The Hold Fast

June 9th, 1878

at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington,

by C. H. Spurgeon.

“Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go: keep her; for she is thy life.”——Proverbs 4:13.

Faith may be well described as taking hold upon divine instruction. God has condescended to teach us, and it is ours to hear with attention and receive his words; and while we are hearing faith comes, even that faith which saves the soul. To take “fast hold” is an exhortation which concerns the strength, the reality, the heartiness, and the truthfulness of faith, and the more of these the better. If to take hold is good, to take fast hold is better. Even a touch of the hem of Christ’s garment causeth healing to come to us, but if we want the full riches which are treasured up in Christ we must not only touch but take hold; and if we would know from day to day to the very uttermost all the fullness of his grace, we must take fast hold, and so maintain a constant and close connection between our souls and the eternal fountain of life. It were well to give such a grip as a man gives to a plank when he seizes hold upon it for his very life— that is a fast hold indeed.

We are to take fast hold of instruction, and the best of instruction is that which comes from God; the truest wisdom is the revelation of God in Christ Jesus: of that therefore we are to take fast hold. The best understanding is obedience to the will of God and a diligent learning of those saving truths which God has set before us in his word: so that in effect we are exhorted to take hold of Christ Jesus our Lord, the incarnate wisdom in whom dwelleth all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. We are not to let him go but to keep him and hold him, for he is our life. Does not John in his gospel tell us that the Word is our light for instruction and at the same time our life? “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” The more we abide in the Lord Jesus and the more firmly we take hold upon him, the better will it be for us in a thousand ways. I intend at this time to speak as the Holy Spirit shall enable me upon this fast-hold; and I reckon that the subject is one of the most important which can occupy your attention at this particular crisis in the history of the church. Many there be around us who believe in Christ, but it is with a very trembling faith and their hold is unsteady; we need to have among us men of tighter grip, who really believe what they profess to believe, who know the truth in its living power, and are persuaded of its certainty, so that they cannot by any means be moved from their steadfastness. Among the vacillating crowd we long to see fast-holders who are pillars in the house of our God, whose grasp of divine truth is not that of babes or boys, but of men full grown and vigorous.

We shall handle our subject by speaking first upon the method by which we may take fast hold; then upon the difficulties which will lie in our way in so doing; thirdly, upon the benefits of such a firm grasp; and lastly upon the arguments for our fast holding mentioned in the text.

I. First then, the method of taking fast hold upon true religion, upon the gospel, upon Christ in fact.

At the outset my brethren, much must depend upon the intense decision which a man feels in his soul with regard to eternal things. If he intends trifling he will trifle, but if he means taking fast hold he will, by God’s grace, do so. Under God, this, in many cases, depends very much upon a man’s individuality and force of character. Some men are naturally thorough and whole-hearted in all things upon which they enter, whether of this world or the next. When they serve the devil they are amongst his life guards, and they rush to the front in all kinds of iniquity. Among sinners they become the chief for they have no fear and no hesitancy; they are daredevils, defying both God and man, sinning greedily with both hands. Such men, when converted, often become eminent saints, being just as thorough and resolute in their following after God as they were in the pursuit of evil; they are determined to vindicate his holy cause and spread abroad the knowledge of his love. I must confess an earnest longing that many such may be brought into the church of Christ at this time to brace her up and inspire her with new energy. Many in our churches appear to have no depth of earth; with joy they receive the word from the very fact that they are so shallow, but as soon as the sun ariseth with burning heat it is discovered that they have no root, for they wither away. Others are truly religious, and probably will remain so, but they are not zealous; in fact they are not intense about anything, but are lukewarm, weak, and unstable. These are mere chips in the porridge, neither souring nor sweetening: they give forth no flavour, but they take the flavour of that which surrounds them; they are the creatures of circumstances, not helmsmen who avail themselves of stream and tide, but mere drift-wood carried along by any and every current which may take hold on them. They have no fullness of manhood about them, they are mere children; they resemble the sapling which can be bent and twisted, and not the oak which defies the storm. There are certain persons of this sort who in other matters have purpose enough, and strength of mind enough, but when they touch the things of God they are loose, flimsy, superficial, half-hearted. You see them earnest enough in hunting after wealth, but they show no such zeal in the pursuit of godliness. The force of their character comes out in a political debate, in the making of a bargain, in the arrangement of a social gathering, but you never see it in the work of the Lord. The young man comes to the front as a volunteer, or as a member of a club, or in the house of business, but who ever hears of him in the Sabbath school, the prayer-meeting, or the home-mission? In the things of God such persons owe any measure of progress which they make to the influence of their fellows who bear them along as so much dead weight, they themselves never throwing enough weight into the matter to add a single half-ounce of spiritual power to the church. Now, all this is mischievous and wrong.

My dear friends, we must all confess that if the religion of Christ be true it deserves that we should give our whole selves to it. If it be a lie let it be scoured from creation; but if it he true, it is a matter concerning which we cannot be neutral or lukewarm, for it demands our soul, our life, our all, and its claim cannot be denied. There must be a determination wrought in our souls by the Holy Spirit to be upright and downright in the work of the Lord, or else we shall be little worth.

We come however to closer matters of fact when we observe next that our taking fast hold of the things of God must depend upon the thoroughness of our conversion. In this church we try, as far as we can, in receiving church-members, to receive none but those who give clear evidence of a change of heart; but this evidence can be imitated so skilfully that the best examination and the most earnest judgment cannot prevent self-deceived persons from making a profession of religion. This we cannot help, but woe to those who wilfully deceive. Many exhibit flowers and fruits which never grew in their own gardens; their experience is borrowed and does not spring from the essential root of the Holy Ghost’s work within their souls: this is sad indeed. Our condition before God is a personal matter and can never be settled by the judgment of our fellows, for what can others know of the workings of our hearts? Each man must judge himself and examine himself, for whatever a church may attempt in its zeal for purity, it can never take the responsibility of his own sincerity from any man. We do not pretend to give certificates of salvation, and if we did they would be worthless; you must yourselves know the Lord and be really converted, or else your profession is a forgery and you yourselves are counterfeits. If a man shall in after life hold fast the things of God he must be soundly converted at first. Very much of his after life depends upon the thoroughness of his beginning. There must at the very first be a deep sense of sin, a consciousness of guilt, a holy horror of evil, or he will never make much of a Christian. I do not say that all or even any of those doubts and temptations and satanic suggestions which some have had to struggle with, are necessary to make a true conversion; but I must confess that I am not at all displeased when I meet with a good deal of battling and struggling in the experience of the newly awakened. It is not pleasant for them, but we hope it will be profitable. Those whose souls are ploughed and ploughed and ploughed again before the seed is sown upon them, often yield the best crop. John Bunyan’s “Grace Abounding” very much accounts for John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress.” If it had not been for his terrible conflicts of soul he might not have known how to hold fast his confidence when shut up for twelve years in prison, nor would he have seen visions of the celestial city when all around him was as the valley of the shadow of death. I do not wish to see seeking souls distressed by Satan, but I do press for this— that there shall be an end of self-trust, a total destruction of self-righteousness, a complete giving up of all legal and carnal hopes, or else the conversion will be a mere show and he who is the subject of it will be like Ephraim, a silly dove without heart. Unless repentance of sin is real in you, you will never take fast hold of the truth of God.

And there must be, dear friends, a very sincere laying hold upon Christ Jesus. If you have any doubt about the doctrine of atonement I do not wonder if your religion soon wears into shreds. No, you must without question accept the substitutionary sacrifice; your soul must feel that the precious blood is her only hope, that this and this alone can make her clean before the living God. You must fly to Christ in desperation, and cling to him as all your salvation and all your desire; there must be no hesitancy here. At the very outset of the Christian life these two things should be very distinct with you —sin which has ruined you, and Christ who has saved you. Make a muddle at first and your life will be a tangle. Some tradesmen never carry on their business well, they evidently do not more than half understand it and are mere bunglers. Now, if you come to enquire you will find that they were never thoroughly grounded in their calling; either they never served an apprenticeship, or else they were lazy lads and never became masters of their trade, and this bad commencement sticks to them all their lives. It is the same with the higher learning. A man may go a long way in the classics, but if he was not grounded in the grammar he will be everlastingly making mistakes which a sound scholar will soon discover. Every teacher must work hard at the elements if his pupils are to succeed. Whatever you do with the higher forms, do teach that little boy his grammar, ground him in the rudiments, or he will be injured for life. To borrow another illustration, we have heard of a bridge which spanned a stream and for some years stood well enough, but by-and-by through the force of the current, it began to show signs of giving way. When it came to be examined it was soon seen that the builders never went deep enough with the foundations. There is the mischief of thousands of other things besides bridges. We must have good and deep foundations or otherwise the higher we build the sooner the fabric will fall. Look at many of the wretched houses in the streets around us, they are the disgrace of the city; you will see settlements and cracks everywhere because of bad foundations and bad materials. The same is true in the characters of many professed Christians; for want of a good commencement you can see flaws and cracks innumerable and you wonder that they do not come down in sudden ruin. So indeed they would, but like those wretched houses they hold one another up. Many professors only keep upright because they stand in a row and derive support from their associations. I wish we could see more Christian men of the sort who dare to stand alone, like those old family mansions which stand each one in its own garden, so well built that when we begin to take them down each brick is found to be solid as granite, and the mortar is as hard as a rock. Such buildings and such men become every day more rare, but we must come back to the old style, and the sooner the better. Those of you who are yet in the early days of your piety should see to this. See that you are right, and sound, and thorough, and take fast hold of truth in the days of your first love, or yours will be but a sickly life in years to come.

This being taken for granted, the next help to a fast hold of Christ is hearty discipleship. Brethren, as soon as you are converted you become the disciples of Jesus, and if you are to become fast-holding Christians you must acknowledge him to be your Master, Teacher, and Lord in all things, and resolve to be good scholars in his school. He will be the best Christian who has Christ for his Master and truly follows him. Some are disciples of the church, others are disciples of the minister, and a third sort are disciples of their own thoughts; he is the wise man who sits at Jesus’ feet and learns of him with the resolve to follow his teaching and imitate his example. He who tries to learn of Jesus himself, taking the very words from the Lord’s own lips, binding himself to believe whatsoever the Lord hath taught and to do whatsoever he hath commanded—he I say, is the stable Christian. Follow Jesus my brethren and not the church, for our Lord has never said to his disciples, “Follow your brethren,” but he has said “Follow me.” He has not said, “Abide by the denominational confession,” but he has said, “Abide in me.” Nothing must come in between our souls and our Lord. What if fidelity to Jesus should sometimes lead us to differ from our brethren? What matters it so long as we do not differ from our Master? Crochets and quibbles are evil things, but a keenly sensitive conscientiousness is invaluable. Be true disciples of Christ and let his least word be precious to you. Remember that if a man love him he will keep his words; and he hath said, “he that shall break one of the least of these my commandments and shall teach men so, the same shall be least in the kingdom of heaven.” Shun all compromises and abatements of truth, but be thorough and determined, holding fast your Savior’s words. Follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. If such be your resolve by the grace of God, you will take fast hold of instruction and will never let it go.

It will much help you to this if in the next place you have a studious consideration of the Word of God, and meditate much upon the truth which you have received. There is too little studying of the Scriptures nowadays, I am persuaded. Books, magazines, papers, and the like bury the Bible under heaps of rubbish; but he who means to be a man of God to the fullness of his manhood will feed upon the word of God at first hand. Like the Bereans he will be of a noble spirit, and he will search the Scriptures daily. “I want,” saith he, “to obtain my creed, not at second hand from others, but directly for myself from the very word of God itself—the pure well of gospel undefiled.” This is a very important point. I have heard often of late a misused expression—“I do my own thinking:” let us correct it and then adopt it by saying, “I do my own searching of the word of God.” Remember, we are not called to think out a new gospel, as some imagine, but we are called to be thinkers upon the old gospel, that we may know and understand its principles and its bearings and become confirmed in the belief of it. We need to think over the word till we are thoroughly imbued with it. The silk of certain insects takes its color from the leaves on which they feed, and a Christian man’s life will always take its color from that which his soul feeds upon. Oh, to live upon the word of God, even upon the deep things of God, for so shall we be rooted and grounded in the faith and shall take fast hold of eternal wisdom.

An established Christian is one who not only knows the doctrine but who also knows the authority for it, having looked around it and pondered it in his heart. By careful meditation he is taught in the truth and is able to give a reason for the hope that is in him with meekness and fear. Nor is he merely a man of the letter; his study in the power of the Holy Spirit has carried him into the essence of the word. He has asked the Spirit of God to make him acquainted with divine truth, so that he has not only read of it but he has communed with it, and now he lives upon it, eats it, drinks it, receives it into the inward parts of his soul, and retains it there as a living and incorruptible seed. Now a man who does this year after year is the kind of man who, by God’s grace, will take fast-hold of instruction, and will prove a faithful witness for his Lord.

Add to this also an earnest seriousness of character, and you go a long way towards maintaining a fast hold of Christ. We do not mean by this that we are to dismiss cheerfulness—the Lord give us more of it, for it is as oil to the wheels, and is a high recommendation of religion to the unconverted. There are some who are a deal too gloomy in their religion, and seem to think that the grace of God is never displayed by them unless they are sullen and doleful. But at the same time there is a flippancy which is not commendable, and a levity which is far apart from the mind of Christ. Christian life is not child’s play; we above all men ought to make our lives sublime, and not ridiculous. We are not called into this world to trifle away the hours and kill time in doing nothing; for this life links itself to eternity, and that eternity, in spite of all that is said to the contrary, wilt be one of endless misery or of endless joy; it is therefore no small thing to possess an immortal mind and to be responsible before God. Sin is no trifle, pardon is no trifle, and condemnation is no trifle. Eternal life is precious beyond all things, and to lie under the wrath of God is dreadful beyond conception. I love to see, especially in young Christians, with regard to the things of God, deep seriousness of purpose and spirit, showing that they feel it to be a weighty thing to be a Christian, and that they cannot afford to have their Christianity put under the shadow of suspicion, nor dare they even appear to be mere players upon a stage, for they fear and tremble at his word.

Now, if all these things be in you and abound, there will grow around them an experimental verification of the things of God. I mean that you will not only read of the love of God, but you will feel it from day to day, and so be assured of it. You read in the Scriptures of the power of sin and you believe what you read, but to this will be added the confirmatory fact that you feel it in your members, and therefore cannot doubt it. You read of the efficacy of the precious blood of Jesus; but you do more, for you feel its cleansing power upon your heart and its consoling influence over your conscience, and so you are established in the blessed truth. We hardly know anything till we have lived it. You must get truth burnt into you with the hot iron of experience or you will forget it. I believe that the pains and griefs and afflictions of many of God’s children have been absolutely necessary to establish them in the faith; and I can only hope that you who are the children of joy may derive as much benefit from your gladness, as mourners have found in their sorrows; it might be so and should be so, but I fear it seldom is. The whole of our life should be a daily testing of the gospel, and a continuous verification of the eternal truth thereof. Our life should agree with this Book of life: just as the book of nature, being written by the same author as the book of revelation, shows the same hand and style; so the book of the new creation within us; being inscribed by the same Spirit who has written these Scriptures, will display the same style and manner; and we shall thus be growingly assured of the things which are verily revealed to us of God. Go on, dear friends, and may the Lord grant that whatever your experience may be, whether it shall abound in bitterness or in sweetness, the testimony of God may be confirmed in you, and your grip of it may be intensified by every year’s experience.

I must add one other word. I believe that in the mode of taking fast hold upon the gospel, practical Christianity has a great influence; I refer especially to practical usefulness. Some members enter the church and never do a hand’s turn. We have the distinguished privilege of seeing them sit in their pews, and that is all we know about them. We cannot bring them under church censure, for they are punctual in religious observances; but they are barren boughs. Give me the young man who, when he joins the church, says, “I shall take a little time to study the gospel till I know more of it by the teaching of God’s Spirit;” and then, having done so, says, “I have not learned this for myself. There is something for me to do in connection with the church of God and I am determined to find out what it is and to do it.” You see such a young believer going to the Sabbath school, or you find him beginning to speak in a cottage, or becoming a visitor, and seeking to speak personally to individuals about their souls. If he be a man of the right kind his work will be another hold-fast to his mind. Look at him, how he keeps to the gospel: how he clings to the old, old truth. He is not the man to run after new theories and modern doubts for he is helped to keep right by his practical connection with spiritual disease and its remedy. Go into the back slums of London and see if you will doubt the doctrine of human depravity. Oh no, it is your ladies and gentlemen that wear lavender kid gloves who doubt that doctrine. Try to rescue a harlot from her sin, and if you are enabled to lead her to Jesus you cannot doubt the power of the precious blood of Jesus to cleanse the heart. Not those who battle with vice but those who practice it themselves are found cavilling at the doctrine of atonement. Those who are busy plucking brands out of the fire are little given to speculation, but are firm abiders in the gospel. I think there are few exceptions to the rule that the “advanced thought” gentlemen are not engaged in practical work for the salvation of souls. They are grand talkers but very poor workers. I am not hypercritical when I say that if you will mention a “modern thought” professor, it will generally turn out that he is not worth his salt as to practical usefulness: not he; he has the parrot-faculty of pulling things to pieces, but what positive work has he ever done? He may be a distinguished dignitary or a noble scholar, but as to actually grappling with the hearts and consciences of men and entering into the dark and troublous experience of tempted souls, he is quite at sea, for he knows nothing about it. He would talk after another fashion if his hand had ever been laid to hard work among sinful men and afflicted consciences. I tell you sirs that to argue with a poor distressed conscience and to try to bring it to peace in Christ soon lets you know the truth of the gospel. To stand by a dying bed and hear the holy triumph of even the most illiterate of the children of God, or what is equally efficacious, to watch the last sad hours of an impenitent sinner dying without hope, will make you know that there is a world to come, joyful or terrible as the case may be; and you will also learn that sin is a great evil, and that the atonement is a great reality. Young convert, if you want to be one of the firm holders of the gospel you must get to work as well as to study, for this by the overruling power of the Holy Ghost will strengthen you in the faith of God’s elect. Thus I have brought forward the method: may it prove to be instructive.

II. Very briefly I want now to show the difficulties of taking fast hold of instruction, and every difficulty I mention will tend to show all the more clearly the necessity of it.

The first difficulty is that this is the age of questioning. Everybody questions now. Our friends over in Germany have pushed the questioning business to the furthest point, and in their thorough way they have produced its legitimate fruit in cold-blooded attempts to murder a venerable monarch. Professed ministers of the gospel have taught the German mind to doubt everything, and now the basis of society is shaken and law and order are undermined. What could they expect otherwise? He who does not fear God is not likely to honor the king. When men give up their Bibles they will care but little for human laws. We have plenty of the like evil leaven in England, and certain clergymen and dissenting divines are spreading it with hideous industry. Young gentlemen whose whiskers have not yet developed are authoritatively deciding that nothing can be decided, and dogmatically denouncing all dogmas. We meet them every day, and we notice that in proportion to their ignorance is their confidence in sneering at every holy thing. According to them nobody is sincere, nothing is sacred. These great men, who would never have been heard of if they had not been heretical, know better by far than God himself. As for apostles and prophets, they are just nothing at all to these infallibles; their own “thought” is more precious than inspiration itself. This conceited scepticism is in the air; everywhere it seems to be abroad and you cannot help encountering it; therefore let us be the more earnest to hold fast the faith.

Worse than this, this is an age of worldliness. Everybody wants to be rich, and nobody is rich now at the point at which his forefathers were content to stop. Our good old deacons and respected church members were content with very moderate incomes, they were satisfied and happy with thrift and prudence, and would have been deeply grieved with the extravagance which is seen on all sides at this time. They not only considered their shops and their fields, but they planned to have time to look after the Sunday-schools in which they were proud to serve, and the prayer-meetings which they delighted to attend. But, dear me, prayer-meetings, lectures, sermons, Sunday-schools, these are all despised now! If a man can make an extra guinea or two by putting himself where they are out of the question, he jumps at the chance. We must be rich, we must cut a dash, we must spend more than our neighbors, and for this the work of the church may go to the dogs. Oh for a few simple, earnest Christians who will judge their Lord and his cause to be worth some consideration, and will lay themselves out to serve his church. When worldliness is so predominant it becomes so much the harder to take fast hold of eternal things. One needs to hear the word, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you,” for unless we do hear it we shall be tempted to take fast hold on the world, and let the things of eternity slip by us.

Then, besides, there is and always has been a great desire for novelty. We are all the subjects of it: we all like something fresh. But there are some who are sick of the changeable disease; you see them zealots for a creed to-day, but on a sudden you find them deeply immersed in the opposite teaching. Ah, now they have found out something very wonderful: just as the idiot who saw the rainbow, and believed that there was a jewel at the foot of it, ran for miles to seize a glittering sapphire and grasped a piece of glass bottle; so do they forever pursue and never attain. We have a few of these gentlemen in most of our churches, but you will find them nowhere long. Another inventor starts a new system and away they go, pining always to be the first disciples of each new prophet. May God save us from the Athenian spirit which for ever hungers for something new.

Another difficulty, and the worst of all, is the corruption of our own hearts. “Take fast hold of instruction” says the text. “Why,” I hear a brother say, “my dear sir, sometimes it is as much as I can do to take hold of it at all. I have to question whether I have been converted. I go down into such depths of despondency that unless the truth holds me, I shall never hold it.” Well, but I hope this is all a means of helping you to hold it all the more firmly. You now see that salvation must be by grace from first to last. By this very process you will be compelled to hold the doctrines of grace the more intensely, because you are made to see how utterly unable you are, in and of yourselves to think a good thought, much less to remain steadfast in the whole truth of Christ.

And then there is Satan, too; how busy he is in trying to undermine the fundamentals of the faith! Has he not suggested to some of us all kind of doubts? Yes. I said to a man one day who had uttered some blasphemy in my presence against a certain truth, “You think you stagger me! My dear man, I have had more doubts pass through my thoughts a great deal than you could tell me, or fifty like you.” The doubts which the devil insinuates into the minds of the people of God are at times quite as horrible as any which a Voltaire or a Tom Paine was ever able to invent, and yet by God’s grace we have not given up the gospel, nor shall we, though heaven and earth shall pass away. Because we are one with Christ, we shall live in the truth of Christ, for he will keep and preserve us even to the end.

III. Thirdly let us consider the benefits of taking fast hold. I wish I had an hour in which to dilate upon the benefit of so doing, but I must briefly say that it gives stability to the Christian character to have a firm grip of the gospel. Men who take fast hold are the backbone of a church. All through the dark reign of moderatism in Scotland, who kept up the testimony for truth? Why, those solid Christians who were known as “the men” who held the faith and walked with God in the power of it. These were men much in prayer and much in meditation, who lived on when all sound teaching had left the pulpits, because their souls were sustained by secret communion with God on the hill-side. When the time came for pure truth to revive in Scotland these men came to the front and were honored as the men who had kept the flame alive in the land. What was it delivered our country in still earlier times from being altogether under the hoof of Rome? When prelates forsook Christ, and preachers by hundreds in Mary’s day turned from Protestantism to Popery, the true faith lived on in the hearts of poor men and women, weavers and cobblers, who believed what they did believe and could not deny the truth. Everybody in the parish knew that they were “stubborn heretics” who could not be frightened or argued down. They knew, they were sure, they were confident, and therefore they spoke. It did not matter to them that they were in a minority, for they knew that a minority of one on God’s side is a majority. “I Athanasius against the world,” said that grand old confessor, when they told him everybody had gone over to Arianism, and that nobody believed in the deity of Christ. “The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved, I bear up the pillars of it,” said one of old; and happy is that man to whom such an office is given.

A firm grip of the gospel will give you strength for service. The man who can “hold the fort” at one time is the very man who can capture a fort at another time. He who can stand well can march well. The hand of the church is made of the same material as its backbone. It is of no use sending poor hesitating professors into the field of holy labor. If you hardly know what you believe how can you teach other people? But when the truth is written upon your very soul and graven as with the point of a diamond upon your heart, you will speak with confidence; and there will be a power about your utterances which none shall be able to withstand or gainsay. For the sake then of your spiritual strength, I press the exhortation of the text, “Take fast hold of instruction.”

And this, too, will bring you joy. The outskirts of our Jerusalem are dreary; her glory lies within. Where shines the brightest light? It is in the holy of holies, in the innermost shrine. The skin and husks of religion are poor things, but the juice, the life, the vital power of religion,—therein lies the sweetness. You must not be satisfied with the “name to live”; it will never comfort you, it will even distress you. The life of Christ mightily developed in you must be the joy of your heart. Multitudes of Christian professors get next to nothing out of Christianity. How can they? They hold their religion as some rich farmers hold “off-hand farms.” Nobody ever makes anything out of off-hand farms: the man who makes farming pay lives on the spot, and gives his whole time and energy to it. So is it in the things of God: if you make your minister your bailiff in religion you will get nothing out of it; you must live in it and upon it, and then you will prosper. I want you to say, “If there be anything in godliness I am going to know it; if prayer has power I am going to pray; if there be such a thing as communion with God I will enjoy it; if there be such a thing as likeness to Christ I will obtain it. Godliness shall not be an addition to my life, but it shall be my life itself.” Ah brother, you are the man of the shining countenance, you are the man of the sparkling eye; you drink deep, and you find that the deeper you drink the sweeter the draught becomes.

Lastly, with regard to this summary of benefits;—persons of this kind are the very glory of the church, they are the persons in whom true religion displays its brightest beams. They may be humble cottagers, or obscure members of a large church who are scarcely known, but those who live with them, those who are at all acquainted with them, say of them, “These men are a credit to the church and an honor to the name of Christianity.” Not your frothy talkers, not your flimsy professors, but your deep taught, grace-instructed men and women, these are they who are the beauty of the church and the glory of Christ. I would to God we had many more such. I look around and see that the cause does not prosper as I could wish throughout the land, and then I recollect in one spot an earnest village preacher, in another a holy laborious deacon, in a third a gracious woman, zealous in every good work, and I am comforted. Thank God, there is life in the old church yet. There is hope for her yet because of her fast-holding people. If I study the statistics of the churches, I have to say, “What is the good of these figures? Probably a church of two hundred members might be cut down to twenty earnest effectives.” For my part, I would sooner stand on this platform with twelve holy men and women to back me up than with twelve thousand mere pretenders to religion, such as can be found in crowds anywhere. No, it is the fast grip of faith, it is vital godliness which makes a man to be a real power in the church.

IV. Now lastly I have to mention the arguments of the text, which are three. All through the sermon I have been using argument, therefore I shall be the more brief and draw to a close.

The first argument is, take fast hold of true religion because it is your best friend. Read the text: “Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go.” You cannot find your way to heaven without this guide, therefore do not suffer it to leave you. Do as Moses did, who when his father-in-law, Hobab, was with him, would not suffer him to depart, “for” he said, “thou shalt be to us instead of eyes, for thou knowest where to encamp in the wilderness.” As Moses kept Hobab, so do you keep the faith, for you cannot find your road except by holding the true gospel with a true heart. What a sweet companion the gospel is! How often it has cheered you! How easy has the road become while you have been in intercourse with it. Do you what the disciples at Emmaus did when Jesus talked with them: they constrained him, saying “Abide with us.” Do not let him go; you will be a lonely pilgrim if you do. No, if you could be led by an angel but must lose the presence of your God, you would be wise to cry out against such an evil, and like Moses plead: “If thy Spirit go not with us, carry us not up hence.”

The next argument is that true godliness should be held fast, for it is your treasure. “Keep it,” says our text. It is your best inheritance at the present moment, and it is to be your eternal inheritance: keep it then. Let everything else go, but do not part with a particle of truth. The slightest fragment of truth is more valuable than a diamond. Hold it then with all firmness. You are so much the richer by every truth you know; you will be so much the poorer by every truth you forget. Hold it then, and hide it in your heart. A certain king who had a rare diamond sent it to a foreign court, entrusting it to a very faithful servant. This servant was attacked however on the road by a band of robbers, and as they could not find the diamond, they drew their swords and killed him. He was found dead, but his master exclaimed, “He has not lost the diamond, I am sure!” He judged truly, for the trusty servant had swallowed the gem and so preserved it with his life. We also should thus place the truth in our inward parts, and then we shall never be deprived of it. A priest took a Testament from an Irish boy. “But” cried the boy, “you cannot take away those six chapters of Matthew that I learned by heart.” They may take away our books but they cannot take away what we have fed upon and made our own. “His flesh is meat indeed, his blood is drink indeed,” for when we have fed upon him our Lord Jesus remains in us the hope of glory. Hold fast the truth, O believers in Jesus, for it is your treasure.

Lastly, it is your “lift.” Mr. Arnot, in his very beautiful book upon the Proverbs, tells a story to illustrate this text. He says that in the Southern seas an American vessel was attacked by a wounded whale. The huge monster ran out for the length of a mile from the ship, and then turned round, and with the whole force of its acquired speed struck the ship and made it leak at every timber, so as to begin to go down. The sailors got out all their boats, filled them as quickly as they could with the necessaries of life, and began to pull away from the ship. Just then two strong men might be seen leaping into the water who swam to the vessel, leaped on board, disappeared for a moment, and then came up bringing something in their hands. Just as they sprang into the sea, down went the vessel, and they were carried round in the vortex, but they were observed to be both of them swimming, not as if struggling to get away, but as if looking for something, which at last they both seized and carried to the boats. What was this treasure? What article could be so valued as to lead them to risk their lives? It was the ship’s compass which had been left behind, without which they could not have found their way out of those lonely southern seas into the high road of commerce. That compass was life to them, and the gospel of the living God is the same to us. You and I must venture all for the gospel: this infallible word of God must be guarded to the death. Men may tell us what they please, and say what they will, but we will risk everything sooner than give up those eternal principles by which we have been saved. The Lord give all of us his abundant grace that we may take fast hold of divine instruction. Amen.

The Great Reservoir

February 21, 1858
by
C. H. SPURGEON
(1834-1892)

"Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life."—Proverbs 4:23.

If I should vainly attempt to fashion my discourse after lofty models, I should this morning compare the human heart to the ancient city of Thebes, out of whose hundred gates multitudes of warriors were wont to march. As was the city, such were her armies, as was her inward strength, such were they who came forth of her. I might then urge the necessity of keeping the heart, because it is the metropolis of our manhood, the citadel and armory of our humanity. Let the chief fortress surrender to the enemy, and the occupation of the rest must be an easy task. Let the principal stronghold be possessed by evil, the whole land must be overrun thereby. Instead, however, of doing this, I shall attempt what possibly I may be able to perform, by a humble metaphor and a simple figure, which will be easily understood; I shall endeavor to set forth the wise man's doctrine, that our life issues from the heart, and thus I shall labor to show the absolute necessity of keeping the heart with all diligence.

You have seen the great reservoirs provided by our water companies, in which the water which is to supply hundreds of streets and thousands of houses is kept. Now, the heart is just the reservoir of man, and our life is allowed to flow in its proper season. That life may flow through different pipes—the mouth, the hand, the eye; but still all the issues of hand, of eye, of lip, derive their source from the great fountain and central reservoir, the heart; and hence there is no difficulty in showing the great necessity that exists for keeping this reservoir, the heart, in a proper state and condition, since otherwise that which flows through the pipes must be touted and corrupt. May the Holy Spirit now direct our meditations.

Mere moralists very often forget the heart, and deal exclusively with the lesser powers. Some of them say, "If a man's life be wrong, it is better to alter the principles upon which his conduct is modeled: we had better adopt another scheme of living; society must be re-modeled, so that man may have an opportunity for the display of virtues, and less temptation to indulge in vice." It is as if, when the reservoir was filled with poisonous or polluted fluid, some sage counsellor should propose that all the piping had better be taken up, and fresh pipes laid down, so that the water might run through fresh channels; but who does not perceive that it would be all in vain, if the fountain-head were polluted, however good the channels. So in vain the rules by which men hope to fashion their lives; in vain the regimen by which we seek to constrain ourselves to the semblance of goodness, unless the heart be right, the very best scheme of life shall fall to the ground, and fail to effect its design. Others say, "Well, if the life be wrong, it would be better to set the understanding right: you must inform man's judgment, educate him, teach him better, and when his head is well informed, then his life will be improved. Now, understanding is, if I may use such a figure, the stopcock which controls the emotions, lets them flow on, or stops them; and it is as if some very wise man, when a reservoir had been poisoned, proposed that there should be a new person employed to turn the water off or on, in hope that the whole difficulty would thus be obviated. If we followed his advice, if we found the wisest man in the world to have control of the fountain, Mr. Understanding would still be incapable of supplying us with healthy streams, until we had first of all purged the cistern whence they flowed. The Arminian divine, too, sometimes suggests another way of improving man's life. He deals with the will. He says, the will must first of all be conquered, and if the will be right, then every thing will be in order. Now, will is like the great engine which forces the water out of the fountain-head along the pipes, so that it is made to flow into our dwellings. The learned counsellor proposes that there should be a new steam-engine employed to force the water along the pipes. "If," says he, "we had the proper machinery for forcing the fluid, then all would be well." No, sir, if the stream be poisonous, you may have axles to turn on diamonds, and you may have a machine that is made of gold, and a force as potent as Omnipotence, but even then you have not accomplished your purpose until you have cleansed the polluted fountain, and purged the issues of life which flow therefrom. The wise man in our text seems to say, "Beware of misapplying your energies, be careful to begin in the right place." It is very necessary the understanding should be right; it is quite needful the will should have its proper predominance; it is very necessary that you should keep every part of man in a healthy condition; "but," says he, "if you want to promote true holiness, you must begin with the heart, for out of it are the issues of life; and when you have purged it, when you have made its waters pure and limpid, then shall the current flow and bless the inhabitants with clear water; but not till then." Here let us pause and ask the solemn and vital question, "Is my heart right in the sight of God?" For unless the inner man has been renewed by the grace of God, through the Holy Spirit, our heart is full of rottenness, filth, and abominations. And if so, here must all our cleansing begin, if it be real and satisfactory. Unrenewed men, I beseech you ponder the words of an ancient Christian which I here repeat in thine ear:—"It is no matter what is the sign, though an angel, that hangs without, if the devil and sin dwell therein. New trimmings upon an old garment will not make it new, only give it a new appearance; and truly it is no good husbandry to bestow a great deal of cost in mending up an old suit, that will soon drop to tatters and rags, when a little more might purchase a new one that is lasting. And is it not better to labor to get a new heart, that all thou dost may be accepted, and thou saved, than to lose all the pains thou takest in religion, and thyself also for want of it?"

Now, ye who love the Lord, let me take you to the reservoir of your heart, and let, me urge upon you the great necessity of keeping the heart right, if you would have the stream of your life happy for yourselves and beneficial to others.

I. First, keep the heart full. However pure the water may be in the central reservoir, it will not be possible for the company to provide us with an abundant supply of water, unless the reservoir itself be full. An empty fountain will most assuredly beget empty pipes; and let the machinery be never so accurate, let every thing else be well ordered, yet if that reservoir be dry, we may wait in vain for any of the water that we require. Now, you know many people—(you are sure to meet with them in your own society, and your own circle; for I know of no one so happy as to be without such acquaintances)—whose lives are just dry, good-for-nothing emptiness. They never accomplish anything; they have no mental force; they have no moral power; what they say, nobody thinks of noticing; what they do is scarcely ever imitated. We have known fathers whose moral force has been so despicable, that even their children have scarcely been able to imitate them. Though imitation was strong enough in them, yet have they unconsciously felt, even in their childhood, that their father was, after all, but a child like themselves, and had not grown to be a man. Do you not know many people, who if they were to espouse a cause, and it were entrusted to them, would most certainly pilot it to shipwreck. Failure would be the total result. You could not use them as clerks in your office, without feeling certain that your business would be nearly murdered. If you were to employ them to manage a concern for you, you would be sure they would manage to spend all the money, but could never produce a doit. If they were placed in comfortable circumstances for a few months, they would go on carelessly till all was gone. They are just the flats, preyed on by the sharpers in the world; they have no manly strength, no power at all. See these people in religion: it does not matter much what are their doctrinal sentiments, it is quite certain they will never affect the minds of others. Put them in the pulpit: they are the slaves of the deacons, or else the, are over-ridden by the church; they never have an opinion of their own, can not come out with a thing; they have not the heart to say, "Such a thing is, and I know it is." These men just live on, but as far as any utility to the world is concerned, they might almost as well never have been created, except it were to be fed upon by other people. Now, some say that this is the fault of men's heads: "Such a one," they say, "could not get on; he had a small head; it was clean impossible for him to prosper, his head was small, he could not do anything; he had not enough force." Now, that may be true; but I know what was truer still—he had got a small heart and that heart was empty. For, mark you, a man's force in the world, other things being equal, is just in the ratio of the force and strength of his heart. A full-hearted man is always a powerful man: if he be erroneous, then he is powerful for error; if the thing is in his heart, he is sure to make it notorious, even though it may be a downright falsehood. Let a man be never so ignorant, still if his heart be full of love to a cause, he becomes a powerful man for that object, because he has got heart-power, heart-force. A man may be deficient in many of the advantages of education, in many of those niceties which are so much looked upon in society; but once give him a good strong heart, that beats hard, and there is no mistake about his power. Let him have a heart that is right full up to the brim with an object, and that man will do the thing, or else he will die gloriously defeated, and will glory in his defeat. HEART IS POWER. It is the emptiness of men's hearts that makes them so feeble. Men do not feel what they are at. Now, the man in business that goes heart and soul into his business, is more likely to prosper than anybody else. That is the preacher we want, the man that has a full soul. Let him have a head—the more he knows the better; but, after all, give him a big heart; and when his heart beats, if his heart be full, it will, under God, either make the hearts of his congregation beat after him; or else make them conscious that he is laboring hard to compel them to follow. O! if we had more heart in our Master's service, how much more labor we could endure. You are a Sunday-school teacher, young man, and you are complaining that you can not get on in the Sunday-school. Sir, the service-pipe would give out plenty of water if the heart were full. Perhaps you do not love your work. O, strive to love your work more, and then when your heart is full, you will go on well enough. "O," saith the preacher, "I am weary of my work in preaching; I have little success; I find it a hard toil." The answer to that question is, "Your heart is not full of it, for if you loved preaching, you would breathe preaching, feed upon preaching, and find a compulsion upon you to follow preaching; and your heart being full of the thing, you would be happy in the employment. O for a heart that is full, and deep, and broad! Find the man that hath such a soul as that, and that is the man from whom the living waters shall flow, to make the world glad with their refreshing streams.

Learn, then, the necessity of keeping the heart full; and let the necessity make you ask this question—"But how can I keep my heart full? How can my emotions be strong? How can I keep my desires burning and my zeal inflamed?" Christian! there is one text which will explain all this. "All my springs are in thee," said David. If thou hast all thy springs in God, thy heart will be full enough. If thou dost go to the foot of Calvary, there will thy heart be bathed in love and gratitude. If thou dost frequent the vale of retirement, and there talk with thy God, it is there that thy heart shall be full of calm resolve. If thou goest out with thy Master to the hill of Olivet, and dost with him look down upon a wicked Jerusalem, and weep over it with him, then will thy heart be full of love for never-dying souls. If thou dost continually draw thine impulse, thy life, the whole of thy being from the Holy Spirit, without whom thou canst do nothing; and if thou dost live in close communion with Christ, there will be no fear of thy having a dry heart. He who lives without prayer—he who lives with little prayer—he who seldom reads the Word—he who seldom looks up to heaven for a fresh influence from on high—he will be the man whose heart will become dry and barren; but he who calls in secret on his God—who spends much time in holy retirement—who delights to meditate on the words of the Most High—whose soul is given up to Christ—who delights in his fullness, rejoices in his all-sufficiency, prays for his second coming, and delights in the thought of his glorious advent—such a man, I say, must have an overflowing heart; and as his heart is, such will his life be. It will be a full life; it will be a life that will speak from the sepulcher, and wake the echoes of the future. "Keep thine heart with all diligence," and entreat the Holy Spirit to keep it full; for, otherwise, the issues of thy life will be feeble, shallow, and superficial; and thou mayest as well not have lived at all.

2. Secondly, it would be of little use for our water companies to keep their reservoirs full, if they did not also keep them pure. I remember to have read a complaint in the newspaper of a certain provincial town, that a tradesman had been frequently supplied with fish from the water company, large eels having crept down the pipe, and sometimes creatures a little more loathsome. We have known such a thing as water companies supplying us with solids when they ought to have given us nothing but pure crystal. Now, no one likes that. The reservoir should be kept pure and clean; and unless the water comes from a pure spring, and is not impregnated with deleterious substances, however full the reservoir may be, the company will fail of satisfying or of benefiting its customers. Now it is essential for us to do with our hearts as the company must do with its reservoir. We must keep our hearts pure; for if the heart be not pure, the life can not be pure. It is quite impossible that it should be so. You see a man whose whole conversation is impure and unholy; when he speaks he lards his language with oaths; his mind is low and groveling; none but the things of unrighteousness are sweet to him, for he has no soul above the kennel and the dunghill. You meet with another man who understands enough to avoid violating the decencies of life; but still, at the same time he likes filthiness; any low joke, anything that will in some way stir unholy thoughts is just the thing that he desires. For the ways of God he has no relish; in God's house he finds no pleasure, in his Word no delight. What is the cause of this? Say some, it is because of his family connections—because of the situation in which he stands—because of his early education, and all that. No, no; the simple answer to that is the answer we gave to the other inquiry; the heart is not right; for, if the heart were pure, the life would be pure too. The unclean stream betrays the fountain. A valuable book of German parables, by old Christian Scriver, contains the following homely metaphor:—"A drink was brought to Gotthold, which tasted of the vessel in which it had been contained; and this led him to observe. We have here an emblem of our thoughts, words, and works. Our heart is defiled by sin, and hence a taint if sinfulness cleaves unfortunately to everything we take in hand; and although, from the force of habit, this may be imperceptible to us, it does not escape the eye of the omniscient, holy, and righteous God." Whence come our carnality, covetuousness, pride, sloth and unbelief? Are they not all to be traced to the corruption of our hearts? When the hands of a clock move in an irregular manner, and when the bell strikes the wrong hour, be assured there is something wrong within. O how needful that the main-spring of our motives be in proper order, and the wheels in a right condition.

Ah! Christian keep thy heart pure. Thou sayest, "How can I do this?" Well, there was of old a stream of Marah, to which the thirsty pilgrims in the desert came to drink; and when they came to taste of it, it was so brackish that though their tongues were like torches, and the roofs of their mouths were parched with heat, yet they could not drink of that bitter water. Do you remember the remedy which Moses prescribed? It is the remedy which we prescribe to you this morning. He took a certain tree, and he cast it into the waters, and they became sweet and clear. Your heart is by nature like Marah's water, bitter and impure. There is a certain tree, you know its name, that tree on which the Saviour hung, the cross. Take that tree, put it into your heart, and though it were even more impure than it is, that sweet cross, applied by the Holy Spirit, would soon transform it into its own nature, and make it pure. Christ Jesus in the heart is the sweet purification. He is made unto us sanctification. Elijah cast salt into the waters; but we must cast the blood of Jesus there. Once let us know and love Jesus, once let his cross become the object of our adoration and the theme of our delight, the heart will beam its cleansing, and the life will become pure also. Oh! that we all did learn the sacred lesson of fixing the cross in the heart! Christian man! love thy Saviour more; cry to the Holy Spirit that thou mayest have more affection for Jesus; and then, how ever gainful may be thy sin, thou wilt say with the poet,

"Now for the love I bear his name,
What was my gain I count my loss;
My former pride I call my shame,
And nail my glory to his cross."

The cross in the heart is the purifier of the soul; it purges and it cleanses the chambers of the mind. Christian! keep thy heart pure, "for out of it are the issues of life."

3. In the third place, there is one thing to which our water companies need never pay much attention; that is to say, if their water be pure, and the reservoir be full, they need not care to keep it peaceable and quiet, for let it be stirred to a storm, we should receive our water in the same condition as usual. It is not so, however, with the heart. Unless the heart be kept peaceable, the life will not be happy. If calm doth not reign over that inner lake within the soul which feeds the rivers of our life, the rivers themselves will always be in storm. Our outward acts will always tell that they were born in tempests, by rolling in tempests themselves. Let us just understand this, first, with regard to ourselves. We all desire to lead a joyous life; the bright eye and the elastic foot are things which we each of us desire; to carry about a contented mind is that to which most men are continually aspiring. Let us all remember, that the only way to keep our life peaceful and happy is to keep the heart at rest; for come poverty, come wealth, come honor, come shame, come plenty, or come scarcity, if the heart be quiet there will be happiness anywhere. But whatever the sunshine and the brightness, if the heart be troubled the whole life must be troubled too. There is a sweet story told in one of the German martyrologies well worth both my telling and your remembering. A holy martyr who had been kept for a long time in prison, and had there exhibited, to the wonderment of all who saw him, the strongest constancy and patience, was at last, upon the day of execution, brought out, and tied to the stake preparatory to the lighting of the fire. While in this position he craved permission to speak once more to the Judge, who, according to the Swiss custom, was required to be also present at the execution. After repeatedly refusing, the judge at last came forward, when the peasant addressed him thus: You have this day condemned me to death. Now, I freely admit that I am a poor sinner, but positively deny that I am a heretic, because from my heart I believe and confess all that is contained in the Apostles' Creed (which he thereupon repeated from beginning to end). Now, then, sir, he proceeded to say, I have but one last request to make, which is, that you will approach and place your hand, first upon my breast and then upon your own, and afterwards frankly and truthfully declare, before this assembled multitude, which of the two, mine or yours, is beating most violently with fear and anxiety. For my part, I quit the world with alacrity and joy, to go and be with Christ, in whom I have always believed; what your feelings are at this moment is best known to yourself. The judge could make no answer, and commanded them instantly to light the pile. It was evident, however, from his looks, that he was more afraid than the martyr."

Now, keep your heart right. Do not let it smite you. The Holy Spirit says of David, "David's heart smote him." The smiting of the heart is more painful to a good man than the rough blows of the fist. It is a blow that can be felt; it is iron that enters into the soul. Keep your heart in good temper. Do not let that get fighting with you. Seek that the peace of God which passeth all understanding, may keep your heart and mind through Christ Jesus. Bend your knee at night, and with a full confession of sin, express your faith in Christ, then you may "dread the grave as little as your bed." Rise in the morning and give your heart to God, and put the sweet angels of perfect love and holy faith therein, and you may go into the world, and were it full of lions and of tigers you would no more need to dread it than Daniel when he was cast into the lion's den. Keep the heart peaceable and your life will be happy.

Remember, in the second place, that it is just the same with regard to other men. I should hope we all wish to lead quiet lives, and as much as lieth in us to live peaceably with all men. There is a particular breed of men—I do not know where they come from, but they are mixed up now with the English race and to be met with here and there—men who seem to be born for no other reason whatever but to fight—always quarreling, and never pleased. They say that all Englishmen are a little that way—that we are never happy unless we have something to grumble at, and that the worst thing that ever could be done with us would be to give us some entertainment at which we could not grumble, because we should be mortally offended, because we had not the opportunity of displaying our English propensities. I do not know whether that is true of all of us, but it is of some. You can not sit with them in a room but they introduce a topic upon which you are quite certain to disagree with them. You could not walk with them half a mile along the public streets but they would be sure to make an observation against every body and every thing they saw. They talk about ministers: one man's doctrine is too high, another's is too low; one man they think is a great deal too effeminate and precise, another they say is so vulgar they would not hear him at all. They say of another man that they do not think he attends to visiting his people; of another, that he visits so much that he never prepares for the pulpit. No one can be right for them.

Why is this? Whence arises this continual snarling? The heart must again supply the answer, they are morose and sullen in the inward parts, and hence their speech betrayeth them. They have not had their hearts brought to feel that God hath made of one blood all nations that dwell upon the face of the earth, or if they have felt that, they have never been brought to spell in their hearts—"By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another." Whichever may have been put there of the other ten, the eleventh commandment was never written there. "A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another." That they forgot. Oh! dear Christian people, seek to have your hearts full of love, and if you have had little hearts till now that could not hold love enough for more than your own denomination, get your hearts enlarged, so that you may have enough to send out service-pipes to all God's people throughout the habitable globe; so that whenever you meet a man who is a true-born heir of heaven, he has nothing to do but to turn to the tap, and out of your loving heart will begin to flow issues of true, fervent, unconstrained, willing, living love. Keep thine heart peaceable, that thy life may be so; for out of the heart are the issues of life.

How is this to be done? We reply again, we must ask the Holy Spirit to pacify the heart. No voice but that which on Galilee lake said to the storm "Be still," can ever lay the troubled waters of a stormy heart. No strength but Omnipotence can still the tempest of human nature. Cry out mightily unto him. He still sleeps in the vessel with his church. Ask him to awake, lest your piety should perish in the waters of contention. Cry unto him that he may give your heart peace and happiness. Then shall your life be peaceful; spend ye it where ye may, in trouble or in joy.

4. A little further. When the water-works company have gathered an abundance of water in the reservoir, there is one thing they must always attend to, and that is, they must take care they do not attempt too much, or otherwise they will fail. Suppose they lay on a great main pipe in one place to serve one city, and another main pipe to serve another, and the supply which was intended to fill one channel is diverted into a score of streams, what would be the result? Why nothing would be done well, but everyone would have cause to complain. Now, man's heart is after all so little, that there is only one great direction in which its living water can ever flow; and my fourth piece of advice to you from this text is, Keep your heart undivided. Suppose you see a lake, and there are twenty or thirty streamlets running from it: why, there will not be one strong river in the whole country; there will be a number of little brooks which will be dried up in the summer, and will be temporary torrents in the winter. They will every one of them be useless for any great purposes, because there is not water enough in the lake to feed more than one great stream. Now, a man's heart has only enough life in it to pursue one object fully. Ye must not give half your love to Christ, and the other half to the world. No man can serve God and mammon because there is not enough life in the heart to serve the two. Alas! many people try this, and they fail both ways. I have known a man who has tried to let some of his heart run into the world, and another part he allowed to drip into the church, and the effect has been this: when he came into the church he was suspected of hypocrisy. "Why," they said, "if he were truly with us, could he have done yesterday what he did, and then come and profess so much to-day?" The church looks upon him as a suspicious one: or if he deceive them they feel he is not of much use to them, because they have not got all his heart. What is the effect of his conduct in the world? Why, his religion is a fetter to him there. The world will not have him, and the church will not have him; he wants to go between the two, and both despise him. I never saw anybody try to walk on both sides of the street but a drunken man: he tried it, and it was very awkward work indeed; but I have seen many people in a moral point of view try to walk on both sides of the street, and I thought there was some kind of intoxication in them, or else they would have given it up as a very foolish thing. Now, if I thought this world and the pleasures thereof worth my seeking, I would just seek them and go after them, and I would not pretend to be religious; but if Christ be Christ, and if God be God, let us give our whole hearts to him, and not go shares with the world. Many a church member manages to walk on both sides of the street in the following manner: His sun is very low indeed—it has not much light, not much heat, and is come almost to its setting. Now sinking suns cast long shadows, and this man stands on the world's side of the street, and casts a long shadow right across the road, to the opposite side of the wall just across the pavement. Ay, it is all we get with many of you. You come and you take the sacramental bread and wine; you are capsized; you join the church; and what we get is just your shadow; there is your substance on the other side of the street, after all. What is the good of the empty chrysalis of a man? And yet many of our church members are little better. They just do as the snake does that leaves its slough behind. They give us their slough, their skin, the chrysalis case in which life once was, and then they go themselves hither and thither after their own wanton wills; they give us the outward, and then give the world the inward. O how foolish this, Christian! Thy master gave himself wholly for thee; give thyself unreservedly to him. Keep not back part of the price. Make a full surrender of every motion of thy heart; labor to have but one object, and one aim. And for this purpose give God the keeping of thine heart. Cry out for more of the divine influences of the Holy Spirit, that so when thy soul is preserved and protected by him, it may be directed into one channel, and one only, that thy life may run deep and pure, and clear and peaceful; its only banks being God's will, its only channel the love of Christ and a desire to please him. Thus wrote Spencer in days long gone by: "Indeed, by nature, man's heart is a very divided, broken thing, scattered and parceled out, a piece to this creature, and a piece to that lust. One while this vanity hires him (as Leah did Jacob of Rachel), anon when he hath done some drudgery for that, he lets out himself to another: thus divided is man and his affections. Now the elect, whom God hath decreed to be vessels of honor, consecrated for his holy use and service, he throws into the fire of his word, that being there softened and melted, he may by his transforming Spirit cast them anew, as it were, into a holy oneness; so that he who before was divided from God, and lost among the creatures, and his lusts, that shared him among them, now, his heart is gathered into God from them all; it looks with a single eye on God, and acts for him in all that he doth: if therefore thou wouldest know whether thy heart be sincere, inquire whether it be thus made anew."

5. Now, my last point is rather a strange one perhaps. Once upon a time, when one of our kings came back from a captivity, old historians tell us that there were fountains in Cheapside that did run with wine. So bounteous was the king, and so glad the people, that instead of water, they made wine flow free to everybody. There is a way of making our life so rich, so full, so blessed to our fellow men, that the metaphor may be applicable to us, and men may say, that our life flows with wine when other men's lives flow with water. Ye have known some such men. There was a Howard. John Howard's life was not like our poor common lives; he was so benevolent, his sympathy with the race so self-denying, that the streams of his life were like generous wine. You have known another, an eminent saint, one who lived very near to Jesus: when you talked yourself, you felt your conversation was poor watery stuff; but when he talked to you, there was an unction and a savor about his words, a solidity, and a strength about his utterances, which you could appreciate, though you could not attain unto it. You have sometimes said, "I wish my words were as full, as sweet, as mellow, and as unctuous as the words of such an one! Oh! I wish my actions were just as rich, had as deep a color, and as pure a taste as the acts of so-and-so. All I can do seems but little and empty when compared with his high attainments. Oh, that I could do more! Oh, that I could send streams of pure gold into every house, instead of my poor dross," Well, Christian, this should teach thee to keep thine heart full of rich things. Never, never neglect the Word of God; that will make thy heart rich with precept, rich with understanding; and then thy conversation, when it flows from thy mouth, will be like thine heart, rich, unctuous, and savory. Make thy heart full of rich, generous love, and then the stream that flows from thy hand will be just as rich and generous as thine heart. Above all, get Jesus to live in thine heart, and then out of thy belly shall flow rivers of living water, more rich, more satisfying than the water of the well of Sychar of which Jacob drank. Oh! go, Christians, to the great mine of riches, and cry unto the Holy Spirit to make thy heart rich unto salvation. So shall thy life and conversation be a boon to thy fellows; and when they see thee, thy face shall be as the angel of God. Thou shalt wash thy feet in butter and thy steps in oil; they that sit in the gate shall rise up when they see thee, and men shall do thee reverence.

But one single sentence, and we have done. Some of your hearts are not worth keeping. The sooner you get rid of them the better. They are hearts of stone. Do you feel today that you have a stony heart? Go home, and I pray the Lord hear my desire that thy polluted heart may be removed. Cry unto God and say, "Take away my heart of stone, and give me a heart of flesh;" for a stony heart is an impure heart, a divided heart, an unpeaceful heart. It is a heart that is poor and poverty-stricken, a heart that is void of all goodness, and thou canst neither bless thyself nor others, if thy heart be such. O Lord Jesus! wilt thou be pleased this day to renew many hearts? Wilt thou break the rock in pieces, and put flesh instead of stone, and thou shalt have the glory, world without end!

Eyes Right

                               July 14, 1887
                                            by

                                  C. H. Spurgeon

“Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.”——Proverbs 4:25.

These words occur in a passage wherein the wise man exhorts us to take care of all parts of our nature, which he indicates by members of the body. “Keep thy heart,” says he “with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. Put away from thee a froward mouth, and perverse lips put far from thee. Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from evil.” It is clear that every part of our nature needs to be carefully watched lest in any way it should become the cause of sin. Any one member or faculty is readily able to defile all the rest, and therefore every part must be guarded with care. We have selected for our meditation the verse which deals with the eye. These windows of light need to be watched in their incomings, lest that which we take into our soul should be darkness rather than light; and they need to be watched in their outgoings lest the glances of the eye should be full of iniquity, or should suggest foolish thoughts. Hence the wise man advises, “Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.” Have eyes and use them. Using them, take care to use them honestly.

Some persons are always as if they were asleep. They go though the world mooning about, seeing nothing, or seeing men as if they were trees with a sight which is not sight, but blindness hidden. The shadows of this transient life impress them and that is all: they have never awakened yet to the true life and its solemn realities. They have never seen anything in very truth; for it is faith that sees, and of faith they have none. That which is apart from faith is not visible to the soul however clear it may be to the eye. We have thousands around us who need to be startled out of that slumber in which they see the fabrics of their dreams, and the unsubstantial fancies of the hour. They say, “We see,” but scales are on their eyes. I fear we have such in all our congregations, lulled to sleep even by the preacher’s tones, to whom the fact of coming to their accustomed seat and listening to the usual hymns, tends rather to confirm them in a sluggard’s slumber than to stir their souls to action. O ye sluggards, may God awaken you by grace lest he arouse you by the thunderbolts of his vengeance! It is time that your eyes began to look right on, and your eyelids straight before you.

Many others are somewhat awake mentally but they are not looking right on, neither do their eyelids look straight before them. They are staring about them, star-gazing, wondering what will be seen next: always ready like the Athenians to hear and see some new thing. They move, it is true, but it is in a labyrinth which leads to nothing, in a circle which ends where it began; they toil and slave but it is all in the shadowland: of substantial work they do nothing. An active idleness, a diligent laziness, is all that their life is made up of; for as yet they have no purpose—no purpose worth being the aim of an immortal soul. An arrow will never strike the mark if it travels in a zigzag direction; and the man whose life has no aim whatever, who pursues this, and then that, and then the other, what will he achieve? Are not many like “dumb driven cattle” going they know not where? They have never yet discovered that this life is a preface to a life of diviner mold. They do not regard the present as the lowly porch of the glorious edifice of the future. They have not thought that time is but the doorstep of eternity, a thing of small account, save that it is linked with the endless ages; and so they seek after this, and then after that, and then after the other; and always after that which is too poor, too trifling to be the object of a mind capable of fellowship with God. How many there are whose spirit is agitated by a mere nothing, resembling

“Ocean into tempest tost
To waft a feather or to drown a fly”!

To beings who lead such purposeless lives we would address the words of the wise man, “Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.” Have something to do and do it. Have something to live for and live for it. Get to know the right way, and knowing the right way keep to it with full purpose of heart and concentration of faculty. O man, see whither thou art going and go that way with thine eyes open, resolutely marking every step as thou takest it. Look where thou oughtest to look and then follow thine eyes, which shall thus be useful outriders to thy life, and help to make thy way safe and wise. When thou hast sent thine eyes before thee to make sure of the way, it will be safe to follow. Look before you leap, and only leap when looking bids you do so. If a man is to let his eyes look right on and his eyelids straight before him, then he is to have a way, and that way is to be a straight way, and in that straight way he is to persevere. You cannot see to the end of a crooked way. You can only see a small part of a way that twists and winds. Choose then a direct path which has an end which you dare think of and look upon. Some men’s lives are such that they dare not think of what the end of them must be. They would not long pursue their present track if they were forced to gaze into that dread abyss which is the only possible close of an evil course. The way of transgressors is hard in itself, but it is hardest of all when we behold their dreadful end. “Surely thou hast set them in slippery places. Thou castest them down into destruction.” You need to have a way, and a straight way, and a way whose end you dare contemplate, or else you cannot carry out the advice of Solomon, “Let thine eyes look right on and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.”

Every wise man will conclude that the best way for a man is the way which God has made for him. He that made us knows what he made us for, and he knows by what means we may best arrive at that end. According to divine teaching, as gracious as it is certain, we learn that the way of eternal life is Jesus Christ. Christ himself says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life”; and he that would pursue life after a right fashion must look to Jesus, and must continue looking unto Jesus, not only as the author but as the finisher of his faith. It shall be to him a golden rule of life when he has chosen Christ to be his way, to let his eyes look right on, and his eyelids straight before him. He need not be afraid to contemplate the end of that way, for the end of the way of Christ is life and glory with Christ for ever. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” A friend said to me the other day, “How happy are we to know that whatever happens to us in this life, it is well!” “Yes,” I added, “and to know that if this life ends it is equally well, or better.” Then we joined hands in common joy to think that we were equally ready for life or death, and did not need five minutes’ anxiety as to whether it should be the one or the other. Brethren, when you are on the King’s highway, and that way is a perfectly straight one, you may go ahead without fear and sing on the road.

With all my heart I invite any who have never yet begun to live after a right fashion, to take Christ to be the way of life to them; and then I entreat them to let their eyes look straight on, and their eyelids straight before them, and to follow Jesus without giving a glance either to the right hand or to the left till it shall be said of them, even in glory, “These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.”

I. I shall make my earnest appeals to the heart and conscience by beginning with this first exhortation: let Christ be your way. You that are young, let him be your way from your youth. You that have hitherto gone the wrong road until your hairs have grown grey in the service of iniquity, turn I beseech you, and take to the way of salvation. May his Spirit turn you, and you will be turned, then will Jesus become your way from henceforth.

If Christ be your way, you will begin first to seek to have Christ. “How shall I have him?” says one. Dost thou desire him? Wilt thou accept him? He is thine. The act of accepting Christ secures Christ to us, for the Father freely gives him to all who freely accept him. Some are troubled through ignorant and unbelieving fears, and are saying, “I wish I could lay hold on Jesus! I wish I knew that Christ was mine!” Art thou willing to have him? Who made thee willing? Dost thou desire him? Who made thee desire him? Who but the Spirit of the Lord? Wilt thou now take Jesus to be thy Savior to save thee from thy sin? Then depend on it, he is thine. There was never any difficulty with him to give himself to thee; the difficulty was to bring thee to receive him; and now that thou dost receive him, remember this—“ As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” Jesus himself has said it, “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out”; and therefore, since thou comest, thou shalt never be cast out. Jesus has accepted thee, for thou hast accepted him. But I pray you, none of you rest until you have Christ. Let your eyes look right on and your eyelids straight before you till you find him. Look nowhere else but to him and after him. Shut yourself up in your room determine not to come out again until you have him, and it shall not be long before you find him. Concentrating all your gaze upon the Crucified, light shall come from him, causing the scales to fall from your eyes, and you shall see him, even you that could not see; and you shall cry in delight, “He is mine, he is mine.” Remember how David said to his son, “If thou seek him, he will be found of thee.” Think of the words of the prophet, “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near.” When you have Christ, the next business of your life must be to know Christ. Seek to know more of him, to know him better, to know him more practically, to know him more assuredly. “That I may know him,” said the apostle, after he had been a believer in him for fifteen years. That same man of God speaks of “the love of Christ which passeth knowledge,” even his knowledge, which was of the fullest sort; so that he meant to go on learning more and more of Christ, and he did not count himself to have attained. Christian men and women, you do not know your great Master yet. Here have some of us been nearly forty years in his service, and yet we could not describe him to our own satisfaction. Why, we hardly know the power of the hem of his garment yet. We have not descended far down into the mines of his perfections. How little know we of our hidden wealth in Christ Jesus! Oh, that we studied Scripture more, that we were more teachable, and waited more humbly upon the Lord for the light of his Spirit from day to day! Well says our singer—

“Hoard up his sacred word,

And feed thereon and grow;

Go on to seek to know the Lord,

And practice what you know.”

In this matter let your eyes look right on, and your eyelids straight before you. Other men may have their pursuits, this is yours; stick to it earnestly. The science of a crucified Savior shines like the moon in the midst of the stars as compared with all the other sciences which men may know; study it with your whole power of mind and heart. The angels on the mercy-seat of the ark stood always looking downward and bending over. Hence the apostle says, “Which things the angels desire to look into”; and if they desire to look into the ark of the covenant and its sacred mysteries, how much more should we!

When you come to know somewhat of what he is, then go on to obey Christ. Is there anything that he has bidden you do? Do it. Some Christians have never yet been baptized: how will they answer for wilful neglect of a known duty? Others have been Christians for years and yet have never communed at the Lord’s table. Jesus said “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” Do they keep his commandments? It was his dying request, “This do in remembrance of me,” and yet they will not fulfill it. Even such a tender request they slight, as though it were of no importance whatever, as if their Lord was a mere nobody whose wishes might well be overlooked. What shall I say of many of the biddings of our holy gospel, many of those sweet precepts which are to be used in the family, and in the business, and in the field? What forgetfulness there is of them! What refusings to follow Christ! He might come to us and say, “If I be a Master, where is mine honor?” Truly it ought to be one of the first thoughts of a Christian to find out the Lord’s will; and when he knows it, obedience should follow immediately. His eyes should look right on, and his eyelids straight before him. What said the blessed virgin to those who were at the feast? Note the words, “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.” It was well spoken of the favored mother and it remains as a golden precept for us all —“Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.” Make no reserve, exercise no choice but obey his command. When you know what he commands, do not hesitate, question, or try to avoid it, but “do it”: do it at once, do it heartily, do it cheerfully, do it to the full. It is but a little thing that, as our Lord has bought us with the price of his own blood, we should be his servants. The apostles frequently call themselves the bond-slaves of Christ. Where our Authorized Version softly puts it “servant” it really is “bond-slave.” The early saints delighted to count themselves Christ’s absolute property, bought by him, owned by him, and wholly at his disposal. Paul even went so far as to rejoice that he had the marks of his Master’s brand on him, and he cries, “Let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” There was the end of all debate: he was the Lord’s, and the marks of the scourges, the rods, and the stones were the broad-arrow of the King which marked Paul’s body as the property of Jesus the Lord. Now if the saints of old time gloried in obeying Christ, I pray that you and I, forgetting the sect to which we may belong, or even the nation of which we form a part, may feel that our first object in life is to obey our Lord and not to follow a human leader, or to promote a religious or political party. This one thing we mean to do, and so follow the advice of Solomon as he says, “Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.” Beloved, let us endeavor to be obedient in the minute as well as in the greater matters, for it is in details that true obedience is best seen. Let us copy the faintest touches in the life of our great Exemplar.

That being attended to, remember, if Christ be your way you have further to seek to be like him, not only to do as he did, but to be as he was; for “as he was, so are we in this world.” What a man does is important, but what a man is, is all-important. The ring of the metal is something, but if its ring could be imitated by a base coin it would be nothing. It is after all the substance of the metal that decides its value. O man, what art thou? If thou be a twice-born man thou art a partaker of the nature of Christ; but if not thou art under the curse which cleaves to the old nature as leprosy cleaves to the leper. “As we have borne the image of the earthy we shall also bear the image of the heavenly”; and we must begin to bear that heavenly image even now. As born again into the headship of the Second Adam, we should seek to be as much like the Second Adam as we are already by nature like the first Adam through our first birth. The second birth should be as operative to produce the image of the second Adam, as the first was to produce the image of the first Adam. Alas! “the earthy” is impressed upon us very distinctly; we cannot spend an hour without discovering the clear stamp of nature’s die. Oh that “the heavenly” could be quite as clearly discerned! This therefore we must aim at, though as yet we have not attained it. Here is something to be thought of very carefully, and I charge you by the Holy Ghost, let your eyes look right on and your eyelids straight before you, that you may be transformed from glory to glory into the image of the Lord. God grant that it may be so with every one of us!

Now supposing that we have attended to all this, if Christ is our way and our model there is something more; namely, that we seek to glorify Christ and labor to win others to him. Here is a grand field for all our energies. O Christian people, what are we left in this world for except to bring others to Jesus? Are we not left in this wilderness that we may find out more of the good Shepherd’s stray sheep, and work for him and with him to bring them in. I fear we forget this. Are not some of you indifferent as to whether your fellow-men are lost or saved? Have not some of you, in your families, come to this pass - that you see your brother an infidel, your sister frivolous, your parents godless, and yet it does not fret you? I think that if I had a godless relative it would break my night’s rest, not now and then, but always. A brother, a father, a child unsaved! What mean ye by taking your ease? If the spirit of Christ be in us, the tears that fell from the eyes of Jesus will find their like upon our cheeks. We shall weep day and night because men are not gathered unto eternal life. Nor will this be a loss to us for blessed are the mourners in Zion. Blessed are they that mourn because others abide in sin and reject the Lord!

Now concerning the salvation of our fellow-men; we shall never compass it unless our eyes look right on and our eyelids straight before us. Before we win souls we must live for souls. We need men and women who live to convert others to Christ. The minister had better quit his pulpit if it be not his one burning desire to bring hearts to Jesus’ feet. If a divine impulse be not upon him driving him to seek the souls of men, let him go elsewhere with his windy periods. Professors have little right to be in Christ’s church unless they are passionately in earnest to increase his kingdom by the salvation of their fellow-men. O my brothers and sisters on whom is the blood-mark of redemption, I charge you concerning this matter to “let your eyes look right on and let your eyelids look straight before you”! Seek souls as dogs hunt their game; eye, nostril, ear all open, and every muscle strained. Converts are not gained by dreamers. We cannot imitate Jesus as a Savior of men by being dull and heartless. In any point in which we follow our Lord let us do it with all our soul.

Thus much upon the first point: let Christ be your way in all things, and keep to that way.

II. Following the text again, only working it a little differently, the second exhortation is set your eyes on him as your way. If Christ be your way and you follow him to have him, to know him, to obey him, to be like him, and to glorify him, then set your eyes on him as the way. Think of him, consider him, study him, and in all things regard him as first and last to you.

First, that you may know the way of life, let your eyes be fixed on him. Soul, art thou in the dark? Kneel down and pray and look Christward. Saint, art thou bewildered? Go by the way of the cross, the way of the Crucified, for that is the true and sure path. Sinner, art thou burdened? Wouldst thou be rid of thy burden? Run Christward. Any direction given thee to go anywhere else will misdirect thee. I say not to any one I meet to-night, “Go to the wicket-gate.” Neither will I bid you look to any light within and run that way. My only direction is “Go to Jesus.” You see that cross and him who bled thereon! Stand still and look that way, and your burden shall fall from your shoulders. Where Jesus died, you shall live. Where Christ was wounded, you shall be healed. “Let your eyes look right on and let your eyelids look straight before you.” Know the road; you will never know it too well: the more you know it the happier you will be in it. “To Christ!” “To Christ!” “To Christ!” That is the sole inscription upon every finger-post of the road to heaven. Keep you to the King’s highway.

Since Christ is the way, let your eyes be fixed on him as the way, that you may follow him well, may follow him wholly. Gather up all your faculties to go after your Lord. Be not like Lot’s wife who longed, and looked, and lingered, and was lost. Away, away, away from Sodom, altogether away: let no eye steal in that direction. Away, away, away to Christ, to Christ alone. All eyes must be for Jesus who cries “Look unto me and be ye saved.” As the ploughman looks to the end of the furrow and keeps right on, even so must you look only to Jesus. What hast thou to do with anything but Christ, sinner? I tell thee that thou hast nothing even to do with thine own sins, but to lay them down at his feet. He is all; the beginning and the end. “Let thine eyes look right on and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.”

Look alone to Jesus and do this to keep your spirits up. Some men’s eyes do not look right on and their eyelids do not look straight before them, for they look back upon that part of the road which they have traversed, and grow content with that which they have already attained. They live in retrospection. When you begin to look back at what you have done and rub your hands and say with self-satisfaction, “I remember when I did right well,” wisdom warns you that this is not the right kind of look. What have you to look back upon? Poor, weak creature! Forget that which is behind and press forward to something better and higher. When you sinful souls get looking back upon your past bad lives, I am glad of that, but still I do not want even you to keep your eyes always in that direction. You will get no comfort in looking into the foul ditch of your own transgressions. Look, look, look before you! Look where the cross stands. Run that way. Let thine eyelids look straight before thee to the atoning sacrifice; away from the past, which he will graciously blot out, to Jesus only. Some spend much of their time in what is called introspection. Now introspection, like retrospection, is a useful thing in a measure; but it can readily be overdone, and then it breeds morbid emotions, and creates despair. Some are always looking into their own feelings. A healthy man hardly knows whether he has a stomach or a liver; it is your sickly man who grows more sickly by the study of his inward complaints. Too many wound themselves by studying themselves. Every morning they think of what they should feel: all day long they dwell upon what they are not feeling; and at night they make diligent search for what they have been feeling. It looks to me like shutting up your shop and then living in the counting-house, taking account of what is not sold. Small profits will be made in this way. You may look a long while into an empty pocket before you find a sovereign, and you may look a long time into fallen nature before you find comfort. A man might as well try to find burning coals under the ice as to find anything good in our poor human nature. When you look within it should be to see with grief what the filthiness is; but to get rid of that filthiness you must look beyond yourself. I remember Mr. Moody saying that a looking-glass was a capital thing to show you the spots on your face; but you could not wash in a looking-glass. You want something very different when you would make your face clean. So let your eyes look right on—

“To the full atonement made,

To the utmost ransom paid.”

Forget yourself and think only of Christ.

Some not only unduly practice retrospection and introspection, but they carry much too far a sort of circumspection. They look all around them: they look upon their past, and their present, and their fears and their doubts, and from all these things they judge their condition, and decide their state of mind. You recollect Peter. He cried to his Lord, “Bid me come unto thee on the water.” He receives permission. Down the side over the boat goes Peter. To his intense surprise he is standing on a wave. Peter had never done such a thing before in his life as walk on the water. He might have kept on standing on the wave and he might have walked all the way to Jesus, if he had kept his eyes on his Master until he reached him. The waters would have borne him up as well as a granite pavement; but Peter began to look at the billows, and he listened to the howling of the wind, and then to the beating of his own heart; and down he went; and then he had to cry to his Master. “Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee”: thou canst walk the waters all the way to the golden shore if thou canst but stop thine eyes to all things else. Surely I may use the text as an illustration of that closing of the eyes. “Let thine eyes look right on.” “I understand that,” says one, “for I trust. But you cannot look with your eyelids.” What can that mean? Remember that you can shut your eyes with your eyelids to a great many things, and so cease to see them; and in the matter of faith-sight a great many things are best not seen. So, when you would otherwise see the danger and all the difficulties and the doubts, do not look with your eyes, but look with your eyelids. Not to look at the difficulties at all is all the look they deserve. Let your eyelids shut out the view which would create distrust. Do not see, do not feel, “only believe.” Believe Christ, and believe nothing else. “Let God be true but every man a liar.” If all the sins thou hast ever done should come rolling up like Atlantic billows, and if all the devils in hell should come riding on the crests of those waves howling as they come, take no notice of them. Christ has said he that believeth in him hath everlasting life; believe thou in him, and thou hast the everlasting life as surely as Christ is the Christ of God. Draw down the blind and see nothing, know nothing, believe nothing but the living word of the living Savior. “Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.” When thou closest thine eyes to consider, thou canst see a good deal with closed eyes, but still look thou right on to the one and only trust.

You must also let your eyes look right on, dear friends; for if you begin to look two ways at a time you will miss the Lord Jesus, who is your way. Under the Jewish law no man who had a squint was allowed to be a priest. He is described as one who had “a blemish in his eye.” I wish they would make a similar law with regard to spiritual sight in preachers nowadays, for certain of them are sadly cross-eyed. When they preach free grace they squint fearfully towards free-will; and if they look to the atonement they must needs see in it more of man than of Christ. See how they look to Moses and to Darwin; to revelation and to speculation! A great many people would fain be saved, but they squint: they look a little towards sin, and the flesh, and the world, and they make provision for personal gain, and personal ease. In this case they fail to see Christ’s strait and narrow way of the denial of self, and the crucifixion of the flesh. If thou wouldst have salvation, “Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.” Look not a little this way and a little that way, or thou wilt never run aright. “I could believe that I was a Christian,” says one, “if I felt more happy. I could trust Christ if I felt my nature changed.” That is a squint which ruins the faith-look. That is trying to look two ways at once. You cannot do it: it will ruin you. It would spoil the beauty of the sweetest countenance if we could use our eyes to look otherwise than straight on. We have some friends who if they wish to see us, look over there, and yet we are not there. Avoid this spiritual blemish; it has no advantages—“Let thine eyes look right on.” Look to Christ alone, to him as thy whole salvation. Have nothing to do with thy good works as a ground of trust, or thou art a lost man. I charge thee have nothing to do even with thy faith and thy repentance as a ground of trust. Trust not thy trust, but trust alone in what Christ has done. If thou shalt trust thy best feelings or thy worst feelings, thy prayers or thy praises, thy almsgivings or thy consecration in any degree, thou hast made an antichrist of them. Strip thyself of thy last rag and let Christ clothe thee from top to toe. Be thou hungry unto famishing, and clean out the last crumb thou hast in the pantry, for then only wilt thou feed on Christ the bread of life. Let him be both bread and wine, and make up the whole of a feast for thee. Thou shalt have salvation surely enough if this be what thou dost. But let not Jesus bring the bread, and carnal confidence the wine: take a whole Christ to be all thy salvation and all thy desire, and thy peace shall be unbroken. Let the Holy Spirit bring thee to that oneness of trust which makes both eyes meet at their proper focus, and let that focus be the Lord Jesus. “Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.”

III. But my time has almost expired and I have only to lay emphasis on one more matter. Let your eyes distinctly and directly look to Christ alone. I have gone over this before, but I need to hammer at it again in order to clench the nail. Look not to any human guide but look to Christ Jesus alone. We have no faith in priests; but it is a very easy thing to fix your faith upon a minister and hear what he says, and believe it because he says it. I charge you, believe nothing that I tell you if it cannot be supported by the Word of God. I am content to stand or to fall by this: “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, there is no light in them.” I will quote the authority of no other book whoever may have composed it; no ancient book, let it belong even to the earliest days of the church. This one inspired volume is the text-book of our religion. Follow Holy Scripture and you have an infallible chart. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the one apostle and high priest of our profession: follow him. Not even mother or father or the brightest saint that ever lived must divide you from your perfect Guide. “Let your eyes look right on and let your eyelids look straight before you,” and hear the gracious words of him who bought you with his blood as he cries, “Follow me.”

Then again look to Christ directly and distinctly for yourself. I warn you against putting any trust in national religion, or in family and birthright godliness. A personal Christ must be laid hold of by a personal faith. You must yourself repent, yourself believe, yourself get a grip of him, and of none but him. You must use your own eyes: “Let your eyes look right on and let your eyelids look straight before you.”

Again, look not to any secondary aims. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. In seeking Christ make no bargain with gain or reputation; be content to lose all gold and all honor if you may but win Christ. To follow religion for self would be a mean act of hypocrisy, and to leave it for the same reason is equally vile. Let your eyes be fixed on following your Lord, and as to any worldly consequences, bring your eyelids into use, keep them fast closed, and go right on in implicit obedience to your Lord.

Forget all things else when seeking Christ and when you have found Christ. It is no ill thing for a man, when he is under concern of soul, to let his business and everything go till he finds his Savior. I urge no one to such a course, but I have noticed many converts who have done this who have soon found rest. If a captain were busy about the comfort of his passengers in their cabins but all the while knew that there was a great leak in the ship, and that it would soon go down, and to this he paid no heed whatever, you would say to him “How foolish you are to mind the little and neglect the great!” But if he told the passengers, “Breakfast cannot be prepared with our usual care for all hands are pumping or repairing the vessel,” you could not blame him when you knew that every man’s help was needed to save the ship from going down. In times of extreme danger, secondary things must give place to the main thing. If this house were to take fire you would not stay to sing the last hymn, even if I gave it out. May the Holy Spirit lead some of you to feel that you must be saved! You must be saved, and therefore you must put other things into a second place. Remember how Bunyan pictures the man running for his life, and when his neighbors called to him to stop, he put his fingers in his ears, and as he ran he shouted “Eternal life! Eternal life! Eternal life!” That man was a wise man. Imitate him; if you have not found eternal life run for it with your “eyes right on, and your eyelids straight before you.”

And lastly, take care that you continue gazing upon Christ until you have faith in him. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Go on hearing the Word of God till faith come thereby. Do you ask me how faith comes? It is the gift of God, but it usually comes in a certain way. Thinking of Jesus and meditating upon Jesus will breed faith in Jesus. I was struck with what one said the other day of a certain preacher. The hearer was in deep concern of soul, and the minister preached a very pretty sermon indeed, decorated abundantly with word-painting. I scarcely know any brother who can paint so daintily as this good minister can; but this poor soul under a sense of sin said, “There was too much landscape, sir. I did not want landscape; I wanted salvation.” Dear friend, never crave word-painting when you attend a sermon; but crave Christ. You must have Christ to be your own by faith or you are a lost man. When I was seeking the Savior I remember hearing a very good doctrinal sermon; but when it was over I longed to tell the minister that there was a poor lad there who wanted to know how he could be saved. How I wished he had given half a minute to that subject! Dr. Manton, who was usually a clear and full preacher of the gospel, when he preached before the Lord Mayor, gave his lordship something a cut above the common citizens and so the poorer folk missed their portion. After he had done preaching his sermon an aged woman cried, “Dr. Manton, I came here this morning under concern of soul, wanting a blessing, and I have not got it for I could not understand you.” The preacher meekly replied, “The Lord forgive me! I will not so offend again.” He had overlooked the poor, and had thought mainly of my Lord Mayor. Special sermons before Mayors and Queens and assemblies are seldom worth a penny a thousand. The gospel does not lend itself to show performances. I am not here to give you intellectual treats: my eyes look right on to your salvation. Oh that yours may look that way! Go after Christ, dear friend. Seek after Christ with your whole heart and soul. Feel that the one thing you must have is to be reconciled to God by the death of his Son. Keep on with that cry, “None but Christ: none but Christ.” Make this your continual litany—

“Give me Christ, or else I die;

Give me Christ, or else I die.”

Then you will soon find him. “Let your eyes look right on and let your eyelids look straight before you,” and you shall see the Lord of grace appearing to you through the mist and through the cloud; that self-same Savior who stands in the midst of us even now and cries, “Look unto me and be ye saved all the ends of the earth: for I am God and there is none else.”

At the End of Your Life

December 31, 1865
by
C. H. Spurgeon
(1834-1892)

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^{© Copyright 2001 by Tony
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^{Verses quoted, unless
otherwise noted, are taken from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION}^©^{1978

by the New York Bible Society, used by permission of Zondervan Bible
Publishers.}

^{A copy of this sermon, Preached by Tony Capoccia, is available

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“At the end of your life.”--Proverbs 5:11

The wise man saw a young and foolish man straying into the house of the adulterous woman. The house seemed so completely different from what he knew it to be, that he desired to shed a light on it, that the young man might not sin in the dark, but might understand the nature of his actions. The wise man looked around, and he saw only one lamp suitable for his purpose; it was called “At the end;” so, grabbing this lamp, he held it up in the midst of the adulterous woman’s den of iniquity, and suddenly everything was changed from what it had been before: the truth had come to light, and the deception vanished. The young man dreamed of pleasure, he hoped to find delight in lustful lovemaking; but when the lamp called “At the end” began to shine, he saw rottenness in his bones, filthiness in his flesh, pains and griefs and sorrows, as the necessary consequence of sin, and, wisely guided, wisely taught, the simple-minded young man started back and listened to the warnings of the teacher, “Do not go near the door of her house, for her house is a highway to the grave, leading down to the chambers of death.”

Now if this lamp called “At the end” was found so useful in this one particular case, I think it would be equally useful everywhere else, and it may help us all to better understand the truth of matters if we will look at them in the light which this wonderful lamp yields. I can only compare my text in its matchless power to Ithuriel’s spear. Now, according to Milton, Ithuriel was an angel, who on finding Satan, in a toad-like form, tempting Eve, touched him with his spear and transformed him into his proper likeness, into his true colors. Therefore, if I can apply my text to certain things today, they will come out in their true light; “At the end,” will be the rod in my hand with which I will touch tinsel, and it will disappear and you will see it is not gold, and I will touch varnish and paint, and you will understand what they really are, and not what they profess to be: the “At the end” light will be the light of truth, the light of wisdom to our souls. It seems to me that this morning is a fitting occasion for holding up this light, since we have come to the end of the year, and will in a few short hours be at the beginning of another. Let us look back on the year that is past, and look forward on the year that is to come, and my four-sided lamp will perhaps shine off in the distance. I hope that you have the courage to look down the vista of the years that you have already lived, and think of everything that you have thought, and spoken, and done, in the light of the beams of this lamp called “At the end,” and then I hope you will be bold enough to let the same light shine forward on the years yet to come, when your hair will be grey and your teeth begin to fall out, and your eyesight fails.

We will, this morning, examine the past and the future of life in the light of “At the end.” May it teach us wisdom, and make us walk in the fear of God.

I have said that my lamp has four sides to it, and so it has: we will look at the first side of the light which streams from death.

I. DEATH is at the end.

In some sense it is the end, of this mortal life; it is the end of our period of trial here below; it is the end of the day of grace; it is the end of the day of sin. The tree falls when we die, and it will not sprout again; the house is removed from its foundations and it is not to be built again, if it has been founded on sin. Death is the end of this present life. And how certain it is to all of us! This year we have had many proofs of its certainty. One might almost compose an almanac for this year, and write down, each month, the name of a noteworthy person who has died, and I would not be exaggerating if I said every week, throughout the year. All ranks and classes have been made to feel the sting of death. From royalty down to poverty the grave has been gorged with its prey. Early this year there fell one whose benevolence mingled with wisdom had blessed our land, and who being dead is still remembered by the needy, because he lowered the cost of their food, and abolished the laws which, have fattened the rich, and impoverished the poor. His wisdom and kindness could not spare him, and though he is embalmed in the hearts of thousands, yet to the dust he has returned.

Swiftly after him there fell another who ruled a mighty people in the afterglow of victory, when what threatened to be a disruption and a separation had ended in triumph to one side and the nation seemed as if it were about to start on a fresh course of prosperity. By the assassin’s hand he fell. Whatever question there might have been about him in his life, all men conspired to honor him in his death. The ruler of a nation who could subdue a fearless and a mighty enemy, could not subdue that old enemy who conquers whomever he wills. Abraham Lincoln died just like all the rest.

And then there was he who had saved many precious lives by warning mariners of the approaching storm, and thus many a ship had remained in harbor and been delivered from the merciless jaws of the deep, but this person could not forecast or escape the last dreaded storm; he, too, must go down into that fathomless deep which swallows all mankind.

Then, when the year was ripe and the flowers were all in bloom--an appropriate season for his death--there was taken away the man who has garnished our nation with objects of beauty and of joy, a man who loved the flowers and sleeps beneath them now. Like flowers he withered as all of us must do--Sir Joseph Paxton died. Then in the month of September, when the year began to wane, three men who studied the stars, astronomers who predicted eclipses and told of comets, men of fame and name--all three died at once. They might tell of a coming eclipse, but they themselves must be eclipsed; and they who could foretell the track of the next comet, are themselves gone from us just like those dazzling meteor stars have disappeared from view.

Then you will remember, when the year had waned, grown old, it is but a day or two ago, that all were startled by the death of that man who had ruled our nation so long and on the whole so well. We will not forget that he who was taken away from us, was, in some respects, a king throughout our land. Wisdom, cheerfulness, youthful strength such as he possessed, could not avert the time of death. And then, as if the muster roll were not completed, as if death could not be satisfied till the year had yielded up yet another grave, we heard that the oldest of monarchs had been taken away; and though his goodness and his wisdom had successfully guided the little nation over which he ruled, and given him an influence far more extensive than his own sphere, yet death did not spare him, and King Leopold I of Belgium must die.

This past year has been a year of dying rather than of living, and you may look on yourselves and wonder why you are still here. Some younger than we are have been taken. You that are older, are you ready? It is amazing that although you are so ripe for death, yet you should have been spared for so long.

Now in the light of all these deaths, I want you to look at the deadliness of sin. If you were to visit a graveyard you would notice that some gravestones have angels sculptured on them; then let each angel from the gravestone speak to us this morning, and we will listen to their words, for they will surely be wise and solemn, and worthy of our notice, as if they had risen from the dead.

Let me take you to your own death bed, for there, perhaps, the lamp will burn best for you. Look at the various activities of your life which you thought were great, and on which you have prided yourself--how will they look at the end? You made money; you made money fast; you did it very cleverly; you praised yourself for it, just as others have praised themselves for conquering nations, or forcing their way to fame, or lifting themselves into eminence. Now you are dying, and what do you think of all that? Is it so great as it seemed to be? Oh, how hard you climbed up to it, how you strained yourself to reach it, and you have got it, and you are dying. What do you think of it now? The greatest of human accomplishments will appear to be insignificant when we come to die, and especially those on which men most pride themselves--these will yield them the bitterest humiliation. We will then say what madmen we must have been to have wasted so much time and energy on such worthless things. When we discover that they were not real, that they were only mere bubbles, mere pretences, we will then look on ourselves as having been crazy to have spent our entire life and all of our energy on them.

Let us look at our selfish actions in that light of death.

A man says, “I know how to make money,” “and I know how to hold on to it too,” he says, and he prides himself that he is not such a fool as to be generous, nor such a simpleton as to give either to God or to the poor. Now, there he lies. Ah! do you know how to hold on to it now? Can you take it with you? Can you carry so much as a single penny of it across the river of death? You have come to the water’s edge--how much of it will you carry over? Oh you fool! how much wiser you would have been if you had laid up your treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys! You called such men fools when you were living. What do you think of them now that you are dying? Who is the fool, he that sent his riches on ahead, or he that stored them up here on earth to leave them forever? Everything that is selfish will look disgraceful when we come to die; but everything which in the sight of God we have done for Christ’s sake that has been generous, and self-denying, and noble, will even amidst the tombs of death sparkle with celestial splendor. Some of you have been, during this past week, giving very generously to the cause of Christ, for which I thank you, and when I have thought of it, I have said to myself, “Surely, when these generous people come to die, none of them will regret that they have served the cause of Christ. Yes, if they have even given to the point of personal sacrifice, it will be no source of sorrow when they come to their death bed that they did it to one of the least of God’s little ones.” Look at your actions in the light of death, and the selfish ones will soon fade away.

I pray also, dear friends, that some of you would look at your self-righteousness in the light of death.

You have been very good people, very upright, honest, moral, friendly, generous, and so on, and you are resting on what you are. Do you think this will bear your weight when you come to die? When you are in good health any form of religion may satisfy, but a dying soul wants more than sand to rest on. You will want the Rock of Ages. Then let me assure you, that in the light of the grave, all confidence, except confidence in the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ, is a clear delusion. Flee from it, I beg you. Will you rest beneath Jonah’s vine that will wither when chewed by the worm? Seek a better shelter; cling to the Rock of Ages; find the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.

I can say the same thing of all confidence in the value of the Roman Catholic ceremonies and sacraments. When Roman Catholics are in good health it seems sufficient for them to have been baptized, and to have taken the sacrament of Holy Communion and to go to Mass, and read prayers and all that, and take a little “holy” water, out of those little wells while they are strong and joyous; but when they become sick and are about to die, these sacraments and ceremonies will mean nothing to them.

Likewise, for those claiming to be Christians, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper will also deceive you, if you rest your salvation on them; when you are near death you will find them too frail to be supports to bear the weight of an immortal soul’s eternal interests. It will be worthless when you lie dying, if your conscience prompts you to say, “I went to church or to prayer meetings so many times a week.” You will find it a poor dressing to your soul’s wounds to be able to say, “I made a profession of godliness.” Oh, your facade will all be torn away from you by the rough hand of the skeleton called “Death”; you will need a real Savior, vital godliness, true regeneration, not baptismal regeneration; you will need Christ, not sacraments; and nothing short of this will do “at the end.”

And, dear friends, let me ask as I hold up the light, “How will sin appear when we come to die?”

Sin is pleasant now and we can excuse it, calling it a venial sin, a little trivial mistake, a juvenile error, and an indiscretion, and so on; but how will sin appear when we come to die? The grim ghosts of our iniquities, if they have not been laid in the grave of Christ Jesus, will haunt our dying bed. That ghastly figure of Death, with his fingers all bloody and red, will draw the curtain around us. What a horrid prospect, to be shut in with our sins forever, to be dying, with no friends around the bed to comfort, but only the remembrances of the past to terrify and to frighten!

Think, I pray that you think, not only of the root and principle of evil, but of the fruit of it. Remember that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. Do not consider what the thing looks like today, but what they will look like at the end of your life? Today you provide a warm resting place for the viper of sin in your heart, but how will you bear its sting in the last day when you are lying on your death bed? I know the sea is smooth and calm to you, for the moment, as you navigate your ship through life; but remember, there are storms, there are hurricanes that sweep down, and what will your poor cry of distress accomplish without Christ at the helm when the dreaded storm of death comes? Imagine with me, that you are going down, down, down in the waters of death, where you will feel your feet sinking in the dreadful sand of uncertainty, and hear the explosive sounds of the distant sea, and your spirit will begin to ask, “What is that ocean that I hear?” And there will come back an answer, “You hear the breaking of the everlasting waves of judgment; the bottomless sea of eternity is that to which you are descending.” You will feel its chilling floods as they rise up from the ankles to the knees, and from the knees to the hips; and you will find it (if you are without Christ), not a river to swim in, but an ocean to be drowned in forever, forever, and forever.

Oh, may God help you to look at present joys, and actions, and thoughts, and behavior, in the light of death!

What a contrast there often is between the life of a man and his time of death! You would praise some men if you only saw their lives, but, when you see their deaths, you change your estimation. There is Moses: he is in line to become the King of Egypt, but he gives up royalty and all its tempting joys. On the mountain he is told that he will become the founder of a mighty race--a desire always prominent in the Eastern mind, but, instead of desiring that he would be made be made a great nation, he, unselfishly, desires that he himself would be blotted out of the Book of Life, if God will but spare his people Israel. And what does Moses get for it all? His only earthly reward is to be the leader of a group of slaves who are perpetually rebelling against him and greatly troubling his heart. Now there is Balaam, on the other hand, he has visitations from God; and when Balak, the son of Zippor, begs him to curse Israel, he cannot curse, though he is quite willing to go as far as he can. He is compelled by the Holy Spirit to bless the people, but, after he has done that, for gain and for reward, he devises a plan against Israel by which they were cursed: he tells their enemy to send out the idolatrous women of Moab to lead astray the children of Israel. Now there he goes, with his treasures of silver and gold, back to his own house, and the shrewd busy worldly man says, “That is the man for me: do not tell me about your meek Moses, that is afraid of doing this and that. He has thrown away a kingdom, and has thrown away the chance of being the head of a nation. That is the man to make money--Balaam. He will be a city father, or a mayor, or governor one day--that Balaam. A man must not get too caught up with principles; he must move ahead, and make hay while the sun shines.

That is the man for me, the one who knows when to launch out on the waters and who does not ask if they are dirty or clean if they only carry him onward to wealth and success.” Ah, but they come to die, and Balaam dies--how? He had prayed to God, “Let me die the death of the righteous, and may my end be like theirs!” Balaam wanted to die the death of the righteous, but how did he die? He died in battle, fighting against the righteous and against the God of the righteous.

When Moses died; how did he die? You know how--standing on Mount Nebo, looking at, Canaan, the Promised Land, in the distance, and melting what he saw into visions of the Promised Land which is above, the New Jerusalem, which is the mother of us all. In death, who would not want to be a Moses, let all who will be Balaam in life? Be it yours and my desire to aspire to be like Moses, both in life and in death. “At the end!” think of that, and whenever you are tempted by sin, or tempted by wealth or honor, look at it by the light--called, “At the end,” “At the end.” God help you to judge with a righteous judgment.

II. And now we will turn to the second side of our lantern. The second light at the end is the light of JUDGMENT.

After death comes the judgment. When we die, we don’t really die! When a man dies, will he live again? Yes, he will--for his spirit never dies. God has made us such strange wondrous creatures, with such far reaching hopes and aspirations, that it is not possible we should die and become extinct. Animals have no longing for immortality; you never hear them sigh for the celestial state: they have no fear of judgment, because there is no second life, no judgment for the animal that perishes. But the God who gives to man the fear of things to come, and makes him feel and long after something better than this earthly life provides, cannot have mocked us, cannot have made us more wretched than the beast that perishes, by giving us passions and desires never to be gratified.

We are immortal, every one of us, and when the stars cease to exist and the sun’s great furnace is extinguished for lack of fuel, and, like a scroll, God’s universe is rolled up, we will still be living a life as eternal as the Eternal God himself. Oh, when we leave this world, we are told that after death there comes a judgment for us. I don’t know how it is with you--you may be more accustomed to courts of justice than I am--but there always creeps a somberness over me, even in a common court of justice among men, and especially, when a man is being tried for his life. Laughter seems out of place there, and everything is solemn. How much more dread will be in that Court where men and women will be tried for their eternal lives, where their souls rather than their bodies will be at stake! Judgment by our fellowmen is not to be despised. A bold good man can afford to laugh at the world’s opinion; still it is trying to him, for they just may be right: multitudes of men, if they have really thought on the matter, may not all be wrong. It is not easy to be given the judgment of public opinion, and receive the verdict of condemnation; but what will it be like to stand before the judgment throne of God, who is greater than all, and to receive from him the sentence of eternal damnation! God save us from that!

Let us think of this judgment for a moment.

We will rise from the dead: we will be there in body as well as spirit. These very bodies will stand on the earth during the last days: when Christ will come and the trumpet will sound, his people will rise at the first resurrection, and the wicked will rise also, and in their flesh they will see God. Let me think of all that I have done in the light of that. There will be present every man and woman who has ever lived on earth. How will I like to have all my deeds published there? My very thoughts--how will I feel when they are read out loud; what I whispered in the ear--how will I like to have that proclaimed with the sound of trumpet! And what I did in the dark--how will I like to have that revealed in the light? And yet these things must be revealed before the assembled universe. My enemies will be present there. If I have treated them badly, if I have been a backbiter, a slanderer, then it will be declared: if I have been a hypocrite and a deceiver, and made others think I was speaking the truth when I was lying, I will be unmasked then. Those I have injured will be there. The seducer will panic to see those whom he has seduced stand with fiery eyes to accuse him there! With what horror will the oppressor see the widow and the fatherless, whom he drove to poverty, stand there, swift witnesses against him to condemnation! If I have spread false doctrine, a moral pestilence destroying human souls, my victims will be there to gather around me in a circle and, like dogs that bay the deer, each of them demanding my blood. They will all be there, friends and foes. But still even more solemn, “He” will be there--the man of men, the grandest among men, because He is God as well as man, and if I have despised and rejected his salvation, I will then see him in another way and with a much different nature.

“The Lord will come! but not the same
As once in lowliness he came,
A silent Lamb before his foes,
A weary man, and full of woes.

The Lord will come! a dreadful form,
With rainbow-wreath and robes of storm;
On cherub wings, and wings of wind,
Appointed Judge of all mankind!”

How will you face him, you that have despised him? You who have doubted his deity, how will you bear the blaze of it? You rejected and trampled on his precious blood, how will you bear the weight of his almighty arm? When on the cross you would not receive him, and when on the throne you will not escape from him. That silver scepter which he now stretches out to you on earth today, if you refuse to touch it, will be laid aside at your death, and he will take one of another metal, a rod of iron, and he will break you in pieces, yes, he will smash you in pieces like potters’ jars. And God will be there, manifestly there, that God who is here this morning, on the last day of this year, and who sees your thoughts and reads your minds at this very moment, but who is so invisible that you forget that he fills this place, and fills all places; you will not be able to forget him then. Your eyes will see him in that day; you will understand his presence. You will try to be hidden from him; would desire hell itself, and think it a place of shelter, if you could escape from him; but everywhere that fire will encircle you, will consume you, for “our God is a consuming fire.” You will no more be able to escape from yourself than from God. You will find him as present with you as your own soul will be, and you will feel his hand of fire searching for your soul. Unspeakable misery must be yours when the voice of the God-man, will say, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fires,” of hell.

I pray to God that you would look at all your actions in the light of the Day of Judgment. Our secret thoughts, let us expose them this morning; they have been lying hidden till they have become moldy; let us bring them out today. My thoughts, how will they look in the light of judgment? My profession of faith, my imaginations, my conceptions, how will they all be when the judgment day will shine on them? My profession of faith, how does that look? I have been baptized in Christ because of my professed faith, I wear the name “Christian,” I preach the gospel, I am a Church officer or a Church member, how will all this stand the light of that tremendous day? When I am put on the scales and weighed, will I be the weight that I am labeled? In that dreadful day will I see the handwriting on the wall, “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN”--“You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting”? or will I hear the gracious sentence which will pronounce me saved in Jesus Christ?

As to my graces, what must they be in the light of judgment?

My own salvation, all the matters of experience and knowledge--how do they all look in that light! I think I have believed: I think I love the Savior: I sometimes hope that I am his; but am I really? Will I be found to be a true believer at the end? Will my love be mere lip service or true affection? Will my graces be mere talk, or will they be found to be the work of God the Holy Spirit? Am I vitally united to Christ or not? Am I a mere pretender, or a true possessor of eternal things? Oh, my soul, ask these questions in the light of that tremendous day. I pray to God we could now go forward to the day of judgment, in thought at any rate; and since I feel myself quite unable to lead you there, let me adopt my Savior’s words: “He says that the day will come when he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. There will be some on his left hand to whom he will say, “I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me. Depart from me, you who are cursed.” Will he say that to you and to me? There will be some on his right hand to whom he will say, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” Will he say that to you and to me? It will be one or the other.

As I stand here this morning, I seem to feel, and I hope you all do too, what a certain man once felt in court. Sentence was about to be given in his case, or, at least he thought the case would be called on immediately, and he rushed to his attorney and he said, “Have we done everything we can do? Are you sure? for if I lose this case I am a ruined man.” His face was white with anxiety. And so it is with you. Have you done everything you can do? for if you lose this case at God’s throne of judgment--you are a ruined man. Come, have you believed in Christ Jesus, or is your faith incomplete? Have you given up your self-righteousness? Have you left your sin? Have you given your heart to the Savior? Is your regeneration still unaccomplished? Are you born again? Are you in Christ? Are you saved? If your case is lost you then you are a ruined man. A man ruined here on earth may still retrieve his fortunes; the bankrupt person may start all over again and still become rich; the captain who has lost a battle may renew the fight and win the next victory and begin the campaign anew; but lose the battle of life, and the fight will be over. Become bankrupt in this life’s business, and you have no more trading. This is the business of eternity.

Soul, is there anything left unfinished? Brother, sister, is there anything left incomplete? for if you lose this case, you are ruined, and that for all eternity. I pray that you look at this day and at all your days, the past and the future, in the light of the day of judgment.

III. But my lamp has a third side to it, bright, gleaming like a cluster of stars. The third light at the end of our lives is the light of HEAVEN.

We hope, when days and years have passed, that many of us will meet to part no more on the other side of the Jordan, in heaven. Now, let us see if we can cast a little light from heaven on things from the present and the past. You have been working--working very hard, and wiping the sweat from your brow, and saying, “My lot in life is not a desirable one. Oh, how tired I feel! I cannot bear it.” Courage, brother, courage, sister; there is rest for the weary; there is eternal rest for the beloved of the Lord, and when you arrive in heaven, how little, how utterly insignificant your labor on earth will seem, even if it will have lasted seventy years. You are in much pain; even now pain shoots through your body; you don’t often know what it is to have an easy hour, and you half murmur to yourself, “Why am I like this? Why did God deal so harshly with me?” Think of heaven, where the inhabitants will never again say, “I am sick;” where there are no groans to mingle with the songs that sing from immortal tongues. Courage, tried one, Oh it will soon be over; it is only a pin’s prick or a moment’s pang, and then eternal glory. Cheer up, and don’t let your patience fail you.

So you have been slandered. You have received shame and reproach because of Christ’s dear name, and you are ready to give up. Come, my friend, look beyond this earth! Can’t you hear the applause of the angels as the conquerors receive, one by one, their eternal crowns? What! Why won’t you fight when there is so much to be won? Must you be carried to the skies on flowery beds of comfort? You must fight if you would reign. Prepare your mind for action and think of the rewards waiting for you in heaven. In the light of heaven, the shame of earth will seem to be less than nothing and vanity.

So you have had many losses and crosses: you were once well-to-do, but now you are poor. You will have to go home today to a very poor house and to a meager meal, Oh, but beloved, you will not be there long. “In my Father’s house are many rooms.” It is only an inn you are staying at for awhile, and, if the accommodation is a little rough, remember you are gone tomorrow; so don’t complain. I pray to God we could look on all our actions in the light of heaven--I mean those who are believers in Jesus Christ. If we could have regrets in heaven, I think it would be that we did not do more than we did for Christ here below. In heaven they cannot feed Christ’s poor, cannot teach the ignorant. They can extol him with songs of praise, but there are some things in which we have the preference over them: they cannot clothe the naked, or visit the sick, or speak words of cheer to those that are sad. If there is anything that can give joy in heaven, surely it will be in looking back on the grace which enabled us to serve the Master. Oh, if I can win souls to Christ, I will be a gainer as well as you. I will have another heaven in their heaven, another joy as it were in their life, and another happiness in their souls’ happiness. And, dear brothers and sisters, if in your Sunday-school teaching, or visiting, or talking to others, you can bring any to glory, you will, if it is possible, multiply your heaven and make it all the more glad and joyful.

Now, look at the life of some Christians. They come here, and if I preach what they call a good sermon, they like it and drink it in. They are willing to eat the best foods and drink the sweetest drinks, but what do they do for Christ? Nothing. What do they give for Christ? Hardly anything. There are a few such people among us, and these are generally the most miserable people you meet with--neither a comfort to others, nor any joy to themselves. Now, I think, even in heaven, though no sorrow should be there, it will only be God’s wiping it away that will keep them from regretting that they did not do what they might have done on earth. We are saved by grace, blessed be God--by grace alone; but, being saved, we desire to make known the savor of Christ in every place, and we believe in heaven we will have joy in having made this known among the sons of men on earth. Look at your joy in the light of heaven, and you will see it differently than it now appears.

IV. Lastly, we now turn to the fourth side of our lamp, and that is the fourth light at the end of our lives, the light of HELL. Let us look at all things in the light of HELL, that dreadful and gloomy light, the glare of the fiery abyss.

Bring that lantern here. Here is a young man very merry. “Ho! ho!” he sings, “Christians are fools.” Hold up the light of Hell. There you are, young man, without God, without hope, with the great iron gate of death shut on you and locked forever, your body and soul in the horrible flames of the wrath of God. Who is the fool now? Oh, when your spirit is damned, as it must be if you live without a Savior, you will not even think of laughing. Laugh now, sir! Scoff now! For a few minutes’ merriment you sold eternal joys. You had a bowl of red stew and you ate it quickly, and you sold your birthright. What do you think of it now? It is an awful thing that men should be content, for a few short hours of silly amusement, to throw away their souls. Look at your fun and games in the glare of the flames of hell. Note that man in agony down in the vault of hell, he made money by sin, and there he is; he gained the whole world and lost his own soul. How does it look now? “I would give fifty thousand dollars,” said a gentleman when he lay dying, “if any man could prove to me, without a doubt, that there is no hell.” That man did not want to believe in a literal hell, and was willing to pay almost anything for some proof to satisfy his conscience, but now, with indescribable pain, he knows hell is real. If lost spirits could return here, surely they would do what Judas did--throw down the thirty pieces of silver in the temple, and curse themselves that they ever took the reward of this world and destroyed their souls.

And how will unbelief look in the flames of hell?

There are no unbelievers anywhere except on earth: there are none in heaven, and there are none in hell. Atheism is a strange thing. Even the demons never fell into that vice, for the Bible says, “the demons believe and shudder.” Yet, there are some of the devil’s children that have gone beyond their father in sin, but how will it look when they are forever lost? When God’s wrath crushes them, they will not be able to doubt his existence. When he tears them in pieces and there is no one to save them, then their sophisticated reasoning, their empty logic, their boasts and showy defiance, will be of no avail. Oh, that they had been wise and had not darkened their foolish hearts, but had turned to the living God!

I have another thought which will come home to some of your spirits with special power. How will procrastination seem when you get to hell?

Some of you have been attending this church for a long time: you have often felt conviction in your hearts, but you have always said “Tomorrow,” “Tomorrow.” You have been aroused and aroused again, but still it has been “Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.” How that word “tomorrow” will ring in your ears when you are actually burning in the fires of hell! What would you not give for another day of mercy, another hour of grace? I feel this morning as if I would do with you what the Roman Ambassadors did with Antiochus. They met him and asked him whether he intended war or peace. He said he hadn’t decided yet; and one of them taking his staff, made a circle around him where he stood, and said, “You must answer before you leave that spot. If you step out of the circle then it is war. Now, war or peace?” And I too would draw a circle around you in the pew this morning, and say to you, “Which will it be, sin or holiness, self or Christ? Will it be grace or hostility, heaven or hell? And I pray you answer that question in the light of hell. It is a dreadful light, but it is a revealing one. It is a fire that will devour the scales that cover your eyes and prevent you from seeing clearly. God grant that it may burn those scales away, that you may now see how dreadful a thing it is to be an enemy of God, and be led by his Holy Spirit to plead for mercy from Jesus Christ even now.

Ah, how will the gospel seem in the light of hell, and how will your indifference to it seem?

When I was thinking of preaching this morning, I wished that I could preach as in that light. To think that there are some to whom I have spoken again and again, who during this year have passed out of this world of hope and into the fires of despair, is a dreadful thought. Persons that occupied these pews, some even stood during the service and listened and heard the gospel--and now they are gone! Did I warn them fairly, truly? If not--if you didn’t warn them, then they perished, but their blood God will require at our hands. My God, by the blood of the Savior, set us free from these men! Oh deliver us from that solemn condemnation. But with those of you that still live, I will be innocent of your blood. Dear listeners, don’t you feel that you are mortal? Don’t you have within you a sense that you are dying? It is a thought that is always with me; life seems so short. It was not always this way with me; but the shortness of life now seems to hang over my mind perpetually, and I suppose it must be so for those of you who are thirty, forty, fifty, or sixty, and who frequently see your friends taken away. Now, since you too must soon die, since there is a world to come, and you believe there is, how can some of you play with these things? How is it that while you are attentive to your business, you neglect the business of your soul? What are you waiting for, my friend? Are you waiting for another season? Doesn’t the Bible say, “Now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation”? What are you waiting for? Oh that you were wise, and would think of the end of your life and seek after God! I call on you, because of the shortness of life, because of the certainty of death, because of the terrors of judgment, because of the glories of heaven, because of the agonies of hell, to seek the narrow path to heaven and follow it. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. This is the gospel, “Whoever believes in Christ is not condemned.” To believe is to trust. Oh, that you may have grace to trust your souls with the Lord Jesus now and forever, and then we will not need to fear those words, “At the end,” nor the four lights at the end of our lives: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. God bless you, for his name’s sake. Amen.

Sinners Bound with the Cords of Sin

February 13th, 1870
by
C. H. SPURGEON
(1834-1892)

"His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins."—Proverbs 5:22.

The first sentence has reference to a net, in which birds or beasts are taken. The ungodly man first of all finds sin to be a bait, and, charmed by its apparent pleasantness he indulges in it, and then he becomes entangled in its meshes so that he cannot escape. That which first attracted the sinner, afterwards detains him. Evil habits are soon formed, the soul readily becomes accustomed to evil, and then, even if the man should have lingering thoughts of better things, and form frail resolutions to amend, his iniquities hold him captive like a bird in the fowler's snare. You have seen the foolish fly descend into the sweet which is spread to destroy him, he sips, and sips again, and by-and-by he plunges boldly in to feast himself greedily: when satisfied, he attempts to fly, but the sweet holds him by the feet and clogs his wings; he is a victim, and the more he struggles the more surely is he held. Even so is it with the sins of ungodly men, they are at first a tempting bait, and afterwards a snare. Having sinned, they become so bewitched with sin, that the scriptural statement is no exaggeration: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil."

The first sentence of the text also may have reference to an arrest by an officer of law. The transgressor's own sins shall take him, shall seize him; they bear a warrant for arresting him, they shall judge him, they shall even execute him. Sin, which at the first bringeth to man a specious pleasure, ere long turneth into bitterness, remorse, and fear. Sin is a dragon, with eyes like stars, but it carrieth a deadly sting in its tail. The cup of sin, with rainbow bubbles on its brim, is black with deep damnation in its dregs. O that men would consider this, and turn from their delusions. To bring torment to the guilty, there is little need that God should, literally in the world to come, pile up Tophet with its wood and much smoke, nor even that the pit should be digged for the ungodly in order to make them miserable; sin shall of itself bring forth death. Leave a man to his own sins, and hell itself surrounds him; only suffer a sinner to do what he wills, and to give his lusts unbridled headway, and you have secured him boundless misery; only allow the seething caldron of his corruptions to boil at its own pleasure, and the man must inevitably become a vessel filled with sorrow. Be assured that sin is the root of bitterness. Gild the pill as you may, iniquity is death. Sweet is an unholy morsel in the mouth, but it will be wormwood in the bowels. Let but man heartily believe this, and surely he will not so readily be led astray. "Surely in vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird," and shall man be more foolish than the fowls of the air? will he wilfully pursue his own destruction? will he wrong his own soul? Sin, then, becomes first a net to hold the sinner by the force of custom and habit, and afterwards, a sheriffs officer to arrest him, and to scourge him with its inevitable results.

The second sentence of our text speaks of the sinner being holden with cords, and a parable may be readily fashioned out of the expression. The lifelong occupation of the ungodly man is to twist ropes of sin. All his sins are as so much twine and cord out of which ropes may be made. His thoughts and his imaginations are so much raw material, and while he thinks of evil, while he contrives transgression, while he lusts after filthiness, while he follows after evil devices, while with head, and hand, and heart he pursues eagerly after mischief, he is still twisting evermore the cords of sin which are afterwards to bind him. The binding meant is that of a culprit pinioned for execution. Iniquity pinions a man, disables him from delivering himself from its power, enchains his soul, and inflicts a bondage on the spirit far worse than chaining of the body. Sin cripples all desires after holiness, damps every aspiration after goodness, and thus, fettering the man hand and foot, delivers him over to the executioner, which executioner shall be the wrath of God, but also sin itself, in the natural consequences which in every case must flow from it. Samson could burst asunder green withes and new ropes, but when at last his darling sin had bound him to his Delilah, that bond he could not snap, though it cost him his eyes. Make a man's will a prisoner, and he is a captive indeed. Determined independence of spirit walks at freedom in a tyrant's Bastille, and defies a despot's hosts; but a mind enslaved by sin builds its own dungeon, forges its own fetters, and rivets on its chains. It is slavery indeed when the iron enters into the soul. Who would not scorn to make himself a slave to his baser passions? and yet the mass of men are such—the cords of their sins bind them.

Thus, having introduced to you the truth which this verse teaches, namely, the captivating, enslaving power of sin, I shall advance to our first point of consideration. This is a solution to a great mystery; but then, secondly, it is itself a greater mystery; and when we have considered these two matters it will be time for us to note what is the practical conclusion from this line of thought.

I. First, then, the doctrine of the text, that iniquity entraps the wicked as in a net, and binds them as with cords is A SOLUTION OF A GREAT MYSTERY.

When you and I first began to do good by telling out the gospel, we labored under the delusion that as soon as our neighbors heard of the blessed way of salvation they would joyfully receive it, and be saved in crowds. We have long ago seen that pleasant delusion dispelled; we find that our position is that of the serpent-charmer with the deaf adder, charm we ever so wisely, men will not hear so as to receive the truth. Like the ardent reformer, we have found out that old Adam is too strong for young Melancthon. We now perceive that for a sinner to receive the gospel involves a work of grace that shall change his heart and renew his nature. Yet none the less is it a great mystery that it should be so. It is one of the prodigies of the god of this world that he makes men love sin, and abide in indifference as if they were fully content to be lost. It is a marvel of marvels that man should be so base as to reject Christ, and abide in wilful and wicked unbelief. I will try and set forth this mystery, in the way in which, I dare say, it has struck many an honest hearted worker for Jesus Christ.

Is it not a mysterious thing that men should be content to abide in a state of imminent peril? Every unconverted man is already condemned. Our Lord has said it: "He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed on the Son of God." Every unregenerate man is not only liable to the wrath of God in the future, but the wrath of God abideth on him. It is on him now, it always will remain upon him; as long as he is what he is, it abideth on him. And yet in this state men do not start, they are not amazed or alarmed, they are not even anxious. Sabbath after Sabbath they are reminded of their unhappy position: it makes us unhappy to think they should be in such a state, but they are strangely at ease. The sword of vengeance hangs over them by a single hair, yet sit they at their banquets, and they laugh and sport as though there were no God, no wrath to come, no certainty of appearing before the judgment-seat of Christ. See a number of persons in a train that has broken down. The guard has only to intimate that another train is approaching, and that it may perhaps dash into the carriages and mangle the passengers; he has only to give half a hint, and see how the carriage doors fly open, how the travelers rush up the embankment, each one so eager for his own preservation as to forget his fellow's. Yet here are men and women by hundreds and thousands, with the fast-rushing train of divine vengeance close behind them; they may almost hear the sound of its thundering wheels, and, lo, they sit in all quietness, exposed to present peril and in danger of a speedy and overwhelming destruction. "'Tis strange. 'tis passing strange, 'tis wonderful." Here is a mystery indeed, that can only be understood in the light of the fact that these foolish beings are taken by their sing, and bound by the cords of their iniquities.

Be it ever remembered that before very long these unconverted men and women, many of whom are present this morning, will be in a stale whose wretchedness it is not possible for language fully to express. Within four-and-twenty hours their spirits may be summoned before the bar of God; and, according to this book, which partially uplifts the veil of the future, the very least punishment that can fall upon an unconverted soul will cause it "weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth." All they had endured, of whom it is written, that they wept and gnashed their teeth, was to be shut out into outer darkness, nothing more; no stripes had then fallen, they had not yet been shut up in the prison-house of hell, only the gate of heaven was shut, only the light of glory was hid; and straightway there was weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. What, then, will be the woe of the lost when positive punishment is inflicted? As for what they will endure who have beard the gospel, but have wilfully rejected it, we have some faint notion from the Master's words: "It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for them." We know that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, for "our God is a consuming fire." From this platform there rings full often that question, "How shall ye escape if ye neglect so great salvation?" And yet for all this, men are willing to pass on through time into eternity regardless of the escape which God provides, turning aside from the only salvation which can rescue them from enduring "the blackness of darkness for ever." O reason, art thou utterly fled? Is every sinner altogether brutish? If we should meet with a man condemned to die, and tell him that pardon was to be had, would he hear us with indifference? Would he abide in the condemned cell and use no means for obtaining the boon of life and liberty? Yes, there awaits the sinner a more awful doom, and a more terrible sentence, and we are sent to publish a sure pardon from the God of heaven; and yet thousands upon thousands give us no deep heartfelt attention, but turn aside and perish in their sins. O that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep for the folly of the race to which I belong, and mourn over the destruction of my fellow men!

It often strikes us with wonder that men do not receive the gospel of Jesus Christ, when we recollect that the gospel is so plain. If it were a great mystery one might excuse the illiterate from attending to it. If the plan of salvation could only be discovered by the attentive perusal of a long series of volumes, and if it required a classical training and a thorough education, why then the multitude of the poor and needy, whose time is taken up with earning their bread, might have same excuse; but there is under heaven no truth more plain than this, "He that believeth on the Lord Jesus hath everlasting life;" "He that believeth and is baptised, shall be saved." To believe—that is, simply to trust Christ. How plain! There is no road, though it ran straight as an arrow, that can be more plain than this. Legible only by the light they give, but all so legible that be who runs may read, stand these soul-quickening words, "Believe and live." Trust Christ and your sins are forgiven; you are saved. This is so plain a precept, that I may call it a very A B C for infants, yet men receive it not. Are they not indeed holden by the cords of their sins when they refuse to obey?

Moreover, brethren, there is a wonderful attractiveness in the gospel. If the gospel could possibly be a revelation of horrors piled on horrors, if there were something in it utterly inconsistent with reason, or something that shocked all the sensitive affections of our better part, we might excuse mankind, but the gospel is just this: man is lost, but God becomes man to save him, "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." Out of infinite love to his enemies the Son of God took upon himself human flesh, that he might suffer in the room and stead of men what they ought to have suffered. The doctrine of substitution, while it wondrously magnifies the grace of God and satisfies the justice of God, methinks ought to strike you all with love because of the disinterested affection which it reveals on Jesus Christ's part. O King of Glory, dost thou bleed for me? O Prince of Life, canst thou lie shrouded in the grave for me? Doth God stoop from his glory to be spat upon by sinful lips? Doth he stoop from the splendor of heaven to be "despised and rejected of men," that men may be saved? Why, it ought to win every human ear, it ought to entrance every human heart. Was ever love like this? Go ye to your poets, and see if they have ever imagined anything nobler than the love of Christ the Son of God for the dying sons of men! Go to your philosophers, and see if in all their maxims they have ever taught a diviner philosophy than that of Christ's life, or ever have imagined in their pictures of what men ought to be, an heroic love like that which Christ in very deed displayed! We lift before you no gory banner that might sicken your hearts; we bring before you no rattling chains of a tyrant's domination; but we lift up Jesus crucified, and "Love" is written on the banner that is waved in the forefront of our hosts; we bid you yield to the gentle sway of love, and not to the tyranny of terror. Alas! men must be bound, indeed, and fettered fast by an accursed love to sin, or else the divine attractions of a crucified Redeemer would win their hearts.

Consider, my friends, you who love the souls of your fellow men, how marvellous it is that men should not receive the gospel when the commandment of the gospel is not burdensome! Methinks if it had been written that no man should enter heaven except by the way of martyrdom, it had been wisdom for every one of us to give our bodies to be burned, or to be stretched upon the rack; yea, if there had been no path to escape from the wrath of God, but to be flayed alive with Bartholomew, enduring present but exquisite torture, it would have been but a cheap price for an escape from wrath, and an entrance into heaven. But I find in God's word prescribed as the way of salvation, no such physical agonies. No austerities are commanded; not even the milder law which governed the Pharisee when he "fasted thrice in the week." Only this is written—"Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved;" and the precept of the Christian's life is, "Love thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself." Most pleasant duties these of love! What more sweet? What more delightful than to permit the soul to flow out in streams of affection? The ways of true religion are not irksome, her ways are pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. What, heaven given for believing? What, heaven's gate opened only for knocking, and boons all priceless bestowed for nothing but the asking? Yet they will not ask, they will not knock. Alas, my God, what creatures are men! Alas, O sin, what monsters hast thou made mankind, that they will forget their own interests, and wrong their own souls!

Further, it is clear that men must be fast held by the bondage of their sins when we recollect that, according to the confession of the most of them, the pleasures of sin are by no means great. I have heard them say themselves that they have been satiated after a short season of indulgence We know how true the word is, "Who hath woe? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine." No form of sin has ever been discovered yet that has yielded satisfaction. You shall look at those who have had all that heart could wish, and have without restraint indulged their passions, and you shall find them to be in their latter end amongst the most wretched rather than the most satisfied of mankind. Yet for these pleasures—I think I degrade the word when I call them pleasures—for these pleasures they are willing to pawn their souls and risk everlasting woe; and all this while, be it remembered, to add to the wonder, there are pleasures to be found in godliness; they do not deny this, they cannot without belying their own observation. We who are at least as honest as they are, bear our testimony that we never knew what true happiness was till we gave our hearts to Christ; but since then our peace has been like a river. We have had our afflictions, we have suffered grievous bodily pain, we have endured mental depression, we have been heavily burdened, we have borne many trials; but we can say—

"We would not change our blest estate
For all the world calls good or great."

"Happy are the people whose God is the Lord!" We can set our seal to this experimentally. See ye then, my brethren, these poor souls will prefer the pleasures that mock them to the pleasures that alone can satisfy. If we had to die like dogs, it would be worth while to be a Christian. If there were no hereafter, and our only consideration were who should enjoy this life the best, it would be the wisest thing to be a servant of God and a soldier of the cross. I say not it would ensure our being rich, I say not it would ensure our being respected, I say not it would ensure our walking smoothly and free from outward trouble; but I do say that because of "the secret something which sweetens all," because of the profound serenity which true religion brings, the Christian life out-masters every other, and there is none to be compared therewith. But think ye for awhile what the ungodly man's life is! I can only compare it to that famous diabolical invention of the Inquisition of ancient times. They had as a fatal punishment for heretics, what they called the "Virgin's Kiss." There stood in a long corridor the image of the Virgin. She outstretched her arms to receive her heretic child; she looked fair, and her dress was adorned with gold and tinsel, but as soon as the poor victim came into her arms the machinery within began to work, and the arms closed and pressed the wretch closer and closer to her bosom, which was set with knives, and daggers, and lancets, and razors, and everything that could cut and tear him, till he was ground to pieces in the horrible embrace; and such is the ungodly man's life. It standeth like a fair virgin, and with witching smile it seems to say, "Come to my bosom, no place so warm and blissful as this;" and then anon it begins to fold its arms of habit about the sinner, and he sins again and again, brings misery into his body, perhaps, if he fall into some form of sin, stings his soul, makes his thoughts a case of knives to torture him, and grinds him to powder beneath the force of his own iniquities. Men perceive this, and dare not deny it; and yet into this virgin's bosom they still thrust themselves, and reap the deep damnation that iniquity must everywhere involve. Alas, alas, my God!

And now, once more, this terrible mystery, which is only solved by men's being held by their sins, has this added to it, that all the while in the case of most of you now present, all that I have said is believed, and a great deal of it is felt. I mean this: if I were talking with persons who did not believe they had a soul, or believe in the judgment to come, or believe in the penalty of sin, or believe in the reward of righteousness, I should see some reason why they rejected the great salvation; but the most of you who attend this house of prayer—I think I might say all—have scarcely ever had a doubt about these things. You would be very much horrified if any one would insinuate that you did not believe the Bible to be the word of God. You have a little Pharisaism in your soul, that you think you are not as scoffers are, nor infidels. I own you are not, but I grieve to say I think you are more inconsistent than they. If these things be a fiction, well, sirs, your course is rational; but if these things be realities, what shall I say for you when I plead with God on your behalf? What excuse can I make for you? If you profess to believe these things, act as though you believe them; if you do not, practically act so. Why do you profess to own them as the truth? The case is worse, for you not only believe these thing's to be true, but some of you have felt their power. You have gone home from this place, and you could not help it, you have sought your chamber and bowed your knee in prayer; such prayer as it was, for, alas! your goodness has been like the morning cloud and the early dew. I know some of you who have had to break off some of your sins, for your conscience would not let you rest in them. Yet you are unbelievers still, still you are undecided, still you are unsaved, and at this moment, if your soul were required of you, nothing would be in prospect but a fearful looking for of judgment and of fiery indignation. O my hearer, you whose conscience has been at times awakened, in whom the arrows of the great King have found a lodging place, in whom they are rankling still, yield, I pray thee, yield to the divine thrusts, and give up thy contrite spirit to thy Redeemer's hands. But if thou do not, what shall I say to thee? The kingdom of God has been thrust from you by yourselves. Be sure of this, it has come near you, and in coming near it has involved solemn responsibilities which I pray you may not have to feel the weight of in the world to come.

Here, then, stands the riddle, that man is so set against God and his Christ that he never will accept eternal salvation until the Holy Spirit, by a supernatural work, overcomes his will and turns the current of his affections; and why is this? The answer lies in the text, because his own iniquities have taken him, and he is holden with the cords of his sin. For this reason he will not come unto Christ that he may have life; for this reason he cannot come, except the Father which hath sent Christ draw him.

II. But now, secondly, I pass on to observe that though this is the solution of one mystery, IT IS IN ITSELF A GREATER MYSTERY.

It is a terrible mystery that man should be so great a fool, so mad a creature as to be held by cords apparently so feeble as the cords of his own sins. To be bound by reason is honorable; to be hold by compulsion, if you cannot resist it, is at least not discreditable; but to be held simply by sin, by sin and nothing else, is a bondage which is disgraceful to the human name. It lowers man to the last degree, to think that be should want no fetter to hold him but the fetter of his own evil lusts and desires. Let us just think of one or two cords, and you will see this.

One reason why men receive not Christ and are not saved, is because they are hampered by the sin of forgetting God. Think of that for a minute. Men forget God altogether. The commission of many a sin has been prevented by the presence of a child. In the presence of a fellow creature, ordinarily a man will feel himself under some degree of restraint. Yet that eye which never sleeps, the eye of the eternal God, exercises no restraint on the most of men. If there were a child in that chamber thou wouldst respect it-but God being there thou canst sin with impunity. If thy mother or thy father were there thou wouldst not dare offend, but God who made thee and whose will can crush thee, thy lawful sovereign, thou takest no more account of him than though he were a dog, yea, not so much as that. Oh, strange thing that men should thus act! And yet with many it is not because of the difficulty of thinking of God. Men of study, for instance, if they are considering the works of God, must be led up to thoughts of God. Galen was converted from being an atheist while in the process of dissecting the human body; he could not but see the finger of God in the nerves and sinews, and all the rest of the wonderful embroidery of the human frame. There is not an emmet or an infusorial animalcule beneath the microscope but what as plainly as tongue can speak, saith, "Mortal, think of God who made thee and me." Some men travel daily over scenes that naturally suggest the Creator; they go down to the sea in ships, and do business on great waters, where they must see the works of the Lord, and yet they even manage to become the most boisterous blasphemers against the sacred majesty of the Most High, in his very temple where everything speaks of his glory. But you will tell me perhaps, some of you, that you are not engaged in such pursuits. I reply, I know it. Many of you have to labor with your hands for your daily bread, in occupations requiring but little mental exercise. So much the more guilty then are you that when your mind is not necessarily taken up with other things, you still divert it from all thoughts of God. The working man often find is it very possible to spend his leisure hours in politics, and to amuse his working hours by meditating upon schemes more or less rational concerning the government of his country, and will he dare to tell me therefore that he could not during that time think of God? There is an aversion to God in your heart, my brother, or else it would not be that from Monday morning to Saturday night you forget him altogether. Even when sitting here you find it by no means a pleasant thing to be reminded of your God, and yet if I brought up the recollection of your mother, perhaps in heaven, the topic would not be displeasing to you. What owe you to your mother compared with what you owe to your God? If I spoke to you of some dear friend who has assisted you in times of distress, you would be pleased that I had touched upon such a chord; and may I not talk with you concerning your God, and ask you why do you forget him? Have you good thoughts for all but the best? Have you kind thoughts of gratitude for every friend but the best friend that man can have? My God! my God! why do men treat thee thus? Brightest, fairest, best, kindest, and most tender, and yet forgotten by the objects of thy care!

If men were far away from God, and it were a topic abstruse and altogether beyond reach, something might be said. But imagine a fish that despised the ocean and yet lived in it, a man who should be unconscious of the air he breathes! "In him we live and move and have our being; we are also his offspring." He sends the frost, and he will send the spring; he sends the seed-time and the harvest, and every shower that drops with plenty comes from him, and every wind that blows with health speeds forth from his mouth. Wherefore then is he to be forgotten when everything reminds you of him? This is a sin, a cruel sin, a cursed sin, a sin indeed that binds men hard and fast, that they will not come to Christ that they may have life; but it is strange, it is beyond all miracles a miracle, that such a folly as this should hold men from coming to Christ.

Another sin binds all unregenerate hearts; it is the sin of not loving the Christ of God. I am not about to charge any person here with such sins as adultery, or theft, or blasphemy, but I will venture to say that this is a sin masterly and gigantic, which towers as high as any other—the sin of not loving the Christ of God. Think a minute. Here is one who came into the world out of pure love, for no motive but mercy, with nothing to gain, but though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor; why then is he not loved? The other day there rode through these streets a true hero, a brave bold man who set his country free, and I do remember how I heard your shouts in yonder street, and you thronged to look into the lion-like face of Italy's liberator. I blame you not, I longed to do the same myself, he well deserved your shouts and your loudest praises. But what had he done compared with what the Christ of God has done in actually laying down his life to redeem men from bondage, yielding up himself to the accursed death of the cross that man might be saved through him? Where are your acclamations, sirs, for this greater Hero? Where are the laurels that you cast at his feet? Is it nothing to you, is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by, is it nothing to you that Jesus should die? Such a character, so inexpressibly lovely, and yet despised! Such a salvation, so inexpressibly precious, and yet rejected! Oh, mystery of iniquity! indeed, the depths of sin are almost as fathomless as the depths of God, and the transgressions of the wicked all but as infinite in infamy as God is infinite in love.

I might also speak of sins against the Holy Ghost that men commit, in that they live and even die without reverential thoughts of him or care about him; but I shall speak of one sin, and that is the mystery that men should be held by the sin of neglecting their souls. You meet with a person who neglects his body, you call him fool, if, knowing that there is a disease, he will not seek a remedy. If, suffering, from some fatal malady, he never attempts to find a cure, you think the man is fit only for a lunatic asylum. But a person who neglects his soul, be is but one of so numerous a class, that we overlook the madness. Your body will soon die, it is but as it were the garment of yourself and will be worn out; but you yourself are better than your body as a man is better than the dress he wears. Why spend you then all thoughts about this present life and give none to the life to come?

It has long been a mystery who was the man in the iron mask. We believe that the mystery was solved some years ago, by the conjecture that he was the twin brother of Louis XIV., King of France, who, fearful lest he might have his throne disturbed by his twin brother, whose features were extremely like his own, encased his face in a mask of iron and shut him up in the Bastille for life. Your body and your soul are twin brothers. Your body, as though it were jealous of your soul, encases it as in an iron mask of spiritual ignorance, lest its true lineaments, its immortal lineage should be discovered, and shuts it up within the Bastille of sin, lest getting liberty and discovering its royalty, it should win the mastery over the baser nature. But what a wretch was that Louis XIV., to do such a thing to his own brother! How brutal, how worse than the beasts that perish! But, sir, what art thou if thou doest thus to thine own soul, merely that thy body may be satisfied, and thy earthly nature may have a present gratification? O sirs, be not so unkind, so cruel to yourselves. But yet this sin of living for the mouth and living for the eye, this sin of living for what ye shall eat and what ye shall drink, and wherewithal ye shall be clothed, this sin of living by the clock within the narrow limits of the time that ticks by the pendulum, this sin of living as if this earth were all and there were nought beyond—this is the sin that holds this City of London, and holds the world, and binds it like a martyr to the stake to perish, unless it be set free.

Generally, however, there also lies some distinct form of actual sin at the bottom of most men's impenitence. I will not attempt to make a guess, my dear hearer, as to what it may be that keeps thee from Christ, but without difficulty I could, I think, state what these sins generally are. Some men would fain be saved, but they would not like to tale up the cross and be despised as Christians. Some would fain follow Christ, but they will not give up their self-righteous pride; they want to have a part of the glory of salvation. Some men have a temper, which they do not intend to try to restrain. Others have a secret sin, too sweet for them to give it up; it is like a right arm, and they cannot come to the cutting of it off. Some enjoy company which is attractive, but destructive, and from that company they cannot fly. Men one way or another are held fast like birds with birdlime, till the fowler comes and takes them to their destruction. O that they were wise, for then they might be awakened out of this folly! But this still remaineth the mystery of mysteries, that those sins absurd and deadly, bind men as with cords, and hold them fast like a bull in a net.

THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER IS THIS, a message sinner to thee, and saint, to thee.

Sinner, to thee. Thou art held fast by thy sins, and I fear me much thou wilt be held so till thou perish, perish everlastingly. Man, does not this concern you? I lay last night by the hour together on my bed awake, tossing with a burden on my heart, and I tell thee that only burden that I had was thy soul. I cannot endure it, man, that thou shouldst be cast into the "lake that burneth with fire and brimstone." I believe that book as thou dost; believing it, I am alarmed at the prospect which awaits the unconverted. The more I look into the subject of the world to come, the more I am impressed that all those who would lessen our ideas of the judgment that God will bring upon the wicked, are waging war against God and against virtue and the best interests of men. "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Do not try it, my friend, I pray thee do not try it. Run not this risk, this certainty of endless misery, I beseech thee, dare it not! What sayest thou, "What then should I do?" I venture to reply in the words of one of old, "Break off thy sins by righteousness, for it is time to seek the Lord." But thou repliest, "How can I break them off? they are like cords and bonds." Ah, soul, here is another part of thy misery, that thou hast destroyed thyself, but thou canst not save thyself; thou hast woven the net, thou hast made it fast and firm, but thou canst not tear it in pieces. Bat there is One who can, there is One upon whom the Spirit of the Lord descended that he might loose the prisoner. There is a heart that feels for thee in heaven, and there is One mighty to save, who can rescue thee. Breathe that prayer, "O set me free, thou Liberator of captive souls;" breathe the prayer now, and believe that he can deliver thee, and thou shalt yet, captive as thou art, go free, and this shall be thy ransom price, his precious blood; and this shall be the privilege of thy ransomed life, to love and praise him who hath redeemed thee from going down into the pit.

But I said the conclusion of the whole matter had something to do with the child of God. It has this to do with him. Dear brother and sister in Christ, by the love you bear to your fellow sinners, never help to make the bonds of their sins stronger than they are—you will do so if you are inconsistent. They will say, "Why, such a one professes to be a saved man, and yet see how he lives!" Will you make excuses for sinners? It was said of Judah, by the prophet, that she had become a comfort to Sodom and Gomorrah. O never do this; never let the ungodly have to say, "There is nothing in it; it is all a lie; it is all a mere pretense; we may as well continue in sin, for see how these Christians act!" No, brethren, they have bonds enough without your tightening them or adding to them.

In the next place, never cease to warn sinners. Do not stand by and see them die without lifting up a warning note. A house on fire, and you see it as you go to your morning's labor, and yet never lift up the cry of "Fire!" a man perishing, and yet no tears for him! Can it be so? At the foot of Mr. Richard Knill's likeness I notice these words, "Brethren, the heathen are perishing, will you let them perish?" I would like to have each of you apply to your own conscience the question, "Sinners are perishing, will you let them perish without giving them at least, a warning of what the result of sin must be?" My brethren, I earnestly entreat you who know the gospel to tell it out to others. It is God's way of cutting the bonds which confine men's souls; be instant, in season and out of season, in publishing the good news of liberty to the captives through the redeeming Christ.

And lastly, as you and I cannot set these captives free, let us look to him who can. O let our prayers go up and let our tears drop down for sinners. Let it come to an agony, for I am persuaded we shall never get much from God by way of conversion till we feel we must have it, until our soul breaketh for the longing that it hath for the salvation of souls: when your cry is like that of Rachel, "Give me children or I die I" you shall not long be spiritually barren. When you must have converts, or your heart will break, God will hear you and send you an answer. The Lord bless you! May none of you be held by the cords of your sins, but may ye be bound with cords to the horns of God's altar as a happy and willing sacrifice to him that loved you. The Lord bless you for Jesus' sake.

An Appeal to Children of Godly Parents

March 27th, 1887

delivered by C. H. Spurgeon

“My son, keep thy father’s commandment, and forsake not the law of thy mother: Bind them continually upon thine heart, and tie them about thy neck. When thou goest, it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest, it shall keep thee; and when thou awakest, it shall talk with thee. For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life.”—Proverbs 6:20-23.

You have here before you the advice of King Solomon, rightly reckoned to be one of the wisest of men; and verily he must be wise indeed who could excel in wisdom the son of David, the King of Israel. It is worth while to listen to what Solomon has to say; it must be good for the most intelligent young person to listen and to listen carefully to what so experienced a man as Solomon has to say to young men. But I must remind you that a greater than Solomon is here, for the Spirit of God inspired the Proverbs. They are not merely jewels from earthly mines, but they are also precious treasures from the heavenly hills; so that the advice we have here is not only the counsel of a wise man, but the advice of that Incarnate Wisdom who speaks to us out of the Word of God. Would you become the sons of wisdom? Come and sit at the feet of Solomon. Would you become spiritually wise? Come and hear what the Spirit of God has to say by the mouth of the wise man.

In considering this subject I am going first of all to show you that true godliness, of which the wise man here speaks, comes to many of us recommended by parental example: “My son, keep thy father’s commandment, and forsake not the law of thy mother: bind them continually upon thine heart, and tie them about thy neck.” But in addition to that true religion comes to us commended by practical uses, by its beneficial effect upon our lives: “When thou goest, it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest, it shall keep thee; and when thou awakest, it shall talk with thee. For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life.”

I. Now in the first place I want to show you that true religion comes to many of us recommended by parental example.

Unhappily it is not so with all of you. There are some who had an evil example in their childhood, and who never learnt anything that was good from their parents. I adore the sovereignty of divine grace that there are among us tonight many who are the first in their families that ever made a profession of faith in Christ. They were born and brought up in the midst of everything that was opposed to godliness; yet here they are, they can themselves hardly tell you how, brought out from the world as Abraham was brought from Ur of the Chaldees. The Lord in his grace has taken one of a city, and two of a family, and brought them to Zion. You, dear friends, have special cause for thankfulness; but it should be a note to be entered in your diary that your children shall not be subjected to the same disadvantages as you yourselves suffered. Since the Lord has looked in love upon you, let your households be holiness to the Lord, and so bring up your children that they shall have every advantage that religious training can give, and every opportunity to serve the living God.

But there are many among us, I believe the larger proportion of those gathered here, who have had the immense privilege of godly training. Now, to my mind it seems that a father’s experience is the best evidence that a young man can have of the truth of anything. My father would not say that which was false anywhere to anyone; but I am sure that he would not say it to his son; and if after serving God for fifty years he has found religion to be a failure, even if he had not the courage to communicate it to the whole world, I feel persuaded that he would have whispered in my ear, “My son, I have misled you. I was mistaken, and I have found it out.” But when I saw the old man the other day he had no such information to convey to me. Our conversation was concerning the faithfulness of God; and he delights to tell of the faithfulness of God to him and to his father, my dear grandfather, who has now gone up above. How often have they told me that in a long lifetime of testing and proving the promises, they have found them all true, and they could say in the language of the hymn —

“‘Tis religion that can give

Sweetest pleasures while we live;

‘Tis religion must supply

Solid comfort when we die.”

As for myself, if I had found out that I was mistaken, I should not have been so foolish as to rejoice that my sons should follow the same way of life, and should addict themselves with all their might to preaching the same truth that I delight to proclaim. Dear son, if thou hast a godly father believe that the religion upon which he has fixed his faith is true. He tells thee that it is so; he is, at any rate, a sincere and honest witness to thee; I beseech thee therefore, forsake not thy father’s God.

Then I think that one of the most tender bonds that can ever bind man or woman is the affection of a mother. Many would perhaps break away from the law of the father; but the love of the mother, who among us can break away from that? So next, a mother’s affection is the best of arguments. You remember how she prayed for you. Among your earliest recollections is that of her taking you between her knees and teaching you to say,—

“Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,

Look upon a little child.”

Perhaps you have tried to disbelieve, but your mother’s firm faith prevents it. I have heard of one who said that he could easily have been an infidel if it had not been for his mother’s life and his mother’s death. Yes, these are hard arguments to get over, and I trust that you will not get over them. You remember well her quiet patience in the house when there was much that might have ruffled her. You remember her gentleness with you when you were going a little wild. You hardly know perhaps, how you cut her to the heart, how her nights were sleepless because her boy did not love his mother’s God. I do charge you by the love you bear her, if you have received any impressions that are good, cherish them, and cast them not aside. Or if you have received no such impressions, yet at least let the sincerity of your mother, for whom it was impossible to have been untrue,— let the deep affection of your mother who could not and would not betray you into a lie,—persuade you that there is truth in this religion which now, perhaps, some of your companions are trying to teach you to deride. “My son, keep thy father’s commandment, and forsake not the law of thy mother.”

I think that to any young man, or any young woman either, who has had a godly father and mother, the best way of life that they can mark out for themselves is to follow the road in which their father’s and mother’s principle would conduct them. Of course we make great advances on the old folks, do we not? The young men are wonderfully bright and intelligent, and the old people are a good deal behind them. Yes, yes; that is the way we talk before our beards have grown. Possibly when we have more sense we shall not be quite so conceited of it. At any rate, I, who am not very old, and who dare not any longer call myself young, venture to say that for myself I desire nothing so much as to continue the traditions of my household. I wish to find no course but that which shall run parallel with that of those who have gone before me. And I think dear friends, that you who have seen the holy and happy lives of Christian ancestors will be wise to pause a good deal before you begin to make a deviation, either to the right or to the left, from the course of those godly ones. I do not believe that he begins life in a way which God is likely to bless, and which he himself in the long run will judge to be wise, who begins with the notion that he shall upset everything; that all that belonged to his godly family shall be cast to the winds. I do not seek to have heirlooms of gold or silver; but though I die a thousand deaths I can never give up my father’s God, my grandsire’s God, and his father’s God, and his father’s God. I must hold this to be the chief possession that I have; and I pray young men and women to think the same. Do not stain the glorious traditions of noble lives that have been handed down to you; do not disgrace your father’s shield, bespatter not the escutcheons of your honored predecessors by any sins and transgressions on your part. God help you to feel that the best way of leading a noble life will be to do as they did who trained you in God’s fear!

Solomon tells us to do two things with the teachings which we have learned of our parents. First he says, “Bind them continually upon thine heart,” for they are worthy of loving adherence. Show that you love these things by binding them upon your heart. The heart is the vital point; let godliness lie there, love the things of God. If we could take young men and women and make them professedly religious without their truly loving godliness, that would be simply to make them hypocrites, which is not what we desire. We do not want you to say that you believe what you do not believe, or that you rejoice in what you do not rejoice in. But our prayer—and oh that it might be your prayer too!—is that you may be helped to bind these things about your heart. They are worth living for, they are worth dying for, they are worth more than all the world besides; the immortal principles of the divine life which comes from the death of Christ. “Bind them continually upon thine heart.”

And then Solomon, because he would not have us keep these things secret as if we were ashamed of them, adds, “and tie them about thy neck,” for they are worthy of boldest display. Did you ever see my Lord Mayor wearing his chain of office? He is not at all ashamed to wear it. And the sheriffs with their brooches; I have a lively recollection of the enormous size to which those ornaments attain; and they take care to wear them too. Now then, you who have any love to God, tie your religion about your neck. Do not be ashamed of it, put it on as an ornament, wear it as the mayor does his chain. When you go into company never be ashamed to say that you are a Christian; and if there is any company where you cannot go as a Christian, well, do not go there at all. Say to yourself, “I will not be where I could not introduce my Master; I will not go where he could not go with me.” You will find that resolve to be a great help to you in the choice of where you will go and where you will not go; therefore bind it upon your heart, tie it about your neck. God help you to do this and so to follow those godly ones who have gone before you!

I hope that I am not weak in wishing that some here may be touched by affection to their parents. I have had very sorrowful sights sometimes in the course of my ministry. A dear father, an honest, upright, godly man, is perhaps present; but he will not mind my saying what lines of grief I saw upon his face when he came to say to me, “Oh, sir, my boy is in prison!” I am sure that if his boy could have seen his father’s face as I saw it, it would have been worse than prison to him. I have known young men who have come to this Tabernacle with their parents—nice boys too, they were— and they have gone into situations in the city where they have been tempted to steal, and they have yielded to the tempter and they have lost their character. Sometimes the deficiency has been met, and they have been rescued from a criminal’s career; but alas, sometimes they have fallen into the hands of a wicked woman, and then woe betide them! Occasionally it has seemed to be sheer wantonness and wickedness that has made them act unrighteously. I wish I could fetch those young men—I do not suppose that they are here to-night—and let them see not merely the misery they will bring upon themselves, but show them their mother at home when news came that John had lost his position because he had been acting dishonestly, or give them a glimpse of the father’s face when the evil tidings reached him. The poor man stood aghast; he said “There was never a stain upon the character of any of my family before.” If the earth had opened under the godly man’s feet, or if the good mother could have gone down straight into the grave, they would have preferred it to the lifelong tribulation which has come upon them. Therefore I charge you, young man, or young woman, do not kill the parents who gave you life, do not disgrace those who brought you up; but I pray you, instead thereof, seek the God of your father and the God of your mother, and give yourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ and live wholly to him.

II. Now I must turn to my second point, which is that true religion comes to us commended by practical uses. This is a less sentimental argument than the one I have been pleading; but to many, vital godliness appeals because of its immense utility in the actual everyday life of men.

Solomon tells us first that true godliness serves us for instruction: “For the commandment is a lamp.” If thou wouldst know all that thou oughtest to know, read this Book. If thou wouldst know in thy heart that which shall be for thy present and eternal good, love this Book, believe the truth it teaches and obey it, “for the commandment is a lamp.”

Next, true religion serves us for direction: “and the law is light.” If we want to know what we should do, we cannot do better than yield ourselves up to the guidance of the Divine Spirit and take this Word as our map, for—

“‘Tis like the sun, a heavenly light,

That guides us all the day;

And through the dangers of the night,

A lamp to lead our way.”

Solomon also tells us that true religion guides us under all circumstances. He says in the 22nd verse that when we are active, there is nothing like true godliness to help us: “When thou goest, it shall lead thee.” He tells us that when we are resting there is nothing better than this for our preservation: “When thou sleepest, it shall keep thee.” And when we are just waking, there is nothing better than this with which to delight the mind: “When thou awakest, it shall talk with thee.” I do not intend to expand those three thoughts except just to say this, when thou art busiest, thy religion shall be thy best help. When thy hands are full of toil, and thy head is full of thought, nothing can do thee more service than to have a God to go to, a Savior to trust in, a heaven to look forward to. And when thou goest to thy bed to sleep or to be sick, thou canst have nothing better to smooth thy pillow and to give thee rest than to know that thou art forgiven through the precious blood of Christ, and saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation. Often ere I fall asleep, I say to myself those words of Watts,—

“Sprinkled afresh with pardoning blood,

I lay me down to rest,

As in the embraces of my God,

Or on my Savior’s breast;”

and there is no more delicious sleep in the world than that sleep which even in dreams keeps near to Christ. Some of us know what it is, even in those wanderings of our mind in sleep, not to quit the holy ground of communion with our Lord. It is not always so, but it is sometimes so; and even then when the mind has lost power to control its thoughts, even the thoughts seem to dance like Miriam to the praise of God. Oh, happy men, whose religion is their protection even in their sleep! And then Solomon says, “when thou awakest, it shall talk with thee.” This Bible is a wonderful talking book; there is a great mass of blessed talk in this precious volume. It has told me a great many of my faults; it would tell you yours if you would let it. It has told me much to comfort me; and it has much to tell you if you will but incline your ear to it. It is a book that is wonderfully communicative; it knows all about you, all the ins and outs of where you are and where you ought to be, it can tell you everything. The best communion that a man can have is when he commences with God in prayer and the reading of the Word: “When thou awakest, it shall talk with thee.”

I have hurried over that point because I want to say something else to you. Dear friends, those of you who are unconverted, our great anxiety is that you should know the Lord at once; and our reason is this, that it will prepare you for the world to come. Whatever that world may be, full of vast mysteries, yet no man is so prepared to launch upon the unknown sea as the one who is reconciled to God, who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, who trusts him, and rejoices in the pardon of his sin through the great atoning sacrifice, and experiences in his own heart the marvelous change which has made him a new creature in Christ Jesus. The great reason, I say again, why we wish to have our dear friends converted, is that they may be ready for the world to come. You will soon die, all of you: I think it was last Sunday evening that there sat in that pew just over there, a friend who was generally here in the morning and evening; but on Wednesday he died quite suddenly. He appeared to be in good health, but he died at the railway station, away from home. That seat where he used to sit ought to have a warning voice to all of us, crying aloud, “Prepare to meet thy God.” It might have been myself; it might have been any of these friends around me on the platform; it might have been any of you in the congregation. Who can tell who will go this week? Probably some one or other of us (our number is so large) will be taken away ere another Sabbath bell shall be heard.

I think that is a very good reason for seeking the Lord, that you may be prepared for eternity. One day this week I saw an aged friend who cannot live much longer; she is eighty-six, and her faculties are failing her; but she said to me, “I have no fear, I have no fear of death; I am on the Rock, I am on the Rock Christ Jesus. I know whom I have believed, and I know where I am going.” It was delightful to hear the aged saint speak like that; and we are always hearing such talk from our dear friends when they are going home, they never seem to have any doubts. I have known some who, while they were well, had many doubts; but when they came to die they seemed to have none at all, but were joyously confident in Christ.

But there is another reason why we want our friends converted, and that is that they may be prepared for this life. I do not know what kind of life you have set before yourself. Perhaps I may be addressing some young men who are going to the University, and they hope to have lives consecrated to learning and crowned with honor. Possibly some here have no prospect but that of working hard to earn their bread with the sweat of their brow; some have begun to lay bricks, or to drive the plane, or to wield the pen. There are all sorts of ways of mortal life; but there is no better provision and preparation for any kind of life on earth than to know the Lord, and to have a new heart and a right spirit. He that rules millions of men will do it better with the grace of God in his heart; and he that had to be a slave would be the happier in his lot for having the grace of God in his heart. You that are old and you that are young, you that are masters and you that are servants, true religion cannot disqualify you for playing your part here in the great drama of life; but the best preparation for that part, if it is a part that ought to be played, is to know the Lord and feel the power of divine grace upon your soul.

Let me just show you how this is the case. The man who lives before God, who calls God his Father, and feels the Spirit of God working within him a hatred of sin and a love of righteousness, he is the man who will be conscientious in the discharge of his duties; and you know, that is the kind of man, and the kind of woman, too, that we want nowadays. We have so many people who want looking after; if you give them anything to do they will do it quickly enough if you stand and look on; but the moment you turn your back they will do it as slovenly, or as slowly, and as badly as can be. They are eye-servants only. If you were to advertise for an eye servant I do not suppose anybody would come to you; yet they might come in shoals for there are plenty of them about. Well now, a truly Christian man, a man who is really converted, sees that he serves God in doing his duty to his fellow men. “Thou God seest me,” is the power that ever influences him; and he desires to be conscientious in the discharge of his duties whatever those duties may be. I once told you the story of the servant girl who said that she hoped she was converted. Her minister asked her this question, “What evidence can you give of your conversion?” She gave this among a great many other proofs, but it was not a bad one; she said, “Now, sir, I always sweep under the mats.” It was a small matter, but if you carry out in daily life that principle of sweeping under the mats, that is the kind of thing we want. Many people have a little corner where they stow away all the fluff and the dust, and the room looks as if it was nicely swept, but it is not. There is a way of doing everything so that nothing is really done, but that is not the case where there is grace in the heart. Grace in the heart makes a man feel that he would wish to live wholly to God, and serve God in serving man. If you get that grace you will have a grand preparation for life as well as for death.

The next thing is that a man who has a new heart has imparted to him a purity which preserves him in the midst of temptation. Oh, this dreadful city of London! I wonder that God endures the filth of it. I frequently converse with good young men who come up from the country to their first situation in London, and the first week they live in London is a revelation to them which makes their hair almost stand on end. They see what they never dreamt of. Well now, you young fellows who have just come to London, perhaps this is your first Sunday, give yourselves to the Lord at once I pray you. Yield yourselves to Jesus Christ tonight, for another week in London may be your damnation. Only a week in London may have led you into acts of impurity that shall ruin you forever. Before you have gone into those things devote yourselves to God and to his Christ, that with pure hearts and with right spirits you may be preserved from “the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and the destruction that wasteth at noonday,” in this terribly wicked city. There is no hope for you young men and young women in this great world of wickedness, unless your hearts are right towards God. If you go in thoroughly to follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth, he will keep and preserve you even to the end; but if you do not give yourselves to the Lord, whatever good resolutions you may have formed, you are doomed—I am sure you are—to be carried away with the torrents of iniquity that run down our streets today. Purity of heart then, which comes from faith in Christ, is a splendid preparation for life.

So also is truthfulness of speech. Oh, what a wretched thing it is when people will tell lies! Now the heart that is purified by the grace of God hates the thought of a lie. The man speaks the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and he is the man who shall pass through life unscathed, and shall be honored, and in the long run successful. He may have to suffer for a time through his truthfulness, but in the end nothing shall clear a way for him so well as being true in thought and word and deed.

If you love the Lord with all your heart you will also learn honesty in dealing; and that is a grand help in life. I know that the trickster does sometimes seem to succeed for a time; but what is his success? It is a success which is only another name for ruin. Oh, dear sirs, if all men could be made honest, how much more of happiness there would be in the world! And the way to be upright among men is to be sincere towards God, and to have the Spirit of God dwelling within you.

Again, true religion is of this value, that it comforts a man under great troubles. You do not expect many troubles my young friend, but you will have them. You expect that you will be married and then your troubles will be over; some say that then they begin. I do not endorse that statement; but I am sure that they are not over, for there is another set of trials that begin then. But you are going to get out of your apprenticeship and then it will be all right; will it? Journeymen do not always find it so. But you do not mean always to be a journeyman; you are going to be a little master. Ask the masters whether everything is pleasant with them in these times. If you want to escape trouble altogether you had better go up in a balloon; and then I am sure that you would be in trouble for fear of going up too high or coming down too fast. But troubles will come; and what is there that can preserve a man in the midst of trouble like feeling that things are safe in his Father’s hands? If you can say, “I am his child, and all things are working together for my good. I have committed myself entirely into the hands of him who cannot err, and will never do me an unkindness,” why, sir, you have on a breastplate which the darts of care cannot pierce, you are shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, and you may tread on the briars of the wilderness with an unwounded foot.

True religion will also build up in you firmness of character, and that is another quality that I want to see in our young people nowadays. We have some splendid men in this place, and some splendid women too. I should not be afraid if the devil himself were to preach here that he would pervert them from the faith; and if all the new heresies that can rise were to be proclaimed in their presence, they know too well what the truth is ever to be led astray. But on the other hand, we have a number of people who are led by their ears. If I pull their ear one way, they come after me; if they happen to go somewhere else and somebody pulls their ear the other way, they go after him. There are lots of people who never do their own thinking, but put it out as they put out their washing; they do not think of doing it at home. Well now, these people are just like the chaff on the threshing-floor, and when the wind begins to blow, away they go. Do not be like that. Dear young sons and daughters of the church-members here, know the Lord. May he reveal himself to you at once; and when you do know him, and get a grip of the gospel, bind it to your heart and tie it about your neck, and say “Yes, I am going to follow in the footsteps of those I love, and especially in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus Christ.

“‘Through floods and flames, if Jesus lead,

I’ll follow where he goes.’”

God help you to do it! But first believe in the Lord Jesus Christ; trust yourselves wholly to him and he will give you grace to stand fast even to the end.

The Talking Book

October 22nd, 1871
by
C. H. SPURGEON
(1834-1892)

"When thou awakest, it shall talk with thee"—Proverbs 6:22.

It is a very happy circumstance when the commandment of our father and the law of our mother are also the commandment of God and the law of the Lord. Happy are they who have a double force to draw them to the right—the bonds of nature, and the cords of grace. They sin with a vengeance who sin both against a father on earth and the great Father in heaven, and they exhibit a virulence and a violence of sin who do despite to the tender obligations of childhood, as well as to the demands of conscience and God. Solomon, in the passage before us, evidently speaks of those who find in the parents' law and in God's law the same thing, and he admonishes such to bind the law of God about their heart, and to tie it about their neck; by which he intends inward affection and open avowal. The law of God should be so dear to us, that is should be bound about the most vital organ of our being, braided about our heart. That which a man carries in his hand he may forget and lose, that which he wears upon his person may be torn from him, but that which is bound about his heart will remain there as long as life remains. We are to love the Word of God with all our heart, and mind, and soul, and strength; with the full force of our nature we are to embrace it; all our warmest affections are to be bound up with it. When the wise man tells us, also, to wear it about our necks, he means that we are never to be ashamed of it. No blush is to mantle our cheek when we are called Christians; we are never to speak with bated breath in any company concerning the things of God. Manfully must we take up the cross of Christ; cheerfully must we avow ourselves to belong to those who have respect unto the divine testimonies. Let us count true religion to be our highest ornament; and, as magistrates put upon them their gold chains, and think themselves adorned thereby, so let us tie about our neck the commands and the gospel of the Lord our God.

In order that we may be persuaded so to do, Solomon gives us three telling reasons. He says that God's law, by which I understand the whole run of Scripture, and, especially the gospel of Jesus Christ, will be a guide to us:—"When thou goest, it shall lead thee." It will be a guardian to us: "When thou sleepest"—when thou art defenceless and off thy guard—"it shall keep thee." And it shall also be a dear companion to us: "When thou awakest, it shall talk with thee." Any one of these three arguments might surely suffice to make us seek a nearer acquaintance with the sacred word. We all need a guide, for "it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." Left to our own way, we soon excel in folly. There are dilemmas in all lives where a guide is more precious than a wedge of gold. The Word of God, as an infallible director for human life, should be sought unto by us, and it will lead us in the highway of safety. Equally powerful is the second reason: the Word of God will become the guardian of our days; whoso hearkeneth unto it shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil. Unguarded moments there may be; times, inevitable to our imperfection, there will be, when, unless some other power protect us, we shall fall into the hands of the foe. Blessed is he who has God's law so written on his heart, and wears it about his neck as armour of proof, that at all times he is invulnerable, kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.

But I prefer, this morning, to keep to the third reason for loving God's word. It is this, that is becomes our sweet companion: "When thou awakest, it shall talk with thee." The inspired law of God, which David in the hundred and nineteenth Psalm calls God's testimonies, precepts, statutes, and the like, is the friend of the righteous. Its essence and marrow is the gospel of Jesus, the law-fulfiller, and this also is the special solace of believers. Of the whole sacred volume it may be said, "When thou awakest, it shall talk with thee." I gather four or five thoughts from this expression, and upon these we will speak.

I. We perceive here that THE WORD IS LIVING. How else could it be said: "It shall talk with thee"? A dead book cannot talk, nor can a dumb book speak. It is clearly a living book, then, and a speaking book: "The word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever." How many of us have found this to be most certainly true! A large proportion of human books are long ago dead, and even shrivelled like Egyptian mummies; the mere course of years has rendered them worthless, their teaching is disproved, and they have no life for us. Entomb them in your public libraries if you will, but, henceforth, they will stir no man's pulse and warm no man's heart. But this thrice blessed book of God, though it has been extant among us these many hundreds of years, is immortal in its life, unwithering in its strength: the dew of its youth is still upon it; its speech still drops as the rain fresh from heaven; its truths are overflowing founts of ever fresh consolation. Never book spake like this book; its voice, like the voice of God, is powerful and full of majesty.

Whence comes it that the word of God is living? Is it not, first, because it is pure truth? Error is death, truth is life. No matter how well established an error may be by philosophy, or by force of arms, or the current of human thought, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven, and all untruth shall be as stubble before the fire. The tooth of time devours all lies. Falsehoods are soon cut down, and they wither as the green herb. Truth never dies, it dates its origin from the immortals. Kindled at the source of light, its fame cannot be quenched; if by persecution it be for a time covered, it shall blaze forth anew to take reprisals upon its adversaries. Many a once venerated system of error now rots in the dead past among the tombs of the forgotten; but the truth as it is in Jesus knows no sepulchre, and fears no funeral; it lives on, and must live while the Eternal fills His throne.

The word of God is living, because it is the utterance of an immutable, self-existing God. God doth not speak to-day what He meant not yesterday, neither will He to-morrow blot out what He records to-day. When I read a promise spoken three thousand years ago, it is as fresh as though it fell from the eternal lips to-day. There are, indeed, no dates to the Divine promises; they are not of private interpretation, nor to be monopolised by any generation. I say again, as fresh to-day the eternal word drops from the Almighty's lips as when He uttered it to Moses, or to Elias, or spake it by the tongue of Esaias or Jeremiah. The word is always sure, steadfast, and full of power. It is never out of date. Scripture bubbles up evermore with good matters, it is an eternal Geyser, a spiritual Niagara of grace, for ever falling, flashing, and flowing on; it is never stagnant, never brackish or defiled, but always clear, crystal, fresh, and refreshing; so, therefore, ever living.

The word lives, again, because it enshrines the living heart of Christ. The heart of Christ is the most living of all existences. It was once pierced with a spear, but it lives on, and yearns towards sinners, and is as tender and compassionate as in the days of the Redeemer's flesh. Jesus, the Sinner's Friend, walks in the avenues of Scripture as once He traversed the plains and hills of Palestine: you can see Him still, if you have opened eyes, in the ancient prophecies; you can behold Him more clearly in the devout evangelists; He opens and lays bare His inmost soul to you in the epistles, and makes you hear the footsteps of His approaching advent in the symbols of the Apocalypse. The living Christ is in the book; you behold His face almost in every page; and, consequently, it is a book that can talk. The Christ of the mount of benedictions speaks in it still; the God who said, "Let there be light," gives forth from its pages the same divine fiat; while the incorruptible truth, which saturated every line and syllable of it when first it was penned, abides therein in full force, and preserves it from the finger of decay. "The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the Lord endureth for ever."

Over and above all this, the Holy Spirit has a peculiar connection with the word of God. I know that He works in the ministries of all His servants whom He hath ordained to preach; but for the most part, I have remarked that the work of the Spirit of God in men's hearts is rather in connection with the texts we quote than with our explanations of them. "Depend upon it," says a deeply spiritual writer, "it is God's word, not man's comment on it, which saves souls." God does save souls by our comment, by still it is true that the majority of conversions have been wrought by the agency of a text of Scripture. It is the word of God that is living, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword. There must be life in it, for by it men are born again. As for believers, the Holy Spirit often sets the word on a blaze while they are studying it. The letters were at one time before us as mere letters, but the Holy Ghost suddenly came upon them, and they spake with tongues. The chapter is lowly as the bush at Horeb, but the Spirit descends upon it, and lo! it glows with celestial splendour, God appearing in the words, so that we feel like Moses when he put off his shoes from his feet, because the place whereon he stood was holy ground. It is true, the mass of readers understand not this, and look upon the Bible as a common book; but if they understand it not, as least let them allow the truthfulness of our assertion, when we declare that hundreds of times we have as surely felt the presence of God in the page of Scripture as ever Elijah did when he heard the Lord speaking in a still small voice. The Bible has often appeared to us as a temple God, and the posts of its doors have moved at the voice of Him that cried, whose train also has filled the temple. We have been constrained adoringly to cry, with the seraphim. "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God of Hosts." God the Holy Spirit vivifies the letter with His presence, and then it is to us a living word indeed.

And now, dear brethren, if these things be so—and our experience certifies them—let us take care how we trifle with a book which is so instinct with life. Might not many of you remember your faults this day were we to ask you whether you are habitual students of holy writ? Readers of it I believe you are; but are you searchers; for the promise is not to those who merely read, but to those who delight in the law of the Lord, and meditate therein both day and night. Are you sitting at the feet of Jesus, with His word as your school-book? If not, remember, though you may be saved, you lacked very much of the blessing which otherwise you might enjoy. Have you been backsliding? Refresh your soul by meditating in the divine statues, and you will say, with David, "Thy word hath quickened me." Are you faint and weary? Go and talk with this living book: it will give you back your energy, and you shall mount again as with the wings of eagles. But are you unconverted altogether? Then I cannot direct you to Bible-reading as being the way of salvation, nor speak of it as though it had any merit in it; but I would, nevertheless, urge upon you unconverted people great reverence for Scripture, an intimate acquaintance with its contents, and a frequent perusal of its pages, for it has occurred ten thousand times over that when men have been studying the word of life, the word has brought life to them. "The entrance of thy word giveth light." Like Elijah and the dead child, the word has stretched itself upon them, and their dead souls have been made to live. One of the likeliest places in which to find Christ is in the garden of the Scriptures, for there He delights to walk. As of old, the blind men were wont to sit by the wayside begging, so that, if Jesus passed by, they might cry to Him, so would I have you sit down by the wayside of the Holy Scriptures. Hear the promises, listen to their gracious words; they are the footsteps of the Saviour; and, as you hear them, may you be led to cry, "Thou Son of David, have mercy upon me!" Attend most those ministries which preach God's Word most. Do not select those that are fullest of fine speaking, and that dazzle you with expressions which are ornamental rather than edifying; but get to a ministry that is full of God's own Word, and, above all, learn God's Word itself. Read it with a desire to know its meaning, and I am persuaded that, thereby, many of you who are now far from God will be brought near to him, and led to a saving faith in Jesus, for "the Word of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul." "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God."

II. If the text says, "When thou awakest, it shall talk with thee," then it is clear THE WORD IS PERSONAL. "It shall talk with thee." It is not written, "It shall speak to the air, and thou shalt hear its voice," but, "It shall talk with thee." You know exactly what the expression means. I am not exactly talking with any one of you this morning; there are too many of you, and I am but one; but, when you are on the road home, each one will talk with his fellow: then it is truly talk when man speaks to man. Now, the word of God has the condescending habit of talking to men, speaking personally to them; and, herein, I desire to commend the word of God to your love. Oh! that you might esteem it very precious for this reason!

"It shall talk with thee," that is to say, God's word talks about men, and about modern men; it speaks of ourselves, and of these latter days, as precisely as if it had only appeared this last week. Some go to the word of God with the idea that they shall find historical information about the ancient ages, and so they will, but that is not the object of the Word. Others look for facts upon geology, and great attempts have been made either to bring geology round to Scripture, or Scripture to geology. We may always rest assured that truth never contradicts itself; but, as nobody knows anything yet about geology—for its theory is a dream and an imagination altogether—we will wait till the philosophers settle their own private matters, being confident that when they find out the truth, it will be quite consistent with what God has revealed. At any rate, we may leave that. The main teachings of Holy Scripture are about men, about the Paradise of unfallen manhood, the fall, the degeneracy of the race, and the means of its redemption. The book speaks of victims and sacrifices, priests and washings, and so points us to the divine plan by which man can be elevated from the fall and be reconciled to God. Read Scripture through, and you shall find that its great subject is that which concerns the race as to their most important interests. It is a book that talks, talks personally, for it deals with things not in the moon, nor in the planet Jupiter, nor in the distant ages long gone by, nor does it say much of the periods yet to come, but it deals with us, with the business of to-day; how sin may be to-day forgiven, and our souls brought at once into union with Christ.

Moreover, this book is so personal, that it speaks to men in all states and conditions before God. How it talks to sinners—talks, I say, for its puts it thus: "Come, now, and let us reason together; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as wool; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as snow." It has many very tender expostulations for sinners. It stoops to their condition and position. If they will not stoop to God, it makes, as it were, eternal mercy stoop to them. It talks of feasts of fat things, of fat things full of marrow; and the book, as it talks, reasons with men's hunger, and bids them eat and be satisfied. In all conditions into which the sinner can be cast, there is a word that precisely meets his condition.

And, certainly, when we become the children of God the book talks with us wondrously. In the family of heaven it is the child's own book. We no sooner know our Father than this dear book comes at once as a love letter from the far-off country, signed with our own Father's hand, and perfumed with our Father's love. If we grow in grace, or if we backslide, in either case Scripture still talks with us. Whatever our position before the eternal God, the book seems to be written on purpose to meet that position. It talks to you as you are, not only as you should be, or as others have been, but with you, with you personally, about your present condition.

Have you never noticed how personal the book is as to all your states of mind, in reference to sadness or to joy? There was a time with some of us when we were very gloomy and sore depressed, and then the book of Job mourned to the same dolorous tune. I have turned over the Lamentations of Jeremiah wrote. It mourns unto us when we lament. On the other hand, when the soul gets up to the exceeding high mountains, to the top of Amana and Lebanon, when we behold visions of glory, and see our Beloved face to face, lo! The word is at our side, and in the delightful language of the Psalms, or in the yet sweeter expressions of the Song of Solomon, it tells us all that is in our heart, and talks to us as a living thing that has been in the deeps, and has been on the heights, that has known the overwhelmings of affliction, and has rejoiced in the triumphs of delight. The word of God is to me my own book: I have no doubt, brother, it is the same to you. There could not be a Bible that suited me better: it seems written on purpose for me. Dear sister, have not you often felt as you have put your finger on a promise, "Ah, that is my promise; if there be no other soul whose tearful eyes can bedew that page and say, 'It is mine,' yet I, a poor afflicted one, can do so!" Oh, yes; the book is very personal, for it goes into all the details of our case, let our state be what it may.

And, how very faithful it always is. You never find the word of God keeping back that which is profitable to you. Like Nathan it cries, "Thou art the man." It never allows our sins to go unrebuked, nor our backslidings to escape notice till they grow into overt sin. It gives us timely notice; it cries to us as soon as we begin to go aside, "Awake thou that sleepest," "Watch and pray," "Keep thine heart with all diligence," and a thousand other words of warning does it address personally to each one of us.

Now I would suggest, before I leave this point, a little self-examination as healthful for each of us. Does the word of God after this fashion speak to my soul? Then it is a gross folly to lose by generalisations that precious thing which can only be realised by a personal grasp. How sayest thou, dear hearer? Dost thou read the book for thyself, and does the book speak to thee? Has it ever condemned thee, and has thou trembled before the word of God? Has it ever pointed thee to Christ, and has thou looked to Jesus the incarnate Saviour? Does the book now seal, as with the witness of the Spirit, the witness of thine own spirit that thou art born of God? Art thou in the habit of going to the book to know thine own condition, to see thine own face as in a glass? Is it thy family medicine? Is it thy test and tell-tale to let thee know thy spiritual condition? Oh, do not treat the book otherwise than this, for if thou dost thus unto it, and takest it to be thy personal friend, happy art thou, since God will dwell with the man that trembles at His word; but, if you treat it as anybody's book rather than your own, then beware, lest you be numbered with the wicked who despise God's statutes.

III. From the text we learn that HOLY SCRIPTURE IS VERY FAMILIAR. "When thou awakest, it shall talk with thee. To talk signifies fellowship, communion, familiarity. It does not say, "It shall preach to thee." Many persons have a high esteem for the book, but they look upon it as though it were some very elevated teacher speaking to them from a lofty tribunal, while they stand far below. I will not altogether condemn that reverence, but it were far better if they would understand the familiarity of God's word; it does not so much preach to us as talk to us. It is not, "When thou awakest, it shall lecture thee," or, it shall scold thee;" no, no, "it shall talk with thee." We sit at its feet, or rather at the feet of Jesus, in the Word, and it comes down to us; it is familiar with us, as a man talketh to his friend. And here let me remind you of the delightful familiarity of Scripture in this respect that it speaks the language of men. If God had written us a book in His own language, we could not have comprehended it, or what little we understood would have so alarmed us, that we should have besought that those words should not be spoken to us any more; but the Lord, in His Word, often uses language which, though it be infallibly true in its meaning, is not after the knowledge of God, but according to the manner of man. I mean this, that the word uses similes and analogies of which we may say that they speak humanly, and not according to the absolute truth as God Himself sees it. As men conversing with babes use their broken speech, so doth the condescending word. It is not written in the celestial tongue, but in the patois of this lowland country, condescending to men of low estate. It feeds us on bread broken down to our capacity, "food convenient for us". It speaks of God's arm, His hand, His finger, His wings, and even of His feathers. Now, all this is familiar picturing, to meet our childish capacities; for the Infinite One is not to be conceived of as though such similitudes were literal facts. It is an amazing instance of divine love, that He puts those things so that we may be helped to grasp sublime truths. Let us thank the Lord of the word for this.

How tenderly Scripture comes down to simplicity. Suppose the sacred volume had all been like the book of the prophet Ezekiel, small would have been its service to the generality of mankind. Imagine that the entire volume had been as mysterious as the Book of Revelation: it might have been our duty to study it, but if its benefit depended upon our understanding it, we should have failed to attain it. But how simple are the gospels, how plain these words, "He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved"; how deliciously clear those parables about the lost piece of money, the lost sheep, and the prodigal son. Wherever the word touches upon vital points, it is as bright as a sunbeam. Mysteries there are, and profound doctrines, deeps where Leviathan can swim; but, where it has to do immediately with what concerns us for eternity, it is so plain that the babe in grace may safely wade in its refreshing streams. In the gospel narrative the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err. It is familiar talk; it is God's great mind brought down to our littleness, that it may lift us up.

How familiar the book is too—I speak now as to my own feelings—as to all that concerns us. It talks about my flesh, and my corruptions, and my sins, as only one that knew me could speak. It talks of my trials in the wisest way; some, I dare not tell, it knows all about. It talks about my difficulties; some would sneer at them and laugh, but this book sympathises with them, knows my tremblings, and my fears, and my doubts, and all the storm that rages within the little world of my nature. The book has been through all my experience; somehow or other it maps it all out, and talks with me as if it were a fellow-pilgrim. It does not speak to me unpractically, and scold me, and look down on me from an awful height of stern perfection, as if it were an angel, and could no sympathise with fallen men; but like the Lord whom it reveals, the book seems as if it were touched with a feeling of my infirmities, and had been tempted in all points like as I am. Have you not often wondered at the human utterances of the divine word: it thunders like God and yet weeps like man. It seems impossible that anything should be too little for the word of God to notice, or too bitter, or even too sinful for that book to overlook. It touches humanity at all points. Everywhere it is a personal, familiar acquaintance, and seems to say to itself, "Shall I hide this thing from Abraham my friend?"

And, how often the book has answered enquiries! I have been amazed in times of difficulties to see how plain the oracle is. You have asked friends, and they could not advise you; but you have gone to your knees, and God has told you. You have questioned, and you have puzzled, and you have tried to elucidate the problem, and lo! In the chapter read at morning prayer, or in a passage of Scripture that lay open before you, the direction has been given. Have we not seen a text, as it were, plume its wings, and fly from the word like a seraph, and touch our lips with a live altar coal? It lay like a slumbering angel amidst the beds of spices of the sacred word, but it received a divine mission, and brought consolation and instruction to your heart.

The word of God, then, talks with us in the sense of being familiar with us. Do we understand this? I will close this point by another word of application. Who, then, that finds God's word so dear and kind a friend would spurn or neglect it? If any of you have despised it, what shall I say to you? If it were a dreary book, written within and without with curses and lamentations, whose every letter flashed with declarations of vengeance, I might see some reason why we should not read it; but, O precious, priceless companion, dear friend of all my sorrows, making my bed in my sickness, the light of my darkness, and the joy of my soul, how can I forget thee—how can I forsake thee? I have heard of one who said that the dust on some men's Bibles lay there so thick and long that you might write "Damnation" on it. I am afraid that such is that case with some of you. Mr. Rogers, of Dedham, on one occasion, after preaching about the preciousness of the Bible, took it away from the front of the pulpit, and, putting it down behind him, pictured God as saying, "You do not read the book: you do not care about it; I will take it back—you shall not be wearied with it any more." And then he portrayed the grief of wise men's hearts when they found the blessed revelation withdrawn from men; and how they would besiege the throne of grace, day and night, to ask it back. I am sure he spoke the truth. Though we too much neglect it, yet ought we to prize it beyond all price, for, if it were taken from us, we should have lost our kindest comforter in the hour of need. God grant us to love the Scriptures more!

IV. Fourthly, and with brevity, our text evidently shows that THE WORD IS RESPONSIVE. "When thou awakest, it shall talk with thee," not to thee. Now, talk with a man is not all on one side. To talk with a man needs answering talk from him. You have both of you something to say when you talk together. It is a conversation to which each one contributes his part. Now, Scripture is a marvellously conversational book; it talks, and makes men talk. It is ever ready to respond to us. Suppose you go to the Scriptures in a certain state of spiritual life: you must have noticed, I think, that the word answer to that state. If you are dark and gloomy, it will appear as though it had put itself in mourning, so that it might lament with you. When you are on the dunghill, there sits Scripture, with dust and ashes on its head, weeping side by side with you, and not upbraiding like Job's miserable comforters. But suppose you come to the book with gleaming eyes of joy, you will hear it laugh; it will sing and play to you as with psaltery and harp, it will bring forth the high-sounding cymbals. Enter its goodly land in a happy state, and you shall go forth with you and be led forth with peace, its mountains and its hills shall break before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. As in water the face is reflected, so in the living stream of revealed truth a man sees his own image.

If you come to Holy Scripture with growth in grace, and with aspirations for yet higher attainments, the book grows with you, grows upon you. It is ever beyond you, and cheerily cries, "Higher yet; Excelsior!" Many books in my library are now behind and beneath me; I read them years ago, with considerable pleasure; I have read them since, with disappointment; I shall never read them again, for they are of no service to me. They were good in their way once, and so were the clothes I wore when I was ten years old; but I have outgrown them I know more than these books know, and know wherein they are faulty. Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years. It is true, it cannot really grow, for it is perfect; but it does so to our apprehension. The deeper you dig into Scripture, the more you find that it is a great abyss of truth. The beginner learns four or five points of orthodoxy, and says, "I understand the gospel, I have grasped all the Bible." Wait a bit, and when his soul grows and knows more of Christ, he will confess, "Thy commandment is exceeding broad, I have only begun to understand it."

There is one thing about God's word which shows its responsiveness to us, and that is when you reveal your heart to it, it reveals its heart to you. If, as you read the word, you say, "O blessed truth, thou art indeed realised in my experience; come thou still further into my heart. I give up my prejudices, I assign myself, like the wax, to be stamped with thy seal,"—when you do that, and open your heart to Scripture, Scripture will open its heart to you; for it has secrets which it does not tell to the casual reader, it has precious things of the everlasting hills which can only be discovered by miners who know how to dig and open the secret places, and penetrate great veins of everlasting riches. Give thyself up to the Bible, and the Bible will give itself up to thee. Be candid with it, and honest with thy soul, and the Scripture will take down its golden key, and open one door after another, and show to thy astonished gaze ingots of silver which thou couldst not weigh, and heaps of gold which thou couldst not measure. Happy is that man who, in talking with the Bible, tells it all his heart, and learns the secret of the Lord which is with them that fear Him.

And how, too, if you love the bible and talk out your love to it, the Bible will love you! Its wisdom says, "I love them that love me." Embrace the word of God, and the word of God embraces you at once. When you prize its every letter, then it smiles upon you graciously, greets you with many welcomes, and treats you as an honoured guest. I am always sorry to be on bad terms with the Bible, for then I must be on bad terms with God. Whenever my creed does not square with God's word, I think it is time to mould my creed into another form. As for God's words, they must not be touched with hammer or axe. Oh, the chiselling, and cutting, and hammering in certain commentaries to make God's Bible orthodox and systematic! How much better to leave it alone! The word is right, and we are wrong, wherein we agree not with it. The teachings of God's word are infallible, and must be reverenced as such. Now, when you love it so well that you would not touch a single line of it, and prize it so much that you would even die for the defence of one of its truths, then, as it is dear to you, you will be dear to it, and it will grasp you and unfold itself to you as it does not to the world.

Dear brethren and sisters, I must leave this point, but it shall be with this remark—Do you talk to God? Does God talk to you? Does your heart go up to heaven, and does His Word come fresh from heaven to your soul? If not, you do not know the experience of the living child of God, and I can earnestly pray you may. May you this day be brought to see Christ Jesus in the word, to see a crucified Saviour there, and to put your trust in Him, and then, from this day forward, the word will echo to your heart—it will respond to your emotions.

V. Lastly, SCRIPTURE IS INFLUENTIAL. That I gather from the fact that Solomon says, "When thou wakest, it shall talk with thee"; and follows it up with the remark that it keeps man from the strange woman, and from other sins which he goes on to mention. When the word of God talks with us, it influences us. All talk influences more or less. I believe there more done in this world for good or bad by talk than there is by preaching; indeed, the preacher preaches best when he talks; there is no oratory in the world that is equal to simple talk; it is the model of eloquence; and all your rhetorician's action and verbiage are so much rubbish. The most efficient way of preaching is simply talking; the man permitting his heart to run over at his lips into other men's hearts. Now, this book, as it talks with us, influences us, and it does so in many ways.

It soothes our sorrows, and encourages us. Many a warrior has been ready to steal away from God's battle, but the word has laid its hand on him, and said, "Stand on thy feet, be not discouraged, be of good cheer, I will strengthen thee, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness." Brave saints we have read of, but we little know how often they would have been arrant cowards only the good word came and strengthened them, and they went back to be stronger than lions and swifter than eagles.

While the book thus soothes and cheers, it has a wonderfully elevating power. How you never felt it put fresh life-blood into you? You have thought, "How can I continue to live at such a dying rate as I have lived, something nobler must I gain?" Read that part of the word which tells of the agonies of your Master, and you will feel—

"Now for the love I bear His name,
What was my gain I count my loss;
My former pride I call my shame,
And nail my glory to His cross."

Read of the glories of heaven which this book reveals, and you will feel that you can run the race with quickened speed, because a crown so bright is glittering in your view. Nothing can so lift a man above the gross considerations of carnal gain or human applause as to have his soul saturated with the spirit of truth. It elevates as well as cheers.

Then, too, how often it warns and restrains. I had gone to the right or to the left if the law of the Lord had not said, "Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee."

This book's consecrated talk sanctifies and moulds the mind into the image of Christ. You cannot expect to grow in grace if you do not read the Scriptures. If you are not familiar with the word, you cannot expect to become like Him that spake it. Our experience is, as it were, the potter's wheel on which we revolve; and the hand of God is in the Scriptures to mould us after the fashion and image which He intends to bring us to. Oh, be much with the holy word of God, and you will be holy. Be much with the silly novels of the day, and the foolish trifles of the hour, and you will degenerate into vapid wasters of your time; but be much with the solid teaching of God's word, and you will become solid and substantial men and women: drink them in, and feed upon them, and they shall produce in you a Christ-likeness, at which the world shall stand astonished.

Lastly, let the Scripture talk with you, and it will confirm and settle you. We hear every now and then of apostates from the gospel. hey must have been little taught in the truth as it is in Jesus. A great outcry is made, every now and then, about our all being perverted to Rome. I was assured the other day by a good man with a great deal of alarm, that all England was going over to Popery. I told him I did not know what kind of God he worshipped, but my God was a good deal bigger than the devil, and did not intend to let the devil have his way after all, and that I was not half as much afraid of the Pope at Rome as of the Ritualists at home. But mark it, there is some truth in these fears. There will be a going over to one form of error or another unless there be in the Christian church a more honest, industrious, and general reading of Holy Scripture. What if I were to say most of you church members do not read your Bibles, should I be slandering you? You hear on Sabbath day a chapter read, and you perhaps read a passage at family prayer, but a very large number never read the Bible privately for themselves, they take their religion out of the monthly magazine, or accept it from the minister's lips. Oh, for the Berean spirit back again, to search the Scriptures whether these things be so. I would like to see a huge pile of all the book, good and bad that were ever written, prayer-books, and sermons, and hymn-books, and all, smoking like Sodom of old, if the reading of those books keeps you away from the reading of the Bible; for a ton weight of human literature is not worth an ounce of Scripture; one single drop of the essential tincture of the word of God is better than a sea full of our commenting and sermonisings, and the like. The word, the simple, pure, infallible word of God, we must live upon if we are to become strong against error, and tenacious of truth. Brethren, may you be estalished in the faith rooted, grounded, built up; but I know you cannot be except ye search the Scriptures continually.

The time is coming when we shall all fall asleep in death. Oh, how blessed it will be to find when we awake that the word of God will talk with us then, and remember its ancient friendship. Then the promise which we loved before shall be fulfilled; the charming intimations of a blessed future shall be all realised, and the face of Christ, whom we saw as through a glass darkly, shall be all uncovered, and He shall shine upon us as the sun in its strength. God grant us to love the word, and feed thereon, and the Lord shall have the glory for ever and ever. Amen and amen.

The Waterer Watered

A sermon (No. 626) delivered on Sunday Morning, April 23, 1865,

at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington,

by C. H. Spurgeon.

“He that watereth shall be watered also himself.”—Proverbs 11:25.

The general principle is that in living for the good of others, we shall be profited also ourselves. We must not isolate our own interests, but feel that we live for others. This teaching is sustained by the analogy of nature, for in nature there is a law that no one thing can be independent of the rest of creation, but there is a mutual action and reaction of all upon all. All the constituent parts of the universe are bound to one another by invisible chains, and there is not a single creature in it which springeth up, or flourisheth, or decayeth for itself alone. The very planets, though they float far from one another, exercise attraction; and the fixed stars, though they seem to be infinitely remote, are still linked to one another by mysterious bonds. God has so constituted this universe that selfishness is the greatest possible offense against his law, and living for others, and ministering to others, is the strictest obedience to his will. Our surest road to our own happiness is to seek the good of our fellows. We store up in God’s own bank what we generously expend on the behalf of our race. The little spring bubbling forth from the ancient pipe on the hill side overflows the stone basin, and liberally supplies all the villagers with pure and cooling drink. In its flowing it does not waste itself, for the deep fountains in the bowels of the earth continue unceasingly to supply it, and both in winter’s frost and summer’s drought the spring-head yields its crystal stream. The little brook which babbles through the wood, hiding among stones, leaping down the moss-grown rocks, and anon deepening and swelling its stream, pours all its gatherings into the river hoarding not a drop, and though its treasure is constantly being lavished with unstinting liberality, yet heaven and earth see to it that the brook shall never fail to sing its joyous song,

“Men may come and go

But I go on for ever.”

The river hastens with its greater floods towards the all-receiving ocean, pouring itself out every hour with happy plenteousness as though it only existed to empty itself; yet the abundant tributaries which come streaming from the hills and draining the valleys are careful that the river shall know no lack, but shall be kept constantly brimming, a joyous and bounding river evermore. The ocean perpetually sends up its steaming exhalations to the sky, grudging nothing it puts no doors to its roiling waves, but uncovereth all its treasure to the sun, and the sun makes large draughts upon the royal exchequer of the deep; nevertheless the ocean is not diminished, for all the rivers are constantly conspiring to keep the sea full to the shore. The clouds of heaven when they are full of rain empty themselves upon the earth, and yet the clouds cease not to be, for “they return after the rain,” and the ocean down below seems but to be too glad to be continually feeding its sister ocean on the other side the firmament. So as wheels with bands are made to work together, as wheels with cogs working upon one another, the whole watery machinery is kept in motion by each part acting upon its next neighbor, and the next upon the next. Each wheel expends its force upon its fellow, and the whole find a recompense in their mutual action upon one another. The same truth might be illustrated from other departments of nature. If we view this microcosm, the human body, we shall find that the heart does not receive the blood to store it up, but while it pumps it in at one valve it sends it forth at another. The blood is always circulating everywhere and is stagnant nowhere; the same is true of all the fluids in a healthy body, they are in a constant state of expenditure. If one cell stores for a few moments its peculiar secretion, it only retains it till it is perfectly fitted for its appointed use in the body, for if any cell in the body should begin to store up its secretion, its store would soon become the cause of inveterate disease; nay, the organ would soon lose the power to secrete at all if it did not give forth its products. The whole of the human system lives by giving. The eye cannot say to the foot I have no need of thee and will not guide thee, for if it does not perform its watchful office the whole man will be in the ditch, and the eye will be covered with mire. If the members refuse to contribute to the general stock the whole body will become poverty-stricken, and be given up to the bankruptcy of death. Let us learn then from the analogy of nature, the great lesson that to get we must give; that to accumulate we must scatter; that to make ourselves happy we must make others happy; and that to get good and become spiritually vigorous we must do good and seek the spiritual good of others. This is the general principle.

The text suggests a particular personal application of the general principle. We shall consider it first in its narrowest sense, as belonging to ourselves personally; secondly, in a wider sense as it may refer to us as a Church; then thirdly, in its widest sense as it may be referred to the entire body of Christ, showing that still it is true that as it watereth so it shall be watered itself.

I. First then, in reference to ourselves personally.

There are some works my brethren, in which we cannot all engage. Peculiar men are called to be God’s great woodmen, to clear the way with the axe, to go before his army like our sappers and miners —such men as Martin Luther, and Calvin, and Zwingle—that glorious trio of heroes marching in front of reformation and evangelization; they are cutting down the tall trees, tunnelling the hills, and bridging the rivers, and we smaller men feel that there is little of this work for us to do. But when the backwoodsmen have cleared the forest, after all the roots are grubbed and the soil is burned and ploughed, then comes the sowing and the planting, and in this all the household can take a place; and when the plants have sprung up and need water, it is not only the stalwart man with the axe who can now apply himself to watering, but even the little children can take a share in this lighter work. Watering is work for persons of all grades and all sorts. If I cannot carry about me some ponderous load as the Eastern water-bearer can, yet I will take my little waterpot, my little jug or pitcher, and go to the well; for if I cannot water the forest tree I may water the tiny plant which grows at its root. Watering is work for all sorts of people; so then, we will make a personal application to every Christian here this morning: you can all do something in watering, and this promise can therefore be realized by you all, “He that watereth shall be watered also himself.”

All God’s plants more or less want watering. You and I do. We cannot live long without fresh supplies of grace. Hence the value of the promise, “I, the Lord, do keep it; I will water it every moment.” There are no rills at our root as we grow in the soil of nature; it is only in the garden of grace that we are “like trees planted by the rivers of water, bringing forth our fruit in our season.” If the Lord Jesus who is the stem of the vine should cease to supply us with the fresh sap of grace, should we not be like the withered branch which is cast over the wall to be burned in the fire?

The Lord’s people usually get this watering through instrumentality. God does not speak to us out of heaven with his own voice—perhaps the thunder might appal us; he doth not write texts of Scripture with his own finger in letters of fire across the sky, but he waters us by instrumentality, by his Word written and his Word preached, or otherwise uttered by his servants. His Holy Spirit waters us by the admonitions of parents, by the kind suggestions of friends, by the teaching of his ministers, by the example of all his saints. The Holy Spirit waters us, but he takes care to do it by our fellow-workers, putting an honor upon his own servants by using them in instrumentality.

This being fully believed by us all, we may proceed to another truth, namely that some of his servants especially want watering and should therefore be the objects of our constant care. Some plants need watering from their peculiar nature. A gardener will tell you that certain flowers require very little water, perhaps for months they will grow in a stony soil, but others must be watered regularly and plenteously or they will soon droop. Some of you, my dear brothers and sisters, are so desponding that if you did not receive much comfort you would hardly hold up your heads at all; you are so weak in the faith that if you were not fed with milk continually you would scarcely be alive. “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God” —is especially applicable to the mourners in Zion. Their constitutional temperament is such that to maintain the lamp of their joy they require much oil of comfort.

Perhaps too they are ignorant, and the ignorant want much watering. If they knew the doctrines of grace more fully they might go to the wells themselves: but not knowing where the water is, or feeling like the woman at the well that the well is deep, and that there is nothing to draw with, they cannot get the water; and we who are instructed in the way of God must take care that we bring up the water for them with our longer length of the line of knowledge, so that they may not fail to be watered.

It may be the need is not so much caused by the nature of the plant, but by the position in which it is placed. Many of you, dear brethren, are very happily situated where you can constantly attend the means of grace, where the family altar smokes with sweet perfume, where you cannot well help growing for you are like plants in a hothouse. But there are others on the contrary who live in houses where the jeer is far more frequently heard than the voice of praise; where instead of being helped in your devotions you are hindered; your spirit is driven to and fro with distractions; from the very closet where you wanted to commune with God, you are forced out by cruel mocking. We ought to be very tender over your condition, as being planted on no fruitful hill, but on a very thirsty land where no water is; your position should lead God’s people to watch you with deepest interest, and see to it that you are well watered.

I may mention also the sick. When our dear friends are tried with bodily pain, when they are shut up week after week from the public gatherings, then they want watering. Their position is such that we ought to be specially mindful of them. It is written, “He carrieth the lambs in his bosom, and gently leadeth those that are with young;” and we must note the peculiar condition of the saints of God, being most careful of those who most need our tenderness.

Let me also suggest the young to you. These want watering, both, let me say, from their character and from their position. With little experience and little knowledge they are prone to wander or to be seized by the wolf. Tend them with parental affection. When slips of flowers are first put into the ground they want more water than they will do afterwards; when they have sent out more roots, and these roots have abundant fibres searching through the soil for moisture, they may not require much of the gardener’s care; but just now they must have it or die. Therefore I say, let the feeble, the weak, the young, the sick, the persecuted, be watered most anxiously and lovingly by you all.

Certain dear friends need watering, not so much from their position and character, as from the present trials through which they are passing. Certain plants, after long standing in the sun, droop their leaves and look as if they must wither and die; but as soon as water is poured to their roots it has sometimes perfectly surprised me to see how they will recover. I could scarcely think that they were the same plants, their recovery was so sudden. The little roots beneath sent the message up to the main roots and said, “We have found out moisture, a friendly hand has given us a supply,” and the root talked to the stem, and the stem rejoiced, and the great leaves drank up their share, and the little leaves sucked up their drops, till the whole plant to the very summit was verdant once more and rejoiced. Times will come to all of us when we want water. I myself get very desponding at seasons, as I suppose you do. Unbelief dries us up. Oh that devil of unbelief! Why, if that demon were dead the other devil we might very well contend with. Personal affliction, losses, crosses, burdens, make us just like the withering shrub, and then we want to have the consolations of some kind friend to water us.

Dear friends, sometimes there are those in the Church who particularly want watering because they are actually withering. It is not to maintain verdure in their case, but to restore it. Those backsliding ones, those who have slipped with their feet, do not cast them off, for God casts not off the backsliding one. When they begin to forsake the House of God, do not forsake them; follow them with your tears. In such a Church as this if you do not exercise mutual oversight over one another we shall simply become a mass of corruption, instead of being a mountain of holiness. Watch over your brethren as soon as you see the first signs of declension. When they forsake the prayer-meetings, gently give them a hint of the evil of lukewarmness, and the danger of falling by little and little. When you mark the first sign in their outward carriage of laxity with regard to divine things, when you see coldness where there was formerly zeal, be sure to give a gentle word of earnest, pathetic admonition. As I look around this Tabernacle, I can but compare these rising seats to shelves in the conservatory, and you are the plants which must all be watered or you will languish and wither; and I who have to be my Master’s under-gardener am very anxious to say to all of you who have any water in your wateringpots, help me to water these plants, that by the gracious operations of God the Holy Ghost they may be kept fruitful, green, verdant in spiritual things even to the end.

We now enter more thoroughly into our text and observe that all believers have power to water others. You may not have much ability or influence, but you all have some power in this matter. In thinking over what Solomon meant, it struck me that he had in his mind’s eye the plan of irrigation which is followed in some Eastern countries. The rivers at certain seasons overflow their banks. The careful husbandmen whose farms are close along the sides of the bank, have large tanks and reservoirs in which they store up the water. After the flood, the river is comparatively empty, and the little farms, the vineyards, and pastures on the banks begin to cry out for water; then the careful husbandman lets out the water from his tank or reservoir by slow degrees, and uses it with great economy. It would sometimes happen that one of these farmers would have his reservoirs filled, and his next neighbor, perhaps through the bursting of a tank, or the falling down of the bank of earth, might have little or no water. At such times a churlish man would say, “I shall want all my water for myself, I will not lend or give so much as a drop of it. I have none to spare.” But the generous man says, “I do not know whether God may be pleased to send a drought or no, but I cannot let my neighbor lose all his crops for the want of a little water while I have a good stock in hand;” so he pulls up the sluice and lets such a stream as he thinks he can spare flow into his neighbour’s channel, that he may water his fields therewith. Now Solomon says that those who water others shall be watered; hence, next season it may happen that this good man may have no water himself; well then, all the farmers round about will say, “Why, he helped us when his tank was full, and we will return his kindness into his bosom.” “Ah,” says one, “he saved me from ruin; I should not have had a crop at all last season if it had not been for him.” So they all lend a portion till he finds no difficulty whatever; even in a season of drought when men cannot get water for love or money, he is sure to have it. The common feeling of men, as a usual rule, recognises the law of gratitude, and men say, “He watered others, he shall be watered himself.” My dear brother, you may be a man of talent, you may be a man of wealth: just turn on the big tap and let your ignorant or poor neighbors benefit a little by your abundance; pull up the flood-gates and let the more needy brethren be enriched by your fullness: open that mouth of yours that your wisdom may feed many; tell of what God has done for your soul that the humble may hear thereof and be glad. Do not be a reservoir brimmed up till the banks are ready to burst out through the weight which presses upon them, but just let some of the treasure run out, and when your need of it shalt come—and who knows when it may overtake any of us?—you shall find willing friends who shall run with swift feet to cheer your adversity.

This simile needs to be supplemented by another: many true saints are unable to do much. See then the gardeners going down to the pond and dipping in their watering-pots to carry the refreshing liquid to the flowers. A child comes into the garden and wishes to help; and yonder is a little watering-pot for him. Now, see that little water-pot, though it does not carry so much, yet carries the same water; and it does not make any difference to the half-dozen flowers which get that water whether it came out of the big pot or the little pot, so long as it is the same water and they get it. You who are like children in God’s Church, you who do not know much, yet try and tell to others what you do know, and if it be the same gospel truth and it be blest by the same Spirit it will not matter to the souls who get blessed by you whether they were blessed by a man of one or ten talents. What difference will it make to me whether I was converted to God by means of a poor woman who was never made a blessing to anybody else, or by one who had brought his thousands to the Savior’s feet? Go, my dear brethren, and exercise the holy art of watering. You say “How?” Why, a word may do it, a look may do it, an action may do it; only zealously desire to offer sympathy, to afford instruction, to give needed help, to impart what you may be favored with to others, and you shall be watering yourselves.

The main point is that in so watering others we shall be watered ourselves. I am sure we shall, for God promises it and he always keeps his promise. If I want to get water I must give water. Though that seems a strange way of self-serving, I pray you try it. Was not that a very singular thing that when the poor woman of Sarepta had nearly exhausted all her meal, the prophet asked for a cake for himself? She had been very saving of it; I dare say she had eaten only a mouthful or two every day. She and her poor boy were looking very thin. They had come to the last handful. She thought, “I will make one cake for my son and myself and then we will die.” She is outside picking up sticks that she may bake this cake. God intends to bless her. How does he do it? There comes his prophet, the hairy man, and the first word he says to her is, “Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel that I may drink.” She is quite ready to serve any one, and away she hastens for the water, when Elijah cries aloud, “Bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in thine hand.” What, out of that little handful—only enough for one? “Yes,” he says, “make me thereof a little cake first, and after make for thee and thy son.” “After that!” she might have said, “what will be left after that? When there is only a handful of meal and a little oil in a cruse, not enough for one, am I to give that to you and afterwards see to myself and child?” Faith enabled her to obey, and from that very moment neither she nor her son ever knew what want was. She gave from her little, and her little multiplied. The case of the woman of Zarephath is but one of thousands establishing the rule of God’s mode of action with his Church, a rule which shall not be broken till the end shall come.

Let me show you how you will get watered yourself. In the first place, if you try to do good to others it will do you good by waking up your powers. Thousands of men do not know what they are made of. You have no idea what a fine fellow you are, young man, till you begin to shake yourself a little and go forth to fight the Lord’s battles. We do not know what sinews we have till we climb the mountains; we do not know what strength there may be in our backs and arms till we have to carry a ponderous load, and then we find it out. You have latent talents, dormant faculties which would work wonders if you could call them forth. Some people are not awake more than skin deep; all underneath the skin is sound asleep. They are like the great candle which I showed you one night with a small wick, which was only melted a little in the middle while all the outside was still cold hard tallow, and did not contribute to the light. You have not become warmed through yet, your whole souls have not been wound up to the right pitch for serving God, you have only a little earnestness, a little zeal; but if you ventured upon holy enterprises you would bestir yourself so thoroughly that you would scarcely know yourself again. That would be a blessing indeed.

But next you would often find that in trying to water others, you gained instruction. Go talk to some poor saint to comfort her, and she will tell you what will comfort you. Oh, what gracious lessons some of us have learned at sick beds! We went to teach the Scriptures, we came away blushing that we knew so little of them. We went to talk experimental truth, and we found we were only up to the ankles while here were God’s poor saints breast-deep in the river of divine love. We learn by teaching, and our pupils often teach us.

You will also get comfort in your work. Rest assured that working for others is very happy exercise. Like the two men in the snow; one chafed the other’s limbs to keep him from dying, and in so doing he kept his own blood in circulation, and his own life was preserved. Comfort God’s people and the comfort will return into your own soul.

Watering others will make you humble. You will find better people in the world than yourself. You will be astonished to find how much grace there is where you thought there was none, and how much knowledge some have gained while you as yet have made little progress with far greater opportunities.

You will also win many prayers. Those who work for others get prayed for, and that is a swift way of growing rich in grace. Let me have your prayers and I can do anything! Let me be without my people’s prayers, and I can do nothing. You Sunday-school teachers, if you are blessed to the conversion of the children, you will get your children’s prayers. You that conduct the larger classes, in the conversion of your young people you will be sure to have a wealth of love come back into your own bosoms, swimming upon the stream of supplication. You will thus be a blessing to yourselves.

In watering others you will get honor to yourselves, and that will help to water you by stimulating your future exertions. The Romans appointed censors in their State, not only to censure men for gross immoralities, but to require every man to give an account of what he was doing for the good of the Republic. We have deacons and elders —would it not be an additional blessing to have censors in the Church to go round and ask the members, all of them, what they are doing for the good of the Christian Church? A Greek historian desired very intensely to say a word about the people of the city where he was born. He felt he could not write his history without saying something of his own native place, and accordingly he wrote this— “While Athens was building temples and Sparta was waging war, my countrymen were doing nothing.” I am afraid there are too many Christians of whom, if the book were written as to what they are doing in the Church, it would have to be said they have been doing nothing all their lives. You would be delivered from that reproach if you began to water others.

Let me cease from this subject by saying while you are watering others, you will be manifesting and showing your love to Christ, and that will make you more like him, and so you will be watered while you are seeking to benefit your neighbors. To serve Jesus! what need I say of that? Look into that face bedewed with bloody sweat for you, and can you not sweat for him? Look to those hands pierced for you, and shall your hands hang idly down and not be used for him? Look at those feet fastened to the wood with nails for you! Can I ask of you any pilgrimage too long to repay the toil which those feet endured for your sake? My brethren and sisters, remember what Christ Jesus has done for you, from whence he came, the riches which he left, to what he came, the poverty and shame which he endured, and how he went down into the depths that he might take us up to the heights. If you will think of these, you will have the best motive methinks for beginning to look after his lambs and fighting with those lions which seek to devour his flock; and in that moving motive will be the main means by which you shall be conformed to his image, and shall become like him, self-sacrificing, doing your Father’s business.

I wish I could speak more powerfully this morning but the matter ought to speak for itself with Christians. If we love Jesus we shall not want any pleading with to water his plants. If you really love him it will not be a question of whether you shall do something, the only question will be “What can I do?” and you will say in your pew this morning, “What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits toward me?” He has spared your lives, he has given you health and strength, provided you with spirituals and temporals, he has made your heart leap for joy at the sound of his name, he has plucked you out of the horrible pit and out of the miry clay, he has taken you out of the black bondage of the prince of darkness and made you his sons and daughters; he has put the ring of his eternal love upon your finger, your feet are shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace —

“This world is yours, and worlds to come,

Earth is your lodge, and heaven your home.”

There is a crown for your head and a palm branch for your hand and pavements of gold for your feet, and felicities for ever for your entire soul; and even your body is to be raised again from the dust and fashioned like unto Christ’s glorious body. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for you.” Now what will you do for him? Will you not win the promise that your soul shall be watered by seeking to water the souls of others?

II. a brief exhortation shall suffice for the second point—this general principle is worthy of a wider application.

We as a Church, dear friends, have enjoyed singular prosperity. While many Churches have been depressed and decreased in numbers, we have increased. While other Churches have had the hectic flush of a spurious revival, we have had one perpetual revival lasting for nearly twelve years. I do not know that we have increased at a more or a less rapid rate; we could not increase more quickly for we have not officers enough, or time enough to see the converts as it is; we have never, I think, increased less, for the work seems to have ever the same prosperity about it. I praise God that I can say of my ministry in this place and elsewhere, that to this day it hath the dew of its youth upon it, and there are as many rejoicing to find Christ through the agencies employed in this Church to-day as in the first day when we came among you in the freshness and vigor of our youth. We have had no schism; we have had no division; we have not been vexed with heresy. We have been blessed with something like persecution, but this has only bound us the faster to one another till we are like a three-fold cord which cannot be broken, and like iron bars made red hot in the furnace and hammered together, we are not soon to be sundered from one another. Now, dear friends, up to this time the policy which we have pursued has been this: if members of other Churches want to know, we hereby tell them, we have endeavored to water others. Your minister has journeyed all over the three kingdoms preaching the Word, and you have not grumbled at his absence. We have undertaken many enterprises for Christ; we hope to undertake a great many more. We have never husbanded our strength; we have undertaken enterprises that were enough to exhaust us, to which we became accustomed in due season, and then we have gone on to something more. We have never sought to hinder the uprising of other Churches from our midst or in our neighborhood. It is with cheerfulness that we dismiss our twelves, our twenties, our fifties, to form other Churches. We encourage our members to leave us to found other Churches; nay, we seek to persuade them to do it. We ask them to scatter throughout the land to become the goodly seed which God shall bless. I believe that so long as we do this we shall prosper. I have marked other Churches that have adopted the other way, and they have not succeeded. This is what I have heard from some ministers: “I do not encourage village stations, or if I do, I do not encourage their becoming distinct Churches and breaking bread together. I do not encourage too many young men going out to preach, for to have a knot of people who can preach a little may very soon cause dissatisfaction with my own preaching.” I have marked those who have followed this course, and I have seen that the effect of trying to keep all the blood in the heart is to bring on congestion, and very soon the whole body has been out of health. My brethren, if you can do more good elsewhere than you can do here, for God’s sake, go, and happy shalt I be that you have gone. If you can serve my Master in the little rooms in the neighborhood, if by forming yourselves into smaller Churches you can increase the honor of my Master’s name, I shall love you none the less for going, but I shall delight to think that you have Christ’s spirit in you, and can do and dare for his name’s sake. At the present moment we rejoice to know that many a Sunday School in this neighborhood is indebted to the members of this Church for teachers. It is right. We do not want you at home, and are therefore glad to see you at work elsewhere. No matter, so long as Christ is preached, whether you throw your strength into that Church or into this Church. Here, as being members with us, we have the first claim upon you; but when we do not need you by reason of our abundance of men, go and give your strength to any other part of Christ’s Church that may desire you.

While I speak thus much in your praise my brethren and sisters, let me say we must keep this up. If we say, “We have the College to support, and we do as much as other Churches for various societies, and we can be content to sit still,” this Church will begin to go rotten at the core the moment we are not working for God with might and main. Sometimes I get a pull at my coat-tail by very kind, judicious friends, who think I shall ask you to do too much. My brethren are welcome to pull my coat-tail, but it will come off before I shall stand back for a moment. As long as I live I must serve my Master with my whole soul, and when you think I go too fast, you can stand back if you dare, for mark, you will be responsible to God if you do; you may start back if you will and if you dare, but I must go on, must go, MUST go on, or else you and I that are worthy of the day in which you live will follow me, step by step, in any good project, and though I should seem too rash, you will redeem me from the charge of rashness by the enthusiasm and the earnestness with which you carry out my plans. Here is this great city! Was there ever such spiritual destitution? A million of people who could not go to a place of worship, if they had the heart to go there! And here we have the priestcraft of the Church of England increasing the spiritual destitution by building fresh Churches—not providing for it, but increasing it I say, for I reckon that wherever Puseyism is preached there is an increase of spiritual destitution; wherever broad Churchism comes, there is an increase of spiritual destitution, and it is little better where they go who preach the gospel in the pulpit, and read Popery at the font, the grave, and the bedside. In this last case public morality is shocked by the perjury of those who swear to a Prayer Book in which they do not believe. Much as I respect and even love believers in the Anglican Establishment, I can only feel that their presence in so corrupt a body is the reason why it exists; and I therefore think them to be doing mischief by buttressing a falling and ruinous cause. True Protestants, we must take upon ourselves to work for London, as if there were no other agencies at work except those of the Free Churches; for the Hagar Church, the Church which has a mortal for its head, the harlot Church which lives in alliance with the State, has too many sins of her own to repent of to be of much use in this hour of peril. The good she can do is so insignificant that it is not worth while to compute it, because the monstrous evil which she fosters and perpetrates is a more than sufficient set-off against it. We must work and toil and labor to scatter in every lane, amid alley and court of London, the pure gospel of the blessed God; and let men know that Sacramentarianism is a lie, and that there is no salvation but in the uplifted cross of Christ, and no salvation through ceremonies but only through a simple faith in him who loved us and gave himself for us. If ye, among others, are come to the kingdom for such a time as this, it shall be well with you; but if not, ye shall be put away as things abhorred, and this place shall be a hissing and a bye-word in generations yet to come, and it shall be said of you, there lived a people who were led by a man, who, with all his faults, was in earnest and was honest, and they would not follow him, but proved unworthy of him, and they have passed away, and their names are writ in water. They had opportunities which they did not use; work was allotted them which they were not worthy to take up, God said to them in answer to their request to be excused, “Ye shall be excused;” and they went back—

“To the vile dust from whence they sprung,

Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.”

But it shall not be so with you my brethren, though I thus speak; I know your zeal, and love, and earnestness, and that you will continue to water others, and then you shall be watered yourselves. We will pray and strive together for the faith once delivered to the saints; we will cleave closer and closer to one another, and foot to foot, and shoulder to shoulder, we will march to battle for God and for his truth, and come what may, whoever may prove cravens in these days of charity and compromise, we will be found, in God’s name, by the help of God’s Spirit, faithful and true.

III. And now dear friends, another sentence or two will close the sermon.

On the widest scale, this is true. This is true of our denomination and of every Church. If we will water others, we shall be watered. From the very day when Carey, and Fuller, and Pearce went forth to send the gospel to the heathen, a blessing rested upon our denomination, I believe, and if we had done more for the heathen we should have been stronger to do more at home. You may rest assurred, though some may not think it, that our missionary operations are an infinite blessing to the churches at home—that relinquishing them, giving them up, staying them, would bring such a blight and a curse that we had need to go down on our knees and pray, God send the missionary work back again. Give us an outlet for our liberality and our zeal, for without it we become like a pool dammed up, that is full of filth, and toads, and frogs, and all sorts of foul things. Lord, open the river for our zeal and let us once again have an opportunity to serve thee for the nations that are far away!” But I must leave you to preach on that point for my time has gone, and you can do so more practically than I can. My sermon is reported, and I will undertake that what you preach shall not be forgotten, it shall all be taken down in those boxes which shall be passed round. Say each of you as much as ever you can upon this subject by your contributions, and remember, “He that watereth others, shall himself be watered.”

Withholding Corn

                               July 30, 1865,

              at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington,

                               by C. H. Spurgeon.

“He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him: but blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it.”—Proverbs 11:26.

If I dared, I should always preach upon the comfortable promises and gracious doctrines of God’s Word. I find it most delightful and easy work to expatiate upon those themes of revelation which abound in sweetness, and are full of savor and preciousness to the child of God. I said, “If I dared,” and you will ask me why I dare not? The answer is because I have a solemn conviction on my mind, that if I would be clear of the blood of all men, I must strive to make my range of ministry as wide as the range of revelation, and I must not shun to declare the whole counsel of God. I feel bound to go, not where my wishes would lead me, but where Holy Scripture has made a track for my feet. There are certain texts in the Scriptures which are very seldom preached upon because it is thought that there is little gospel in them, and that the people when they go home will say to one another, “Well, I was not fed this morning.” Those who aim at pleasing men may well be shy of such subjects. But I hold that since God in his wisdom has placed these passages in the Bible, he intended his servants, the preachers of the Word, to expound them. We are, it strikes me, not to preach from selections of Scripture only, but from the whole of the Sacred Volume, for “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” I freely confess that I do not know why I have selected this text this morning, except that it haunted and hunted me until I could not forbear to preach upon it. It seems to force itself upon me, and to bore its way into my soul like a rifle shot. I thought it over and over and could not make much of it, until I yielded up myself to it, saying within myself, “If the Lord has anything to say to the people out of my mouth, here it is—let him use it.” If there should be any persons among our country-friends, or our corn-dealing townsmen, who this morning feel at all touched by the text, I cannot help it; there is my Master’s message to them, and I can only deliver it with the best intentions, hoping that those to whom it comes home may he profited by it. It will, however, soon be clear to you that the verse before us has, besides its first meaning, a weight of very important spiritual teaching in it, to which we shall all do well to take heed.

The text, as it stands, has to do, as you clearly see, with owners of corn and dealers in it. In Solomon’s days there were very frequent famines. Communication between one nation and another was so extremely difficult that the transportation of wheat in any large quantities was not attempted; and therefore, if a failure in the crops occurred in one district, the scarcity in that neighborhood was not compensated by abundance in another, and terrible famines prevailed. Certain persons in those days not only stored up all the corn which grew on their own fields, but purchased as much as they could of others, so as to raise the market above its natural level. This, under the circumtances, was a very high affront put upon God, for instead of bearing their part in his judgments, these men enriched themselves by the poverty of their starving neighbors. There have been such people ever since Solomon’s day, and although the present system of free trade has nearly put an end to that kind of thing, there are doubtless some who would again withhold their corn, even at famine prices, if they could raise the price still higher. How does Scripture deal with this peculiar form of greed in trade?

I cannot but admire the wonderful reserve of Holy Scripture, for as Mr. Arnot well observes, “in this brief maxim no arbitrary rule is laid down to the possessor of corn, that he must sell at a certain period and at a certain price: and yet the hungry are not left without a protecting law. The protection of the weak is entrusted not to small police regulations, but to great self-acting providential arrangements. The double fact is recorded in terms of peculiar distinctness, that he who in times of scarcity keeps up his corn in order to enrich himself is loathed by the people, and he who sells it freely is loved. This is all. There is no further legislation on the subject.” Our narrow wisdom might have wished for some definite law upon the subject, something like a slidingscale, but the great ruler of heaven and earth falls into no such error. Laws which interfere between buyer and seller, master and workman, by any form of law, are blunders and nuisances. Parliaments and princes have hung on to the antiquated absurdity of regulating prices, but the Holy Ghost does nothing of the kind. All the attempts of men to control the price of bread and wheat is sheer folly, as the history of France may well prove. The market goes best when it is left alone, and so in our text, there is no law enacted and no penalty threatened, except that which the nature of things makes inevitable. God knows political economy, whether men do or not, and leaving the coarse machinery of police regulations, he puts the offender under a form of self-acting legislature which is far more efficient. The text seems to say, “Well, if you have no love to your neighbor and choose to keep your wheat, I make no law to break open your granary or pull down your ricks, but you will most certainly gain the hatred, contempt, and curse of the people among whom you dwell.”

You see dear friends, that the man may do as he pleases about selling or not, but he cannot escape from the curse of the people if he chooses to lock up his grain; and on the other hand if he will sell at a proper price, or as another translation reads it, break his bread, that is to say, give it to the starving if they cannot buy it, he will receive blessings not only from the people but from heaven itself.

Brethren, this is a matter of fact, that any man of any observation must have seen, that there is no transaction which ever brings such ill-will upon a man, such general condemnation, especially from the poor, as withholding the corn. Common consent condemns the hoarder, and human nature revolts at his offense. Ask any one you choose to meet, except he be himself deep in the same mire, and he will join you in crying out against it. Of course there are many ways of defending the deed, but there is no way of escaping the fact that the people curse the doer of it in their hearts. “Well,” says one, “it is my own corn, I may do as I like with it.” Just so, nobody said you could not; nobody disputed your rights—only you are warned that in hoarding it you are sure to get the people’s curse. You cannot alter that; it will follow and hang about your heels, and as far as the fact is known, it will make men curl the lip at you and sneer if they are your equals, while the working-men deep in their hearts will abhor you. No matter how kind you may be to the poor in other matters, or how you may have given your money in other ways, your holding the corn will be a scorn among your enemies and an offense to your best friends. It is not always an ill sign when the voice of the people is against a man, but in this case Scripture endorses it, and he who dares to run the risk is none too wise.

“Ah,” says another, “I do not see the wrong of withholding. There are laws of supply and demand, and the preacher does not understand political economy.” The preacher however thinks he does understand it, and even if he does not a child can comprehend the text before him, and with that we have to deal just now. Solomon here tells you that if you like to carry out political economy in the withholding way, you will get cursed for it, and depend upon it, you will. Facts are stubborn things, and this is one—that withholding corn earns me the curse of the people, and that is what no Christian man would wish to bear.

“But what business is that of the preacher’s?” He answers that he thanks God that he has no share in it whatever, but he is set in his place to rebuke what God rebukes, and he is doing no more than expounding God’s own word upon the matter. Whether you hear or forbear, there is the truth, and may the Lord bless it to you. “Well, we ought not to hear such things on Sundays.” What, not read our Bibles on Sundays—not explain the meaning of a text on Sundays? You would not have heard me on a Monday some of you, and therefore you have it to-day. Do not be angry with the text, but look at it and read it, and then afterwards choose you as you will. “He that withholdeth corn,” God says, “the people shall curse him;” and if you wish to have ill-will, and the bad word of thousands of poor cottagers and all others who have human sympathies, then withhold your corn. Thank God, the worst monopoliser cannot do much mischief now-a-days, for by the gracious providence of God which has burst the fetters of commerce, we are not likely to feel any very great straitness for bread in this country. Should our own crops fail, the harvests of other lands supply the masses with their food. The crime is growing scarcer and scarcer; but if any cases still survive and men choose to follow so ruinous a course, they will get cursed for it in mutterings deep, if silent, and in sneers as bitter as they are well deserved.

By your leave I shall now take a step above my text, using it as a ladder to mount to a yet higher truth. If it brings a curse upon a man to withhold the bread which perisheth, what a weight of curse will light upon that man who withholds the bread of eternal life. If the people shall curse the man who keeps back the bread which merely sustains the body, what shall be the withering denunciations which shall overwhelm the soul of him who deals deceitfully with the bread of eternal life? That seems to me to be a fair deduction from the text, and at that truth we will aim this morning. First, I shall attempt to show the ways in which the bread of life may be withheld from the people, and the curse which will follow; secondly, I shall try to depict the blessedness of the man who “breaketh it,” as another translation hath it, to the people; and then thirdly, we shall conclude by opening our own granaries and breaking some of this bread among the assembled multitude.

I. First, he that withholdeth the bread of life will surely get the people’s curse upon him. How can this be done?

1. It may be readily accomplished by locking up the Word of God in an unknown language, or by delivering and preaching it in such a style that the people shalt not comprehend it. The Romish Church for many years kept the sacred Scriptures in an unknown tongue, and resisted all attempts to translate the book of God into the vulgar language of the people. What a curse Rome has had resting on her head. To those who know the enormity of this wickedness in holding back the word of life, it is scarcely possible to think of Rome without invoking judgement upon her. What myriads of souls went down to the pit perishing through lack of knowledge during what were called the Dark Ages! What fearful imprecations they must be uttering even now upon Popes and Cardinals and Priests who had the key of the kingdom, but would neither enter themselves nor suffer others to enter there! They had the light but they concealed it in a dark lantern, and the nations were compelled to sit in the darkness of profound ignorance and superstition because they would not give them the light. Surely the people shall curse such for ever. But are these the only offenders? Is not their crime prolonged by those ministers who aim at delivering themselves in an oratorical style, with flowers of rhetoric far too fine to be reached by the common people? We have heard of some, and we fear we know some, who would rather round a period than win a soul, to whom it is the first and the last object to deliver refined thoughts in elegant and elaborate language, and having so done, having soared aloft on the spread-eagle’s wing far out of sight, they are content to have dazzled the many, and displayed themselves. Truly such men withhold the corn. What can the poor countrymen and servants who are sitting in the aisles make out of their eloquence? What can the work-people, who come in to hear something that may do them good, make out of their outlandish big talk? The terms of theology, the phrases of art, the definitions of philosophy, the jargon of science, are an unknown tongue to the young godly ploughmen or praying shopkeepers. “Alas!” says he, “this does not come to me—I cannot get at it.” Possibly, in their ignorance, some people think the highflyers very learned men, but in reality they are far from it; for plainness of speech is a better sign of learning than high-sounding words and soaring sentences.

Oh, dear friends, when we preach the gospel plainly, I am sure we have our reward! When preaching in some village chapel, or from a waggon in a field, it is no small delight to watch the faces of the men in smockfrocks and the women in their print gowns, as they catch or feel the force of an inspired truth; plain speech wins their blessing. But to stand and talk right over the people’s heads—what is it but having the corn and keeping it from those who want it? Simplicity is the authorised style of true gospel ministry. “Having this ministry,” says the apostle, “we use great plainness of speech.” The common people heard the Master gladly, which they would not have done if he had spoken in highflown language. Whitfield, the prince of preachers, was mainly so because of the market language which he used. Let all of us who have the bread of life try to be very plain. You who write tracts or preach in the street, or you that teach children, break the large slices of truth into small pieces, and crack the shells of the hard nuts. Take away the crust for the babes, and pick out the stones from the fruit. Beware lest in seeking an excess of refinement you withhold the corn and win the people’s curse.

2. But secondly, we may fall into this sin by keeping back the most important and vital truths of Revelation, and giving a prominence to other things which are but secondary. My brethren, if I were to stand in this pulpit and for the next few months address you upon moral precepts, the excellence of virtue or the faultiness of vice; if you could come out of this place and say, time after time, “We hear nothing about Jesus Christ; we do not know whether there be any Holy Ghost:” if I were gifted with ever so much of ability—if these were my themes, however earnestly I pressed them, I should he guilty of withholding the corn, the true food of souls. Morality brings no food to hungry souls, although it is a good thing in its place. Dissuasives from vice are not the bread of heaven, though well enough in their way. We need to have the great doctrines of grace brought forward, for the Word of God is the sword of the Spirit, and it is by preaching the truth as it is in Jesus that souls are won to him. I grieve to think how indistinct some preachers are upon the doctrines of grace: they dare not say “Election,” or if they do they tremble directly and guard their words with shields so huge that the poor truth is crushed beneath them. As to final perseverance, effectual calling, particular redemption, or any of those grand truths wherein the fatness and savor and marrow of the gospel is to be found, you may listen to some of them from the beginning of January to the end of December without hearing a word. This will not do: this is taking away the backbone from the spiritual man; it is tearing away the vitals of the gospel; it is giving to the people husks for wheat, and straw and chaff, instead of corn. Above all, that ministry is an abomination which puts Jesus Christ in the background. My brethren and sisters, we must not only hear something about Jesus Christ but our preaching must be mainly about Him. He must be its head and front; nay, let me say, in some sense, he must be all that the preacher has to preach. Christ crucified must be the general summary of his ministry; and he must he able to say when he retires from it and is called up higher, “I have preached Christ. Of the things which I have spoken this is the sum: I have preached my Master and what my Master gave me.” O my brethren, what a guilty ministry is that in which the blood has no place—the ministry which denies or undervalues the atoning sacrifice of the great Redeemer! God have mercy upon us that we have not preached this fundamental truth so earnestly as we ought to have done, but still, we can plead before him and say we have truly desired to do it.

“E’er since by faith I saw the stream

His flowing wounds supply,

Redeeming love has been my theme,

And shall be till I die.”

What is the use of any ministry of which that is not true? It is withholding corn, and in eternity the lost will curse their destroyer.

But we must not talk about ministers, of whom there are not many here: we will come down to you. Many of you are Sunday-school teachers: now you can sin in this way in the very same sense. Suppose as a Sunday-school teacher you are content with making the little ones read through the lesson, satisfied with filling up the hour or the hour and-a-half, and feeling you have done a good deal in making the little fellows sit still, and so on. Ah! my brother and sister, it is very solemn work. You have undertaken to teach these young immortals, and if you are satisfied with just making them go through the routine, take heed lest when they grow up they come to curse you. I am afraid that many Sunday-school addresses have no gospel in them. I do not see why the same gospel should not he preached to children as to grown-up people. I think it should. To stand up in a Sunday-school and say, “Now, be good boys and girls and God will love you,” is telling lies. I know the teachers of our school feel the importance of delivering the truth as it is in Jesus to their children, and you therefore tell them: “You are lost and ruined, and your salvation is in Jesus Christ: look to him and live.” The teacher whose general teaching is not full of Christ will be called to a sad account in the day when Christ shall come. Dear teachers of the school, whatever you do not know, do know your Lord, and whatever you cannot get into the youngsters’ heads, do make it a matter of prayer that you may get a knowledge of Christ and his atoning blood into their young hearts by the Holy Ghost. The same is also true of those of our beloved friends who conduct Bible classes, or who in any way teach the people. I do not know that I have any necessity to say this to the most of you here, but still I will say it for the good of others; you must not my brethren get away from your great theme. It is of no use to go to the people empty-handed, we must take them bread; we only mock them by offering them stones if we talk to them about the histories and precepts of Scripture and forget the cross. Let our teaching be full of grace and truth: let us deliver our souls of every doctrine as we find it in Scripture, and let us be determined that if men do perish it shall not be for want of knowing the way of salvation.

3. We may withhold the bread of life dear friends, by a want of loving in our labor; because the mere telling out the plan of salvation is of no great service; God may bless it, but he does not often do so.

That which God blesses to the saving of sinners is truth attended by the earnestness of the speaker, the loving anguish of a heart which stirs the preacher’s soul. What shall I say here? for if I speak I do but condemn myself. Think of the preaching of Baxter. He preached for many years but he said he never went into his pulpit without his knees knocking together; and Martin Luther said the same. Truly it is enough to make any man tremble when he feels that he is God’s mouth to immortal souls. “If they perish and thou warn them not, their blood will I require at thy hand.” Surely this ought to give a melting heart and streaming eyes to God’s ministers! But, I say, I remember reading of Baxter’s ministry—oh what pleading there was in it! The man seemed as if he never would go out of the pulpit till his hearers had received the truth, he wept, and sighed, and sobbed, unless they came to Jesus Christ. You know how he followed them to their houses, watched them through the streets of Kidderminster, and would give them no rest till they thought about eternal things, and he was privileged thus to break the bread of life to many thousands, although his body was as full of physical pain as his heart was of holy anxiety. O for something of Mr. Baxter’s spirit to make us love the souls of men as he did! We are guilty of withholding corn unless we preach with a sympathising, loving, tender, affectionate, earnest, anxious soul. Brethren and sisters, you are most of you doing something for Jesus Christ; let me therefore put this very plainly to you. If you get through your work for God as a mere matter of form, however true may be that which you have to say, and however carefully you may deliver it, yet still if the truth you deliver is not delivered with holy anxiety, with earnestness, with fervor, with love, with affection, and above all, if it he not attended with prayer, take heed lest in some day to come you get the curse of those from whom you withheld the bread. How would you like, Sunday-school teachers, to see a lad in your class grow up and go into sin? How would you like to meet him some day on a sick bed when his vices had at last brought him to his end; how would you like that he should look into your face and say, “Ah! teacher, you were never earnest with me: you told me the truth, but you told it me so coldly that I did not believe it. If I had seen one tear in your eye I think there would have been one in mine. If I thought you felt what you were saying, I sometimes think I should have felt it too; but you merely kept me still and told me it all as if it were no great matter, and so I doubted the whole, and from doubt went on to unbelief and ran into sin, and here I am. O that you had wept over me as such-and-such a teacher did with my brother! How different is my brother from what I am. He was in another class, and his teacher took him before God in prayer; prayed with him as well as for him, told him the truth, but did more: labored to drive it home as with a great hammer while he pleaded with him to lay hold on eternal life. Teacher, would to God that you had been more earnest with me.” Beloved, seek to rid yourselves of any future regrets in this matter. It is no small satisfaction when you hear the death-bell toll, to say, “Well, I did all I could for that soul, and whether it be in heaven or hell my conscience is clear. You cannot save, but still, God who works by means may make you the instrument of conveying salvation to sinners: or on the other hand, you may be made instruments of unrighteousness through whom Satan may harden these children’s hearts, even to their everlasting ruin. I take the case of a Sunday-school teacher, but I intend the remarks for every worker. O let us work for God with our whole hearts. God make us more awfully in earnest. Life is earnest, death is earnest, heaven is earnest, hell is earnest, Christ is earnest, God is earnest; let us be clad with zeal as with a cloak, and go forth to serve the Lord with all our soul and strength as his Holy Spirit shall enable us.

4. Fourthly, we may be found guilty of withholding corn by refusing to labor zealously for the spread of the kingdom of Christ and the conversion of sinners. I am afraid that the Churches of the past were not altogether without a curse because of their deficiency in the matter of missions and home evangelization. During the pastorate of my venerated predecessor, Dr. Gill, this Church, instead of increasing, gradually decreased; and although the age in which he lived was honored with many great and excellent men, yet the state of our own denomination, and the Presbyterian body, and the Independent body, in England was most lamentable. Many of the Churches were gradually sliding into Unitarianism, and the simple gospel of Jesus Christ was scarcely preached, or, where preached, it was without any power whatever: and I take it that the reason was very much that the Churches were content to be edified themselves, but had no bowels of compassion for the perishing multitudes around and abroad. But mark this, from the day when Fuller, Carey, Sutcliffe, and others met together to send out missionaries to India, the sun began to dawn on a gracious revival which is not over yet; for bad as the state of the Churches now is, yet it is marvellously an improvement upon anything before the age of missions. Though not as zealous as we ought to be, the zeal of Christendom is one hundred times greater than it was then; and as for what is done for winning souls brethren, the Churches now are like a garden of the Lord compared with what they were then. I believe that the neglect of sending the word to the heathen brought a blight and a curse upon the Churches, which is now happily removed. Yet even to-day we find professors who are always doubting. They never get beyond —

“‘Tis a point I long to know.”

There they stick, and never know whether they are saved or not. Full assurance is to be a tempting morsel which they have not yet tasted. Their eyes do not sparkle with heavenly delight; they know not what it is to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus; their raptures are very few, their joys very shallow. I will tell you why. In almost every case these people do nothing for souls; they withhold the corn and therefore they get this curse in their souls, that they shall not enjoy their own religion because they do not want to lead other people into it. If you put your hands into your pockets and say. “Well, glory be to God; I trust I am one of the elect, and whatever becomes of the rest of mankind really is not my concern. Every man for himself, say I.” That is such an unchristian spirit, so antagonistic to the whole life of Jesus Christ, that if you get sorely whipped in providence I can only hope you may be blessed by it; but I would not pray that the rod may be removed until you are scourged into a better temper. Commend me to the Christian who says, “I bless God I am saved; now what can I do for others?” The first thing in the morning he prays, “God help me to say a word to some soul this day.” During the day, wherever he may be, he is watching his opportunity, and will do good if he can. He is concerned about his children: it sometimes breaks his heart to think that they are not saved. If he happens to have an ungodly wife it is his daily burden: “Oh God, save my wife!” When he goes to a place of worship, he does not expect the minister to make sermons always on purpose for him, but he says “I shall sit here and pray God to bless the word,” and if he looks round the chapel and sees one that he loves, he prays for him, “God send the word home to him.” When service is over, a man of this kind will waylay the unconverted, and try to get a personal word with them; and see if he cannot discover some beginnings of grace in their souls. This is how earnest Christians live; and let me tell you, as a rule, though they have the griefs of other men’s souls to carry, they do not have much grief about their own. As a rule their Master favors them with the light of his countenance; they are watering others and they are watered themselves also. May this be your work and mine! But some of you say nothing for Christ at all. You are too timid, and others of you are too indifferent, too thoughtless about others. Oh, the opportunities many of you have lost! Oh, the many who have died to whom you might have spoken, but you did not! Oh, the people that are now in the darkness of ignorance who get no light from you! You have light, but you keep it. They are dying, and you have the healing medicine, but you will not tell them of it. May God deliver you from the curse of those who thus withhold the corn.

We will only mention one more form of this evil. Some may be said to be guilty of withholding the corn, because while they themselves do not speak for Christ, they do not help those who can. No Christian man ought to go to bed with an easy conscience if he has thousands of pounds which he does not require, which lies by unused for God. There must be many Christians in this rich country who have not consecrated their substance to the Lord. When a man can say, “I have money which I really do not need, and my children do not require it; and this is money absolutely needed for God’s cause,” ought he to keep it from the Lord Jesus?’ Must you confess that so many missionaries might be sent out to-morrow if you just drew a cheque and handed it over to the proper quarter—then why not do it? A destitute neighborhood needs a place of worship, and if I can build it if I would, how am I to answer for it to my Lord?

I cannot understand how a man can love God when he only lives to heap up riches. I can with great difficulty imagine such a case, but I fear that such cannot be real piety. It seems to me that if I have any religion in my soul, it will make me not only say with Dr. Watts: —

“Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine

Demands my soul, my life, my all”

but I think it would make me carry it out. I will not propose to you that you should act indiscreetly in giving, so as to beggar your families or deprive yourselves of what is necessary; you know I am not so foolish. But I am speaking to many Christians who have not only enough, but to spare, and who will continue to accumulate and accumulate and accumulate, and I cannot think that they can feel that they are doing right in the sight of God. O God! this great city needing preachers, needing the gospel—thousands needing even bread to keep them from starving—and for thy professing people to be heaping their coffers fuller and fuller! Why surely, if I do this, I am heaping up wrath against the day of wrath, and I shall find it come into my bosom hot and fierce from the God of Sabaoth, to whom my gold and my silver will cry out against me. Let us not be guilty of this, but ‘each in our own station, as far as we can, let us be aiding others to preach the word if we cannot preach it ourselves. Dozens of young men are desirous to enter our College, and you can help them to go forth to preach if you cannot preach yourself.

II. I am pleased to turn to the other subject for a minute or two. I am to speak upon the blessedness which those possess who break the bread of life.

To describe it is altogether beyond my power. You must know and taste and feel it, beloved. There are many blessednesses in doing good to others. God is a good paymaster; he pays his servants while at work as well as when they have done it; and one of his payments is this, an easy conscience. If you have spoken faithfully only to one person, when you go to bed at night you feel happy in thinking “I have this day discharged my conscience of that man’s blood.” You do not know how delightful a Sabbath evening is to some of us when God has helped us to be faithful; how sweet to feel “I have made many blunders, shown many infirmities of the flesh, and so on, but I have preached the gospel and preached it with my whole heart to the best of my ability.” One feels a burden taken off one’s back, and there is a joy and satisfaction unknown to those who sit at home doing nothing. You in your class at the Sunday-school, I know you feel when Sunday is over, though it is a very hard day’s work for some of you after the six days’ toil in the week, you feel “I thank God I did not spend that afternoon in lolling about at home, but I did speak a word for Jesus.” You will find such a peace of mind that you would not give it up for all the world. Then there is a great comfort in doing something for Jesus. Look into his face—what would you not do for him? When first converted did you not think you could do ten thousand things for Jesus; the moment your burden was off your back and your sins forgiven, how you felt you could follow him through floods and flames! Have you lived up to your resolutions, brethren? Have you kept up to your own ideas of Christian duties? I do not suppose any of us can say that we have. Still, what little we have done has been an unspeakable delight, when we have felt that we have been crowning his head and strewing palm-branches in his path. Oh! what a happiness to place jewels in his crown and give him to see of the travail of his soul! Beloved, there is very great reward in watching the first buddings of conviction in a young soul! To say of that girl in the class, “She seems so tender of heart, I do hope that there is the Lord’s work there.” To go home and pray over that boy who said something in the afternoon to make you think he must know something more than he seemed to know! Oh, the joy of hope! But as for the joy of success! It is unspeakable. I recollect the first soul that God ever gave me—she is in heaven now—but I remember when my good deacon said to me, “God has set his seal on your ministry in this place, sir.” Oh, if anybody had said to me, “Somebody has left you twenty thousand pounds,” I should not have given a snap of my fingers for it compared with that joy which I felt when I was told that God had set his seal on my ministry. “Who is it?” I asked. “Why, it is a poor laboring man’s wife! she went home broken-hearted by the sermon two or three Sundays ago, and she has been in great trouble of soul, but she has found peace, and she says she would like to speak to you.” I felt like the boy who has earned his first guinea, like a diver who has been down to the depths of the sea and brought up a rare pearl— I prize each one whom God has given me, but I prize that woman most. Since then my God has given me many thousands of souls, who profess to have found the Savior by hearing or reading words which have come from my lips. Well, this joy, overwhelming as it is, is a hungry sort of joy —you want more of it: for the more you have of spiritual children the more your soul desires to see them multiplied. Let me tell you that to be a soul-winner is the happiest thing in this world, and with every soul you bring to Jesus Christ you seem to get a new heaven here upon earth. But what will be the joy of soul-winning when we get up above! What happiness to the Christian minister to be saluted on his entrance into heaven by many spiritual children! They will call him “Father,” for though they are not married nor given in marriage, though natural relations are all over, yet spiritual relations last for ever. Oh! how sweet is that sentence, “Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” Do you know what the joy of Christ is over a saved sinner? You cannot guess it. You would need to know the griefs he suffered to save that sinner. O the joys he must feel when he sees that sinner saved as the result of his griefs; this is the very joy which you and I are to possess in heaven: “Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” Yes, when he mounts the throne you shall mount with him. When the heaven rings with “Well done, well done,” you shall partake in the reward; you have toiled with him, you have suffered with him, you shall now reign with him; you have sown with him, you shall reap with him; you were despised with him, you shall now be honored with him; your face was covered with sweat like his, and your soul was grieved for the sins of men as his soul was, now shall your face be bright with heaven’s splendor as is his countenance, and now shall your soul he filled with beatific joys even as his soul is. He that breaketh bread, blessings shall be upon his head.

III. Now I have to open the granary for a minute myself.

Hungry sinners, wanting a Savior, we cannot withhold the bread from you. You may never come to hear the gospel again; we therefore will open the granary very wide. Christ Jesus, the Son of God, became man to save men, and inasmuch as God’s wrath was due to sin, Christ took the sin of all who have ever believed, or ever shall believe on him, and, taking all their sins, he was punished in their room and place, and stead so that God can now justly forgive sin because Christ was punished in the stead of sinners, and suffered divine wrath for them. Now this is the way of salvation, that thou trust this Son of God with thy soul and if thou dost so then know that thy sins are now forgiven thee, and that thou art saved. Concerning this salvation, hear thou just these few words.

It is a satisfying salvation. Here is all that thou canst want. Thy conscience shall be at ease for ever if thou believest in Jesus: thy biggest sins shall no longer trouble thee, thy blackest iniquities shall no longer haunt thee. Believing in Jesus, every sin thou hast of thought and word and deed shall be cast into the depths of the sea and never shall be mentioned against thee any more for ever.

It is an all-sufficient salvation too. However great thy sins, Christ’s blood can take all away. However deep thy needs, Christ can supply them. Thou canst not be so big a sinner as he is a Savior. Thou mayest be the worst sinner out of hell, but thou art not too great for him to remove; he can carry elephantine sinners upon his shoulders, and bear gigantic mountains of guilt upon his head into the wilderness of forgetfulness. He has enough for thee, however deep thy necessity.

It is moreover a complete salvation. Sovereign mercy does not stand on the mountain and cry to you, climb up hither and I will save you. Eternal mercy comes down the valley to you just where you are, and meets your case just as it is, and never leaves you till it has made you meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light. Christ does not want you to pay one talent out of the hundred and promise to pay for you the ninety-nine. He will discharge all your debts of sin. All that you want to take you up to heaven is provided in Jesus.

This is a present salvation—a salvation which if it come to you, will save you now. You shall be a child of God this very hour, and ere that clock shall strike again you shall rejoice in the peace which the Spirit of God gives you, if you believe on him.

It is an available salvation, freely presented to you in Christ Jesus. Remember the text of two or three Sundays ago: “Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely.” Jesus casts out none that come to him. Oh that thou mayest be led to come this morning.

Thus have I tried to avoid the sin of withholding corn; and if any in this house of prayer have been guilty of it, I pray you avoid the curse of the people, and seek the blessing of the Most High God by this day endeavoring to scatter everywhere the bread of life. Go and work for God wherever you have an opportunity, and help us in our prayers and efforts to send forth more laborers into the harvest, for the harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. Amen.

The Soul Winner

                                       January 20th, 1876,

              at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington,

                               by C. H. Spurgeon.

“The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; and he that winneth souls is wise.”—Proverbs 11:30.

I had very great joy last night—many of you know why but some do not. We held our annual meeting of the church, and it was a very pleasant sight to see so many brethren and sisters knit together in the heartiest love, welded together as one mass by common sympathies, and holding firmly to “one Lord, one faith, and one baptism.” Think of a church with 4,900 members! Such a community has seldom been gathered in any age, and in the present century it is without a parallel. “O Lord, thou hast multiplied the people and increased the joy. They joy before thee as the joy of harvest.” It brings tears into one’s eyes to look upon so many who declare themselves to be members of the body of Christ. The hope that so many are plucked as brands from the burning and delivered from the wrath to come is in itself exceedingly consoling, and I felt the joy of it while communing with the brethren and sisters in Christ Jesus. On thinking it over afterwards however, it seemed to me that there was a higher joy in looking at a body of believers than that which arises from merely regarding them as saved. Not but what there is a great joy in salvation, a joy worthy to stir the angelic harps. Think of the Savior’s agony in the ransom of every one of his redeemed, think of the work of the Holy Spirit in every renewed heart, think of the love of the Father as resting upon every one of the regenerate: I could not, if I took up my parable for a month, set forth all the mass of joy that is to be seen in a multitude of believers if we only look at what God has done for them, and promised to them, and will fulfill in them. But there is yet a wider field of thought, and my mind has been traversing it all this day—the thought of the capacities of service contained in a numerous band of believers, the possibilities of blessing others which lie within the bosoms of regenerate persons. We must not think so much of what we already are that we forget what the Lord may accomplish by us for others. Here are the coals of fire, but who shall describe the conflagration which they may cause?

We ought to regard the Christian Church, not as a luxurious hostelry where Christian gentlemen may each one dwell at his ease in his own inn, but as a barracks in which soldiers are gathered together to be drilled and trained for war. We should regard the Christian church not as an association for mutual admiration and comfort, but as an army with banners, marching to the fray to achieve victories for Christ, to storm the strongholds of the foe and to add province after province to the Redeemer’s kingdom. We may view converted persons when gathered into church membership as so much wheat in the granary. God be thanked that it is there, and that so far the harvest has rewarded the sower; but far more soul-inspiring is the view when we regard those believers as each one likely to be made a living center for the extension of the kingdom of Jesus, for then we see them sowing the fertile valleys of our land and promising ere long to bring forth some thirty, some forty, some fifty, and some a hundredfold. The capacities of life are enormous; one becomes a thousand in a marvellously brief space. Within a short time a few grains of wheat would suffice to seed the whole world, and a few true saints might suffice for the conversion of all nations. Only take that which comes of one ear, store it well, sow it all, again store it next year, and then sow it all again, and the multiplication almost exceeds the power of computation. O that every Christian were thus year by year the Lord’s seed corn! If all the wheat in the world had perished except a single grain, it would not take many years to replenish all the earth and sow her fields and plains; but in a far shorter time, in the power of the Holy Spirit, one Paul or one Peter would have evangelised all lands. View yourselves as grains of wheat predestinated to seed the world. That man lives grandly who is as earnest as if the very existence of Christianity depended upon himself, and is determined that to all men within his reach shall be made known the unsearchable riches of Christ.

If we whom Christ is pleased to use as his seed corn were only all scattered and sown as we ought to be, and were all to sprout and bring forth the green blade and the corn in the ear, what a harvest there would be! Again would it be fulfilled, “There shall be an handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains;”—a very bad position for it—“the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon: and they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth.” May God grant us to feel to-night some degree of the Holy Spirit’s quickening power while we talk together, not so much about what God has done for us as about what God may do by us, and how far we may put ourselves into a right position to be used by him.

There are two things in the text, and these are found laid out with much distinctness in its two sentences. The first is—the life of the believer is, or ought to be, full of soul blessing —“The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life.” In the second place—the pursuit of the believer ought always to be soul winning. The second is much the same as the first, only the first head sets forth our unconscious influence and the second our efforts which we put forth with the avowed object of winning souls for Christ.

I. Let us begin at the beginning, because the second cannot be carried out without the first: without fullness of life within there cannot be an overflow of life to others. It is of no use for any of you to try to be soul winners if you are not bearing fruit in your own lives. How can you serve the Lord with your lips if you do not serve him with your lives? How can you preach with your tongues his gospel, when with hands, feet, and hearts you are preaching the devil’s gospel, and setting up antichrist by your practical unholiness? We must first have life and bear personal fruit to the divine glory, and then out of our example will spring the conversion of others. Let us go to the fountain head and see how the man’s own life is essential to his being useful to others. The Life Of The Believer Is Full Of Soul Blessing: this fact we shall consider by means of a few observations growing out of the text; and first let us remark that the believer’s outward life comes as a matter of fruit from him. This is important to notice. The fruit of the righteous —that is to say his life—is not a thing fastened upon him, but it grows out of him. It is not a garment which he puts off and on, but it is inseparable from himself. The sincere man’s religion is the man himself, and not a cloak for his concealment. True godliness is the natural outgrowth of a renewed nature, not the forced growth of pious hothouse excitement. Is it not natural for a vine to bear clusters of grapes? natural for a palm tree to bear dates? Certainly it is as natural for the apples of Sodom to be found on the trees of Sodom as for noxious plants to produce poisonous berries. When God gives a new nature to his people, the life which comes out of that new nature springs spontaneously from it. The man who has a religion which is not part and parcel of himself will by-and-by discover that it is worse than useless to him. The man who wears his piety like a mask at a carnival, so that when he gets home he changes from a saint to a savage, from an angel to a devil, from John to Judas, from a benefactor to a bully—such a man I say, knows very well what formalism and hypocrisy can do for him, but he has no vestige of true religion. Fig trees do not bear figs on certain days and thorns at other times, but they are true to their nature at all seasons.

Those who think that godliness is a matter of vestment and has an intimate relation with blue and scarlet, and fine linen, are consistent if they keep their religion to the proper time for the wearing of their sacred pomposities; but he who has discovered what Christianity is knows that it is much more a life than an act, a form, or a profession. Much as I love the creed of Christendom, I am ready to say that true Christianity is far more a life than a creed. It is a creed, and it has its ceremonies, but it is mainly a life; it is a divine spark of heaven’s own flame which falls into the human bosom and burns within, consuming much that lies hidden in the soul, and then at last, as a heavenly life, flaming forth so as to be seen and felt by those around. Under the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit a regenerate person becomes like that bush in Horeb, which was all aglow with Deity. The God within him makes him shine so that the place around him is holy ground, and those who look at him feel the power of his hallowed life. Dear brethren, we must take care that our religion is more and more a matter of outgrowth from our souls. Many professors are hedged about with, “You must not do this, or that,” and are driven onward with, “You must do this, and you must do that.” But there is a doctrine, too often perverted, which is nevertheless a blessed truth, and ought to dwell in your hearts. “Ye are not under the law but under grace”: hence you do not obey the will of God because you hope to earn heaven thereby, or dream of escaping from divine wrath by your own doings, but because there is a life in you which seeks after that which is holy, pure, right, and true, and cannot endure that which is evil. You are careful to maintain good works, not from either legal hopes or legal fears, but because there is a holy thing within you born of God, which seeks, according to its nature, to do that which is pleasing to God. Look to it more and more that your religion is real, true, natural, vital—not artificial, constrained, superficial, a thing of times, days, places, a fungus produced by excitement, a fermentation generated by meetings and stirred by oratory. We all need a religion which can live either in a wilderness or in a crowd; a religion which will show itself in every walk of life and in every company. Give me the godliness which is seen at home, especially around the fireside, for it is never more beautiful than there; that is seen in the battle and tussle of ordinary business among scoffers and gainsayers as well as among Christian men. Show me the faith which can defy the lynx eyes of the world and walk fearlessly where all scowl with the fierce eyes of hate, as well as where there are observers to sympathize and friends to judge leniently. May you be filled with the life of the Spirit, and your whole conduct and conversation be the natural and blessed outgrowth of that Spirit’s indwelling!

Note next that the fruit which comes from a Christian is fruit worthy of his character—“The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life.” Each tree bears its own fruit and is known by it. The righteous man bears righteous fruit; and do not let us be at all deceived brethren, or fall into any error about this, “he that doeth righteousness is righteous,” and “he that doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.” We are prepared, I hope, to die for the doctrine of justification by faith, and to assert before all adversaries that salvation is not of works; but we also confess that we are justified by a faith which produces works, and if any man has a faith which does not produce good works it is the faith of devils. Saving faith appropriates the finished work of the Lord Jesus and so saves by itself alone, for we are justified by faith without works; but the faith which is without works cannot bring salvation to any man. We are saved by faith without works, but not by a faith that is without works, for the real faith that saves the soul works by love and purifies the character. If you can cheat across the counter your hope of heaven is a cheat too; though you can pray as prettily as anybody and practice acts of outward piety as well as any other hypocrite, you are deceived if you expect to be right at last. If as a servant you are lazy, lying, and loitering, or if as a master you are hard, tyrannical, and unchristianlike towards your men, your fruit shows that you are a tree of Satan’s own orchard and bear apples which will suit his tooth. If you can practice tricks of trade, and if you can lie—and how many do lie every day about their neighbors or about their goods—you may talk as you like about being justified by faith, but all liars will have their portion in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone, and amongst the biggest liars you will be for you are guilty of the lie of saying, “I am a Christian,” whereas you are not. A false profession is one of the worst of lies since it brings the utmost dishonor upon Christ and his people. The fruit of the righteous is righteousness: the fig tree will not bring forth thorns, neither shall we gather grapes from thistles. The tree is known by its fruit, and if we cannot judge men’s hearts, and must not try to do so, we can judge their lives, and I pray God we may all be ready to judge our own lives and see if we are bringing forth righteous fruit, for if not ye are not righteous men.

Let it however never be forgotten that the fruit of the righteous, though it comes from him naturally, for his newborn nature yields the sweet fruit of obedience, yet it is always the result of grace and the gift of God. No truth ought to be remembered more than this, “From me is thy fruit found.” We can bring forth no fruit except as we abide in Christ. The righteous shall flourish as a branch, and only as a branch. How does a branch flourish? By its connection with the stem, and the consequent inflowing of the sap; and so, though the righteous man’s righteous actions are his own, yet they are always produced by the grace which is imparted to him and he never dares to take any credit for them, but he sings, “Not unto us, but unto thy name give praise.” If he fails he blames himself; if he succeeds he glorifies God. Imitate his example. Lay every fault, every weakness, every infirmity at your own door, and if you fall short of perfection in any respect—and I am sure you do—take all that to yourself and do not excuse yourself; but if there be any virtue, any praise, any true desire, any real prayer, anything that is good, ascribe it all to the Spirit of God. Remember, the righteous man would not be righteous unless God had made him righteous, and the fruit of righteousness would never come from him unless the divine sap within him had produced that acceptable fruit. To God alone be all honor and glory.

The main lesson of the passage is that this outburst of life from the Christian, this consequence of life within him, this fruit of his soul, becomes a blessing to others. Like a tree it yields shade and sustenance to all around. It is a tree of life, an expression which I cannot fully work out to-night as I would wish, for there is a world of instruction compressed into the illustration. That which to the believer himself is fruit becomes to others a tree: it is a singular metaphor, but by no means a lame one. From the child of God there falls the fruit of holy living, even as an acorn drops from the oak; this holy living becomes influential and produces the best results in others, even as the acorn becomes itself an oak and lends its shade to the birds of the air. The Christian’s holiness becomes a tree of life. I suppose it means a living tree, a tree calculated to give life and sustain it in others. A fruit becomes a tree! A tree of life! Wonderful result this! Christ in the Christian produces a character which becomes a tree of life. The outward character is the fruit of the inner life; this outer life itself grows from a fruit into a tree, and as a tree it bears fruit in others to the praise and glory of God. Dear brothers and sisters, I know some of God’s saints who live very near to him and they are evidently a tree of life, for their very shadow is comforting, cooling, and refreshing to many weary souls. I have known the young, the tried, the downcast, go to them, sit beneath their shade, and pour out the tale of their troubles, and they have felt it a rich blessing to receive their sympathy, to be told of the faithfulness of the Lord, and to be guided in the way of wisdom. There are a few good men in this world whom to know is to be rich. Such men are libraries of gospel truth, but they are better than books, for the truth in them is written on living pages. Their character is a true and living tree; it is not a mere post of the dead wood of doctrine bearing an inscription and rotting while it does so, but it is a vital, organized, fruit-producing thing, a plant of the Lord’s right hand planting.

Not only do some saints give comfort to others, but they also yield them spiritual nourishment. Well-trained Christians become nursing fathers and nursing mothers, strengthening the weak and binding up the wounds of the broken hearted. So too, the strong, bold, generous deeds of large-hearted Christians are of great service to their fellow Christians, and tend to raise them to a higher level. You feel refreshed by observing how they act; their patience in suffering, their courage in danger, their holy faith in God, their happy faces under trial—all these nerve you for your own conflicts. In a thousand ways the sanctified believer’s example acts in a healing and comforting way to his brethren, and assists in raising them above anxiety and unbelief. Even as the leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations, so the words and deeds of saints are medicine for a thousand maladies.

And then what fruit, sweet to the taste of the godly, instructed believers bear! We can never trust in men as we trust in the Lord, but the Lord can cause the members to bless us in their measure, even as their Head is ever ready to do. Jesus alone is the Tree of Life, but he makes some of his servants to be instrumentally to us little trees of life, by whom he gives us fruit of the same sort that he bears himself, for he puts it there, and it is himself in his saints causing them to bring forth golden apples with which our souls are gladdened. May we every one of us be made like our Lord, and may his fruit be found upon our boughs.

We have put into the tomb during last year many of the saints who have fallen asleep, and among them there were some of whom I will not at this moment speak particularly, whose lives as I look back upon them are still a tree of life to me. I pray God that I may be like them. Many of you knew them, and if you will only recall their holy, devoted lives, the influence they have left behind will still be a tree of life to you. They being dead yet speak, hear ye their eloquent exhortations! Even in their ashes live their wonted fires; kindle your souls at their warmth. Their noble examples are the endowments of the church, her children are ennobled and enriched as they remember their walk of faith and labor of love. Beloved, may we every one of us be true benedictions to the churches in whose gardens we are planted. “Oh,” says one, “I am afraid I am not much like a tree, for I feel so weak and insignificant.” If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed you have the commencement of the tree beneath whose branches the birds of the air will yet find a lodging. The very birds that would have eaten the tiny seed come and find lodgment in the tree which grows out of it; and people who despise and mock at you now that you are a young beginner, will one of these days, if God blesses you, be glad to borrow comfort from your example and experience.

But one other thought on this point. Remember that the completeness and development of the holy life will be seen above. There is a city of which it is written, “In the midst of the street thereof, and on every side of the river was there the tree of life.” The tree of life is a heavenly plant, and so the fruit of the Christian is a thing of heaven; though not transplanted to the glory land, it is getting fit for its final abode. What is holiness but heaven on earth? What is living unto God but the essence of heaven? What are uprightness, integrity, Christ-likeness? Have not these even more to do with heaven than harps and palms and streets of purest gold? Holiness, purity, loveliness of character, these make a heaven within a man’s own bosom, and even if there were no place called heaven, that heart would have a heavenly happiness which is set free from sin and made like the Lord Jesus. See then dear brethren, what an important thing it is for us to be indeed righteous before God, for then the outcome of that righteousness shall be fruit which will be a tree of life to others, and a tree of life in heaven above, world without end. O blessed Spirit make it so, and thou shalt have all the praise.

II. This brings us to our second head. The pursuit of the believer should be soul winning. For “he that winneth souls is wise.” The two things are put together—the life first, the effort next: what God hath joined together let no man put asunder.

It is implied in our text that there are souls which need winning. Ah me, all souls of men are lost by nature. You might walk through the streets of London and say of the masses of men you meet upon those crowded pavements with sighs and tears—“Lost, lost, lost!” Wherever Christ is not trusted, and the Spirit has not created a new heart, and the soul has not come to the great Father, there is a lost soul. But here is the mercy—these lost souls can be won. They are not hopelessly lost; not yet has God determined that they shall for ever abide as they are. It is not yet said, “He that is filthy, let him be filthy still,” but they are in the land of hope where mercy may reach them, for they are spoken of as capable of being won. They may yet be delivered, but the phrase hints that it will need all our efforts. “He that winneth souls.”

What do we mean by that word win. We use it in lovemaking. We speak of the bridegroom who wins his bride, and sometimes there is a large expense of love, many a pleading word, and many a wooing act, ere yet the valued heart is all the suitor’s own. I use this explanation because in some respects it is the very best, for souls will have to be won for Christ in this fashion, that they may be espoused unto him. We must make love to the sinner for Christ; that is how hearts are to be won for him. Jesus is the bridegroom, and we must speak for him, and tell of his beauty as Abraham’s servant, when he went to seek a wife for Isaac acted as a wooer in his stead. Have you never read the story? Then turn to it when you get home and see how he talked about his master, what possessions he had, and how Isaac was to be heir of it all and so on, and then he finished his address by urging Rebecca to go with him. The question was put home to her, “Wilt thou go with this man?” So the minister’s business is to commend his Master and his Master’s riches and then to say to souls, “Will you be wedded to Christ?” He who can succeed in this very delicate business is a wise man.

We also use the term in a military fashion. We speak of winning a city, a castle, or a battle. We do not win victories by going to sleep. Believe me, castles are not captured by men who are only half awake. To win a battle needs the best skill, the greatest endurance, and the utmost courage. To storm fortresses which are regarded as almost impregnable, men need to burn the midnight oil and study well the arts of attack; and when the time comes for the assault, not a soldier must be a laggard, but all force of artillery and manhood must be brought to bear on the point assailed. To carry man’s heart by main force of grace, to capture it, to break down the bars of brass and dash the gates of iron in pieces, requires the exercise of a skill which only Christ can give. To bring up the big battering rams and shake every stone in the sinner’s conscience, to make his heart rock and reel within him for fear of the wrath to come, in a word, to assail a soul with all the artillery of the gospel, needs a wise man, and one aroused to his work. To hold up the white flag of mercy, and if that be despised, to use the battering ram of threatening until a breach is made, and then with the sword of the Spirit in his hand to capture the city, to tear down the black flag of sin and run up the banner of the cross, needs all the force the choicest preacher can command and a great deal more. Those whose souls are as cold as the Arctic regions, and whose energy is reduced to the vanishing point, are not likely to take the city of Mansoul for Prince Emanuel. If you think you are going to win souls, you must throw your soul into your work just as a warrior must throw his soul into a battle, or victory will not be yours.

We use the words “to win” in reference to making a fortune, and we all know that the man who becomes a millionaire has to rise up early and sit up late and eat the bread of carefulness, and it takes a deal of toiling and saving, and I know not what besides, to amass immense wealth. We have to go in for winning souls with the same ardor and concentration of our faculties as old Astor of New York went in to build up that fortune of so many millions which he has now left behind him.

It is indeed a race, and you know that in a race nobody wins unless he strains every muscle and sinew. They that run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize; and that one is generally he who had more strength than the rest; certainly, whether he had more strength or not, he put out all he had, and we shall not win souls unless we imitate him in this.

Solomon in the text declares that “He that winneth souls is wise,” and such a declaration is all the more valuable as coming from so wise a man. Let me show you why a true soul-winner is wise. First, he must be taught of God before he will attempt it. The man who does not know that whereas he was once blind, now he sees, had better think of his own blindness before he attempts to lead his friends in the right way. If not saved yourself, you cannot be the means of saving others. He that winneth souls must be wise unto salvation first for himself. That being taken for granted, he is a wise man to select such a pursuit. Young man, are you choosing an object worthy to be the great aim of your life? I do hope you will judge wisely and select a noble ambition. If God has given you great gifts, I hope they will not be wasted on any low, sordid, or selfish design. Suppose I am now addressing one who has great talents, and has an opportunity of being what he likes, of going into Parliament and helping to pass wise measures, or of going into business and making himself a man of importance; I hope he will weigh the claims of Jesus and immortal souls as well as other claims. Shall I addict myself to study? Shall I surrender myself to business? Shall I travel? Shall I spend my time in pleasure? Shall I become the principal fox-hunter of the county? Shall I lay out my time in promoting political and social reforms? Think them all over; but if you are a Christian man, my dear friend, nothing will equal in enjoyment, in usefulness, in honor, and in lasting recompense the giving yourself up to the winning of souls. Oh, it is grand hunting, I can tell you, and beats all the fox hunting in the world in excitement and exhilaration. Have I not sometimes gone with a cry over hedge and ditch after some poor sinner, and kept well up with him in every twist and turn he took till I have overtaken him by God’s grace, and been in at the death, and rejoiced exceedingly when I have seen him captured by my Master. Our Lord Jesus calls his ministers fishermen, and no other fishermen have such labor, such sorrow, and such delight as we have. What a happy thing it is that you may win souls for Jesus, and may do this though you abide in your secular callings. Some of you would never win souls in pulpits, it would be a great pity if you tried, but you can win souls in the workshop, and in the laundry, in the nursery, and in the drawing-room. Our hunting grounds are everywhere: by the wayside, by the fireside, in the corner, and in the crowd. Among the common people Jesus is our theme, and among the great ones we have no other. You will be wise, my brother, if for you the one absorbing desire is that you may turn the ungodly from the error of their ways. For you there will be a crown glittering with many stars, which you shall cast at Jesus’ feet in the day of his appearing.

Further, it is not only wise to make this your aim, but you will have to be very wise if you succeed in it because the souls to be won are so different in their constitutions, feelings, and conditions, and you will have to adapt yourselves to them all. The trappers of North America have to find out the habits of the animals they wish to catch, and so you will have to learn how to deal with each class of cases. Some are very depressed, you will have to comfort them. Perhaps you will comfort them too much, and make them unbelieving; and therefore possibly instead of comforting them you will need sometimes to administer a sharp word to cure the sulkiness into which they have fallen. Another person may be frivolous, and if you put on a serious face you will frighten your bird away; you will have to be cheerful and drop a word of admonition as if by accident. Some people, again, will not let you speak to them, but will talk to you; you must know the art of putting a word in edgeways. You will have to be very wise and become all things to all men, and your success will prove your wisdom. Theories of dealing with souls may look very wise, but they often prove to be useless when actually tried: he who by God’s grace accomplishes the work is a wise man, though perhaps he knows no theory whatever. This work will need all your wit, and far more, and you will have to cry to the great winner of souls above to give you of his Holy Spirit.

But mark you, he that wins souls is wise because he is engaged in a business which makes men wiser as they proceed with it. You will bungle at first, and very likely drive sinners off from Christ by your attempts to draw them to him. I have tried to move some souls with all my might with a certain passage of Scripture, but they have taken it in an opposite light to what it was intended, and have started off in the wrong direction. It is very difficult to know how to act with bewildered enquirers. If you want some people to go forward you must pull them backwards; if you want them to go to the right you must insist upon their going to the left, and then they go to the right directly. You must be ready for these follies of poor human nature. I know a poor aged Christian woman who had been a child of God fifty years, but she was in a state of melancholy and distress from which nobody could arouse her. I called several times and endeavored to cheer her up, but generally when I left she was worse than before. So the next time I called to see her I did not say anything to her about Christ or religion. She soon introduced those topics herself, and then I remarked that I was not going to talk to her about such holy things for she did not know anything about them, for she was not a believer in Christ, and had been, no doubt, a hypocrite for many years. She could not stand that, and asserted, in self-defense that the Lord above knew her better than I did, and he was her witness that she did love the Lord Jesus Christ. She scarcely forgave herself afterwards for that admission, but she could never talk to me quite so despairingly any more. True lovers of men’s souls learn the art of dealing with them, and the Holy Spirit makes them expert soul surgeons for Jesus. It is not because a man has more abilities, nor altogether because he has more grace, but the Lord makes him to love the souls of men intensely, and this imparts a secret skill, since for the most part the way to get sinners to Christ is to love them to Christ.

Beloved brethren, I will say once more he who really wins souls for Jesus, however he wins them, is a wise man. Some of you are slow to admit this. You say—Well, so-and-so, I dare say, has been very useful, but he is very rough. What does his roughness matter if he wins souls? Ah, says another, but I am not built up under him. Why do you go to hear him, to get built up? If the Lord has sent him to pull down, let him pull down, and do you go elsewhere for edification; but do not grumble at a man who does one work because he cannot do another. We are also too apt to pit one minister against another, and say “you should hear my minister.” Perhaps we should, but it would be better for you to hear the man who edifies you, and let others go where they also are instructed. “He that winneth souls is wise.” I do not ask you how he did it. He sang the gospel and you did not like it, but if he won souls he was wise. Soul-winners have all their own ways, and if they do but win souls they are wise. I will tell you what is not wise, and will not be thought so at the last, namely, to go about the churches doing nothing yourself and railing at all the Lord’s useful servants. Here is a dear brother on his dying bed, he has the sweet thought that the Lord enabled him to bring many souls to Jesus, and the expectation when he comes to the gates that many spirits will come to meet him. They will throng the ascent to the New Jerusalem, and welcome the man who brought them to Jesus. They are immortal monuments to his labors. He is wise. Here is another who has spent all his time in interpreting the prophecies; so that everything he read of in the newspapers he could see in Daniel or the Revelation. He is wise, so some say, but I had rather spend my time in winning souls. I would sooner bring one sinner to Jesus Christ than unpick all the mysteries of the divine word, for salvation is the thing we are to live for. I would to God that I understood all mysteries, yet chief of all would I proclaim the mystery of soul-saving by faith in the blood of the Lamb. It is comparatively a small matter for a minister to have been a staunch upholder of orthodoxy all his days, and to have spent himself in keeping up the hedges of his church; soul winning is the main concern. It is a very good thing to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints; but I do not think I should like to say in my last account, “Lord, I have lived to fight the Romanists and the State church, and to put down the various erroneous sects, but I never led a sinner to the cross.” No, we will fight the good fight of faith, but the winning of souls is the greater matter, and he who attends to it is wise. Another brother has preached the truth, but he did so polish up his sermons that the gospel was hidden. Never a sermon was fit to preach, he thought, until he had written it out a dozen times to see whether every sentence would be according to the canons of Cicero and Quintillian, and then he went and delivered the gospel as a grand oration. Is that wise? Well, it takes a wise man to be a thorough orator; but it is better not to be an orator if fine speech prevents your being understood. Let eloquence be flung to the dogs rather than souls be lost. What we want is to win souls, and they are not to be won by flowery speeches. We must have the winning of souls at heart, and be red hot with zeal for their salvation, and then however much we blunder according to the critics, we shall be numbered among those whom the Lord calls wise.

Now, Christian men and women, I want you to take this matter up practically, and to determine that you will try this very night to win a soul. Try the one next to you in the seat if you cannot think of anybody else. Try on the way home; try with your own children. Have I not told you of what happened one Sunday six months ago? In my sermon I said “Now you mothers, have you ever prayed with each of your children, one by one, and urged them to lay hold on Christ? Perhaps dear Jane is now in bed, and you have never yet pleaded with her about eternal things. Go home to-night, wake her up and say, “Jane, I am sorry I have never told you about the Savior personally and prayed with you, but I mean to do it now.” Wake her up, and put your arms round her neck, and pour out your heart to God with her. Well, there was a good sister here who had a daughter named Jane. What do you think? She came on Monday to bring her daughter Jane to see me in the vestry, for when she woke her up and began, “I have not spoken to you about Jesus,” or something to that effect, “Oh, dear mother,” said Jane, “I have loved the Savior these six months, and wondered you had not spoken to me about him;” and then there was such kissing and rejoicing. Perhaps you may find that to be the case with a dear child at home, and if you do not, so much the more reason why you should begin at once to speak. Did you never win a soul for Jesus? You shall have a crown in heaven, but no jewels in it. You will go to heaven childless; and you know how it was in the old times, how the women dreaded lest they should be childless. Let it be so with Christian people; let them dread being spiritually childless. We must hear the cries of those whom God has given to be born unto himself by our means. We must hear them, or else cry out in anguish, “Give me converts or I die.” Young men, and old men, and sisters of all ages, if you love the Lord get a passion for souls. Do you not see them? they are going down to hell by thousands; as often as the hand upon the dial completes its circuit, hell devours multitudes, some of them ignorant of Christ, and others wilfully rejecting him. The world lies in darkness: this great city still pines for the light, your own friends and kinsfolk are unsaved and they may be dead ere this week is over. Oh, if you have any humanity, let alone Christianity, if you have found the remedy tell the diseased about it. If you have found life, proclaim it to the dead; if you have found liberty, publish it to the captives; if you have found Christ, tell of him to others. My brethren in the college, let this be your choice work while studying, and let it be the one object of your lives when you go forth from us. Do not be content when you get a congregation but labor to win souls, and as you do this God will bless you. As for us, we hope during the rest of our lives to follow him who is the soul-winner, and to put ourselves in his hands who maketh us soul-winners, so that our life may not be a long folly, but may be proved by results to have been directed by wisdom. O you souls not won to Jesus, remember that faith in Christ saves you. Trust in him. May you be led to trust in him for his name’s sake. Amen.

How a Man’s Conduct Comes Home
to Him

A sermon (No. 1235) delivered on Lord’s Day Morning, May 16th, 1875,

at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington,

by C. H. Spurgeon.

“The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways: and a good man shall be satisfied from himself.”—Proverbs 14:14.

A common principle is here laid down and declared to be equally true in reference to two characters, who in other respects are a contrast. Men are affected by the course which they pursue; for good or bad, their own conduct comes home to them. The backslider and the good man are very different, but in each of them the same rule is exemplified—they are both filled by the result of their lives. The backslider becomes filled by that which is within him, as seen in his life, and the good man also is filled by that which grace implants within his soul. The evil leaven in the backslider leavens his entire being and sours his existence, while the gracious fountain in the sanctified believer saturates his whole manhood, and baptizes his entire life. In each case the fullness arises from that which is within the man, and is in its nature like the man’s character; the fullness of the backslider’s misery will come out of his own ways, and the fullness of the good man’s content will spring out of the love of God which is shed abroad in his heart.

The meaning of this passage will come out better if we begin with an illustration. Here are two pieces of sponge, and we wish to fill them: you shall place one of them in a pool of foul water, it will be filled, and filled with that which it lies in; you shall put the other sponge into a pure crystal stream, and it will also become full, full of the element in which it is placed. The backslider lies asoak in the dead sea of his own ways, and the brine fills him; the good man is plunged like a pitcher into “Siloa’s brook, which flows hard by the oracle of God,” and the river of the water of life fills him to the brim. A wandering heart will be filled with sorrow, and a heart confiding in the Lord will be satisfied with joy and peace. Or, take two farmsteads; one farmer sows tares in his field, and in due time his barns are filled therewith; another sows wheat, and his garners are stored with precious grain. Or follow out our Lord’s parable: one builder places his frail dwelling on the sand, and when the tempest rages he is swept away in it naturally enough; another lays deep the foundations of his house and sets it fast on a rock, and as an equally natural consequence he smiles upon the storm, protected by his well-founded dwelling-place. What a man is by sin or by grace will be the cause of his sorrow or of his satisfaction.

I. I shall take the two characters without further preface, and first let us speak awhile about the backslider. This is a very solemn subject, but one which it is needful to bring before the present audience, since we all have some share in it. I trust there may not be many present who are backsliders in the worst sense of the term, but very, very few among us are quite free from the charge of having backslidden in some measure at some time or other since conversion. Even those who sincerely love the Master sometimes wander, and we all need to take heed lest there be in any of us an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.

There are several kinds of persons who may with more or less propriety be comprehended under the term “backsliders,” and these will each in his own measure be filled with his own ways.

There are first, apostates, those who unite themselves with the church of Christ, and for a time act as if they were subjects of a real change of heart. These persons are frequently very zealous for a season, and may become prominent if not eminent in the church of God. They did run well like those mentioned by the apostle, but by some means they are, first of all, hindered, and slacken their pace; after that they linger and loiter, and leave the crown of the causeway for the side of the road. By-and-by in their hearts they go back into Egypt, and at last, finding an opportunity to return, they break loose from all the restraints of their profession and openly forsake the Lord. Truly the last end of such men is worse than the first. Judas is the great type of these pre-eminent backsliders. Judas was a professed believer in Jesus, a follower of the Lord, a minister of the gospel, an apostle of Christ, the trusted treasurer of the college of the apostles, and after all turned out to be the “son of perdition” who sold his Master for thirty pieces of silver. He ere long was filled with his own ways, for, tormented with remorse, he threw down the blood-money he had so dearly earned, hanged himself, and went to his own place. The story of Judas has been written over and over again in the lives of other traitors. We have heard of Judas as a deacon, and as an elder; we have heard Judas preach, we have read the works of Judas the bishop, and seen Judas the missionary. Judas sometimes continues in his profession for many years, but sooner or later the true character of the man is discovered; his sin returns upon his own head, and if he does not make an end of himself, I do not doubt but what, even in this life, he often lives in such horrible remorse that his soul would choose strangling rather than life. He has gathered the grapes of Gomorrah and he has to drink the wine; he has planted a bitter tree and he must eat the fruit thereof. Oh sirs, may none of you betray your Lord and Master. God grant I never may. “Traitor! Traitor!” Shall that ever be written across your brow? You have been baptised into the name of the adorable Trinity, you have eaten the tokens of the Redeemer’s body and blood, you have sung the Songs of Zion, you have stood forward to pray in the midst of the people of God, and will you act so base a part as to betray your Lord? Shall it ever be said of you, “Take him to the place from whence he came, for he is a traitor”? I cannot conceive of anything more ignominious than for a soldier to be drummed out of a regiment of Her Majesty’s soldiers, but what must it be to be cast out of the host of God! What must it be to be set up as the target of eternal shame and everlasting contempt for having crucified the Lord afresh, and put him to an open shame! How shameful will it be to be branded as an apostate from truth and holiness, from Christ and his ways. Better never to have made a profession than to have belied it so wretchedly, and to have it said of us, “it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, the dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.” Of such John has said, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.”

This title of backslider applies also to another class, not so desperate but still most sad, of which not Judas but David may serve as the type: we refer to backsliders who go into open sin. There are men who descend from purity to careless living, and from careless living to indulgence of the flesh, and from indulgence of the flesh in little matters into known sin, and from one sin to another till they plunge into uncleanness. They have been born again and therefore the trembling and almost extinct life within must and shall revive and bring them to repentance: they will come back weary, weeping, humbled, and brokenhearted, and they will be restored, but they will never be what they were before; their voices will be hoarse like that of David after his crime, for he never again sung so jubilantly as in his former days. Life will be more full of trembling and trial, and manifest less of buoyancy and joy of spirit. Broken bones make hard travelling, and even when they are set they are very subject to shooting pains when ill weathers are abroad. I may be addressing some of this sort this morning, and if so I would speak with much faithful love. Dear brother, if you are now following Jesus afar off you will ere long, like Peter, deny him. Even though you will obtain mercy of the Lord, yet the text will certainly be fulfilled in you, and you will be “filled with your own ways.” As certainly as Moses took the golden calf and ground it into powder, and then mixed it with the water which the sinful Israelites had to drink till they all tasted the grit in their mouths, so will the Lord do with you if you are indeed his child: he will take your idol of sin and grind it to powder, and your life shall be made bitter with it for years to come. When the gall and wormwood are most manifest in the cup of life, it will be a mournful thing to feel “I procured this unto myself by my shameful folly.” O Lord, hold thou us up, and keep us from falling by little and little lest we plunge into overt sin and continue in it for a season; for surely the anguish which comes of such an evil is terrible as death itself. If David could rise from his grave and appear before you with his face seamed with sorrow and his brow wrinkled with his many griefs, he would say to you “keep your hearts with all diligence lest ye bring woe upon yourselves. Watch unto prayer, and guard against the beginnings of sin lest your bones wax old through your roarings, and your moisture be turned into the drought of summer.” O beware of a wandering heart, for it will be an awful thing to be filled with your own backslidings.

But there is a third sort of backsliding, and I am afraid a very large number of us have at times come under the title—I mean those who in any measure or degree, even for a very little time, decline from the point which they have reached. Perhaps such a man hardly ought to be called a backslider because it is not his predominant character, yet he backslides. If he does not believe as firmly, and love as intensely, and serve as zealously as he formerly did, he has in a measure backslidden, and any measure of backsliding, be it less or be it more, is sinful, and will in proportion as it is real backsliding fill us with our own ways. If you only sow two or three seeds of the thistle there will not be so many of the ill weeds on your farm as if you had emptied out a whole sack, but still there will be enough and more than enough. Every little backsliding, as men call it, is a great mischief; every little going back even in heart from God, if it never comes to words or deeds, yet will involve us in some measure of sorrow. If sin were clean removed from us, sorrow would be removed also, in fact we should be in heaven since a state of perfect holiness must involve perfect blessedness. Sin in any degree will bear its own fruit, and that fruit will be sure to set our teeth on edge; it is ill therefore to be a backslider even in the least degree.

Having said so much, let me now continue to think of the last two kinds of backsliders, and leave out the apostate. Let us first read his name, and then let us read his history, we have both in our text.

The first part of his name is “backslider.” He is not a back runner, nor a back leaper, but a backslider, that is to say he slides back with an easy, effortless motion, softly, quietly, perhaps unsuspected by himself or anybody else. The Christian life is very much like climbing a hill of ice. You cannot slide up, nay, you have to cut every step with an ice axe; only with incessant labor in cutting and chipping can you make any progress; you need a guide to help you, and you are not safe unless you are fastened to the guide, for you may slip into a crevasse. Nobody ever slides up, but if great care be not taken they will slide down, slide back, or in other words backslide. This is very easily done. If you want to know how to backslide, the answer is leave off going forward and you will slide backward, cease going upward and you will go downward of necessity, for stand still you never can. To lead us to backslide, Satan acts with us as engineers do with a road down the mountains side. If they desire to carry the road from yonder alp right down into the valley far below, they never think of making the road plunge over a precipice, or straight down the face of the rock, for nobody would ever use such a road; but the road makers wind and twist. See, the track descends very gently to the right, you can hardly see that it does run downwards; anon it turns to the left with a small incline, and so by turning this way and then that, the traveler finds himself in the vale below. Thus the crafty enemy of souls fetches saints down from their high places; whenever he gets a good man down it is usually by slow degrees. Now and then, by sudden opportunity and strong temptation, the Christian man has been plunged right from the pinnacle of the temple into the dungeon of despair in a moment, but it is not often the case; the gentle decline is the devil’s favourite piece of engineering, and he manages it with amazing skill. The soul scarcely knows it is going down, it seems to be maintaining the even tenor of its way, but ere long it is far below the line of peace and consecration. Our dear brother, Dr. Arnot, of the Free Church, illustrates this very beautifully by supposing a balance. This is the heavy scale loaded with seeds, and the other is high in the air. One morning you are very much surprised to find that what had been the heavier scale is aloft, while the other has descended. You do not understand it till you discover that certain little insects had silently transferred the seeds one by one. At first they made no apparent change, by-and-bye there was a little motion, one more little seed was laid in the scales and the balance turned in a moment. Thus silently the balance of a man’s soul may be affected, and everything made ready for that one temptation by which the fatal turn is made, and the man becomes an open transgressor. Apparently insignificant agencies may gradually convey our strength from the right side to the wrong by grains and half-grains, till at last the balance is turned in the actual life and we are no more fit to be numbered with the visible saints of God.

Think again of this man’s name. He is a “backslider,” but what from? He is a man who knows the sweetness of the things of God and yet leaves off feeding upon them. He is one who has been favored to wait at the Lord’s own table, and yet he deserts his honorable post, backslides from the things which he has known, and felt, and tasted, and handled, and rejoiced in— things that are the priceless gifts of God. He is a backslider from the condition in which he has enjoyed a heaven below; he is a backslider from the love of him who bought him with his blood; he slides back from the wounds of Christ, from the works of the Eternal Spirit, from the crown of life which hangs over his head, and from a familiar intercourse with God which angels might envy him. Had he not been so highly favored he could not have been so basely wicked. O fool and slow of heart to slide from wealth to poverty, from health to disease, from liberty to bondage, from light to darkness; from the love of God, from abiding in Christ, and from the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, into lukewarmness, worldliness, and sin. The text however, gives the man’s name at greater length, “The backslider in heart.” Now the heart is the fountain of evil. A man need not be a backslider in action to get the text fulfilled in him, he need only be a backslider in heart. All backsliding begins within, begins with the heart’s growing lukewarm, begins with the love of Christ being less powerful in the soul. Perhaps you think that so long as backsliding is confined to the heart it does not matter much; but consider for a minute, and you will confess your error. If you went to your physician and said, “Sir, I feel a severe pain in my body,” would you feel comforted if he replied “There is no local cause for your suffering, it arises entirely from disease of the heart”? Would you not be far more alarmed than before? A case is serious indeed when it involves the heart. The heart is hard to reach and difficult to understand, and moreover it is so powerful over the rest of the system, and has such power to injure all the members of the body, that a disease in the heart is an injury to a vital organ, a pollution of the springs of life. A wound wherein there are a thousand wounds, a complicated wounding of all the members with a stroke. Look ye well then to your hearts, and pray, “O Lord cleanse thou the secret parts of our spirit and preserve us to thy eternal kingdom and glory!”

Now let us read this man’s history—“he shall be filled with his own ways,” from which it is clear that he falls into ways of his own. When he was in his right state he followed the Lord’s ways, he delighted himself in the law of the Lord, and he gave him the desire of his heart; but now he has ways of his own which he prefers to the ways of God. And what comes of this perverseness? Does he prosper? No; he is before long filled with his own ways; we will see what that means.

The first kind of fullness with his own ways is absorption in his carnal pursuits. He has not much time to spend upon religion; he has other things to attend to. If you speak to him of the deep things of God he is weary of you, and even of the daily necessaries of godliness he has no care to hear much, except at service time. He has his business to see to, or he has to go out to a dinner party, or a few friends are coming to spend the evening: in any case, his answer to you is “I pray thee have me excused.” Now, this pre-occupation with trifles is always mischievous, for when the soul is filled with chaff there is no room left for wheat; when all your mind is taken up with frivolities, the weighty matters of eternity cannot enter. Many professed Christians spend far too much time in amusements, which they call recreation, but which I fear is far rather a redestruction than a recreation. The pleasures, cares, pursuits, and ambitions of the world swell in the heart when they once enter, and by-and-bye they fill it completely. Like the young cuckoo in the sparrow’s nest, worldliness grows and grows and tries its best to cast out the true owner of the heart. Whatever your soul is full of, if it be not full of Christ, it is in an evil case.

Then backsliders generally proceed a stage further, and become full of their own ways by beginning to pride themselves upon their condition and to glory in their shame. Not that they really are satisfied at heart, on the contrary, they have a suspicion that things are not quite as they ought to be, and therefore they put on a bold front and try to deceive themselves and others. It is rather dangerous to tell them of their faults, for they will not accept your rebuke, but will defend themselves, and even carry the war into your camp. They will say, “Ah, you are puritanical, strict and straight-laced, and your manners and ways do mischief rather than good.” They would not bring up their children as you do yours, so they say. Their mouths are very full because their hearts are empty, and they talk very loudly in defense of themselves because their conscience has been making a great stir within them. They call sinful pleasure a little unbending of the bow, greed is prudence, covetousness is economy, and dishonesty is cleverness. It is dreadful to think that men who know better should attempt thus to excuse themselves. Generally the warmest defender of a sinful practice is the man who has the most qualms of conscience about it. He himself knows that he is not living as he should, but he does not intend to cave in just yet, nor at all if he can help it. He is filled with his ways in a boasted self-content as to them.

Ere long this fullness reaches another stage, for if the backslider is a gracious man at all, he encounters chastisement, and that from a rod of his own making. A considerable time elapses before you can eat bread of your own growing: the ground must be ploughed and sown, and the wheat has to come up, to ripen, and to be reaped and threshed and ground in the mill, and the flour must be kneaded and baked in the oven; but the bread comes to the table and is eaten at last. Even so the backslider must eat of the fruit of his own ways. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked, whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Now look at the backslider eating the fruit of his ways. He neglected prayer, and when he tries to pray he cannot; his powers of desire, emotion, faith, and entreaty have failed; he kneels awhile, but he cannot pray; the Spirit of supplications is grieved, and no longer helps his infirmities. He reaches down his Bible; he commences to read a chapter, but he has disregarded the word of God so long that he finds it to be more like a dead letter than a living voice, though it used to be a sweet book before he became a backslider. The minister, too, is altered; he used to hear him with delight; but now the poor preacher has lost all his early power, so the backslider thinks. Other people do not think so, the place is just as crowded, there are as many saints edified and sinners saved as before; but the wanderer in heart began criticizing, and now he is entangled in the habit, and he criticises every thing, but never feeds upon the truth at all. Like a madman at table he puts his fork into the morsel and holds it up, looks at it, finds fault with it, and throws in on the floor. Nor does he act better towards the saints in whose company he once delighted; they are dull society and he shuns them. Of all the things which bear upon his spiritual life he is weary, he has trifled with them, and now he cannot enjoy them. Hear him sing, or rather sigh —

“Thy saints are comforted, I know,

And love thy house of prayer;

I sometimes go where others go,

But find no comfort there.”

How can it be otherwise? He is drinking water out of his own cistern and eating the bread of which he sowed the corn some years ago. His ways have come home to him.

Chastisement also comes out of his conduct in other ways. He was very worldly and gave gay parties, and his girls have grown up and grieved him by their conduct. He himself went into sin, and now that his sons outdo his example, what can he say? Can he wonder at anything? Look at David’s case. David fell into a gross sin, and soon Amnon his son rivalled him in iniquity. He murdered Uriah the Hittite, and Absalom murdered his brother Amnon. He rebelled against God, and lo, Absalom lifted up the standard of revolt against him. He disturbed the relationships of another man’s family in a disgraceful manner, and behold his own family rent in pieces, and never restored to peace; so that even when he lay a-dying he had to say, “My house is not so with God.” He was filled with his own ways and it always will be so, even if the sin be forgotten. If you have sent forth a dove or a raven from the ark of your soul, it will come back to you just as you sent it out. May God save us from being backsliders lest the smooth current of our life should turn into a raging torrent of woe.

The fourth stage, blessed be God, is at length reached by gracious men and women, and what a mercy it is they ever do reach it! At last they become filled with their own ways in another sense; namely, satiated and dissatisfied, miserable and discontented. They sought the world and they gained it, but now it has lost all charms to them. They went after other lovers, but these deceivers have been false to them, and they wring their hands and say, “Oh that I could return to my first husband for it was better with me then than now.” Many have lived at a distance from Jesus Christ, but now they can bear it no longer; they cannot be happy till they return. Hear them cry in the language of the fifty-first psalm, “Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.” But, I tell you, they cannot get back very easily. It is hard to retrace your steps from backsliding, even if it be but a small measure of it; but to get back from great wanderings is hard indeed, much harder than going over the road the first time. I believe that if the mental sufferings of some returning backsliders could be written and faithfully published they would astound you, and be a more horrible story to read than all the torments of the Inquisition. What racks a man is stretched upon who has been unfaithful to his covenant with God! What fires have burned within the souls of those men who have been untrue to Christ and his cause! What dungeons, what grim and dark prisons under ground have saints of God lain in who have gone aside into By-path Meadow instead of keeping to The King’s Highway. Their sighs and cries, for which after all they have learned to be thankful, are dolorous and terrible to listen to, and make us learn that he who sins must smart, and especially if he be a child of God, for the Lord has said of his people, “you only have I known of all the people of the earth, therefore I will punish you for your iniquities.” Whoever may go unchastised, a child of God never shall: the Lord will let his adversaries do a thousand things and not punish them in this life, since he reserves vengeance for them in the life to come, but as for his own children, they cannot sin without being visited with stripes.

Beloved friends, let all go straight away to the cross at once for fear we should be backsliders—

“Come, let us to the Lord our God

With contrite hearts return

Our God is gracious, nor will leave

The penitent to mourn.”

Let us confess every degree and form of backsliding, every wandering of heart, every decline of love, every wavering of faith, every flagging of zeal, every dulness of desire, every failure of confidence. Behold, the Lord says unto us, “Return”; therefore let us return. Even if we be not backsliders it will do us no hurt to come to the cross as penitents, indeed, it is well to abide there evermore. O Spirit of the living God, preserve us in believing penitence all our days.

II. I have but little time for the second part of my text. Excuse me therefore if I do not attempt to go into it very deeply. As it is true of the backslider that he grows at last full of that which is within him and his wickedness, it is true also of the Christian, that in pursuing the paths of righteousness and the way of faith, he becomes filled and contented too. That which grace has placed within him fills him in due time.

Here then we have the good man’s name and history.

Notice first, his name. It is a very remarkable thing that as a backslider, if you call out his name, will not as a rule answer to it, even so a good man will not acknowledge the title here assigned him. Where is the good man? Know that every man here who is right before God will pass the question on, saying, “There is none good save One, that is, God.” The good man will also question my text and say “I cannot feel satisfied with myself.” No, dear friend, but mind you read the words aright. It does not say “satisfied with himself,” no truly good man ever was self-satisfied, and when any talk as if they are self-satisfied it is time to doubt whether they know much about the matter. All the good men I have ever met with have always wanted to be better; they have longed for something higher than as yet they have reached. They would not own to it that they were satisfied, and they certainly were by no means satisfied with themselves. The text does not say that they are, but it says something that reads so much like it that care is needed. Now, if I should seem to say this morning that a good man looks within and is quite satisfied with what he finds there, please let me say at once, I mean nothing of the sort. I should like to say exactly what the text means, but I do not know quite whether I shall manage to do it, except you will help me by not misunderstanding me, even if there should be a strong temptation to do so. Here is the good man’s history, he is “satisfied from himself,” but first I must read his name again, though he does not own to it, what is he good for? He says, “good for nothing,” but in truth he is good for much when the Lord uses him. Remember that he is good because the Lord has made him over again by the Holy Spirit. Is not that good which God makes? When he created nature at the first he said of all things that they were very good; how could they be otherwise, since he made them? So in the new creation a new heart and right spirit are from God, and must be good. Where there is grace in the heart the grace is good and makes the heart good. A man who has the righteousness of Jesus, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is good in the sight of God.

A good man is on the side of good. If I were to ask, who is on the side of good? we would not pass on that question. No, we would step out and say “I am. I am not all I ought to be, or wish to be, but I am on the side of justice, truth, and holiness; I would live to promote goodness, and even die rather than become the advocate of evil.” And what is the man who loves that which is good? Is he evil? I trow not. He who truly loves that which is good must be in a measure good himself. Who is he that strives to be good, and groans and sighs over his failures, yea and rules his daily life by the laws of God? Is he not one of the world’s best men? I trust without self-righteousness the grace of God has made some of us good in this sense, for what the Spirit of God has made is good, and if in Christ Jesus we are new creatures, we cannot contradict Solomon, nor criticize the Bible if it calls such persons good, though we dare not call ourselves good.

Now, a good man’s history is this, “He is satisfied from himself.”

That means first that he is independent of outward circumstances. He does not derive satisfaction from his birth, or honors, or properties; but that which fills him with content is within himself. Our hymn puts it so truly—

I need not go abroad for joys,

I have a feast at home,

My sighs are turned into songs,

My heart has ceased to roam.

Down from above the blessed Dove

Is come into my breast,

To witness thine eternal love

And give my spirit rest.”

Other men must bring music from abroad if they have any, but in the gracious man’s bosom there lives a little bird that sings sweetly to him. He has a flower in his own garden more sweet than any he could buy in the market or find in the king’s palace. He may be poor, but still he would not change his estate in the kingdom of heaven for all the grandeur of the rich. His joy and peace are not even dependent upon the health of his body, he is often well in soul when sick as to his flesh; he is frequently full of pain and yet perfectly satisfied. He may carry about with him an incurable disease which he knows will shorten and eventually end his life, but he does not look to this poor life for satisfaction, he carries that within him which creates immortal joy: the love of God shed abroad in his soul by the Holy Ghost yields a perfume sweeter than the flowers of Paradise. The fulfillment of the text is partly found in the fact that the good man is independent of his surroundings.

And he is also independent of the praise of others. The backslider keeps easy because the minister thinks well of him and Christian friends think well of him, but the genuine Christian who is living near to God thinks little of the verdict of men. What other people think of him is not his chief concern; he is sure that he is a child of God, he knows he can say, “Abba, Father,” he glories that for him to live is Christ, and to die is gain, and therefore he does not need the approbation of others to buoy up his confidence. He runs alone, and does not need, like a weakly child, to be carried in arms. He knows whom he has believed, and his heart rests in Jesus; thus he is satisfied not from other people and from their judgment, but “from himself.”

Then again, the Christian man is content with the well of upspringing water of life which the Lord has placed within him. There, my brethren, up on the everlasting hills is the divine reservoir of all-sufficient grace, and down here in our bosom is a spring which bubbles up unto everlasting life. It has been welling up in some of us these five and-twenty years, but why is it so? The grand secret is that there is an unbroken connection between the little spring within the renewed breast and that vast unfathomed fount of God, and because of this the well-spring never fails; in summer it still continues to flow. And now if you ask me if I am dissatisfied with the spring within my soul which is fed by the all-sufficiency of God, I reply, no, I am not. If you could by any possibility cut the connection between my soul and my Lord I should despair altogether, but as long as none can separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, I am satisfied and at rest. Like Naphtali we are “satisfied with favor and full of the blessing of the Lord.”

Faith is in the good man’s heart and he is satisfied with what faith brings him, for it conveys to him the perfect pardon of his sin. Faith brings him nearer to Christ. Faith brings him adoption into the family of God. Faith secures him conquest over temptation. Faith procures for him everything he requires. He finds that by believing he has all the blessings of the covenant daily to enjoy. Well may he be satisfied with such an enriching grace. The just shall live by faith.

In addition to faith, he has another filling grace called hope, which reveals to him the world to come, and gives him assurance that when he falls asleep he will sleep in Jesus, and that when he awakes he will arise in the likeness of Jesus. Hope delights him with the promise that his body shall rise, and that in his flesh he shall see God. This hope of his sets the pearly gates wide open before him, reveals the streets of gold, and makes him hear the music of the celestial harpers. Surely a man may well be satisfied with this.

The godly heart is also satisfied with what love brings him; for love though it seem but a gentle maid, is strong as a giant, and becomes in some respects the most potent of all the graces. Love first opens wide herself like the flowers in the sunshine, and drinks in the love of God, and then she joys in God and begins to sing:—

“I am so glad that Jesus loves me.”

She loves Jesus, and there is such an interchange of delight between the love of her soul to Christ and the love of Christ to her, that heaven itself can scarce be sweeter. He who knew this deep mysterious love will be more than filled with it, he will need to be enlarged to hold the bliss which it creates. The love of Jesus is known, but yet it passeth knowledge. It fills the entire man, so that he has no room for the idolatrous love of the creature, he is satisfied from himself and asks no other joy.

Beloved, when the good man is enabled by divine grace to live in obedience to God, he must as a necessary consequence, enjoy peace of mind. His hope is alone fixed on Jesus, but a life which evidences his possession of salvation casts many a sweet ingredient into his cup. He who takes the yoke of Christ upon him and learns of him finds rest unto his soul. When we keep his commandments we consciously enjoy his love, which we could not do if we walked in opposition to his will. To know that you have acted from a pure motive, to know that you have done the right is a grand means of full content. What matters the frown of foes or the prejudice of friends, if the testimony of a good conscience is heard within? We dare not rely upon our own works, neither have we had a desire or need to do so, for our Lord Jesus has saved us everlastingly; still, “Our rejoicing is this, the testimony our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world.”

The Christian needs to maintain unbroken fellowship with Jesus his Lord if he would be good as a soldier of Christ, but if his communion be broken his satisfaction will depart. If Jesus be within we shall be satisfied from within, but not else; if our fellowship with him be kept up, and it may be from day to day, and month to month, and year to year (and why should it ever be snapped at all), then the satisfaction will continue and the soul will continue to be full even to the brim with the bliss which God alone can give. If we are by the Holy Spirit made to be abundant in labor or patient in suffering, if, in a word, we resign ourselves fully up to God, we shall find a fullness of his grace placed within ourselves. An enemy compared some of us to cracked vessels, and we may humbly accept the description. We do find it difficult to retain good things, they run away from our leaking pitchers; but I will tell how a cracked pitcher can be kept continually full. Put it in the bottom of an ever-flowing river, and it must be full. Even so though we are leaking and broken, if we abide in the love of Christ we shall be filled with his fullness. Such an experience is possible; we may be

“Plunged in the Godhead’s deepest sea,

And lost in his immensity,”

Then we shall be full—full to running over; as the Psalmist says, “my cup runneth over.” The man who walks in God’s ways, obediently resting wholly upon Christ, looking for all his supplies to the great eternal deeps, that is the man who will be filled—filled with the very things which he has chosen for his own, filled with those things which are his daily delight and desire. Well may the faithful believer be filled, for he has eternity to fill him—The Lord has loved him with an everlasting love; —there is the eternity past: “The mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but my covenant shall not depart from thee”—there is the eternity to come. He has infinity, yea the infinite One himself, for the Father is his Father, the Son is his Savior, the Spirit of God dwells within him—the Trinity may well fill the heart of man. The believer has omnipotence to fill him, for all power is given unto Christ, and of that power Christ will give to us according as we have need. Living in Christ and hanging upon him from day to day, beloved, we shall have a “peace of God which passeth all understanding to keep our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” May we enjoy this peace and magnify the name of the Lord for ever and ever. Amen.