CHARLES SPURGEON INSTABILITY
“Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.” Genesis 49:4
PERFECT stability has ceased from the world since the day when Adam fell.
He was stable enough when in the garden he was obedient to his Master’s
will, but when he ate of the forbidden fruit he did not only slide himself, but
he shook the standing places of all his posterity. Perfect stability belongs
alone to God he alone, of all beings, is without variableness or shadow of a
turning. He is immutable, he will not change. He is all-wise, he need not
change. He is perfect; he cannot change. But men, the best of them are
mutable, and therefore to a degree, they are unstable, and do not excel. Yet
it is remarkable that, although man has lost perfect stability, he has not lost
the admiration of it. Perhaps there is no virtue, or, rather, no compound of
virtues, which the world more esteems than stability of mind. You will find
that, although men have often misplaced their praise, and have called those
great who were not great, morally, but were far below the level of
morality, yet they have scarcely ever called a man great who has not been
consistent, who has not had strength of mind enough to be stable in his
principles. I know not how it is, but so it is, whenever a man is firm and
consistent, we always admire him for it. Though we feel certain that he is
wrong, yet his consistency in his wrong still excites our admiration. We
have known men whom we have thought to be insane, they have conceived
a design so ridiculous that we could only laugh at them, and despise their
idea; but they have stuck to it, and we have said, “Well, there is nothing
like a man standing to a thing,” and we have admired even the senseless,
brainless idiot, as we have thought him, when we have seen him
pertinaciously insisting that his idea would at last triumph, and persevering
in futile endeavors to realize his wish. The weathercock man is never
admired, as a politician or as anything else he will never succeed; he must
be one thing or another, or the world will never respect him.
Now, my brethren, if it be so in earthly things, it is so also in spiritual.
Instability in religion is a thing which every man despises, although every
man has, to a degree, the evil in himself, but stability in the firm profession
and practice of godliness, will always win respect, even from the worldly,
and certainly will not be forgotten by him whose smile is honor and whose
praise is glory, even the great Lord and Master, before whom we stand or
fall. I have many characters here to-day whom I desire to address in the
words of my text. “Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.” I propose,
first, briefly to notice, the common and unavoidable instabilities which
necessarily attach themselves to the best of Christians. I shall then note the
character of a Christian who is noted for glaring instability, but who,
notwithstanding, has sufficient of godliness to bid us hope that he is a child
of God, I shall then have to do with the mere professor, who is “unstable
as water,” and cannot excel in any way whatever; and then I must deal with
the unstable sinner who, in any pretensions he may ever make to better
feelings, is always like the early cloud and the morning dew.
I. First, then, to ALL Christians, permit me to address myself. Our father
Adam, spoilt us all; and, although the second Adam has renewed us, he has
not yet removed from us the infirmities, which the first Adam left us as a
mournful legacy. We are none of us stable as we should be. We had a
notion when we were first converted, that we should never know a change;
our soul was so full of love that we could not imagine it possible we should
ever flag in our devotion; our faith was so strong in our Incarnate Master,
that we smiled at older Christians who talked of doubts and fears; our faces
were so stedfastly set Zionward that we never imagined Bye-path Meadow
would ever be trodden by our feet. We felt sure that our course would
certainly be “like the shining light, which shineth more and more unto the
perfect day.” But, my brethren, have we found it so? Have we not this day
to lament that we have been very changeable and inconstant, even unstable
as water? How unstable have we been in our frames? To-day we have
climbed the top of Pisgah, and have viewed the heavenly landscape over by
the eye of faith; to-morrow we have been plunged in the dungeon of
despair, and could not call a grain of hope our own; to-day we have feasted
at the banquetting table of communion; to-morrow we have been
exclaiming, “Oh! that I knew where I might find him, that I might come
even unto his feet.” At night I have said, “I will not let thee go except thou
bless me,” to-morrow has beheld my grasp loosened, and prayer neglected
until God has said “I will return unto my rest, until thou hast acknowledged
thy transgressions, which thou hast committed against me.” High frames
one day, low frames the next We have had more changes than even this
variable climate of ours. It is a great mercy for us that frames and slings are
not always the index of our security, for we are as safe when we are
mourning as we are when we are singing; but verily, if our true state before
God had changed as often as our experience of his presence, we must have
been cast into the bottomless pit years ago.
And how variable have we been in our faith! In the midst of one trouble we
have declared, “though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” We have
courted the jeer, we have laughed at the scorn of the world, and have stood
like rocks in the midst of foaming billows, when all men were against us;
another week has seen us flying away, after denying our Master, because,
like Peter, we were afraid of some little maid, or of our own shadow. After
coming out of a great trouble, we have resolutely declared “I can never
doubt God again,” but the next cloud that has swept the sky, has darkened
all our faith. We have been variable in our faith.
And have you not also, at times, my friends, felt variable in your love?
Sweet Master, King of heaven, fairest of a thousand fairs! my heart is knit
to thee — my soul melteth at the mention of thy name; my heart bubbleth
up with a good matter, when I speak of the things which I have made
touching the King.
The strings that bind around my heart,
Tortures and racks may tear them off;
But they can never, never part,
The hold I have of Christ, my love.”
Sure, I could die for thee, and think it better than to live, if so I might
honor thee. This is the sweet manner of our spirit when our love is burning
and fervent: but anon we neglect the fire, it becomes dim, and we have to
rake among the ashes even for a spark, crying,
“‘Tis a point I long to know,
Oft it causes anxious thought,
Do I love the Lord or no?
Am I his, or am I not?”
How unstable we are! At one time we are quite certain we are the Lord’s.
though an angel from heaven should deny our election, or our adoption, we
would reply that we have the witness of the Spirit that we are born of God,
but perhaps within two minutes we shall not be able to say that we ever
had one spiritual feeling. We shall perhaps think that we never repented
aright, never fled to Christ aright, and did never believe to the saving of the
soul. Oh! it is no wonder that we do not excel, when we are such unstable
creatures. Alas! my brethren I might enlarge on the inconsistencies of the
mass of Christians. How unfaithful we have been to our dedication vows!
how negligent of close communion! How unlike we have been to holy
Enoch! how much more like Peter, when he followed afar off! I might tell
how one day, like the mariner, we mounted up to heaven, and how the next
moment we have gone to the lowest depths when the waves of God’s
grace have ceased to lift us up. I wonder at David, at Jacob, and at every
instance we have in Scripture of excellent men. Marvel! O ye angels, that
God should ever make such bright stars out of such black blots as we are.
How can it ever be that man, so fickle, so inconstant, should nevertheless
be a pillar in the house of his God, and should be made to stand “steadfast,
immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord!” How is it, O our
God, that thou couldst have steered a vessel so safely to its port which was
so easily driven by every wind and carried away by every wave! He is a
good marksman who an shoot so crooked an arrow straight to its target.
Marvel not that we do not excel — marvel that we do excel in anything
unstable as we are.
II. And now leaving these general remarks I have to single out a certain
class of persons. I believe them to be TRUE CHRISTIANS but they are
Christians of a singular sort. I would not be so harsh as to condemn them,
though I must certainly condemn the error with which I am about to find
fault. I doubt not that they have been converted in a genuine manner, but
still they are often a mystery to me, and I should think they are a mystery
to themselves. How many Christians have we in our churches that are
unstable as water! I suppose they were born so. They are just as unstable in
business as they are in religion; they open a grocer’s shop, and shut it in
three months, and turn drapers, and when they have been drapers long
enough to become almost bankrupts, they leave that and try something
else. When they were boys they could never play a game through, they
must always be having something fresh, and now they are just as childish as
when they were children. Look at them in doctrine: you never know where
to find them. You meet them one day, and they are very full of some superlapsarian
doctrine, they have been to some strong Calvinist place, and
nothing will suit them except the very highest doctrine and that must be
spiced with a little of the gall of bitterness, or they cannot think it is the
genuine thing. Very likely next week they will be Arminians; they will give
up all idea of a fixed fate, and talk of free-will, and man’s responsibility like
the most earnest Primitive Methodist. Then they steer another way.
“Nothing is right but the Church of England. Is it not established by law?
Ought not every Christian to go to his parish church?” Ah! ah, Let them
alone, they will be at the most gross schismatical shop in the metropolis
before long. Or if they do not change their denomination they are always
changing their minister. A new minister starts up; there is no one, since the
apostles, like him; they take a seat and join the church; he is everything to
them. In three months they have done with him, another minister rises up
some distance off, and these people are not particular how far they walk;
so they go to hear him. He is the great man of the age; he will see every
man’s candle out, and his will burn on. But a little trouble comes on the
church, and they leave him. They have no attachment to anything; they are
merely feathers in the wind or corks on the wave. They hear a sermon
preached, and they say, “I think it did me good” but they do not venture to
be sure till they speak to some great man who is a member of the church,
and he says “Oh! there was nothing in it.” “Ah! just so,” they say, and
cannot make up their minds whether it was a good sermon or not. They are
unstable; they could easily be talked into anything or out of anything, they
never had any brains in their head, I suppose, or if they ever had any they
gave them to somebody else to muddle as he liked. They believe the last
man they hear, and are easily guided and led by him.
Now, if the matter ended there it would not be so bad; but these poor
people are just the same with regard to any religious enterprize they take in
hand. There is a Sunday-school, they are enchanted with the thought. What
a lovely thing it must be to sit on a form and try to teach half-a-dozen boys
the way to heaven. They go to the Sunday-school and are alarmed the very
first day, when they hear all the boys talking louder than the teachers. After
about ten minutes they think it is not quite so nice as they thought. Perhaps
they think it is that particular school they do not like, and they try another,
and at last they give up all Sunday-school teaching, and make up their
minds that it is not a good thing, at least not for them. Then there is a
Ragged-school. What a divine enterprize! They will be Ragged-school
teachers, and off they go with their hearts full of fire, and their eyes full of
tears over these poor ragged-school children they are going to teach. Ah!
how soon is their zeal withered and all their glory departed! Hear them talk
about Ragged-schools a month afterwards: they shake their heads and say
it is a very arduous enterprise. They do not think they had a call to it, they
will try something else, and so they keep on to the end of the chapter, they
are “everything by turns, and nothing long.” There are some brethren in the
ministry very much of the same sort. They never preach in one pulpit long,
(though some say they preach there too long, for they ought never to have
preached there at all) but I sometimes think that if they had had a little
more courage, and bore a little more of the brunt of the battle, they might
have done good to some of the villages where they were placed. But they
are unstable as water, and everybody sees that they cannot excel. The same
instability men will carry out in their friendships; they meet a person one
day, and are as friendly as possible with him; they meet him the next day,
he does not know what he has done to offend them, but they turn their
head another way. And some carry their instability a little farther, they
carry it into their moral character. I shall not deny their Christianity, but
they are a queer sort of Christians. For these people will sometimes, at
least, stretch the cords of godliness a little too far, and though they
certainly do act in the main conscientiously, yet their conscience is a large
one, and it admits a great many things which tender-hearted people would
think were wrong. We cannot find out any crime for which we could
excommunicate them, yet in our hearts we often say, “Dear me! what a sad
disgrace so-and-so is to the cause; we could do far better without him than
with him, for he casts such a slur on the name of Christ.”
Now, do not think I am drawing a fancy picture. I beg to inform you I am
not; there are persons here who are furnishing me with the model; and if
they choose to think me personal I shall be obliged to them, for I intend to
be. These persons are to be found in all churches and among all
denominations. You have met them everywhere. They are as unstable as
water; they do not excel.
Now, let me address these persons very earnestly. My brother, I would be
far from dealing in a censorious manner with thee, for I am inclined to
think that thine instability is a little owing to some latent insanity. We are
no doubt all of us insane to a degree; there is some little thing in us, which
if we saw in another we should regard as being a little madness. I would
therefore, my brother, deal very leniently with you, but at the same time let
me very solemnly address you as a Christian minister speaking to a
professedly Christian man. My brother, how much moral weight you lose
in the church, and in the world by your perpetual instability. No one ever
attaches any importance to your opinion, because your opinion has no
importance in it, seeing that you yourself will contradict it in a very short
time. You see many persons growing up in the church who have an
influence over their neighbor for good; you sometimes wish that you too
could strengthen the young convert, or reclaim and guide the wanderer.
My brother you cannot do it, because of your inconsistency. Now is it not
a fearful thing that you should be throwing away the whole force and
weight of your character, simply because of this insane habit of yours of
being always unstable? I beseech thee, my brother, recollect that thou art
responsible to God for thine influence; and if thou canst have influence and
dost not get it thou art as sinful as if, having influence, thou hadst misused
it. Do not, I beseech thee, suffer this instability to continue, lest thou
shouldst become like the chaff which the wind driveth away — of no
account to the world at all. Remember, my brother, how your instability
ruins your usefulness. You never continue long enough in an enterprise to
do good. What would you think of the farmer who should farm just long
enough to plough his ground and sow his wheat, but not long enough to
get a harvest? You would think him foolish; but just so foolish are you.
You begin time enough to be overworked before you have well
commenced. My brother, review your history, what have you done? You
have made hundreds of futile attempts to do something, but a list of
failures must be the only record of your labors. What do you think will be
your distress of mind when you come to die, when you look back upon
your life, and see it all the way through, a host of blunders? Do you not
think it will stuff the pillow of your dying bed with thorns, to think that you
were so wayward in disposition, so unstable in heart, that you were unable
to accomplish anything for your Master, so that when you lay your crown
at his feet you will have to say, “There is my crown, my Master but it has
not a solitary star in it for I never worked long enough for thee in any
enterprise to win a soul; I only did enough to fail and to be laughed at by
all.” And I would have thee think also, my brother, how canst thou be a
growing Christian, and yet be so changeable as thou art? If a gardener
should plant a tree to day, and take it up in the course of a month, and
transfer it to another place, what crop would he have when autumn came?
He would not have much to repay his toil. The continual changing of the
tree would put it into such a weakly condition, that if it did not actually die,
it would certainly produce nothing. And how can you expect to grow in
knowledge when you have no steadfast principle? The man who espouses
one form of doctrine, and does it honestly, will, though it be a mistaken
form, at least understand it, but you do not know enough of Calvinism to
defend it from its opponents, or enough of Arminianism to defend it from
the Calvinists. You are not wise in anything, you are a rolling stone, you
gather no moss. You stay in one school only long enough to read through
the curriculum, but you learn nothing. You are smiling I see. And yet some
of those who smiled are just the men we smile at. They are here. But alas! I
have noticed one sad thing respecting these people, they are generally the
most conceited in all the world; they are excellent men they think; they are
at home everywhere. If they are in error they know they can get right tomorrow,
and then if some one else will again convince them they are in
error, they know no difference between error and truth, except the
difference which other people like to point out to them. O ye unstable
Christians, hear ye the word of the Lord! “Unstable as water thou shalt not
excel.” Your life shall have little of the cream of happiness upon it: you
shall not walk in the midst of the king’s highway, in which no lion shall be
found, but you shall walk on the edge of the way, where you shall
encounter every danger, feel every hardship and endure every ill. You shall
have enough of God’s comfort to keep you alive, but not enough to give
you joy in your spirit and consolation in your heart. Oh, I beseech you
ponder a little. Study the Word more, know what is right, and defend what
is right. Study the Law more, know what is right, and do what is right.
Study God’s will more, know what be would have you do, and then do it.
For an unstable Christian never can excel.
III. But now there is another class of persons whom we dare not, in the
spirit of the widest charity admit to be true Christians. They are
PROFESSORS they have been baptized, they receive the Lord’s Supper, they
attend prayer meetings church meetings, and everything else that belongs
to the order of Christians with which they are connected. They are never
behindhand in religious performances; they are the most devout hypocrites,
they are the most pious formalists that could be discovered, range the wide
world o’er. Their religion on the Sabbath day is of the most superfine
order; their godliness when they are in their pews cannot be exceeded.
They sing with the most eloquent praise, they pray the longest and most
hypocritical prayer that man could utter; they are just up to the mark in
every religious point of view, except on the point which looks to the heart
As far as the externals of godliness go there is nothing to be desired. They
tithe the anise, the mint, and the cummin; they fast twice in the week; or if
they do not fast, they are quite as religious in not fasting, and are just as
godly in not doing it, as if they did it.
But these people are unstable as water, in the worst sense; for whilst they
sing Watts’s hymns on Sunday, they sing other songs on Monday, and
whilst they drink sacramental cups on Sabbath evenings, there are other
cups of which they drink too deep on other nights; and though they pray
most marvellously, there is a pun on that word pray, and they know how to
exercise it upon their customers in business. They have a great affection for
everything that is pious and devout; but alas! like Balaam, they take the
reward of wickedness, and they perish in the gainsaying of Core. “These
are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding
themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of
winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by
the roots. Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame;
wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.”
They bring a disgrace upon the cause which they profess: not the vilest
profane swearer brings more dishonor on God’s holy name than they do.
They can find fault with everything in the church, whilst they commit all
manner of wickedness, and are, as the apostle said, even weeping “enemies
of the cross of Christ, for their God is their belly, and they glory in their
shame.” O hypocrite, thou thinkest that thou shalt excel, because the
minister has been duped, and gives thee credit for a deep experience,
because the deacons have been entrapped and think thee to be eminently
godly, because the church members receive thee to their houses, and think
thee a dear child of God too! Poor soul! mayhap thou mayest go to thy
grave with the delusion in thy brain that all is right with thee; but
remember, though like a sheep thou art laid in thy grave, Death will find
thee out. He will say to thee, Off with thy mask, man! away with all thy
robes! Up with that whitewashed sepulcher! Take off that green turf; let
the worms be seen. Out with the body; let us see the reeking corruption!
and what wilt thou say when thine abominably corrupt and filthy heart shall
be opened before the sun, and men and angels hear thy lies and hypocrisies
laid bare before them? Wilt thou play the hypocrite then? Soul, come and
sing God’s praises in the day of judgment with false lip! Tell him now,
while a widow’s house is in your throat, tell him that you love him! Come,
now, thou that devourest the fatherless, thou that robbest, thou that dost
uncleanness! tell him now that thou didst make thy boast in the Lord! tell
him that thou didst preach his word, tell him that thou didst walk in his
streets! tell him thou didst make it known that thou wert one of the
excellent of the earth! What! man, is thy babbling tongue silent for once?
What is the matter with thee? Thou wast never slow to talk of thy
godliness. Speak out, and say “I took the sacramental cup; I was a
professor.” Oh how changed! The whitewashed sepulcher has become
white in another sense, he is white with horror. See now; the talkative has
become dumb; the boaster is silent; the formalist’s garb is rent to rags, the
moth has devoured their beauty; their gold has become tarnished, and their
silver cankered. Ah! it must be so with every man who has thus belied God
and his own conscience. The stripping day of judgment will reveal him to
God and to himself. And how awful shall be the damnation of the
hypocrite! If I knew that I must be damned, one of my prayers should be,
“Lord, let me not be damned with hypocrites,” for surely to be damned
with them is to be damned twice over. Conceive of a hypocrite going into
hell. You know how one of the prophets depicted the advent of a great
monarch into hell, when all the kings that had been his slaves rose up and
said, “Art thou become like one of us?” Do you not think you see the
godly Christian deacon, so godly that he was a liar all his life? Do you not
think you see the eminent Christian member that kept a bank, took the
chair at public meetings, swindled all he could, and died in despair? Do you
not think you see him coming into the pit? There is one man there that was
a drunkard all his life. Hear his speech, “Ah! you were a sober man! you
used to talk to me, and tell me that drunkards could not inherit the
kingdom of heaven. Aha! and art thou become like one of us?“ Says
another, “About a month ago, when we were on earth, you met me and
rebuked me for profane swearing, and told me that all swearers should
have their portion in the lake. Ah! there is not much to choose between
thee and me now, is there?” And the profane man laughs as well as he can
laugh in misery at his desperately religious adviser. “Oh!” says another —
and they look round at one another with demoniac mirth; as much mockery
of joy as hell can afford — “The parson here? Now preach us a sermon;
now pray us a long prayer! Plenty of time to do it in!” “No!” sans another,
“there is no widow’s house to eat, here, and he only prayed on the
strength of the widow’s house.”
This is a hard scene for me to describe; but I doubt not of its truthfulness.
It may be given to you in rough language, but it needs far rougher to make
you know the dread reality. And what a solemn thought it is! there is not
one man nor one woman in this place who has not need to ask, “Is it so
with me?” Many have been deceived — I may be — you may be, my
hearer. “I am not deceived,” says one, “I am a minister.” My brethren,
there are many of us who are preachers who are like Noah’s carpenters; we
may help to build an ark, and never get in it ourselves. Says another, “I
shall not endure such language as that; I am a deacon.” You may be all
that, and yet, after having ministered, instead of earning to yourself a good
degree, you may be cast from the presence of God. “No,” says another,
“but I have been a Christian professor these last forty years, and nobody
has found fault with me.” Ah! I have known many A rotten bough to have
stopped on a tree forty years, and you may be rotten and yet stand all that
time; but the winds of judgment will crack you at last, and down you will
fall. “Nay,” says another. “I know I am not insincere I am sure I am right.”
I am glad that you think so, but I would not like you to say it. “Let him
that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” There have been many
great bubbles that have burst ere this, and your piety may be one of them.
“Let not him that putteth on the harness boast as though he put it off.” It
will be time enough for you to be quite sure when you are quite safe. Yet
blessed be God, we hope we can say, “O Lord, if not awfully deceived we
have given our hearts to thee! Lord thou knowest all things; thou knowest
that we love thee, and if we do not, Lord thou knowest we pray this prayer
from our hearts: ‘Search me, O God, and try my ways, prove me and know
my heart, and see if there be any evil way in me and lead me in the way
everlasting.’” May God the Holy Spirit strengthen and settle each of us.
IV. And now I have the last word to address to those who MAKE NO
PRETENSION TO RELIGION whatever. I have heard hundreds of persons in
my short life excuse their sin by saying, “Well, I make no profession,” and I
have always thought it one of the strangest excuses, one of the most wild
vagaries of apology to which the human mind could ever make resort.
Take an illustration, which I have used before. To-morrow morning, when
the Lord Mayor is sitting, there are two men brought up before him for
robbery. One of them says he is not guilty, he declares that he is a good
character, and he is an honest man in general though he was guilty in this
case. He is punished. The other one says, “Well, your worship, I make no
profession; I’m a down right thorough thief, and I don’t make any
profession of being honest at all.” Why you can suppose how much more
severe the sentence would be upon such a man. Now, when you say I do
not make any profession of being religious, what does that mean? It means
that you are a despiser of God and of God’s law; it means that you are in
the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity. You that boast of making
no profession of religion, you are boasting you know not what of. You
would think it a strange thing for a man to boast that he made no
profession of being a gentleman, or no profession of being honest, or no
profession of being sober, or no profession of being chaste. You would
shun a man who did this, at once. And you who make no pretensions to
religion, just make your trial the more easy for there will be no need for
any dispute concerning you. When the scales of justice are lifted up at last
you will be found to be light weight, and that upon your own confession. I
cannot imagine you urging such a plea as that when God shall judge you.
“My Lord, I made no profession.” “What” saith the King, “did my subject
make no profession of obedience?” “O Lord, I made no profession.”
“What!” saith the Creator, “make no profession of acknowledging my
rights?” “I made no profession of religion.” “What!” saith the Judge, “did I
send my Son into the world to die, and did this man make no profession of
casting his soul upon him? What! did he make no profession of his need of
mercy? Then he shall have none. Does he dare tell me to my face that he
never made any profession of faith in Christ, and never had anything to do
with the Savior? Then insomuch as he despised my Son, and despised his
cross, and rejected his salvation, let him die the death;” and what that death
is with its everlasting wailings and gnashing of teeth, eternity alone can tell.
O sinner! thou hast some part and lot in my text Thou art “unstable as
water.” Let me remind thee that though thou makest no profession of
religion now, there was a time when thou didst. Strong man! you are
laughing now: I repeat it, there was a time when you did talk about
religion; it is not quite gone from your memory yet. You lay sick with fever
for six weeks: do you recollect when the delirium came on, and they all
thought that you must die? Do you recollect when your poor brain was
right for a moment how you asked the physician whether there was any
hope for you, and he would not exactly say “NO,” but he looked so blank
at you, that you understood what it meant? Do you recollect the agony
with which you looked forward to death? Do you recollect how you
groaned in your spirit, and said, “O God, have mercy upon me?” Do you
recollect that you got a little better, and you told your friends that if you
lived you would serve God?
“Oh! it is all over now,” you say, you were a fool! Yes, you were a fool,
that is true, you were a fool, to have said what you did not mean and to
have lied before God. You do not profess religion! But you remember the
last time the terrific thunder and lightning came. You were out in the
storm. A flash came very near you. You are a bold man, but not so bold as
you pretend to be. You shook from head to foot, and when the thunder
clap succeeded, you were almost down on your knees, and before you
knew it you were in prayer. “Please God I get home to-night,” you said, “I
shall not take his name in vain again!” But you have done it. You are
unstable as water. You went sometime ago to a church or a chapel — I
mind not which: the minister told you plainly where you were going. You
stood there and trembled; tears ran down your cheeks, you did not knock
your wife about that Sunday, you were a greet deal more sober that week,
and when your companion said you looked squeamish, you denied it, and
said you had no such thoughts as he imagined. “Unstable as water.” Oh!
and there are some of you worse than that still: for not once, nor twice, but
scores of times you have been driven under a faithful minister, to the very
verge of what you thought repentance, and then, just when something said
in your heart, “This is a turning point,” you have started back, you have
chosen the wages of unrighteousness, and have again wandered into the
world. Soul! my heart yearns for thee! “Unstable as water thou shalt not
excel.” No, but I pray the Lord to work in thee something that will be
stable; for we all believe — and what I say is not a matter of fiction, but a
thing that you believe in your own hearts to be true — we all believe that
we must stand before the judgment bar of God, and ere long give account
of the things done in the body, whether they be good or whether they be
evil. Friend, what account wilt thou give of thy broken vows, of thy
perjured soul? What wilt thou have to say why judgment should not be
pronounced against thee? Ah! sinner, you will want Christ then! What
would you give then for one drop of his blood? “Oh! for the hem of his
garment! Oh, that I might but look to him and be lightened. Oh, would to
God that I might hear the gospel once again!” I hear you wailing, when
God has said, “Depart ye cursed!” And this is the burden of your song
“Fool that I was, to have despised Jesus, who was my only hope, to have
broken my promise, and gone back to the poor vain world that deluded me,
after all!” And now I hear him say “I called, but ye refused, I stretched out
my hand, but no man regarded; now I will laugh at your calamity, and
mock when your fear cometh.” I always think those two last sentences the
most awful in the Bible. “I will laugh at your calamity.” The laugh of the
Almighty over men that have rebelled against him, that have despised him,
and trodden his gospel underfoot! “I also will laugh at your calamity I will
mock when your fear cometh.” Rail at that if you like, it is sure, sirs.
Remember that all your kicking at God’s laughter will not make him leave
it off; remember that all your rebellious speeches against him shall be
avenged in that day, unless ye repent, and that speak as ye will against him
your blasphemy cannot quench the flames of hell, nor will your jeers slay
the sword of vengeance: fall it must, and it will fall on you all the more
heavily because you did despise it.
Hear the gospel, and then farewell. Jesus Christ the eternal Son of God
was born of the Virgin Mary and became a man, he lived on earth a life of
holiness and suffering; at last he was nailed to the cross, and in deep woe
he died. He was buried; he rose again from the deed, he ascended into
heaven. And now God “commandeth all men everywhere to repent;” and
he telleth them this — “Whosoever believeth on the Son of God shall not
perish, but have eternal life.” And this is his gospel. If you this day feel
yourself to be a sinner, if that be a feeling wrought in you by the Holy
Spirit and not a casual thought flashing across the soul, then Christ was
punished for your sins; and you cannot be punished; for God will not
punish twice for one offense. Believe in Christ; cast your soul on the
atonement that he made; and although black as hell in sin, you may this day
find yourself, through the efficacious blood of Christ, whiter than the snow.
The Lord help thee, poor soul, to believe that the Man who died on
Calvary was God, and that he took the sin of all believers upon himself —
that thou, being a sinner and a believer, he has taken thy sins, and that
therefore thou art free. Thus believe, and by faith thou wilt have peace with
God through Jesus Christ our Lord, by whom also we have received the
atonement.