eChurch Christian Blog

“Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.”
Hebrews 13:8

IT is well that there is one person who is the same. It is well that there is
one stable rock amidst the changing billows of this sea of life; for how
many and how grievous have been the changes of last year? How many of
you who commenced in affluence, have by the panic, which has shaken
nations, been reduced almost to poverty? How many of you, who in strong
health marched into this place on the first Sabbath of last year, have had to
come tottering here, feeling that the breath of man is in his nostrils, and
wherein is he to be accounted of? Many of you came to this hall with a
numerous family, leaning upon the arm of a choice and much loved friend.
Alas! for love, if thou wert all, and nought beside, o earth! For ye have
buried those ye loved the best. Some of you have come here childless, or
widows, or fatherless, still weeping your recent affliction. Changes have
taken place in your estate that have made your heart full of misery. Your
cups of sweetness have been dashed with draughts of gall; your golden
harvests have had tares cast into the midst of them, and you have had to
reap the noxious weed along with the precious grain. Your much fine gold
has become dim, and your glory has departed; the sweet frames at the
commencement of last year became bitter ones at the end. Your raptures
and your ecstacies were turned into depression and forebodings. Alas! for
our charges, and hallelujah to him that hath no change.

But greater things have changed than we; for kingdoms have trembled in
the balances. We have seen a peninsula deluged with blood, and mutiny
raising its bloody war whoop. Nay, the whole world hath changed; earth
hath doffed its green, and put on its sombre garment of Autumn, and soon
expects to wear its ermine robe of snow. All things have changed. We
believe that not only in appearance but in reality, the world is growing old.
The sun itself must soon grow dim with age; the folding up of the wornout
vesture has commenced; the changing of the heavens and the earth has
certainly begun. They shall perish; they all shall wax old as doth a garment;
but for ever blessed be him who is the same, and of whose years there is no
end. The satisfaction that the mariner feels, when, after having been tossed
about for many a day, he puts his foot upon the solid shore, is just the
satisfaction of a Christian when, amidst all the changes of this troublous
life, he plants the foot of his faith upon such a text as this — “the same
yesterday, and to day, and for ever.” The same stability that the anchor
gives the ship, when it hath at last got the grip of some immovable rock,
that same stability doth our hope give to our spirits, when, like an anchor,
it fixes itself in a truth so glorious as this — “Jesus Christ the same
yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.”

I shall first try this morning to open the text by a little explanation; then I
shall try to answer a few objections which our wicked unbelief will be quite
sure to raise against it; and afterwards I shall try to draw a few useful,
consoling, and practical lessons from the great truth of the immutability of
Jesus Christ.

I. First, then, we open the text by a little EXPLANATION — “Jesus Christ
the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.” He is the same in his
person. We change perpetually; the bloom of youth gives place to the
strength of manhood, and the maturity of manhood fades away into the
weakness of old age. But, “Thou hast the dew of thy youth.” Christ Jesus,
whom we adore, thou art as young as ever! We came into this world with
the ignorance of infancy; we grow up searching, studying, and learning
with the diligence of youth; we attain to some little knowledge in our riper
years; and then in our old age we totter back to the imbecility of our
childhood. But o, our Master! thou didst perfectly foreknow all mortal or
eternal things from before the foundations of the world, and thou knowest
all things now, and for ever thou shalt be the same in thine omniscience.
We are one day strong, and the next day weak — one day resolved, and
the next day wavering — one hour constant, and the nest hour unstable as
water. We are one moment holy, kept by the power of God; we are the
next moment sinning, led astray by our own lusts; but our Master is for
ever the same; pure, and never spotted; firm, and never changing —
everlastingly Omnipotent, unchangeably Omniscient. From him no attribute
doth pass away; to him no parallax, no tropic, ever comes; without
variableness or shadow of a turning, he abideth fast and firm. Did Solomon
sing concerning his best beloved, “His head is as the most fine gold: his
locks are bushy and black as a raven. His eyes are as the eyes of doves by
the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set. His cheeks are as a
bed of spices, as sweet flowers: his lips like lilies, dropping sweet smelling
myrrh. His hands are as gold rings set with the beryl: his belly is as bright
ivory overlaid with sapphires. His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon
sockets of fine gold; his countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the
cedars?” Surely we can even now conclude the description from our own
experience of him; and while we endorse every word which went before,
we can end the description by saying, “ His mouth is most sweet, yea he is
altogether lovely. His matchless beauty is unimpaired; he is still ‘the chief
among ten thousand,’ — ‘fairest of the sons of men.’ “ Did the divine John
talk of him when he said — “His head and his hairs were white like wool,
as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto
fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of
many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars; and out of his
mouth went a sharp two-edged sword; and his countenance was as the sun
shineth in his strength.” He is the same; upon his brow there is ne’er a
furrow; his locks are grey with reverence, but not with age; his feet stand
as firm as when they trod the everlasting mountains in the years before the
world was made — his eyes as piercing as when, for the first time, he
looked upon a newborn world. Christ’s person never changes. Should he
come on earth to visit us again, as sure he will, we should find him the
same Jesus; as loving, as approachable, as generous, as kind, and though
arrayed in nobler garments than he wore when first he visited earth, though
no more the Man of Sorrows and grief’s acquaintance, yet he would be the
same person, unchanged by all his glories, his triumphs, and his joys We
bless Christ that amid his heavenly splendours his person is just the same,
and his nature unaffected. “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day,
and for ever.”

Again: Jesus Christ is the same with regard to his Father as ever. He was
his Father’s well-beloved Son before all worlds; he was his well-beloved in
the stream of baptism; he was his well-beloved on the cross; he was his
well-beloved when he led captivity captive, and he is not less the object of
his Father’s infinite affection now than he was then. Yesterday he lay in
Jehovah’s bosom, God, having all power with his Father — to-day he
stands on earth man, with us, but still the same, for ever — he ascends on
high and still he is his Father’s son still by inheritance, having a more
excellent name than angels — still sitting far above all principalities and
powers, and every name that is named. O Christian, give him thy cause to
plead; the Father will answer him as well now as he did afore time. Doubt
not the Father’s grace. Go to thine Advocate. He is as near to Jehovah’s
heart as ever — as prevalent in his intercession. Trust him, then, and in
trusting him thou mayest be sure of the Father’s love to thee.

But now there is a yet sweeter thought. Jesus Christ is the same to his
people as ever. We have delighted in our happier moments, in days that
have rolled away, to think of him that loved us when we had no being; we
have often sung with rapture of him that loved us when we loved not him.

“Jesus sought me when a stranger
Wandering from the fold of God;
He to save my soul from danger
Interposed his precious blood.”

We have looked back, too, upon the years of our troubles and our trials;
and we can bear our solemn though humble witness, that he has been true
to us in all our exigencies, and has never failed us once. Come, then, let us
comfort ourselves with this thought — that though to-day he may distress
us with a sense of sin, yet his heart is just the same to us as ever. Christ
may wear masks that look black to his people, but his face is always the
same; Christ may sometimes take a rod in his hand instead of a golden
scepter; but the name of his saints is as much engraved upon the hand that
grasps the rod as upon the palm that clasps the scepter. And oh, sweet
thought that now bursts upon our mind! Beloved, you conceive how much
Christ will love you when you are in heaven? Have you ever tried to
fathom that bottomless sea of affection in which you shall swim, when you
shall bathe yourself in seas of heavenly rest? Did you ever think of the love
which Christ will manifest to you, when he shall present you without spot,
or blemish, or any such thing, before his Father’s throne? Well, pause and
remember, that he loves you at this hour as much as he will love you then;
for he will be the same for ever as he is to-day, and he is the same to-day as
he will be for ever. This one thing I know: if Jesus’ heart is set on me he
will not love me one atom better when this head wears a crown, and when
this hand shall with joyous fingers touch the strings of golden harps, than
he does now, amidst all my sin and care and woe. I believe that saying
which is written — “As the Father hath loved me, even so have I loved
you;” and a higher degree of love we cannot imagine. The Father loves his
Son infinitely, and even so to-day, believer, doth the Son of God love thee.
Every bowel yearns over thee; all his heart flows out to thee. All his life is
thine; all his person is thine. He cannot love thee more; he will not love
thee less. “The same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.”

But let us here recollect that Jesus Christ is the same to sinners to-day as
he was yesterday. It is now eight years ago since I first went to Jesus
Christ. Come the sixth of this month, I shall then be eight years old in the
gospel of the grace of Jesus: a child, a little child therein as yet. I recall that
hour when I heard that exhortation — “Look unto me and be ye saved, all
the ends of the earth, for I am God, and beside me there is none else.” And
I remember, how with much trembling and with a little faith I ventured to
approach the Saviour’s feet. I thought he would spurn me from him
“Sure,” said my heart, “if thou shouldst presume to put thy trust in him as
thy Savior, it would be a presumption more damnable than all thy sins put
together. Go not to him; he will spurn thee.” However, I put the rope
about my neck, feeling that if God destroyed me for ever, he would be just,
I cast the ashes on my head, and with many a sigh I did confess my sin; and
then when I ventured to draw nigh to him, when I expected that he would
frown, he stretched out his hand, and said, “I, even I, am he that blotteth
out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.”
I came like the prodigal, because I was forced to come. I was starved out
of that foreign country where in riotous living I had spent my substance,
and I saw my Father’s house a great way off, but little did I know that my
Father’s heart was beating high with love to me. O rapturous hour, when
Jesus whispered I was his, and when my soul could say, “Jesus Christ is my
salvation.” And now I would refresh my own memory by reminding myself
that what my Master was to me yesterday that he is to-day; and if I know
that as a sinner I went to him then and he received me, if I have never so
many doubts about my saintship I cannot doubt but what I am a sinner; so
to thy cross, O Jesus, I go again, and if thou didst receive me then, thou
wilt receive me now; and believing that to be true, I turn round to my
fellow-immortals, and I say, “He that received me, he that received
Manasseh, he that received the thief upon the cross, is the same to-day as
he was then. Oh! come and try him! come and try him! Oh! ye that know
your need of him, come ye to him; ye that have sold for nought your
heritage above may have it back unbought, the gift of Jesus’ love. Ye that
are empty, Christ is as full to-day as ever. Come! fill yourselves here. Ye
that are thirsty, the stream is flowing; ye that are black, the fountain still
can purify; ye that are naked, the wardrobe is not empty.

‘Come, guilty souls, and flee away,
To Christ, and heal your wounds;
Still ‘tis the gospel’s gracious day,
And now free grace abounds.’

I cannot pretend to enter into the fullness of my text as I could desire; but
one more thought. Jesus Christ is the same to-day as he was yesterday in
the teachings of his Word. They tell us in these times that the
improvements of the age require improvements in theology. Why, I have
heard it said that the way Luther preached would not suit this age. We are
too polite! The style of preaching, they say, that did in John Bunyan’s day,
is not the style now. True, they honor these men; they are like the
Pharisees; they build the sepulchres of the prophets that their fathers slew,
and so they do confess that they are their fathers’ own sons, and like their
parents. And men that stand up to preach as those men did, with honest
tongues, and know not how to use polished courtly phrases, are as much
condemned now as those men were in their time; because, say they, the
world is marching on, and the gospel must march on too. No, sirs, the old
gospel is the same; not one of her stakes must be removed, not one of her
cords must be loosened. “Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou
hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.” Theology hath
nothing new in it except that which is false. The preaching of Paul must be
the preaching of the minister to-day. There is no advancement here. We
may advance in our knowledge of it; but it stands the same, for this good
reason, that it is perfect, and perfection cannot be any better. The old truth
that Calvin preached, that Chrysostom preached that Paul preached, is the
truth that I must preach to-day, or else be a liar to my conscience and my
God. I cannot shape the truth. I know of no such thing as paring off the
rough edges of a doctrine. John Knox’s gospel is my gospel. That which
thundered through Scotland must thunder through England again. The
great mass of our ministers are sound enough in the faith, but not sound
enough in the way they preach it. Election is not mentioned once in the
year in many a pulpit; final perseverance is kept back; the great things of
God’s law are forgotten, and a kind of mongrel mixture of Arminianism
and Calvinism is the delight of the present age. And hence the Lord hath
forsaken many of his tabernacles and left the house of his covenant, and he
will leave it till again the trumpet gives a certain sound. For wherever there
is not the old gospel we shall find “Ichabod” written upon the church walls
ere long. The old truth of the Covenanters, the old truth of the Puritans,
the old truth of the Apostles, is the only truth that will stand the test of
time. and never need to be altered to suit a wicked and ungodly generation.
Christ Jesus preaches to-day the same as when he preached upon the
mount; he hath not changed his doctrines; men may ridicule and laugh, but
still they stand the same — semper idem written upon every one of them.
They shall not be removed or altered.

Let the Christian remember that this is equally true of the promises. Let the
sinner remember this is just as true of the threatenings. Let us each
recollect that not one word can be added to this Sacred Book. nor one
letter taken away from it; for as Christ Jesus is yet the same, so is his
Gospel, the same yesterday, to-day and for ever.

I have thus briefly opened the text, not in its fullest meanings, but still
enough to enable the Christian at his own leisure to see into thee depth
without a bottom — the immutability of Christ Jesus the Lord.

II. And now comes in one of crooked gait, with hideous aspect — one
that hath as many lives as a cat, and that cannot be killed anyhow, though
many a great gun hath been shot against him. His name is old Mr.
Incredulity — unbelief; and he begins his miserable oration by declaring,
“How can that be true? ‘Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and
for ever.’ Why, yesterday Christ was all sunshine to me — to-day I am in
distress!” Stop, Mr. Unbelief; I beg you to remember that Christ is not
changed. You have changed yourself, for you have said in your very
accusation that yesterday you rejoiced, but to-day you are in distress. All
that may happen, and yet there may be no change in Christ The sun may be
the same always though one hour may be cloudy, and the next bright with
golden light; yet there is no proof that the sun has changed. ‘Tis even so
with Christ.

“If to-day he deigns to bless us
With a sense of pardoned sin,
He to-morrow may distress us,
Make us feel the plague within.
All to make us,
Sick of self and fond of him.”

There is no change in him.

“Immutable his will
Though dark may be my frame,
His loving heart is still
Unchangeably the same.
My soul through many changes goes,
His love no variation knows.”

Your frames are no proof that Christ changes: they are only proof that you
change.

But saith old Unbelief again — “Surely God has changed: you look at the
old saints of ancient times. What happy men they were! How highly
favored of their God! How well God provided for them! But now, sir,
when I am hungry, no ravens come and bring me bread and meat in the
morning, and bread and meat in the evening. When I am thirsty, no water
leaps out of the rock to supply my thirst. It is said of the children of Israel
that their clothes waxed not old, but I have a hole in my coat to-day, and
where I shall get another garment I know not. When they marched through
the desert he suffered no man to hurt them; but, sir, I am continually beset
by enemies. It is true of me as it says in the Scriptures, ‘And the
Ammonites distressed Israel at the coming in of the year;’ for they are
distressing me. Why, sir, I see my friends die in clouds; there are no fiery
chariots to carry God’s Elijahs to heaven now. I lost my son; no prophet
laid upon him and gave him life again; no Jesus met me at the city gates, to
give me back my son from the gloomy grave. No, sir, these are evil times;
the light of Jesus Christ has become dim, if he walks among the golden
candlesticks, yet still it is not as he used to do. And worse than that, sir, I
have heard my father talk of the great men that were in the age gone by: I
have heard the names of Romaine, and Toplady, and Scott; I have heard of
Whitfields and of Bunyans; and even but a few years ago I heard talk of
such men as Joseph Irons — solemn and earnest preachers of a full gospel.
But where are those men now? Sir, we have fallen upon an age of
drivellings; men have died out, and we have only a few dwarfs left us; there
are none that walk with the giant tramp and the colossal tread of the
mighty fathers, like Owen, and Howe, and Baxter, and Charnock. We are
all little men. Jesus Christ is not dealing with us as he did with our fathers.”
Stop, Unbelief, a minute: let me remind thee that the ancient people of God
had their trials too. Know ye not what the apostle Paul says? “For thy sake
we are killed all the day long.” Now, if there be any change it is a change
for the better; for you have not yet “resisted unto blood, striving against
death”

But remember that still that does not affect Christ; for neither nakedness
nor famine, nor sword, have separated us from the love of God, which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord. It is true that you have no fiery chariot; but then the
angels carry you to Jesus’ bosom, and that is as well. It is true no ravens
bring you food, it is quite as true you get your food somehow or other. It
is quite certain that no rock gushes out with water, but still your water has
been sure. It is true your child has not been raised from the dead, but you
remember that David had a child that was not raised any more than yours.
You have the same consolation as he had: “I shall go to him, he shall not
return to me.” You say that you have more heart-rendings than the saints
had of old. It is your ignorance that makes you say so. Holy men of old
said, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Why art thou disquieted within
me?” Even prophets had to say — “Thou hast made me drunken with
wormwood, and broken my teeth with gravel stones.” Oh, you are
mistaken: your days are not more full of trouble than the days of Job, you
are not more vexed by the wicked than was Lot of old, you have not more
temptations to make you angry than had Moses; and certainly your way is
not half so rough as the way of your blessed Lord. The very fact that you
have troubles is a proof of his faithfulness; for you have got one half of his
legacy, and you will have the other half. You know that Christ’s last will
and testament has two portions in it. “In the world ye shall have
tribulation:” you have got that. The next clause is — “In me ye shall have
peace.” You have that too. “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the
world.” That is yours also.

And then you say that you have fallen upon a bad age with regard to
ministers. It may be so; but remember, the promise is true still. “Though I
take away from thee bread and water yet will I never take away thy
pastors.” You have still such as you have — still some that are faithful to
God and to his covenant, and who do not forsake the truth and though the
day may be dark, yet it is not so dark as days have been; and besides
remember, what you say to day is just what your forefathers said. Men in
the days of Toplady looked back to the days of Whitfield; men in the days
of Whitfield looked back to the days of Bunyan; men in the days of Bunyan
wept, because of the days of Wycliffe, and Calvin, and Luther, and men
then wept for the days of Augustine and Chrysostom. Men in those days
wept for the days of the Apostles; and doubtless men in the days of the
Apostles wept for the days of Jesus Christ; and no doubt some in the days
of Jesus Christ were so blind as to wish to return to the days of prophesy,
and thought more of the days of Elijah then they did of the most glorious
day of Christ. Some men look more to the past than the present. Rest
assured, that Jesus Christ is the same to-day as he was yesterday, and he
will be the same for ever.

Mourner, be glad! I have heard of a little girl who, when her father died,
saw her mother weeping immoderately. Day after day, and week after
week, her mother refused to be comforted. and the little girl stepped up to
her mother, and putting her little hand inside her mother’s hand, looked up
in her face, and said, “Mamma, is God dead? Is God dead, mamma ?” And
her mother thought, “Surely, no.” The child seemed to say “Thy maker is
thy husband; the Lord of hosts is his name. So you may dry your tears, I
have a father in heaven and you have a husband still” Oh! ye saints that
have lost your gold and your silver; ye have got treasure in heaven, where
no moth nor rust doth corrupt, where no thieves break through and steal!
Ye that are sick to-day, ye that have lost health, remember the day is
coming when all that shall be made up to you, and when ye shall find that
the flame has not hurt you, it has but consumed your dross and refined
your gold. Remember, Jesus Christ is “the same to-day, yesterday, and for
ever.”

III. And now I must be brief in drawing one or two sweet conclusions
from that part of the text.

First, then, if he be the same to-day as yesterday, my soul, set not thy
affections upon these changing things, but set thine heart upon him. O my
heart, build not thine house upon the sandy pillars of a world that soon
must past away, but build thy hopes upon this rock, which when the ram
descends and floods shall come, shall stand immovably secure. O my soul, I
charge thee, lay up thy treasure in this secure granary. O my heart, I bid
thee now put thy treasure where thou canst never lose it. Put it in Christ;
put all thine affections in his person, all thy hope in his glory, all thy trust in
his efficacious blood, all thy joy in his presence, and then thou wilt have
put thyself and put thine all where thou canst never lose anything, because
it is secure. Remember, O my heart, that the time is coming when all things
must fade, and when thou must part with all. Death’s gloomy night must
soon put out thy sunshine; the dark flood must soon roll between thee and
all thou hast. Then put thine heart with him who will never leave thee trust
thyself with him who will go with thee through the black and surging
current of death’s stream, and who will walk with thee up the steep hills of
heaven and make thee sit together with him in heavenly places for ever.
Go, tell thy secrets to that friend that sticketh closer than a brother. My
heart, I charge thee, trust all thy concerns with him who never can be taken
from thee, who will never leave thee, and who will never let thee leave him,
even “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.” That is
one lesson.

Well, then, the next. If Jesus Christ be always the same, then, my soul,
endeavor to imitate him. Be thou the same too. Remember that if thou
hadst more faith, thou wouldst be as happy in the furnace as on the
mountain of enjoyment. Thou wouldst be as glad in famine as in plenty,
thou wouldst rejoice in the Lord when the olive yielded no oil, as well as
when the vat was bursting and overflowing its brim. If thou hadst more
confidence in thy God, thou wouldst have far less of tossings up and down;
and if thou hadst greater nearness to Christ thou wouldst have less
vacillation. Yesterday thou couldst pray with all the power of prayer;
perhaps if thou didst always live near thy master, thou mightest always
have the same power on thy knees. One time thou canst bid defiance to the
rage of Satan, and thou canst face a frowning world; to-morrow thou wilt
run away like a craven. But if thou didst always remember him who
endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, thou mightest always
be firm and stedfast in thy mind. Beware of being like a weather-cock.
Seek of God, that his law may be written on your hearts as if it were
written in stone, and not as if it were written in sand. Seek that his grace
may come to you like a river and not like a brook that fails. Seek that you
may keep your conversation always holy; that your course may be like the
shining light that tarries not, but that burneth brighter and brighter until the
fullness of the day. Be ye like Christ — ever the same.

Again: if Christ be always the same, Christian, rejoice! Come what may
thou art secure.

“Let mountains from their seats be hurled
Down to the deeps and buried there;
Convulsions shake the solid world;
Our faith shall never need to fear.”

If kingdoms should go to rack the Christian need not tremble. Just for a
minute imagine a scene like this. Suppose for the next three days the sun
should not rise; suppose the moon should be turned into a clot of blood,
and thine no more upon the world; imagine that a darkness that might be
felt, brooded over all men; imagine next that all the world did tremble in an
earthquake till every tower and house and hut fell down: imagine next that
the sea forgot its place and leaped upon the earth, and that the mountains
ceased to stand, and began to tremble from their pedestals; conceive after
that that a blazing comet streamed across the sky — that the thunder
bellowed incessantly — that the lightnings without a moment’s pause
followed one the other; conceive then that thou didst behold divers terrible
sights fiendish ghosts and grim spirits. imagine next, that a trumpet, waxing
exceeding loud, did blow, that there were heard the shrieks of men dying
and perishing; imagine, that in the midst of all this confusion there was to
be found a saint. My friend, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, to-day, and
for ever,” would keep him as secure amidst all these horrors as we are today.
Oh I rejoice! I have pictured the worst that can come. Then you
would be secure. Come what may then, you are safe, while Jesus Christ is
the same.

And now, last of all, if Jesus Christ be “the same yesterday, to lay, and for
ever,” what sad work this is for the ungodly! Ah! sinner, when he was on
earth he said, “Their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched.” When
he stood upon the mount he said, “It were better to enter life halt or
maimed, than having two hands or two feet to be cast into hell fire.” As a
man on earth, he said, that the goats should be on the left, and that he
would say to them. “Depart, ye cursed.” Sinner, he will be as good as his
Word. He has said, “He that believeth not shall be damned.” He will damn
you if you believe not, depend upon it. He has never broken a promise yet;
he will never break a threatening. That same truth which makes us
confident to day that the righteous shall go away into everlasting life
should make you quite as confident that unbelievers shall go into eternal
misery. If he had broken his promise he might break his threatening; but as
he has kept one he will keep the other. Do not hope that he will change, for
change he will not. Think not that the fire which he said was unquenchable
will after all be extinguished. No, within a few more years, my hearer, if
thou dost not repent, thou wilt find that every jot and every letter of the
threatenings of Jesus will be fulfilled; and, mark thee, fulfilled in thee. Liar,
he said, “All liars shall have their portion in the lake that burns with fire and
brimstone.” He will not deceive you. Drunkard, he has said, “Ye know that
no drunkard hath eternal life.” He will not belie his word. You shall not
have eternal life. He has said, “The nations that forget God shall be cast
into hell.” All ye that forget religion, moral people you may be, he will
keep his word to you; he will cast you into hell. O “kiss the Son lest he be
angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little;
blessed are all they that put their trust in him.” Come, sinner, bow thy
knee; confess thy sin and leave it; and then come to him; ask him to have
mercy upon thee. He will not forget his promise — “Him that cometh unto
me I will in no wise cast out.” Come and try him. With all your sins about
you, come to him now. “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be
saved;” for this is my Master’s gospel, and I now declare it — “He that
believeth and is immersed shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be
damned.” God grant you grace to believe, through Jesus Christ our Lord,
Amen.

“What have I done?” Jeremiah 8:6

PERHAPS no figure represents God in a more gracious light than those
figures of speech, which represent him as stooping from his throne, and as
coming down from heaven to attend to the wants and to behold the woes
of mankind. We must have love for that God, who, when Sodom and
Gomorrah were reeking with iniquity, would not destroy those cities,
although he knew their guilt and their wickedness, until he had made an
actual visitation to them and had sojourned for awhile in their streets.
Methinks we cannot help pouring out our heart in affection to that God, of
whom we are told that he inclines his ear from the highest glory, and puts it
to the lip of the faintest that breathes out the true desire. How can we resist
feeling that he is a God whom we must love, when we know that he
regards everything that concerns us, numbers the very hairs of our heads,
bids his angels protect our footsteps lest we dash our feet against stones,
marks our path and ordereth our ways. But especially is this great truth
brought near to man’s heart, when we recollect how attentive God is, not
merely to the temporal interests of his creatures, but to their spiritual
concerns. God is represented in Scripture as waiting to be gracious, or, in
the language of the parable, when his prodigals are yet a great way off he
sees them; he runs and falls upon their neck and kisses them. He is so
attentive to everything that is good, even In the poor sinner’s heart, that to
him there is music in a sigh, and beauty in a tear; and in this verse that I
have just read, he represents himself as looking upon man’s heart and
listening — listening, if possibly he may hear something that is good. “I
hearkened and heard; I listened; I stood still, and I attended to them.” And
how amiable does God appear, when he is represented as turning aside,
and as it were with grief in his heart, exclaiming “I did listen, I did hearken,
but they spake not aright; no man repented of his wickedness, saying,
‘What shall I do?’ “ Ah! my hearer, thou never hast a desire towards God
which does not excite God’s hope; thou dost never breathe a prayer
towards heaven which he does not notice; and though thou hast very often
uttered prayers which have been as the morning cloud and as the early dew
that soon passeth away, yet all these things have moved Jehovah’s bowels;
for he has been hearkening to thy cry and noticing the breathing of thy
soul, and though it all hath passed away, yet it did not pass away
unnoticed, for he remembers it even now. And oh! thou that art this day
seeking a Savior, remember, that Savior’s eyes are on thy seeking soul to
day. Thou art not looking after one who cannot see thee; thou art coming
to thy Father, but thy Father sees thee even in the distance. It was but one
tear that trickled down thy cheek, but thy Father noticed that as a hopeful
sign; it was but one throb that went through thy heart just now during the
singing of the hymn, but God, the Loving, noticed even that, and thought
upon it as at least some omen that thou wast not yet quite hardened by sin
nor yet given up by love and mercy.

The text is “What have I done?” I shall just introduce that by a few words
of affectionate persuasion, urging all now present to ask that question:
secondly, I shall give them a few words of assistance in trying to answer it;
and when I have so done, I shall finish by a few sentences of solemn
admonition to those who have had to answer the question against
themselves.

I. First, then, a few words of EARNEST PERSUASION, requesting everyone
now present, and more especially every unconverted person, to ask this
question of himself, and answer it solemnly: “What have I done?”
Few men like to take the trouble to review their own lives; most men are
so near bankruptcy that they are ashamed to look at their own books. The
great mass of mankind are like the silly ostrich, which, when hard pressed
by the hunters, buries its head in the sand and shuts its eyes and then
thinks, because it does not see its pursuers, that therefore it is safe. The
great mass of mankind, I repeat, are ashamed to review their own
biographies. and if conscience and memory together could turn joint
authors of a history of their lives throughout, they would buy a huge iron
clasp and a padlock to it, and look the volume up, for they dare not read it.
They know it to be a book full of lamentation and woe, which they dare
not read, and still go on in their iniquities. I have therefore a hard task in
endeavoring to persuade you one and all to take down that book, and be its
pages few or many, be they white or be they black, I have some difficulty
in getting you to read them through. But may the Holy Spirit persuade you
now, so that you may answer this question, “What have I done?” For
remember, my dear friend, that searching yourself can do you no hurt. No
tradesman ever gets the poorer by looking to his books. he may find
himself to be poorer than he thought he was, but it is not the looking to the
books that hath hurt him; he hath hurt himself by some ill trading before.
Better, my friend, for you to know the past whilst there is yet time for
repairing it, than that you should go blindfolded, hoping to enter the gates
of Paradise and find out your mistake when alas! it is too late, because the
door is shut. There is nothing to be lost by taking stock; you cannot be any
the worse for a little self examination. This of itself shall be one strong
argument to induce you to do it; but remember you may be a great deal the
better; for suppose your affairs are all right with God, why then you may
make good cheer and comfort yourself, for he that is right with his God has
no cause to be sad. But ah! remember there are many probabilities that you
are wrong. There are so many in this world that are deceived, that there are
many chances that you are deceived too. You may have a name to live and
yet be dead; you may be like John Bunyan’s tree, of which he said “ ‘twas
fair to look upon and green outside, but the inside of it was rotten enough
to be tinder for the devil’s tinder box.” You may this day thus stand before
yourself and fellow creatures well whitewashed, and exceeding fair, but
you may be like that Pharisee of whom Christ said, “Thou art a whited
sepulcher, for inwardly thou art full of rottenness and dead men’s bones.”
Now, man, however thou mayest wish to be self-deceived, for my own part
I feel that I would a thousand times rather know my own state really than
have the most pleasing conceptions about it and find myself deceived.
Many a time have I solemnly prayed that prayer, “Lord, help me to know
the worst of my own case; if I be still an apostate from thee, without God
and without Christ, at least let me be honest to myself and know what I
am.” Remember, my friend, that the time you have for self-examination is,
after all, very short. Soon thou wilt know the great secret. I perhaps may
not say words rough enough to rend off the mask which thou now hast
upon thee, but there is one called Death who will stand no compliment.

You may masquerade it out to-day in the dress of the saint, but death will
soon strip you, and you must stand before the judgment seat after death
has discovered you in all your nakedness, be that naked innocence or naked
guilt. Remember, too, though you may deceive yourself, you will not
deceive your God. You may have light weights, and the beam of the scale
in which you weigh yourself may not be honest, and may not therefore tell
the truth; but when God shall try you he will make no allowances; when
the everlasting Jehovah grasps the balances of justice and puts his law into
one scale, ah, sinner, how wilt thou tremble when he shall put thee into the
other; for unless Christ be thy Christ thou wilt be found light weight —
thou wilt be weighed in the balances and found wanting, and be cast away
for ever.

Oh! what words shall I adopt to induce every one of you now to search
yourselves! I know the various excuses that some of you will make. Some
of you will plead that you are members of churches, and that, therefore, all
is right with you. Perhaps you look across from the gallery, and you say to
me, “Spurgeon, your hands baptized me but this year into the Lord Jesus,
and you have often passed to me the sacramental bread and wine.” Ah, my
hearer, I know that and I have baptized, I fear, many of you that the Lord
hath never baptized, and some of you have been received into the churchfellowship
on earth who were never received by God. If Jesus Christ had
one hypocrite in his twelve, how many hypocrites must I have here in
nearly twelve hundred? Ah! my hearers, in this age it is a very easy thing to
make a profession of religion: many churches receive candidates into their
fellowship without examination at all; I have had such come to me, and I
have told them, “I must treat you just the same as if you came from the
world,” because they said, “I never saw the minister, I wrote a note to the
Church, and they took me in,” Verily, in this age of profession, a man may
make the highest profession in the world, and yet be at last found with
damned apostates. Do not put off the question for that; and do not say, “I
am too busy to attend to my spiritual concerns; there is time enough yet.”
Many have said that, and before their “time enough” has come, they have
found themselves where time shall be no more. Oh! thou that sayest thou
hast time enough, how little dost thou know how near death is to thee.
There are some present that will not see New Year’s Day; there is every
probability that a very large number will never see another year. Oh, may
the Lord our God prepare us each for death and for judgment, and bless
this morning’s exhortation to our preparation, by leading us to ask the
question — “What have I done?”

II. Now, then, I am to help you to answer the question — “What have I
done?”

Christian, true Christian, I have little to say to thee this morning. I will not
multiply words, but leave the enquiry with thine own conscience. What
hast thou done? I hear thee reply, “I have done nothing to save myself, for
that was done for me in the eternal covenant, from before the foundation of
the world. I have done nothing to make a righteousness for myself, for
Christ said, ‘It is finished;’ I have done nothing to procure heaven by my
merits, for all that Jesus did for me before I was born.” But say, brother,
what hast thou done for him who died to save thy wretched soul? What
hast thou done for his church? What hast thou done for the salvation of the
world? What hast thou done to promote thine own spiritual growth in
grace? Ah! I might hit some of you that are true Christians very hard here;
but I will leave you with your God. God will chastise his own children. I
will, however, put a pointed question. Are there not many Christians now
present who cannot recollect that they have been the means of the salvation
of one soul during this year. Come, now; turn back: Have you any reason
to believe that directly or indirectly you have been made the means this
year of the salvation of a soul? I will go further. There are some of you
who are old Christians, and I will ask you this question: Have you any
reason to believe that ever since you were converted you have ever been
the means of the salvation of a soul? It was reckoned in the past, in the
times of the patriarchs, to be a disgrace to a woman that she had no
children; but what disgrace it is to a Christian to have no spiritual children
— to have none born unto God by his instrumentality! And yet there are
some of you here that have been spiritually barren, and have never brought
one convert to Christ; you have not one star in your crown of glory, and
must wear a starless crown in heaven. Oh! I think I see the joy and
gladness with which a good child of God looked upon me last week, when
we had heard some one who had been converted to God by her
instrumentality. I took her by the hand and said, “Well, now, you have
reason to thank God.” “Yes, sir,” she said, “I feel a happy and an honored
woman now. I have never, that I know of before been the means of
bringing a soul to Christ.” And the good woman looked so happy the tears
were in her eyes for gladness. How many have you brought during this
year? Come, Christian, what have you done? Alas! alas! you have not been
barren fig-trees, but still your fruit is such that it cannot be seen. You may
be alive unto God; but how many of you have been very unprofitable, and
exceedingly unfruitful? And do not think that while I thus deal hardly with
you I would escape myself. No, I ask myself the question, “What have I
done?” And when I think of the zeal of Whitfield, and of the earnestness of
many of those great evangelists of former times, I stand here astounded at
myself, and I ask myself the question, “What have I done?” And I can only
answer it with some confusion of face. How often have I preached to you,
my hearers, the Word of God, and yet how seldom have I wept over you as
a pastor should! How often ought I to have warned you of the wrath to
come, when I have forgotten to be so earnest as I might have been. I fear
lest the blood of souls should lie at my door, when I shall come to be
judged of my God at last. I beseech you, pray for your minister in this
thing, that he may be forgiven, if there has ever been a lack of earnestness
and energy, and prayerfulness, and pray that during the next year I may
always preach as though I ne’er might preach again,

“A dying man to dying men.”

I heard the moralist whilst I was questioning the Christian, say, “What have
I done? Sir, I have done all I ought to have done. You may, as a Gospeller,
stand there and talk to me about sins; but I tell you Sir, I have done all that
was my duty; I have always attended my church or chapel regularly every
Sunday as ever a man or woman could; I have always read prayers in the
family, and I always say prayers before I go to bed and when I get up in the
morning. I don’t know that I owe anybody anything, or that I have been
unkind to anybody; I give a fair shave to the poor, and I think if good
works have any merit I certainly have done a great deal.” Quite right, my
friend, very right indeed, if good works have any merit; but then it is very
unfortunate that they have not any; for our good works, if we do them to
save ourselves by them, are no better than our sins. You might as well
hope to go to heaven by cursing and swearing, as by the merits of your
own good works; for although good works are infinitely preferable to
cursing and swearing in a moral point of view, yet there is no more merit in
one than there is in the other, though there is less sin in one than in the
other. Will you please to remember then, that all you have been doing all
these years, is good for nothing ? “Well, but, Sir, I have trusted in Christ.”
Now, stop! Let me ask you a question. Do you mean to say, that you have
trusted partly in Christ and partly in your own good works? “Yes, sir.”
Well, then, let me tell you, the Lord Jesus Christ will never be a makeweight;
you must take Christ wholly, or else no Christ at all, for Christ will
never go shaves with you in the work of salvation. So, I repeat, all you
have ever done is good for nothing. You have been building a card house,
and the tempest will blow it down; you have been building a house upon
the sand, and when the rains descend and the floods come, the last vestige
of it will be swept away for ever. Hear ye the word of the Lord! “By the
works of the law shall no flesh living be justified.” “Cursed is every one
that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to
do them,” and in as much as you have not continued in all things that are
written in the law you are transgressors of the law, and you are under the
curse, and all that the law has to say to you is, “Cursed, cursed, cursed!
Your morality is of no help to you whatever, as to eternal things.”
I turn to another character. He says, “Well, I don’t trust in my morality nor
in anything else; I say,

‘Begone, dull care, I pray thee begone from me.’

I have nothing to do with talking about eternity, as you would have me.
But, sir, I am not a bad fellow after all. It is a very little that I ever do
amiss; now and then a peccadillo, just a little folly, but neither my country,
nor my friends nor my own conscience, can say anything against me. True,
I am none of your saints; I don’t profess to be too strict I may go a little
too far sometimes, but it is only a little, and I dare say we shall be able to
set all matters straight before the end comes.” Well, friend, but I wish you
had asked yourself the question, “What have I done?” — it strikes me that
if each of you would just take off that film, that films your heart and your
life over, you might see a grievous leprosy lurking behind what you have
done. “Well, for the matter of that” says one, “perhaps I may have taken a
glass or two too much sometimes.” Stop a bit! What is the name of that?
Stutter as much as you like! Out with it! What is the name of it? “Why, it is
just a little mirth, sir.” Stop: let us have the right name of it. What do you
call it in any one else? “Drunkeness, I suppose.” Says another, “I have been
a little loose in my talk sometimes.” What is that? “It has been just a merry
spree.” Yes, but please to call it what it ought to be called — lascivious
conversation. Write that down. “Oh! no, sir; things are looking serious.”
Yes, they are indeed; but they do not look any more serious than they
really are. Sometimes you have been out on the Sabbath day, haven’t you?
“Oh! yes; but that has been only now and then — just sometimes.” Yes,
but let us put it down what it is, and we will see what the list comes to.
Sabbath-breaking! “Stop,” you say, “I have gone no further sir, certainly I
have gone no further.” I suppose in your conversation, sometime; during
your life, you have quoted texts of Scripture to make jokes of them haven’t
you? And sometimes you have cried out, when you have been a little
surprised, “Lord have mercy upon me!” and such things. I don’t venture to
say you swear: though there is a Christian way of swearing that some
people get into, and they think it is not quite swearing, but what it is
besides nobody knows, and so we will put it down as swearing — cursing
and swearing. “Oh! sir, it was only when somebody trod on my toes, or I
was angry.” Never mind, put it down by its right name: we shall get a
pretty good list against you by-and-bye. I suppose that in trade you never
adulterate your articles. “Well that is a matter of business in which you
ought not to interfere.” Well, it so happens I am going to interfere — and
if you please, we will call it by its right name — stealing. We will put that
down. I suppose you have never been hard with a debtor, have you? You
have never at any time wished that you were richer, and sometimes half
wished that your opposite neighbor would lose part of his custom, so that
you might have it? Well, we will call it by its right name: that is
“covetousness, which is idolatry.” Now, the list seems to be getting black
indeed. Besides that, how have you spent all this year; and though you
have pretended sometimes to say prayers, have you ever really prayed? No,
you have not. Well, then there is prayerlessness to put down. You have
sometimes read the Bible, you have sometimes listened to the ministry; but
have you not, after all, let all these things pass away? Then I want to know
whether that is not despising God, and whether we must not put it down
under that name. Truly, we need go but very little further; for the list
already when summed up is most fearful, and few of us can escape from
sins so great as these, if our conscience be but a little awake.

But there is one man here who has grown very careless and indifferent to
every point of morality. and he says, “Ah! young man, I could tell you what
I have done during the year.” Stop, sir, I don’t particularly wish to know
just now; you may as well tell it to yourself when you get home. There are
young people here: it would not do them much good to know what you
have done perhaps. You are no better than you should be, some people
say; which means, you are so bad they would not like to say what you are.
Do you suppose in all this congregation we have no debauched men —
none that indulge in the vilest sin and lust? Why, God’s angel seems even
now to be flying through our midst, and touching the conscience of some,
to let them know in what iniquities they have indulged during the year. I
pray God that my just simply alluding to them may be the means of
startling your conscience. Ah! ye may hide your sins; the coverlet of
darkness may be your shelter; you may think they shall never be
discovered; but remember, every sin that you have done shall be read
before the sun, and men and angels shall hear it in the day of final account.
Ah! my hearer, be thou moral or be thou dissolute, I beseech thee, answer
this question solemnly to-day: “What have I done?” It would be as well if
you took a piece of paper when you went home, and just wrote down what
you have done from last January to December; and if some of you do not
get frightened at it I must say you have got pretty strong nerves, and are
not likely to be frightened at much yet.

Now I specially address myself to the unconverted man, and I would help
him to answer this question in another point of view. “What have I done?”
Ah! man, thou that livest in sin thou that art a lover of pleasure more than a
lover of God, what hast thou done? Dost thou not know that one sin is
enough to damn a soul for ever? Hast thou never read in Holy Scripture
that cursed is he that sins but once? How damned then, art thou by the
myriad sins of this one year! Recall, I beseech thee, the sins of thy youth
and thy former transgressions up till now; and if one sin would ruin thee for
ever, how ruined art thou now! Why man, one wave of sin may swamp
thee. What will these oceans of thy guilt do? One witness against thee will
be enough to condemn thee: behold the crowds of follies and of crimes
now gathered round the judgment sea that have gone before thee into
judgment. How wilt thou escape from their testimonies, when God shall
call thee to his bar? What hast thou done? Come, man, answer this
question. There are many consequences involved in thy sin, and in order to
answer this question rightly thou must reply to every consequence, what
hast thou done to thine own soul? Why, thou hast destroyed it; thou hast
done thy best to ruin it for ever, For thine own poor soul thou hast been
digging dungeons; thou hast been piling faggots; thou hast been forging
chains of iron — faggots with which to burn it, and fetters with which to
bind it for ever.

Remember, thy sins are like sowing for a harvest. What a harvest is that
which thou hast sown for thy poor soul! Thou hast sown the wind, thou
shalt reap the whirlwind; thou hast sown iniquity, thou shalt reap
damnation. But what hast thou done against the gospel? Remember, how
many times this year thou hast heard it preached. Why since thy birth there
have been waggon loads of sermons wasted on thee. Thy parents prayed
for thee in thy youth, thy friends instructed thee till thou didst come to
manhood. Since then how many a tear has been wept by the minister for
thee! How many an earnest appeal has been shot into thine heart! But thou
hast rent out the arrow. Ministers have been concerned to save thee, and
thou hast never been concerned about thyself. What hast thou done against
Christ? Remember, Christ has been a good Christ to sinners here; but as
there is nothing that burns so well as that soft substance oil, so there is
nothing that will be so furious as that gentle-hearted Savior, when he
comes to be your Judge. Fiercer than a lion on his prey is rejected love.
Despise Christ on the cross, and it will be a terrible thing to be judged by
Christ on his throne.

But again: what have you done for your children this year? Oh! there be
some here present that have been doing all they could to ruin their
children’s souls. ‘Tis solemn what responsibility rests upon a father; and
what shall be said of a drunken father? — the father that sets his children
an example of drunkenness. Swearer, what have you done for your family?
Haven’t you too been twisting the rope for their eternal destruction? Will
they not be sure to do as you do? Mother you have several children, but
this year you have never prayed for one of them never put your arms round
their necks as they kneeled at their little chair at night and said, “Our
Father;” you have never told them of Jesus that loved children and once
became a child like them. Ah, then, you too have neglected your children. I
remember a mother who was converted to God in her old age, and she said
to me — and I shall never forget the woman’s grief — “God has forgiven
me, but I shall never forgive myself. For, sir,” she said, “I have nourished
and brought up children, but I have done it without any respect to
religion.” And then she burst into tears, and said, “I have been a cruel
mother, sir; I have been a wretch!” “Why,” said I, “my good woman, you
have brought your children up.” “Yes,” said she, “my husband died when
they were young, and left me with six of them, and these hands have
earned their bread and found them clothes, no one,” she said, “can accuse
me of being unkind to them in anything but this; but this is the worst of all,
I have been a cruel mother to them, for while I fed their bodies I neglected
their souls.” But some have gone further than this. Ah, young man, you
have not only done your best this year to damn yourself, but you have done
your best to damn others! Remember, last January when you took that
young man into the tavern for the first time, and laughed at all his boyish
scruples as you called them, and told him to drink away as you did.
Remember, when in the darkness of night you first led astray one young
man whose principles were virtuous, and who had not known lust unless
you had revealed it to him. you said at the time, “Come with me, I’ll show
you London life, I’ll let you see pleasure!” That young man, when he first
came to your shop, used to go to the house of God on Sunday, and seemed
to bid fair for heaven — “Ah,” you say, “I have laughed religion out of
Jackson, he doesn’t go anywhere on a Sunday now except for a spree, and
he is just as merry as any of us.” Ah! sir, and you will have two hells when
you are damned; you will have your own hell and his too, for he will look
through the lurid flames upon you, and say, “Mayhap, I had never been
here if you had not brought me here!” And ah! seducer, what eyes will be
those that will glare at you through hell’s horror? — The eyes of one
whom you led into iniquity! what double hells they will be to you as they
glare on you like two stars, whose light is fury, and wither your blood for
ever! Pause ye that have led others astray, and tremble now. I paused
myself, and prayed to God when first I knew a Savior. that he would help
me to lead those to Christ, that I had ever in any way led astray. And I
remember George Whitfield says when he began to pray, his first prayer
was that God would convert those with whom he used to play at cards and
waste his Sundays. “And blessed be God,” he says, “I got everyone of
them.”

O my God, can I not detect in some face here astonishment and terror.
Doth no man’s knees knock together? Doth no man’s heart quail within
him because of his iniquity? Surely it cannot be so, else were your hearts
turned to steel, and your bowels become as iron in the midst of you.
Surely, if it be so, the words of God are most certainly true, wherein he
saith in the seventh verse of this chapter — “The stork in the heaven
knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle, and the crane, and the
swallow, observe the time of their coming, but my people know not the
judgment of the Lord,” and certainly that prophet was true who said, “The
ox knoweth its owner, and the ass his master’s crib, but my people doth
not know, Israel doth not consider.” Oh, are ye so brutish as to let the
reflections of that guilt pass over you without causing astonishment and
terror? Then, surely we who feel our guilt have need to bend our knees for
you, and pray that God might yet bring you to know yourselves; for, living
and dying as you are, hardened and without hope, your lot must be horrible
in the extreme.

How happy should I be if I might hope that the great mass of you could
accompany me in this humble confession of our faith; may I speak as if I
were speaking for each one of you? It shall be at your option, either to
accept what I say, or to reject it; but, I trust, the great multitude of you will
follow me. “Oh, Lord! I this morning confess that my sins are greater than
I can bear; I have deserved thy hottest wrath, and thine infinite displeasure;
and I hardly dare to hope that thou canst have mercy upon me, but
inasmuch as thou didst give thy Son to die upon the cross for sinners, thou
hast also said, ‘Look unto me and be ye saved all the ends of the earth,’
Lord I look to thee this morning, though I never looked before, yet I look
now; though I have been a slave of sin to this moment, yet Lord accept me
sinner though I be, through the blood and righteousness of thy Son, Jesus
Christ. Oh Father, frown not on me, thou mayest well do so, but I plead
that promise which says, ‘Whosoever cometh unto me, I will in no wise
cast out.’ Lord, I come —

‘Just as I am, without one plea,
But that thy blood was shed for me,
And that thou bid’st me come to thee;
O Lamb of God, I come.’

‘My faith doth lay its hand,
On that dear head of thine,
While like a penitent I stand,
And there confess my sin.’

Lord accept me, Lord pardon me, and take me as I am, from this time forth
and for ever, to be thy servant whilst I live, to be thy redeemed when I
die.” Can you say that? Did not many a heart say it? Did I not hear many a
lip in silence utter it? Be of good cheer, my brother, my sister, if that came
from your heart, you are as safe as the angels of heaven, for you are a child
of God, and you shall never perish.

III. Now I have to address a few words of AFFECTIONATE ADMONITION,
and then I have done. It is a very solemn thing to think how years roll
away. I never spent a shorter year in my life than this one, and the older I
grow the shorter the years get; and you, old men, I dare say, look back on
your sixty and seventy years, and you say, “Ah young man, they will seem
shorter soon.” No doubt they will. “So teach us to number our days, O
God, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” But is it not a solemn
thing that there is another year nearly gone; and yet many of you are
unsaved? You are just were you were last year. No, you are not, you are
nearer death, and you are nearer hell, except you repent; and perhaps even
what I have said this morning will have no effect upon you. You are not
altogether hardened, for you have had many serious impressions. Scores of
times you have wept under discourses and yet all has been in vain, for you
are what you were. I beseech you answer this question, “What have I
done?” for remember there will be a time when you will ask this question,
but it will be too late. When is that — say you — on the death bed? No, it
is not too late there.

“While the lamp holds out to burn,
The vilest sinner may return.”

But it will be too late to ask, “What have I done?” when the breath has
gone out of your body. Just suppose the monument as it used to be, before
they caged it round. Suppose a man going up the winding staircase to the
top, with a full determination to destroy himself. He has got on the outside
of the railings. Can you imagine him for a moment saying, “What have I
done?” just after he has taken his leap. Why, methinks some spirit in the air
might whisper, “Done? you have done what you can never undo. You are
lost — lost — lost!” Now, remember that you that have not Christ, are today
going up that spiral staircase; perhaps to-morrow you will be standing
in the article of death upon the pallisading, and when death has gotten you,
and you are just leaping from that monument of life down to the gulf of
despair, that question will be full of horror to you. “What have you done?”
But the answer for it will not be profitable, but full of terror Methinks, I
see a spirit launched upon the sea of eternity I hear it say “What have I
done?” It is plunged in flaming waves, and cries, “What have I done?” It
sees before it a long eternity; but it asks the question again, “What have I
done?” The dread answer comes: “Thou hast earned all this for thyself.
Thou knewest thy duty, but thou didst it not, Thou wast warned, but thou
didst despise the warning.” Ah! hear the doleful soliloquy of such a spirit.
The last great day is come; the flaming throne is set, and the great book is
opened. I hear the leaves as with terrible rustle they are turned over. I see
men motioned to the right or to the left, according to the result of that
great book. And what have I done? I know that to me sin will be
destruction for I have never sought a Savior. What is that? The Judge has
fixed his eye on me. Now it is on me turned. Will he say, “Depart ye
cursed,” unto me? Oh! let me be crushed for ever rather than bear that
sight. There is no noise, but the finger is lifted, and I am dragged out of the
crowd, and singly I stand before the Judge. He turns to my page, and
before he reads it my heart quakes within me. “Be it so,” says he, “it has
never been blotted with my blood. You despised my calls; you laughed at
my people; you would have none of my mercy; you said that you would
take the wages of unrighteousness. You shall have them, the wages of sin
is death.” Ah! me, and is he about to say, “Depart, ye cursed?” Yes, with a
voice louder than a thousand thunders, he says, “Depart, ye cursed into
everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” Ah! it is all true
now. I laughed at the minister because he preached about hell; and here am
I in hell myself, Ah! I used to wonder why he wanted to frighten us so. Ah!
I would to God he had frightened me more, if he might but have frightened
me out of this place. But now here am I lost, and there is no escape. I am
in darkness so dark, there is not a ray of light can ever reach me. I am shut
up so close, that not one of the bolts and bars can ever be removed. I am
damned for ever. Ah! that is a dreary soliloquy. I cannot tell it to you. Oh!
if you were there yourselves, if you could only know what they feel, and
see what they endure, then would you wonder that I am not more earnest
in preaching the Gospel, and you would marvel, not that I wish to make
you weep, but that I did not weep far more myself and preach more
solemnly. Ah! my hearers as the Lord my God liveth, before whom I stand,
I shall one day stand acknowleged by your conscience as having been a
true witness unto you this morning; for there is not one of you here to-day
but will be without excuse if you perish. You have been warned, I have
warned you as earnestly as I can. I have no more powers to spend, no
more arts to try, no more persuasion that I can use. I can only conclude by
saying, I beseech you, fly to Jesus. I entreat you, as immortal spirits that
are bound for endless weal or woe, fly ye to Christ; seek for mercy at his
hands; trust in him and be saved; and at your peril reject my solemn
warning. Remember ye may reject it, but ye reject not me, but him that sent
me. Ye may despise it, but ye despise not me, but a greater than Moses,
even Jesus Christ the Lord; and when ye come before his bar. piercing will
be his language, and terrible his words, when he condemns you for ever,
for ever, for ever, without hope, for ever, for ever, for ever. May God
deliver us from that, for Jesus’ sake Amen.

“These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit.”
Jude 1:19

WHEN a farmer comes to thrash out his wheat, and get it ready for the
market there are two things that he desires — that there may be plenty of
it, of the right sort, and that when he takes it to market, he may be able to
carry a clean sample there. He does not look upon the quantity alone; for
what is the chaff to the wheat ? He would rather have a little clean than he
would have a great heap containing a vast quantity of chaff, but less of the
precious corn. On the other hand, he would not so winnow his wheat as to
drive away any of the good grain, and so make the quantity less than it
need to be. He wants to have as much as possible — to have as little loss
as possible in the winnowing, and yet to have it as well winnowed as may
be. Now, that is what I desire for Christ’s Church, and what every
Christian will desire. We wish Christ’s church to be as large as possible.
God forbid that by any of our winnowing, we should ever cast away one of
the precious sons of Zion. When we rebuke sharply, we would be anxious
lest the rebuke should fall where it is not needed, and should bruise and
hurt the feelings of any who God hath chosen. But on the other hand, we
have no wish to see the church multiplied at the expense of its purity. We
do not wish to have a charity so large that it takes in chaff as well as
wheat: we wish to be just charitable enough to use the fan thoroughly to
purge God’s floor, but yet charitable enough to pick up the most shrivelled
ear of wheat, to preserve it for the Master’s sake, who is the husbandman.
I trust, in preaching this morning, God may help me so to discern between
the precious and the vile that I may say nothing uncharitable, which would
cut off any of God’s people from being part of his true and living and
visible church; and yet at the same time I pray that I may not speak so
loosely, and so without God’s direction, as to embrace any in the arms of
Christian affection whom the Lord hath not received in the eternal
covenant of his love.

Our text suggests to us three things: first, an inquiry — Have we the
Spirit? secondly, a caution — if we have not the spirit we are sensual;
thirdly, a suspicion — there are many persons that separate themselves.
Our suspicion concerning them is, that notwithstanding their extrasuperfine
profession, they are sensual, not having the Spirit; for our text
says, “These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the
Spirit.”

I. First, then, our text suggests AN INQUIRY — Have we the Spirit? This is
an inquiry so important, that the philosopher may well suspend all his
investigations to find an answer to this question on his own personal
account. All the great debates of politics, all the most engrossing subjects
of human discussion, may well stop to-day, and give us pause to ask
ourselves the solemn question — “Have I the Spirit?” For this question
does not deal with any externals of religion, but it deals with religion in its
most vital point. He that hath the Spirit, although he be wrong in fifty
things, being right in this, is saved; he that hath not the Spirit, be he never
so orthodox, be his creed as correct as Scripture- ay and in his morals
outwardly as pure as the law, is still unsaved; he is destitute of the essential
part of salvation — the Spirit of God dwelling in him.

To help us to answer this question, I shall try to set forth the effects of the
Spirit in our hearts under sundry Scriptural metaphors. Have I the Spirit? I
reply, And what is the operation of the, Spirit? How am I to discern it?
Now the Spirit operates in divers ways, all of them mysterious, and
supernatural, all of them bearing the real marks of his own power, and
having certain signs following whereby they may be discovered and
recognised.

1. The first work of the Spirit in the heart is a work during which the Spirit
is compared to the wind. You remember that when our Savior spoke to
Nicodemus he represented the first work of the Spirit in the heart as being
like the wind, “which bloweth where it listeth ;” “even so;” saith he, “is
every one that is born of the Spirit.” Now you know that the wind is a
most mysterious thing; and although there be certain definitions of it which
pretend to be explanations of the phenomenon, yet they certainly leave the
great question of how the wind blows, and what is the cause of its blowing
in a certain direction, where it was before. Breath within us, wind without
us, all motions of air, are to us mysterious. And the renewing work of the
Spirit in the heart is exceedingly mysterious. It is possible that at this
moment the Spirit of God may be breathing into some of the thousand
hearts before me; yet it would be blasphemous if any one should ask,
“Which way went the Spirit from God to such a heart? How entered it
there?” And it would be foolish for a person who is under the operation of
the Spirit to ask how it operates: thou knowest not where is the storehouse
of the thunder; thou knowest not where the clouds are balanced; neither
canst thou know how the Spirit goeth forth from the Most High and enters
into the heart of man. It may be, that during a sermon two men are
listening to the same truth; one of them hears as attentively as the other and
remembers as much of it; the other is melted to tears or moved with
solemn thoughts; but the one though equally attentive, sees nothing in the
sermon, except, maybe, certain important truths well set forth; as for the
other, his heart is broken within him and his soul is melted. Ask me how it
is that the same truth has an effect upon the one, and not upon his fellow: I
reply, because the mysterious Spirit of the living God goes with the truth to
one heart and not to the other. The one only feels the force of truth, and
that may be strong enough to make him tremble, like Felix; but the other
feels the Spirit going with the truth, and that renews the man, regenerates
him, and causes him to pass into that gracious condition which is called the
state of salvation. This change takes place instantaneously. It is as
miraculous a change as any miracle of which we read in Scripture. It is
supremely supernatural. It may be mimicked, but no imitation of it can be
true and real. Men may pretend to be regenerated without the Spirit, but
regenerated they cannot be. It is a change so marvellous that the highest
attempts of man can never reach it. We may reason as long as we please,
but we cannot reason ourselves into regeneration; we may meditate till our
hairs are grey with study; but we cannot meditate ourselves into the new
birth. That is worked in us by the sovereign will of God alone.

“The Spirit, like some heavenly wind,
Blows on the sons of flesh,
Inspires us with a heavenly mind,
And forms the man afresh.”

But ask the man how: he cannot tell you. Ask him when: he may recognize
the time, but as to the manner thereof he knoweth no more of it than you
do. It is to him a mystery.

You remember the story of the valley of vision. Ezekiel saw dry bones
lying scattered here and there in the valley. The command came to Ezekiel,
“Say to :these dry bones, live.” He said, “Live,” and the bones came
together, “bone to his bone, and flesh came upon them;” but as yet they did
not live. “Prophesy, son of man; say to the wind, breathe upon these slain,
that they may live.” They looked just like life: there was flesh and blood
there; there were the eyes and hands and feet; but when Ezekiel had spoken
there was a mysterious something given which men call life, and it was
given in a mysterious way, like the blowing of the wind. It is even so today.
Unconverted and ungodly persons may be very, moral and excellent;
they are like the dry bones, when they are put together and clothed with
flesh and blood. But to make them live spiritually it needs the divine
afflatus from the breath of the Almighty, the divine pneuma, the divine
Spirit, the divine wind should blow on them, and then they would live. Say,
my hearer, hast thou ever had any supernatural influence on thine Heart?
For if not I may seem to be harsh with thee, but I am faithful: if thou hast
never had more than nature in thy heart, thou art “in the gall of bitterness
and in the bonds of iniquity.” Nay, sir, sneer not at that utterance; it is as
true as this Bible, for tis from this Bible it was taken, and for proof thereof
hear thou me. “except a man be born again (from above) of water and of
the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” What sayest thou to that? It
is in vain for thee to talk of making thyself to be born again; thou canst not
be born again except by the Spirit, and thou must perish, unless thou art.
You see, then, the first effect of the Spirit, and by that you may answer the
question.

2. In the next place, the Spirit in the word of God is often compared to
fire. After the Spirit, like the wind, has made the dead sinner live, then
comes the Spirit like fire. Now, fire has a searching and tormenting power.
It is purifying, but it purifies by a terrible process. Now, after the Holy
Spirit has given us the life of Christianity, there immediately begins a
burning in our heart: the Lord searches and tries our reins, and lights a
candle within our spirits which discovers the wickedness of our nature, and
the loathsomeness of our iniquities. Say, my hearer, dost thou know
anything about that fire in thine heart? For if not, thou hast not yet received
the Spirit. To explain what I mean, let me just tell a piece of my own
experience, by way of illustrating the fiery effects of the Spirit. I lived
careless and thoughtless; I could indulge in sin as well as others, and did do
so. Sometimes my conscience pricked me, but not enough to make me
cease from vice. I could indulge in transgression, and I could love it: not so
much as others loved it — mine early training would not let me do that —
but still enough to prove that my heart was debased and corrupt. Once on a
time something more than conscience pricked me: I knew not then what it
was. I was like Samuel, when the Lord called him; I heard the voice, but I
knew not whence it came. A stirring began in my heart, and I began to feel
that in the sight of God I was a lost, ruined, and condemned sinner. That
conviction I could not shake off. Do what I might it followed me. If I
sought to amuse my mind and take it off from serious thoughts it was of no
use; I was obliged still to carry about with me a heavy burden on my back.
I went to my bed, and there I dreamed about hell, and about “the wrath to
come.” I woke up, and this dreary nightmare, this incubus, still brooded on
me. What could I do? I renounced first one vicious habit, then another: it
mattered not; all this was like pulling one firebrand from a flame, that fed
itself with blazing forests. Do what I might, my conscience found no rest.
Up to the house of God I went to hear the gospel: there was no gospel for
me; the fire burned but the more fiercely, and the very breath of the gospel
seemed to fan the flame. Away I went to my chamber and my closet to
pray: the heavens were like brass, and the windows of the sky were barred
against me. No answer could I get; the fire burned more vehemently. Then
I thought, “I would not live always; would God I had never been born!”
But I dared not die, for there was hell when I was dead; and I dared not
live, for life had become intolerable. Still the fire blazed right vehemently;
till at last I came to this resolve: “If there be salvation in Christ, I will have
it. I have nothing of my own to trust to; I do this hour, O God, renounce
my sin, and renounce my own righteousness too.” And the fire blazed
again, and burned up all my good works, ay, and my sins with them. And
then I saw that all this burning was to bring me to Christ. And oh! the joy
and gladness of my heart, when Jesus came and sprinkled water on the
flame, and said, “I have bought thee with my blood; put thy trust in me; I
will do for thee what thou canst not do for thyself; I will take thy sins
away; I will clothe thee with a spotless robe of righteousness; I will guide
thee all thy journey through, and land thee at last in heaven.” Say, my dear
hearer, Dost know anything about the Spirit of burning? For if not, again I
say, I am not harsh, I am but true; if thou hast never felt this, thou knowest
not the Spirit.

3. To proceed a little further. When the Spirit has thus quickened the soul
and convinced it of sin, then he comes under another metaphor. He comes
under the metaphor of oil. The Holy Spirit is very frequently in Scripture
compared to oil. “Thou anointest mine head with oil; my cup runneth
over.” Ah! brethren, though the beginning of the Spirit is by fire, it does
not end there. We may be first of all convinced and brought to Christ by
misery; but when we get to Christ there is no misery in him, and our
sorrow results from not getting close enough to him. The Holy Spirit
comes, like the good Samaritan, and pours in the oil and the wine. And oh!
what oil it is with which he anoints our head, and with which he heals our
wounds! How soft the liniments which he binds round our bruises! How
blessed the eye-salve with which he anoints our eyes! How heavenly the
ointment with which he binds up our sores, and wounds, and bruises, and
makes us whole, and sets our feet upon a rock, and establishes our goings!
The Spirit, after he has convinced, begins to comfort; and ye that have felt
the comforting power of the Holy Spirit, will bear me witness there is no
comforter like him that is the Paraclete. Oh! bring hither the music, the
voice of song, and the sound of harps; they are both as vinegar upon nitre
to him that hath a heavy heart. Bring me here the enchantments of the
magic world, and all the enjoyments of its pleasures; they do but torment
the soul and prick it with many thorns. But oh! Spirit of the living God,
when thou dost blow upon the heart, there is not a wave of that
tempestuous sea which does not sleep for ever when thou biddest it be still;
there is not one single breath of the proud hurricane and tempest which
doth not cease to howl and which doth not lie still, when thou sayest to it,
“Peace be unto thee; thy sins are forgiven thee.” Say, do you know the
Spirit under the figure of oil? Have you felt him at work in your spirits,
comforting you, anointing your head, making you glad, and causing you to
rejoice?

There are many people that never felt this. They hope they are religious;
but their religion never makes them happy. There are scores of professors
who have just enough religion to make them miserable. Let them be afraid
that they have any religion at all; for religion makes people happy; when it
has its full sway with man it makes him glad. It may begin in agony, but it
does not end there. Say, hast thou ever had thine heart leaping for joy?
Hath thy lip ever warbled songs of ecstatic praise? Doth thine eye ever
flash the fire of joy? If these things be not so, I fear lest thou art still
without God, and without Christ; for where the Spirit comes, his fruits are,
joy in the Spirit, and peace, and love, and confidence, and assurance for
ever.

4. Bear with me once more. I have to show you one more figure of the
Spirit, and by that also you will be able to ascertain whether you are under
his operation. When the Spirit has acted as wind, as fire, and as oil, he then
acts like water. We are told that we are “born again of water and of the
Spirit.” Now I do not think you foolish enough to need that I should say
that no water, either of immersion or of sprinkling, can in the least degree
operate in the salvation of a soul. There may be some few poor creatures,
whose heads were put on their shoulders the wrong way, who still believe
that a few drops of water from a priest’s hands can regenerate souls. There
may be such a few, but I hope the race will soon die out. We trust that the
day will come when all those gentry will have no “other Gospel” to preach
in our churches, but will have clean gone over to Rome, and when that
terrible plague-spot upon the Protestant Church, called Puseyism, will have
been cut out like a cancer, and torn out by its very roots. The sooner we
get rid of that the better; and whenever we hear of any of them going over
to Rome, let them go — I wish we could as easily get rid of the devil, they
may go together — we do not want either of them in the Protestant
Church, anyhow. But the Holy Spirit when he comes in the heart comes
like water. That is to say, he comes to purify the soul. He that is to-day as
foul a liver as he was before his pretended conversion is a hypocrite and a
liar; he that this day loveth sin and liveth in it just as he was wont to do, let
him know that the truth is not in him, but he hath received the strong
delusion to believe a lie: God’s people are a holy people; God’s Spirit
works by love, and purifies the soul. Once let it get into our hearts, and it
will have no rest till it has turned every sin out. God’s Holy Spirit and
man’s sin cannot live together peaceably; they may both be in the same
heart, but they cannot both reign there, nor can they both be quiet there;
for “the Spirit lusteth against the flesh, and the flesh lusteth against the
Spirit;” they cannot rest, but there will be a perpetual warring in the soul,
so that the Christian will have to cry, “O wretched man that I am! who
shall deliver me from the body of this death?” But in due time the Spirit
will drive out all sin, and will present us blameless before the throne of his
Majesty with exceeding great joy.

Now, my hearer, answer thou this question for thyself, and not for another
man. Hast thou received this Spirit? Answer me, anyhow; if it be with a
scoff, answer me; if thou sneerest and sayest, “I know nothing of your
enthusiastic rant,” be it so, sir; say, nay, then. It may be thou carest not to
reply at all. I beseech thee do not put away my entreaty. Yes or no. Hast
thou received the Spirit? “Sir no man can find fault with my character; I
believe I shall enter heaven through my own virtues.” It is not the question,
sir. Hast thou received the Spirit? All that thou sayest thou mayest have
done; but if thou hast left the other undone, and hast not received the
Spirit, it will go ill with thee at last. Hast thou had a supernatural operation
upon thine own heart? Hast thou been made a new man in Christ Jesus!
For if not, depend on it, as God’s Word is true, thou art out of Christ, and
dying as thou art thou wilt be shut out of heaven, be thou who thou mayest
and what thou mayest.

II. Thus, I have tried to help you to answer the first question — the
inquiry, Have we received the Spirit? And this brings me to the CAUTION.
He that has not received the Spirit is said to be sensual. Oh, what a gulf
there is between the least Christian and the greatest moralist! What a wide
distinction there is between the greatest professor destitute of grace, and
the least of God’s believers who has grace in his heart. As great a
difference as there is between light and darkness between death and life,
between heaven and hell, is there between a saint and a sinner; for mark,
my text says, in no very polite phrase, that if we have not the Spirit we are
sensual. “ Sensual!” says one; “well, I am not converted man — I don t
pretend to be; but I am not sensual.” Well, friend, and it is very likely that
you are not — not in the common acceptation of the term sensual; but
understand that this word, in the Greek, really means what an English word
like this would mean, if we had such a one — soulish. We have not such a
word — we want such a one. There is a great distinction between mere
animals and men, because man hath a soul, and the mere animal hath none.
There is another distinction between mere men and a converted man. The
converted man hath the Spirit — the unconverted man hath none; he is a
soulish man — not a spiritual man; he has got no further than mere nature
and has no inheritance in the spiritual kingdom of grace. Strange it is that
soulish and sensual should after all mean the same! Friend, thou hast not
the Spirit. Then thou art nothing better — be thou what thou art, or
whatsoever thou mayest be — than the fall of Adam left thee. That is to
say, thou art a fallen creature, having only capacities to live here in sin, and
to live for ever in torment; but thou hast not the capacity to live in heaven
at all, for thou hast no Spirit; and therefore thou art unable to know or
enjoy spiritual things. And mark you, a man may be in this state, and be a
sensual man, and yet he may have all the virtues that could grace a
Christian; but with all these, if he has not the Spirit, he has got not an inch
further than where Adam’s fall left him — that is, condemned and under
the curse. Ay, and he may attend to religion with all his might — he may
take the sacrament, and be baptized, and may be the most devout
professor; but if he hath not the Spirit he hath not started a solitary inch
from where he was, for he is still in “the bonds of iniquity,” a lost soul.
Nay, further, he may pick up religious phrases till he may talk very fast
about religion; he may read biographies till he seems to be a deep taught
child of God; he may be able to write an article upon the deep experience
of a believer; but if this experience be not his own, if he hath not received it
by the Spirit of the living God, he is still nothing more than a carnal man,
and heaven is to him a place to which there is no entrance. Nay, further, he
might go so far as to become a minister of the gospel, and a successful
minister too, and God may bless the word that he preaches to the salvation
of sinners, but unless he has received the Spirit, be he as eloquent as
Apollos, and as earnest as Paul, he is nothing more than a mere soulish
man, without capacity for spiritual things.

Nay, to crown all, he might even have the power of working miracles, as
Judas had — he might even be received into the church as a believer, as
was Simon Magus, and after all that, though he had cast out devils, though
he had healed the sick, though he had worked miracles, he might have the
gates of heaven shut in his teeth, if he had not received the Spirit. For this
is the essential thing, without which all others are in vain — the reception
of the Spirit of the living God. It is a searching truth, is it not, my friends?
Do not run away from it. If I am preaching to you falsehood, reject it; but
if this be a truth which I can substantiate by Scripture, I beseech you, rest
not till you have answered this question: Hast thou the Spirit, living,
dwelling, working in thy heart?

III. This brings me, in the third place, to THE SUSPICION. How singular
that “separation” should be the opposite of having the Spirit. Hark! I hear a
gentle man saying, “Oh! I like to hear you preach smartly and sharply; I am
persuaded, sir, there are a great many people in the church that ought not
to be there; and so I, because there is such a corrupt mixture in the church,
have determined not to join anywhere at all. I do not think that the Church
of Christ now a days is at all clean and pure enough to allow of my joining
with it. At least, sir, I did join a church once, but I made such a deal of
noise in it they were very glad when I went away. And now I am just like
David’s men; I am one that is in debt and discontented, and I go round to
hear all new preachers that arise. I have heard you now these three months;
I mean to go and hear some one else in a very little time if you do not say
something to flatter me. But I am quite sure I am one of God’s special
elect. I don’t join any church because a church is not good enough for me;
I don’t become a member of any denomination, because they are all wrong,
every one of them.” Hark ye brother, I have something to tell you, that will
not please you. “These be they that separate themselves, sensual, having
not the Spirit.” I hope you enjoy the text: it certainly belongs to you, above
every man in the world. “These be they who separate themselves, sensual,
having not the Spirit.” When I read this over I thought to myself, there be
some who say, “Well, you are a dissenter, how do you make this agreeable
with the text, ‘These be they who separate themselves;’ “ you are separated
from the Church of England. Ah, my friends, that a man may be, and be all
the better for it; but the separation here intended is separation from the one
universal Church of Christ. The Church of England was not known in
Jude’s day: so the apostle did not allude to that. “These be they who
separate themselves,” — that is from the Church of Christ; from the great
universal body of the elect. Moreover, let us just say one thing. We did not
separate ourselves — we were turned out. Dissenters did not separate
themselves from the Church of England, from the Episcopal church; but
when the Act of Uniformity was passed, they were turned out of their
pulpits. Our forefathers were as sound Churchmen as any in the world, but
they could not take in all the errors of the Prayer Book, and they were
therefore hounded to their graves by the intolerance of the conforming
professors. So they did not separate themselves. Moreover, we do not
separate ourselves. There is not a Christian beneath the scope of God’s
heaven from whom I am separated. At the Lord’s table I always invite all
Churches to come and sit down and commune with us. If any man were to
tell me that I am separate from the Episcopalian, the Presbyterian, or the
Methodist, I would tell him he did not know me, for I love them with a
pure heart fervently, and I am not separate from them. I may hold different
views from them, and in that point truly I may be said to be separate; but I
am not separate in heart, I will work with them — I will work with them
heartily; nay, though my Church of England brother sends me in, as he has
done, a summons to pay a churchrate that I cannot in conscience pay, I will
love him still; and if he takes chairs and tables it matters not — I will love
him for all that; and if there be a ragged-school or anything else for which I
can work with him to promote the glory of God, therein will I unite with
him with all my heart. I think this bears rather hard on our friends — the
Strict Communion Baptists. I should not like to say anything hard against
them, for they are about the best people in the world, but they really do
separate themselves from the great body of Christ’s people. The Spirit of
the living God will not let them do this really, but they do it professedly.
They separate themselves from the great Universal Church. They say they
will not commune with it; and if any one comes to their table who has not
been baptized, they turn him away. They “separate,” certainly. I do not
believe it is willful schism that makes them thus act; but at the same time I
think the old man within has some hand in it.

Oh, how my heart loves the doctrine of the one church. The nearer I get to
my Master in prayer and communion, the closer am I knit to all his
disciples. The more I see of my own errors and failings, the more ready am
I to deal gently with them that I believe to be erring. The pulse of Christ’s
body is communion; and woe to the church that seeks to cure the ills of
Christ’s body by stopping its pulse. I think it sin to refuse to commune with
anyone who is a member of the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ. I desire
this morning to preach the unity of Christ’s church. I have sought to use
the fan to blow away the chaff. I have said no man belongs to Christ’s
church unless he has the Spirit; but, if he hath the Spirit, woe be to the man
that separates himself from him. Oh! I should think myself grossly in fault if
at the foot of these stairs I should meet a truly converted child of God,
who called himself a Primitive Methodist, or a Wesleyan. or a Churchman,
or an Independent, and I should say, “No, sir, you do not agree with me on
certain points; I believe you are a child of God, but I will have nothing to
do with you.” I should then think that this text would bear very hard on
me. “These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the
Spirit.” But would we do so, beloved? No, we would give them both our
hands, and say, God speed to you in your journey to heaven; so long as
you have got the Spirit we are one family, and we will not be separate from
one another. God grant the day may come when every wall of separation
shall be beaten down! See how to this day we are separate. There! you will
find a Baptist who could not say a good word to a Poedo-Baptist if you
were to give him a world. You find to this day Episcopalians who hate that
ugly word, “Dissent;” and it is enough for them that a Dissenter has done a
thing; they will not do it then, be it never so good.

Ah! and furthermore, there are some to be found in the Church of England
that will not only hate dissent, but hate one another into the bargain. Men
are to be found that cannot let brother ministers of their own church preach
in their parish. What an anachronism such men are! They would seem to
have been sent into the world in our time purely by mistake. Their proper
era would have been the time of the dark ages. If they had lived then, what
fine Bonners they would have made! What splendid fellows they would
have been to have helped to poke the fire in Smithfield! But they are quite
out of date in these times, and I look upon such a curious clergyman in the
same way that I do upon a Dodo — as an extraordinary animal whose race
is almost, if not quite extinct. Well, you may look, and look and wonder.
The animal will be extinct soon. It will not be long, I trust, before not only
the Church of England shall love itself, but when all who love the Lord
Jesus shall be ready to preach in each other’s pulpits, preaching the same
truth, holding the same faith, and mightily contending for it. Then shall the
world “see how these Christians love one another; “ and then shall it be
known in heaven that Christ s kingdom has come, and that his will is about
to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

My hearer, dost thou belong to the church? For out of the church there is
no salvation. But mark what the church is. It is not the Episcopalian,
Baptist, or Presbyterian: the church is a company of men who have
received the Spirit. If thou canst not say thou hast the Spirit, go thy way
and tremble; go thy way and think of thy lost condition; and may Jesus by
his Spirit so bless thee, that thou mayest be led to renounce thy works and
ways with grief, and fly to him who died upon the cross, and find a shelter
there from the wrath of God.

I may have said some rough things this morning, but I am not given much
to cutting and trimming, and I do not suppose I shall begin to learn that art
now. If the thing is untrue, it is with you to reject it; if it be true, at your
own peril reject what God stamps with divine authority. May the blessing
of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit rest upon the one church of
Israel’s one Jehovah. Amen and Amen.

“That through death he might destroy him that had the power of death,
that is the devil” Hebrews 2:14

IN God’s original empire everything was happiness, and joy, and peace. If
there be any evil, any suffering and pain, that is not God’s work. God may
permit it, overrule it, and out of it educe much good; but the evil cometh
not of God. He himself standeth pure and perfect, the clean fountain out of
which gusheth forth ever more sweet and pure waters. The devil’s reign,
on the contrary, containeth nought of good, “the devil sinneth from the
beginning,” and his dominion has been one uniform course of temptation to
evil and infliction of misery. Death is a part of Satan’s dominion, he
brought sin into the world when he tempted our mother Eve to eat of the
forbidden fruit, and with sin he brought also death into the world, with all
its train of woes. There had been likely no death, if there had been no devil.
If Satan had not tempted, mayhap man had not revolted, and if he had not
revolted he would have lived for ever, without having to undergo the
painful change which is caused by death. I think death is the devil’s
masterpiece. With the solitary exception of hell, death is certainly the most
Satanic mischief that sin hath accomplished. Nothing ever delighted the
heart of the devil so much as when he found that the threatening would be
fulfilled, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” and
never was his malicious heart so full of hellish joy as when he saw Abel
stretched upon the earth, slain by the club of his brother. “Aha!” said
Satan, “this is the first of all intelligent creatures that has died. Oh how I
rejoice! This is the crowning hour of my dominion. It is true that I have
marred the glory of this earth by my guileful temptation; it is true the whole
creation groaneth and travaileth in pain by reason of the evil that I have
brought into it; but this, this is my masterpiece; I have killed man; I have
brought death into him, and here lieth the first — the first dead man.”
Since that time Satan hath ever gloated over the death of the human race,
and he hath had some cause of glory, for that death has been universal. All
have died. Though they had been wise as Solomon, their wisdom could not
spare their head; though they had been virtuous as Moses, yet their virtue
could not avert the axe, All have died; and therefore the devil hath boasted
in his triumph. But twice hath he been defeated; but two have entered
heaven without dying, but the mass of mankind have had to feel the scythe
of death; and he has rejoiced because this, his mightiest work, has had
foundations broad as earth, and a summit that reached as high as the
virtues of mankind could climb.

There is something fearful in death. It is frightful even to him that hath the
most of faith. It is only the gildings of death, the afterwards, the heaven,
the harp, the glory, that maketh death bearable even to the Christian. Death
in itself must ever be an unutterably fearful thing to the sons of men. And
oh! what ruin doth it work! It darkens the windows of the eyes; it pulls
down the polished pillars of the divine architecture of the body; it turns the
inhabitant the soul, out of its door, and bids it fly to worlds unknown; and
it leaves in place of a living man a corpse whose appearance is so wretched
that none can look upon it without emotions of horror. Now, this is
Satan’s delight. He conceives death to be his masterpiece, because of its
terror, and because of the ruin which it works. The greater the evil, the
better doth he delight in it. No doubt he gloats over our sicknesses; he
rejoices himself in our sin; but death is to him a theme of as much delight
as he can be capable of in his eternal misery. He, as far as he can, shouteth
for joy when he witnesseth how, by one fell deed of his, one piece of
treachery, he hath swept the world with the besom of destruction, and
hurried all men to the tomb.

And death is very lovely to the devil for another reason — not only
because it is his chief work on earth, but because it gives him the finest
opportunity in the world for the display of his malice and his craft. The
devil is a coward, the greatest of cowards, as most wicked beings are. A
Christian in health he will seldom attack; a Christian who has been living
near his Master, and is strong in grace, the devil will leave alone, because
he knows he will meet his match then; but if he can find a Christian either
weak in faith, or weak in body, then he thinks it a fair opportunity for
attack.

Now when death comes with all its terrors, it is usual for Satan to make a
fierce inroad into the soul. Usually with many of the saints, if not in the last
article of death, yet some little time before it, there is a ferocious onslaught
made by the great enemy of souls. And then he loves death, because death
weakens the mind. The approach of death destroys some of the mental
power, and takes away from us for a season some of those spirits by which
we have been cheered in better days. It makes us lie there, languid, and
faint, and weary. “Now is my opportunity,” says the evil one; and he steals
in upon us. Hence I believe for this reason he is said to have the power of
death, for I cannot conceive that the devil hath the power of death in any
other sense but this, that it was originated by him, and that he at such time
generally displays the most of his malice and of his power. For it is certain
my brethren the devil has not the power over death so as to cause death.
All the devils in hell could not take away the life of the smallest infant in
the world, and though we lie gasping and sick, so that the physician
despairs of us, it is nothing but the fiat of the Almighty that can cause us to
die, even in the extremity of our weakness As far as the cause is concerned,
the devil is not the cause of death. We rejoice to believe with Dr. Young,
that an angel’s arm cannot hurl us to the grave, even though it be the arm
of that fallen archangel Lucifer; and we rejoice to know that afterwards a
myriad angels cannot confine us there. So that neither for the unlocking of
the door, nor for the securing of it afterwards, hath the devil any power
whatever over the Christian in death.

Why, there are many persons here present who have such notion of religion
that they conceive it to be a thing of happiness and pleasure, and delight,
and living near the fountain of all bliss, that is their God, their path is filled
with sunshine, and their eye sparkles with perpetual happiness. They bear
the trials of this life manfully as Christians should; they take afflictions from
the hand of God with all resignation and patience. Now the devil says, “It
is of no use my meddling with that man with doubting thoughts; he is too
mighty for me; he is powerful on his knees, and he is powerful with his
God.” “Hands off!” says the Christian to the devil then. But when we begin
to be weak, when our mind through the influence of the body begins to be
sad, when we have either been starving ourselves by some wicked religious
asceticism, or when the rod of God hath bruised us, then in our evil plight
the foe will beset us. And for this reason the devil loves death, and hath the
power over it, because it is the time of nature’s extremity, and therefore is
the time of the devil’s opportunity.

The subject of our discourse this morning is this. Jesus Christ through his
death, hath destroyed what power the devil hath over death. Ay, and to
add a second truth which shall be our second head, he hath not only by his
death destroyed the power which the devil had over death, but he hath
destroyed the devil’s power entirely in every respect by the death which he
died.

I. Let us begin, then, at the beginning. BY THE DEATH OF CHRIST THE
DEVIL’S POWER OVER DEATH IS TO THE CHRISTIAN UTTERLY DESTROYED.

The devil’s power over death lies in three places, and we must look at it in
three aspects. sometimes the devil hath power in death over the Christian,
by tempting him to doubt his resurrection, and leading him to look into the
black future with the dread of annihilation. We will look at that first, and
we will endeavor to show you that by the death of Christ that peculiar form
of the devil’s power in death is entirely removed. When the poor spirit lieth
on the verge of eternity, if faith be weak, and if the eye-sight of hope be
dim, the Christian will most likely look forward into what? Into a world
unknown, and the language of even the infidel sometimes rush into the lips
of the most faithful child of God.

“My soul looks down on what?
A dread eternity; a dreary gulf.”

You may tell him of the promises; you may try to cheer him by reminding
him of the certain revelations of the future; but apart from the death of
Christ, I say, even the Christian himself would look forward to death as
being a dreary goal, a dark cloudy end to a life of weariness and woe.
Whither am I speeding? An arrow shot from the bow of God’s creation!
Whither am I speeding? And the answer cometh back from blank
nothingness thou camest, and thou art speeding to the same; there is
nought to thee; when thou diest thou art lost. Or if reason has been well
tutored it may perhaps reply to him, “Yes, there is another world, but
reason can only tell him that it thinks so. It dreams of it. but what that
other world shall be, what its tremendous mysteries, what its gorgeous
splendors, or what its horrible terrors, reason cannot tell.” And the sting of
death would be to such a man, who had no view of immortality in Christ,
the thought that he was to be annihilated — not to exist — or if to exist
that he knew not how, or where. But, beloved, by the death of Christ all
this is taken away. If I lie a-dying, and Satan comes to me and says, “Thou
art to be annihilated, thou art now sinking beneath the waves of time, and
thou shalt lie in the caverns of nothingness for ever; thy living, leaping
spirit, is to cease for ever and be not.” I reply to him, “No, not so: I have
no fear of that; O Satan, thy power to tempt me here faileth utterly and
entirely. See there my Savior! He died — he died really and actually, for
his heart was pierced, he was buried, he lay in his grave three days; but, O
Devil, he was not annihilated, for he rose again from the tomb on the third
day, and in the glories of the resurrection he appeared unto many
witnesses, and gave infallible proofs that he was risen from the dead. And
now, O Satan, I tell thee, thou canst not put an end to my existence, for
thou couldst not put an end to the existence of my Lord. As the Lord the
Savior rose, so all his followers must. ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,’
and therefore I know that though the ‘worms destroy this body, yet in my
flesh shall I see God.’ Thou tellest me, O Satan, that I am to be swallowed
up, and be a thing of nought, and sink into the bottomless pit of nonenity. I
reply to thee, thou liest. My Savior was not swallowed up, and yet he died,
he died, but could not long be held a prisoner in the tomb. Come, death,
and bind me, but thou canst not destroy me. Come on, O grave; open thy
ghastly mouth, and swallow me up; but I shall burst thy bonds another day.
When that all-glorious morning shall dawn, I having a dew like the dew of
herbs upon me, shall be raised up and shall live in his sight. Because he
lives I shall live also.” So, you see, Christ, by being a witness to the feet of
the resurrection, has broken the power of the devil in death. In this respect
he has prevented him from tempting us to fear annihilation, because, as
Christians, we believe that because Christ rose again from the dead, even
so they that sleep in Jesus will the Lord bring with him.

But now for a more common temptation — another phase of the devil’s
power in death. Full often the devil comes to us in our life-time, and he
tempts us by telling us that our guilt will certainly prevail against us, that
the sins of our youth and our former transgressions are still in our bones,
and that when we sleep in the grave our sins shall rise up against us
“They have many of them,” saith he, “gone before you unto judgment, and
others shall follow after.” When the Christian getteth weak, and his heart
and his flesh do fail him, were it not, I say for the great doctrine of the
death of Christ the devil would be able to tempt him thus “Thou art about
to die. I dare not tell thee that there is no future state, for if I do thou
replies to me, ‘There is, for Christ rose from the dead and therefore I
shall,’ but I will tempt thee another way. Thou hast made a fine profession,
but I charge upon thee that thou hast been a hypocrite. Thou pretendest
that thou art one of the Lord’s beloved: now look back upon thy sins:
remember on such-a-day how thy rebellious lusts arose, and thou wast led
if not quite to indulge in a transgression, yet to long after it. Recollect how
often thou hast provoked him in the wilderness, how frequently thou hast
made his anger wax hot against thee.” The devil takes up our diary, and he
turns over the page, and with black finger points to our sins; and he reads
scornfully, with a leer upon his countenance. “See here saint” he says.
“Saint! Aha! a fine saint you were. There! Sabbath breaking. There! evil
thoughts of unbelief. There! departure from the living God.” And he turns
over page after page, and he stops over some very black page, and says,
“See here!” And he twits the Christian with the thing. “Ah!” saith he,
“David, remember Bathsheba. Lot, remember Sodom and the cave, Noah,
remember the vineyard and the drunkenness.” Ah! and it makes even the
saint quiver, when sin stares him in the face — when the ghosts of his old
sins rise up and stare upon him. He is a man that has got faith indeed that
can look sin in the face, and still say, “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth
me from sin.” But were it not for that blood, were it not for the death of
Christ, you can easily conceive what power the devil would have over us in
the hour of death, because he would fling all our sins in our teeth just when
we came to die, But now see how through death Christ has taken away the
devil s power to do that. We reply to the temptation to sin, “In truth O
Satan thou art right; I have rebelled, I will not belie my conscience and my
memory; I own I have transgressed. O Satan, turn to the blackest page of
my history, I confess all,

‘Should he send my soul to hell
His righteous law approves it well.’

But O fiend, let me tell thee my sins were numbered on the scape-goat’s
head of old. Go thou, O Satan, to Calvary’s cross, and see my substitute
bleeding there, Behold, my sins are not mine; they are laid on his eternal
shoulders, and he has cast them from his own shoulders into the depths of
the sea. Avaunt, hell-hound! Wouldst thou worry me? Go thou and satisfy
thyself with a sight of that Man, who entered the gloomy dungeons of
death, and slept awhile there, and then rent the bars away, and led captivity
captive as a proof that he was justified of God the Father. and that I also
am justified in him.” Oh! yes, this is the way that Christ’s death destroys
the power of the devil. We can tell the devil that we care not for him, for
all our sins are passed away, covered in the thick cloud, and shall not be
brought against us any more for ever, “Ah!” said an aged saint once who
had been much teased by Satan, “at last I got rid of my temptations, sir,
and I enjoyed much peace,” “How did you do it?” said a Christian friend
who visited him, “I showed him blood, sir; I showed him the blood of
Christ.” That is a thing the devil cannot endure. You may tell the devil,
“Oh! but I prayed so many times.” He will sniff at your prayers. You may
tell him, “Ah! but I was a preacher” He will laugh in your face, and tell you
you preached your own damnation You may tell him you had some good
works, and he will lift them up and say, “these are your good works —
filthy rags: no one would have them at a gift.” You may tell him, “Ah! but I
have repented.” He will sneer at your repentance. You may tell him what
you like, he will sneer at you, till at last you say,

“Nothing in my hands I bring,
Simply to the cross I cling;”

And it is all over with the devil then; there is nothing now that he can do,
for the death of Christ has destroyed the power that the devil hath over us
to tempt us on account of our guilt. “The sting of death is sin:” our Jesus
took the sting away, and now death is harmless to us, because it is not
succeeded by damnation.

Once more, you may suppose a Christian who has firm confidence in a
future state. The evil one has another temptation for him. .”It. may be very
true,” saith he, “that you are to live for ever and that your sins have been
pardoned; but you have hitherto found it very hard work to persevere, and
now you are about to die you will be sure to fail. When you have had
troubles you know you have been half inclined to go back again to Egypt.
Why, the little hornets that you have met have worried you, and now this
death is the prince of dragons; it will be all over with you now. You know
that when you used to go through a cart-rut you were crying for fear of
being drowned: what will you do now that you have got into the swellings
of Jordan? “Ah!” says the devil, “you were afraid of the lions when they
were chained: what will you do with this unchained lion? How will you
come off now? When you were a strong man and had marrow in your
bones, and your sinews were full of strength, even then you trembled at
me: now I shall have at you, when I get you in your dying-time and your
strength fails, and if I once get the grip of you

‘That desperate tug your soul shall feel,
Through bars of brass and triple-steel.’

Ah! you will then be overcome.” And sometimes the poor feint-hearted
Christian thinks that is true; I shall surely fall one day by the hand of the
enemy. Up gets the Arminian divine, and says, “that is a very proper sort of
feeling, my friend; God often does desert his children and cast them away.”
To which we reply “Thou liest, Arminian; shut thy mouth, God never did
desert his children, neither can he, nor will he.”

And having answered the Arminian we turn to answer the devil, and we say
to him, “O fiend, thou temptest us to think that thou wilt conquer us;
remember Satan, that the strength that has preserved us against thee has
not been our own; the arm that has delivered us has not been this arm of
flesh and blood, else we had long since been overcome. Look thou there,
fiend, at him that is Omnipotent: his Almightiness is the power that
preserves us to the end; and, therefore, be we never so weak, when we are
weak then we are strong, and in our last hour of peril we shall yet
overcome thee.”

But please to notice, that this answer springs and arises from Christ’s
death. Let us just picture a scene. When the Lord Jesus came down to
earth, Satan knew his errand. He knew that the Lord Jesus was the Son of
God, and when he saw him an infant in the manger, he thought if he could
kill him and get Him in the bonds of death what a fine thing it would be! So
he stirred up the spirit of Herod to slay him; but Herod missed his mark.
And many a time did Satan strive to put the personal existence of Christ in
danger, so that he might get Christ to die. Poor fool as he was, he did not
know that when Christ died he would bruise the devil’s head. Once, you
remember, when Christ was in the synagogue, the devil stirred up the
people, and made them angry; and he thought, “Oh! what a glorious thing
it would be if I could kill this man; then there would be an end of him, And
I should reign supreme for ever.” So he got the people to take him to the
brow of the hill, and he gloated over the thought that now surely he would
be cast down headlong. But Christ escaped. He tried to starve him, he tried
to drown him; he was in the desert without food, and he was on the sea in
a storm; but there was no starving or drowning him, and Satan no doubt
panted for his blood and longed that he should die. At last the day arrived;
it was telegraphed to the court of hell that at last Christ would die. They
rung their bells with hellish mirth and joy. “He will die now,” said he,
“Judas has taken the thirty pieces of silver. Let those Scribes and Pharisees
get him, they will no more let him go than the spider will a poor
unfortunate fly. He is safe enough now.” And the devil laughed for very
glee, when he saw the Savior stand before Pilate’s bar. And when it was
said, “Let him be crucified,” then his joy scarce knew bounds, except that
bound which his own misery must ever set to it. As far as he could he
revelled in what was to him a delightful thought, that the Lord of glory was
about to die. In death, as Christ was seen of angels, he was seen of devils
too; and that dreary march from Pilate’s palace to the cross was one which
devils saw with extraordinary interest. And when they saw him on the
cross, there stood the exulting fiend, smiling to himself. “Ah! I have the
King of Glory now in my dominions, I have the power of death, and I have
the power over the Lord Jesus.” He exerted that power, till the Lord Jesus
had to cry out in bitter anguish, “My God, my God, Why hast thou
forsaken me ?” But ah! how short-lived was hellish victory! How brief was
the Satanic triumph! He died, and “It is finished!” shook the gates of hell.
Down from the cross the conqueror leaped, pursued the fiend with
thunder-bolts of wrath; swift to the shades of hell the fiend did fly, and
swift descending went the conqueror after him; and we may conceive him
exclaiming —

“Traitor! this bolt shall find and pierce thee through,
Though under hell’s profoundest wave thou div’st,
To find a sheltering grave.”

And seize him he did — chained him to his chariot wheel; dragged him up
the steps of glory; angels shouting all the while, “He hath led captivity
captive, and received gifts for men.” Now, devil, thou saidst thou wouldst
overcome me, when I came to die. Satan I defy thee, and laugh thee to
scorn! My Master overcame thee, and I shall overcome thee yet. You say
you will overcome the saint, do you? You could not overcome the saint’s
Master, and you will not overcome him. You once thought you had
conquered Jesus: you were bitterly deceived. Ah! Satan, thou mayest think
thou shalt overcome the little faith and the faint heart; but thou art
wondrously mistaken — for we shall assuredly tread Satan under our feet
shortly; and even in our last extremity, with fearful odds against us, we
shall be “more than conquerors through him that loved us.”
You see that thus, my brethren, Christ’s death has taken away from Satan
the advantage which he has over the saint in the hour of death; so that we
may joyfully descend the shelving banks of Jordan, or may even, if God
calls us to a sudden death, glide from its abrupt cliffs, for Christ is with us,
and to die is gain.

II. But now, I want just a moment or two, whilst I try to show you that
not only has Christ by his death taken away the devil’s power in death; but
HE HAS TAKEN AWAY THE DEVILS POWER EVERYWHERE ELSE OVER A
CHRISTIAN. “He hath destroyed,” or overcome, “him that had the power of
death, that is, the devil.”

Death was the devil’s chief intrenchment: Christ bearded the lion in his den,
and fought him in his own territory; and when he took death from him and
dismantled that once impregnable fortress, he took away from him not only
that, but every other advantage that he had over the saint. And now Satan
is a conquered foe, not only in the hour of death, but in every other hour
and in every other place. He is an enemy, both cruel and mighty, but he is a
foe who quakes and quails when a Christian gets into the lists with him; for
he knows that though the fight may waver for a little while in the scale, the
balance of victory must fall on the side of the saint, because Christ by his
death destroyed the devil’s power.

Satan, my brethren, may to-morrow get much power over you, by
tempting you to indulge in the lusts of the flesh, or in the pride of life; he
may come to you and say, “Do such-and-such a thing that would be
dishonest, and I will make you rich; indulge in such-and-such a pleasure,
and I will make you happy. come,” saith Satan, “yield to my blandishments;
I will give you wine to quaff that shall be richer than ever came from the
wine-vats of Holy Scripture; I will give you bread to eat that you know not
of. Eat thou the tempting fruit; it is sweet; it will make thee like a god.” .
“Ah!” saith the Christian, “but Satan, my Master died when he had to do
with thee, and therefore I will have nothing to do with thee. If thou didst
kill my Lord, thou wilt kill me too if thou canst, and therefore away with
thee! but inasmuch as thou layest down silver for me, and tellest me I can
have it if I do wrong, lo, Satan, I can cover thy silver with gold, and have
ten times as much to spare afterwards. Thou sayest I shall get gain if I sin.
Nay, but the treasures of Christ are greater riches than all the treasures of
Egypt. Why, Satan, if thou wert to bring me a crown, and say, ‘There!
thou shalt have that if thou wilt sin.’ I should say, ‘Poor crown! Why,
Satan, I have got a better one than that laid up in heaven, I could not sin
for that, that is a bribe too paltry,” In he brings his bags of gold. and he
says, “Now, Christian, sin for them.” The Christian says, “Why fiend, that
stuff is not worth my looking at. I have an inheritance in a city where the
streets are paved with solid gold; and, therefore, what are these poor
chinking bits to me? Take them back!” He brings in loveliness, and he
tempts us by it. but we say to him, “Why, devil, what art thou at? What is
that loveliness to me? Mine eyes have seen the King in his beauty and the
land that is very far oft; and by faith I know that I shall go where beauty’s
self, even in her perfection, is excelled — where I shall see my Savior, who
is ‘the chief among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely.’ That is no
temptation to me! Christ has died, and I count all these things but dross,
that I may win Christ and be found in him.” So that you see, even in
temptation, the death of Christ has destroyed the devil’s power
“You will not yield, will you?” says the devil “You cannot be tempted! Ah!
well,” says he, “if you cannot be drawn aside, I’ll pull you aside. What are
you, that you should stand against me? A poor puny man! Why, I have
made angels fall, and I am not afraid of you. Come on!” And he puts his
foot to our foot, and with his dragon yell he frights the echoes till they dare
not reply. He lifts his blazing sword, and thinks to smite us to the ground.
You know, my brethren, what the shield is that must catch the blow. It is
the shield of faith in Christ that died for us. He hurls his darts, but his darts
hurt not, for lo, we catch them also on this all-powerful shield, Christ and
his cross. So that, let his insinuations be never so direful, the death of
Christ has destroyed the devil’s power either to tempt or to destroy. He
may be allowed to attempt either the one or the other, but he can be
successful in neither. The death of Christ has “destroyed him that had the
power of death, that is, the devil.”

Some people say they don’t believe in a devil. Well, I have only to tell them
I don’t believe in them because if they knew themselves much they would
very soon find a devil. But it is quite possible that they have very little
evidence of there being any devil; for you know the devil never wastes his
time. He comes up a street, and he sees a man engaged in business,
hoarding, covetous, grasping. He has got a widow’s house in his throat, he
has just swallowed the last acre of a poor orphan’s lands. “Oh,” says the
devil, “drive by, I shall not stop there; he does not need me; he will go to
hell easily enough.” He goes to the next house: there is a man there, a
drunkard. spending his time in riotousness: he marches by, and says,
“There’s no need for me here; why should I trouble my own dear friends?
Why should I meddle with those whom I am sure to have at last? There’s
no need to tease them.” He finds a poor saint upon his knees, exercising
but very little power in prayer. “Oh!” says the devil, “I shant have this
creature at last; I’ll howl at him now.” There is a poor sinner just returning
from his evil ways and crying, “I have sinned and done evil in thy sight;
Lord, have mercy upon me “ “Losing a subject,” says Satan; “I’ll have him;
I’m not going to lose my subjects like this.” So he worries him. The reason
why you don’t believe there is a devil, very likely is, that the devil very
seldom comes to you because you are so safe that he does not take any
trouble to look after you, and you have not seen him, because you are too
bad for him to care about, and he says, “Oh no, there’s no need for me to
waste time to tempt that man, it would be carrying coals to Newcastle to
tempt him, for he is as bad as he can be, and therefore let him alone.” But
when a man lives near to God, or when a man’s conscience begins to be
aroused, then Satan cries, “To arms! to arms! to arms!” For two good
reasons: first, because he wants to worry him, and secondly, because he
wants to destroy him. Well, we bless God that though the devil may direct
his utmost scorn and craft and malice against the Christian, the Christian is
safe behind the rock Christ Jesus, and may rest secure.

And now, in conclusion, suffer a word or two of comfort to the people of
God, and a warning to those that know him not.

O children of God! death hath lost its sting, because the devil’s power over
it is destroyed. Then cease to fear dying. Thou knowest what death is: look
him in the face, and tell him thou art not afraid of him. Ask grace from
God, that by an intimate knowledge and a firm belief of thy Master’s death,
thou mayest be strengthened for that dread hour. And mark me, if thou so
livest, thou mayest be able to think of death with pleasure, and to welcome
it when it comes with intense delight. It is sweet to die: to lie upon the
breast of Christ, and have one’s soul kissed out of one’s body by the lips of
divine affection. And you that have lost friends, or that may be bereaved,
sorrow not as those that are without hope; for remember the power of the
devil is taken away. What a sweet thought the death of Christ brings us
concerning those who are departed! They are gone, my brethren; but do
you know how far they have gone? The distance between the glorified
spirits in heaven and the militant saints on earth seems great; but it is not
so. We are not far from home.

“One gentle sigh the spirit breaks,
We scarce can say ‘tis gone,
Before the ransomed spirit takes
Its station near the throne.”

We measure distance by time. We are apt to say that a certain place is so
many hours from us. If it is a hundred miles off and there is no railroad we
think it a long way; if there is a railway, we think we can be there in no
time, But how near must we say heaven is? For it is just one sigh and we
get there. Why, my brethren, our departed friends are only in the upper
room, as it were, of the same house; they have not gone far off; they are up
stairs, and we are down below.Yea, more as the poet says,

“Ten thousands to their endless home,
This solemn moment fly,
And we are to the margin come,
And soon expect to die.”

And then he describes them.

“Part of the host have crossed the flood.”

There they are, on the other side the banks. Here is another part, deep in
the stream. Here are we on the margin, just about to step down. They are
all one army; there is not one gap, right down from Abel to the one that is
now departing; and they never shall be but one, till the pearly gates are shut
for ever, and they are all secure.

“E’en now by faith we clasp our hands
With those that went before,
And greet the blood-besprinkled bands
Upon the eternal shore.”

And now I close by saying this word to the sinner O thou that knowest not
God, thou that believest not in Christ, death is to thee a horrible thing. I
need not tell thee that; for thine own conscience tells it to thee. Why, man,
thou mayest laugh sometimes at religion; but in thine own solitary moments
it is no laughing thing. The greatest brags in the world are always the
greatest cowards. If I hear a man saying, “Oh, I am not afraid of dying, I
don’t care about your religion,” he does not deceive me; I know all about
that. He says that to cover up his fears, when he is alone of a night. You
should see how white his cheek is if a leaf falls against the window When
there is lightning in the air you should look at him. “Oh that flash” he says.
Or if he is a strong man perhaps he does not say a word, but he feels in
such horror all the time the storm is on. Not like the Christian man: not like
the man who has courage. Why, I love the lightnings; God’s thunder is my
delight. I never feel so well as when there is a tremendous thunder and
lightning storm. Then I feel as if I could mount up, and my whole heart
sings. I love then to sing —

“This awful God is mine
My Father and my love,
He shall send down his heavenly powers
To carry me above.”

Yes, you are afraid of dying I know; and what I shall say to you is this —
You have good need to be afraid of dying, and you have good need to be
afraid of dying now. Because you have escaped many times you think you
shall never die. Suppose we should take a man and tie him to that pillar,
and a good marksman should take bow and arrows and shoot at him. Well,
one arrow might glance and strike some one that sits at the right, and
another might glance and strike some one that is to the left; one might go
above his head, and another beneath his feet, but you cannot suppose that
man would laugh and mock, when the arrows were flying about his ears,
and if he was quite certain that it only wanted the marksman to take an aim
at him, and he would be shot, then, my friends, you cannot conceive how
he would tell you what terror he would experience. But certainly there
would be no laughter. He would not say, “Oh! I shall not die, see, the man
has been shooting all these others.” No, the risk of dying would be enough
to steady him and the thought that that marksman had an eye so true and a
hand so steady that he had but to pull the string, and the arrow would
certainly reach his heart, would be enough at least to sober him, and keep
him always watchful; for in a moment, when he thought not that arrow
might fly. Now, that is you to-day, God puts the arrow to the string: your
neighbor is dead on the right, and another on the left; the arrow will come
to you soon, it might have come before, if God willed it. Oh, mock not at
death, and despise not eternity, but begin to think whether you are
prepared for death, lest death should come and find you wanting. And
remember, death will make no delays for you. You have postponed the
time of thought: death will not be postponed to suit you, but when you die,
there will be no hour allowed for you in which then to turn to God. Death
comes with its first blow; damnation comes afterwards, without the hope
of reprieve. “He that believeth and is immersed shall be saved; he that
believeth not shall be damned.” Thus do we preach the Gospel of God unto
you as God would have us. “Go ye into all the world and preach the
Gospel to every creature.” “Go ye and teach all nations, immersing them in
the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Behold, I tell
you, faith in Jesus is the soul’s only escape; profession of that in immersion
is God’s own way of professing faith before men. The Lord help you to
obey him in the two great gospel commandments, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

“He heard the sound of the trumpet. and took not warning:
his blood shall be upon him.” Ezekiel 33:5

IN all worldly things men are always enough awake to understand their
own interests. There is scarce a merchant who reads the paper who does
not read it in some way or other with a view to his own personal concerns.
If he finds that by the rise or fall of the markets he will be either a gainer or
a loser, that part of the day’s news will be the most important to him. In
politics, in everything, in fact, that concerns temporal affairs, personal
interest usually leads the van. Men will always be looking out for
themselves, and personal and home interests will generally engross the
major part of their thoughts. But in religion it is otherwise. In religion men
love far rather to believe abstract doctrines, and to talk of general truths,
than the searching inquiries which examine their own personal interest in it.
You will hear many men admire the preacher who deals in generalities, but
when he comes to press home searching questions, by-and-by they are
offended. If we stand and declare general facts, such as the universal
sinnership of mankind; or the need of a Savior, they will give an assent to
our doctrine, and possibly they may retire greatly delighted with the
discourse, because it has not affected them; but how often will our
audience gnash their teeth, and go away in a rage, because like the
Pharisees with Jesus, they perceive, concerning a faithful minister, that he
spoke of them. And yet, my brethren, how foolish this is. If in all other
matters we like personalities — if in everything else we look to our own
concerns, how much more should we do so in religion ? for surely every
man must give an account for himself at the day of judgment. We must die
alone, we must rise at the day of resurrection one by one, and each one for
himself must appear before the bar of God; and each one must either have
said to him, as an individual, “Come ye blessed;” or else he must be
appalled with the thundering sentence “Depart ye cursed.” If there were
such a thing as national salvation, if it could be possible that we could be
saved in the gross and in the bulk, that so, like the sheaves of corn, the few
weeds that may grow with the stubble, would be gathered in for the sake of
the wheat, then, indeed, it might not be so foolish for us to neglect our
own personal interests; but if the sheep must, every one of them, pass
under the hand of him that telleth them, if every man must stand in his own
person before God, to be tried for his own acts — by everything that is
rational, by everything that conscience would dictate, and self-interest
would command, let us each of us look to our own selves, that we be not
deceived, and that we find not ourselves, at last, miserably cast away.
Now, this morning, by God’s help, I shall labor to be personal, and whilst I
pray for the rich assistance of the Divine Spirit, I will also ask one thing of
each person here present — I would ask of every Christian that he would
lift up a prayer to God, that the service may be blessed, and I ask of every
other person that he will please to understand that I am preaching to him,
and at him; and if there be anything that is personal and pertinent to his
own case, I beseech him, as for life and death, to let it have its full weight
with him, and not begin to think of his neighbor, to whom perhaps it may
be even more pertinent, but whose business certainly does not concern him.
The text is a solemn one — “ He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took
not warning: his blood shall be upon him.” The first head is this — the
warning was. all that could be desired — “he heard the sound of the
trumpet.” Secondly, the excuses for not attending to the startling warning
are all of them both frivolous and wicked: and therefore, in the third place,
the consequences of inattention must be terrible, because man’s blood
must then be on his own head.

I. First, then, THE WARNING WAS ALL THAT COULD BE DESIRED. When in
time of war an army is attacked in the night, and cut off and destroyed
whilst asleep, if it were impossible for them to be aware of the attack, and
if they had used all diligence in placing their sentinels, but nevertheless the
foe were so wary as to destroy them, we should weep; we should attach no
blame to anyone, but should deeply regret, and should give to that host our
fullest pity. But if, on the other hand, they had posted their sentinels and
the sentinels were wide awake, and gave to the sleepy soldiers every
warning that could be desired, but nevertheless the army were cut off,
although we might for common humanity regret the loss thereof, yet at the
same time we should be obliged to say, if they were foolish enough to sleep
when the sentinels had warned them; if they folded their arms in
presumptuous sloth, after they had had sufficient and timely notice of the
progress of their bloodthirsty enemy, then in their dying, we cannot pity
them: their blood must rest upon their own heads. So it is with you. If men
perish under an unfaithful ministry, and have not been sufficiently warned
to escape from the wrath to come, the Christian may pity them, yea, and
methinks, even when they stand before the bar of God, although the fact of
their not having been warned will not fully excuse them, yet it will go far to
diminish their eternal miseries, which otherwise might have fallen upon
their heads; for we know it is more tolerable for unwarned Tyre and Sidon
in the day of judgment, than it is for any city, or any nation that has had the
Gospel proclaimed in its ears. My brethren, if on the other hand, we have
been warned, if our ministers have been faithful, if they have aroused our
conscience, and have constantly and earnestly called our attention to the
fact of the wrath to come, if we have not attended to their message, if we
have despised the voice of God, if we have turned a deaf ear to their
earnest exhortations, if we perish, we shall die warned — die under the
sound of the Gospel, and our damnation must be an unpitied one, for our
blood must fall upon our own heads. Permit me then, to try, if I can, to
enlarge upon this thought, that the warning has been in the case of many of
you, all that could have been needed.

In the first place, the warnings of the ministry have been to most of you
warnings that have been heard — “ He heard the sound of the trumpet.” In
far off lands the trumpet sound of warning is not heard. Alas! there are
myriads of our fellow creatures who have never been warned by God’s
ambassadors, who know not that wrath abideth on them, and who do not
yet understand the only way and method of salvation. In your case it is
very different. You have heard the Word of God preached to you. You
cannot say, when you come before God, “Lord. I knew no better.” There is
not a man or a woman within this place who will dare then to plead
ignorance. And moreover, you have not only heard with your ears, but
some of you have been obliged to hear it in your consciences. I have before
me many of my hearers whom I have had the pleasure of seeing now for
some years. It has not been once or twice, but many a time, I have seen the
tear guttering your cheeks when I have spoken earnestly, faithfully, and
affectionately to you. I have seen your whole soul moved within you. and
yet, to my sorrow, you are now what you were: your goodness has been as
the early cloud and as the morning dew that passeth away. You have heard
the Gospel. You wept under it, and you loved the sound of it, and you
came again, and wept again, and many marvelled that you did weep, but
the greatest marvel was, that after having wept so well, you wiped away
your tears so easily. Oh, yes, God is my witness, there are some of you not
an inch nearer heaven, but ye have sealed your own damnation doubly sure,
unless ye repent: for ye have heard the Gospel, ye have despised
prophesyings, ye have rejected the counsel of God against yourselves; and,
therefore, when you shall die ye must die pitied by your friends, but at the
same time with your blood on your own heads.

The trumpet was not only heard, but more than that, its warning was
understood. When the man supposed in the text heard the trumpet, he
understood by it that the enemy was at hand, and yet he took not warning.
Now, my brethren, in your case, the sound of the Gospel warning has been
understood. A thousand faults your minister may have, but there is one
fault from which he is entirely free, and that is, he is free from all attempts
to use fine language in the expression of his thoughts; ye are all my
witnesses, that if there be a Saxon word or a homel phrase, a sentence that
is rough and market-like, that will tell you the truth,; always use that first. I
can say solemnly, as in the sight of God, that I never went out of my pulpit,
except with the firm belief, that whatever might have happened, I was
perfectly understood. I had sought at least so to gather wise words, that no
man might mistake my meaning; gnash his teeth he might, but he could not
say, “The preacher was misty and cloudy, talking to me of metaphysics,
beyond my comprehension;” he has been obliged to say, “Well, I know
what he meant, he spoke plainly enough to me.” Well, sirs, then if it be so,
and if ye have heard warnings that ye could understand, so much the more
guilty are ye, if ye are living this day in rejection of them. If I have
preached to you in a style above comprehension. then on my head must be
your blood, because I ought to have made you understand; but if I come
down to men of low estate, and pick even vulgar phrases to suit common
people, then if you understood the warning, and if ye then risked it, mark
you, my hands are clean of your blood. If ye be damned. I am innocent of
your damnation; for I have told you plainly, that except ye repent, ye must
perish, and that except ye put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, there is
for you no hope of salvation.

Again, this trumpet sound was startling. The trumpet’s sound is ever
considered to be the most startling in the world. ‘Tis that which shall be
used on the resurrection morning to startle the myriads of sleepers and
make them rise from their tombs. Ay, and ye have had a startling ministry.
Ye have sat, some of you, under ministers that might have made the devil
himself tremble, so earnest have they been. and they have made you
tremble sometimes, so much, that you could not sleep. The hair of your
head was well nigh moved to stand upright. They spake as though they
ne’er might speak again: as dying men to dying men. They spoke as if they
had been in hell, and knew the vengeance of the Almighty, and anon they
spoke as if they had entered into the heart of Jesus, and read his love to
sinners. They had brows of brass, they knew not how to flinch. They laid
your iniquity bare before your face, and with rough language that was
unmistakeable they made you feel that there was a man there who told you
all things that ever you did. They so declared it, that you could not help
feeling under it. You always retained a veneration for that minister,
because you felt that he at least was honest with you, and you have
sometimes thought that you would even go and hear him again, because
there at least your soul was moved, and you were made to hear the truth.
Yes, you have had a startling ministry, some of you. Then, sirs, if ye have
heard the cry of fire, if ye are burned in your beds, your charred ashes shall
not accuse me. If I have warned you that he that believeth not must be
damned, if you are damned, your miserable souls shall not accuse me. If I
have startle you sometimes from your slumbers, and made your balls and
your pleasure parties uneasy, because I have sometimes warned you of
these things, then, sirs, if after all you put away these warnings, and you
reject these counsels, you will be obliged to say, “My blood is on my own
head.”

In many of your cases the warning has been very frequent. If the man heard
the trumpet sound ONCE and did not regard it, possibly we might excuse
him; but how many of my audience have heard the trumpet sound of the
gospel very frequently. There you are, YOUNG man. You have had many
years of a pious mother’s teaching, many years of a pious minister’s
exhortations. Waggon loads of sermons have been exhausted upon you.
You have had many sharp PROVIDENCES, many terrible sicknesses. Often
when the death bell has tolled for your friend, your CONSCIENCE has been
aroused. To you warnings are not unusual things; they are very common.
Oh ! my hearers, if a man should hear the gospel but once, his blood would
be upon his own head for rejecting it, but of how much sorer punishment
shall you be thought worthy who have heard it many and many a time. AH!
I may well weep, when I think how many sermons you have listened to,
many of you, how many times you have been CUT to the heart. A hundred
times every year you have gone up to the house of God, and far oftener
than that, and you have just added a hundred billets to the eternal pile. A
hundred times the trumpet has sounded in your ears, and a hundred times
you have turned away to sin again, to despise Christ, to neglect your
eternal interests, and to pursue the pleasures and the CONCERNS of this
world. Oh! how mad this is, how mad! Oh, sirs, if a man had but once
poured out his heart before YOU concerning your eternal interests, and if
he had spoken to you earnestly, and you had rejected his message, then,
even then, ye had been guilty. But what shall we say to you upon whom
the shafts of the Almighty have been exhausted? Oh, what stall be done
unto this barren ground that hath been watered with shower after shower,
and that hath been quickened with sunshine after sunshine? What shall be
done unto him who being often rebuked, still hardeneth his neck? Shall he
not be suddenly destroyed, and that without remedy, and shall it not then
be said, “His blood lieth at his own door, his guilt is on his own head?”
And I would just have you recollect one thing more. This warning that you
have had so often, has come to you in time. “ Ah,” said an infidel once,
“God never regards man. If there be a God, he would never take notice of
men.” Said a Christian minister, who was sitting opposite to him in the
carriage, “The day may come, sir, when you will learn the truth of what
you have just said.” “I do not understand your allusion, sir,” said he. “Well,
sir, the day may come, when you may call, and he will refuse; when you
may stretch out your hands, and he will not regard you, but as he has said
in the book of Proverbs, so will he do, ‘Because I called and ye refused.
because I stretched out my hands, and no man regarded, I also will mock at
your calamity, I will laugh when your fear cometh.’ “ But oh, sirs, your
warning has not come too late. You are not warned on a sick bed, at the
eleventh hour, when there is but a bare possibility of salvation, but you are
warned in time, you are warned to-day, you have been warned for these
many years that are now past. If God should send a preacher to the
damned in hell, that were an unnecessary addition to their misery. Surely, if
one could go and preach the gospel through the fields of Gehenna, and tell
them of a Savior they had despised, and of a gospel that is now beyond
their reach, that were taunting poor souls with a vain attempt to increase
their unutterable woe; but Oh my brethren, to preach the gospel now is to
preach in a hopeful period; for “now is the accepted time: now is the day of
salvation.” Warn the boatman before he enters the current, and then, if he
is swept down the rapids, he destroys himself. Warn the man before he
drinks the cup of poison, tell him it is deadly; and then, if he drinks it, his
death lies at his own door. And so, let us warn you before you depart, this
life; let us preach to you while as yet your bones are full of marrow, and
the sinews of your joints are not loosed. We have then warned you in time,
and so much the more shall your guilt be increased, because the warning
was timely, it was frequent, it was earnest, it was appropriate, it was
arousing, it was continually given to you, and yet you sought not to escape
from the wrath to come.

And so even this morning would I say to you, if ye perish. my skirts are
free from your blood; if ye are damned, it is not for want of calling after,
nor for want of praying for, nor for want of weeping over. Your blood
must be on your own heads, for the warning is all that is needed.

II. And now we come to the second point. MEN; MAKE EXCUSES WHY
THEY DO NOT ATTEND TO THE GOSPEL WARNING, BUT THESE EXCUSES
ARE ALL FRIVOLOUS AND WICKED. I will just go over one or two of the
excuses that people make. Some of them say, “Well, I did not attend to the
warning, because I did not believe there was any necessity for it.” Ah! You
were told that after death there was a judgment, and you did not believe
there was any necessity that you should be prepared for that judgment.
You were told that by the works of the law there shall no flesh living be
justified, and that only through Christ CAN sinners be saved; and you did
not think there was any necessity for Christ. Well sir, you ought to have
thought there was a necessity. You know there was a necessity in your
inner consciousness. You talked very large things when you stood up as an
unbeliever, a professed unbeliever: but you know there was a still small
voice that while you spake belied your tongue. You are well aware that in
the silent watches of the night you have often trembled; in a storm at sea
you have been on your knees to pray to a God whom on the land you have
laughed at; and when you have been sick nigh unto death, you have said,
“Lord, have mercy upon me,” and so you have prayed, that you have
believed it after all. But if you did not believe it, you ought to have
believed it. There was enough in reason to have taught you that there was
an hereafter; the Book of God’s revelation was plain enough to have
taught it to you, and if you have rejected God’s Book, and rejected the
voice of reason and of conscience, your blood is on your own head. Your
excuse is idle. It is worse than that, it is profane and wicked, and still on
your own head be your everlasting torment.

“But,”cries another, “I did not like the trumpet. I did not like the Gospel
that was preached.” Says one, “I did not like certain doctrines in the Bible.
I thought the minister preached too harsh doctrines sometimes, I did not
agree with the Gospel, I thought the Gospel ought to have been altered,
and not to have been just what it was.” You did not like the trumpet, did
you? Well, but God made the trumpet, God made the Gospel. and
inasmuch as ye did not like what God made, it is an idle excuse. What was
that to you what the trumpet was, so long as it warned you? And surely, if
it had been time of war, and you had heard a trumpet sounded to warn you
of the coming of the enemy, you would not have sat still, and said, “Now I
believe that is a brass trumpet, I would like to have had it made of silver.”
No, but the sound would have been enough for you and up you would
have been to escape from the danger. And so it must be now with you. It is
an idle pretense that you did not like it. You ought to have liked it, for God
made the Gospel what it is.

But you say, “I did not like the man that blew it.” Well, if you did not like
one messenger of God, there are many in this city. Could you not find one
you did like? You did not like one man’s manner: it was too theatrical, you
did not like another’s: it was too doctrinal; you did not like another’s: it
was too practical — there are plenty of them, you may take which you do
like, but if God has sent the men, and told them how to blow, and if they
blow to the best of their ability, it is all in vain for you to reject their
warnings, because they do not blow the way you like. Ah, my brethren, we
do not find fault with the way a man speaks, if we are in a house that is on
fire. If the man calls, “Fire! Fire!” we are not particular what note he takes,
we do not think what a harsh voice he has got. You would think any one a
fool, a confounded fool, who should lie in his bed, to be burned, because
be said he did not like the way the man cried, “Fire” Why his business was
to have been out of bed and down the stairs at once, as soon as he heard it.
But another says, “I did not like the man himself; I did not like the minister;
I did not like the man that blew the trumpet; I could hear him preach very
well, but I had a personal dislike to him, and so I did not take any notice of
what the trumpet said.” Verily, God will say to thee at last, “Thou fool,
what hadst thou to do with that man; to his own master he stands or falls;
thy business was with thyself.” What would you think of a man? A man has
fallen overboard from a ship, and when he is drowning, some sailor throws
him a rope, and there it is. Well he says, in the first place, “I do not like
that rope, I don’t think that rope was made at the best manufactory, there
is some tar on it too, I do not like it; and in the next place, I do not like
that sailor that threw the rope over, I am sure he is not a kind-hearted man,
I do not like the look of him at all;” and then comes a gurgle and a groan,
and down he is at the bottom of the sea; and when he was drowned, they
said, that it served him right, if he would not lay hold of the rope, but
would be making such foolish and absurd objections, when it was a matter
of life and death. Then on his own head be his blood. And so shall it be
with you at last. You are so busy with criticising the minister, and his style,
and his doctrine, that your own soul perishes. Remember you may get into
hell by criticism, but you will never criticise your soul out of it. You may
there make the most you can of it. You may be there and say “I did not like
the minister I did not like his manner, I did not like his matter;” but all your
dislikings will not get one drop of water to cool your burning tongue. nor
serve to mitigate the unalleviated torments of that world of agony.
There are many other people who say, “Ah, well, I did none of those
things, but I had a notion that the trumpet sound ought to be blown to
everybody else, but not to me.” Ah! that is a very common notion. “All
men think all men mortal, but themselves,” said a good poet; and all men
think all men need the Gospel, but not themselves. Let each of us recollect
that the Gospel has a message to each one of us. What saith the Gospel to
thee my hearer? What saith the Word to thee? Forget thy neighbors, and
ask this question. Doth it condemn thee? or doth it assure thee of thy.
pardon? for recollect, all thou hast to do in the hearing of the Word, is to
hear with thine own ears for thine own soul, and it will be idle for any one
to say “ I did not think it applied to me,” when we know that it is to be
preached to every creature under heaven, and therefore there must be
something in it for every creature or else it would not be preached to every
creature.

Well, says another, “ But I was so busy, I had so much to do, that I could
not possibly attend to my soul’s concerns. What will you say of the man
who has so much to do that he could not get out of the burning house, but
was burnt to ashes? What will you say of the man that had so much to do,
that when he was dying, he had not time to send for a physician? Why, you
will say, then he ought not to have had so much to do. And if any man in
the world has a business which causes him to lose his own soul for want of
time, let him lay this question to his heart, “What shall it profit a man, if he
gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” But it is false — it is false
— men have got time. It is the want of will, not want of way. You have
time, sir, have you not, despite all your business, to spend in pleasure? You
have time to read your newspaper — have you no time to read your Bible?
You have time to sing a song — have you no time to pray a prayer? Why,
you know when farmer Brown met farmer Smith in the market one day, he
said to him, “Farmer Smith, I can’t think how it is you find time for
hunting. Why, man, what with sowing and mowing and reaping and
ploughing, and all that, my time is so fully occupied on my farm, that I
have no time for hunting.” “Ah,” said he “ Brown, if you liked hunting as
much as I do, if you could not find time, you’d make it.” And so it is with
religion, the reason why men cannot find time for it is, because they do not
like it well enough. If they liked it, they would find time. And besides, what
time does it want? What time does it require? Can I not pray to God over
my ledger? Can I not snatch a text at my very breakfast, and think over it
all day? May I not even when I am busy in the affairs of the world, be
thinking of my soul, and casting myself upon a Redeemer’s blood and
atonement? It wants no time. There may be some time required; some time
for my private devotions, and for communion with Christ, but when I grow
in grace, I shall think it right to have more and more time, the more I can
possibly get, the happier I shall be, and I shall never make the excuse that I
have no time.

“Well,” says another, “but I thought I had time enough; you do not want
me, sir, to be religious in my youth, do you? I am a lad, and may I not have
a little frolic and sow my wild oats as well as anybody else?” Well — yes,
yes; but at the same time the best place for frolic that I know of, is where a
Christian lives. the finest happiness in all the world is the happiness of a
child of God. You may have your pleasures — oh yes! you shall have them
doubled and trebled, if you are a Christian. You shall not have things that
worldlings call pleasures, but you shall have some that are a thousand times
better. But only look at that sorrowful picture. There, far away in the dark
gulf of woe, lies a young man, and he cries. “Ah! I meant to have repented
when I was out of my apprenticeship, and I died before my time was up.”
“Ah! “ says another by his side, “and I thought, whilst I was a journeyman,
that when I came to be a master, I would then think of the things of Christ,
but I died before I had got money enough to. start for myself.” And then a
merchant behind wails with bitter woe, and says, “Ah! I thought I would be
religious when I had got enough to retire on, and live in the country, then I
should have time to think of God, when I had got all my children married
out, and my concerns settled about me, but here I am shut up in hell, and
now what are all my delays worth, and what is all the time I gained for all
the paltry pleasures in the world ? Now I have lost my soul over them.”
We experience great vexation if we are unpunctual in many places; but we
cannot conceive what must be the horror and dismay of men who find
themselves too late in the next world! Ah! friends, if I knew there was one
here who said, “I shall repent next Wednesday.” I would have him feel in a
dreadful state till that Wednesday came, for what if he should die? Oh!
what if he should die! Would his promise of a Wednesday’s repentance
save him from a Thursday damnation ?

Ah, these are all idle excuses. Men make not such when their bodily life is
concerned. Would God that we were wise, that we would not make such
pitiful pretences to apology, when our soul, our own soul, is the matter at
stake. If they take not warning, whatever their excuse, their blood must be
upon their own head.

III. And now, I come most solemnly to conclude with all the power of
earnestness; the warning has been sufficient, the excuse for not attending to
it has been proved profane. Then the last thought is “HIS BLOOD SHALL BE
ON HIS OWN HEAD.” Briefly thus — he shall perish; he shall perish
certainly, he shall perish inexcusably. He shall perish. And what does that
mean? There is no human mind, however capacious, that can ever guess
the thought of a soul eternally cast away from God. The wrath to come is
as inexpressible as the glory that shall be revealed hereafter. Our Savior
labored for words with which to express the horrors of a future state to the
ungodly. You remember he talked of worms that die not, and fires that are
never quenched, of a pit without a bottom, of weeping and wailing and
gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness. No preacher was ever so loving as
Christ but no man ever spoke so horribly about hell; and yet even when the
Savior had said his best and said his worst, he had not told us what are the
horrors of a future state. Ye have seen sicknesses, ye have heard the
shrieks of men and women when their pangs have been upon them. We, at
least, have stood by the bed-sides even of some dear to us, and we have
seen to what an extent agony may be carried in the human body; but none
of us know how much the body is capable of suffering. Certainly the body
will have to suffer for ever — “He is able to cast both body and soul into
hell.” We have heard of exquisite torments, but we have never dreamt of
any like unto this. Again, we have seen something of the miseries of the
soul. Have we never marked the man that we used to know in our
childhood who was depressed in spirits. All that ever could be done for him
never could evoke a smile from him — never did the light of cheerfulness
light up his eye — he was mournfully depressed. Ay, and it was my
unhappy lot to live with one who was not only depressed in spirits, but
whose mind had gone so far amiss, that it did brood fancies so mournful
and dismal, that the very sight of him was enough to turn the sunlight of
summer into the very darkness of a dreary winter. He had nothing to say
but dark, groaning words. His thoughts always had a sombre appearance
about them. It was midnight in his soul — a darkness that might be felt.
Have you never seen yourselves what power the mind has over us to make
us full of misery? Ah, brethren and sisters, if ye could go to many of our
asylums, and to our sick wards — ay, and dying beds, too, you might
know what acute anguish the mind may feel. And remember that the mind,
as well as the mortal frame, is to endure damnation. Yes, we must not shirk
that word, the Scripture saith it, and we must use it. Oh! men and women,
except we repent, except we do each of US cry for mercy to him that is
able to save, we must perish. All that is meant by that word “hell,” must be
realized in me except I be a believer. and so all that is meant by “Depart, ye
cursed,” must be thine, unless thou dost turn unto God with full purpose of
heart.

But again, he that turneth not at the rebuke of the minister shall die, and he
shall die certainly. This is not a matter of perhaps or chance. The things we
preach, and that are taught in Scripture, are matters of solemn certainty. It
may be that death is that bourne from which no traveler returns, but it is
not true that we know nothing of it. It is as certain as that there are men,
and a world in which they live, that there is another world to come, and
that if they die impenitent, that world will be to them one of misery. And
mark you — there is no chance of escape, die without Christ, and there is
no gate out of which you can escape — for ever, oh, for ever lost, and not
one hope of mercy — cast away, and not one outlet for escape, not one
solitary chance of ransom. Oh, if there were hope that in the world to
come, men might escape, we need not be so earnest; but since once lost,
lost for aye — once cast away, cast away without hope, without any
prospect of a hope, we must be earnest. Oh, my God, when I remember
that I have to-day some here present who in all probability must be dead
before next Sabbath, I must be earnest. Out of so large an assembly, the
chances are that we shall not all of us be found pilgrims in this world within
another seven days. It is not only possible, but probable that some one out
of this vast audience will have been launched upon a world unknown. Shall
it be myself, and shall I sail to the port of bliss or must I sail over fiery
waves for ever, lost, shipwrecked, stranded, on the rocks of woe? Soul,
which shall it be with thee? It may be, thou shalt die, my greyheaded hearer
or thou young lad, thou boy, thou mayest die — I know not which nor can
we tell — God only knoweth. Then let each one ask himself. Am I
prepared, should I be called to die? Yes, you may die where you are, on
the benches where you are sitting — you may now die — and whither
would you go? for recollect that whither ye go, ye go for ever. Oh! eternity
— eternity — eternity must I climb thy topless steeps for ever, and never
reach the summit, and must my path be ever misery or joy? Oh! eternity,
thou depth without a bottom, thou sea without a shore, must I sail over thy
boundless waves for ever in one undeviating track — and must I either
plough through seas of bliss, or else be driven by the stormy wind of
vengeance, over gulfs of misery? “Then what am I?” “My soul awake and
an impartial survey take.” Am I prepared? Am I prepared? Am I
prepared?” For prepared or not, death admits of no delay, and if he is at my
door, he will take me where I must go for ever, prepared or not.

Now, the last thing is, the sinner will perish — he will perish certainly, but
last of all, he will perish without excuse — his blood shall be on his own
head. When a man is bankrupt ,if he can say, “It is not through reckless
trading — it has been entirely through the dishonesty of one I trusted that I
am what I am;” he takes some consolation, and he says, “I cannot help it.”
But oh, my hearers, if you make bankrupts of your own souls, after you
have been warned, then your own eternal bankruptcy shall lie at your own
door. Should never so great a misfortune come upon us, if we can trace it
to the providence of God, we bear it cheerfully; but if we have inflicted it
upon ourselves, then how fearful is it! And let every man remember that if
he perish after having heard the Gospel, he will be his own murderer.
Sinner, thou wilt drive the dagger into thine heart thyself. If thou depisest
the Gospel, thou art preparing fuel for thine own bed of flames, thou art
hammering out the chain for thine own everlasting binding; and when
damned, thy mournful reflection will be this: — I have damned myself, I
cast myself into this pit; for I rejected the Gospel, I despised the message; I
trod under foot the Son of Man; I would have none of his rebukes. I
despised his Sabbaths: I would not hearken to his exhortations, and now I
perish by mine own hand, the miserable suicide of my own soul.
And now a sweet reflection strikes me. A good writer says, “There are,
doubtless, spots in the world that would be barren for ever, if we
recollected what had happened there.” Says he, “I was once in St. Paul’s
cathedral, just under the dome, and a friend just touched me gently, and
said, ‘Do you see that little chisel mark?’ and I said ‘Yes.’ He said ‘That is
where a man threw himself down, and there he fell, and was dashed to
atoms.’ “ The writer says, “We all started aside from that little spot, where
a fellow creature’s blood had been shed. It seemed an awful place when we
remembered that.” Now, there is many a street, there is many a way-side,
there is many a house of God, where men have taken the last decision, and
damned their own souls. I doubt not, there are some here this morning,
standing or sitting, to whom the voice of conscience says, “Decide for
God,” and now Satan and the evil heart together are saying, “Reject the
message; laugh it off, forget it: take a ticket for the theater to-morrow: do
not let this man alarm us: it is his very profession to talk to us like this; let
us go away, and laugh if off; and let us spend the rest of this day in
merriment.” Yes, that is the last warning thou wilt ever have. It is so with
some of you. There are some of you that will this hour decide to damn
yourselves, and you will look for ever throughout eternity, to that place
under the gallery of the Surrey Music Hall, and you will say, “Alas! woe
was the day I heard that man. I was half impressed — almost he persuaded
me to be a Christian, but I decided for hell” And that will be a solemn spot
to angels where you are standing, or where you are sitting, for angels will
say to one another, “Stand aside, that is a spot where a man ruined his own
soul for ever and ever.” But the sweet thought is, that there are some
places just the reverseWhy, you are sitting, my friend, this morning, on a spot
where some threeweeks ago one sat who was converted to God; and that place where
youare sitting you ought to venerate, for in that place there sat one who was
one of the chiefest of sinners like yourself, and there the Gospel message
met him. And far back there behind the door, many a soul has been brought
to Christ. Many a piece of good news have I heard from some in yonder
upper gallery. “I could not see your face, sir, all the sermon through, but
the arrow of the Lord found its way round the corner, and reached my
heart notwithstanding that, and I was saved.” Ah, well, may God so bless
this place, that every seat of it this day may be solemnized by his own
grace, and a spot to be remembered in your future history by reason of the
beginning of your blessedness, the dawn of your salvation. “Believe on the
Lord Jesus, and be baptized, and thou shalt be saved.” This is the gospel
we are told to preach to every creature — “He that believeth, and is
immersed, shall be saved, he that believeth not shall be damned.”