2 Sermons: The Great Reservoir and Wisdom Guards the Heart The Great Reservoir February 21, 1858 by C. H. (1834-1892) "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life."— Proverbs 4:23 . If I should vainly attempt to fashion my discourse after lofty models, I should this morning compare the human heart to the ancient city of Thebes, out of whose hundred gates multitudes of warriors were wont to march. As was the city, such were her armies, as was her inward strength, such were they who came forth of her. I might then urge the necessity of keeping the heart, because it is the metropolis of our manhood, the citadel and armory of our humanity. Let the chief fortress surrender to the enemy, and the occupation of the rest must be an easy task. Let the principal stronghold be possessed by evil, the whole land must be overrun thereby. Instead, however, of doing this, I shall attempt what possibly I may be able to perform, by a humble metaphor and a simple figure, which will be easily understood; I shall endeavor to set forth the wise man's doctrine, that our life issues from the heart, and thus I shall labor to show the absolute necessity of keeping the heart with all diligence. You have seen the great reservoirs provided by our water companies, in which the water which is to supply hundreds of streets and thousands of houses is kept. Now, the heart is just the reservoir of man, and our life is allowed to flow in its proper season. That life may flow through different pipes—the mouth, the hand, the eye; but still all the issues of hand, of eye, of lip, derive their source from the great fountain and central reservoir, the heart; and hence there is no difficulty in showing the great necessity that exists for keeping this reservoir, the heart, in a proper state and condition, since otherwise that which flows through the pipes must be touted and corrupt. May the Holy Spirit now direct our meditations. Mere moralists very often forget the heart, and deal exclusively with the lesser powers. Some of them say, "If a man's life be wrong, it is better to alter the principles upon which his conduct is modeled: we had better adopt another scheme of living; society must be re-modeled, so that man may have an opportunity for the display of virtues, and less temptation to indulge in vice." It is as if, when the reservoir was filled with poisonous or polluted fluid, some sage counsellor should propose that all the piping had better be taken up, and fresh pipes laid down, so that the water might run through fresh channels; but who does not perceive that it would be all in vain, if the fountain-head were polluted, however good the channels. So in vain the rules by which men hope to fashion their lives; in vain the regimen by which we seek to constrain ourselves to the semblance of goodness, unless the heart be right, the very best scheme of life shall fall to the ground, and fail to effect its design. Others say, "Well, if the life be wrong, it would be better to set the understanding right: you must inform man's judgment, educate him, teach him better, and when his head is well informed, then his life will be improved. Now, understanding is, if I may use such a figure, the stopcock which controls the emotions, lets them flow on, or stops them; and it is as if some very wise man, when a reservoir had been poisoned, proposed that there should be a new person employed to turn the water off or on, in hope that the whole difficulty would thus be obviated. If we followed his advice, if we found the wisest man in the world to have control of the fountain, Mr. Understanding would still be incapable of supplying us with healthy streams, until we had first of all purged the cistern whence they flowed. The Arminian divine, too, sometimes suggests another way of improving man's life. He deals with the will . He says, the will must first of all be conquered, and if the will be right, then every thing will be in order. Now, will is like the great engine which forces the water out of the fountain-head along the pipes, so that it is made to flow into our dwellings. The learned counsellor proposes that there should be a new steam-engine employed to force the water along the pipes. "If," says he, "we had the proper machinery for forcing the fluid, then all would be well." No, sir, if the stream be poisonous, you may have axles to turn on diamonds, and you may have a machine that is made of gold, and a force as potent as Omnipotence, but even then you have not accomplished your purpose until you have cleansed the polluted fountain, and purged the issues of life which flow therefrom. The wise man in our text seems to say, "Beware of misapplying your energies, be careful to begin in the right place." It is very necessary the understanding should be right; it is quite needful the will should have its proper predominance; it is very necessary that you should keep every part of man in a healthy condition; "but," says he, "if you want to promote true holiness, you must begin with the heart, for out of it are the issues of life; and when you have purged it, when you have made its waters pure and limpid, then shall the current flow and bless the inhabitants with clear water; but not till then." Here let us pause and ask the solemn and vital question, "Is my heart right in the sight of God?" For unless the inner man has been renewed by the grace of God, through the Holy Spirit, our heart is full of rottenness, filth, and abominations. And if so, here must all our cleansing begin, if it be real and satisfactory. Unrenewed men, I beseech you ponder the words of an ancient Christian which I here repeat in thine ear:—"It is no matter what is the sign, though an angel, that hangs without, if the devil and sin dwell therein. New trimmings upon an old garment will not make it new, only give it a new appearance; and truly it is no good husbandry to bestow a great deal of cost in mending up an old suit, that will soon drop to tatters and rags, when a little more might purchase a new one that is lasting. And is it not better to labor to get a new heart, that all thou dost may be accepted, and thou saved, than to lose all the pains thou takest in religion, and thyself also for want of it?" Now, ye who love the Lord, let me take you to the reservoir of your heart, and let, me urge upon you the great necessity of keeping the heart right, if you would have the stream of your life happy for yourselves and beneficial to others. I. First, keep the heart full. However pure the water may be in the central reservoir, it will not be possible for the company to provide us with an abundant supply of water, unless the reservoir itself be full. An empty fountain will most assuredly beget empty pipes; and let the machinery be never so accurate, let every thing else be well ordered, yet if that reservoir be dry, we may wait in vain for any of the water that we require. Now, you know many people—(you are sure to meet with them in your own society, and your own circle; for I know of no one so happy as to be without such acquaintances)—whose lives are just dry, good-for-nothing emptiness. They never accomplish anything; they have no mental force; they have no moral power; what they say, nobody thinks of noticing; what they do is scarcely ever imitated. We have known fathers whose moral force has been so despicable, that even their children have scarcely been able to imitate them. Though imitation was strong enough in them, yet have they unconsciously felt, even in their childhood, that their father was, after all, but a child like themselves, and had not grown to be a man. Do you not know many people, who if they were to espouse a cause, and it were entrusted to them, would most certainly pilot it to shipwreck. Failure would be the total result. You could not use them as clerks in your office, without feeling certain that your business would be nearly murdered. If you were to employ them to manage a concern for you, you would be sure they would manage to spend all the money, but could never produce a doit. If they were placed in comfortable circumstances for a few months, they would go on carelessly till all was gone. They are just the flats, preyed on by the sharpers in the world; they have no manly strength, no power at all. See these people in religion: it does not matter much what are their doctrinal sentiments, it is quite certain they will never affect the minds of others. Put them in the pulpit: they are the slaves of the deacons, or else the, are over-ridden by the church; they never have an opinion of their own, can not come out with a thing; they have not the heart to say, "Such a thing is, and I know it is." These men just live on, but as far as any utility to the world is concerned, they might almost as well never have been created, except it were to be fed upon by other people. Now, some say that this is the fault of men's heads: "Such a one," they say, "could not get on; he had a small head; it was clean impossible for him to prosper, his head was small, he could not do anything; he had not enough force." Now, that may be true; but I know what was truer still—he had got a small heart and that heart was empty. For, mark you, a man's force in the world, other things being equal, is just in the ratio of the force and strength of his heart. A full-hearted man is always a powerful man: if he be erroneous, then he is powerful for error; if the thing is in his heart, he is sure to make it notorious, even though it may be a downright falsehood. Let a man be never so ignorant, still if his heart be full of love to a cause, he becomes a powerful man for that object, because he has got heart-power, heart-force. A man may be deficient in many of the advantages of education, in many of those niceties which are so much looked upon in society; but once give him a good strong heart, that beats hard, and there is no mistake about his power. Let him have a heart that is right full up to the brim with an object, and that man will do the thing, or else he will die gloriously defeated, and will glory in his defeat. HEART IS POWER. It is the emptiness of men's hearts that makes them so feeble. Men do not feel what they are at. Now, the man in business that goes heart and soul into his business, is more likely to prosper than anybody else. That is the preacher we want, the man that has a full soul. Let him have a head—the more he knows the better; but, after all, give him a big heart; and when his heart beats, if his heart be full, it will, under God, either make the hearts of his congregation beat after him; or else make them conscious that he is laboring hard to compel them to follow. O! if we had more heart in our Master's service, how much more labor we could endure. You are a Sunday-school teacher, young man, and you are complaining that you can not get on in the Sunday-school. Sir, the service-pipe would give out plenty of water if the heart were full. Perhaps you do not love your work. O, strive to love your work more, and then when your heart is full, you will go on well enough. "O," saith the preacher, "I am weary of my work in preaching; I have little success; I find it a hard toil." The answer to that question is, "Your heart is not full of it, for if you loved preaching, you would breathe preaching, feed upon preaching, and find a compulsion upon you to follow preaching; and your heart being full of the thing, you would be happy in the employment. O for a heart that is full, and deep, and broad! Find the man that hath such a soul as that, and that is the man from whom the living waters shall flow, to make the world glad with their refreshing streams. Learn, then, the necessity of keeping the heart full; and let the necessity make you ask this question—"But how can I keep my heart full? How can my emotions be strong? How can I keep my desires burning and my zeal inflamed?" Christian! there is one text which will explain all this. "All my springs are in thee," said David. If thou hast all thy springs in God, thy heart will be full enough. If thou dost go to the foot of Calvary, there will thy heart be bathed in love and gratitude. If thou dost frequent the vale of retirement, and there talk with thy God, it is there that thy heart shall be full of calm resolve. If thou goest out with thy Master to the hill of Olivet, and dost with him look down upon a wicked Jerusalem, and weep over it with him, then will thy heart be full of love for never-dying souls. If thou dost continually draw thine impulse, thy life, the whole of thy being from the Holy Spirit, without whom thou canst do nothing; and if thou dost live in close communion with Christ, there will be no fear of thy having a dry heart. He who lives without prayer—he who lives with little prayer—he who seldom reads the Word—he who seldom looks up to heaven for a fresh influence from on high—he will be the man whose heart will become dry and barren; but he who calls in secret on his God—who spends much time in holy retirement—who delights to meditate on the words of the Most High—whose soul is given up to Christ—who delights in his fullness, rejoices in his all-sufficiency, prays for his second coming, and delights in the thought of his glorious advent—such a man, I say, must have an overflowing heart; and as his heart is, such will his life be. It will be a full life; it will be a life that will speak from the sepulcher, and wake the echoes of the future. "Keep thine heart with all diligence," and entreat the Holy Spirit to keep it full; for, otherwise, the issues of thy life will be feeble, shallow, and superficial; and thou mayest as well not have lived at all. 2. Secondly, it would be of little use for our water companies to keep their reservoirs full, if they did not also keep them pure. I remember to have read a complaint in the newspaper of a certain provincial town, that a tradesman had been frequently supplied with fish from the water company, large eels having crept down the pipe, and sometimes creatures a little more loathsome. We have known such a thing as water companies supplying us with solids when they ought to have given us nothing but pure crystal. Now, no one likes that. The reservoir should be kept pure and clean; and unless the water comes from a pure spring, and is not impregnated with deleterious substances, however full the reservoir may be, the company will fail of satisfying or of benefiting its customers. Now it is essential for us to do with our hearts as the company must do with its reservoir. We must keep our hearts pure; for if the heart be not pure, the life can not be pure. It is quite impossible that it should be so. You see a man whose whole conversation is impure and unholy; when he speaks he lards his language with oaths; his mind is low and groveling; none but the things of unrighteousness are sweet to him, for he has no soul above the kennel and the dunghill. You meet with another man who understands enough to avoid violating the decencies of life; but still, at the same time he likes filthiness; any low joke, anything that will in some way stir unholy thoughts is just the thing that he desires. For the ways of God he has no relish; in God's house he finds no pleasure, in his Word no delight. What is the cause of this? Say some, it is because of his family connections—because of the situation in which he stands—because of his early education, and all that. No, no; the simple answer to that is the answer we gave to the other inquiry; the heart is not right; for, if the heart were pure, the life would be pure too. The unclean stream betrays the fountain. A valuable book of German parables, by old Christian Scriver, contains the following homely metaphor:—"A drink was brought to Gotthold, which tasted of the vessel in which it had been contained; and this led him to observe. We have here an emblem of our thoughts, words, and works. Our heart is defiled by sin, and hence a taint if sinfulness cleaves unfortunately to everything we take in hand; and although, from the force of habit, this may be imperceptible to us, it does not escape the eye of the omniscient, holy, and righteous God." Whence come our carnality, covetuousness, pride, sloth and unbelief? Are they not all to be traced to the corruption of our hearts? When the hands of a clock move in an irregular manner, and when the bell strikes the wrong hour, be assured there is something wrong within. O how needful that the main-spring of our motives be in proper order, and the wheels in a right condition. Ah! Christian keep thy heart pure. Thou sayest, "How can I do this?" Well, there was of old a stream of Marah, to which the thirsty pilgrims in the desert came to drink; and when they came to taste of it, it was so brackish that though their tongues were like torches, and the roofs of their mouths were parched with heat, yet they could not drink of that bitter water. Do you remember the remedy which Moses prescribed? It is the remedy which we prescribe to you this morning. He took a certain tree, and he cast it into the waters, and they became sweet and clear. Your heart is by nature like Marah's water, bitter and impure. There is a certain tree, you know its name, that tree on which the Saviour hung, the cross. Take that tree, put it into your heart, and though it were even more impure than it is, that sweet cross, applied by the Holy Spirit, would soon transform it into its own nature, and make it pure. Christ Jesus in the heart is the sweet purification. He is made unto us sanctification. Elijah cast salt into the waters; but we must cast the blood of Jesus there. Once let us know and love Jesus, once let his cross become the object of our adoration and the theme of our delight, the heart will beam its cleansing, and the life will become pure also. Oh! that we all did learn the sacred lesson of fixing the cross in the heart! Christian man! love thy Saviour more; cry to the Holy Spirit that thou mayest have more affection for Jesus; and then, how ever gainful may be thy sin, thou wilt say with the poet, "Now for the love I bear his name, What was my gain I count my loss; My former pride I call my shame, And nail my glory to his cross." The cross in the heart is the purifier of the soul; it purges and it cleanses the chambers of the mind. Christian! keep thy heart pure, "for out of it are the issues of life." 3. In the third place, there is one thing to which our water companies need never pay much attention; that is to say, if their water be pure, and the reservoir be full, they need not care to keep it peaceable and quiet, for let it be stirred to a storm, we should receive our water in the same condition as usual. It is not so, however, with the heart. Unless the heart be kept peaceable, the life will not be happy. If calm doth not reign over that inner lake within the soul which feeds the rivers of our life, the rivers themselves will always be in storm. Our outward acts will always tell that they were born in tempests, by rolling in tempests themselves. Let us just understand this, first, with regard to ourselves. We all desire to lead a joyous life; the bright eye and the elastic foot are things which we each of us desire; to carry about a contented mind is that to which most men are continually aspiring. Let us all remember, that the only way to keep our life peaceful and happy is to keep the heart at rest; for come poverty, come wealth, come honor, come shame, come plenty, or come scarcity, if the heart be quiet there will be happiness anywhere. But whatever the sunshine and the brightness, if the heart be troubled the whole life must be troubled too. There is a sweet story told in one of the German martyrologies well worth both my telling and your remembering. A holy martyr who had been kept for a long time in prison, and had there exhibited, to the wonderment of all who saw him, the strongest constancy and patience, was at last, upon the day of execution, brought out, and tied to the stake preparatory to the lighting of the fire. While in this position he craved permission to speak once more to the Judge, who, according to the Swiss custom, was required to be also present at the execution. After repeatedly refusing, the judge at last came forward, when the peasant addressed him thus: You have this day condemned me to death. Now, I freely admit that I am a poor sinner, but positively deny that I am a heretic, because from my heart I believe and confess all that is contained in the Apostles' Creed (which he thereupon repeated from beginning to end). Now, then, sir, he proceeded to say, I have but one last request to make, which is, that you will approach and place your hand, first upon my breast and then upon your own, and afterwards frankly and truthfully declare, before this assembled multitude, which of the two, mine or yours, is beating most violently with fear and anxiety. For my part, I quit the world with alacrity and joy, to go and be with Christ, in whom I have always believed; what your feelings are at this moment is best known to yourself. The judge could make no answer, and commanded them instantly to light the pile. It was evident, however, from his looks, that he was more afraid than the martyr." Now, keep your heart right. Do not let it smite you. The Holy Spirit says of David, "David's heart smote him." The smiting of the heart is more painful to a good man than the rough blows of the fist. It is a blow that can be felt; it is iron that enters into the soul. Keep your heart in good temper. Do not let that get fighting with you. Seek that the peace of God which passeth all understanding, may keep your heart and mind through Christ Jesus. Bend your knee at night, and with a full confession of sin, express your faith in Christ, then you may "dread the grave as little as your bed." Rise in the morning and give your heart to God, and put the sweet angels of perfect love and holy faith therein, and you may go into the world, and were it full of lions and of tigers you would no more need to dread it than Daniel when he was cast into the lion's den. Keep the heart peaceable and your life will be happy. Remember, in the second place, that it is just the same with regard to other men. I should hope we all wish to lead quiet lives, and as much as lieth in us to live peaceably with all men. There is a particular breed of men—I do not know where they come from, but they are mixed up now with the English race and to be met with here and there—men who seem to be born for no other reason whatever but to fight—always quarreling, and never pleased. They say that all Englishmen are a little that way—that we are never happy unless we have something to grumble at, and that the worst thing that ever could be done with us would be to give us some entertainment at which we could not grumble, because we should be mortally offended, because we had not the opportunity of displaying our English propensities. I do not know whether that is true of all of us, but it is of some. You can not sit with them in a room but they introduce a topic upon which you are quite certain to disagree with them. You could not walk with them half a mile along the public streets but they would be sure to make an observation against every body and every thing they saw. They talk about ministers: one man's doctrine is too high, another's is too low; one man they think is a great deal too effeminate and precise, another they say is so vulgar they would not hear him at all. They say of another man that they do not think he attends to visiting his people; of another, that he visits so much that he never prepares for the pulpit. No one can be right for them. Why is this? Whence arises this continual snarling? The heart must again supply the answer, they are morose and sullen in the inward parts, and hence their speech betrayeth them. They have not had their hearts brought to feel that God hath made of one blood all nations that dwell upon the face of the earth, or if they have felt that, they have never been brought to spell in their hearts—"By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another." Whichever may have been put there of the other ten, the eleventh commandment was never written there. "A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another." That they forgot. Oh! dear Christian people, seek to have your hearts full of love, and if you have had little hearts till now that could not hold love enough for more than your own denomination, get your hearts enlarged, so that you may have enough to send out service-pipes to all God's people throughout the habitable globe; so that whenever you meet a man who is a true-born heir of heaven, he has nothing to do but to turn to the tap, and out of your loving heart will begin to flow issues of true, fervent, unconstrained, willing, living love. Keep thine heart peaceable, that thy life may be so; for out of the heart are the issues of life. How is this to be done? We reply again, we must ask the Holy Spirit to pacify the heart. No voice but that which on Galilee lake said to the storm "Be still," can ever lay the troubled waters of a stormy heart. No strength but Omnipotence can still the tempest of human nature. Cry out mightily unto him. He still sleeps in the vessel with his church. Ask him to awake, lest your piety should perish in the waters of contention. Cry unto him that he may give your heart peace and happiness. Then shall your life be peaceful; spend ye it where ye may, in trouble or in joy. 4. A little further. When the water-works company have gathered an abundance of water in the reservoir, there is one thing they must always attend to, and that is, they must take care they do not attempt too much, or otherwise they will fail. Suppose they lay on a great main pipe in one place to serve one city, and another main pipe to serve another, and the supply which was intended to fill one channel is diverted into a score of streams, what would be the result? Why nothing would be done well, but everyone would have cause to complain. Now, man's heart is after all so little, that there is only one great direction in which its living water can ever flow; and my fourth piece of advice to you from this text is, Keep your heart undivided. Suppose you see a lake, and there are twenty or thirty streamlets running from it: why, there will not be one strong river in the whole country; there will be a number of little brooks which will be dried up in the summer, and will be temporary torrents in the winter. They will every one of them be useless for any great purposes, because there is not water enough in the lake to feed more than one great stream. Now, a man's heart has only enough life in it to pursue one object fully. Ye must not give half your love to Christ, and the other half to the world. No man can serve God and mammon because there is not enough life in the heart to serve the two. Alas! many people try this, and they fail both ways. I have known a man who has tried to let some of his heart run into the world, and another part he allowed to drip into the church, and the effect has been this: when he came into the church he was suspected of hypocrisy. "Why," they said, "if he were truly with us, could he have done yesterday what he did, and then come and profess so much to-day?" The church looks upon him as a suspicious one: or if he deceive them they feel he is not of much use to them, because they have not got all his heart. What is the effect of his conduct in the world? Why, his religion is a fetter to him there. The world will not have him, and the church will not have him; he wants to go between the two, and both despise him. I never saw anybody try to walk on both sides of the street but a drunken man: he tried it, and it was very awkward work indeed; but I have seen many people in a moral point of view try to walk on both sides of the street, and I thought there was some kind of intoxication in them, or else they would have given it up as a very foolish thing. Now, if I thought this world and the pleasures thereof worth my seeking, I would just seek them and go after them, and I would not pretend to be religious; but if Christ be Christ, and if God be God, let us give our whole hearts to him, and not go shares with the world. Many a church member manages to walk on both sides of the street in the following manner: His sun is very low indeed—it has not much light, not much heat, and is come almost to its setting. Now sinking suns cast long shadows, and this man stands on the world's side of the street, and casts a long shadow right across the road, to the opposite side of the wall just across the pavement. Ay, it is all we get with many of you. You come and you take the sacramental bread and wine; you are capsized; you join the church; and what we get is just your shadow; there is your substance on the other side of the street, after all. What is the good of the empty chrysalis of a man? And yet many of our church members are little better. They just do as the snake does that leaves its slough behind. They give us their slough, their skin, the chrysalis case in which life once was, and then they go themselves hither and thither after their own wanton wills; they give us the outward, and then give the world the inward. O how foolish this, Christian! Thy master gave himself wholly for thee; give thyself unreservedly to him. Keep not back part of the price. Make a full surrender of every motion of thy heart; labor to have but one object, and one aim. And for this purpose give God the keeping of thine heart. Cry out for more of the divine influences of the Holy Spirit, that so when thy soul is preserved and protected by him, it may be directed into one channel, and one only, that thy life may run deep and pure, and clear and peaceful; its only banks being God's will, its only channel the love of Christ and a desire to please him. Thus wrote Spencer in days long gone by: "Indeed, by nature, man's heart is a very divided, broken thing, scattered and parceled out, a piece to this creature, and a piece to that lust. One while this vanity hires him (as Leah did Jacob of Rachel), anon when he hath done some drudgery for that, he lets out himself to another: thus divided is man and his affections. Now the elect, whom God hath decreed to be vessels of honor, consecrated for his holy use and service, he throws into the fire of his word, that being there softened and melted, he may by his transforming Spirit cast them anew, as it were, into a holy oneness; so that he who before was divided from God, and lost among the creatures, and his lusts, that shared him among them, now, his heart is gathered into God from them all; it looks with a single eye on God, and acts for him in all that he doth: if therefore thou wouldest know whether thy heart be sincere, inquire whether it be thus made anew." 5. Now, my last point is rather a strange one perhaps. Once upon a time, when one of our kings came back from a captivity, old historians tell us that there were fountains in Cheapside that did run with wine. So bounteous was the king, and so glad the people, that instead of water, they made wine flow free to everybody. There is a way of making our life so rich, so full, so blessed to our fellow men, that the metaphor may be applicable to us, and men may say, that our life flows with wine when other men's lives flow with water. Ye have known some such men. There was a Howard. John Howard's life was not like our poor common lives; he was so benevolent, his sympathy with the race so self-denying, that the streams of his life were like generous wine. You have known another, an eminent saint, one who lived very near to Jesus: when you talked yourself, you felt your conversation was poor watery stuff; but when he talked to you, there was an unction and a savor about his words, a solidity, and a strength about his utterances, which you could appreciate, though you could not attain unto it. You have sometimes said, "I wish my words were as full, as sweet, as mellow, and as unctuous as the words of such an one! Oh! I wish my actions were just as rich, had as deep a color, and as pure a taste as the acts of so-and-so. All I can do seems but little and empty when compared with his high attainments. Oh, that I could do more! Oh, that I could send streams of pure gold into every house, instead of my poor dross," Well, Christian, this should teach thee to keep thine heart full of rich things. Never, never neglect the Word of God; that will make thy heart rich with precept, rich with understanding; and then thy conversation, when it flows from thy mouth, will be like thine heart, rich, unctuous, and savory. Make thy heart full of rich, generous love, and then the stream that flows from thy hand will be just as rich and generous as thine heart. Above all, get Jesus to live in thine heart, and then out of thy belly shall flow rivers of living water, more rich, more satisfying than the water of the well of Sychar of which Jacob drank. Oh! go, Christians, to the great mine of riches, and cry unto the Holy Spirit to make thy heart rich unto salvation. So shall thy life and conversation be a boon to thy fellows; and when they see thee, thy face shall be as the angel of God. Thou shalt wash thy feet in butter and thy steps in oil; they that sit in the gate shall rise up when they see thee, and men shall do thee reverence. But one single sentence, and we have done. Some of your hearts are not worth keeping. The sooner you get rid of them the better. They are hearts of stone. Do you feel today that you have a stony heart? Go home, and I pray the Lord hear my desire that thy polluted heart may be removed. Cry unto God and say, "Take away my heart of stone, and give me a heart of flesh;" for a stony heart is an impure heart, a divided heart, an unpeaceful heart. It is a heart that is poor and poverty-stricken, a heart that is void of all goodness, and thou canst neither bless thyself nor others, if thy heart be such. O Lord Jesus! wilt thou be pleased this day to renew many hearts? Wilt thou break the rock in pieces, and put flesh instead of stone, and thou shalt have the glory, world without end! ################################################################################# Wisdom Guards the Heart Proverbs 4:23 What I want to do tonight is pretty much take up where we left off this morning, talking about spiritual warfare and the fact that one of the key battlefields in that warfare is the human heart. I want to look back at the Book of Proverbs, chapter 4—a single verse— Proverbs 4:23 . I want you to turn there, even though it’s only one verse, because we will look a bit at the context. So, turn there, and while you’re doing that, let me read the verse. Proverbs 4:23 , “Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” Now, I want to start by giving you just a very, very short summary of what that proverb means. What it’s saying is this: your heart is like a reservoir and what comes out of it is what determines the quality and the character of your spiritual life. If your heart is defiled, it will have consequences in your behavior, your speech, your attitudes, and every area of life. The heart is the wellspring of life itself, and if you pollute the fountain, you defile all of life. It’s vital to understand that. Now, also, one other thing I don’t want you to miss—and let’s not skip over—is this: that when Scripture speaks of the heart, it’s speaking of your thought life, the core of your soul, where your thoughts and imaginations operate. We sometimes contrast heart and mind in a way that Scripture really doesn’t. The heart isn’t set against the mind in Scripture, but normally, when you see Scripture speaking of the heart, it’s speaking of the mind or at least—at the very least—including the mind, because the heart is where Scripture puts the seat of your thought life. Proverbs 23:7 , “As he thinketh in his heart , so is he.” So, what you think about and how you think, the ideas you entertain in the privacy of your own imagination, that is the true barometer of your spiritual character. One of the key verses in the New Testament is Mark 7:20-23 , where Jesus said this, “That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man; for from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, and foolishness.” Jesus said, “All these things come from within and defile the man.” He was answering people who had charged His disciples with eating with unwashed hands, and He was saying, you know, “It’s not what goes into you that defiles you, but what comes out of your heart.” You cannot entertain wicked thoughts without being utterly defiled by them. In fact, that is, is it not, the very principle our verse is teaching? “A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit,” Matthew 7:18 , “A contaminated well is unhealthy.” So, it’s vital to guard your heart and keep it from every kind of defilement. Now, that’s the meaning of our text. That’s what it’s teaching. What I want to do in this hour is focus on the practical and doctrinal implications of this command that we’re given in this verse: “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life,” or, as another version has it, “Guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” There are three clear spiritual and doctrinal ramifications of this verse that I want to highlight for you tonight. Number one is the duty of guarding the heart; second is the difficulty of guarding the heart; and third is the desirability of guarding the heart. We’ll look at these one at a time, so, if you’re taking notes, I’ll try to help you get the main points down. First is the duty of guarding your heart. The duty of guarding your heart. This is on the face of it. Notice, this is an imperative; it’s a command. There’s a duty that’s clearly set forth in this verse and it’s essential that we embrace this duty and submit to the command. In fact, I would say that this is the chief practical duty of the Christian life as it pertains to us. You know, we’re taught by the first question in the Catechism that man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. And that’s what God made us for—to glorify Him and to enjoy Him—and that’s a fitting statement of our duty with respect to God, but our first and primary duty with respect to ourselves, is the duty stated in this verse: “Keep your heart with all diligence.” As we’re going to see tonight, that is ultimately the only way you can glorify God and enjoy him forever. Now, this is not an easy obligation—and we’re going to talk about that when I get to the second point—but the point here is that it, nonetheless, is an important duty. It’s not easy to keep our thoughts pure and holy, but our sinful thoughts are the first and most important sins we are called to crucify, mortify, put to death. We saw that a little bit this morning. Remember, Jesus taught that those sinful thoughts are the source and the fountain of all the evil that defiles us. That’s interesting, isn’t it? I mean, Scripture—and Jesus here—is explicitly teaching that you’re not defiled by sin that rubs off on you from the outside. Think of it. Jesus, perfectly sinless, came to this earth, dwelt among sinners as a man, and the sin that He lived in the midst of, none of it rubbed off on Him. Why? Because there was no sin coming from within to defile him. The truth is, our own sinful thoughts, what emanates from our own heart, that is the source of every problem we have. That’s what defiles us. When the apostle Paul commands us to mortify the sin that’s in our members, his focus is not on external deeds—I read you that verse this morning, Colossians 3:5—but what he does in Colossians 3:5 , when he says, “Mortify the sin that’s in your members,” he gives a long list of the kinds of sin that, basically, come out of the thought life. Sins that are hatched in an unholy heart; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, covetousness, evil concupiscence—these are all sins that occur in the mind! They are sins of the passion and of the mind. So, the process of mortifying sin, as we saw this morning, involves getting control of the mind, the imagination, the passions, the heart. Paul is calling for internal purification when he says, “Mortify the sin that is in your members.” He’s not calling merely for the reformation of our external behavior—you understand that, right? He’s not saying what your mother meant, when you were a child and she said, “Behave!” She meant, “Act nice.” Paul means, “Think nice.” That’s how sanctification works. The focus on sanctification, in Scripture, is always about purifying the heart and renewing the mind. We’re transformed by the renewing of our mind. The outworking of our sanctification, naturally then, results in a change of behavior. But a change of behavior, without the renewal of the heart, is not sanctification at all. In fact, it’s a form of hypocrisy—and I’ll have more to say about that as we go, but first, let me give you some practical steps for guarding your heart. How can we do this? What precisely does this verse require of us? “Keep thy heart with all diligence”—what does that mean? Scripture gives us some clear guidelines for “keeping our heart” and I want to outline just the basics for you. So, you ought to write these down. If you’re taking notes, again, these are sub-points. I did this this morning, I rarely do this, I hate to confuse you with sub-points, but I’ve got a little list that you need to take down here. Step one: give your heart to Christ . You cannot begin to put this principle into practice unless your heart is surrendered to the Lordship of Christ and you are devoted to Him in love. If you’re not a believer in Christ, that means your heart is not worth keeping! It’s a heart of stone; it’s cold, it’s dead, it’s spiritually lifeless. If you’re not a believer, your heart is corrupt and sinful and utterly impotent to produce any kind of righteousness. You need a wholesale heart renewal, a new heart. That’s what Jesus meant when He said, “You need to be born again.” As Scripture describes it—you can study this for yourself, in Ezekiel 36:1-38—but as Scripture describes the process of the new birth, regeneration, it’s all about a new heart, the implantation of a new heart. The Lord says, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit I will put within you. I’ll take out the stony heart and put in a heart of flesh.” That is the promise. That is the biblical description of the new birth. That is what theologians refer to as regeneration. But, it’s all about a supernatural work of God in the heart. Essentially, a spiritual heart transplant. It is the wholesale renewal of the heart and the will and the passions. It’s not something you can do for yourself. It involves, in effect, spiritual resurrection: life from the dead. Without it, Scripture says, your heart is utterly incapable of any righteousness whatsoever. That’s what Romans 8:7-8 means when it says, “The carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then, they that are in the flesh cannot please God.” There’re no exceptions to that rule, by the way. What it means is that without regeneration, without a new heart, what you have is a heart that is bereft of any kind of righteousness, incapable of obedience to God, devoid of any true love for Him, unable to do anything whatsoever to please Him. That’s really what theologians call the doctrine of total depravity. I didn’t make it up; it’s what the Bible teaches. If you don’t have a regenerate heart, your heart is not worth keeping, and it’s impossible for such a heart to produce any true righteousness. But Christ invites us to give Him our hearts. Wisdom speaks in Proverbs 23:26 and says this, “My son, give me thine heart.” That’s the voice of wisdom and I believe that that is also the voice of Christ, who is personified throughout the Book of Proverbs as wisdom. You can’t truly give your heart to wisdom without devoting your heart to Christ. According to 1 Corinthians 1:30 , “Christ is made, unto us, wisdom.” So, if you want to keep your heart, step one is this: give it to Christ. Devote it to His wisdom. Devote it to love for Him. According to Ephesians 3:16-17 , the way to be “strengthened by might in the inner man” is to “have Christ dwell in your hearts by faith.” Give Him your heart. Embrace Him as the chief object of your love. Jesus Himself said, “He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he that love his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.” If He is not first in your heart, then you have no hope of keeping your heart pure. It’s as simple as that. Step two: crucify your mind . Mortify your evil thoughts. I already quoted Colossians 3:5 , “Mortify, therefore, your members which are upon the earth…fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry,” but this is a recurring theme in the Apostle Paul’s writings, this idea of putting to death sin in your body, mortifying the sin. Romans 8:13 , “If you live after the flesh, you shall die; but if you, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live.” What he’s saying is this: put your evil thoughts to death. Deal with them ruthlessly. Don’t allow them any breathing room. Choke the life out of them. Mortify them. Romans 13:14 , “Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.” By the way, this is one of the marks of the true Christian. Galatians 5:24 says, “They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.” We haven’t done it perfectly. It’s a process of crucifixion, and that’s a slow death, so those affections and lusts continually come back to plague us; but if you are truly a believer, then at some point and in some way, you have begun the process of crucifying these lusts and affections. And Paul says continue the process. Carry it through to the end, because sinful thoughts are a fierce, deadly enemy that must be met with lethal force, choked out of existence, rooted up, exterminated, and utterly purged from our lives. That’s the only way to deal with sin in your life—any sin. Understand what Jesus was saying when He said, “All that defiles you comes from your heart,” He’s saying that every sin that troubles you is hatched in your mind! If you can control your mind, if you can mortify that sin that’s in your mind, that is the pathway to sanctification. If you don’t do that, every wicked thought will destroy you, if you don’t destroy it. And you’ll never get control of your thought life if you’re not proactive, deliberate, ruthless in mortifying and putting to death the sin that’s in your heart. Step three: put restraints on your heart that will keep you from entertaining iniquity in that private arena of your own mind. Put restraints on your heart—you can shorten your version to just that—put restraints on your heart. Get rid of evil influences. Don’t watch movies or read novels that fill your mind with wickedness. Have some self-control in what you expose yourself to; in biblical terms, “exercise yourself rather unto godliness.” Look at the context of our verse now. Proverbs 4:1-27—you should have turned there— Proverbs 4:20—go back to verse 20: “My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes, and keep them in the midst of thine heart, for they are life unto those that find them and health unto all their flesh.” And then our verse, “Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” Verse 24, “Put away from thee a froward [or deceitful mouth], and perverse lips put far from thee. Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand or the left; remove thy foot from evil.” There’s lots of sound advice about how to guard your heart in that passage I just read. Look at it closely. First of all, if you want to guard your heart, you have to guard your ears, verse 20, “Attend to my words; incline thine ear to my sayings.” Be careful what you fill your ears with. This verse suggests that the focus of your hearing ought to be the wisdom of God’s Word. Be attentive. Incline your ears to these sayings. I’m amazed at what some Christians fill their ears with. I could probably tell a lot about the state of your sanctification just by checking the presets on your car radio, right? I mean, what that tells me is what you listen to when you’re alone and can choose to listen for yourself. What do you tune into? What do you tune into? The shock jocks with their off-color humor and the angry ranting of certain drive time radio personalities? Do you gravitate to music that’s profane and full of iniquity? I always wonder why would a Christian ever want to fill his ears with profanity and lewdness, and how can a godly person derive enjoyment from those things? Now, I’m not suggesting that all secular music or humor is evil, but I am saying, shouldn’t our listening be dominated by that which edifies? This passage seems to say so. Our ears ought to be inclined to the truth of the Word of God. If that’s not the focus and predominance of what you listen to when you’re alone, with time to think and meditate, then you’re probably not doing a very good job of guarding your heart. Next: guard your eyes, verse 21: “Don’t let the truth depart from your eyes” and that’s also echoed in verse 25: “Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.” Keep your eyes where they ought to be or you won’t be able to keep your heart where it ought to be—that’s a simple principle. Jesus said, in Matthew 6:22-23 , “The lamp of the body is the eye. If, therefore, your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is evil, your whole body shall be full of darkness.” That’s a good reason not to watch some of the stuff we watch, isn’t it? Our culture constantly bombards us with images and entertainment deliberately designed to appeal to the lust of the eyes, and if you don’t know when to turn away and refuse to watch, you aren’t doing a very good job of guarding your heart. And I’m not speaking only about that which is overtly evil. That’s a given. I shouldn’t even have to make that point. But much of what we watch is simply a waste of time! That is as detrimental to us, spiritually, as watching evil things, because it fills our hearts with vain thoughts. The Psalmist wrote in Psalms 119:37 , “Turn away mine eyes from looking at worthless things.” If you sit for hours watching TV—even if you’re only watching the Fox News Channel or Home and Garden Network—you’re probably not doing a very good job of guarding your heart. Here’s another one: guard your conscience, verses 21 and 22 say this: “Keep these sayings in the midst of your heart, for they are life unto those that find them and health unto all their flesh.” When the sage here encourages us to guard our hearts, he is, in effect, urging us to keep a healthy and active conscience. He’s saying we should cultivate a mind and a conscience that are informed by the Word of God. In fact, I don’t need to say much about this; it’s self-evident. Don’t let the voice of God’s wisdom be silenced in your own heart by the hardening of your conscience. There’s more, verse 24: guard your tongue, “Put away from you a deceitful mouth and put perverse lips far from you.” Proverbs 17:20 says, “He who has a perverse tongue falls into evil.” One of the very practical ways you can mortify sin in your heart is by consciously and carefully restraining its expression in your speech. James 3:2 says, “If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man and able also to bridle the whole body.” If you can control your tongue, you’ll be able to control your mind too. Here’s another one: guard your feet, verses 26 and 27: “Ponder the path of thy feet and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand or to the left; remove thy foot from evil.” In other words, stay away from places where temptation assaults you. That’s pretty much just straightforward, simple wisdom. Jesus taught us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” If you sincerely mean that, then don’t go places where you know you’re going to be tempted. It’s pointless to pray that prayer if you are willingly going to expose yourself to temptation. Now, recently I said some of these things in a message—I think in Grace Life—and someone came to me afterwards and said, “Well, that’s not very balanced. Why don’t you warn about the dangers of legalism? You ought to do another message,” he said, “and explain why we shouldn’t be legalistic.” Well, I have preached on legalism before! I’ve actually preached on legalism twice from this pulpit and if you want to hear that, you can get the tape. But, let me just say that I don’t think legalism is the biggest temptation most of us face. If modern evangelicals have an imbalance, it’s in the other direction, in the direction of worldliness, not legalism. But, there’s nothing legalistic about what I’m telling you. I haven’t given you any lists or rules about specific things you can and cannot do. I haven’t gone beyond what Scripture says. I’ve only given you a list of principles. I’m telling you that you ought to avoid temptation. Again, this is just a basic principle of spiritual and biblical wisdom; it’s not a complex idea. Matthew 26:41 , “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” 1 Peter 5:8-9 , “Be sober, be vigilant because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” “Resist him,” Peter says, “steadfast in the faith.” You’re in Proverbs 4:1-27… Look down at verses 14 and 15, “Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of evil.” Avoid it. Do not travel on it. Turn away from it and pass on. Don’t “walk in the counsel of the ungodly, or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of the scornful,” and if that sounds legalistic to you, you’re probably having a hard time guarding your heart. Two more things, and then I’ll move on to the next point. Keeping your heart also involves a watchful, cautious self-control over your emotions. Don’t let your emotions drive or control your mind, but vice versa. Emotions are good, but in their place, just like your arms are good, but they’re not for walking. Your nose is good, but it’s not very good for driving nails. In the same way, your emotions are good, but they’re not for thinking. Scripture condemns the person who thinks with his emotions. James 3:14-15 refers to that kind of thinking as “sensual wisdom”: wisdom driven by the senses, thinking that is driven by the emotions. James says this: “This wisdom descendeth not from above”—this sensual wisdom—“but is earthly, sensual, devilish.” He says it produces “bitter envying and strife in the heart.” Listen to Richard Baxter, the great Puritan author. He said this: “Keep out”—or cast out—“all inordinate passions, for passions violently press the thoughts and forcibly carry them away. If anger or grief or pleasure be allowed in, they will command your thoughts.” Another writer says it like this—and I like this—he says, “Emotions are like screaming kids. Until you calm them down, you can’t be heard. If you want to get rid of your bad thoughts, control your emotions.” That’s good advice. But, finally and above all, the thing that sums all of this up: control your thoughts . This is the whole point, and this is the area where the virtue of self-control is most important. This is the one area where your battle for self-control will be won or lost: your thought life. If you willingly and deliberately allow yourself to indulge in evil thoughts or wicked fantasies, what this verse says is you’re filling the wellspring of your life with poison—and nothing is more self-destructive! “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.” We’re talking about spiritual warfare this morning. This is classic warfare issue, right? I mean, we’ve got this reservoir up here that feeds water to most of the San Fernando Valley… And you realize, don’t you, that since the terrorist situation has become such a problem, that thing is guarded carefully, constantly! Because it’s a great danger if anyone would poison that reservoir. The Scripture is saying, “Your heart’s like that. Keep it pure. Out of it flow the springs of life.” Now, let’s move on. That’s the first implication of our text: the duty of guarding the heart. So, doctrine number one that we want to draw from this text is this: it is your bound and duty to keep your heart. You need to do it carefully and diligently and conscientiously, and that’s a good place to make the transition to doctrine number two. Doctrine number two is the difficulty of guarding the heart. Our text implies that keeping the heart is not an easy task. This is not something that comes naturally. “Keep thy heart,” he says, “with all diligence.” This is not something that comes easy for anybody. It requires diligence. It’s not something that you can do passively. It calls for effort, perseverance, persistence, constancy, and industry—diligence. It’s a struggle. And that’s all an understatement, really. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” Genesis 8:21 , God himself says, “The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” According to Psalms 51:5 , we are “shapen in iniquity.” Solomon said, in Ecclesiastes 9:3 , “The heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live.” We are all hopelessly, desperately, and completely wicked in and of ourselves. That is the state of every fallen human heart. Again, that’s the doctrine of total depravity. Romans 3:10 , “As it is written: ‘There is none righteous; no, not one.” Nobody escapes this verdict. Now, remember that all the sin we struggle with emanates from our own hearts. Matthew 15:19-20 (this is a cross-reference to the one I read earlier), Jesus says, “For out the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies…These are the things which defile a man.” So, the heart is the source of our problem in the first place. We have to guard our heart, not only from evil outside influences, but, more importantly, from the evil that breeds right there within. Proverbs 28:26 , “He that trusts his own heart is a fool.” Here’s a good lesson: you can never trust your own heart too little, and you can never trust God too much. We face perpetual threats to the purity of our hearts. We’ve already mentioned some. Vain thoughts, mindless, trivial matters that we give our attention to, the pleasures of sin entice us, the lure of the world, the wiles of the devil, the sinful tendencies of our own flesh—all of those things appeal to the wickedness and corruption that lies in our hearts, and that wickedness that’s inside of us is ready to respond to any kind of catalyst. And you cannot cleanse your own heart. This is not a problem we can fix for ourselves. Proverbs 20:9 , “Who can say, ‘I have made my heart clean; I am pure from my sin’?” The implied answer is nobody can say that. Job 14:4 , “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean one?” No one! 1 John 1:8 , “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” So, this is a huge problem. Our hearts are desperately wicked—and we can’t change that, Scripture says, any more than the leopard can change his spots. It’s part of our nature. We can pretend that we’re basically good—that’s what a lot of people do—but that doesn’t change reality. The great Scottish Puritan, Andrew Grey, said this—and I love this statement—he said, “We conceive that if there were a window opened in each of our bosoms, through which each one of us that are here might behold one another’s hearts, we would become monsters and wonders to one another, and to ourselves likewise, and we might cry out, “Oh, where is the God of judgment that takes no vengeance on such deceitful hearts?” If our hearts, he says, were turned inside out, so to speak, and we saw the insides of our hearts, we would wonder at God’s patience. That’s true. I know that’s true because I’ve peeked in my own heart. Our hearts are breeding grounds for all kinds of evil. According to 1 John 1:10 , if you think you’re an exception to this rule, you are self-deceived. You’re calling God a liar, and His Word is not in you. To quote Proverbs 28:26 one more time, “He who trusts in his own heart is a fool.” That’s why it is no simple task to keep your heart pure. Remember that Adam had a heart that wasn’t even already defiled by sin, and he kept it pure only a very short time. The fall occurred before he and Eve had ever conceived a child. It must have been very soon after their creation. That shows the difficulty of keeping a pure heart. That also gives us some perspective on what kind of diligence is required for the keeping of our hearts. This is something we have to do constantly. If you keep your heart only part-time pure, that’s nothing but hypocrisy. It’s an abomination to God. If the only time you think about these things or the only time you ever strive to obey, even, is when you’re listening to a message on the subject or when you come to the Lord’s Table or when it’s otherwise convenient to examine yourself, then all you’re doing is practicing the religion of the Pharisees. You’re merely honing the skill of hypocrisy. Face it, there are times when it’s fairly easy to guard our hearts. When we’re under affliction, when we’re under conviction, when we’re in church, or when we’re in public it’s much easier to keep our hearts pure and focused than when we’re alone, in private, or enjoying our leisure. And, frankly, that’s why trials—that’s one major reason—why trials and difficulties are good for us. That’s why, when God providentially sends us trials and afflictions, it’s sometimes an act of mercy on His part, because when circumstances force us to be dependent on the Lord, our hearts stay fixed on Him. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/spurgeon/ Unsound Spiritual Trading A sermon (No. 849) delivered on Lord’s Day morning, January 10th, 1869, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington, by C. H. Spurgeon. “All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weigheth the spirits.”—— Proverbs 16:2 . During the last two years some of the most notable commercial reputations have been hopelessly destroyed. Men in the great world of trade who were trusted for hundreds of thousands of pounds, around whose characters there hovered no cloud of suspicion nor even the shade of doubt, have proved themselves reckless of honesty and devoid of principle. The fiery trial has been too much for the wood, hay, and stubble of many a gigantic firm. Houses of business which seemed to be founded upon a rock, and to stand as fast as the commonwealth of England itself, have been shaken to their foundations and have caved in with a tremendous crash: on all sides we see the wrecks of great reputations and colossal fortunes. There is wailing in the palaces of sham, and desolation in the halls of pretense. Bubbles are bursting, windbags are collapsing, paint is cracking, gilt is peeling off. Probably we have more of this to come, more revelations still to be made of apparent wealth which covered insolvency, as a rich paper may cover a mud wall; crafty schemes which duped the public with profits never made, and tempted them to advance to deeper speculations, even as the mirage of the desert mocks the traveler. We have seen in the public prints month after month, fresh discoveries of the modes of financing adopted by the villainy of this present age, to accomplish robbery respectably, and achieve felony with credit. We have been astonished and amazed at the vile tricks and shameless devices to which men of eminence have condescended. And yet we have been compelled to hear justifications of gigantic frauds, and have even been compelled to believe that the perpetrators of them did not consider themselves to be acting disreputably, their own previous successes, and the low state of morality, together having lulled them into a state in which conscience, if not dead, was thoroughly asleep. I say, we may probably have yet more to see of this school of dishonesty; but it is a pity that we should—and altogether needless—for the whole trade of financing is now to be examined by the diligent student, with models and living examples, more than enough to illustrate every single portion of the art. Some ages may have been great in science, others in art, and others in war, but our era overtops every other in the proficiency of its rascals; this is the classic period of chicanery, the golden age of fraud. Let a man have a base heart, and a seared conscience, and a plausible mode of address, and let him resolve upon deluding the public out of millions, he need not travel to learn the readiest method, he can find examples near at home amongst high professors and the great ones of the earth. My brethren, these noises of falling towers on the right, these sounds of crumbling battlements on the left, these cries of the shipwrecked everywhere along the coasts of trade, have not only awakened within me many thoughts relative to themselves and the rottenness of modern society, but they have made me muse upon similar catastrophes evermore occurring in the spiritual world. Unrecorded in the journals, and unmourned by unregenerate men, there are failures and frauds and bankruptcies of soul most horrible to think upon. There is a spiritual trading just as pretentious and apparently just as successful as your vaunted limited liability juggle, but really just as rotten and as sure to end in hopeless overthrow. Speculation is a spiritual vice as well as a commercial one— trading without capital is common in the religious world, and puffery and deception are every-day practices. The outer world is always the representative of the inner; the life which clusters round the Exchange illustrates that which gathers within the church; and if our eyes were opened and our ears were able to hear, the sights and the sounds of the spirit world would far more interest us and sadden us than the doings which begin in the directors’ board-room and end we know not where. We should see at this moment colossal religious fortunes melting into abject spiritual poverty. We should see high professors, much reverenced and held in esteem, brought into shame and everlasting contempt. We should see the wealthy in divine matters, whom men have unwisely trusted as their guides and counsellors as to their souls’ best interests, unmasked and proved to be deceitful through and through. I seem at this moment to be peering into the world of spiritual things, and I see many a Babel tower tottering and ready to fall; many a fair tree decaying at the heart; many a blooming cheek undermined by disease. Yes, a sound comes to my ear of men in the church, apparently rich and increased in goods, who are naked, and poor, and miserable, and great men whose towering glories are but a fading flower. There ever have been such, there are many now, and there will be to the end. The supply of deceivers is sure to be maintained since the text tells us that all the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; there is a propensity in human nature which leads men, even when they are most wrong, to judge themselves most right. The text at the same time suggests the terrible conclusion to which all self-deception will certainly come, for the judgment of man concerning himself is not final, and there comes a day when the Lord who weigheth the spirits will reverse the verdict of a perjured conscience, and make the man to stand no longer in the false light which his conceit has thrown around him, but in the true light, in which all his fancied glory shall vanish as a dream. Travelling some time ago in an iron steamboat to the Continent, the captain told me that the compass was far from trustworthy where so much iron was on every side, and that sometimes, when so far as he knew he had steered correctly, he had found himself very considerably out of his course. Though the compass was fixed aloft so as to be as much as possible out of the region of the metallic attraction, yet the deflection and aberrations in the case of his own compass had been occasionally most remarkable. In like manner our conscience originally as it came from God was no doubt an exceedingly correct standard of right and wrong, and if we had sailed by it we must have reached the haven safely enough; but conscience is now placed in connection with a depraved nature which forbids its accurate working. Now, if the laws of nature would vary to make up for its defects when the compass erred, the aberrations would not matter; but if the man is misled by the perverted needle he may unexpectedly be upon a rock, and will be as surely wrecked as if the helmsman had neglected the compass altogether. So, if God’s law could be shaped to suit the errors of our judgment it might not matter; but the laws of God stand sternly and inflexibly the same, and if we deviate from the right way through this false judgment of ours we shall be none the less guilty, and we shall find our fate to be none the less terrible. Hence I do approach this matter with a greater vehemence and earnestness this morning, on your account, and with more brokenness and humility of spirit on my own, desiring to speak with divers classes among you, urging you not to be so flattered by your own conceptions of your position as to get out of the course in which you ought to steer; beseeching you to remember that however well you may cajole yourselves with the idea that your way is right and clear, yet the inevitable judgment-day will come to end all delusions, however pleasant. Spiritual traders, I speak to you this day, reminding you of the great audit which hastens on, and warning you lest you make a fair show for awhile, and then in the end come down with a crash. I am sure there is much rotten spiritual trading abroad, and to save you from it I pray the Holy Ghost to help me speak plainly and searchingly this morning. As God shall help me, I intend to address the text to different characters. We will endeavor to be practical throughout the sermon, and to push home vital truth with great earnestness upon each one. I. The ways of the openly wicked are clean in their own eyes, but the Lord will weigh their spirits. At first sight this statement seems to be rash. The drunkard, the blasphemer, the Sabbath-breaker, can it be that these people are right in their own eyes? Solomon was a profound student of human nature, and when he penned this sentence you may rest assured he knew what he wrote. They who are best acquainted with mankind will tell you that self-righteousness is not the peculiar sin of the virtuous, but that most remarkably it flourishes best where there appears to be the least soil for it. Those men who in the judgment of their fellows distinctly and plainly have no righteousness in which they can glory, are the very persons who, when you come to search into the depth of their nature, are relying upon a fancied goodness which they dream about and rest upon. Take the outwardly immoral for a moment and begin to talk with them about their sins, and you will find that they are accustomed to speak of their faults under very different names from those which Scripture and right reason would use. They do not call drunkenness “drunkenness,” for instance, but it is “taking a glass.” They would not for a moment advocate downright blasphemy, but it is “strong language which a fellow must use if he’s to get on,” or “letting slip an ugly word or so, because you were plagued so.” They disguise vice to themselves as pleasure; they label their uncleanness as gaiety, their filthiness as lightheartedness. They speak of their sins as though they had no enormity about them, but were trifles light as air—if wrong at all, themes rather for the feather lash of ridicule than for the scourge of reproof. Moreover, the most of them will claim that they are not so bad as others. There is some one point in their character in which they do not go so far as some of their fellows, and this is a grand point and a vast comfort to them. They will confess that they are sinners, not meaning it for a moment; and if you come to particulars and details, if they are in an honest frame of mind they will recede step by step, admitting fault after fault, till they come to a particular point, and there they take their footing with virtuous indignation. “Here I am right beyond all rebuke, and even deserving of praise. So far my sin has come, but how thoroughly sound at heart must I be that I have never permitted it to advance further!” This boasted line is frequently so singular and mysterious in its direction, that no one but the man himself can see any reason or consistency in it; and the satirist who shoots at folly as it flies, finds abundant objects for his arrows. Yet to that man himself, his pausing there is the saving clause of his life; he looks to that as the sheet anchor of his character. The woman whose character long since has gone, will yet boast some limit to her licentiousness which is merit in her esteem—merit sufficient to make all her ways clean in her own eyes. Moreover, the worst of men conceive that they have some excellences and virtues, which, if they do not quite atone for their faults, yet at any rate greatly diminish the measure of blame which should be awarded them. The man is a spendthrift, “But sir, he was always freehearted, and nobody’s enemy but his own.” The man, it is true, would curse God, but then, well, it was a mere habit, he always was a dashing blade, but he meant no harm; and besides he never was such a liar as So-and-So; and indeed, he scorned to tell a lie upon any business subject. Another has cheated his creditors, but he was such a nice man; and although, poor fellow, he never could keep accounts or manage money matters, yet he always had a good word for everybody. The immoral man, if he sits down to write his own character, and summons all the partiality he is capable of, will say “I am a sad dog in some respects, sowing a great many wild oats, but I have a fine character underlying it all which will no doubt come up some day, so that my end shall be bright and glorious notwithstanding all. That last point that I hinted at is very often the righteousness of men who have no other, namely, their intention one of these days much to amend and improve. To make up for present poverty of righteousness they draw a bill upon the future. Their promises and resolves are a sort of paper currency on which they imagine they can trade for eternity. “Is it not often done in business?” say they: “A man who has no present income may have a reversionary interest in an estate; he gets advances thereon—why should not we?” Thus the open sinner, easing his all too ready conscience with the imaginary picture of his future repentance and amendment, begins to feel himself already meritorious and bids defiance to all the threatenings of the word of God. I may be speaking to some to whom these remarks are very applicable, and if so I pray that they may lead to serious thought. My hearer, you must know, or at any rate a few sober moments of reflection would make you know, that there is no truth in the pleas, excuses, and promises with which you now quiet your conscience; your peace is founded on a lie, and is upheld by the father of lies. Whilst you are continuing recklessly to break the laws of God in your ordinary life and to take pleasure in sin, you most assuredly are under the anger of God and you are heaping up wrath against the day of wrath, and when the measure of your iniquity is full then shall you receive the terrible reward of transgression. The Judge of all the earth will not pay regard to the idle preterites which now stultify your conscience. He is not a man that he should be flattered as you flatter and deceive yourself. You would not have the impertinence to tell your excuses to him. Dare you kneel down now and speak to the great God in heaven and tell him all these fine things with which you are now smoothing your downward road? I hope you have not come to such a brazen pitch of impertinence as that, but if you have let me remind you of that second sentence of my text, “The Lord weigheth the spirits.” A just and true balance will be used upon you ere long. When the Lord puts such as you are into the scale, there will be no need for delay; the sentence will go forth at once and from it there shall be no appeal: “Thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting.” Ah then my hearer, when that conscience of yours wakes up, how it will torment you! It sleeps now, drugged by the opiates of your ignorance and perverseness; but it will start up soon like a giant refreshed with new wine, and then with strength and fury unthought of before it will pull down the temple of your peace about your ears, even as Samson smote the Philistines. An awakened conscience in another world is the worm that dieth not and the fire which never can be quenched. O sirs, it is a dreadful thing to be delivered up to one’s own conscience when that conscience is enlisted on the side of right. Old tyrants had their terrible headsmen with grim masks across their brows who carried the bright and gleaming axe; the old inquisitors had their familiars arrayed in gowns of serge and cowls, from the loopholes of which their fierce eyes gleamed like wolves; but no tormentors, yea, no fiends of hell, can ever prove more terrible to a man than his conscience when its lash is corded with truth and weighted with honesty. Did you ever spell the burning letters of that word remorse ? Within the bowels of that single word there lieth hell with all its torments. O sirs, if you be but a little aroused now by an earnest sermon or a sudden death, how wretched you feel and how desperately you plunge into fresh gaiety and wantonness to drown your thoughts; but what will you do with thoughts which no dissipation can drown, and remembrances which no mirth can banish? What will it be to be haunted by your sins for ever and for ever? What to have it made sure to you that from the guilt and punishment no way of escape can ever be discovered? O you who fondly dream that the broad road to destruction is the upward path to celestial bliss, I beseech you, learn wisdom and hearken to the voice of instruction; consider your ways and seek unto the precious blood which alone can blot our your sins. II. A second class I will now address. The ways of the godless man are clean in his own eyes, but the Lord weigheth the spirits. The godless man is often exceedingly upright and moral in his outward behavior to his fellow men. He has no religion, but he glories in a multitude of virtues of another kind. It is unhappily true that there are many who have much that is amiable about them who nevertheless are unamiable and unjust towards the one Being who ought to have the most of their love, and who should have been respected in their conduct first of all. How often have I met with the ungodly man who has said, “You talk to me about fearing God! I know him not, neither do I regard him, but I am much better than those who do.” He will sometimes say, “Your religion I look upon as a mere farce: I regard Christians as being made up of two sorts, knaves and fools. They are either duped by others, or else for purposes of their own they are deceiving others. Their talk about God, sir, it is all cant; with some of them I grant you it is not quite that, but then they have too few brains to be able to discover that they are deceived. However, take the whole thing for all in all, it is all a piece of nonsense, and if people just behave as they ought towards their neighbors and do their duty in their station in life, that is enough.” Yes, and there are in this city of London thousands, and hundreds of thousands, who think this to be good logic, and indeed who open their eyes with astonishment if for a single moment you are supposed to contradict their statement that such a style of life is the best and most commendable; and yet if they would but think, nothing can be more unsound than their life and its supposed excellence. Here is a man created by his God, and he is put down amongst his fellow creatures; surely the first duty that he owes is towards his Creator. His life depends entirely upon that Creator’s will—it must be his first duty to have respect to him in whose hands his breath is; but this man not only refuses to be obedient to the law of his Creator and have regard to him in his daily actions, but turns round to his neighbours who are mere creatures like himself, and he says “I will have respect to you, but not to God. Any laws of the state which bind me in my relation to you I will obey; but any laws which describe my relation to God I will not consider except it be to ridicule and laugh at them. I will be obedient to any but to God; I will do the right thing to any but to the Most High. I have a sense of right and wrong but I will restrict its action to my fellow men, and that sense of right and wrong when it comes in relation to God I will utterly obliterate.” Now if there were no God this man were wise enough, but as there is a God who created us, and who shall surely come in the clouds of heaven to call every one of us to account for the things which we have done in the body, what think you will be the judgment dealt out to this unfaithful servant? Will he dare to say unto his King, “I knew that thou wast my Maker and Lord, but I considered that if I served my fellow servants it would be enough. I knew what was right to them, but I disregarded the doing of anything that was right towards thee”? Shall not the answer be, “Thou wicked and faithless servant, thou knewest what was right and wrong, and yet towards me, having first claim upon thee, thou hast acted unjustly, and whilst thou wouldst bow thy neck to others thou wouldst not yield to me. Depart from me, I know thee not. Thou didst not know me, neither do I know thee. I weigh thee in the balances, and I find thee utterly reprobate. Thou art cast away for ever.” O ungodly man, let this warning, if thou be here this morning, sound in thy heart as well as thy ears: no longer set thyself in defiance to thy Creator or live in negligence of him, but say, “I will arise and go unto my Father; I will confess that I have forgotten him and despised him, and I will seek peace through the blood of Jesus Christ.” III. Further, I shall address myself to another class of persons. In all ages of the church, and especially at this time, there are numbers of persons who are outwardly religious , but whose religion ends there. Now it seems to some of us amazingly strange that a man should be acting viciously, should be living wickedly, and yet should think that his ways are clean because he takes a sacrament or attends a certain place of worship. I must confess to my mind this seems a very strange phenomenon, that there should exist men of intelligence in this world who know that their conduct is altogether blameworthy and yet feel perfectly at ease because a chosen ritual has been diligently observed; as if bowing and scraping, singing or groaning could be a substitute for holiness of heart. Look at the Pharisee and tell me if he be not a moral wonder! He devours widows’ houses, he is ready to prey on everything that comes to hand; he is a detestable hypocrite, but the man is perfectly at ease because he has made broad the border of his garments, because he fasts twice in the week, and strains out gnats from the wine that he drinks; he is quite content with himself and all his ways seem right, so right, indeed, that other men who are better than he, he passes by with contempt, afraid lest they should come between the wind and his nobility. He thanks God that he is not as other men, when so far as you and I can judge he is ten thousand fathoms deeper down in dark damnation in his horribly hypocritical character. Yet brethren, some form or other of this is very common. All the ways of a man are clean unto him when he once imbibes the idea that ceremonial religion, or religious talk, or religious profession, can make up for moral sin. Ah brethren, this evil may even creep in among ourselves. Let us not be so swift in condemning the Pharisee when perhaps the same sin may pollute our own souls. I have known the man who was reckoned a sound Calvinist and believed in very high doctrine, live a very unhallowed life. He despised “Arminians,” as he chose to call them, though some of these despised ones lived very near to God and walked in holiness and integrity. The Arminian, forsooth, godly man as he was, would be lost; but this self-righteous orthodox man who could at the same time drink and cheat thought that he should be saved because he had been able to see the truth of certain doctrines, which also the devil sees as well as he. I have known another who thought he had a deep and memorable experience who would talk by the yard of the depravity of his heart. Some people thinking that he ought to be able to talk about that very truly, for he proved it in his life; and yet because he could repeat cant phrases and had picked up certain rich expressions of experience from books, he verily thought within himself that he was not only as good as others but a very pattern for others to copy. Right and left such men as these will hurl curses and anathemas upon the best and most earnest of saints. They are the men—wisdom will die with them. Holiness being dead already with them, it is no wonder that wisdom should die too. Ah! take care lest you and I drink in the same spirit in another shape. Ah! preacher, thy preaching may be all well and good, it may be sound enough and right enough, and it may be even edifying to the people of God and arousing to the unconverted. But remember, God will not judge thee by thy sermons but by thy spirit, for he weigheth not thy words but thy motive, thy desire, thine object in preaching the gospel. Deacon of the church, you may have walked in all honor for many years and may be universally respected, and thine office may have been well maintained in all the outward duties of it, but if thy heart be not right, if some secret sin be indulged, if there be a canker upon thy profession which none know but thine own self, the Lord who weighs the spirit will make nothing of thy deaconship and thy carrying round the cups and bread at the communion, but thou shalt be found wanting and cast away. Thou too, brother elder, thy labors and thy prayers are nothing if the heart be evil. Thou mayst have visited others and instructed them and been a judge of their state; still, if thou hast not served God and his church out of a pure desire for his glory, thou too, put into the scales, shall be rejected with abhorrence. I often pray—I wish however I prayed it more —that none of us here may be preached into the idea that we are all right if we are all wrong. It is not your coming to the Tabernacle, it is not your joining the church, your being baptised, your attending prayer-meetings, or your doing anything that will be the slightest matter in this business—it is your giving up your hearts to God truly, and your living in conformity with your profession; and unless the grace of God be really given you, helping you to do this, your ways may be clean unto you because of your outward profession; but the Lord who weigheth the spirits will make short work of these bubbles, he will break this confectionery, smash to pieces these shams, and leave the man who ought to have a palace over his head throughout eternity to sit down and shiver amongst the ruins of his Babylon, and cry out and weep and wail amongst dragons and fiends. IV. But to pass on, there is another character that must be addressed. “All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes,” so are the ways of the covetous professor . It is marvellous to some of us that a man whose object in life is merely to get money and who withholds what he has from the cause of God should take up the profession of being a Christian man, because none of all the vices is more contrary to true religion than covetousness. Where will you find an instance of a single saint in Scripture that ever fell into covetousness? Into all other sins have they fallen, but into this one I do not remember that one child of God mentioned in Scripture ever descended. Grace may exist where there are many occasional sins, but never where there is abiding covetousness. Think of Paul’s words: “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither, fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.” Luther used to say, “I have been tempted to all sins but covetousness.” This he so detested that he distributed gifts made to him lest he should have his portion in this world. Adams, in his book on Peter, well remarks, “Noah was once drunk with wine but never with the world; Lot, twice incestuous, never covetous; Peter denied his Master thrice, but it was not the love but the fear of the world that brought him to it. Once David was overcome by the flesh, never by covetousness. Why did not these purge themselves from adultery, anger, and the like? Because into these sins the infirmities of a saint may fall, but if once into covetousness there is nothing of a saint left—not even the name. Covetousness hath the brand of God’s hate full on its brow.” “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him;” and when a professor shows the love of the world in its grossest shape, when he gives way to being the slave of “Mammon, the least erect of all the fiends,” he bears evidence to all who judge righteously according to Scripture that the love of God is not in him, and cannot be in him; the two things are inconsistent. Yet, strange to say we do know not a few whose way seems very clean to them. They screw here and there, now their servants, and now their customers: the widow and the fatherless would not be safe from them if they could pick their bones. What they scrape together is held with an iron grasp. Let souls be damned, they shall have no missionary sent to them by their money. Let this London fester with sin, let it be covered with the ulcers of the most fearful depravity, they are never stirred to give any assistance towards the healing of the city’s wounds. And yet while their damnation awaits them certainly, and their condemnation stares them in the face as plainly as the sun in the heavens, yet their ways seem clean unto them. Strange it should be so, but the Lord weigheth the spirits, and what a weighing that shall be when men who escape church censure because theirs was a sin of which the church could not deal with, shall be found guilty of it, and God shall cast them away! Vain will be their pretensions that they ate and they drank in God’s house, for the answer shall come, “I was an hungered and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me no drink; naked, and ye clothed me not. I was sick and in prison, and ye did not minister unto me. Verily I say unto you, I know ye not!” O let this truth, for truth it is, pierce like a two-edged sword right through the hearts of any of you who are beginning to yield to this damning vice. Cry unto God that as he gives you substance you may use it for his glory. Ask him that you may never perish with a millstone about your neck; for even if that killing weight be made of gold it will be no better perishing for all that. V. Another character must have a word also: we will now note the ways of the worldly professor . It is amazing how some people making a profession of religion, square it with their conscience that they live as they do live. You could not with a microscope detect any difference between them and common worldlings, and yet they think there is a vast difference, and they would be insulted if you did not allow it. Here they come up to the house of God to-day, but to what amusements have they been during the week? How are they dressed? How are their children educated? Is there any family prayer? Is there anything in the household that is Christian? Look at them in business. Do not they trade precisely like those who make no pretensions to religion? Ask their workpeople, just go yourselves and watch them—see if they cannot tell white lies as well as others, whether they are not for all the world as alike as two peas are to one another, like other unregenerate and unconverted people! and yet their ways seem very clean unto them, very clean indeed, and their conscience does not trouble them in any way whatever. I have but this word to say in all affection to such, earnestly desiring that they may be plucked out of this fire, “the Lord will weigh the spirits.” The whole of our life is known to him. He will not judge us without book. When he comes to the account he will not be like a judge who has to learn the facts; he will come to the last assize, having seen with those eyes of fire the secret thoughts, the private feelings of our life. God be merciful to us sinners, we may all of us say; but God especially save us from being like the ungodly. VI. Yet another word, and this is addressed to all professors here more or less: it is a solemn word concerning the ways of secure backsliders . Do you not know brethren and sisters, that very often our ways seem very clean to us when they are not. I have learned by experience most painful to my own soul, that I am not in the least qualified to judge of my own spiritual health: I have thought myself gradually advancing in the ways of God when I have been going back, and I have had the conceit crossing my mind that I had now overcome a certain besetting sin, when to my surprise I had found it return with greater force than before. Fellow professor, you may be at this moment walking as you think very rightly, and going off very well and comfortably, but let me ask you a few questions: are you not less in private prayer than you used to be? Do you not now hurry over it, do you not sometimes omit it altogether? Do you not frequently come from your closet without really having spoken to God, having merely gone through the form for the sake of quieting yourself? Your way may seem clean, but is it not foul when the mercy-seat becomes neglected? How about your Bible, is that read as it once was, and are the promises as sweet to you? Do they ever rise from the page and talk with you? Oh, but if your Bible be neglected my brother, you may be just as diligent in attending to the house of God as you used to be, but is not yours a sad state of decay? Let me come closer still. Is there the vitality about your profession that there used to be? There are some in this house this morning who if they could speak, would tell you that when to their great sorrow they fell into sin, it was because by little and little their piety began to lose its force and power of life. They have been restored, but their bones still ache where they were once broken, and I am sure they would say to their brethren “Take care of allowing a gracious spirit to evaporate, as it were, by slow degrees. Watch carefully over it, lest settling upon your lees and not being emptied from vessel to vessel you should by-and-by become carnally secure, and afterwards fall into actual sin. I ask some of my brethren here, and I ask the question because I have asked it of my own soul and answered it very tearfully, may not some of us be growing hardened in heart with regard to the salvation of our fellow creatures? Do we not love less now than we used to do, those who are crying to us, “Come over and help us”? Do we not think ourselves getting to be experienced saints? We are not the poor sinners we once used to be. We do not come broken-heartedly to the mercy-seat as we did. We begin to judge our fellow Christians and we think far less of them than we did years ago when we used almost to love the ground that the Lord’s saints did tread upon, thinking ourselves to be less than nothing in their sight. Now if it were the case in others, that they were growing proud, or becoming cold, or waxing hard of heart, we should say of them, “they are in great danger,” but what about ourselves if that be the case with us? For my own self, I dread lest I should come to this pulpit merely to preach to you because the time has come and I must get through an hour or an hour-and-a-half of worship. I dread getting to be a mere preaching machine without my heart and soul being exercised in this solemn duty; and I dread for you, my dear friends who hear me constantly, lest it should be a mere piece of clock-work that you should be in the seats at certain times in the week, and should sit there and patiently hear the din which my noise makes in your ears. We must have vital godliness, and the vitality of it must be maintained, and the force and energy of our religion must go on to increase day by day, or else though our ways may seem to be very clean the Lord will soon weigh our spirits to our eternal confusion. Do you know that to his people the divine weighing in fatherly chastisement is rough work, for he can put the soul into the scale to our own consciousness, and when we think that it weighs pounds he can reveal to us that it does not even reach to drachms! “There,” saith he, “see what you are!” and he begins to strip off the veil of self-conceit, and we see the loathsomeness and falsehood of our nature, and we are utterly dismayed. Or perhaps the Lord does worse than that. He suffers a temptation to come when we do not expect it, and then the evil bolls up within us, and we who thought we were next door to the cherubs find ourselves near akin to the demons; wondering too that such a wild beast should have slumbered in the den of our hearts, whereas we ought to have known it was always there and to have walked humbly with God, and watched and guarded ourselves. Rest assured beloved, great falls and terrible mischief never come to a Christian man at once, they are a work of slow degrees; and be assured too that you may glide down the smooth waters of the river and never dream of the Niagara beyond, and yet you may be speeding towards it. An awful crash may yet come to the highest professor among us that shall make the world to ring with blasphemy against God, and the church to resound with bitter lamentations because the mighty have fallen. God will keep his own, but how if I should turn out not to be his own! He will keep the feet of his saints, but what if I leave off to watch and my feet should not be kept, and I should turn out to be no saint of his, but a mere intruder into his family, and a pretender to have what I never had! O God, through Christ Jesus deliver each of us from this. VII. Had time not failed me I meant to speak concerning the seventh and last character, namely, the ways of the deceived man . There are, no doubt, many in the world who will never find out that their ways which they thought to be so clean are all foul till they enter upon another world. There are some men who are Christians in all but this, that they have not true faith in Jesus. There are others who apparently are saved, but they have never been really born again. There are many who have everything but the one thing needful, and who think they have that, and persuade their fellows that they have that. How near a man may come to being a Christian and yet miss salvation it were difficult to tell; but certainly he may come so near that no man nor yet the angels of God shall be able to tell the difference between him and a saved soul, only God shall discern the difference when he comes to weigh the spirits. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. It is this: let us come my brethren, all of us, to the place of confession of sin and acknowledge that we have broken God’s law, and deserve his just displeasure. Let us go by the help of his Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of supplication, and let us confess the depravity of our nature and the error of our hearts. Let us pray that instead of thinking our ways clean, we may know them to be foul, may mourn over them, and may learn to see them as God sees them, as crooked ways and wrong ways in themselves not to be boasted of, but to be remembered with shame and confusion of face. Blessed is he who is delivered from any rejoicing in himself. Happy is that man who can see no speck of soundness in his own flesh, but who feels that the leprosy of sin hath covered him without and within from head to foot. And brethren, if we come to such deep humiliation of spirit, the next word is this: let us go together to the great salvation which God has provided in the person of Christ Jesus. Come, linking hand in hand, saint and sinner, now all sinners consciously, let us stand and see where sin has pierced the body of the blessed Substitute with yonder bleeding wounds. Let us read the lines of grief written upon that blessed face; let us gaze into the depth of his soul filled with an ocean of anguish, lashed to a tempest of suffering; let us believe that he suffered in our stead and so roll our sin and our sinfulness on him. Jesus, accept a sinner, a poor sinner still; though these twenty years I have known thy name, yet still a sinner I come to thee, the chief of sinners! Ah, brethren and sisters, we are never safer I am sure, never healthier, never in a better frame than when we are right flat down on the ground before the cross. When you feel yourself to be utterly unworthy you have hit the truth. When you think you are doing something and are rich and flourishing, you are poor, and naked, and miserable; but when you are consciously weak and sinful, then you are rich. When you are weak you are strong; but O God, save us from letting our ways seem clean in our own sight, but may we weigh our spirits by the help of thy Spirit, and condemn ourselves that we may not be condemned of the Lord. The Lord bless you richly and freely for his name’s sake. Amen. Pride and Humility August 17, 1856 by C. H. (1834-1892) "Before destruction the heart of man is haughty, and before honor is humility."— Proverbs 18:12 . Almost every event has its prophetic prelude. It is an old and common saying, that "coming events cast their shadows before them;" the wise man teaches us the same lesson in the verse before us. When destruction walks through the land, it casts its shadow; it is in the shape of pride. When honor visits a man's house, it casts its shadow before it; it is in the fashion of humility. "Before destruction the heart of man is haughty;" pride is as surely the sign of destruction as the change of mercury in the weather-glass is the sign of rain, and far more infallibly so than that. "Before honor is humility," even as before the summer, sweet birds return to sing in our land. Everything hath its prelude. The prelude of destruction is pride, and of honor, humility. There is nothing into which the heart of man so easily falls as pride, and yet there is no vice which is more frequently, more emphatically, and more eloquently condemned in Scripture. Against pride, prophets have lifted up their voices, evangelists have spoken and teachers have discoursed. Yea, more; the everlasting God has mounted to the very heights of eloquence when he would condemn the pride of man; and the full gushing of the Eternal's mighty language has been most gloriously displayed in the condemnation of the pride of human nature. Perhaps the most eloquent passage of God's Word is to be found toward the conclusion of the book of Job, where, in most splendid strains of unanswerable eloquence, God hides pride from many by utterly confounding him; and there is another very eloquent passage in the 14th chapter of Isaiah, where the Lord's holy choler seems to have risen up, and his anger to have waxed hot against the pride of man, when he would utterly and effectually condemn it. He says concerning the great and mighty king of Babylon, "Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even al the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations? For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms." Mark how God addresses him, describing hell itself as being astonished at his fall, seeing that he had mounted so high; and yet declaring, assuredly, that his height and greatness were nothing to the Almighty, that he would pull him down, even though, like an eagle, he had built his nest among the stars. I say there is nothing more eloquently condemned in Scripture than pride, and yet there is no trap into which we poor silly birds so easily flee, no pitfall into which, like foolish beasts of the earth, we so continually run. On the other hand, humility is a grace that hath many promises given to it in the Scripture. Perhaps most promises are given to faith, and love is often considered to be the brightest of the train of virtues; yet humility holds by no means an inferior place in God's word, and there are hundreds of promises linked to it. Every grace seems to be like a nail on which precious blessings hang, and humility hath many a mercy suspended from it. "He that exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted;" "Blessed are the poor in spirit;" and in multitudes of other passages, we are reminded that God loveth the humble, but that he "bringeth down the mighty from their seats, and exalteth the humble and meek." Now, this morning, we shall have a word to say concerning pride and humility . May the Holy Spirit preserve us from the one, and produce in our hearts the other. I. In the first place, we shall have something to say concerning the vice of PRIDE. "Before destruction the heart of man is haughty." Pride, what is it? Pride, where is its seat? The heart of man. And pride, what is its consequence? Destruction. 1. In the first place, I must try to describe pride to you. I might paint it as being the worst malformation of all the monstrous things in creation; it hath nothing lovely in it, nothing in proportion, but everything in disorder. It is altogether the very reverse of the creatures which God hath made, which are pure and holy. Pride, the first-born son of hell, is indeed like its parent, all unclean and vile, and in it there is neither form, fashion, nor comeliness. In the first place, pride is a groundless thing . It standeth on the sands; or worse than that, it puts its foot on the billows which yield beneath its tread; or worse still, it stands on bubbles, which soon must burst beneath its feet. Of all things pride has the worst foothold; it has no solid rock on earth whereon to place itself. We have reasons for almost everything, but we have no reasons for pride. Pride is a thing which should be unnatural to us, for we have nothing to be proud of. What is there in man of which he should glory? Our very creation is enough to humble us; what are we but creatures of to-day? Our frailty should be sufficient to lay us low, for we shall be gone to-morrow. Our ignorance should tend to keep pride from our lips. What are we, but like the wild ass's colt which knoweth nothing? And our sins ought effectually to stop our mouths, and lay us in the dust. Of all things in the world, pride towards God, is that which hath the very least excuse; it hath neither stick nor stone whereon to build. Yet like the spider, it carrieth its own web in its bowels, and can, of itself, spin that wherewith to catch its prey. It seems to stand upon itself, for it hath nothing besides whereon it can rest. Oh! man, learn to reject pride, seeing that thou hast no reason for it; whatever thou art, thou hast nothing to make thee proud. The more thou hast, the more thou art in debt to God; and thou shouldst not be proud of that which renders thee a debtor. Consider thine origin; look back to the hole of the pit whence thou wast digged. Consider what thou wouldst have been, even now, if it were not for Divine grace. And, consider, that thou will yet be lost in hell if grace does not hold thee up. Consider that amongst the damned, there are none that would have been more damned than thyself, if grace had not kept thee from destruction. Let this consideration humble thee, that thou hast nought whereon to ground thy pride. Again, it is a brainless thing as well as a groundless thing; for it brings no profit with it. There is no wisdom in a self-exaltation. Other vices have some excuse, for men seem to gain by them; avarice, pleasure, lust, have some plea; but the man who is proud sells his soul cheaply. he opens wide the flood-gates of his heart, to let men see how deep is the flood within his soul; then suddenly it floweth out, and all is gone—and all is nothing, for one puff of empty wind, one word of sweet applause—the soul is gone, and not a drop is left. In almost every other sin, we gather up the ashes when the fire is gone; but here, what is left? The covetous man hath his shining gold, but what hath the proud man? He has less than he would have had without his pride, and is no gainer whatever. Oh! man, if thou wert as mighty as Gabriel, and had all his holiness, still thou wouldst be an arrant fool to be proud, for pride would sink thee from thine angel station to the rank of devils, and bring thee from the place where Lucifer, son of the morning, once dwelt, to take up thine abode with hideous fiends in perdition. Pride exalts it head, and seeks to honor itself; but it is of all things most despised. It sought to plant crowns upon its brow, and so it hath done, but its head was hot, and it put an ice crown there, and it melted all away. Poor pride has decked itself out finely sometimes; it hath put on its most gaudy apparel, and said to others, "how brilliant I appear!" but, ah! pride, like a harlequin, dressed in thy gay colours, thou art all the more fool for that; thou art but a gazing stock for fools less foolish than thyself. Thou hast no crown, as thou thinkest thou hast, nothing solid and real, all is empty and vain. If thou, O man, desirest shame, be proud. A monarch has waded through slaughter to a throne, and shut the gates of mercy on mankind to win a little glory; but when he has exalted himself, and has been proud, worms have devoured him, like Herod, or have devoured his empire, till it passed away, and with it his pride and glory. Pride wins no crown; men never honor it, not even the menial slaves of earth; for all men look down on the proud man, and think him less than themselves. Again, pride is the maddest thing that can exist; it feeds upon its own vitals; it will take away its own life, that with its blood may make a purple for its shoulders: it sappeth, and undermineth its own house that it may build its pinnacles a little higher, and then the whole structure tumbleth down. Nothing proves men so made as pride. For this they have given up rest, and ease, and repose, to find rank and power among men: for this they have dared to risk their hope of salvation, to leave the gentle yoke of Jesus, and go toiling wearily along the way of life, seeking to save themselves by their own works, and at last to stagger into the mire of fell despair. Oh! man, hate pride, flee from it, abhor it, let it not dwell with thee. If thou wantest to have a madman in thy heart, embrace pride, for thou shalt never find one more mad than he. Then pride is a protean thing ; it changes its shape; it is all forms in the world; you may find it in any fashion you may choose, you may see it in the beggar's rags as well as in the rich man's garment. It dwells with the rich, and with the poor. The man without a shoe to his foot may be as proud as if he were riding in a chariot. Pride can be found in every rank of society—among all classes of men. Sometimes it is an Arminian, and talks about the power of the creature; then it turns Calvinist, and boasts of its fancied security—forgetful of the Maker, who alone can keep our faith alive. Pride can profess any form of religion; it may be a Quaker, and wear no collar to its coat; it may be a Churchman, and worship God in splendid cathedrals; it may be a Dissenter, and go to the common meeting-house; it is one of the most Catholic things in the world, it attends all kinds of chapels and churches; go where you will, you will see pride. It cometh up with us to the house of God; it goeth with us to our houses; it is found on the mart, and the exchange, in the streets, and everywhere. Let me hint at one or two of the forms which it assumes. Sometimes pride takes the doctrinal shape; it teaches the doctrine of self-sufficiency; it tells us what man can do, and will not allow that we are lost, fallen, debased, and ruined creatures, as we are. It hates divine sovereignty, and rails at election. Then if it is driver from that, it takes another form; it allows that the doctrine of free grace is true but does not feel it. It acknowledges that salvation is of the Lord alone, but still it prompts men to seek heaven by their own works, even by the deeds of the law. And when driven from that, it will persuade men to join something with Christ in the matter of salvation; and when that is all rent up, and the poor rag of our righteousness is all burned, pride will get into the Christian's heart as well as the sinner's—it will flourish under the name of self-sufficiency, teaching the Christian that he is "rich and increased in goods, having need of nothing." It will tell him that he does not need daily grace, that past experience will do for to-morrow—that he knows enough, toils enough, prays enough. It will make him forget that he has "not yet attained;" it will not allow him to press forward to the things that are before, forgetting the things that are behind. It enters into his heart, and tempts the believer to set up an independent business for himself, and until the Lord brings about a spiritual bankruptcy, pride will keep him from going to God. Pride has ten thousand shapes; it is not always that stiff and starched gentleman that you picture it; it is a vile, creeping, insinuating thing, that will twist itself like a serpent into our hearts. It will talk of humility, and prate about being dust and ashes. I have known men talk about their corruption most marvellously, pretending to be all humility, while at the same time they were the proudest wretches that could be found this side the gulf of separation. Oh! my friends, ye cannot tell how many shapes pride will assume; look sharp about you, or you will be deceived by it, and when you think you are entertaining angels, you will find you have been receiving devils unawares. 2. Now, I have to speak of the seat of pride—the heart. The true throne of pride everywhere, is the heart of man. If, my dear friends, we desire, by God's grace, to put down pride, the only way is to begin with the heart. Now let me tell you a parable, in the form of an eastern story, which will set this truth in its proper light. A wise man in the east, called a dervish, in his wanderings, came suddenly upon a mountain, and he saw beneath his feet a smiling valley, in the midst of which there flowed a river. The sun was shining on the stream, and the water as it reflected the sunlight, looked pure and beautiful. When he descended, he found it was muddy, and the water utterly unfit for drinking. Hard by he saw a young man, in the dress of a shepherd, who was with much diligence filtering the water for his flocks. At one moment he placed some water into a pitcher, and then allowing it to stand, after it had settled, he poured the clean fluid into a cistern. Then, in another place, he would be seen turning aside the current for a little, and letting it ripple over the sand and stones, that it might be filtered, and the impurities removed. The dervish watched the young man endeavouring to fill a large cistern with clear water; and he said to him, "My son, why all this toil?—what purpose dost thou answer by it?" The young man replied, "Father, I am a shepherd; this water is so filthy that my flock will not drink of it, and, therefore, I am obliged to purify it little by little, so I collect enough in this way that they may drink, but it is hard work." So saying, he wiped the sweat from his brow, for he was exhausted with his toil. "Right well hast thou laboured," said the wise man, "but dost thou know thy toil is not well applied? With half the labour thou mightest attain a better end. I should conceive that the source of this stream must be impure and polluted; let us take a pilgrimage together and see." They then walked some miles, climbing their way over many a rock, until they came to a spot where the stream took its rise. When they came near to it, they saw flocks of wild fowls flying away, and wild beasts of the earth rushing into the forest; these had come to drink, and had soiled the water with their feet. They found an open well, which kept continually flowing, but by reason of these creatures, which perpetually disturbed it, the stream was always turbid and muddy. "My son," said the wise man, "set to work now to protect the fountain and guard the well, which is the source of this stream; and when thou hast done that, if thou canst keep these wild beasts and fowls away, the stream will flow of itself, all pure and clear, and thou wilt have no longer need for thy toil." The young man did it, and as he labored, the wise man said to him, "My son, hear the word of wisdom; if thou art wrong, seek not to correct thine outward life, but seek first to get thy heart correct, for out of it are the issues of life, and thy life shall be pure when once thy heart is so." So if we would get rid of pride, we should not proceed to arrange our dress by adopting some special costume, or to qualify our language, by using an outlandish tongue, but let us seek of God that he would purify our hearts from pride, and then assuredly if pride is purged from the heart, our life also shall be humble. Make the tree good, and then the fruit shall be good; make the fountain pure, and the stream shall be sweet. Oh! that God might grant us all, by his grace, that our hearts may be kept with diligence, so that pride may never enter there lest we be haughty in our hearts, and find that afterwards cometh wrath. 3. This brings me to the other point, which is, the consequence of price—destruction, a fact which we can prove by hundreds of instances in Scripture. When men have become proud, destruction has come upon them. See you yon bright angel chanting the loud anthem of praise before his Maker's throne? Can anything tarnish that angel's glory, rob him of his harp, despoil him of his crown? Yes, see there enters a destroyer whose name is pride. He assaults the angel, and his harp-strings are snapped in twain. His crown is taken from his brow, and his glory is departed, and yon falling spirit descending into hell is he who once was Lucifer, son of the morning. He has now become Father of nights, even the Lord of Darkness, Satan, the Fallen one. See you again that happy pair walking in the midst of luscious fruits, and flowery walks and bowers of Paradise? Can aught spoil Eden, and ruin those happy beings? Yes, pride comes in the shape of a serpent, and asks them to seek to be as gods. They eat of the forbidden fruit, and pride withers their paradise and blasts their Eden. out they go to till the ground, whence they were taken, to beget and to bring forth us who are their children—sons of toil and sorrow. Do you see that man after God's own heart, continually singing his Maker's praise? Can aught make him sad? Can you suppose that he shall ever be laid prostrate on the earth, groaning, and crying, and asking "that the bones which God hath broken may rejoice?" Yes, pride can do that. it will put into his heart that he will number his people, that he will count the tribes of Israel, to show how great and mighty is his empire. It is done, and a terrible pestilence sweeps o'er his land on account of his pride. Let David's aching heart show how destruction comes to a man's glory when he once begins to make a god of it. See that other good and holy man who, like David, was much after God's own heart. He is rich and increased in goods. The Babylonian ambassadors are come, and he shows them all he has. Do you not hear that threatening, "Thy treasures shall be carried away, and thy sons and thy daughters shall be servants to the king of Babylon?" The destruction of Hezekiah's wealth must come, because he is proud thereof. But for the most notable instance of all, let me show you yonder palace, perhaps the most magnificent which has even yet been built. In it there walks one who, lifting up his head on high, as if he were more than mortal man, exclaims, "See ye this great Babylon that I have builded?" Oh! pride, what hast thou done? thou hast more power than a wizard's wand! Mark the mighty builder of Babylon creeping on the earth. Like oxen he is devouring grass; his nails have grown like birds' claws, his hair like eagles' feathers, and his heart has gone from him. Pride did all that, that it might be fulfilled which God hath written, "Before destruction the heart of man is haughty." Is thine heart haughty, sinner , this morning? Dost thou despise God's sovereignty? Wilt thou not submit thyself to Christ's yoke? Dost thou seek to weave a righteousness of thine own? Art thou seeking to be or to do something? Art thou desirous of being great and mighty in thine own esteem? Hear me then, sinner, destruction is coming upon thee. As truly as ever thou exaltest thyself, thou shalt be abased; thy destruction , in the fullest and blackest sense of the word, is hurrying on to overwhelm thee. And oh! Christian, is thine heart haughty this morning? Art thou come here glorying in thy graces? Art thou proud of thyself, that thou hast had such high frames and such sweet experiences? Mark thee, brother, there is a destruction coming to thee also. Some of thy proud things will be pulled up by the roots, some of thy graces will be shattered, and thy good works, perhaps, will become loathsome to thee, and thou wilt abhor thyself in dust and ashes. As truly as ever thou exaltest thyself, there will be a destruction come to thee, O saint—the destruction of thy joys and of thy comforts, though there can be no destruction of thy soul. Pride, you know, is most likely to meet with destruction, because it is too tall to walk upright. It is most likely to tumble down, because it is always looking upward in its ambition, and never looks to its feet. There only needs to be a pitfall in the way, or even a stone, and down it goes. It is sure to tumble, because it is never contented with being where it is. It is always seeking to be climbing, and boys that will climb must expect to fall. Pride is foolhardy, and will venture upon scaling any rock. Sometimes it holds on by a brier, and that pricks it; sometimes by a flint, and that cuts it. There it goes, toiling and laboring on, till it gets as high as it can, and then, from its very height, it is likely to fall. Nature itself tells us to avoid high things. Who is he that can stand upon an eminence without a reeling brain, and without a temptation to cast himself down? Pride, when most successful, stands in slippery places. Who would choose to dwell on a pinnacle of the temple? That is where pride has built its house, and verily it seems but natural that pride should down if pride will up. God will carry out this saying, "Before destruction, the heart of man is haughty." Yet beloved, I am persuaded that all I can say to you, or to myself, can never keep pride from us. The Lord alone can bolt the door of the heart against pride. Pride is like the flies of Egypt; all Pharaoh's soldiers could not keep them out; and I am sure all the strong resolutions and devout aspirations we may have cannot keep pride out unless the Lord God Almighty sends a strong wind of his Holy Spirit to sweep it away. II. Now, let us consider briefly the last part of the text, "BEFORE HONOR IS ." So then, you see our heavenly Father does not say that we are not to have honor. He has not forbidden it; he has only forbidden us to be proud of it. A good man may have honor in this life. Daniel had honor before the people; Joseph rode in the second chariot, and the people bowed the knee before him. God often clothes his children with honor in the face of their adversaries, and makes the wicked confess that the Lord is with them in deed and in truth. But God forbids our making that honor a cloak for pride, and bids us seek humility which always accompanies as well as precedes true honor. 1. Now let us briefly enquire, in the first place, what is humility? The best definition I have ever met with is, "to think rightly of ourselves." Humility is to make a right estimate of one's-self. It is no humility for a man to think less of himself than he ought, though it might rather puzzle him to do that. Some persons, when they know they can do a thing, tell you they cannot; but you do not call that humility? A man is asked to take part in some meeting. "No," he says, "I have no ability;" yet, if you were to say so yourself, he would be offended at you. It is not humility for a man to stand up and depreciate himself and say he cannot do this, that, or the other, when he knows that he is lying. If God gives a man a talent, do you think the man does not know it? If a man has ten talents he has no right to be dishonest to his Maker, and to say, "Lord, thou hast only give me five." It is not humility to underrate yourself, Humility is to think of yourself, if you can, as God thinks of you. It is to feel that if we have talents, God has given them to us, and let it be seen that, like freight in a vessel, they tend to sink us low. The more we have, the lower we ought to lie. Humility is not to say, "I have not this gift," but it is to say, "I have the gift, and I must use it for my Master's glory. I must never seek any honor for myself, for what have I that I have not received?" But, beloved, humility is to feel ourselves lost, ruined, and undone. To be killed by the same hand which, afterwards, makes us alive, to be ground to pieces as to our own doings and willings, to know and trust in none but Jesus, to be brought to feel and sing— "Nothing in my hands I bring, Simply to thy cross I cling." Humility is to feel that we have no power of ourselves, but that it all cometh from God. Humility is to lean on our beloved, to believe that he has trodden the winepress alone, to lie on his bosom and slumber sweetly there, to exalt him, and think less than nothing of ourselves. It is in fact, to annihilate self, and to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ as all in all. 2. Now, what is the seat or throne of humility? The throne of humility must be the heart. I do hate, of all things, that humility which lives in the face. There are some persons who always seem to be so very humble when you are with them, but you can discover there is something underneath it all, and when they are in some other society, they will brag and say how you told them your whole heart. Take heed of the men who allow you to lay your head in their lap and betray you into the hands of the Philistines. I have met with such persons. I remember a man who used to pray with great apparent humility, and then would go and abuse the servants, and make a noise with all his farming men. He was the stiffest and proudest man in the church, yet he invariably used to tell the Lord, in prayer, that he was nothing but dust and ashes, that he laid his hand on his lip, and his mouth in the dust, and cried, "Unclean, unclean." Indeed he talked of himself in the most despairing way, but I am sure if God had spoken to him, he must have said, "O, thou that liest before my throne, thou sayest this, but thou dost not feel it; for thou wilt go thy way and take thy brother by the throat, exalt thyself above all thy fellow-creatures, and be a very Diotrephes in the church, and a Herod in the world." I dislike that humility which rests in outward things. There is a kind of oil, sanctimonious, proud humility, which is not the genuine article, though it is sometimes extremely like it. You may be deceived by it once or twice, but by-and-bye you discover that is a wolf dexterously covered with sheep's clothing. It arrayeth itself in the simplest dress in the world; it talks in the gentlest and humblest style; it says, "We must not intrude our own peculiar sentiments, but must always walk in love and charity." But after all, what is it? It is charitable to all except those who hold God's truth, and it is humble to all when it is forced to humble. It is like one of whom, I dare say, you have read in your childish books,— "So, stooping down, as needs he must Who cannot stand upright." True humility does not continually talk about "dust and ashes," and prate about its infirmities, but it feels all that which others say, for it possesses an inwrought feeling of its own nothingness. Very likely the most humble man in the world won't bend to anybody. John Knox was a truly humble man, yet if you had seen him march before Queen Mary with the Bible in his hand, to reprove her, you would have rashly said, "What a proud man!" Cringing men that bow before everybody, are truly proud men; but humble men are those who think themselves so little, they do not think it worth while to stoop to serve themselves. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, were humble men, for they did not think their lives were worth enough to save them by a sin. Daniel was a humble man; he did not think his place, his station, his whole self, worth enough to save them by leaving off prayer. Humility is a thing which must be genuine; the imitation of it is the nearest thing in the world to pride. Seek of God, dear friends, the gift of true humility. Seek to have that breaking in pieces by the Holy Spirit, that breaking in the mortar with the pestle which God himself gives to his children. Seek that every twig of his rod may drive pride out of you, so that by the blueness of your wound, your soul may be made better. Seek of him, if he does not show you the chambers of imagery within your own heart, that he may take you to Calvary, and that he may show you his brightness and his glory, that you may be humble before him. Never ask to be a mean, cringing, fawning thing: ask God to make you a man—those are scarce things now-a-days—a man who only fears God, who knows no fear of any other kind. Do not give yourselves up to any man's power, or guidance, or rule, but ask of God that you may have that humility towards him, which gives you the noble bearing of a Christian before others. Some think that minister are proud when they resent any interference with their ministry. I consider they would be proud if they allowed it for the sake of peace, which is only another word for their own self-seeking. It is a great mercy when God gives a man to be free from everybody, when he can go into his pulpit, careless of what others may think of him. I conceive that a minister should be like a lighthouse-keeper; he is out at sea, and nobody can suggest to him that he had better light his candles a little later, or anything of the kind. He knows his duty, and he keeps his lamps burning; if he were to follow the opinions of the people on shore, his light might be extinguished altogether. It is a merciful providence that they cannot get to him, so he goes on easily, obeys his regulations as he reds them, and cares little for other people's interpretation. So a minister should not be a weathercock, that is turned by the wind, but he should be one who turns the wind; not one who is ruled by others, but one who knows how to stand firm and fast, and keep his light burning, trusting always in God; believing, that if God has raised him up, he will not desert him, but will teach him by his Holy Spirit, without the ever-changing advice of men. 3. Now, in the last place, what comes of humility? "Before honor is humility." Humility is the herald which ushers in the great king; it walks before honor; and e who has humility, will have honor afterwards. I will only apply this spiritually. Have you been brought to-day to feel, that in yourself you are less than nothing, and vanity? Art thou humbled in the sight of God, to know thine own unworthiness, thy fallen estate in Adam, and the ruin thou hast brought upon thyself by thine own sins? Hast thou been brought to feel thyself incapable of working out thy own salvation, unless God shall work in thee, to will and to do of his own good pleasure? Hast thou been brought to say, "Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner?" Well, then, as true as the text is in the Bible, thou shalt have honor by-and-bye. "Such honor have all the saints." Thou shalt have honor soon to be washed from all thy guilt; thou shalt have honor soon to be clothed in the robes of Jesus, in the royal garments of the King; thou shalt have honor soon to be adopted into his family, to be received amongst the blood-washed ones who have been justified by faith. Thou shalt have honor to be borne, as on eagles' wings, to be carried across the river, and at last to sing his praise, who has been the "Death of deaths, and hell's destruction." Thou shalt have honor to wear the crown, and wave the palm one day, for thou hast now that humility which comes from God. You may fear that because you are now humbled by God, you must perish. I beseech you do not think so; as truly as ever the Lord has humbled you, he will exalt you. And the more you are brought low, the less hope you have of mercy; the more you are in the dust, so much the more reason you have to hope. So far from the bottom of the sea being a place over which we cannot be carried to heaven, it is one of the nearest places to heaven's gate. And if thou art brought to the very lowest place to which even Jonah descended, thou art so much the nearer being accepted. The more thou knowest thy vileness; remember the blacker, the more filthy, the more unworthy thou art in thine own esteem, so much the more right hast thou to expect that thou wilt be saved. Verily, honor shall come after humility. Humble souls, rejoice; proud souls, go on in your proud ways, but know that they end in destruction. Climb up the ladder of your pride, you shall fall over on the other side and be dashed to pieces. Ascend the steep hill of your glory; the higher you climb the more terrible will be your fall. For know you this, that against none hath the Lord Almighty bent his bow more often, and against none has he shot his arrows more furiously than against the proud and mighty man that exalteth himself. Bow down, O man, bow down; "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." A Faithful Friend A Sermon (No. 120) Delivered on Sabbath Morning, March 8, 1857, by the REV. C. H. Spurgeon At The Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother."— Proverbs 18:24 . CICERO has well said, "Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed." Friendship seems as necessary an element of a comfortable existence in this world as fire or water, or even air itself. A man may drag along a miserable existence in proud solitary dignity, but his life is scarce life, it is nothing but an existence, the tree of life being stripped of the leaves of hope and the fruits of joy. He who would be happy here must have friends; and he who would be happy hereafter, must, above all things, find a friend in the world to come, in the person of God, the Father of his people. Friendship, however, though very pleasing and exceedingly blessed, has been the cause of the greatest misery to men when it has been unworthy and unfaithful; for just in proportion as a good friend is sweet, a false friend is full of bitterness. "A faithless friend is sharper than an adder's tooth." It is sweet to repose in some one; but O! how bitter to have that support snapped, and to receive a grievous fall as the effect of your confidence. Fidelity is an absolute necessary in a true friend; we can not rejoice in men unless they will stand faithful to us. Solomon declares that "there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother." That friend, I suppose, he never found in the pomps and vanities of the world. He had tried them all, but he found them empty; he passed through all their joys, but he found them "vanity of vanities." Poor Savage spoke from sad experience when he said— "You'll find the friendship of the world a show! Mere outward show! 'Tis like the harlot's tears, The statesman's promise, or false patriot's zeal, Full of fair seeming, but delusion all." And so for the most part they are. The world's friendship is ever brittle. Trust to it, and you have trusted a robber; rely upon it, and you have leaned upon a thorn; ay, worse than that, upon a spear which shall pierce you to the soul with agony. Yet Solomon says he had found "a friend that sticketh closer than a brother." Not in the haunts of his unbridled pleasures, nor in the wanderings of his unlimited resources, but in the pavilion of the Most High, the secret dwelling-place of God, in the person of Jesus, the Son of God, the Friend of sinners. It is saying a great thing to affirm that "there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother;" for the love of brotherhood has produced most valiant deeds. We have read stories of what brotherhood could do, which, we think, could hardly be excelled in the annals of friendship. Timoleon, with his shield, stood over the body of his slain brother, to defend him from the insults of the foe. It was reckoned a brave deed of brotherhood that he should dare the spears of an army in defense of his brother's corpse. And many such instances have there been, in ancient and modern warfare, of the attachment of brethren. There is a story told of a Highland regiment, who, while marching through the Highlands, lost their way; they were overtaken by one of the terrible storms which will sometimes come upon travelers unawares, and blinded by the snow, they lost their way upon the mountains. Well nigh frozen to death, it was with difficulty they could continue their march. One man after another dropped into the snow and disappeared. There were two brothers, however, of the name of Forsythe; one of them fell prostrate on the earth, and would have lain there to die, but his brother, though barely able to drag his own limbs across the white desert, took him on his back, and carried him along, and as others fell one by one, this brave, true-hearted brother carried his loved one on his back, until at last he himself fell down overcome with fatigue, and died. His brother, however, had received such warmth from his body that he was enabled to reach the end of his journey in safety, and so lived. Here we have an instance of one brother sacrificing his life for another. I hope there are some brothers here who would be prepared to do the same if they should ever be brought into the same difficulty. It is saying a great thing, to declare that "there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother." It is putting that friend first of all in the list of loving ones; for, surely, next to a mother's love, there is, and there ought to be, no higher affection in the world than the love of a brother to one begotten of the same father, and dandled on the same knee. Those who have "grown in beauty side by side, and filled one house with glee," ought to love one another. And we think there have been many glorious instances and mighty proofs of the love of brethren. Yet, says Solomon, "there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother." To repeat our assertion, we believe that this friend is the blessed Redeemer, Jesus Christ. It shall be ours, first, to prove, this morning, the fact that he sticks closer than a brother; then, as briefly as we can, to show you why he sticks closer than a brother; and then to finish up by giving you some lessons which may be drawn from the doctrine, that Jesus Christ is a faithful Friend. I. First, then, beloved, we assert that CHRIST IS "A FRIEND THAT CLOSER THAN A BROTHER." And in order to prove this from facts, we appeal to such of you as have had him for a friend. Will you not, each of you, at once give your verdict, that this is neither more nor less than an unexaggerated truth? He loved you before all worlds; long ere the day star flung his ray across the darkness, before the wing of angel had flapped the unnavigated ether, before aught of creation had struggled from the womb of nothingness, God, even our God, had set his heart upon all his children. Since that time, has he once swerved, has he once turned aside, once changed? No; ye who have tasted of his love and know his grace, will bear me witness, that he has been a certain friend in uncertain circumstances. "He, near your side hath always stood. His loving-kindness. O! how good." You fell in Adam; did he cease to love you? No; he became the second Adam to redeem you. You sinned in practice, and brought upon your head the condemnation of God; you deserved his wrath and his utter anger; did he then forsake you? No! "He saw you ruined in the fall, Yet loved you notwithstanding all." He sent his minister after you; you despised him; he preached the gospel in your ears; you laughed at him; you broke God's Sabbath, you despised his Word. Did he then forsake you? No! "Determined to save, he watched o'er your path, Whilst, Satan's blind slave, you sported with death." And at last he arrested you by his grace, he humbled you, he made you penitent, he brought you to his feet, and he forgave you all your sins. Since then, has he left you? You have often left him; has he ever left you? You have had many trials and troubles; has he ever deserted you? Has he ever turned away his heart, and shut up his bowels of compassion? No, children of God, it is your solemn duty to say "No," and bear witness to his faithfulness. You have been in severe afflictions and in dangerous circumstances; did your friend desert you then? Others have been faithless to you; he that eat bread with you has lifted up his heel against you; but has Christ ever forsaken you? Has there ever been a moment when you could go to him, and say, "Master, thou hast betrayed me?" Could you once, in the blackest hour of your grief, dare to impugn his fidelity? Could you dare to say of him, "Lord, thou hast promised what thou didst not perform?" Will you not bear witness now, "Not one good thing hath failed of all that the Lord God hath promised; all hath come to pass?" And do you fear he will yet forsake you? Ask, then, the bright ones before the throne—"Ye glorified spirits! did Christ forsake you? Ye have passed through Jordan's stream; did he leave you there? Ye have been baptized in the black flood of death; did he there forsake you? Ye have stood before the throne of God; did he then deny you?" And they answered, "No; through all the troubles of our life, in all the bitterness of death, in all the agonies of our expiring moments, and in all the terrors of God's judgment, he hath been with us, 'a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.'" Out of all the millions of God's redeemed, there is not one he hath forsaken. Poor they have been, mean and distressed, but he hath never abhorred their prayer, never turned aside from doing them good. He hath been ever with them. "For his mercy shall endure, Ever faithful, ever sure." But I shall not longer stay, since I can not prove this to the ungodly, and to the godly it is already proven, for they know it by experience; therefore it is but little necessary that I should do more than just certify the fact that Christ is a faithful friend—a friend in every hour of need and every time of distress. II. And now I have to tell you THE REASONS WHY WE MAY DEPEND UPON CHRIST AS BEING A FRIEND. There are some things in himself which render it certain that he will stick close to his people. 1. True friendship can only be made between true men. Hearts are the soul of honor. There can be no lasting friendship between bad men. Bad men may pretend to love each other, but their friendship is a rope of sand, which shall be broken at any convenient season; but if a man have a sincere heart within him, and be true and noble, then we may confide in him. Spenser sings in fine old English verse— "No, certes can that friendship long endure, However gay and goodly be the style, That doth ill cause or evil end enure, For Vertue is the band that bindeth Harts most sure." But who can find a stain in the character of Jesus, or who can tarnish his honor? Has there ever been a spot on his escutcheon? Has his flag ever been trampled in the dust? Does he not stand the true witness in heaven, the faithful and just? Is it not declared of him that he is God who can not lie? Have we not found him so up to this moment; and may we not, knowing that he is "Holy, holy, holy Lord," confide in him, that he will stick closer to us than a brother? His goodness is the guaranty of his fidelity; he can not fail us. 2. Faithfulness to us in our faults is a certain sign of fidelity in a friend. You may depend upon that man who will tell you of your faults in a kind and considerate manner. Fawning hypocrites, insidious flatterers, are the sweepings and offal of friendship. They are but the parasites upon that noble tree. But true friends put enough trust in you to tell you openly of your faults. Give me for a friend the man who will speak honestly of me before my face; who will not tell first one neighbor, and then another, but who will come straight to my house, and say, "Sir, I feel there is such-and-such a thing in you, which, as my brother, I must tell you of." That man is a true friend; he has proved himself to be so; for we never get any praise for telling people of their faults; we rather hazard their dislike; a man will sometimes thank you for it, but he does not often like you any the better. Praise is a thing we all love. I met with a man the other day who said he was impervious to flattery; I was walking with him at the time, and turning round rather sharply, I said, "At any rate, sir, you seem to have a high gift in flattering yourself, for you are really doing so, in saying you are impervious to flattery." "You can not flatter me," he said. I replied, "I can, if I like to try; and perhaps may do so before the day is out." I found I could not flatter him directly, so I began by saying what a fine child that was of his; and he drank it in as a precious draught; and when I praised this thing and that thing belonging to him, I could see that he was very easily flattered; not directly, but indirectly. We are all pervious to flattery; we like the soothing cordial, only it must not be labeled flattery; for we have a religious abhorrence of flattery if it be so called; call it by any other name, and we drink it in, even as the ox drinketh in water. Now, child of God, has Christ every flattered you? Has he not told you of your faults right truly? Has he not pricked your conscience even upon what you thought to gloss over—your little secret sins? Has he not provoked conscience to thunder in your ears notes of terror, because of your misdeeds? Well, then, you may trust him, for he shows that faithfulness which renders a man right trustworthy. Thus I have pointed out to you that there are reasons in himself for which we may trust him. 3. In the next place, there are some things in his friendship which render us sure of not being deceived, when we put our confidence in him. True friendship must not be of hasty growth. As quaint old Master Fuller says: "Let friendship creep gently to a height; if it rush to it, it may soon run itself out of breath." It is even so. I think it was Joanna Baillie said— "Friendship is no plant of hasty growth. Though planted in esteem's deep fixed soil, The gradual culture of kind intercourse Must bring it to perfection." In vain thou trustest the gourd over thy head, O Jonah; it will not be of much use to thee; it came up in a night, it may wither in a night. It is the strong stiff oak, of ages' growth, which shall abide the tempest; which shall alike put out its wings to shield thee from the sun, and shall afterward find thee a hovel in its heart, if necessary, in its gray old age, when its branches tremble in the blast. Friendship is true when it begins; but we must have a man's friendship long before we can say of him, that he will stick closer than a brother. And how long has Christ loved you? That you can not tell. When the ages were not born he loved you; when this world was an infant, wrapped in the swaddling clothes of mist, he loved you; when the old pyramids had not begun to be builded, his heart was set upon you; and ever since you have been born he has had a strong affection for you. He looked on you in your cradle, and he loved you then; he was affianced to you when you were an infant of a span long, and he has loved you ever since. Some of you I see with gray hairs, some with heads all bald with age; he has loved you up till now, and will he now forsake you? O! no, his friendship is so old that it must last; it has been matured by so many tempests, it has been rooted by so many winds of trouble, that it can not but endure; it must stand. Even as the granite peak of the mountain shall not be melted, because, unlike the snow, it has braved the blast, and borne the heat of the burning sun; it has stood out always, catching in its face every blow from the face of nature, and yet been unmoved and uninjured. It shall last, for it has lasted. But when the elements shall melt, and in a stream of dissolving fire shall run away, then shall Christ's friendship still exist, for it is of older growth than they. He must be "a friend that sticketh closer than a brother;" for his friendship is a hoary friendship—hoary as his own head, of which it is said, "His head and his hair are white like snow, as white as wool." 4. But note, further, the friendship which lasts does not take it rise in the chambers of mirth, nor is it fed and fattened there. Young lady, you speak of a dear friend whom you acquired last night in a ball-room. Do not, I beseech you, misuse the word; he is not a friend if he was acquired merely there; friends are better things than those which grow in the hot-house of pleasure. Friendship is a more lasting plant than those. You have a friend, have you? Yes; and he keeps a pair of horses, and has a good establishment. Ah! but your best way to prove your friend is to know that he will be your friend when you have not so much as a mean cottage, and when, houseless and without clothing, you are driven to beg your bread. Thus you would make true proof of a friend. Give me a friend who was born in the winter time, whose cradle was rocked in the storm; he will last. Our fair weather friends shall flee away from us. I had rather have a robin for a friend than a swallow; for a swallow abides with us only in the summer time, but a robin cometh to us in the winter. Those are tight friends that will come the nearest to us when we are in the most distress; but those are not friends who speed themselves away when ill times come. Believer, hast thou reason to fear that Christ will leave you now? Has he not been with you in the house of mourning? You found your friend where men find pearls, "in caverns deep, where darkness dwells;" you found Jesus in your hour of trouble. It was on the bed of sickness that you first learned the value of his name; it was in the hour of mental anguish that you first did lay hold of the hem of his garment; and since then, your nearest and sweetest intercourse has been held with him in the hours of darkness. Well, then, such a friend, proved in the house of sorrow—a friend who gave his heart's blood for you, and let his soul run out in one great river of gore—such a friend never can and never will forsake you; he sticketh closer than a brother. 5. Again, a friend who is acquired by folly is never a lasting friend. Do a foolish thing, and make a man your friend; 'tis but a confederacy in vice, and you will soon discover that his friendship is worthless; the friendship you acquire by doing wrong, you had better be without. O! how many silly friendships there are springing up, the mere fruit of a sentimentalism, having no root whatever, but like the plant of which our Saviour tells us, "It sprang up because it had no depth of earth." Jesus Christ's friendship is not like that; there is no ingredient of folly in it; he loves us discreetly, not winking or conniving at our follies, but instilling into us his wisdom. His love is wise; he hath chosen us according to the counsel of his wisdom; not blindly and rashly, but with all judgment and prudence. Under this head I may like wise observe, that the friendship of ignorance is not a very desirable one. I desire no man to call himself my friend, if he doth not know me. Let him love me in proportion to his knowledge of me. If he loves me for the little he knows, when he knoweth more he may cast me aside. "That man," says one, "seems to be a very amiable man." "I am sure I can love him," says another, as he scans his features. Ay, but do not write "friend" yet; wait a wee bit, until you know more of him; just see him, examine him, try him, test him, and not till then enter him on the sacred list of friends. Be friendly to all, but make none your friends until they know you, and you know them. Many a friendship born in the darkness of ignorance, hath died suddenly in the light of a better acquaintance with each other. You supposed men to be different from what they were, and when you discovered their real character you disregarded them. I remember one saying to me, "I have great affection for you, sir," and he mentioned a certain reason. I replied, "My dear fellow, your reason is absolutely false; the very thing you love me for, I am not, and hope I never shall be." And so I said, "I really can not accept your friendship, if it be founded upon a misunderstanding of what I may have said." But our Lord Jesus never can forsake those whom once he loves, because he can discover nothing in us worse than he knew, for he knew all about us beforehand. He saw our leprosy, and yet he loved us; he knew our deceitfulness and unbelief, and yet he did press us to his bosom; he knew what poor fools we were, and yet he said he would never leave us nor forsake us. He knew that we should rebel against him and despise his counsel often times; he knew that even when we loved him our love would be cold and languid, but he loved for his own sake. Surely, then, he will stick closer than a brother. 6. Yet again, friendship and love, to be real, must not lie in words, but in deeds. The friendship of bare compliment is the fashion of this age, because this age is the age of deceit. The world is the great house of sham. Go where you may in London, sham is staring you in the face; there are very few real things to be discovered. I allude not merely to tricks in business, adulterations in food, and such like. Deception is not confined to the tradesman's shop. It prevails throughout society; the sanctuary is not exempt. The preacher adopts a sham voice. You hardly ever hear a man speak in the pulpit in the same way he would speak in the parlor. Why, I hear my brethren, sometimes, when they are at tea or dinner, speak in a very comfortable decent sort of English voice, but when they get into their pulpits they adopt a sanctimonious tone, and fill their mouths with inflated utterance, or else whine most pitifully. They degrade the pulpit by pretending to honor it; speaking in a voice which God never intended any mortal to have. This is the great house of sham; and such little things show which way the wind blows. You leave your card at a friend's house; that is an act of friendship—the card! I wonder whether, if he were hard up for cash, you would leave your banker's book! You write "My dear sir," "Yours very truly;" it is a sham; you do not mean it. "Dear!" that is a sacred word; it ought to be used to none but those you regard with affection; but we tolerate falsehoods now, as if they were truths; and we call them courtesies. Courtesies they may be; but untruths they are in many cases. Now, Christ's love lieth not in words, but in deeds. He saith not, "My dear people;" but he let his heart out, and we could see what that was. He doth not come to us, and say, "Dearly beloved" simply; but he hangs upon the cross, and there we read "Dearly beloved" in red letters. He does not come to us with the kisses of his lips first—he giveth us blessings with both his hands; he giveth himself for us, and then he giveth himself to us. Trust no complimentary friend; rely upon the man who giveth you real tokens worth your having, who does for you deeds to show the truthfulness of his heart. Such a friend—and such is Jesus—"sticketh closer than a brother." 7. Once more, and I shall not weary you, I trust. A purchased friend will never last long. Give to a man nineteen times, and deny him the twentieth, and he shall hate you; for his love sprang only from your gifts. The love which I could buy for gold I would sell for dross; the friendship that I could buy for pearls I would dispense with for pebbles; it were of no value, and therefore the sooner lost the better. But O believer, Christ's love was unpurchased love. Thou broughtest him no present. Jacob said, when his sons went to Egypt, "Take the man a present, a little oil, a little balm, a few nuts and almonds;" but you took Christ no presents. When you came to him you said, "Nothing in my hands I bring, Simply to thy cross I cling." You did not even promise that you would love him; for you had such a faithless heart, you durst not say so. You asked him to make you love him; that was the most you could do. He loved you for nothing at all—simply because he would love you. Well, that love which so lived on nothing but its own resources, will not starve through the scantiness of your returns; the love which grew in such a rocky heart as this, will not die for want of soil. That love which sprang up in the barren desert, in your unirrigated soul, will never, never die for want of moisture; it must live, it can not expire. Jesus must be "a friend that sticketh closer than a brother." 8. Shall I stay to urge more reasons? I may but mention one other, namely, this—that there can not, by any possibility, arise any cause which could make Christ love us less. You say, how is this? One man loves his friend, but he on a sudden grows rich, and now he says I am a greater man than I used to be, I forget my old acquaintances. But Christ can grow no richer; he is as rich as he can be, infinitely so. He loves you now; then it can not be possible that he will by reason of an increase in his own personal glory forsake you, for everlasting glories now crown his head; he can never be more glorious and great, and therefore he will love you still. Sometimes, on the other hand, one friend grows poorer, and then the other forsakes him; but you never can grow poorer than you are, for you are "a poor sinner and nothing at all" now; you have nothing of your own; all you have is borrowed, all given you by him. He can not love you, then, less, because you grow poorer; for poverty that hath nothing is at least as poor as it can be, and can never sink lower in the scale. Christ, therefore, must love thee for all thy nakedness and all thy poverty. "But I may prove sinful," sayest thou. Yes, but thou canst not be more so than he foreknew thou wouldst be; and yet he loved thee with the foreknowledge of all thy sins. Surely, then, when it happens it will occasion no surprise to him; he knew it all beforehand, and he can not swerve from his love; no circumstance can possibly arise that ever will divide the Saviour from his love to his people, and the saint from his love to his Saviour. He is "a friend that sticketh closer than a brother." III. Now, then, AN TO BE DERIVED FROM THIS. Lavater says, "The qualities of your friends will be those of your enemies; cold friends, cold enemies, half friends, half enemies, fervid enemies, warm friends." Knowing this to be a truth, I have often congratulated myself, when my enemies have spoken fiercely against me. Well, I have thought, "My friends love me hard and fast; let my enemies be as hot as they please; it only indicates that the friends are proportionately firm in affection. Then we draw this inference, that if Christ sticks close, and he is our friend, then our enemies will stick close, and never leave us till we die. O, Christian, because Christ sticks close, the devil will stick close too; he will be at you and with you; the dog of hell will never cease his howlings, till you reach the other side of Jordan; no place in this world is out of bow-shot of that great enemy; till you have crossed the stream his arrows can reach you, and they will. If Christ gave himself for you, the devil will do all he can to destroy you; if Christ has been long-suffering to you, Satan will be persevering, in hopes that Christ may forget you; he will strive after you, and strive until he shall see you safely landed in heaven. But be not disappointed: the louder Satan roars, the more proof you shall have of Christ's love. "Give me," said old Rutherford, "give me a roaring devil rather than a sleeping one; for sleeping devils make me slumber, but roaring ones provoke me to run to my Master." O! be glad, then, if the world rant at thee, if thy foes attack thee fiercely. Christ is just as full of love to thee as they are of hatred. Therefore, "Be firm and strong; Be grace thy shield and Christ thy song." And now I have a question to ask: that question I ask of every man and every woman in this place, and of every child too—Is Jesus Christ your friend? Have you a friend at court—at heaven's court? Is the judge of quick and dead your friend? Can you say that you love him, and has he ever revealed himself in the way of love to you? Dear hearer, do not answer that question for thy neighbor; answer it for thyself. Peer or peasant, rich or poor, learned or illiterate, this question is for each of you; therefore, ask it: Is Christ my friend? Did you ever consider that question? Have you ever asked it? O! to be able to say "Christ is my friend," is one of the sweetest things in the world. A man who had lived much in sin, one day casually entered a place of worship. Before the sermon, this hymn was sung— "Jesus, lover of my soul." The next day the man was met by an acquaintance who asked him how he liked the sermon. Said he, "I do not know, but there were two or three words that took such a hold of me that I did not know what to do with myself. The minister read that hymn, 'Jesus, lover of my soul.' Ah!' said he, though he was by no means a religious man, "to be able to say that, I would give up all I have got! But do you think," he asked "that Jesus ever will be the lover of such a man as I am? 'Jesus, lover of my soul!' O! could I say it." And then he buried his head in his hands and wept. I have every reason to fear that he went back to his sin, and was the same afterwards as before. But, you see, he had conscience enough to let him know how valuable it was to have Christ for his lover and his friend. Ah! rich man, thou hast many friends. There be some here who have toiled for their country's good, and deserve a meed of honor at their country's hands, who, for one mistake—or what, perhaps, was a mistake—have been neglected by too many who once appeared to be their most trusty adherents. O! put no confidence, ye great men and ye rich, in the adherence of your friends. David said in his hast," All men are liars;" you may one day have to say it at your leisure. And O! ye kind and affectionate hearts, who are not rich in wealth, but who are rich in love—and that is the world's best wealth—put this golden coin among your silver ones, and it will sanctify them all. Get Christ's love shed abroad in your hearts, and your mother's love, your daughter's love, your husband's love, your wife's love, will become more sweet than ever. The love of Christ cast not out the love of relatives, but it sanctifies our loves, and makes them sweeter far. Remember, dear hearer, the love of men and women is very sweet; but all must pass away; and what will you do, if you have no wealth but the wealth that fadeth, and no love but the love which dies, when death shall come? O! to have the love of Christ! You can take that across the river of death with you; you can wear it as your bracelet in heaven, and set it up as a seal upon your hand; for his love is "strong as death and mightier than the grave." Good old Bishop Beveridge, I think it was, when dying, did not know his best friends. Said one, "Bishop Beveridge, do you know me?" Said he, "Who are you?" and when the name was mentioned, he said, "No." "But don't you know your wife, Bishop?" "What is her name?" said he. Said she, "I am your wife." "I did not know I had got one," said he. Poor old man! his faculties all failed him. At last one stooped down and whispered, "Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ?" "Yes," said he, making an effort to speak, "I have known him these forty years, and I never can forget him." It is marvelous how memory will hold the place with Jesus, when it will with no one else; and it is equally marvelous, that, "When all created things are dry, Christ's fullness is the same." My dear hearers, do think of this matter. O that you might get Christ for your friend; he will never be your friend while you are self-righteous; he will never be your friend while you live in sin. But do you believe yourselves guilty? Do you desire to leave off sin? Do you want to be saved? Do you desire to be renewed? Then let me tell you, my Master loves you! Poor, weak, and helpless worms, my Master's heart if full of love to you; his eyes at this moment are looking down with pity on you. "O! Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem!" He now bids me tell you that he died for all of you who confess yourselves to be sinners, and feel it. He bids me say to you, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved." He tells me to proclaim salvation full and free; full, needing nothing of yours to help it; free, needing nothing of yours to buy it. "Come ye thirsty, come and welcome; God's free bounty glorify: True belief and true repentance, Every grace that brings us nigh— Without money, Come to Jesus Christ, and buy." There is nothing I feel that I fail so much in as addressing sinners. O! I wish I could cry my heart out, and preach my heart out, to you and at you. "Dear Saviour, draw reluctant hearts, To thee let sinners fly, And take the bliss thy love imparts; And drink, and never die." Farewell, with this one thought—we shall never all of us meet together here again. It is a very solemn thought, but according to the course of nature and the number of deaths, if all of you were willing to come here next Sabbath morning, it is not at all likely that all of you would be alive; one out of this congregation will be sure to have gone the way of all flesh. Farewell, thou that are appointed to death; I know not where thou art—yon strong man, or yon tender maiden with the hectic flush of consumption on her cheek. I know not who is appointed to death; but I do now most solemnly take my farewell of such an one. Farewell, poor soul; and is it farewell for ever? Shall we meet in the land of the hereafter, in the home of the blessed; or do I bid you farewell now for ever? I do solemnly bid farewell to you for ever, if you live and die without Christ. But I can not bear that dreary thought; and I therefore say, poor sinner! stop and consider—consider thy ways, and now "turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die?" "Why will ye die?" "Why will ye die?" "Why will ye die?" Ah! ye can not answer that question. May God help you to answer it in a better fashion, by saying, "Here Lord! Just as I am, without one plea, But that thy blood was shed for me, O Son of God I come to thee. I trust my soul in thy kind hands." The Lord bless you all for Christ's sake! Amen. Buying the Truth June 26th, 1870 by C. H. (1834-1892) "Buy the truth, and sell it not."— Proverbs 23:23 . John Bunyan pictures the pilgrims as passing at one time through Vanity Fair, and in Vanity Fair there were to be found all kinds of merchandise, consisting of the pomps and vanities, the lusts and pleasures of this present life and of the flesh. Now all the dealers, when they saw these strange pilgrims come into the fair began to cry, as shopmen will do, "Buy, buy, buy—buy this, and buy that." There were the priests in the Italian row with their crucifixes and their beads. There were those in the German row with their philosophies and their metaphysics. There were those in the French row with their fashions and with their prettinesses. But the one answer that the pilgrims gave to all the dealers was this—they looked up and they said, "We buy the truth; we buy the truth," and they would have gone on their way if the men of the Fair had not laid them by the heels in the cage, and kept them there, one to go to heaven in a chariot of fire, and the other afterwards to pursue his journey alone. This is very much the description of the genuine Christian at all times. He is surrounded by vendors of all sorts of things, beautifully got up and looking exceedingly like the true article, and the only way in which he will be able to pass through Vanity Fair safely is to keep to this, that he buys the truth, and if he adds to that the second advice of the text, and never sells it, he will, under divine guidance, find his way rightly to the skies. "Buy the truth, and sell it not." Is not the parable we have just read a sort of enlargement of our text? When the merchantman all over the world had travelled to find out some pearl that should have no flaw, some diamond of the purest water fit to glisten in the crown of royalty, at last in his researches, he met with a gem the like of which he had never seen before, and, knowing that here was wealth for him, in the joy of his discovery, he sold all that he had that he might buy that pearl. Even so, the text seems to tell us, that truth is the one pearl beneath the skies that is worth having, and whatever else we buy not, we must buy the truth, and whatever else we may have to sell, yet we must never sell the truth, but hold it fast as a treasure that will last us when gold has cankered, and silver has rusted, and the moth has eaten up all goodly garments, and when all the riches of men have gone like a puff of smoke, or melted in the heat of the judgment day like the dew in the beams of the morning sun. Buy the truth. Here is the treasure. Cost it what it may, buy you it. Here is the piece of merchandise which you must buy, but must not sell. You may give all for it, but you may take nothing in exchange for it, since there is nothing that can be likened unto it. With this as a preface, let us now come straight up to the text, and we shall notice:— I. THE THAT IS SPOKEN OF. "Buy the truth." I shall not speak tonight of those common forms of truth that relate to politics, to history, to science, or to ordinary life, yet would I say of all these—buy the truth. Never be afraid of the truth. Never be afraid in anything of having your prejudices knocked on the head. Always be determined, come what may, even though truth should prove you to be a fool, yet to accept the truth, and though it should cost you dear, yet still to pursue it, for in the long run they who build mere speculations, fancies, and errors, though they may seem to build suitable structures for the time, shall find that they are wood, hay, and stubble, and shall be consumed; but he that keeps to what he knows, to matters of fact, and matters of truth, builds gold, silver, and precious stones, which the trying fire of the coming ages shall not be able to destroy. I would sooner discover one fact, and lay down one certain truth, than be the author of ten thousand theories, even though these theories should for a while rule all the thought of mankind. But I speak now of religious truth. Buy that truth; buy that truth above all others. And here we must have three heads. First, in the matter of doctrinal truth, buy the truth. Holy Scripture is the standard of truth. To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no truth in them. "Thy word is truth." Here is silver tried in the furnace and purified seven times. Speak of Infallibility? It is not at Rome, but it is here in this Book. Here is an infallible witness to the truth of God, and he that is taught of the Holy Spirit to understand it gets at the truth. Now, dear brethren, do aim to get the right truth, the real truth, as to matters of doctrine. Count it not a trifle to be sound in the faith. Think no error to be harmless, for truth is very precious, and error, even when we do not see it to be so, may lead to the most solemn consequences of mischief. In this world we see too much of salvation without Christ—I mean we meet with many who believe that they are saved because they have been baptized, or confirmed, or passed through the ceremonies of the church to which they belong. They have not looked to the precious blood; they are not depending simply upon the finished work of the Redeemer, but something else than Christ has become their confidence. Now, avoid that, and buy the truth, which lies here, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." We hear too much nowadays of regeneration without faith—the supposed regeneration of unconscious babes, the new birth of people through drops of water, when they are not able to understand what is performed upon them. I beseech you believe that there is no new birth where there is not a confidence in Christ, and that the regeneration which does not lead to repentance and faith, which is not, indeed, immediately attended therewith, is no regeneration whatever. Buy the truth in this matter. Stand to it that it is the work of the Holy Spirit in rational and intelligent beings, leading them to hate sin, and to lay hold of eternal life. Alas! we have in some quarters too much of faith is trusted in, which is not practical. Men say they believe, but they do not prove it by their lives. They remain in sin, and yet wrap themselves up in the belief that they are God's chosen ones. From such turn away, and remember that a faith without works is dead, and only the faith that changes the character, sanctifies the life, and leads the man to God, is the faith which will save the soul. We must see to it that in our doctrine we bow our judgment to the teachings of Scripture, and try to be conformed to all the revelation of God, and especially to all the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ. May we not fall into one error or another. Scylla is there and Charybdis is there, and he is a happy helmsman who can steer between the two. You shall fall into this ism or into that, unless you keep to the truth. Never mind whether you can make the truth always consistent to your own judgment or not. If it is the truth, believe it; and though it should seem to contradict another truth, yet hold to it, if it is in the Word, waiting till clearer light shall reveal to you that all these truths stood in a wonderful harmony and consistency which, at first, you could not perceive. In doctrine, buy the truth. But, secondly, buy experimental truth. I know not another word to use; I mean truth within, the truth experienced. See that this be real truth. How easy it is to be deceived with the notion that we are converted when we still need to be converted; to fancy that, because we have the approbation of our minister and of our Christian friends, we must, therefore, necessarily be the people of God. There is only one true new birth, but there are fifty counterfeits of it. In this respect, then, buy the truth. Let me have you beware of an experience which has a faith in it that was never attended with repentance. I am afraid of a dry-eyed faith. That faith seems to me to be the faith of God's elect, whose eyes are full of tears. If thou hast never felt thyself a sinner, never trembled under the law of God, never felt that thou hast deserved to be cast into hell, I am afraid thy faith is a mere presumption, and not the faith that looks to Christ. Beware of an experience that lies in talk, and not in feeling. Mr. Talkative, in Bunyan's Pilgrim could speak very glibly about religion; no man more so than he; he was fit to take the chair in an assembly of divines; but it was not heart-work; it was all surface-work. Plough deep, my brethren. Feel what you believe. Let it be with you real homework, soul-work, the work of God the Holy Ghost—not a temporary excitement, not head-knowledge, not theory. May the truth be burned into your souls by the operation of the Holy Ghost. In this respect, buy the truth. Alas! we see nowadays in many professors a great deal of life without struggle, and I think I have learned that all spiritual life that is not attended with struggles in a mistake, for Isaac, the child of the promise, is sure to be mocked by Ishmael. No sooner does the seed of the woman come into the world than the seed of the serpent tries to destroy it. You must, and will, find a battle going on within you if you are a believer. Sin will contest it with grace, and grace will seek to reign over sinful corruptions. Be afraid of too easy an experience. "Moab is at ease from his youth; he hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel; for the time cometh when the Lord will search Jerusalem with candles, and punish the men that are settled upon their lees." There must be strivings within, or we may well beware of such an experience. And I think I have noticed a growing feeling abroad of confidence without self-examination. I would have you hold to believe God's Word, but do not take your own state at haphazard. Do not conclude that you are a Christian because you thought you were ten years ago. Day by day bring yourself to the touchstone. He that cannot bear examination will have to bear condemnation. He that dare not search himself will find that God will search him. He that is afraid to look himself in the face has need to be afraid to look the Judge in the face when the great white throne shall be placed, and all the world summoned to judgment. Confidence is quite consistent with self-examination, and I pray you in this thing buy the truth, and seek to have a religion that will bear the test—a true faith, a living faith, a faith that moves your soul, a deep-rooted faith, a faith which is the supernatural work of the Holy Ghost, for the time cometh when, as the Lord liveth, nothing short of this will stand you in good stead. Again, I spoke of three sorts of truth—doctrinal truth, experimental truth, and now practical truth. By practical truth I mean our actions being consistent, and those of a right and straightforward course. In this matter, buy the truth. You profess to be a Christian: be a Christian. You say that you are a follower of Christ: follow him, then. You know it is right to be a man of integrity and uprightness: be so. Let no dirty tricks of trade, let no meannesses, let none of those white lies which degrade commerce nowadays, ever come across your path, except to be reprobated and abhorred. Walk straight forward. Learn not to tack. Do not wish to understand policy, and craft, and cunning. Buy the truth. It will shame the world yet. He that speaks out his mind, says what he means, and means what he says, does the just thing, does the right thing, fears no man, and lifts his head boldly in the face of all creation if it dares to whisper that it will enrich him by his doing wrong—that is the man that buys the truth practically. You know how it can be carried out in commerce readily enough, in the parlour, in the drawing-room, and in the kitchen. There is a truthful way for a shoe-black to black shoes in the street, and there is a lying way of doing it. There is a truthful way of doing the commonest actions, and there is a false method of doing the very self-same thing. In this respect, then, buy the truth, as to the straightforwardness, the clean, sharp transparency of your moral character and of your Christian conduct. Never seem to be what you are not, or if you must for a while be in that position, count that you are unfortunate, and escape from it as soon as you can. Never do what you are ashamed of; it matters not who sees. Think always that God sees, and with God for a witness you have enough of observers. Only do that which you would have done if all eyes were fixed on you, and you were observed even of your most cruel critics. Never stifle conscience. Carry out your convictions. If the skies fall, stand upright. What God's Holy Spirit tells you, that do. What you find in this Book, carry out. If you bring any mischief to other people through it, that is their business. If I keep on the right side of the road, and run over anybody—that is his fault; he should have kept out of the way. I would not run over him if I could help it, but I cannot turn aside from the right road. Stand in your place. Let malignant eyes look at you, but, like the sun, shine on, and if others envy you, yet fret not because of them, neither be you grieved to act the truth, but in this respect again fulfil the text and "buy the truth." So have I shown you what the commodity is—doctrinally, experimentally, and practically. "Buy the truth." Now let us come and think specially to the first part of the text. II. HOW THIS IS . "Buy the truth." Let us correct an error here. Some might suppose that Christ, and the gospel, and salvation—all of which are included in the truth—can be bought. They can, but they cannot. They can in the sense of the text; they cannot in any other sense. You cannot purchase salvation; merit cannot win it. Christ's price is, "Without money and without price." Has not the prophet so worded it? "Yea, come, buy wine and milk, without money and without price." Salvation is of free grace, and is from the very necessity of its nature, gratis. You cannot merit it; you cannot earn it. It is not of the will of man, nor of blood, nor of birth, but "he will have mercy on whom he will have mercy, and he will have compassion on whom he will have compassion." What, then, does the text mean? I will try to expound the Word. It means, first, to be saved, give up everything that must be given up, in order to your receiving the free salvation. Every sin must be given up. No man shall go to heaven while he lives in, and favours any one, sin. A man may sin and be saved, but he cannot love sin and be saved. Give up, then, thy drunkenness, if that be thy sin. Give up, then, thine unchaste living, if that be thy sin. Conquer that angry temper, that love of greed—whatever it is that keeps thee back from Christ. Buy the truth, and give up these. Thou wilt not merit salvation then; but if this must be given up, let it not stand in thy way. Give it up, man! Since thou canst not have thy sin and have Christ too, get a divorce from thy sin and take holiness, and take the Saviour. Thou must also give up all thy self-righteousness. Some are trusting in their prayers, some are trusting in their tears, their repentances, their feelings, their church-goings, their chapel-goings, and I know not what men will not trust in. Give them all up. They are all lies together. There is no reliance to be placed on anything you can do. Come and trust what Christ has done, and if it be, as it certainly is, needful for you to give up your own righteousness to win Christ and be found in him, then do it, and in this sense part with all you have that you may buy Christ. Yourself, your sinful self, and your righteous self—oh! that you might be willing to part with both, that you might buy the true salvation! And the text means this, again, that if, in order to be saved, it should cost you a deep experience and much pain, yet never mind it. It is better that you should bear all that and get the truth, than that you should escape without this heart-searching work, and be deceived at the last. If the price at which you shall have a true experience is that of sorrow, buy the truth at that price. Be willing to let the doctor's lancet wound you, if thereby he shall heal you. Be willing to lose the right eye or the right hand, if thereby you shall enter into life eternal. It also means this—buy the truth; that is, be willing at all risks to hold to the truth. Buy it as the martyrs did when they gave their bodies to be burned for it. Buy it as many have done when they have gone to prison for it. Buy it if you should lose your situation for it. Lose your situation sooner than tell a lie. Like the three holy children, be rather willing to go into the fiery furnace, than to worship the image which Nebuchadnezzar has set up. Run the risk of being poor. Do not believe, as all the world says, that you must live. There is no absolute necessity for it. Sometimes it is a grander thing to die. Let the necessity be, "We must be honest; we must do the right; we must serve God," for that is a far greater necessity than that of merely living. Count all things but dross that you may be a true man, a godly man, a holy man, a Christly man, and in this sense make sacrifice of all, and thus "buy the truth." I think that is what the word means. I expound it to mean this—give anything and everything, sooner than part with Christ, part with the living work of grace in your heart, or part with the integrity of your conduct. And now let me:— III. THESE WORDS. "Buy the truth." Then I say, buy only the truth. Do not be throwing away your life, and your abilities, and your zeal, and your earnestness, for a lie. Some are doing it. Thousands of pounds are given to erect edifices for doing mischief. Multitudes of sermons are preached, very zealously, to propagate falsehoods, and sea and land are compassed to make proselytes, who shall be ten times more children of hell than they were before. Buy only the truth. Do not buy the glittering stuff they call truth. Never mind the label; look to see if it be truth. Bring everything that is propounded as truth to the test, to the trial. If it will not stand the fire of God's Word, then do not buy it; nay, do not have it as a gift; nay, do not keep it in the house. Run away from it. It doth eat as doth a canker; let it not come near you. Buy only the truth. "Buy the truth" at any price, and sell it at no price. Buy it at any price. If you lose your body for it, if you lose not your soul, you have made a good bargain. If you lose your estate for it, yet if you have heaven in return, how blessed the exchange! You certainly will not need for it to lose your peace of mind, but you may lose everything else, and you shall make a good bargain. Come to no terms with Christ. Throw all into the soul-bargain. Let all go, as long as you may but have truth in the doctrine, truth in the heart, and truth in the life, and Christ, who is the Truth, to be your treasure for ever. Buy all the truth. When you come to the Bible, do not pick and choose. Do not try to believe half of it, and leave out the other half. Buy the truth—that is, not a section of it that suits your particular idiosyncrasy, but buy the whole. Why need you break up pearls and dissolve them? Buy all that is true. One doctrine of God's Word balances another. He who is altogether and only a Calvinist probably only knows half the truth, but he who is willing to take the other side, as far as it is true, and to believe all he finds in the Word, will get the whole pearl. Buy now the truth—buy tonight the truth. It may not be for you to buy tomorrow. You may be in that land where God hath cast for ever the lost soul away from all access to the truth, where truth's shadow, cold and chill, shall fall upon you, and you, in outer darkness, shall weep and wail, and gnash your teeth, because you shut out truth from you, and now truth has shut you out, and all your knockings at her door shall be answered with the dolorous cry, "Too late, too late! Ye cannot enter now!" Thus I have paraphrased the text. Buy only the truth; buy all the truth; buy at any price the truth; and buy now the truth. Briefly let me give you:— IV. THE REASONS FOR THIS . You want the truth, and you will never be received by God at last unless you bring the truth in your right hand. Only the truthful can enter those gates of pearl. You want the truth now. You are not fit to live any more than to die without an interest in the truth as it is in Jesus. Accept Christ to be truly yours, so truly yours as to make you true. You know not how to fight the battle of life at all without the truth. Your life will be a blunder, and the close of it will be a disaster, except you buy the truth. God grant that you may buy the truth now. You need it. You need it now, and you will for ever need it. Oh! I would to God that that hymn we sang should not merely be heard by you, but felt by you:— "Hasten, sinner, to be wise, And stay not for the morrow's sun." Oh! that fatal "tomorrow"! Over the cliffs of "tomorrow" millions have fallen to their ruin. Tomorrow, ay, tomorrow! Here are these put-offs, and these delays, and yet God has never given you a promise of mercy tomorrow. His word is "Today, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts." A better day shall never come than this day. Oh! that you would accept it now. "If you tarry till you're better, You will never come at all." And till times are more propitious, if you wait, you will wait on for ever and for aye. God grant you may buy the truth now, for the text is in the present tense, for now you need it. Let me direct you to:— V. THE MARKET WHERE YOU CAN BUY IT. These are the words of Jesus Christ when he appeared to his servant John, "I counsel thee, buy of me," said he. There is no place where truth can be found in its power and life, except in Jesus Christ. Truth is in his blood; it will wash away what is false in you. Truth is in his Spirit; it will eradicate what is dark and vile in you. His love will make you true by conforming you to himself. Come to Christ. Bring nothing with you. Come as you are, empty-handed, penniless, and poor. The rills of milk and wells of wine are all with him. He is the banquet-giver, and the banquet too. To trust him is to live. To look to him alone for salvation is to find salvation in that look. Oh! that these simple words might point someone to the place where he shall buy the truth! And now let me repeat my text again, "Buy the truth." Do not misread it. It does not say hear about the truth. That is a good thing, but hearing is not buying, as many of you tradesmen know to your cost. You may tell people where to go, but you do not want them merely to hear; you are not content with that; you want them to buy. Oh! that some of you, my hearers, would become buyers of the truth! I know some of you. I happen to look about, and find out here and there one—some of you, whom I know, and respect, and esteem, and pray for I had thought that you would have bought the truth long ago, and it often staggers me why you have not. Oh! that you were decided for God! I am afraid I am preaching some of you into a hardened state. If the gospel does not save you, it will certainly be a curse to you, and I am afraid it is being so to some of you. Do think of this, I pray you! Why should you and I have the misery of doing each other hurt when our intention is on both sides, I am sure, to do that which is kind and good? Oh! yield you to my Master. The Light of the World is with his hand at your door knocking tonight softly. Do you not hear the knock of the hand that was pierced? Admit him! He comes not in wrath; he comes in mercy. Admit him! He has tarried long, even these many years, but no frown is yet upon his brow. Rise now and let him in. Be not ashamed. Though ashamed, be not afraid, but let him in, and blushing, with tears in your face, say to him, "My Lord, I will trust thee; worthless worm as I am, I will depend upon thee." Oh! that you would do it now, this moment! The Lord give you grace to do it! Do not hear about it only, but buy the truth. Do not merely commend the truth by saying, "The preacher spoke well, and he spoke earnestly, and I love what he said." The preacher had almost rather that you said nothing than that, if you do not buy the truth. How it provokes the salesman when a customer says, "Yes, it is a beautiful article, and very cheap, and just what I want," and then walks out of the shop. Nay, buy the truth, and you shall commend it better afterwards, and your commendation shall be worth the hearing. And, I pray you, do not stand content with merely knowing about the truth. Oh! how much some of you know. How much more you know than even some of God's people. You could correct many of my blunders. But ah! he that knows is nowhere unless he also has. To know about bread will not stay my hunger; to know that there are riches at the bank will not fill my pocket. Buy the truth, as well as know it; that is, make it your own. And do not, I pray you, intend to buy it. Oh! intentions, intentions, intentions! The road to hell—not hell—that is a mistake of the proverb—the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Oh! ye laggards, pull up the paving-stones and hurl them at the devil's head. He is ruining you; he is decoying you to your destruction. Turn your intentions into actions, and no longer intend to buy, but buy the truth. And do not tonight wish that the truth were yours, but buy it. You say the cost is too great. Too great? It is nothing. It is "without money and without price." Do you mean, however, to say, that it is too great a cost to give up a sin? What, will you burn in hell rather than give up a lust? Will you dwell in everlasting burnings for ever, sooner than give up those cups that intoxicate you? Must you have your silly wantonness, and lascivious mirth, or any kind of sin? Must you have it? Will you sooner have it than heaven? Then, sirs, your blood be on your own heads. You have been warned. I hope you are sober, and have not yet gone to madness, and if you be, you will see that no pleasures of an hour can ever recompense for casting yourselves under the anger of God for ever and for ever. Buy the truth. Do not merely talk about it, and wish for it, but buy, buy the truth. And then, lastly: VI. A WARNING AS TO LOSING THE . "Sell it not." My time has gone, and therefore, as I never like to exceed it, there shall be but these few words. When you have once got the truth, I know you will not sell it. You will not, I am sure, at any price; but the exhortation, nevertheless, is a most proper one. There have been some who have sold the truth to be respectable. They used to hear the gospel, but now they have got on in the world, and keep a carriage, and they do not like to go where there are so many poor people, so away they go where they can hear anything or nothing, so that they may be respectable. Ah! I have the uttermost contempt for this affectation of gentility and respectability that leads men to be so mean as to forsake their Christian friends. Let them go; they are best gone. Such chaff had better not be with the wheat, and those that can be actuated by such motives are too base to be worth retaining. Some sell the truth for a livelihood. I pity these far more. "I must have a situation; therefore, I must do what I am told there; I must break this law of God and that, for I must keep my family." Ah! poor soul, I pity thine unfortunate position, but I pray that thou mayest have grace even now to play the man, and never sell the truth, even for bread. Some sell the truth for the pleasures of the world. They must have enjoyment, they say, and so they will mingle with the multitude that do evil, and give up their Christian profession. Others seem to sell the truth for nothing at all. They merely go away from Christ because religion has grown stale with them. They are weary of it, and they go away. I shall put the question painfully to all, Will ye also go away? Will ye to be respectable, will ye to have a livelihood, will ye to have the pleasures of sin for a season, will ye out of sheer weariness—will ye go away? Nay, we can add:— "What anguish has that question stirred, If I will also go! Yet, Lord, relying on thy Word, I humbly answer, No." Sell it not; sell it not; it cost Christ too dear. Sell it not; you made a good bargain when you bought it. Sell it not. Sell it not; it has not disappointed you; it has satisfied you, and made you blessed. Sell it not; you want it. Sell it not; you will want it. The hour of death is coming on, and the day of judgment is close upon its heels. Sell it not; you cannot buy its like again; you can never find a better. Sell it not; you are a lost man if you part with it. Remember Esau, and the morsel of meat, and how he would again have found his birthright if he could. Remember Demas; remember Judas, the son of perdition. You are lost without it. It is your life. Skin for skin, yea all that you possess, part with for it, and be resolved, come fair or come foul, come storm or come calm, come sickness or come health, come poverty or come wealth, come death itself in the grimmest form, yet none shall separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus your Lord, and none shall make you part from the truths you have learned and received from his Word, the truths you have felt and have had wrought into your soul by his Spirit, and the truths which in action you desire should tone and colour all your life. God bless you, dear friends, and keep you, and when the Great Shepherd shall appear may you have the mark of truth upon you, and appear with him in glory. Good News January 6th, 1876 by C. H. (1834-1892) "As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country."— Proverbs 25:25 . This is a text for summertime rather than for a winter's evening. It is only on one of our hottest summer days that we could fully appreciate the illustration here employed; we need to be parched with thirst to be able to feel the value of cold waters to quench our thirst. At the same time, I think that we can, without any very great stretch of imagination, put ourselves into the position of some to whom cold waters have been almost like life from the dead. Look at Hagar, in the wilderness with her child, whom she has cast under one of the shrubs, that she may not see him die. The water in the bottle is spent, and she longs for a cooling draught that might save the young lad's life. Then the Lord opened her eyes, so that she saw a well of water in the desert, and as she filled her bottle from it she understood what cold waters are to a thirsty soul. Think also of the whole nation of Israel in the wilderness crying out in agony because there was no water for them to drink. Then they began to murmur against the Lord, and against Moses; but how joyful they were when the smitten rock poured forth its cooling stream, and they rushed to it, and drank to the full. If you want another personal example of the blessing of cold water to a thirsty soul, think of Samson. Heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of an ass he has slain a thousand men; but the dust of the conflict, and the heat, and the exhaustion had caused such an intense thirst to come upon him that he is ready to die. Then he lifts up his voice to the Lord; and the same God, who had made the jawbone to be so mighty a weapon against the Philistines, opens for him a spring of water in that very jawbone, and he drinks, and is refreshed, and magnifies the name of the Lord. So, you see, there are occasions when cold waters are inexpressibly precious to thirsty souls; and Solomon, who seems to have known something of their value, says that good news from a far country is equally pleasant, and refreshing, and reviving. This proverb is true in its most literal interpretation. When we are in a far country, separate from those we love, there is no greater pleasure than that of receiving letters from them, with tidings of their welfare. Even the little details about household affairs—the minor events which we should scarcely have noticed if we had been there—become exceedingly interesting to us; and the longer we have been away from home, the more dear everything becomes to us when we hear of it in the far country where, for a while, our lot has been cast I suppose that merchants, who have costly ventures in distant parts, also long for good news from the far country which is still their home wherever they may be. Solomon had sent his ships to various foreign countries, and when the news came from Joppa that the vessels were in sight which had come back from India, or from the Pillars of Hercules, bringing all manner of precious things, the merchant prince was highly pleased, and felt that "as cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country." And this, which is a literal fact, may become an illustration of spiritual truth; and I am going to use it in that way as God, the Holy Spirit, may guide me. First, good news from God for sinners is like cold waters to a thirsty soul. Secondly, good news from heaven for saints is like cold waters to a thirsty soul. And, thirdly, good news in heaven from earth—the good news which reaches that far country, every now and then,—is to angels and glorified Saints as cold waters to a thirsty soul. I. First, then, (and may God bless this first head very richly!) GOOD NEWS FROM GOD FOR SINNERS is like cold water to the thirsty. Sin has led the sinner into a far country. That part of the description of the prodigal son, who gathered all-together, and went into a far country, aptly describes the condition of the whole human race. Man, before the Fall, was near to God, he communed with him. But when Adam and Eve heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day," after they had disobeyed him, they "hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden." Practically, by his sin, Adam set out on a long journey away from his happy home; and, soon, he was so far off that, when God came where he had formerly communed with him, he had to cry to him, "Adam, where art thou?" In like manner, we are alienated from God by wicked works, far off from him in character, for he is light, and we are darkness; he is truth, and we are falsehood; he is love, and we are just the opposite. We are also far off from God in our aims and objects, for we aim, not at the good of others, nor at his glory, but we seek earthly things. We are, by nature, far off from God in the whole bent and current of our life, which no longer runs in a parallel line with the life of God as first imparted to man, but runs rather according to the fashion of the life of Satan, so that we yield ourselves up to the evil influence of that foul spirit who worketh in the children of disobedience. When a sinner is awakened by the Holy Spirit, he becomes conscious of this distance, and he feels, in a measure, like the lost spirits in hell who realize that there is a great gulf fixed between them and God. At first, the convicted sinner fancies that gulf can never be passed; and the longer he looks into its awful depths,—the longer his eyes try to gaze across it to the other side,—the more he discovers that he is far off from his God, and that there is a vast, yawning chasm between him and his Maker. If any of you, dear friends, are conscious of being thus at a distance from God, I have come as a messenger from him bringing to you his words of mercy and grace, which should be to you as good news from a far country. And the first piece of good news that I have to give you is, that God has not forgotten you. You are a lost sheep, and you have almost forgotten your Shepherd; perhaps, you have altogether forgotten him; but your Shepherd has been counting over the number of his sheep, and he finds that there is one missing, for there are only ninety and nine where there should be a hundred, and he is deeply concerned about the one that has gone astray. God has not only remembered that there is such a person as you but he remembers you with pity. It is wonderful to notice how he speaks. Sometimes, he cries, "How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? Like as a father pitieth his children, so is it with our God, he pities those who wander away from him. "As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live." God takes no delight in your sin, and no delight in the shame and sorrow which your sin will bring upon you unless you turn from it, but he will take delight in you if you return to him. He still cries to you, "Return ye now every one from his evil way;" and he still remembers you in pity and compassion. Notwithstanding your forgetfulness of him, and your wilful rebellion against him, he doth remember you still; for God is love, and there is love in his heart even towards sinners who are dead in trespasses and sins. That, surely, is good news to you, and if God thus thinks of you in pity, should not you think of God with deep, heartfelt penitence and contrition? But there is even better news from God for you than this, namely, that he has prepared the way by which you may come back to him. Do you ask, "How can that be, for there is a wall of partition between us? How can I ever get to God? Surely, the justice of God, on account of my sin, raises an impassable barrier between us. That justice stands like the cherubim with a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life, lest, haply, I should attempt to return to my God." That is quite true, yet listen to this, poor, guilty sinner. God must be just, that is certain; and, being just, he must punish thy sin. But hast thou not heard that he has given his only-begotten Son that he might stand in the sinner's stead, and bear the punishment that was due on account of the sinner's guilt? That cherub's flaming sword has been quenched in Jesus's, precious blood. That middle wall of partition Christ has broken down, even as the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom. Oh, what a mighty rent was that! Not a little slit, part of the way down; but from the top to the bottom. So has Jesus Christ demolished the barrier which stood between a justly angry God and a guilty but repenting sinner, and now there is a way of approach, for the very worst of men and women, right up to the throne of the Most High. By the blood of Jesus, once shed for many, for the remission of sins, the guiltiest foot of man may come. Ay, by that blood-besprinkled way, the most condemned sinner may come without fear of being repulsed. The chasm has been filled, the gulf bridged over, and if thou truly believest in Jesus Christ, thou mayest, in his name, and for his sake, come back to thy Heavenly Father. That wise resolve within thy heart, which says, "I will arise and go to my Father," should be at once carried into effect, for thy Father hath prepared the way by which thou mayest come back to him, and, to encourage thee, he has sprinkled it with the blood of his dear Son,—the surest sign and token of his love to sinners that even God himself could give. Here, then, is good news from a far country. Your Father thinks of you, poor prodigal; and he has paved the way for you to come back to his own house and heart. Is there any more good news for you? Ay, that there is, far more than I can tell you. This is another piece of it, God has sent you his Word, and sent you his servants, to invite you to come back to him. It is very gracious for God to prepare the way; but it is even more gracious for him to invite you to make use of that way. There are, sometimes, cases of necessity when a man thrusts himself upon the notice of another, and seeks his aid in some great emergency. It is a dark and stormy night, and the wanderer, who has lost his way, knocks at the first door he sees, and asks for shelter. But that is not your case. You also are a wanderer, and you need shelter, but mercy's door stands wide open, and God has sent his messengers to invite you to come in. If the door had been closed, it would have been a wise action, on your part, to knock, and ask for admission, or even to cause the kingdom of heaven to suffer violence, and to take the blessing by force. But that is not necessary. Think, then, of the goodness of God, who invites, entreats, exhorts, and persuades sinners to come unto him. Nay, mere, there is a text,—a blessed text, I think,—which says, "Compel them to come in." The great King bids his servants to seize them by the mighty force of love, and to draw them in with tears and entreaties again and again repeated, until they yield. "Compel them to come in," says he, "that my house may be filled." This is good news indeed. Such gracious invitations as these make up still more good news: "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white, as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. "I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: for I have redeemed thee." "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." "All manner of sin and of blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men." "The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." Is not this good news for poor sinners? O my Master, bless thou thine own words of grace and mercy to all who hear or read them, and make them to be like cold waters to a thirsty soul! There is still more good news beyond all this, and I will tell you some of it. It is good news that many have already returned to their Father, and have been welcomed. Some of these are your own friends and relatives,—your brother, your sister, your father, your mother. This good news does not relate to anything which is merely a matter of experiment. The experiment has been made so often—the blessed experiment of proving whether God will receive repenting sinners or no,—that it is a matter of certainty now. Why, you even know one, who used to be your companion in every kind of folly and sin,—and he has sought and found the Savior. Did he not tell you so, the other day? And there was one, who seemed to he even worse than you,—at least, he went further in open sin than you have ever done; yet he sought the Lord, and he was not rejected. Now, when I see so many come to Christ, and find that he never casts out one of them, what ought I to infer from that? Why, that, he will not cast me out if I come to him. If from my Master's door I saw a stream of sinners coming back, with sad countenances, and all shaking their heads, and saying, "We have been denied admittance, we were too guilty to go in;" or, "We were not fit;" or, "We were not sensitive enough;" or something of that kind, then, methinks, I should not dare to go; but if the footprints of sinners all run towards Christ, and never is there a single footprint of a penitent sinner turned back by him;—if I see him drawing men unto himself, according to his word, "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me;"—and if I never see him repelling or repulsing one sinner, however black or crimson he may be, I may well say, "Come, my poor guilty soul, why shouldst not thou have acceptance too? "At any rate,— "I'll to the gracious King approach, Whose scepter pardon gives; Perhaps he may command my touch, And then the suppliant lives. I can but perish if I go, I am resolved to try; For if I stay away, I know I must for ever die. And if I die with mercy sought, When I the King have tried This were to die (delightful thought!) As sinner never died;"— for no sinner ever did seek Jesus Christ by faith in vain. That, surely, is good news from a far country. And, once again, we have to bring this good news,—that the Lord has not only made a way for his poor wandering children to come back to him, but he has provided all the means needed to bring them back. You recollect that, when Joseph sent for his father Jacob to come to him in Egypt, Jacob could not believe that Joseph was still alive; the news, that he was, under Pharaoh, ruler over all Egypt, seemed too good to be true; but when he saw the waggons which Joseph had sent, then his spirit revived. "Waggons" is the word in our translation, but I expect that Joseph also sent some of the best chariots that Egypt could produce to carry poor old Jacob and all his family down into Egypt; and I do not wonder that the spirit of the patriarch revived when he saw those waggons or chariots. There is many a poor sinner who says, "Yes, I know that there is a way of salvation; but, then, my feet are lame, so how can I run along that way! I know that there is saving truth in the Bible, and blessed be God for that; but how shall I ever learn that truth? I know that Christ is himself the Truth, but how can that Truth be mine? I know that there is eternal life, and that Christ is the Life as well as the Truth and the Way, but I am spiritually dead, can I ever have that life?" Yes, you can, for our Lord Jesus Christ is not merely the Way, but he is also the power by which we run in that way. He is not only the Truth, but he gives us the illuminating Spirit to lead us into the Truth; and he is not only the Life, but he puts that Life into us, and sustains and perfects it. You have nothing to do, sinner, but to give yourself up to the leading, guiding, directing, assisting, quickening of the blessed Spirit of God. It is true that you must believe, but he will give you the grace of faith. It is true that you must repent, but it is also true that he works repentance in us. There must and there will be a change of life in all true converts but it is the Holy Spirit who converts you and turns you completely round. There must be sanctification in genuine believers, but it is the Holy Spirit who sanctifies you. There is nothing asked of you, in the gospel, but what the gospel itself gives you. Those things which, in one part of Scripture, are put as precepts, are, in other parts of Scripture, among the promises. What the Lord bids the sinner do, he enables the sinner to do, just as, when Jesus said to the man that was paralyzed, "Take up thy bed, and walk," with the command he gave the power to obey it; and when he said to another man, "Stretch out thy hand, withered though it be," the miraculous power, that gave the nerves and muscles force again, went with the mandate from the lips of Jesus. In like manner, trust thou the Lord to give thee the power to lay hold on the gospel. The very eye, with which to look at the brazen serpent, is his gift; and that gift he is prepared to bestow upon all who come to him for it. Is not this good news from a far country? And this, too, is good news,—that thou mayest come to Christ at once. If, at this moment, thou art enabled to trust the Lord Jesus, he is thine. The way home looks very far, but the good news I have to bring you is that you can be there in a moment. That is to say, far off as thou art from God, if thou believest in Jesus, thou art brought to God that very instant. As soon as the Holy Spirit enables thee to trust in Jesus, thou art brought near to God at once. What said our Savior to the dying thief? "This day shalt thou be with me in paradise." You perhaps will not have an immediate entrance into the paradise above, but may live a little longer here; but, as soon as thou dost believe in Jesus, thou shalt be reconciled to God by the death of his Son; thou shalt have instantaneous forgiveness, and, at the same time, it shall be as permanent as it is instantaneous, and as complete as it is immediate. This is the good news which comes to you by the gospel. And what thou hast to do with it is this, believe the Father's word, and trust thyself wholly to what Christ has done for sinners. May the Divine Spirit take thee off from all other ways of salvation, and bring thee to trust to this alone, and make thee abhor and loathe even to detestation, anything like confidence in thy prayers, or thy tears, thy doings, thy sufferings, thy preparings, thy repentings, or anything else; for it is none but Jesus who can bring a sinner near to God. All that you spin, you will have to unravel; all that you build, will have to come down; all that you can bring to God, you will have to take back again. You must come to him empty-handed, with nothing of your own, and simply rest where God himself doth rest,—in the blessed person and the finished work of the Lord Jesus who is all in all. Now, if thou art spiritually thirsty, this good news will be to thee as a draught of cold water; but if thou art not thirsty, thou wilt not partake of it. It is little use to praise cold water to a man who is already drunk with the world's intoxicating draughts, or to those who have no thirst, and who will despise it. If there is anyone here who does not feel that he is a sinner, or who thinks that he has no great guilt, and who has no true sorrow of heart on account of his sin,—I might as well walk into St. Paul's Cathedral, and talk to the statues there, or into Westminster Abbey, and preach to the dust beneath my feet, as preach to you. Cold waters are for the thirsty, and the good news of mercy and salvation is for the guilty. Oh, that the Holy Spirit would make you feel your deep need, and give you intense spiritual thirst; for, then, Jesus Christ and the good news from the far country would be precious to you! II. Now I turn to the second part of our subject, which is, GOOD NEWS FROM HEAVEN FOR SAINTS. That also is as cold waters to a thirsty soul. Does someone ask, "Is there any news from heaven?" Yes, there is; and that shall be my first remark in this part of my theme,— that news does still come from heaven. There is an invisible telegraph between us and the glory-land; we are not cut off from communication with those who are there. Jacob dreamed of a ladder reaching to heaven, but it was not merely a dream. Never was there anything more real than that vision of the night, for there is a blessed means of communication between this far-off land and the goodly land beyond the river. Our prayers and sighs and tears, our praises and thanksgivings, get there all right; they are not, lost en route. They reach the great heart of God, and messages come down to us from him in response to them. How do they come? Well, they come by the Holy Spirit sealing home to the soul the promises of the Word. Do you know, experimentally, what I mean by that! "Ah!" says someone, "do I not?" Every now and then, some blessed portion of Scripture seems as if it were set on fire, and, as you read it, it blazes out before your eyes, just as, sometimes, we see the lamps that are being got ready for an illumination. There is some grand device; and, before it is lit up, it is little more than an array of pipes; but how different it looks after they have lit it all! So, there is many a text of Scripture which is like that design; you can see something of what it means, but you should see it when it is lit up. How very different it is then! You sometimes get a promise from the Word whispered into your ear, and it is just as new to you as if it had never been written down eighteen hundred or three or four thousand years ago. It is as fresh to you as if the eternal pen had written it to-day, and written it for you alone. Some of us I hope, many of us—know how the Spirit of God takes of the things of Christ, and reveals them unto us,—leads us into the very heart and soul of the precious blessings of the covenant of grace. This is as good news from a far country, and is as cold waters to a thirsty soul. And often, too, the Lord Jesus Christ sends us news concerning the fellowship which he intends us to enjoy with him. Still do godly men walk with God as Enoch did. Do not imagine that God has gone away, and that no longer may we speak to him as a man speaketh with his friend. No, for truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." Still does Jesus lay bare his heart to his beloved. Still may we say with the spouse, and have the prayer answered, "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine." There are still sweet intercourses and blessed love passages between Christ and his chosen, of which the world knows not; but "the secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will show them his covenant." Yes, there is good news from a far country for the saints of God. And, dear friends, it should be our earnest aim to keep unbroken our intercourse with heaven, for it is the most refreshing thing beneath the sun, This world is like an arid desert where there is no water except as we maintain our intercourse with Christ. So long as I can say that the Lord is mine, all things here below are of small account; but if I once get a doubt about that matter, and if I cease to walk with God, then what is there here below that can content my immortal spirit? Without Christ, this world is to us as thorns without the roses, and as bitters without the sweets of life. But thou, O Lord, makest earth to be a heaven to thy saints even when they lie in dungeons, when thy presence cheers them. But were, they translated to the palaces of kings, and thereby lost thy blessed company, those palaces would he worse than prison-houses to them. It is most important that you, who are obliged to mingle with the world, should maintain your intercourse with Christ; for that is the only way to keep yourself clear from its corruptions. And you, who have much to do in the church, must keep up your intercourse with Christ; for that is the only way of preserving your service from becoming mechanical, and of preventing you from doing good works as a mere matter of routine. You, too, who have much to suffer, or even much to enjoy, must keep up this holy intercourse, or else your soul will soon be like a thirsty land where there is no water. It may be that I am addressing some, who have not had much news lately from the far country of heaven. You are going there, one day, and— "There your best friends, your kindred, dwell; There God your Savior reigns;— but you have had no news from there lately. If it is so with you, I hope you feel as some of us did, a little while ago, when we were in the South of France. "No letters?" we asked, as the time came for our usual post. When the next day came, and there were still no letters, we enquired, "What is the matter?" and they said, "There is deep snow on the railway, the trains cannot travel, so the mails cannot be brought on." Another day passed, and as the snow was not gone, we had no letters. When the letters did come, they were very sweet, and all the sweeter because we had had to wait for them. And there were more of them than usual, for those that had been delayed came tumbling in two or three at a time. I hope it may be so with you and your good news from heaven. If there have been any snow-drifts between your soul and Christ,—and that does happen sometimes in this cold world;—if there is, between you and the Savior, a chilly air, and a frozen mass of unbelief, so that the trains cannot travel to and fro;—oh, cry mightily to the Lord to melt these snows, and clear them away; and, I warrant you, if you do so, when you get communication restored, and fellowship renewed, it will be exceedingly sweet. I hope you will often feel that you cannot have too much of it, and seek to have more and more. Say, as the spouse did in the Song, "It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go." Let this dark season of interrupted fellowship, into which you have passed, only make you the more desperately in earnest to get out of it, so that, when that fellowship is restored, you may be able to say, "I held him, and would not let him go." Get such a firm grip of him again, such a grip as you had when first you knew him,—when the love of your espousals was upon you,—when you were newly married to the blessed Bridegroom, and say again, "I held him, and would not let him go." God grant to you that there may be no more lukewarmness, no more of being neither cold nor hot; and may the cold atmosphere, through which you have passed in his absence, make your heart grow all the warmer towards him now that you have him again. May you cling to him now with an intensity of affection that you have never reached before! What is this good news of which I have been speaking? Well, dear friends, I think that this good news may be summed up thus. God is working in providence, and making all things work together for your good if you belong to him. Your heart is heavy just now, and your harp is hanging on the willows. Yet God is permitting that to happen for your good. The bitter drugs you have to take are nauseous to you, but they are to work together with other things for your good; wherefore, be of good cheer. The next piece of good news is that Jesus is pleading for you. Remember how he said to Peter, "Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." Jesus has thy name upon his breastplate,—yea, graven on the palms of his hands." You are not forgotten of him; is not that good news? When somebody comes to you in a foreign land, you like to hear him say, "When I was at your home, they were all talking about you, and they all sent loving messages to you. I saw your portrait in a locket, and I could tell that you were not forgotten." You are glad to hear that; and Jesus has your names graven on the palms of his hands, and he is pleading for you before the mercy-seat, you are not forgotten up there. Another piece of good news is that he is coming here again,—coming here for you,—coming to be admired by you and the rest of his redeemed family when he comes to take his people up to their eternal home. The message which he has sent is, "Behold, I come quickly." What is your answer to that? I think I hear you say, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus." It will not be very long before you will be with him, or else he will be with you. In a short time, you will have ended your pilgrimage here; the days of your banishment from home will be over. Wait a little longer; only a few more tears, and, then,— "Safe in the arms of Jesus, Safe on his gentle breast." Is not that good news? There is another piece of news, which you have often heard before,—that is, that a great many of the saints have got home already. There is good news from the Fair Havens. Many have entered there,—thousands, millions,—who have had as stormy a sea to traverse as you yourself have had; but their Pilot has brought them to their desired haven. Many, whom we loved on earth, have gone home to be "for ever with the Lord." They are all right; all is well with them. The sheep are getting home to the fold; the children are going home to their Father's house above. I have another piece of good news, and that is, beloved brother or sister, that there is a house there for you. Our Lord Jesus Christ has made it ready for you. There is a crown there which nobody's head but yours can ever wear. There is a seat in which none but yourself can sit. There is a harp that will be silent till your fingers strike its strings. There is a robe, made for you, which no one else can wear. And let me also tell you that they are wanting you up there. "Oh!" say you," they are so happy, and so perfect that they surely do not want me." But they do. What does Paul say in the Epistle to the Hebrews? "They without us should not be made perfect." Nor can they; there cannot be a perfect body till all the members are there. It cannot be a perfect heaven till all the saints are there. Jesus Christ has not all the jewels of his crown yet, and he will have a perfect crown. So they are looking for you, and waiting and watching for you, and all is ready for your reception. You shall go home soon; therefore, live in hope; and having this hope within you, purify yourselves, come out from the world more and more. "Our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself." There is good news for you; is it not like cold waters to a thirsty soul? III. Now, lastly, and very briefly. , IN HEAVEN, THEY GET GOOD NEWS FROM EARTH Our text may be applied to the angels and to the spirits of just men made perfect: "As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country." We do not know how they receive news about us; and it is no use speculating concerning the matter; but there is one thing that we are sure of,—that is, in heaven, they know when a sinner repents, for our Lord Jesus Christ has told us that "there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." That is, to them, good news from a far country. The angels all know about Jesus having died, and every time they see a repenting sinner washed in the blood of the atonement, they must rejoice for Jesus' sake, because he sees of the travail of his soul, and is satisfied. I believe, too, brethren, that they get good news from a far country when you, who are running the Christian race run well; for how does Paul put it in the 12th of Hebrews? Does he not tell us that we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses? And who are these witnesses? Why, those he had been speaking of,—those brave men and women who had performed such valorous deeds by the power of faith,—whose names he had inscribed on the triumphal arch of the 11th chapter of his Epistle. These are they who gaze upon us from their lofty seats, and they see us as we run the race, and note how we do it; and they clap their hands, as the spectators were wont to do in the old Roman foot races, and rejoice over the grace that is manifested in us, and it is as cold water to their souls when they see what God does for his struggling, suffering people. And, moreover, there is another piece of good news that reaches the far country; that is, when the Church of God is being built up, and the gospel is spreading in the earth. When the world was created, did not the morning stars sing together, and shout for joy? And do you not think that, as this new spiritual world is being fashioned by the pierced hands, the spirits above are looking down, and watching the wondrous process? I am sure they do. "When the Lord shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his glory; and appear, not only to those who are watching here below, who are workers together with him, but also to those who have gone above, who rejoice together with him in his gracious work below. And I believe it is also good news from a far country when the saints one by one finish their course. They get tidings up there when another saint is crossing the Jordan of death. "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints," and it must be precious also in the sight of the angels and the redeemed from among men. John Bunyan pictures the shining ones as coming down to the river's brink, and I can easily conceive that it is so. I can well imagine their glad welcome to the spirit as, disencumbered of this poor body, it comes forth from the stream of death, and taking it up to the pearly gates of the celestial city. Then there is good news from a far country. I sometimes like to send a message home by some whose hands I grasp as they are in the last article of death. Rowland Hill, when he was very old, said to one aged Christian who was dying, "I hope they have not forgotten to send for old Rowley;" and then he added, "Take my love up to the three glorious Johns, the apostle John, and John Bunyan, and John Newton." "I have sometimes felt inclined to do the same. Surely, a spirit there will not forget anything that was good here below, and pass, in utter unconsciousness, into the next world. It will have enough to do to think of Christ, and to behold his glory; but, mayhap, the mind will be so expanded as to be able to think of other things beside. This, however, I do not know; but this I am sure of,—that, as one by one they, for whom the Savior died, come home, there must be joy. As they rejoice over repenting sinners, so do they rejoice over perfected saints who are without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, and who come up cleansed and delivered from anything like sin through the precious blood of the Lamb. Then is there good news for them from the far country. I cannot help feeling that I am addressing some who know nothing about the good news of which I have been speaking. For their benefit, let me tell you a story I have heard concerning one of our English pilots. A vessel was off the coast of Kent, gently sailing, as the seamen thought, towards their desired haven. A pilot, who was watching them, observing the extreme danger in which they were went at his utmost speed to warn them of their peril. He was hardly aboard before he shouted to the captain, "The Goodwins! The Goodwins! "They were almost on to those fatal sands, and they did not know it. At once, the course of the vessel was changed, and all sail possible was set, and they were saved as by the skin of their teeth. So, I come to you thoughtless, careless ones, and I cry to you, "Hell lieth right ahead of you,—eternal destruction from the presence of the Lord, and the glory of his power. Put your helm hard aport, up with such sail as you have: and may God send the breath of his Eternal Spirit to blow you or these breakers which already seem booming with the certainty of your eternal doom! "O God, almighty and ever-merciful, save them by thy grace! Save them by the precious blood of Jesus, for his dear name's sake! Amen and Amen. Proverbs 27:1. Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. Let us never boast of future days and years, or what we mean to do when we come to any age, or what shall be our position when we grow gray. Let us never boast of anything in the future, for we cannot tell what even a day may bring forth.Proverbs 27:2. Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips.For he who praises himself writes himself down a fool in capital letters.Proverbs 27:3. A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty; but a fool’s wrath is heavier than them both.One might endure almost any sort of labour sooner than have to live with one who is perpetually and foolishly angry.Proverbs 27:4. Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?Envy is a snake in the grass. Christians, beware of envy. You will, perhaps, be tempted to have it in your heart when you see another Christian more useful than you are, or when some Christian brother seems to have more honour than you have. Ah, then! cry to God against it. Never let this venomous reptile be spared for a single moment. The best of men will find envy creeping over them at times; it may be envy of the wicked who are rich. We must seek to overcome that at once. And even envy of the best of men, what is it but covetousness and hatred, and a breach of two commandments? God save us from it!Proverbs 27:5. Open rebuke is better than secret love.That I should love my fellow-man is a good thing; but to have love enough to be able openly to rebuke his faults, is a very high proof of affection, and far better than secret love that is silent when it ought to speak. And yet, how many persons there are who are very angry with you if you give them an open rebuke, and how many there are who are foolish enough to prefer secret love to open rebuke, though they have Solomon’s wisdom to teach them better! Our Lord Jesus Christ has a secret love to his people, yet he never spares them the open rebuke when he knows that it will be good for them.Proverbs 27:6. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. Beware of the flattering world, believer; beware of the flattering devil, and of the cozening of the flesh. When things go smoothly with you, there may be the greatest danger. Whatever you do in times of storm, keep a good look-out when the sea is calm and the sky is clear.Proverbs 27:7. The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.“The full soul loatheth” (even that luscious thing) “an honeycomb.” No true preaching will go down with him who is full of himself, full of his own importance. Unless there shall be many of the flowers of rhetoric in the discourse, he will not listen to sound doctrine. “But to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.” Happy hunger is it when the soul hungereth and thirsteth after righteousness. Then there are no hyper-critical observations about the minister’s delivery, and no carping at words and phrases. It is spiritual food that the soul seeks, and if it can get that, though it may not be to its taste in every respect, there will be a sweetness in it that will make it like a honeycomb.Proverbs 27:8-9. As a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is a man that wandereth from his place. Ointment and perfume rejoice the heart: so doth the sweetness of a man’s friend by hearty counsel.The Orientals were wont to smear their faces, and especially their hair with ointment and perfume, and those who came near them were pleased with the scent. When you can get a little conversation, especially upon points that help towards godliness, with those of a like frame of mind with you, when you can have sweet communion and fellowship with the people of God, then it is that your hearts are rejoiced as with ointments and perfumes.Proverbs 27:10. Thine own friend, and thy father’s friend, forsake not;Have but few friends, but stick closely to them. Above all, cleave closely to that “Friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” If he be thine own Friend, and thy father’s Friend, never forsake HIM. Forsake all the world for him, but let not all the world induce thee to forsake him.Proverbs 27:10. Neither go into thy brother’s house in the day of thy calamity: for better is a neighbour that is near than a brother far off. It is very sad that it should be so; but, sometimes, our nearest relatives are the farthest off, and those who ought to help us the most help us least. Many a man has had kindness shown to him by his neighbour, who was but a stranger, when he has had little or no kindness from his own relatives. But there is one Brother into whose house we may always go. So near of kin he is to us, and so loving of heart, that he never thinketh a hard thought of us; but, the more we ask of him, the more delighted he is with us, and is only grieved with us because we stint ourselves in our prayers.Proverbs 27:11. My son, be wise, and make my heart glad, that I may answer him that reproacheth me.A good son is his father’s honour. If any say of such-and-such a man that he is a bad man, yet, if his children walk orderly, he can answer the slander without speaking a word. Would a bad man have brought up his children in that way? Would they be walking in the fear of God if he had not walked in that way himself? So the sons of God ought to seek, by their consistency, to keep the name of their Father clear of reproach. The consistency of our conduct should be the best answer to the accusations of the infidel.Proverbs 27:12-13. A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself, but the simple pass on and are punished. Take his garment that is surety for a stranger, He that taketh surety is sure, but he that goeth surety for another, and especially for a stranger, will smart for it, perhaps to the day of his death.Proverbs 27:13-14. And take a pledge of him for a strange woman. He that blesseth his friend with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, it shall be counted a curse to him.There are some men who always use such sweet words; they are so fond of you that they are up early in the morning to give you their praise, and they continue all day pouring out their flattering unction. Such blessings as these are a curse, and the wise man will loathe these parasitical people who will see no faults, or pretend that they do not see any, but will always be extolling mere trifles as though they were the sublimest virtues. A sensible man is not to be overcome by this flattery.Proverbs 27:15. A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike. When there is a little leak in the roof, and the rain keeps dropping through, it is very uncomfortable; but it is ten times more comfortable than it is to have to dwell with a contentious woman.Proverbs 27:16. Whosoever hideth her hideth the wind, and the ointment of his right hand, which bewrayeth itself.That is to say, if a man put sweet ointment on his hand, the smell of it would soon be perceived; so, if a woman be of a contentious, angry, quarrelsome disposition, her contentiousness will be discovered, there is no hiding it.Proverbs 27:17. Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.Hence the usefulness of Christian association, and hence also the evil of sinful company, for one sinner sharpens another to do mischief, just as one saint encourages another to righteousness.Proverbs 27:18-19. Whoso keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof: so he that waiteth on his master shall be honoured. As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man.If I look into water, I see the reflection of my own face, not another man’s; and if I look into society, I shall probably see men like-minded with myself. How is it that a drunken man always finds out drunken men? How is it that lascivious men always have a bad opinion of the morality of other people? How is it that hypocrites always think other people hypocrites? Why, because they can see the reflection of their own faces. When a man tells me that there is no love in the Church of God, I know it is because he sees his own face, and knows that there is no love in it. You will generally find that men measure other people’s corn with their own bushels. They are sure to mete out to others according to their own measure; and they thus unconsciously betray themselves.Proverbs 27:20-21. Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied. As the fining pot for silver, and the furnace for gold; so is a man to his praise.Many a man, who can bear adversity, cannot bear prosperity. The world’s censures seldom do a Christian any harm, but it is the breath of applause that often gives us the scarlet fever of pride.Proverbs 27:22. Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.No troubles, no afflictions, can of themselves make a fool into a wise man. The sinner remains a sinner, after all providential chastisements, unless sovereign grace interposes.Proverbs 27:23. Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds.Be not slothful in business; and, above all, let the Christian be diligent to know the state of his own heart.Proverbs 27:24-27. For riches are not for ever: and doth the crown endure to every generation? The hay appeareth, and the tender grass showeth itself, and herbs of the mountains are gathered. The lambs are for thy clothing, and the goats are the price of the field. And thou shalt have goats’ milk enough for thy food, for the food of thy household, and for the maintenance for thy maidens.Those who are diligent generally prosper, and they who are diligent in spiritual things shall have all that their souls need. They shall be clothed with the robe of righteousness, they shall be well fed, and shall be satisfied. May the wisdom of these proverbs be given to us in daily life, that we may be wise as serpents, and harmless as doves; but, above all, may heavenly wisdom be given to us in all spiritual things, to the praise of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ! --- Two sermons: Tommorow and Cheer for Despondency Tomorrow August 25, 1856 by C. H. (1834-1892) "Boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth."— Proverbs 27:1 . God's most holy Word was principally written to inform us of the way to heaven, and to guide us in our path through this world, to the realms of eternal life and light. But as if to teach us that God is not careless concerning our doings in the present scene, and that our benevolent Father is not inattentive to our happiness even in this state, he has furnished us with some excellent and wise maxims, which we may put in practice, not only in spiritual matters, but in temporal affairs also. I have always looked upon the book of Proverbs with pleasure, as being a book not only teaching us the highest spiritual wisdom, but as also more especially speaking on the "now"—the time that is present with us—giving us maxims that will make us wise for this world, and that will instruct us in conducting our affairs whilst we are here amongst our fellow-men. We need some temporal wisdom as well as spiritual illumination; it need not always be that the children of the kingdom should be more foolish than the children of darkness. It is well that we should be wise to order our common affairs aright, as well as to set out house in order for the grave; and hence we find in Scripture maxims and teachings for them both. Since God has been pleased thus to instruct us in the avocations of life, I shall not, then, be out of place, if I use my text, in some degree, in a merely temporal manner, and endeavour to give advice to my friends concerning the business of this life. Afterwards, I shall dwell upon it more spiritually. There is first, the abuse of to-morrow forbidden in the text; in the second place, I shall mention the right use of to-morrow . I. First, then, there is THE ABUSE OF TO-MORROW mentioned in the text; and we shall look upon it first in a worldly point of view, and yet, I trust, in a way of wisdom. "Boast not thyself of to-morrow." Oh! my brethren, whoso'er ye be, whether ye be Christians or no, this passage hath a depth of wisdom in it for you. "Boast not thyself of to-morrow," and this, for many very wise reasons. First of all, because it is extremely foolish to boast at all . Boasting never makes a man any the greater in the esteem of others, nor does it improve the real estate either of his body or soul. Let a man brag as he will, he is none the greater for his bragging; nay, he is the less, for men invariably think the worse of him. Let him boast as much as he pleases of anything that he possesses, he shall not increase its value by his glorying. He cannot multiply his wealth by boasting of it; he cannot increase his pleasures by glorying in them. True, to be content with those pleasures, and feel a complacency in them, may render them very sweet; but not so with such a treasure as this, for it is a treasure which he has not yet, and, therefore, how foolish is he to glory in it! There is an old, old proverb, which I dare not quote here; it is something to do with chickens. Perhaps you can recollect it; it bears very well upon this text, for to-morrow is a thing that we have not yet obtained, and, therefore, not only if we had it would it be foolish to boast of it, but because we have it not, and may never have it, it becomes the very extremity of foolishness to glory in it. Glory, O man, in the harvest that may come to thee next year when thy seed is sown; but glory not in to-morrow, for thou canst sow no seeds of morrows. Morrows come from God; thou hast no right to glory in them. Glory if thou wilt, O fowler, that the birds have once flown to thy net, for they may come again; but glory not too soon, for they my find another decoy that shall be better to their taste than thine, or they may rove far off from thy snare. Though many a day has come to thee, think not that another will certainly arrive. Days are not like links of a chain; one does not ensure the other. We have one, but we may never see its fellow; each may be the last of its kind. Each springs of a separate birth. There are no twin days. To-day hath no brother, it stands alone, and to-morrow must come alone, and the next and the next, also, must be born into this world without a brother. We must never look upon two days at once, nor expect that a whole herd of days shall be brought forth at one time. We need not boast of to-morrow, for it is one of the frailest things in all creation , and, therefore, the least to be boasted of. Boast of the bubbles on the breaker, boast of the foam upon the sea, boast of the clouds that skim the sky, boast of what thou wilt, O man, but boast not of to-morrow, for it is too unsubstantial. To-morrow, it is a fleeting thing. Thou hast not seen it; why dost thou boast of it? To-morrow, it is a fleeting thing. Thou hast not seen it; why dost thou boast of it? To-morrow, it is the cup which the idiot dreams lieth at the foot of the rainbow. It is not there, nor hath he found it. To-morrow—it is the floating island of Loch Lomond; many have talked of it, but none have seen it. To-morrow—it is the wrecker's beacon, enticing men to the rock of destruction. Boast not thyself of to-morrow; it is the frailest and most brittle thing thou canst imagine. Not glass were half so easily broken as thy to-morrow's joys and thy to-morrow's hopes; a puff of wind shall crush them, while yet they seem not to be full blown. He said, good easy man, full surely my greatness is a ripening, but there came a frost—a killing, frost which nipped his shoot and then he fell. Boast not of to-morrow; thou hast it not. Boast not of to-morrow; thou mayest never have it. Boast not of to-morrow; if thou hadst it, it would deceive thee. Boast not of to-morrow, for to-morrow thou mayest where morrows will be dreadful things to tremble at. Boast not thyself of to-morrow, not only because it is extremely foolish, but because it is exceedingly hurtful . Boasting of to-morrow is hurtful to us every way. It is hurtful to us now . I never knew a man who was always hoping to do great things in the future, that ever did much in the present. I never knew a man who intended to make a fortune by-and-bye, who ever saved sixpence a week now. I never knew a man who had a very great and grand hopes on the death of some old grandmother, or the coming-in of some property from chancery, or the falling to him of something because his name was Jenyns, I never saw him very prosperous in the mean time. I have heard of a man going to be rich to-morrow, and boasting of it; but I never knew him do much. Such men spend so much time in building castles in the air, that they have no stones left wherewith to build so much as a cottage on the ground. They were wasting all their energies on to-morrow, consequently they had no time to reap the fields of the present, for they were waiting for the heavy harvests of the future. The heavily laden boats of to-day come in with abundance of fish from the depths of time; but they said of them, "They are nothing; there will be heavier draughts to-morrow; there will be greater abundance then. Go away, little ships; an argosy shall come home to-morrow—a very fleet of wealth;" and so they let to-day's wealth go by because they expected the greater wealth of to-morrow; therefore, they were hurt even for the present. And worse than that. Some men were led into extraordinary extravagance from their hopes of the future. They spend what they are going to have, or rather what they never will have. Many have been ruined by the idle dream of speculation; and what is that but boasting of to-morrow? They have said, "True, I cannot pay for this which I now purchase; but I shall to-morrow, for to-morrow I shall roll in wealth, to-morrow, perhaps, I shall be the richest of men. A lucky turn of business (as they term it) will lift me off this shoal." So they keep still, and not only do they refuse to toil, to push themselves off the sand, but worse than that, they are throwing themselves away and wasting what they have, in the hope of better times coming in the future. Many a man has been made halt, and lame, and blind, and dumb, in the present, because he hoped to be greater than a man in the future. I always laugh at those who say to me, "Sir, rest a while; you will work all the longer of it. Stay while, lest you wast your strength, for you may work to-morrow." I bid them remember that such is not the teaching of Scripture, for that says, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might;" and I would count myself worse than a fool, if I should throw away my to-days in the expectation of to-morrows, and rest upon the couch of idleness to-day, because I thought the chariot of to-morrow would make up for all my sloth. No, beloved, if we love our God, we shall find enough to do, if we have all our to-morrows, and use all our to-days too. If we serve our God as we ought to serve him, considering what he has done for us, we shall find that we shall have more than our handsfull, let our life be spared as long as Methuselah's—enough for every moment, enough for every hour, long as life may be. But hoping to do things in the future takes away our strength in the present, unnerves our resolution, and unstrings our diligence. Let us take care that we are not hurt in the present by boasting of to-morrow. And, remember, that if you boast of to-morrow, it will not only hurt you to-day, but hurt you to-morrow also . Do you know why? because, as sure as you are alive, you will be disappointed with to-morrow, if you boast of it before it comes. To-morrows would be very good things if you did not give them such a very good character. I believe one of the very worst things a minister can possess is to have anybody to recommend him; for the people say, "Here comes a man, how he will preach, how eloquent he will be!" The poor creature cannot come up to their expectations, and so they are disappointed. So with to-morrow; you give him such flattering enconiums; "Oh! he is everything; he is perfection." To-days—they are nothing; they are the very sweepings of the floors; but to-morrows—they are the solid gold. Todays—they are exhausted mines, and we get little from them; but to-morrows—they are the very mines of wealth. We have only to get them, and we are rich, immensely rich. The to-morrows are everything; and then the to-morrows come laden with mercy and big with blessings of God; but, notwithstanding, we are disappointed, because to-morrow is not what we expected it to be, even when to-morrow is marvellously abundant. But sometimes to-morrow comes with storms, and clouds, and darkness, when we expected it to be full of light and sunshine, and oh, how terrible is our feeling then, from the very reason that we expected something different. It is not at all a bad beatitude, "Blessed is the man that expecteth nothing, for he shall never be disappointed." If we know how to practise that, and expect nothing, we shall not be disappointed, it is certain; and the less we expect, and the less we boast of our expectations, the more happy will the future be; because we shall have far less likelihood of being disappointed. Let us recollect, then, that if we would kill the future, if we would ruin the to-morrows, if we would blast their hopes, if we would take away their honey, we must press them in the hand of boasting, and then we shall have done it. "Boast not thyself of to-morrow;" for thou spoilest the to-morrow by boasting of it. And then, remember, what disastrous circumstances have occurred to men in this life after to-morrow had gone, from boasting of to-morrows. Ay, there is many a man that set all his hope upon one single thing; and the to-morrow came which he did not expect—perhaps a black and dark to-morrow, and it crushed his hopes to ashes; and how sad he felt afterwards! He was in his nest; he said, "Peace, peace, peace;" and sudden destruction came upon his happiness and his joy. He had boasted of his to-morrow by over security, and see him there, what a very wreck of a man he is, because he had set his hope on that; now his joy is blasted. Oh! my friends, never boast too much of the to-morrows, because if you do, your disappointment will be tremendous, when you shall find your joys have failed you, and your hopes have passed away. See there that rich man; he has piled heaps on heaps of gold; but now for a desperate venture, he is about to have more than he ever possessed before, and he reckons on that to-morrow. Nothingness is his; and what is his disappointment? because he boasted of imagined wealth. See that man! his ambition is to raise his house, and perpetuate his name; see that heir of his—his joy, his life, his fulness of happiness. A handful of ashes and a coffin are left to the weeping father. Oh! if he had not boasted too much of the certainty of that son's life, he had not wept so bitterly, after the to-morrow had swept over him, with all its blast and mildew of his expectations. See yonder, another; he is famous, he is great; to-morrow comes a slander, and his fame is gone, and his name disgraced. Oh! had he not set his love on that, he had not cared whether men cried, "crucify," or "hallelujah;" he had disregarded both alike. But believing that fame was a stable thing, whereas its foot is on the sand, he reckoned on to-morrows; and mark how sad he walks the earth, because to-morrow has brought him nothing but grief. "Boast not thyself of to-morrow." And I would have you remember just one fact; and that I think to be a very important one; that very often when men boast of to-morrow, and are over confident that they shall live, they not only entail great sorrow upon themselves, but upon others also . I have, when preaching, frequently begged of my friends to be quite sure to make their wills, and see to their family affairs. Many are the solemn instances which should urge you to do so. One night a minister happened to say, in the course of his sermon, that he held it to be a Christian duty for every man to have his house set in order, so that if he were taken away, he would know, that as far as possible, everything would be right. And there was one member of his church there, who said to himself, "What my minister has said is true. I should not like to see my babes and my wife left with nothing, as they must be if I were to die." So he went home. That night he made his will and cleared up his accounts. That night he died! It must have been a joyful thing for the widow, in the midst of her sadness, to find herself amply provided for, and everything in order for her comfort. Good Whitfield said he could not lie down in bed of a night, if he did not know that even his gloves were in their place; for he said he should not like to die with anything in his house out of order. And I would have every Christian very careful, to be so living one day, that if he were never to see another, he might feel that he had done the utmost that he could, not only to provide for himself, but also for those who inherit his name and are dear to him. Perhaps you call this only worldly teaching; very good; you will find it very much like heavenly teaching one of these dark days, if you do not practise it. "Boast not thyself of to-morrow." II. But now I come to dwell upon this in a spiritual manner , for a moment or two. "Boast not thyself of to-morrow." Oh! my beloved friends, never boast of to-morrow with regard to your soul's salvation. They do so in the first place, who think that it will be easier for them to repent to-morrow than it is to-day . Felix said there would be a more convenient season, and then he would again send for Paul, that he might hear him seriously. And many a sinner thinks that just now it is not easy to turn and to repent, but that by-and-bye it will be. Now, is not that a very string of falsehoods? In the first place, is it ever easy for a sinner to turn to God? Must not that be done, at any time, by divine power? And again, if that be not easy for him now , how will it be easier in after life? Will not his sins bind fresh fetters to his soul, so that it will be even more impossible for him to escape from his iron bondage? If he be dead now, will he not be corrupt before he reaches to-morrow? And when to-morrow comes, to which he looks forward as being easier for a resurrection, will not his soul be yet more corrupt, and, therefore, if we may so speak, even further from the possibility of being raised? Oh! sirs, ye say it is easy for ye to repent to-morrow; why, then, not to-day? Ye would find the difficulty of it, if you should try it; yea, you would find your own helplessness in that matter. Possibly you dream that on a future day repentance will be more agreeable to your feelings. But how can you suppose that a few hours will make it more pleasant? If it be vinegar to your taste now, it shall be so then; and if ye love your sins now, ye will love them better then; for the force of habit will have confirmed you in your course. Every moment of your lives is driving in another rivet to your eternal state. So far as we can see, it becomes less and less likely (speaking after the manner of men) that the sinner should burst his chains each sin that he commits; for habit has bound him yet faster to his guilt, and his iniquity has got another hold upon him. Let us take care, then, that we do not boast of to-morrow, by a pretence that it will be so much easier to repent to-morrow; whereas, it is one of Satan's lies, for it will only be the more difficult. He boasts of to-morrow, again, who supposes that he shall have plenty of time to repent and to return to God . Oh! there are many who say, "When I come to die, I shall be on my death-bed, and then I shall say, 'Lord, have mercy upon me a sinner.'" I remember an aged minister telling me a story of a man whom he often warned, but who always said to him, "Sir, when I am dying, I shall say 'Lord, have mercy on me;' and I shall go to heaven as well as anybody else." Returning home from market one night, rather "fou" with liquor, he guided his horse with a leap right over the parapet of a bridge into the river; the last words he was heard to utter, were a most fearful imprecation; and in the bed of the river he was found dead, killed by the fall. So it may be with you. You think you will have space for repentance, and it may be that sudden doom will devour you: or, perhaps, even while you are sitting there in the pew, your last moment is running out. There is your hour-glass. See! it is running. I marked another grain just then, and then another fell; it fell so noiselessly, yet methought I heard it fall. Yes! there it is! The clock's tick is the fall of that grain of dust down from your hour-glass. Life is getting shorter every moment with all of you; but with some the sand is almost out; there is not a handful left. A few more grains. See, now they are less, two or three. Oh! in a moment it may be said, "The is not one left." Sinner! never think that thou hast time to spare! thou never hadst; man never had. God says, "Haste thee," when he bids men flee from Sodom. Lot had to haste; and depend upon it, when the Spirit speaks in a man's heart, he doth always bid him haste. Under natural convictions, men are very prone to tarry; but the Spirit of God, when he speaks in the heart of man, always says, "to-day." I never knew a truly anxious soul yet, who was willing to put off till to-morrow. When God the Holy Ghost has dealings with a man, they are always immediate dealings. The sinner is impatient to get deliverance; he must have pardon now; he must have present mercy, or else he fears that mercy will come too late to him. Let me beseech you, then, (and may God the Holy Spirit grant that my entreaty may become successful in your case) let me beseech every one of you to take this into consideration—that there is never time to spare, and that your thought that there is time to spare, is an insinuation of Satan; for when the Spirit pleads with man, he pleads with him with demands of immediate attention. " To-day , if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation." "Boast not thyself of to-morrow," O sinner, as I doubt not thou art doing in another fashion. "Boast not thyself of to-morrow," in the shape of resolves to do better . I think I have given up resolutions now; I have enough of the debris and the rubbish of my resolutions to build a cathedral with, if they could but be turned into stone. Oh! the broken resolutions, the broken vows, all of us have had! Oh! we have raised castles of resolutions, structures of enormous size, that outvied Babylon itself, in all its majesty. Says one, "I know I shall be better to-morrow; I shall renounce this vice and the other; I shall forsake this lust; I shall give up that darling sin; true, I shall not do so now—a little more sleep and a little more slumber; but I know I shall do it to-morrow." Fool! thou knowest not that thou shalt see to-morrow. Oh! greater fool! thou oughtest to know, that what thou art not willing to do to-day, thou wilt not be willing to do to-morrow. I believe there are many souls that have been lost by good intentions, which were never carried out. Resolutions strangled at their birth brought on men the guilt of spiritual infanticide; and they have been lost, with resolutions sticking in their mouths. Many a man has gone down to hell with good resolution on his lip, with a pious resolve on his tongue. Oh! if he had lived another day, he said he would have been so much better; if he had lived another week, oh, then he thought he would begin to pray. Poor soul! if he had been spared another week, he would only have sunk the deeper into sin! But he did not think so, and he went to hell with a choice morsel rolling under his tongue—that he should do better directly, and that meant to amend by-and-bye. There are many of you present, I dare say, who are making good resolutions. You are apprentices: well, you are not going to carry them out till you get to be journeymen. You have been breaking the Sabbath: but you intend to leave it off when you are in another situation. You have been accustomed to swear: you say, "I shall not swear any more when I get out of this company, they try my temper so." You have committed this or that petty theft: to-morrow you will renounce it, because to-morrow you will have enough, and you can afford to do it. But of all the lying things—and there are many things that are deceptive—resolutions for to-morrow are the worst of all. I would not trust one of them; there is nothing stable in them; you might sooner sail to America across the Atlantic on a sere leaf, than float to heaven on a resolution. It is the frailest thing in the world, tossed about by every circumstance, and wrecked with all its precious freight—wrecked to the dismay of the man who ventured his soul in it—wrecked, and wrecked for aye. Take care, my dear hearers, that none of you are reckoning on to-morrows. I remember the strong but solemn words of Jonathan Edwards, where he says, "Sinner, remember, thou art at this moment standing over the mouth of hell upon a single plank, and that plank is rotten; thou art hanging over the jaws of perdition by a solitary rope, and lo! the strands of that rope are creaking—breaking now, and yet thou talkest of to-morrows!" If thou wert sick, man, wouldst thou send for thy physician to-morrow? If thine house were on fire, wouldst thou call "fire" to-morrow? If thou wert robbed in the street on thy road home, wouldst thou cry "stop thief" to-morrow? No, surely; but thou art wiser than that in natural concerns. But man is foolish, oh! too foolish in the things that concern his soul; unless divine and infinite love shall teach him to number his days, that he may apply his heart unto true wisdom, he will still go on boasting of to-morrows, until his soul has been destroyed by them. Just one hint to the child of God. Ah! my beloved brother or sister, do not, I beseech thee, boast of to-morrow thyself. David did it once: he said, "My mountain standeth firm, I shall never be moved." Do not boast of your to-morrows. You have feathered your nest pretty well; ay, but you may have a thorn in it before the sun has gone down, and you will be glad enough to fly aloft. You are very happy and joyful, but do not say you will always have as much faith as you have now—do not be sure you will always be as blessed. The next cloud that sweeps the skies may drive many of your joys away. Do not say you have been kept hitherto, and you are quite sure you will be preserved from sin to-morrow. Take care of to-morrows. Many Christians go tumbling on without a bit of thought; and then, on a sudden, they tumble down and make a mighty mess of their profession. If they would only look sharp after the to-morrows—if they would only watch their paths instead of star-gazing and boasting about them, their feet would be a great deal surer. True, God's child need not think of to-morrow as regards his soul's eternal security, for that is in the hand of Christ and safe for ever; but as far as his profession, and comfort, and happiness are concerned, it will well become him to take care of his feet every day. Do not get boasting; if you get boasting of to-morrow, you know the Lord's rule is always to send a canker where we put our pride. And so if you boast of to-morrow, you will have a moth in it before long. As sure as ever we glory in our wealth, it becomes cankered, or it takes to itself wings and flies away; and as certainly as we boast of to-morrow, the worm will gnaw its root, as it did Jonah's gourd, and the to-morrow under which we rested shall, with dropping leaves, only stand a monument to our disappointment. Let us take care, Christian brethren, that we do not waste the present time with hopes of to-morrow—that we do not get proud, and so off our guard, by boasting of what we most assuredly shall be then, as we imagine. III. And now, in the last place, if to-morrows are not to be boasted of, are they good for nothing? No, blessed be God! There are great many things we may do with to-morrows. We may not boast of them, but I will tell you what we may do with them if we are the children of God. We may always look forward to them with patience and confidence , that they will work together for our good. We may say of the to-morrows, "I do not boast of them, but I am not frightened at them; I would not glory in them, but I will not tremble about them." "What may be my future lot, Well I know concerns me not; This doth set my heart at rest, What my God appoints is best." We may be very easy and very comfortable about to-morrow; we may remember that all our times are in his hands, that all events are at his command; and though we know not all the windings of the path of providence, yet He knows them all. They are all settled in his book, and our times are all ordered by his wisdom; whether they be "Times of trial and of grief; Times of triumph and relief; Times the tempter's power to prove, Times to taste a Saviour's love: All must come, and last, and end, As shall please my heavenly Friend." And, therefore, we may look upon the to-morrows as we see them in the rough bullion of time, about to be minted into every day's expenditure, and we may say of them all, "They shall all be gold; they shall all be stamped with the King's impress, and, therefore, let them come; they will not make me worse—they will work together for my good." Yea, more, a Christian may rightly look forwards to his to-morrows, not simply with resignation, but also with joy . To-morrow to a Christian is a happy thing, it is one stage nearer glory. To-morrow! It is one step nearer heaven to a believer; it is just one knot more that he has sailed across the dangerous sea of life, and he is so much the nearer to his eternal port—his blissful heaven. To-morrow, it is a fresh lamp of fulfilled promise that God has placed in his firmament, that the Christian may hail it as a guiding star, in the future, or at least as a light to cheer his path. To-morrow, the Christian may rejoice at it; he may say of to-day, "O day, thou mayest be black, but I shall bid thee good-bye, for lo, I see the morrow coming, and I shall mount upon its wings, and shall flee away and leave thee and thy sorrows far behind me." And, moreover, the Christian may await to-morrow with even more than simple hope and joy; he may look forward to it with ecstacy in some measure, for he does not know but that to-morrow his Lord may come. To-morrow Christ may be upon this earth, "for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh." To-morrow, all the glories of millennial splendour may be revealed; to-morrow, the thrones of judgment may be set, and the King may summon the people to judgment. To-morrow, we may be in heaven; to-morrow, we may be on the breast of Christ; to-morrow, ay, before then, this head may wear a crown, this hand may wave the palm, this lip may sing the son, this foot may tread the streets of gold, this heart may be full of bliss, immortal, everlasting, eternal. Be of good cheer, oh, fellow-Christian; to-morrow can have nothing black in it to thee, for it must work for thy good, but it may have in it a precious, precious jewel. It is an earthen pitcher, and it may have in it some dark black waters, but their bitterness is taken away by the cross. But mayhap, also, it may have in it the precious jewel of eternity; for wrapt up within to-morrow may be all the glories of immortality. Anoint thine head with fresh oil of gladness at the prospect of each coming day. Boast not of to-morrow, but often comfort thyself with it. Thou hast a right to do so; it cannot be a bad tomorrow to thee; it may be the best day of thy life, for it may be thy last. And yet, another hint. To-morrow ought to be observed by Christians in the way of providence. Though we may not boast of to-morrow, yet we may seek to provide for the morrow. On one occasion I pleaded for a benefit society, and not knowing a more appropriate text, I selected this, "Take no thought for the morrow, for to-morrow shall take thought for the things of itself." Some of my hearers, when I announced my text, feared the principle of it was altogether hostile to anything like an insurance, or providing for the future, but I just showed them that it was not, as I looked upon it. It is a positive command that we are to take no anxious thought concerning to-morrow. No, how can I do that? How can I put myself into such a position that I can carry out this command of taking no thought for the morrow! If I were a man struggling in life, and had it in my power to insure for something which would take care of wife and family in after days, if I did not do it, you might preach to me all eternity about not taking thought for the morrow; but I could not help doing it, when I saw those I loved around me unprovided for. Let it be in God's word, I could not practise it; I should still be at some time or other taking thought for the morrow. But let me go to one of the many of the excellent institutions which exist, and let me see that all is provided for, I come home and say, "Now, I know how to practise Christ's command of taking no thought for the morrow; I pay the policy-money once a year, and I take no further thought about it, for I have no occasion to do so now, and have obeyed the very spirit and letter of Christ's command." Our Lord meant that we were to get rid of cares; now it is apparent that those distressing cares are removed, and we are able to live above anxiety by that single process. Now, if that is so, if there is anything that enables us to carry out Christ's commands, is it not in the very bowels of the commandments to do that? If God has pleased to put into the hearts of wise men to devise something that should in some way ameliorate the misfortunes of their kind, and relieve them from the distresses and casualties of God's providence, how can it but be our duty to avail ourselves of that wisdom which, doubtless, God gave to men, that we might thereby in these times be enable to carry out in the fullest extent the meaning of that passage, "Take no thought for the morrow." Why, if a man says, "I shall take no thought for the morrow, I will just spend all I get, and not think of doing anything or taking any thought for the morrow," how is he going to pay his rent? Why, the text could not be carried out, if it meant what some people think. It cannot mean that we should carelessly live by the day, or else a man would spend all his money on Monday, and have nothing left for the rest of the week; but that would be simple folly. It means that we should have no anxious, distressing thought about it. I am preaching about benefit societies; I would not attempt to recommend many of them, and I do not believe in the principles of half of them; I believe a great deal of mischief is done by their gatherings in alehouses and pothouses; but wherever there is a Christian society, I must endeavour to promote its welfare, for I look on the principle as the best means of carrying out the command of Christ, "Take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for itself." Allow me to recommend this Asylum to your liberality as a refuge in adversity for those who were careful in prosperity. It is a quiet retreat for decayed members of Benefit Societies, and I am sorry to inform you that many of its rooms are vacant, not from want of candidates, but from a lack of funds. It is a pity that so much public property should lie unemployed. Help the committee then to use the houses. And, now, in concluding, let me remind the Christian that there is one thing he has not do, and that is, he has not to provide salvation, nor grace, nor sustenance, nor promises for the morrow. No, beloved; but we often talk as if we had. We say, "How shall I persevere through such and such a trial?" "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." You must not boast of to-day's grace, as though it were enough for to-morrow. But you need not be afraid. With to-morrow's difficulties there will be to-morrow's help; with to-morrow's foes, to-morrow's friends; with to-morrow's dangers, to-morrow preservations. Let us look forward, then, to to-morrow as a thing we have not to provide for in spiritual matters, for the atonement is finished, the covenant ratified, and therefore every promise shall be fulfilled, and be "yea and amen" to us, not only in one to-morrow, but in fifty thousand to-morrows, if so many could run over our heads. And now just let us utter the words of the text again, very solemnly and earnestly. O young men in all your glory! O maidens in all your beauty! "Boast not yourselves of to-morrow." The worm may be at your cheeks very soon. O strong men, whose bones are full of marrow! O ye mighty men, whose nerves seem of brass, and your sinews of steel! "Boast not of to-morrow." "How, fir tree," for cedars have fallen ere now; and though you think yourselves great, God can pull you down. Above all, ye grey heads, "Boast not yourselves of to-morrow," with one foot hanging over the unfathomable gulf of eternity, and the other just tottering on the edge of time! I beseech you do not boast yourselves of to-morrow. In truth I do believe that grey heads are not less foolish on this point than very childhood. I remember reading a story of a man who wanted to buy his neighbour's farm next to him, and he went to him and asked him whether he would sell it. He said, "No; I will not;" so he went home, and said, "Never mind, Farmer So-and-so is an old man; when he is dead, I shall buy it." The man was seventy, and his neighbour sixty-eight; he thought the other would be sure to die before him. It is often so with men. They are making schemes that will only walk over their graves, when they will not feel them. The winds shall soon howl across the green sward that covers their tomb, but they shall not hear its wailing. Take care of the "to-days." Look not through the glass of futurity; but look at the things of to-day. "Boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth." ########################################################################## Cheer for Despondency A sermon (No. 3183) published on Thursday, February 3, 1910, delivered by C. H. Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington. “Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.”— Proverbs 27:1 . What a great mercy it is that we do not know “what a day may bring forth”! We are often thankful for knowledge, but in this case we may be particularly grateful for ignorance. It is the glory of God, we are told, to conceal a thing, and it most certainly is for the happiness of mankind that he should conceal their future. Supposing that bright lines were written for us in the book of destiny, and that we could read those bright lines now, and see some of them, we should probably loiter away our time until we arrived at them and should have no heart for the present. If on the other hand we knew that there were dark days of trouble in store for us, and had a presentiment and full conviction as to when they would come, probably the thought of them would overshadow the present, so that the joys which we now drink would be left untasted by reason of our nervous fears as to the distant future. To know the good might lead us to presumption, to know the evil might tempt us to despair. Happy for us is it that our eyes cannot penetrate the thick veil which God hangs between us and tomorrow, that we cannot see beyond the spot where we now are, and that, in a certain sense, we are utterly ignorant as to the details of the future. We may indeed be thankful for our ignorance. Although however we do not know what a day may bring forth, though we cannot see into what I may call “the immediate future,” yet we have reason to be thankful that we do know something about what is to come, and that we do know what is in the far-reaching future. We differ from the brutes in this respect. When two or three nights in the week I pass on my way home a flock of sheep, or a little herd of bullocks, all going down to the butcher’s, travelling in the cold bright moonlight towards the slaughter-house, I feel thankful that they do not know where they are going, for what would be their misery if they knew anything about death? The lamb’s thoughts are in the fold, and all unconscious of the shambles; it licks the hand that smites it, not knowing of its coming speedy death. It is the happiness of the brute not to know the future. But in our case we know that we must die; and if it were not for the hope of the resurrection and of the here-after, this knowledge would distinguish us from the brutes only by giving us greater misery. There must be an intention on God’s part for us to live in a future state or else he would, out of mere benevolence, have left us ignorant of the fact of death. If he had not meant our souls to begin to prepare for another and a better existence, he would have kept us ignorant, even of the fact that this one will pass away; but having given us an intellect and a mind which doth from observation and inward consciousness know that death will come, we believe that he would have us prepare for that which will follow and look out for that which is beyond. We do know the future in its great rough outlines. We know that if the Lord cometh not first, we shall die; we know that our soul shall live for ever in happiness or in woe; and that, according to whether we are found in Christ or without Christ, our eternal portion shall be one of never-ending agony or of ceaseless bliss. We may be thankful that we do know this so that we may be prepared for it; but still—to return to that with which we started—we may be thankful also that we do not really know the great future in its details, that it is shut from our eye lest it should have an evil influence upon our life. Now, Solomon in the Book of Proverbs applied the truth that we know not about to-morrow to the boaster, to the man who said, “To-morrow I will go into such a city and buy, and sell, and get gain, and then go to another city and get more gain, and then when I have amassed so much wealth I will say, ‘Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease; eat, drink, and be merry.’” Solomon seems to come in and put his hand upon the man’s shoulders and to say, virtually, “Thou fool, thou knowest nothing about all this; thou dost not know what shall be on the morrow; thy goods may never come to thee, or thou mayest not be here to trade with these goods at all; so thou buildest a castle in the air; thou thinkest thy fancies are true; thou art as one that dreams of a feast and wakes to find himself hungry! How canst thou be so foolish?” Solomon dwells upon the text very solemnly, and says, “Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.” I do not intend however to use the text with this object to-night. It struck me that as Solomon uses it here with one design it might be very properly used for another; that as he intends to shame our growing pride and certainty of prosperity, so it might be used especially to cheer those who have a tendency to gloom, and to shed a ray of light into the thick darkness of their fear. I. It will first comfort those who are fearing and trembling concerning some evil which is yet to come . My friend, thou art afraid to-night; thou canst not enjoy anything thou hast because of this terrible and fearful shadow which has come across thy path of an evil which thou sayest is coming to-morrow, or in one or two months’ time, or even in six months. Now, at least, thou art not quite certain that it will come, for thou knowest not what may be on the morrow. Thou art as alarmed and as afraid as if thou wert quite certain that it would appear. But it is not so, “Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth,” and since it is uncertain whether it shall be or not , hadst thou not better leave thy sorrow till it is certain; and meanwhile, leave the uncertain matter in the hand of God whose divine purposes will be wise and good in the end, and will be even seen to be so? At the very least, slender as the comfort may be, yet still there is comfort in the fact that thou knowest not what may be on the morrow. Let us just expand this thought a little to those of you who are fearing about to-morrow. We very often fear what never will occur. I think that the major part of our troubles are not those which God sends us, but those which we invent for ourselves. As the poet speaks of some who “Feel a thousand deaths in fearing one,”— so there are many who feel a thousand troubles in fearing one trouble, which trouble, perhaps, never will have any existence except in the workshop of their own misty brain. It is an ill task for a child to whip himself; it might be good for him to feel the whip from his father’s hand, but it is of little service when the child applies it himself. And yet very often the strokes which we dread never do come from God’s hand at all, but are the pure inventions of our own imagination and our own unbelief working together. There are more who have to howl under the lash of unbelief than there are who have to weep under the gentle rod of God’s providential dispensation. Now, why shouldst thou go about to fill thy pillow with thorns grown in thine own garden? Why so busy, good sir, about gathering nettles with which to strew thine own bed? There are clouds enough without thy thinking that every little atom of mist will surely bring a tempest. There are difficulties enough on the road to heaven without thy taking up stones to throw into thine own path to make thing own road more rough than there was any need shalt it should be. Thou knowest not what may be on the morrow. Thy fears are absurd. Perhaps thy neighbor knows they are absurd, but certainly thou oughtest to know it is so. Dost thou not know that the trouble thou art dreading, God can utterly avert? Perhaps to-morrow morning there will come a letter which will entirely change the face of the matter. A friend may interpose when least thou couldst expect one, or difficulties which were like mountains may be cast into the depths of the sea. “Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth,” and the trouble which thou so much dreadest may never occur at all. Moreover, dost thou not know that even if the if the trouble should come, God has a way of overruling it? So that even thou, poor trembler, shalt stand by and see the salvation of God and wonder at two things—thine own unbelief and God’s faithfulness. Thou sayest that the sea is before thee, that the mountains are on either hand, and that the foe is behind thee, but thou knowest not what shall be on the morrow. Thy God shall lead thee through the depths of the sea, and put such a song into thy mouth as thou never couldst have known if there had been no sea, and no Pharaoh, and no mountains to shut thee in. These trials of thine shall be the winepress out of which shall come the wine of consolation to thee. This furnace shall rob thee of nothing but thy dross, which thou wilt be glad to be rid of, but thy pure gold shall not be diminished by so much as a drachm, but shall only be the purer after it all. The trouble, then, may not come to thee at all, or if it come it may be overruled. And there is one thing more; supposing the trial does come, thy God has promised that as thy days so shall thy strength be . Hath he not said it many times in his Word, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee”? He never did promise thee freedom from trouble. He speaks of rivers and of thy going through them; he speaks of fires and of thy passing through them; but he has added, “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.” What matters it to thee then whether there be fire or not, if thou be not burned? What matters it to thee whether there are floods or not if thou be not drowned? As long as thou escapest with spiritual life and health and comest up out of all thy trials the better for them, thou mayest rejoice in tribulations. Thank God when thy temptations abound, and be glad when he putteth thee into the furnace because of the blessing which thou art sure to receive from it. So then, since thou knowest not what may be on the morrow, take thou heart thou fearing one, and put thy fears away. Do as thou hast been bidden, delight thyself in the Lord and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Cast thy burden upon the Lord and he will sustain thee. He will never suffer the righteous to be moved. Did not David say, speaking by the Holy Ghost, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth him out of them all”? I charge thee therefore to be of good comfort since thou knowest not what may be on the morrow. This is the message to fearful saints. II. But now we will use the text to another class of Christians whose painful position really deserves more pity than that of those who only invent their fears, or who are troubled about the future. I mean those who are at the present moment disconsolate through immediate distress and present affliction . We little know my brethren, when we gather here, how many cases of distress may be assembled in this house at any one time. Verily the poor have not ceased out of the land. The poor we have always with us, and some of the poor, too, who need to have other mouths to speak for them since from their very independence of spirit and their Christian character they are slow to speak for themselves. There may he a trouble in my neighbour’s hearts which is almost bursting it, while I am sitting peacefully still enjoying the Word. We should remember those who are in bonds as bound with them; and sympathize with those who are troubled as being ourselves also in the body. It will not be a waste of time then if I say to you who are troubled about worldly matters , than there is comfort for you in this passage. “Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.” Thou sayest, “It is all over with me; I will give up in despair.” No friend, do not do so for one day longer, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth; and if to-morrow bring thee not deliverance, hope on at least for one day more, for “thou knowest not what “a day may bring forth.” And I would keep on with the same tale till the last day of life. At least for one day more there is no room for despair. You cannot conclude that God has forsaken you, or that providence has utterly turned against you. At least you know not what may be on the morrow, so wait till you have seen that day out. Give not up yourself a hopeless victim to despair till you have seen what to-morrow may bring you. What unexpected turns there have been in the lives of those who have trusted in God! You who are trusting in yourselves may help yourselves as best you can, but you who are trusting in God have ample reasons to expect that God will come to your assistance. It is yours to watch and yours to work as if everything depended upon you, but it is yours also to remember that everything does not depend upon you. Sometimes God has come in to help his servants so exactly at what we call “the nick of time” that they have hardly been able to believe their own senses. “Strange!” they say, “it is like a miracle,” and so indeed it is; for the difference between the old dispensation and the new is that God used to work his wonders by suspending the laws of nature, whereas now he does greater things than this, inasmuch as he achieves his purposes quite as marvellously, and lets the laws of nature remain as they are. He does not make the ravens bring his people bread and meat, but he lets them have their bread and their meat when they need them. God does not nowadays make the manna drop down from heaven; no doubt some people would like him to do so, but still he brings the manna for all that: there is the bread, and there is the raiment, and therewith should the Christian be content. He supplies his people’s needs by ordinary means, and herein is he to be wondered at and to be adored. Look up then. Wipe away that tear. Do not talk for a moment of murmuring against God. Do not go home with that sorry tale to your wife and children, and tell them that God is not faithful to you. Wait till to-morrow at any rate, for “thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.” And to you who are disconsolate about spiritual things I might quote the same text. You say, “Ah! I have been hearing the Word very long, and all that I have got from it is a sense of sin, or hardly that. Oh! how I wish that God would bless the word to my soul! I am longing to be saved! What would I not give to be a Christian, a true and sincere Christian, one in whom the Spirit of God has wrought a new heart and a right spirit? Oh!” you say, “I have sought it by listening to the word, and I have sought it in earnest prayer; but months have passed, and I have made no advance; I have no more hope now than I had long ago; I seem as far off the attainment of eternal life as I was when first I heard the Word; nay, if possible I am still further off; the Word has been a savor of death unto death to me, and not a savor of life unto life.” Well, my dear friend, do not give up listening to the Word; do not give up treading the courts of the Lord’s house; for if thou hast hitherto got no blessing, yet, being in the way, the Lord may meet with thee, for thou knowest not what may be on the morrow. How many years these poor creatures waited around the pool when they expected that an angel would, at a certain season, come and trouble the water! There they waited, and though they were disappointed scores of times by others stepping in before them, yet seeing it was the only hope they had they waited still. Now, it is in the use of the means that you are likely to get a blessing. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” Do not therefore be persuaded to cease hearing, for thou knowest not what may be on the morrow. The very next sermon thou shalt hear may be the means of thine enlightenment. The very next address at the prayer-meeting may give thee encouragement. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/spurgeon/ Two Coverings and Two Consequences by C. H. (1834-1892) "He that covereth his sins shall not prosper."— Proverbs 28:13 . "Thou Hast covered all their sins."— Psalms 85:2 . In these two texts we have man's covering, which is worthless and culpable, and God's covering, which is profitable, and worthy of all acceptation. No sooner had man disobeyed his Maker's will in the garden of Eden than he discovered, to his surprise and dismay, that he was naked, and he set about at once to make himself a covering. It was a poor attempt which our first parents made, and it proved a miserable failure. "They sewed fig-leaves together." After that God came in, revealed to them yet more fully their nakedness, made them confess their sin, brought their transgression home to them, and then it is written, the Lord God made them coats of skin. Probably the coats were made of the skins of animals which had been offered in sacrifice, and, if so, they were a fit type of him who has provided us with a sin-offering and a robe of perfect righteousness. Every man since the days of Adam has gone through much of the same experience, more or less relying on his own ingenuity to hide his own confusion of face. He has discovered that sin has made him naked, and he has set to work to clothe himself. As I shall have to show you presently, he has never succeeded. But God has been pleased to deal with his own people, according to the riches of his grace; he has covered their shame and put away their sins that they should not be remembered any more. Let me now direct your attention, first, to man's covering, and its failure; and then to God's covering, and its perfection. May the Holy Spirit be pleased to give you discernment, that you may see your destitute state in the presence of God, and understand the merciful relief that God himself has provided in the bounty of his grace! I. MAN'S . There are many ways in which men try to cover their sin. Some do so by denying that they have sinned, or, admitting the fact, they deny the guilt; or else, candidly acknowledging both the sin and the guilt, they excuse and exonerate themselves on the plea of certain circumstances which rendered it, according to their showing, almost inevitable that they should act as they have done. By pretext and presence, apology and self-vindication, they acquit themselves of all criminality, and put a fine gloss upon every foul delinquency. Excuse-making is the commonest trade under heaven. The slenderest materials are put to the greatest account. A man who has no valid argument in arrest of judgment, no feasible reason why he should not be condemned, will go about and bring a thousand excuses, and ten thousand circumstances of extenuation, the whole of them weak and attenuated as a spider's web. Someone here may be saying within himself, "It may be I have broken the law of God, but it was too severe. To keep so perfect a law was impossible. I have violated it, but then I am a man, endowed with passions that involve propensities, and inflamed with desires that need gratification. How could I do otherwise than I have done? Placed in peculiar circumstances, I am borne along with the current. Subject to special temptations, I yield to the fascination; this is natural." So you think; so you essay to exculpate yourself. But, in truth, you are now committing a fresh sin; for you are abasing God, you are inculpating the Almighty. You are impugning the law to vindicate yourself for breaking it. There is no small degree of criminality about such an unrighteous defence. The law is holy, just, and good. You are throwing the onus of your sins upon God. You are trying to mane out that, after all, you are not to blame, but the fault lies with him who gave the commandment. Do you think that this will be tolerated? Shall the prisoner at the bar bring accusations against the Judge who tries him? Or shall he challenge the equity of the statute while he is arraigned for violating it? And as for the circumstances that you plead, what valid excuse can they furnish, Has it come to this—that it was not you, but your necessities, that did the wrong and are answerable for the consequence? Not you, indeed! you are a harmless innocent victim of circumstances! I suppose, instead of being censured, you ought almost to be pitied. What is this, again, but throwing the blame upon the arrangements of Providence, and saying to God, "It is the harshness of thy discipline, not the perverseness of my actions, that involves me in sin." What, I say, is this but a high impertinence, ay, veritable treason, against the Majesty of that thrice holy God, before whom even perfect angels veil their faces, while they cry, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts"? I pray thee resort not to such a covering as this, because, while it is utterly useless, it adds sin to sin, and exposes thee to fresh shame. In many cases persons violating the law of God have hoped to cover their transgression by secrecy. They have done the deed in darkness. They hope that no ear of man heard their footfall, or listened to their speech. Possibly they themselves held their tongue, and flattered themselves that no observer witnessed their movements or could divulge their action. So was it with Achan. I dare say he took the wedge of gold and the Babylonish garment, mid the confusion of the battle, and hid it when his comrades seemed too much engaged to notice so trivial fan affair. While they were rushing over the fallen walls of Jericho, amidst the debris and the dust, he might be unmolested; and then, in the dead of night, while they slept, he turned the sod of his tent, dug into the earth, and buried there his coveted treasure. All looks right, to his heart's content. He has smoothed it down, and spread his carpet over the grave of his lust. Little did he reckon of the Omniscient eye. Little did he count on the unerring lot that would come home to the tribe of Judah, to the family of the Zarhites, to the house of Zabdir, and, at last, to the son of Carmi, so that Achan himself would have to stand out confessed as a traitor—a robber of his God. Men little know the ways in which the Almighty can find them out, and bring the evidence that convicts, out of the devices that were intended to cover their sin. Do you not know that Providence is a wonderful detective? There are hounds upon the track of every thief, and murderer, and liar—in foot, upon every sinner of every kind. Each sin leaves a trail. The dogs of judgment will be sure to scent it out, and find their prey. There is no disentangling yourselves from the meshes of guilt; no possibility of evading the penalty of transgression. Very wonderful have been the ways in which persons who have committed crimes have been brought to judgment. A trifle becomes a tell-tale. The method of deceit gives a clue to the manner of discovery. Wretched the men who bury their secrets in their own bosom. Their conscience plays traitor to them. They have often been forged to betray themselves. We have read of men talking in their sleep to their fellows, and babbling out in their dreams the crime they had committed years before. God would have the secret disclosed. No eye had seen, neither could other tongue have bold, but the man turned king's evidence against himself; he has thus brought himself to judgment. It has often happened, in some form or other, that conscience has thus been witness against men. Do I address anyone who is just now practicing a secret sin? You would not have me point you out for all the world, nor shall I do so. Believe me, however, the sin is known. Dexterous though you have been in the attempt to conceal it, it has been seen. As surely as you live, it has been seen. "By whom?" say you. Ah! by One who never forgets what he sees, and will be sure to tell of it. He may commission a little bird of the air to whisper it. Certainly he will one day proclaim it by the sound of trumpet to listening worlds. You are watched, sir; you are known. You have been narrowly observed, young girl; those things you have hidden away will be brought to light, for God is the great discoverer of sin. His eye has marked you; his providence will track you. It is vain to think that ye can conceal your transgressions. Before high heaven, disguise is futile. Yea, the darkness hideth not; the night shineth as the day. I have known persons who have harboured a sin in their breast till it has preyed upon their constitution. They have been like the Spartan boy who had stolen a fox, and was ashamed to have it known, so he kept it within his garment, till it ate through his flesh, and he fell dead. He suffered the fox to gnaw his heart ere he would betray himself. There are those who have got a sin, if not a lie in their right hand, yea, a lie in their heart, and it is eating into their very life. They dare not confess it. If they would confess it to their God, and make restitution to those whom they have offended, they would soon come to peace; but they vainly hope that they can cover the sin, and hide it from the eyes of God and man. He that covereth his sin in this fashion shall not prosper. Again, full many a time sinners have tried to cover their sin with falsehood. Indeed, this is the usual habit—to lie—to cloak their guilt by denying it. Was not this the way with Gehazi? When the prophet said, "Whence comest thou, Gehazi?" he said, "Thy servant went no whither." Then the prophet told him that the leprosy of Naaman should cleave to him all the days of his life. The sin of Ananias and Sapphira, in lying in order to hide their sin, how quickly was it discovered, and how terrible was the retribution! I wonder that men and women can lie as they do after reading that story. "Hast thou sold the land for so much?" said Peter. And Ananias said, "Yea, for so much." At that instant he fell down and gave up the ghost. Three hours after, when his wife, Sapphire, said the same, the feet of the young men who had buried her husband were at the door, ready to carry out her corpse, and bury her by his side. Oh! sirs, ye must weave a tangled web, indeed, when once ye begin to deceive; and when you have woven it you will have to add lie to lie, and lie to lie, and yet all to no purpose, for you will be surely found out. There is something about a lie that always deludes the man who utters it. Liars have need of good memories. They are sure to leave a little corner uncovered through which the truth escapes. Their story does not hang together. Discrepancies excite suspicions, and evasions furnish a clue to discoveries, till the naked truth is unveiled. Then the deeper the plot the fouler is the shame. But to lie unto the God of truth, of what avail can that be? What advantageth it you to plead "not guilty," when he has witnessed your crime? That infallible Eye which never mistakes is never closed. He knows everything; from him no secret is hid. Why, therefore, dost thou imagine that thou canst deceive thy Maker? There are some who try to cover their sin by prevarication. With cunning subtlety they strive to evade personal responsibility. Memorable is the instance of David. I will not dwell upon his flagrant crime; but I must remind you of his sorry subterfuge, when he tried to hide the baseness of his lust by conspiring to cause the death of Uriah. There have been those who have schemed deep and long to throw the blame on others, even to the injury of their reputation, to escape the odium of their own malpractices. Who knows but in this congregation there may be someone who affects a high social position, supported by a deep mercantile immorality? Merchants there have been that have swollen before the public as men of wealth, while they were falsifying their acoounts, abstracting money, yet making the books tally, rolling in luxury, and living in jeopardy. Have they prospered? Were they to be envied? The detection that long haunted them at length overtook them; could they look it in the face? We have heard of their blank despair, their insane suicide; at any rate, a miserable exposure has been their melancholy climax. "Be sure your sin will find you out." You may run the length of your tether. It is short. The hounds of justice, swift of scent and strong of limb, are on your trail. Rest assured, you will be discovered. Could you escape the due reward in this life, yet certainly your guilt is known in heaven, and you shall be judged and condemned in that great day which shall decide your eternal destiny. Seek not, then, to cover up sin with such transparent cobwebs as these. Some people flatter themselves that their sin has already been hidden away by the lapse of time. "It was so very long ago," says one, "I had almost forgotten it; I was a lad at the time." "Aye," says another, "I am gray-headed now. It must have been twenty or thirty years ago. Surely you do not think that the sin of my far-off days will be brought out against me? The thing is gone by. Time must have obliterated it." Not so, my friend. It may be the lapse of time will only make the discovery the more clear. A boy once went into his father's orchard, and there in his rough play he broke a little tree which his father valued. But, rapidly putting it together again, he managed to conceal the fact, for the disunited parts of the tree took kindly to each other, and the tree stood as before. It so happened that more than forty years afterwards he went into that garden after a storm had blown across it in the night, and he found that the tree had been riven in two, and it had snapped precisely in the place where he had broken it when it was but a sapling. So there may come a crash to your character precisely in that place where you sinned when yet a lad. Ah! how often the transgressions of our youth remain within our bosoms! There lie the eggs of our young sin, and they hatch when men come into riper years. Don't be so sure that the lapse of time will consign your faults and follies to oblivion. You sowed your wild oats, sir; you have got to reap them. The time that has intervened has only operated to make that evil seed spring up, and you are so much the nearer to the harvest. Time does not change the hue of sin in the sight of God. If a man could live a thousand years, the sins of his first year would be as fresh in the memory of the Almighty as those of the last. Eternity itself will never wash out a sin. Flow on, ye ages; but the scarlet spots on the sand. Flow on still in mighty streams, but the damning spot is there still. Neither time nor eternity can cleanse it. Only one thing can remove sin. The lapse of time cannot. Let not any of you be so foolish as to hope it will. When the trumpet of the resurrection sounds, there will be a resurrection of characters, as well as of men. The man who has been foully slandered will rejoice in the light that reflects his purity. But the man whose latent vices have been skilfully veneered will be brought to the light too. His acts and motives will be alike exposed. As he himself looks and sees the resurrection of his crimes, with what horror will he face that day of judgment! "Ah! ah!" says he, "Where am I? I had forgotten these. These are the sins of my childhood, the sins of my youth, the sins of my manhood, and the sins of my old age. I thought they were dead and buried, but they start from their tombs. My memory has been quickened. How my brain reels as I think of them all! But there they are, and, like so many wolves around me, they seem all thirsting for my destruction." Beware, oh! men. Ye have buried your sins, but they will rise up from their graves and accuse you before God. Time cannot cover them. Or do any of you imagine that your tears can blot out transgressions? That is a gross mistake. Could your tears for ever flow; could you be transformed into a Niobe, and do nothing else but weep for aye, the whole flood could not wash out a single sin. Some have supposed that there may be efficacy in baptismal water, or in sacramental emblems, or in priestly incantations, or in confession to a priest—one who asks them to disclose their secret wickedness to him, and betrays a morbid avidity to make his breast the sewer into which all kinds of uncleanness should be emptied. Be not deceived. There is nothing in these ordinances of man, or these tricks of Romish priestcraft (I had almost said of witchcraft, the two are so much alike) to excuse the folly of those who are beguiled by them. You need not catch at straws when the rope is thrown out to you. There is pardon to be had; remission is to be found; forgivenness can be procured. Turn your back on yonder shavelings; lend not your ear to them, neither be ye the victims of their snares. In the street each day it makes one's soul sad to see them. Like the Pharisees of old, they wear their long garments to deceive. You cannot mistake them. Their silly conceit publishes their naked shame. Confide not in them for a moment. Christ can forgive you. God can blot out your sin. But they cannot ease your conscience by their penances, or remove your transgressions by their celebrations. Thus I have gone through a rough, not very accurate, list of the ways by which men hope to cover their sin, but they "shall not prosper." None of these shall succeed. A more joyous task devolves on me now, while I draw your attention to my second text, "Thou hast covered all their sin." II. GOD'S . This fact is affirmed concerning the people of God. All who have trusted in the atoning sacrifice which was presented by the Lord Jesus Christ upon Calvary may accept this welcome assurance, "God. has covered all their sin." How this hath come to pass I will tell you. Before ever God covers a man's sins he unveils them. Did you ever see your sins unveiled? Did it ever seem as if the Lord put his hand upon you, and said, "Look, look at them"? Have you been led to see your sins as you never saw them before? Have you felt their aggravations fit to drive you to despair? As you have looked at them, has the finger of detection seemed to point out your blackness? Have you discovered in them a depth of guilt, and iniquity, and hell—desert which never struck your mind before? I recollect a time when that was a spectacle always before the eyes of my conscience. My sin was ever before me. If God thus makes you see your sin in the light of his countenance, depend upon it he has his purposes of mercy toward you. When you see and confess it, he will blot it out. So soon as God, in infinite loving-kindness, makes the sinner know in truth that he is a sinner, and strips him of the rags of his self-righteousness, he grants him pardon and clothes his nakedness. While he stands shivering before the gaze of the Almighty, condemned, the guilt is purged from his conscience. I do not know of a more terrible position in one's experience than to stand with an angry God gazing upon you, and to know that wherever God's eye falls upon you it sees nothing but sin; sees nothing in you but what he must hate and must abhor. Yet this is the experience through which God puts those to whom he grants forgiveness. He makes them know that he sees how sinful they are, and he makes them feel how vile and leprous they are. His justice withers their pride; his judgment appals their heart. They are humbled in the very dust, and made to cry out—each man trembling for his own soul—"God be merciful to me, a sinner!" Not till this gracious work of conviction is fully wrought does the Lord appear with the glorious proclamation that whosoever believeth in the Lord Jesus shall have his sins covered. That proclamation. I have now openly to publish and personally to deliver to you. With your outward ears you may have heard it hundreds of times. It is old, yet ever new. Whosoever among you, knowing himself to be guilty, will come and put his trust in Jesus Christ, shall have his sins covered. "Can God do that?" Yes, he can. He alone can cover sin: Against him the sin was committed. It is the offended person who must pardon the offender. No one else can. He is the King. He has the right to pardon. He is the Sovereign Lord, and he can blot out sin. Beside that, he can cover it lawfully, for the Lord Jesus Christ (though ye know the story, let me tell it again—the song of redemption always rings out a charming melody), Jesus Christ, the Father's dear Son, in order that the justice of God might be vindicated, bare his breast to its dreadful hurt, and suffered in our room, and place, and stead, what we ought to have suffered as the penalty of our sin. Now the sacrifice of God covers sin—covers it right over; and he more than covers it, he makes it cease to be. Moreover, the Lord Jesus kept the law of God, and his obedience stands, instead of our obedience; and God accepts him and his righteousness on our behalf, imputing his merits to our souls. Oh! the virtue of that atoning blood! Oh! the blessedness of that perfect righteousness of the Son of God, by which he covers our sins! There are two features of covering I should like to recall to your recollection. The one was the mercy-seat or propitiatory, over the golden ark, wherein were the tables of stone. Those tables of stone seemed, as it were, to reflect the sins of Israel. As in a mirror they reflected the transgression of God's people. God was above, as it were, looking down between the cherubic wings. Was he to look down upon the law defied and defiled by Israel? Ah! no; there was put over the top of the ark, as a lid which covered it all, a golden lid called the mercy-seat, and when the Lord looked down he looked upon that lid which covered sin. Beloved, such is Jesus Christ, the covering for all our sins. God sees no sin in those who are hidden beneath Jesus Christ. There was another covering at the Red Sea. On that joyous day when the Egyptians went down into the midst of the sea pursuing the Israelites, at the motion of Moses' rod the waters that stood upright like a wall leapt back into their natural bed and swallowed up the Egyptians. Great was the victory when Miriam sang, "The depths have covered them. There is not one of them left." It is even so that Jesus Christ's atonement has covered up our sins. They are sunk in his sepulchre; they are buried in his tomb. His blood, like the Red Sea, has drowned them. "The depths have covered them. There is not one of them left." Against the believer there is not a sin in God's Book recorded. He that believeth in him is perfectly absolved. "Thou hast covered all their sin." I shall not have time to dwell upon the sweetness of this fact, but I invite you that believe to consider its preciousness; and I hope you who have not believed will feel your mouth watering after it; to know that every sin one has ever committed, known and unknown, is gone—covered by Christ. To be assured that when Jesus died he did not die for some of our sins, but for all the sins of his people; not for their sins up till now, but for all the sins they ever will commit! Well does Kent put it:— "Here's pardon for transgressions past, It matters not how black they're cast And O, my soul, with wonder view For sins to come here's pardon too." The atonement was made before the sin was committed. The righteousness was presented even before we had lived. "Thou hast covered all their sin. It seems to me as if the Lamb of God, slain from before the foundation of the world, had in the purpose of God, from the foundation of the world, covered all his people's sins. Therefore, we are accepted the Beloved, and dear to the Father's heart. Oh! what a joy it is to get a hold of something like this truth, especially when the truth gets a hold of you—when you can feel by the inwrought power and witness of the Holy Ghost that your sins are covered—that you dare stand up before a rein-trying, heart-searching God, and give thanks that every transgression you ever committed is hid from the view of those piercing eyes through Jesus Christ your Lord. Some people think we ought not to talk thus, that it is presumptuous. But really there is more presumption in doubting than there is in believing. For a child to believe his father's word is never presumption. I like to credit my Father's word. "He that believeth in him is not condemned." Condemned I am not, for I know I do believe in him. "Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us." Beloved, the covering is as broad as the sin. The covering completely covers, and for ever covers; for as God sees to-day no sin in those who are washed in Jesus' blood, so will he never see any. You are accepted with an acceptance that nothing can change. Whom once he loves he never leaves, but loves them to the end. The reason of his love to them does not lie in their merits nor their charms; the cause of love is in himself. The ground of his acceptance of them is in the person and work of Christ. Whatever they may be, whatever their condition of heart may be, they are accepted, because Christ lived and died. It is not a precarious or a conditional, but an eternal acceptance. Would you enjoy the blessedness of this complete covering? Cowering down beneath the tempest of Jehovah's wrath, which you feel in your conscience, would you obtain this full remission? Behold the gates of the City of Refuge which stand wide open. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is proclaimed! to the thirsty, needy, labouring, weary soul. Not merely open are the gates, but the invitation to enter is given. "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." You are bidden to lay hold upon eternal life. The way of doing so is simple. No works of yours, no merits, no tears, no preparations are required, but trust—trust—that is all. Believe in Jesus. Rely upon him; depend upon him; depend upon him. I have heard of Homer's Iliad being enclosed in a nutshell, so small was it written; but here is the Plain Man's Guide to Heaven in a nutshell. Here is the essence of the whole gospel in one short sentence. "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Trust him; trust him. That is the meaning of that word believe. Depend upon him, and as surely as thou doest it, nor death, nor hell, nor sin shall ever separate thee from the love of him whom thou hast embraced, from the protection of him in whose power thou hast taken shelter. The Lord lead you to cower beneath his covering wings, and grant you to be found in Christ, accepted in the Beloved. So shall your present peace be the foretaste of your eternal felicity. Amen.