The Gospel
Bethlehem was not the birth-place of the Gospel. There was a Gospel in the wilderness of Sinai, although it might be confused with the smoke of the incense, and only to be seen through slaughtered victims. Yea, more, we go back to the fair trees of Eden, and there was a Gospel, for we hear the voice of God, as he spoke to recreant man, “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head”
There be men that quite misunderstand the Gospel; they think that righteousness qualifies them to come to Christ; whereas sin is the only qualification for a man to come to Jesus.
The Gospel of Christ will make hell hotter to some men than it otherwise would have been. Men would all have sunk to hell, had it not been for the Gospel. The grace of God reclaims “a multitude that no man can number;” but, at the same time, it does to those who reject it make their damnation even more dreadful.
A truth perverted is generally worse than a doctrine which all know to be false. As fire, one of the most useful of the elements, can also cause the fiercest of conflagrations, so the Gospel, the best thing we have, can be turned to the vilest account.
Only let the Gospel thoroughly pervade all ranks of society, and saturate the mind of nations, and there shall be no more lifting of spears, they shall be used for pruning hooks; no bathing of swords in blood, they shall be turned into peaceful ploughshares of the soil; we shall then have no “hosts encountering hosts,” no millions slain for widows to deplore; but every mau shall meet every other man, and call him “brother.”
The Gospel is preached in proportion as we have Calvary exalted, and Christ magnified. These are the things we want, Calvary preaching, Calvary theology, Calvary books, Calvary sermons.
I have an old sword, but it is not a rusty one; though it hath hacked and cut many a Kahab, yet it has not a single mark of weakness upon itself — it is as new as when it was first forged upon the anvil of wisdom.
What poor ideas men have of the value of Christ’s Gospel, if they think they can buy it! God will not have your rusty farthings to buy heaven with.
It is a free Gospel, free as the air; and he who has but life to breathe it may breathe it; so that every poor soul who is quickened, and has a sense of his guilt, may come to Christ.
The Gospel really felt in the mind will toll the knell of selfishness; it will bring down the proud from their elevated solitude, and restore the down-trodden to the rights of our common manhood. We need only the Gospel thoroughly preached to bring about “liberty, equality, and fraternity,” in the best sense of these words.
The truths of Christianity work out their perfect work; and pride, bitterness, wrath, envy, and malice, must see their graves.
To preach the Gospel is to proclaim with trumpet tongue and flaming zeal the unsearchable riches of Christ, so that men may hear, and, understanding, may turn to God with full purpose of heart.