Faith Among Mockers

“He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.” — Psalm xxii. 8.

David experienced what Paul afterwards so aptly described as “cruel inockings.” Note the adjective cruel: it is well chosen. Mockings may not cut the flesh, but they tear the heart; they may shed no blood, but they cause the mind to bleed internally. Fetters gall the wrists, but the iron of scorn entereth into the soul. Ridicule is a poisoned bullet which goes deeper than the flesh, and strikes the centre of the heart. David in the wilderness hunted by Saul, and on the throne abused by Shimei, knew what it was to be the butt of scorn, the football of contempt. Many a time and oft was he the song of the drunkard, and the byword of the scoffer.

But what have I to do with the son of Jesse? my heart remembers the Son of man. What if David suffered despising and scorn? He knew it but in small measure compared with our blessed Lord. Well is it said, “The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord.” It is not wonderful that such an one as David should have to cry, “My soul is among lions,*’ when the Lord of all, the perfectly pure and Holy One, was driven to utter the same cry, saying, “A11 they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.” My brethren and sisters in Christ, if you have to pass through a like painful experience, count it no strange thing, for a strange thing it is not. Reproach is the common heritage of the godly. Do not think that this fire which you suffer is the first that ever burned a saint. Others have had to bear the enmity of the world long before you. Remember that, of old, from the first moment when sin came into the world, there were two seeds, the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent; and between these two seeds there is an enmity of the most deadly kind, which will never cease. It may assume different forms, and it may be held in check by many forces, but it will always continue for ever the same while men are men, and sin is sin, and God and the devil are opposed. It was so, you know, in the house of Abraham: he was a man that walked before God, and was perfect in his generation, and yet in his family there were the two opposing powers: Ishmael, born after the flesh, mocked him that was born after the Spirit. When Rebekah had brought forth twin sons, yet the fact of their being twin sons of holy Isaac did not prevent the enmity that arose between Jacob and Esau. Nothing will prevent the seed of the serpent from exhibiting its spite towards the seed of the woman; even kinship and brotherhood go for little in this strife; in fact, a man’s foes full often are they of his own household. Count it no marvel, then, if you are derided! It seems to be a necessity of the holy nature of God that it should incur the enmity of the evil nature of fallen man, and that this evil nature should show itself by direct and bitter attack. Remember “him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.” Henceforth, bow your shoulders to the yoke; expect that if you follow the Crucified you will have to bear the cross, for so it will be. I trust that our present meditation may be useful to any of God’s servants who are feeling the sharp lash of envious tongues, that they may not be driven from their steadfastness thereby. If any in their hearts are bowed down because they are conscious that possibly they have given the scoffers some opportunity to mock at them, may they even in this take heart, for David had done so, and yet he was not crushed by the blasphemies of the wicked.

The first thing to which I shall call your attention at this time is, that a truly gracious man is like David and like the Lord Jesus, in that HIS TRUST IN God is known. Even the enemies of this holy man who is mentioned in the text, and, as I interpret it, even the enemies of our divine Lord and Master, never denied that he trusted in God. This, indeed, is the commencement of their scoff: ‘*He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him.” From which I gather that every gracious man should have an apparent, manifest, public trust in God. He should not merely trust him in his heart alone, but that trust should so enter into his entire nature that he does not conceal it nor think of <x)ncealing it. He should be so open in the avowal of his confidence that his enemies, before whom he is naturally restrained and on his guard, nevertheless are able to spy out this precious thing within him, and are forced to bear their witness, though it be mockingly and jestingly, that “He trusted on the Lord.” Such a testimony is all the more valuable as coming from an enemy. You know our character is not likely to be drawn too prettily by those who hate us; the utmost will be sure to be said against us; but if even our enemies say of us, ‘* He trusted on the Lord,” we may be very thankful that we have so lived as to extort this testimony from their lips.

What, then, ought a child of God to do in order to show that he really does trust in the Lord? How did Jesus do this? Well, I think that in our Lord’s case it was his wonderful calmness which compelled everybody to see that “he trusted on the Lord.” You never find him in a durry; he is never won-ied nor confused. He is beset behind and before with men who try to catch him, but he is as self-possessed as if he spoke among friends. He does not appear to be the least upon his guard, and yet instead of their catching him, before long he either catches them, or else they retire saying, “Never man spake like this Man.” He was always cool, peaceful, ready, self-composed. You notice his inward quietude not only when enemies are round about him, but when he is surrounded by a great mob of people all hungry, starving, famishing: he breaks the bread and multiplies it; but not before he has made them all sit down on the green grass by hundreds and by fifties. He will have them in companies, arranged in ranks, for convenient distribution; and when they are all placed in order, as if it had been a well-marshalled royal entertainment, then it is that he takes the bread, and, looking up to heaven, with all deliberation asks a blessing, and breaks and gives the food to the disciples. The disciples make no scramble of it: it is an orderly festival, and the thousands are all fed in order due, in majestic decorum; for Christ was calm, and therefore master of the situation. He never looks as if he had fallen into diiiiculties, and then adopted expedients to get out of them; but his whole life is pre-arranged and ordered in the most prudent and peaceful manner. Nothing upon this earth, although he was so reduced that he had nowhere to lay his head, although he was sometimes so weary that he sat down upon a well to rest, could put him out of the way, or disarrange his perfect collectedness. He was always ready for every emergency; in fact, nothing was an emergency to him. What a beautiful picture that is of Christ on board ship in a storm! While they that are with him are afraid that they will go down, that the wind will blow them into the water, or blow the water over them, so that they will certainly be drowned, what is he doing? Why, he is asleep: not because he forgot them — no; but because he knew that the vessel was in the great Father’s hands. It was his time for sleep; he was weary and needed it, and so he carried out that -which was the nearest duty, and in all peacefulness laid his head on a pillow, and slumbered. His sleep ought to have made them fe at «ase. Whenever the captain can afford to go to sleep, the passengers may go to sleep too. Depend upon if, he that manages everything would not have gone to bed if he had not felt that it was all right in the hands of the Highest, who at any moment could stay the raging storm. I wish we could be similarly restful; for then even our enemies would say of us, ‘* He trusted on the Lord.” I wish we could have that steadfast, imperturbable frame of mind, in which our Lord untied the knots wherewith his foes would have bound him; for then our assailants would marvel at our quiet confidence. Jesus knew no hurry, but calmly and deliberately he met each matter as it came, and grandly kept himself free from all entanglement. Oh, for the holy quiet which would prevent our going about our business in haste! “He that believeth shall not make haste,” but do everything as in the infinite leisure of the Eternal, who never is before his time, and never is behind. If we could do that, and did not get so flurried and worried, and tossed about and driven to our wit’s end, then our enemies would say with astonishment, “He trusted on the Lord.”

Brethren, this ought also to come out not merely in our calm and quiet manner, but also by our distmct avowal, I do not think that any man has a right to be a secret believer in the Lord Jesus Christ at this time. You will tell me that Nicodemus was so; that Joseph of Arimathea was so, and I answer “Yes “; but therein they are not our exemplars. These weak brethren were forgiven and strengthened; but we may not therefore presume. Times, however, arc different now: by the death of Christ the thoughts of many hearts were revealed, and from that day those secret disciples were among the foremost to avow their faith. Nicodemus brought the spices, and Joseph of Arimathea went ia boldly and begged the body of Jesus. Since that da, when the Christ was openly revealed upon the cross, the thoughts of otiie men’s heart* are revealed too; and it is not now permissible for us to play hide-andseek with Christ. No; “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved;” “He that with his heart believeth and with his mouth maketh confession of him, shall be saved.” The open confession is constantly, in Scripture, joined with the secret faith. The Lord Jesus Christ puts it, “He that denieth me before men, hiiu will I deny”; and if you read it, the text sets denying in opposition to confession, so that it really means, “He that does not confess me before men, him will I not confess when I come in the glory of the Father.” Our Lord does not reckon upon leading a body of followers who will always keep behind the hedge, hiding themselves in holes and corners whenever there is anything to be done for his glory, and only running out at meal-times when there is something to be got for themselves. I know some professors of that sort, but I have very little to say to their credit: they are a cowardly crew. No, no. We ought distinctly to declare that we believe in God, and we should take opportunities, as prudence dictates, of telling to our friends and neighbours what our experience has been about trusting in God; telling them of deliverances we have received, of prayers which have been answered, and of many other tokens for good which have come to us as the result of our faith in God. To trust in man is a thing of which we may be ashamed, for we find man to be as a broken reed, or as a spear that pierces us to our heart when we lean thereon; but blessed are they that trust in the Lord, for they shall be as trees planted by the rivers of water, they shall bring forth their fruit in their season, and even their leaf shall not wither. God, in whom they trust, will honour their faith, and bless them yet more and more; let them therefore honour their God, and never hesitate to speak well of ‘his name. So, then, I say first a calm belief, and, secondly, an open avowal should cause even our adversaries to know that we have trusted in the Lord.

And, then, I will add to that, that our general conduct should reveal our faith. The whole of our life should show that we are men who rejoice in the Lord; for trusting the Lord, as I understand it, is not a thing for Sundays and for places of worship alone: we are to trust in the Lord about everything. If I trust the Lord about my soul I must trust him about my body, about my wife, about my children, and all my domestic and business alFairs. It would have been a terrible thing if the Lord had drawn a black line around our religious life, and had said, “You may trust me about that, but with household matters I will have nothing to do.” We need the whole of life to be within the ringfence of divine care. The perfect bond of divine love must tie up the whole bundle of our affairs, or the whole will slip away. Faith is a thing for the closet, and the parlour, and the counting-house, and the farmhouse; it is a light for dark days, and a shade for bright days; you may carry it with you everywhere, and everywhere it shall be your help. Oh, that we did so trust in the Lord that people noticed it as much they notice our temper, our dress, or our tone. The pity is that too often we go forward hetter-skelter, following our own wisdom, whereaswe ought to say, “No, I must wait a little while, till I ask counsel of the Lord.’’ It should be seen and known that we are distinctly waiting upon God for gaidance. AYhat a stir this would make in some quarters! I wish that without any desire to be Pharisaical, or to display our piety, we nevertheless did unconsciously show the great principle which governs us. Just as one man will say, ‘’Excuse me, I must consult a friend,” or, “I must submit the case to my solicitor,” so it ought to be habitual with a Christian before he replies to an important matter, to demand a moment wherein he may wait upon God and obtain direction.. In any case I wish that it may be so usual with us to ask guidance from above that it may be noticed as our habit to trust on the Lord.

Once more, I think this ought to come out most distinctly in our behaviour during times of trouble; for then it is that our adversaries are most likely to notice it. You, dear sister, have lost a child. Well now,, remember that you are a Christian woman, and sorrow not as those that are without hope. Do let the difference be real and true, and do not be ashamed that others should observe it. When your neighbour lost her child it occasioned a quarrel between her and God, but it is not so with you, is it? Will you quarrel with God about your baby? Oh, no; you love him too well. And you, brother, you are perplexed in business and you know what a worldling does: if he has nothing more than outward religion, he complains bitterly that God deals hardly with him, and he quarrels with God; or, perhaps, to make things better, he does what he ought not to do in business, and makes them a great deal worse. Many a man has plunged into rash speculations until he has destroyed himself commercially; but you, as a Christian man, must take matterscalmly and quietly: it is not yours to speculate, but to confide. Your strength lies in saying — “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” You must not be so eager to be rich that you would put forth your hand to do iniquity in order to seize the golden apples: that is the reverse of faith. You are now to play the man, and in the power of the Holy Ghost you are now with resignation — with more than that — with a sweet acquiescence in the; Divine will — to show men how a Christian can behave himself. I have, never admired Addison’s words as some have done, who, when he came to die, sent for a lord of his acquaintance, and said, “See how a Christian can die.’’ There is a little parade about that; but I do desire that every Christian should say in his soul, “I will show men how a. Christian can live. I will let them see what it is to live by faith in the Sun of God who loved me, and gave himself for me. Those who do not believe there is a God shall yet be led to feel there must be a God,, because my faith in him doth speed so well, and I obtain such unnumbered blessings as the result of it.” I say, most earnestly, that especially in the time of sorrow and bereavement, when other people are sore put to it because they have lost their joy, and the light of their house isquenched, it is the believer s duty and privilege by his holy calm of heart to show his trust in God. If religion cannot help you in trouble it is not worth having j if the Spirit of God does not sustain you when you lose your dearest friend, you ought to question whether it is thft

Spirit of God; you ought to ask, “Can this be the Spirit which bore up the martyrs at the stake?” if now that you are passing through these waters you are carried away by them? If our faith shines out in dark times, even as the stars are seen by night, then is it well with us.

Oh, that you and I might in all these ways so live that all who see ua should know that we are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ! It would be Tidiculous if a man went into society with a label on his breast, “This man trusts in God’’ and it would be a pretty clear sign that he needed to be thus ticketed. I would have you shun all distinctive phylacteries in matters of religion as too much flavoured with the leaven of the Pharisees; but when the possession of godliness proclaims its own self, even as a box of precious spikenard tells its own tale, you need not be ashamed of it. Display and ostentation are vicious, but the unrestrained use of influence and example is commendable. In these days when men ;glory in their unbelief, let us not be bashful with our faith. If, in a free country, men should not persecute an infidel, they certainly ought not to silence a believer. We do not intend to smuggle our religion through the land. It is not contraband, and therefore we shall bear it with us openly in the sight of all men, and let them say if they please, “He trusted on the Lord”

II. Secondly, this trust on the part op relieving men is not UNDERSTOOD BY THE WORLD. “He trusted ou the Lord that he would deliver him.” Observe that they restricted the Saviour’s trust to that point — *’ He trusted on the Lord that he tvould deliver him.:’ But now, in the first place, our faith is not confined to merely receiving from God. No, brethren; if the Lord does not deliver us we will trust “him. See how firmly Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stood to it that they would not bow before the image which Nebuchadnezzar had set up: “Our <jod whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, 0 king. But if not, be it .known unto thee, 0 king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.” There was great faith in that “if not.” We must not live and wait upon Grod with a kind of •cupboard love, just as a stray dog might follow a man for bones; but we must speak well of our God even if he scourge us, for therein lies both the truth and the strength of faith. Job has put it — “Shall we receive ^ood at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Whatever happens to us, if our faith is the work of the Holy •Spirit we shall hold on to our trust in God.

Neither is our faith limited to what men call deliverance. It is a misrepresentation when his enemies say, “He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him; “because though it is the truth, it is not the whole truth. Our blessed Lord continued to trust in the Father though the K)up did not pass from him, and though no legions of angels were sent to -deliver him from Pilate. Though the enemy was permitted to exercise all his malice upon him until his blessed body was nailed to the accursed tree, yet the faith of our divine Lord and Master was not moved from its steadfastness. He trusted in God for something higher than deliver- -ance from death, for he looked beyond the gxave, and said, “Thou ^ilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy

One to see corruption.” In all his pains his heart said, “It is the-Lord, let him do what seemeth him good.” The blind world cannot understand this. They say, like their father, “Doth Job fear God for nought?” They insinuate that Christian people trust God for what. they get out of him. Now I have often thought that if the devil could; have put it the other way he would have been very rejoiced to do so. Suppose he could have said, “Job serves God for nought,” then the ungodly world would have shouted, “le told you so. God is a bad Paymaster: his servants may serve him as perfectly as Job, but he never gives them any reward.” Happily the accuser’s grumble is of quite the opposite kind. Neither one way nor another is there any pleasing the devil, and it is not a tiling we desire to do. Let him pat it as he likes. We serve God and we have our reward; but if the Lord does not choose to give us exactly what we look for, still will we trust in him, for it is our delight. It is a misrepresentation to say of a believer that “■ he trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him,’” if he is supposed to trust for no other reason.

And, dear friends, our faith is not tied to time. That is the mistake of the statement in the text. They said, “He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him” — as much as to say, “If God does not deliver him now his trust will have been a folly, and God will not have answered to his confidence.” Bat it is not so. Brethren, if we are in the fire to-night, and we are trusting in God, our faith does not mean that we expect to come forth from the furnace at this very hour. Nay, we may not come out to-night, nor to-morrow, nor next month, it may be not for years. We do not tie God down to conditions, and expect him to do this and that and then if he does not in his wisdom see fit to do it, threaten that we will trust him no more. The very worst we could do would be to make the Eternal God a slave to time, as though he must do everything at our bidding, and measure his divine movements by the ticking of a clock. The Lord did deliver his Son Jesus Christ, but he suffered him to die first; he was put into the grave before he was uplifted from the power of death; and if it had not been that he died and lay in the tomb he could not have had that splendid deliverance which his Father did vouchsafe him when he raised him again from the dead; had he not yielded ta death there could have been no resurrection for him or for us. So, beloved, it may be God has not effected his purpose with you yet, nor has he quite prepared you for the height of blessing to which he has ordained you. Receive what he is going to give you, and take gratefully the painful preliminaries. High palaces must have deep foundations, and it takes a long time to excavate a human soul so deep that God can build a gorgeous palace of grace therein. If it be a mere cottage that the Lord is to build in you, you may escape with small troubles; but if he is going to make you a palace to glorify himself withal, then you may expect to have long trials. Coarse pottery needs not the laborious processes which must be endured by superior vessels. Iron which is to become a sword for a hero must know more of the fire than the metal which lies upon the road as a rail. Your eminence in grace can only come by affliction. Will you not have trust in God if severe trials are ordained for you? Yes, of course you will. The Holy Spirit will be the all-sulficient helper of your infirmities. I say it is misrepresentation if we limit the Holy One of Israel to any form for our deliverance, or to any time for our deliverance. Let not the Lord of love be treated like a child at school, as if he could be taught anything by us!

So, also, our faith must not judge at all by present circumstances. The ungodly world judges that God has not delivered us because we are now in trouble, and are at present distressed by it. Oh, how wrongly the world judged of Christ when it judged of him by his condition! Covered with a bloody sweat and groaning out his soul to God beneath the olives at midnight — why, they that passed by who did not know him must have judged him to be a man accursed of God. “See,” they would have said, “we never heard of a man that sweat blood before — sweat blood in prayer; and yet listen to his groaning; he is not heard by God, for evidently the cup does not pass from him.” If any man had looked at our Lord Jesus when he was on the cross and had heard him cry, ‘* My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” they would have certainly concluded that he was the most ungracious and undeserving of men; for had he been a saint, surely, they say, God would not have forsaken him. Yes, but you see they only saw a little of our blessed Master’s career; they only looked upon a span of his existence; what a grievous error it was to have estimated his life by his brief passion, knowing nothing of its grand intent! See him now while harps unnumbered sound his praises and all heaven rejoices to behold his glory, and the Father looks upon him with inefiable delight! This is the same Jesus who was crucified! AVhat think you of him now? You must not measure a man by a little bit of his life, nor even by the whole of his earthly career; for it is nothing compared with the hidden future of his life in eternity. These men measured David’s faith, and measure our fiiith by what they see of us on one day: we are sick, we are sorry, we are poor, we are troubled, and then they say, ‘’We told you so! This faith of theirs is not worth having, or else they would not fare so roughly or be found in so much heaviness.” Faith and feeling are in contrast. Outward circumstances must never be made the tests of the value of pious trust in our God. We must not judge God by his dealings with us nor judge ourselves thereby; but let us still hold on to this pure, simple faith that the Lord is good to Israel. Let us love the Lord for a whole eternity of his love, and then for everything, for every turn of his hand, for every frown and stroke and rebuke; for he is good in everything, unalterably good. If with this faith of ours we are praying and pleading and God does not answer us, does not help us, but leaves us in the dark, yet still let not our trust waver. If any man walk in darkness and see no light, let him trust and trust on until the light shall come.

So, then, we have just touched upon two points — that a true man’s faith is soon made known, but that, though it be known, it is usually misunderstood. We live among blind men; let us not be angry because they cannot see.

III. Thirdly, this true faith will, in all probability, bb MOCKED AT SOME TIME OR OTHER. It is a great honour to a man to trust in God, and so to have his name written upon the Arch of Triumph which Paul has erected in the eleventh chapter of the Hebrews, where yon see name after name of the heroes who served God by faith. It is a glorious thing to mingle our bones with those who are buried in that mausoleum which bears this epitaph, “These all died in faith.” It is an honourable thing to be a believer in God, but there are some who think the very reverse, and these begin to scoff at the believer. Sometimes they scoff at faith itself: they count faith itself to be a folly of weak minds. Or else they insult over one particular Christian’s faith. “Oh,” they say, ‘’he professes to trust in God. This man talks after this mad fashion I Why, he is a working man like other people — works in a shop along with me. What has he to do with trusting God any more than I have? He is conceited and fanatical.” Or in other circles they cry, “This is a man of business; he keeps a shop, and I dare say he knows as much of the tricks of the trade as we do, and yet he talks about trusting in God. No doubt he pretends to this faith to win religious customers.” Sometimes the mockery comes from one of your own family, for faith’s foes live in the same house with her. The husband has been known to say to his wife, “Ridiculous nonsense, your trusting in God!” Ay, and parents have said the like to holy children; and, alas! children have grown up to speak in like fashion to their parents to the wounding of their hearts. As if faith in God were a thing that could be scoffed at, instead of being the most wise, and proper, and rational thing under heaven. Faith in God is a thing to be reverenced rather than reviled. True religion is sanctified common-sense. It is the. most common-sense thing in the world to put your trust in One that cannot lie. If I trust myself, or trust my fellow-man, I am thought to be in the first case self-reliant, and in the second case I am judged to have a charitable disposition; yet in either case I shall, sooner or later, prove my folly; but if I trust God, who can bring a reason against my confidence? What is there to be ridiculed in a man’s trusting his Maker? Can he fail that created the blue heavens, that settled the foundations of the earth and poured out the waters of the great sea? Can the Almighty retract his promise because he is unable to fulfil it? Can he break his word because circumstances master him and prevent his performance of it? “Trust ye in the Lord for ever: for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength.” The day shall come when it will be known by all intelligent beings that unbelief of God is folly, but that faith in the Eternal is essential wisdom. God give us more faith in himself. No doubt we may expect to have all the more of the laughter of the ungodly, who will make a spectacle of us for our faith: but what of that? We can bear mockery and much mure for his sake who died for us.

And then men scoff at the very idea of divine interposition. They judge the Lord’s deUverance to be the main point of our faith. “He trusted God that he would deliver him.” “Look,” they say, “he fancies that God will deliver him, as if the Creator had not something else to do besides looking after him, poor miserable creature that he is! He is nothing to God — a mere speck — the insect of an hour, and yet he trusts in God to interfere on his behalf.” The philosophers laugh whenever you speak of divine interposition, and count that we must be in the last stage of lunacy to expect anything of the kind. They believe in laws, they say — irreversible, immutable laws, that grind on, like the

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ereat cogs of a machine which, when once they are set in motion, teap everything to pieces that comes in their way. They do not believe that Ood fulfils promises, or answers prayers, or delivers his people. Their God is a dead force, without mind, or thought, or love, or care. He who in nature acts according to law is yet believed to have no power to carry out his own word, which must always be law to a truthful being. Why some of us are as sure that God has interposed for us as if he had rent the heavens and thrust forth his right hand visibly before the eyes of all beholders. The wise ones laugh at us for this, but we are not abashed; rather do we reply, “Laugh if you like, and as long as you like; but we daily receive unnumbered blessings from God in answer to our cries, and your laughter no more affects us than the noise of the dogs by the Nile disturbs the flow of the river. We shall believe for all your merriment, and if it please you to go on with your laughter we also will eo on with our faith.” The object of the ungodly man’s scorn is the idea that God should ever interfere to help his people in human affairs; but do you stand to it, 0 true believers; for he does still show himself strono- on the behalf of them that trust in him. Let them say, and laugh at you as they say it, “He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him;” but let none of these things move you.

Further we have known this mockery to extend to all hinds of Jailk in the divine love. “Let him deliver him,” they say, “seeing that he deljo-hted in him.” Perhaps you have unwisely told out the tale ot God’s special love to those who are now making merriment of you; you have cast your pearls before swine, and they turn again to rend you. They say, “This man says God loves him above others; that he chose him before the world began; that he redeemed him from among men with the blood of Christ; that he has called him by his Holy Spirit; that he has admitted him into his secrets and made hiin his child; and then they laugh again right lustily, as if it were a rare jest. How the world rages against electing love! It cannot endure any speciality in grace The idea that one man should be more beloved ot heaven than another it scouts as horrible. The heathen could not make out a certain brave saint because he called himself Theophorus, or God-bearer-” but he stuck to it that he was so, and this made his foes the more wrathful. God dwelt in him, he said, and he would not give up his happy belief, therefore they ceased not to mock. It was a carrying out of our text, “Let him deliver him, seeing he delighteth m him. Well well- we can afford to bear these mockings; for if we are beloved. by a ‘king it will not much matter if we are sneered at by his subjects; if we are beloved by God it is a small concern though all men should make us the subject of their jest., ,7, ;./.

Ungodly men are exceedingly apt to find amusement m the trials involved in the life and walk of faith. Their cry of - Let him deliver him” implies that their victim was in serious difficulty from which he could not extricate himself. This is no novelty to the believer, bu it makes rare fun for the ungodly. What is the good of faith if the believer suffers like others, and endures the same pams, and losses, and diseases as others? So the men of the world argue. Ihey would be believers too if it would bring theni in a fortune or a handsome salary, or at least a loaded table and a full cup. But when they

Bee a saint on the dunghill with Job, or in the pit with Joseph, or m thedun<reon with Jeremiah, or among the dogs with Lazarus, they sneei and cry, Is this the reward of piety? Is this the recompense of godliness ‘<’ They like to spy us out in our time of trouble and taunt us with our confidence in God; and, alas, there is so much unbelief in uu p f we are all too prone in such seasons to question the justice and laithtulnessof the Lord, and to say with David, “Yerily I hare cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency.” It seems hard for us to be mocked by the base ones of the earth, to become the song and the byword of the ungodly; yet this has happened to the excellent of the earth and will happen yet again. Set your account that this is a part of the covenanted heritage, and accept it with joy for Christ s sake. lY. Now, I must close with this point (though there is much more to be said); the time shall come when the faith of the man WHO has trusted in God shall be abundantly justified. I think it is no small thing to have the ungodly hearing witness that Ue trusted in God that he would deliver him.” I have known what it is to be exceedingly grateful to ungodly men for helping me to believe that I am truly a child of God. Somebody, years ago, uttered an atrocious lie ao-ainst me — an abominable slander. I was very low and heavy ot spirirat the time; but when I read it I clapped my hands for joy, for 1 felt “Now I have one of the marks and seals of a child of God, for it is written, ‘Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. IhQ love of the Lord’s brethren and the hatred of the Lord’s enemies are two things to be desired. We may gather that we are not of the wicked when they will not endure us in their company, when our very presence irritates them, and they begin to rail and jeer. It has happened unto us even as Jesus said: ‘’ If ye were of the world, the world would love his. own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out ot the world, therefore the world hateth you.” So that there is justification as it were, of our faith even from the lips of adversaries, and we ought to be thankful for it instead of being downcast about it.

Another justification awaits us, and in due season it will come. Brethren, the day will come when God will deliver his people, lou wi be brought out of your trouble — it may not be immediately, but it wilt be seasonably. You may most wisely in the meantime learn to glory m your tribulation; your bitters shall turn into sweets, and your losses into gains; your sorrows shall be your joys, your struggles your triumphs — perhaps in this life this transformation may occur, even as the Lord gave to Job twice as much as he had before; but certainly in the life to come you will find the tables turned. Then, what will the ungodly say? They say now, “He trusted on God that he would deliver him; but they will be compelled to say as they gnash their teeth, “God has delivered

him.”

Whereas the ungodly ridicule the idea that God delights in his people, the day shall come when they shall be made to see that he does delight in them. When the Lord appears on behalf of his people, and gives them “beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning,” the wicked sha 1 gnash their teeth, and be filled with confusion. When the Lord shall turn again our captivity, even our most desperate foes shall be made to

3o

546 METROPOLITAN TAhiiRNACLE PULPIT.

say, “The Lord hath done great things for them.” They shall wondep and be sore vexed to see how the Lord hath a favour to his chosen. If they do not see it in this life, oh, what an exhibition ungodly men will see of his delight in his people in the world to come! Dives sees Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom: what a sight for him! They that scoff at God’s poor people here, shall see them exalted to be kings and priests, to reign with Christ for ever and ever, and what will they say then? What can they say but be compelled to bear witness that their faith was justified.

Brethren, at the last great day ungodly men will be witnesses on behalf of the saints. If any doubt whether the saints trusted in God, the wicked will be compelled to come forward and say, “They did trust, for we laughed at them for it.” Of this and that man they shall say, “He trusted on God that he would deliver him.” In that day the unbelieving will be swift witnesses against themselves; for as they ridiculed the children of God here, they will have it read out before them as evidence of their enmity against the Lord: and how will they answer it? A man is generally much grieved with any one who injures his children. i have known a man behave patiently to his neighbours, and put up with a great deal from them; but when one of them has struck his child I have seen him incensed to the last degree. He has said, “I cannot stand that, I will not look on and see my own children ill-used.” The Lord says, “He that touches you touches the apple of my eye.” Jesus rises from his throne in glory and stands up indignantly while his servant Stephen is being stoned. If I had no other amusement whatever, I would not for merriment sake mock the people of God; for it will go hard with those who make unhallowed mirth out of the saints of the Most High. If any of you have ever done so — if you have done so ignorantly — the Lord forgive you, and bring you to be numbered among his people, as was Saul of Tarsus; and if any of you have done so knowingly, be humble and penitent, and the Lord will forgive you and receive you amongst his people.

But whether ye revile or flatter, it is all one to us. We are at a pass with you: we do trust in God that he will deliver us, and we cannot be removed from this confidence. 0 ye mockers, we will not be fooled out of our hope, nor jested out of our peace. We cannot find any one like our God to trust to, and so we will not depart from him in life or death, but will rest in him, come what may, even till we see him face to face.

“LET HIM DELIVER HIM NOW.’

Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, June 17th, 1888, Bt
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON”.

“He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God.” — Matthew xxvii. 43.

These words are a fulfilment of the prophecy contained in the twenty-second Psalm. Read from the seventh verse — “All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.” Thus to the letter doth our Lord answer to the ancient prophecy.

It is very painful to the heart to picture our blessed Master in his death-agonies, surrounded by a ribald multitude, who watched him and mocked him, made sport of his prayer and insulted his faith. Nothing was sacred to them: they invaded the Holy of holies of his confidence in God, and taunted him concerning that faith in Jehovah which they were compelled to admit. See, dear friends, what an evil thing is sin, since the Sin-bearer suffers so bitterly to make atonement for it! See, also, the shame of sin, since even the Prince of Glory, when bearing the consequences of it, is covered with contempt! Behold, also, how he loved us! For our sake he “endured the cross, despising the shame.” He loved us so much that even scorn of the most cruel sort he deigned to bear, that he might take away our shame and enable us to look up unto God.

Beloved, the treatment of our Lord Jesus Christ by men is the clearest proof of total depravity which can possibly be required or discovered. Those must be stony hearts indeed which can laugh at a dying Saviour, and mock even at his faith in God! Compassion would seem to have deserted humanity, while malice sat supreme on the throne. Painful as the picture is, it will do you good to paint it. You will need neither canvas, nor brush, nor palette, nor colours. Let your thoughts draw the outline, and your love fill in the detail; I shall not complain if imagination heightens the colouring. The Son of God, whom angels adore with veiled faces, is pointed at with scornful fingers by men who thrust out the tongue and mockingly exclaim,

648 METROPOLITAN TABERXACLE PULriT.

“He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.”

While thus we see our Lord in his sorrow and his shame as our substitute, we must not forget that he also is there as our representative. That which appears in many a psalm to relate to David is found in the Gospels to refer to Jesus, our Lord. Often and often the student of the Psalm will say to himself, * * Of whom speaketh the prophet this? “He will have to disentangle the threads sometimes, and mark off that which belongs to David and that which relates to the Son of God; and frequently he will not be able to disentangle the threads at all, because they are one, and may relate both to David, and to David’s Lord. This is meant to show us that the life of Christ is an epitome of the life of his people. He not only suffers for us as our substitute, but he suffers before us as our pattern. In him we see what we have in our measure to endure. “As he is, so are we also in this world.” We also must be crucified to the world, and we may look for somewhat of those tests of faith and taunts of derision which go with such a crucifixion. “Marvel not if the world hate you.” You, too, must suffer without the gate. Not for the world’s redemption, but for the accomplishment of divine purposes in you, and through you to the sons of men, you must be made to know the cross and its shame. Christ is the mirror of the church. What the head endured every member of the body will also have to endure in its measure. Let us read the text in this light, and come to it saying to ourselves, “Here we see what Jesus suffered in our stead, and we learn hereby to love him with all our souls. Here, too, we see, as in a prophecy, how great things we are to suffer for his sake at the hands of men.” May the Holy Spirit help us in our meditation, so that at the close of it we may more ardently love our Lord, who suffered for us, and may the more carefully arm ourselves with the same mind which enabled him to endure such contradiction of sinners against himself.

Coming at once to the text, first, observe the acknowledgment with which the text begins: “He trusted in God.” The enemies of Christ admitted his faith in God. Secondly, consider the test which is the essence of the taunt: Let him deliver him, if he will have him.’* When we have taken those two things into our minds, then let us for a while consider the answer to that test and taunt: God does assuredly deliver his people: those who trust in him have no reason to be ashamed of their faith.

I. First, then, my beloved brethren, you who know the Lord by faith and live by trusting in him, let me invite you to observe the ACKNOWLEDGMENT which these mockcrs made of our Lord’s faith: “He trusted in God.” Yet the Saviour did not wear any pecuHar garb or token by which he let men know that he trusted in God. He was not a recluse, neither did he join some little knot of separatists, who boasted their peculiar trust in Jehovah. Although our Saviour was separate from sinners, yet he was eminently a man among men, and he went in and out among the multitude as one of themselves. His one peculiarity was that “he trusted in God.” He was so perfectly a man that, although he was undoubtedly a Jew, there were no Jewish peculiarities about him. Any nation might claim him; but no nation could monopolize him. The characteristics of our humanity are so palpably about him that he belongs to all mankind. I admire the Welch sister who was of opinion that the Lord Jesus must be Welch. When they asked her how she prored it, she said that he always spoke to her heart in AVelch. Doubtless it was so, and I can, with equal warmth, declare that he always speaks to me in English. Brethren from Grermany, France, Sweden, Italy — you all claim that he speaks to you in your own tongue. This was the one thing which distinguished him among men — “he trusted in God,” and he lived such a life as naturally grows out of faith in the Eternal Lord. This peculiarity had been visible even to that ungodly multitude who least of all cared to perceive a spiritual point of character. Was ever any other upon a cross thus saluted by the mob who watched his execution? Had these scorners ever mocked anyone before for such a matter as this? I trow not. Yet faith had been so manifest in our Lord’s daily life that the crowd cried out aloud, “He trusted in Ood.”

How did they know? I suppose they could not help seeing that he made much of God in his teaching, in his life, and in his miracles. Whenever Jesus spoke it was always godly talk; and if it was not always distinctly about God, it was always about things that related to God, that came from God, that led to God, that magnified God. A man may be fairly judged by that which he makes most of. The ruling passion is a fair gauge of the heart. What a soul-ruler faith is! It sways the man as the rudder guides the ship. When a man once g-ets to live by faith in God, it tinctures his thoughts, it masters his purposes, it flavours his words, it puts a tone into his actions, and it comes out in everything by ways and means most natural and unconstrained, till men perceive that they have to do with a man who makes much of God. The unbelieving world says outright that there is no God, and the less impudent, who admit his existence, put him down at a very low figure, so low that it does not affect their calculations; but to the true Christian, God is not only much, but all. To our Lord Jesus, ljrod was all in all; and when you come to estimate God as he did, then the most careless onlooker will soon begin to say of you, “He trusted in God.”

In addition to observing that Jesus made much of God, men came to note that he was a trusting man, and not self-confident. Certain persons are very proud because they are self-made men. I will do them the credit to admit that they heartily worship their maker. Self made them, and they worship self. We have among us individuals who are self-sufficient, and almost all-sufficient; they sneer at those who do not succeed, for they can succeed anywhere at anything. The world to them is a football which they can kick where they like. If they do not rise to the very highest eminence it is simply out of pity to the rest of us, who ought to have a chance. A vat of sufficiency ferments within their ribs! There was nothing of that sort of thing in our Lord. Those who watched him did not say that he had great self-reliance and a noble spirit of self-confidence. No, no! They said, “He trusted in God.” Indeed it was so. The words that he spake he spake not of himself, and the great deeds that he did he never boasted of, but said ‘’the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.” He was a truster in God, not a boaster in self. Brethren and sisters, I desire that you and I may be just of that order. Self-confidence is the death of confidence in God; reliance upon talent, tact, experience, and things of that kind, kills faith. Oh that we may know what faith means, and so look out of ourselves and quit the evil confidence which looks within!

On the other hand, we may wisely remember that, while our Lord Jesus was not self-reliant, he trusted, and was by no means despondent: he was never discouraged. He neither questioned his commission, nor despaired of fulfilling it. He never said, “I must give it up: I can never succeed.” No; “He trusted in God.” And this is a grand point in the working of faith, that while it keeps us from self-conceit, it equally preserves us from enfeebling fear. When our blessed Lord set his face like a fiint; when, being baffled, he returned to the conflict; when, being betrayed, he still persevered in his love, then men could not help seeing that he trusted in God. His faith was not mere repetition of a creed, or profession of belief, but it was childlike reliance upon the Most High. May ours be of the same order!

It is evident that the Lord Jesus trusted in God openly, since even yonder gibing crowd proclaimed it. Some good people try to exercise faith on the sly: they practise it in snug corners, and in lonely hours, but they are afraid to say much before others, for fear their faith should not see the promise fulfilled. They dare not say, with David, “My soul shall make her boast in the Lord: the humble shall hear thereof, and be glad.” This secrecy robs God of his honour. Brethren, we do not glorify our God as he ought to be glorified. Let us trust in him, and own it. Wherefore should we be ashamed? Let us throw down the gauge of battle to earth and hell. God, the true and faithful, deserves to be trusted without limit. Trust your all with him, and be not ashamed of having done so. Our Saviour was not ashamed of trusting in his God. On the cross he cried, “Thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother’s breast.”. Jesus lived by faith. We are sure that he did, for in the Epistle to the Hebrews he is quoted as saying, “I will put my trust in him.” If so glorious a personage as the only begotten Son of God lived here by faith in God, how are you and I to live except by trust in God? If we live unto God, this is the absolute necessity of our spiritual life: ‘’the just shall live by faith.” Shall we be ashamed of that which brings life to us? The cruel ones who saw Jesus die did not say, “He now and then trusted in God”; nor “he trusted in the Lord years ago”; but they admitted that faith in God was the constant tenor of his life: they could not deny it. Even though, with malicious cruelty, they turned it into a taunt, yet they did not cast a question upon the fact that “he trusted in God.” Oh, I want you so to live that those who dislike you most may, nevertheless, know that you do trust in God! When you come to die, may your dear children say of you, “Our dear mother did trust in the Lord “! May that boy, who has gone furthest away from Christ, and grieved your heart the most, nevertheless say in his heart, “There may be hypocrites in the world, but my dear father does truly trust in God”! Oh, that our faith may be known unmistakably I

We do not wish it to be advertised to our own honour. That be far from our minds. But yet we would have it known that others may be encouraged, and that God may be glorified. If nobody else trusts in God, let us do so; and thus may we uplift a testimony to the honour of his faithfulness. When we die, may this be our epitaph — “He trusted in God.”

David, in the twenty-second Psalm, represents the enemies as saying of our Lord — “He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him.” ThiB practical faith is sure to be known wherever it is in operation, because it is exceedingly rare. Multitudes of people have a kind of faith in God, but it does not come to the practical point of trusting that God will deliver them. I see upon the newspaper placards, “Startling News! People in the Planets!” Not a very practical discovery. For many a day there has been a tendency to refer God’s promises and our faith to the planets, or somewhere beyond this present every-day life. We say to ourselves, “Oh yes, God delivers his people.” We mean that he did so in the days of Moses, and possibly he may be doing so now in some obscure island of the sea. Ah me 1 The glory of faith lies in its being fit for every-day wear. Can it be said of you, “He trusted in God, that he would deliver him “? Have you faith of the kind which will make you lean upon the Lord in poverty, in sickness, in bereavement, in persecution, in slander, in contempt? Have you a trust in God to bear you up in holy living at all costs, and in active service even beyond your strength? Can you trust in God definitely about this and that? Can you trust about food, and raiment, and home? Can you trust God even about your shoes, that they shall be iron and brass, and about the hairs of your head that they are all numbered? What we need is less theory and more actual trust in God.

The faith of the text was personal: “that he would deliver himV Blessed is that faith which can reach its arm of compassion around the world, but that faith must begin at home. Of what use were the longest arm if it were not fixed to the man himself at the shoulder? If you have no faith about yourself, what faith can you have about others? “He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him.” Come, beloved, have you such a faith in the living God? Do you trust in God through Christ Jesus that he will save you? Yes, you poor, unworthy one, the Lord will deliver you if you trust him. Yes, poor woman, or unknown man, the Lord can help you in your present trouble, and in every other, and he will do so if you trust him to that end. May the Holy Spirit lead you to first trust the Lord Jesus for the pardon of sin, and then to trust in God for all things.

Let us pause a minute. Let a man trust in God; not in fiction but in fact, and he will find that he has solid rock under his feet. Let him trust about his own daily needs and trials, and rest assured that the Lord will actually appear for him, and he will not be disappointed. Such a trust in God is a very reasonable thing; its absence is most unreasonable. If there be a God, he knows all about my case. If he made my ear he can hear me; if he made my eye he can see me; and therefore he perceives my condition. If he be my Father, as he says he is, he will certainly care for me, and will help me in my hour of need if he can. We are sure that he can, for he is omnipotent. Ta there anything unreasonable, then, in trusting in God that he will deliver us? I venture to say that if all the forces in the universe were put together, and all the kindly intents of all who are our friends were put together, and we were then to rely upon those united forces and intents, we should not have a thousandth part so much justification for our confidence as when we depend upon God, whose intents and forces are infinitely greater than those of all the world beside. “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man; it is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes.” If you view things in the white light of pure reason, it is infinitely more reasonable to trust in the living God than in all his creatures put together.

Certainly, dear friends, it is extremely comfortahle to trust in God. I find it so, and therefore speak. To roll your burden upon the Lord, since he will sustain you, is a blessed way of being quit of care. We know him to be faithful, and as powerful as he is faithful; and our deiDcndence upon him is the solid foundation of a profound peace.

While it is comfortable, it is also uplifting. If you trust in men, the best of men, you are likely to be lowered by your trust. We are apt to cringe before those who patronize us. If your prosperity depends upon a person’s smile, you are tempted to pay homage even when it is undeserved. The old saying mentions a certain person as “knowing on which side his bread is buttered.” Thousands are practically degraded by their trusting in men. But when our reliance is upon the living God we are raised by it, and elevated both morally and spiritually. You may bow in deepest reverence before God, and yet there will be no fawning. You may lie in the dust before the Majesty of heaven, and yet not be dishonoured by your humility; in fact, it is our greatness to be nothing in the presence of the Most High.

This confidence in God makes men strong. I shoidd advise the enemy not to oppose the man who trusts in God. In the long run he will be beaten, as Haman found it with Mordecai. He had been warned of this by Zeresh, his wife, and his wise men, who said, “If Mordecai be of the seed of the Jews, before whom thou hast begun to fall, thou shalt not prevail against him, but shalt surely fall before him.” Contend not with a man who has God at his back. Years ago the Mentonese desired to break away from the dominion of the Prince of Monaco. They therefore drove out his agent. The prince came with his army, not a very great one, it is true, but still formidable to the Mentonese. I know not what the high and mighty princeling was not going to do; but the news came that the King of Sardinia was coming up in the rear to help the Mentonese, and therefore his lordship of Monaco very prudently retired to his own rock. When a believer stands out against evil he may- be sure that the Lord of hosts will not be far away. The enemy shall hear the dash of his horse-hoof and the blast of his trumpet, and shall flee before him. Wherefore be of good courage, and compel the world to say of you, “He trusted in the Lord that he would deliver him.”

11. Secondly, I want you to follow me briefly in considering the

“LET HIM DELIYEB HIM NOW.” 553

TEST WHICH IS THE ESSENCE OF THE TAUXT wHch was hurled by the mockers against our Lord —” Let him deliver him now, if he will have

him.” „

Such a test will come to all believers. It may come as a taunt ±rom enemies; it will certainly come as a trial of your faith. The arch-enemy will assuredly hiss out, “Let him deliver him, seemg he delighted in him.” 7.7

This taunt has about it the appearance of leing very logical, and indeed in a measure so it is. If God has promised to deliver us, and we have openly professed to believe the promise, it is only natural that others should say, “Let us see whether he does deliver him. This man believes that the Lord will help him; and he must help him, or else the man’s faith is a delusion.” This is the sort of test to which we ourselves would have put others before our conversion, and we cannot object to be proved in the same manner ourselves. Perhaps we incline to run away from the ordeal, but this very shrinking should be a solenin call to us to question the genuineness of that faith which we are afraid to test. “He trusted on the Lord,” says the enemy, “that he would deliver him: let him deliver him”; and surely, however malicious the design, there is no escaping from the logic of the challenge.

It is peculiarly painful to have this stern inference driven home to you in the hour of sorrow. Because one cannot deny the fairness of the appeal, it is all the more trying. In the time of depression of spirit it is hard to have one’s faith questioned, or the ground on which it stands made a matter of dispute. Either to be mistaken m one’s belief, or to have no real faith, or to find the ground of one’s faith fail is an exceedingly grievous thing. Yet as our Lord was not spared this painful ordeal, we must not expect to be kept clear of it, and Satan knows well how to work these questions, till the poison of them sets the blood on fire. “He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him; let him deliver him;” he hurls this fiery dart into the soul, till the man is sorely wounded, and can scarcely hold his ground.

The taunt is specially joom<?f, and jyersonal. It is put thus: ‘’He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him” ,• “Do not come to us with your fiddle-faddle about God’s helping all his chosen. Here is a man who is one of his people, will he helihim? Do not talk to us big things about Jehovah at the Eed Sea, or in the Desert of Sinai, or God helping his people in ages past. Here is a living man before us who trusted in God that he would deliver him: let him deliver him now.” You know how Satan will pick out one of the most afilicted, and pointing his fingers at him will cry, “Let him deliver him.” Brethren, the test is fair. God will be true to every believer. If any one child of God could be lost, it would be quite enough to enable the devil to spoil all the glory of God for ever. If one promise of God to one of his people should fail, that one failure would suffice to mar the veracity of the Lord to all eternity; they would pubhsh it in the “Diabolical Gazette,” and in every street of Tophet they would howl it out, “God has failed. God has broken his promise. God has ceased to be faithful to his people.” It would then be a horrible reproach — “He trusted in God to deliver him, but he did not deliver him.”

Much emphasis lies in its being in the present tense: “He ti*U8ted in God that he would deliver him: let him deliver him now I see Thee,

0 Lord Jesus, thou art not now in the wilderness, where the fiend is saying, “If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.” No. Thou art nailed to the tree; thine enemies have hemmed thee in. The legionaries of Bome are at the foot of the cross, the scribes and Pharisees and raging Jews compass thee about. There is no escape from death for thee! Hence their cry — “Let him deliver him wow?.” Ah, brothers and sisters! this is how Satan assails us, using our present and pressing tribulations as the barbs of his arrows. Yet here also there is reason and logic in the challenge.

If God does not deliver his servants at one time as well as another, he has not kept his promise. For a man of truth is always true, and a promise once given always stands. A promise cannot be broken now and then, and yet the honour of the person giving it be maintained by his keeping it at other times. The word of a true man stands always good: it is good now. This is logic, bitter logic, cold steel logic, logic which seems to cut right down your backbone and cleave your chine. “He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him now.” Yet this hard logic can be turned to comfort.

1 told you a story the other day of the brother in Guy’s Hospital to whom the doctors said that he must undergo an operation which was extremely dangerous. They gave him a week to consider whether he would submit to it. He was troubled for his young wife and children, and for his work for the Lord. A friend left a bunch of flowers for him, with this verse as its motto, “He trusted in God; let him deliver him now.” “Yes,” he thought, ‘’now:’ In prayer he cast himself upon the Lord, and felt in his heart, “Come on, doctors, I am ready for you.” When the next morning came, he refused to take chloroform, for he desired to go to heaven in his senses. He bore the operation manfully, and he is yet alive. “He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him” then and there, and the Lord did so. In this lies the brunt of the battle.

A Christian man may be beaten in business, he may fail to meet all demands, and then Satan yells, “Let him deliver him now.’’ The poor man has been out of work for two or three months, tramping the streets of London until he has worn out his boots; he has been brought to his last penny. I think I hear the laugh of the Prince of Darkness as he cries, “Let him deliver him now.” Or else the believer is very ill in body, and low in spirit, and then Satan howls, “Let him deliver him now.” Some of us have been in very trying positions. We were moved with indignation because of deadly error, and we spoke plainly, but men refused to hear. Those we relied upon deserted us; good men sought their own ease and would not march with us, and we had to bear testimony for despised truth alone, until we were ourselves despised. Then the adversary shouted, “Let him deliver him wo «^.” Be it so! We do not refuse the test. Our God whom we serve will deliver us. We will not bow down to modern thought nor worship the image which human wisdom has set up. Our God is God both of hills and of valleys. He will not fail his servants, albeit that for

I a while lie forbears that lie may try their faith. We dare accept the test, and say,” Let him deliver us now.’’^

Beloved friends, we need not be afraid of this taunt if it is brought by adversaries; for, after all, the test will come to us apart from any malice, for it is inevitable. All the faith you have will be tried. I can. see you heaping it up. How rich you are! What a pile of faith! Friend, you are almost perfect! Open the furnace door and put the heap in. Do you shrink? See how it shrivels! Is there anything left? Bring hither a magnifying glass. Is this all that is left? Yes, thia is an that remains of the heap. You say, “I trusted in God.” Yes but you had reason to cry, “Lord, help my unbelief.” Brethren, we have not a tithe of the faith we think we have. But whether or not, all our faith must be tested. God builds no ships but what he sends to sea. In living, in losing, in working, in weeping, in suffering, or in strivings God will find a fitting crucible for every single grain of the precious faith which he has given us. Then he will come to us and say — You trusted in God that he would deliver you, and you shall be delivered now. How you will open your eyes as you see the Lord’s hand of deliverance! AVhat a man of wonders you will be when you tell in. your riper years to the younger people how the Lord delivered you I Why, there are some Christians I know of who, like the ancient mariner, could detain even a wedding guest with their stories of God’s wonders on the deep.

Yes, the test will come again and again. May the gibes of adversaries only make us ready for the sterner ordeals of the judgment to come. 0 my dear friends, examine your religion. You have a great deal of it, some of you; but what of its quality? Can your religion stand the test of poverty, and scandal, and scorn? Can it stand the test of scientific sarcasm and learned contempt? Will your religion stand the test of long sickness of body and depression of spirit caused by weakness? What are you doing amid the common trials of life? What will you do in the swellings of Jordan? Examine well your f aith since all hangs there. Some of us who have lain for weeks together, peering through the thin veil which parts us from the unseen, have been made to feel that nothing will suffice us but a promise which will answer the taunt, “Let him deliver us now.’’’’

III. I shall finish, in the third place, dear friends, by noticing the ANSWER to the test. God does deliver those who trust in him. God’s interposition for the faithful is not a dream, but a substantial reality. “Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.” All history proves the faithfulness of God. Those who trust God have been in all sorts of troubles; but they have always been delivered. They have been bereaved. What a horrible bereavement was that which feU to the lot of Aaron, when his twa sons were struck dead for their profanity in the presence of Godl “And Aaron held his peace”! What grace was there! Thus wilL the Lord sustain you also should he take away the desire of your eyes with a stroke. Grave after grave has the good man visited till it seemed that his whole race was buried, and yet his heart has not been, broken; but he has bowed his soul before the will of the ever-blessed One. Thus has the Lord delivered his afflicted one by sustaining him.

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In other ways the bush has burned, and 3’et has not been consumed. Remember the multiplied and multiform trials of Job. Yet God sustained him to the end so that he did not charge God foolishly, but held fast his faith in the Most High. If ever you are called to the afflictions of Job you will also be called to the sustaining grace of Job. Some of God’s servants have been defeated in their testimony. They have borne faithful witness for God, but they have been rejected of men. It has been their lot, like Cassandra, to prophesy the truth, but not to be believed. Such was Jeremiah, who was born to a heritage of scorn from those whose benefit he sought. Yet he was delivered. He shrank not from being faithful. His courage could not be silenced. By integrity he was delivered.

Godly men have been despised and misrepresented, and yet have been delivered. Remember David and his envious brethren, David and the malignant Saul, David when his men spake of stoning him. Yet he took off the giant’s head; yet he came to the throne; yet the Lord built him a house.

Some of God’s servants have been bitterly persecuted, but God has delivered them. Daniel came forth from the lions’ den, and the three holy children from the midst of the burning fiery furnace. These are only one or two out of millions who trusted God and he delivered them. Out of all manner of ill the Lord delivered them. God brought this crowd of witnesses through all their trials unto his throne, where they rest with Jesus, and share the triumph of their Master at this very day. 0 my timid brother, nothing has happened to you but what is common to men. Your battle is not different from the warfare of the rest of the saints; and as God has delivered them he will deliver you also, seeing you put your trust in him.

But God’s ways of deliverance are his own. He does not deliver according to the translation put upon “deliverance” by the ribald throng. He does not deliver according to the interpretation put upon <’ deliverance “by our shrinking flesh and blood. He delivers, but it is in his own way. Let me remark that, if God delivers you and me in the same way as he delivered his own Son, we can have no cause of complaint. If the deliverance which he vouchsafed to us is of the same kind as that which he vouchsafed to the Only Begotten, we may well be content. Well, what kind of a deliverance was that? Did the Father tear up the cross from the earth? Did he proceed to draw out the nails from the sacred hands and feet of his dear Son? Did he set him down upon that ‘* green hill far away, beyond the city wall,” and place in his hand a sword of fire with which to smite his adversaries? Did he bid the earth open and swallow up all his foes? No; nothing ol the kind. Jehovah did not interpose to spare his Son a single pang; but he let him die. He let him be taken as a dead man down from the cross and laid in a tomb. Jesus went through with his suffering to the bitter end. 0 brothers and sisters, this may be God’s waj of delivering us.. We have trusted in God that he would deliver us; and his rendering of his promise is, that he will enable us to go through with it; we shall suffer to the last, and triumph in so doing.

Yet God’s way of delivering those who trust in him is always the best way. If the Father had taken his Son down from the cross, what would have been the result? Redemption unaccomplished, salvation work undone, and Jesus returning with his life-work unfinished. This would not have been deliverance, but defeat. It was much better for our Lord Jesus to die. Now he has paid the ransom for his elect, and having accomplished the great purpose of atonement, he has slept a while in the heart’ of the earth, and now has ascended to his throne in the endless glories of heaven. It was deliverance of the fullest kind; for from the pangs of his death has come the joy of life to his redeemed. It is not Grod’s will that every mountain should be levelled, but that we should be the stronger for climbing the Hill Difficulty. God will deliver; he must deliver, but he will do it in our cases, as in the case of our Lord, in the best possible manner.

Anyhow, he will deliver his chosen: the taunt of the adversary shall not cause our Grod to forget or forego his people. I know that the Lord will no more fail me than any other of his servants. He will not leave a faithful witness to his adversaries. “I know that my Avenger liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.” Is this also your confidence? Then do not sit down in sorrow, and act as though you despaired. Quit yourselves like men. Be strong, fear not. Cast yourselves on the love that never changeth and never fainteth, and the Lord will answer all the revilings of Rabshakeh, and the blusterings of Sennacherib.

There are times when we may use this text to our comfort. “Let him deliver him now,” saith the text, “if he will have him.” You, dear friends, who have never believed in the Lord Jesus Christ before, how I wish you could try him now! You feel this morning full of sin, and full of need. Come, then, and trust the Saviour now. See whether he will not save you 710 w. Is there one day in the year in which Jesus cannot save a sinner? Come and see whether the 1 7th of June is that day. Try whether he will not deliver you now from the guilt, the penalty, the power of sin. Why not come? You have never, perhaps, been in the Tabernacle before, and when coming here this morning you did not think of finding the Saviour. Oh, that the Saviour may find you! Jesus Christ is a Saviour every day, all the year round. Whoever cometh to him shall find eternal life now. “Oh,” you say, “I am in such an unfit state; I am in all the deshabille of my carelessness and godlessness.” Come along, man, come along, just as you are. Tarry not for improvement or arrangement, for both of these Jesus will give you; come and put your trust in the great Sacrifice for sin, and he will deliver you — deliver you nov Lord, save the sinner, now!

Others of you are the children of God, but you are in peculiar trouble. Well, what are you going to do? You have always trusted in God before; are you going to doubt him now? “0 my dear sir, you do not know my distress; I am the most afflicted person in the Tabernacle.” Be it so; but you trusted in the Lord the past twenty years, and I do not believe that you have seen any just cause for denying him

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your confidence now. Did you say that you have known him from your youth up? What! you seventy years of age? Then you are too near home to begin distrusting your heavenly Father. That will never do. You have been to sea, and have weathered many a storm in mid-ocean, and are you now going to be drowned in a ditch? Think not so. The Lord will deliver you even now. Do not let us suppose that we have come where boundless love and infinite wisdom cannot reach us. Do not fancy that you have leaped upon a ledge of rock so high as to be out of reach of the everlasting arm. If you had done so I would

still cry Throw yourself, down into the arms of God, and trust that

he will not let you be destroyed.

It may be that some of us are in trouble about the church and the faith. We have defended God’s truth as well as we could, and spoken out against deadly error; but craft and numbers have been against us, and at present things seem to have gone wrong. The good are timid, and the evil are false. They say, ‘* He trusted in God: let him deliver him now.” Sirs, he will deliver us now. We will throw our soul once more into this battle, and see if the Lord does not vindicate his truth. If we have not spoken in God’s name we are content to go back to the dust from whence we sprang; but if we have spoken God’s truth we defy the whole confederacy to prevail against it.

Peradventure, I speak to some missionary, who is mourning over a time of great trial in a mission which is dear to his heart. Ah, dear friend! Christ intended that the gospel should repeat his own experience, and then should triumph like himself. The gospel lives by being killed, and conquers by defeat. Cast it where you will, it always falls upon its feet. You need not be afraid of it under any trial. Just now, the wisdom of man is its worst foe, but the Lord will deliver it now. The gospel lives and reigns. Tell it out among the heathen, that the Lord reigneth from the tree, and from that tree of the curse he issues his supreme commands. The self-same day in which Jesus died, he took with him into his kingdom and his inmost paradise a thief who had hung at his side. He liveth and reigneth for ever and -ever, and calleth to himself whomsoever he hath chosen. Let us drown the taunts of the adversary with our shouts of Hallelujah! The Lord shall reign for ever and ever. Hallelujah. Amen!

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon — Psalm cxix.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book” — 196, 34, 37 (Part II.).

Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, April 18th, 1886, by
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

“Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.** — Matthew xxvii. 45.

From nine till noon the usual degree of light was present; so that there was time enough for our Lord’s adversaries to behold and insult his sufferings. There could be no mistake about the fact that he was really nailed to the cross; for he was crucified in broad daylight. We are fully assured that it was Jesus of Nazareth, for both friends and foes were eye-witnesses of his agonies: for three long hours the Jews sat down and watched him on the cross, making jests of his miseries. I feel thankful for those three hours of light; for else the enemies of our faith would have questioned whether in very deed the blessed body of our Master was nailed to the tree, and would have started fancies as many as the bats and owls which haunt the darkness. Where would have been the witnesses of this solemn scene if the sun had been hidden from morn till night? As three hours of light gave opportunity for inspection and witness-bearing, we see the wisdom which did not allow it to close too soon.

Never forget that this miracle of the closing of the eye of day at high noon was performed by our Lord in his weakness. He had walked the sea, and raised the dead, and healed the sick, in the days of his strength; but now he has come to his lowest, the fever is on him, he is faint and thirsty. He hangs on the borders of dissolution; yet has he power to darken the sun at noon. He is still very God of very God:” Behold, a purple torrent run

Down from his hands and head,
The crimson tide puts out the sun;
His groans awake the dead.”

If he can do this in his weakness, what is he not able to do in his strength? Fail not to remember that this power was displayed in a sphere in which he did not usually put forth his might. The sphere of Christ is that of goodness and benevolence, and consequently of light. When he enters the sphere of darknessmaking, and of working judgment, he engages in what he calls his strange work. Wonders of terror are his left-handed deeds. It is but now and then that he causes the sun to go down at noon, and darkens the earth in the clear day (Amos viii. 9). If our Lord can

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make darkness ab will as he dies, what glory may we not expect now that he lives to be the light of the city of God for ever? The Lamb ig the liht; and what a light! The heavens bear the impress of his dyingpower, and lose their brightness; shall not the new heavens and the new earth attest the power of the risen Lord? The thick darkness around the dying Christ is the robe of the Omnipotent: he liveth again, all power is in his hands, and all that power he will put forth to

bless his chosen..,,, ^. ^,

What a call must that mid-day midnight have been to the cal-eless ‘sons of men! They knew not that the Son of God was among them; nor that he was working out human redemption. The grandest hour in all history seemed likely to pass by unheeded, when, suddenly, night hastened from her chambers and usurped the day. Every one asked his fellow, “What means this darkness?” Business stood still: the plouo-h stayed in mid-furrow, and the axe paused uplifted. It was the middle of the day, when men are busiest; but they made a general pause. Not only on Calvary, but on every hill, and in every valleythe o-loom settled down. There was a halt in the caravan of life, one could move unless they groped their way like the blind. The master of the house called for a light at noon, and his servant treniblingrly obeyed the unusual summons. Other lights were twinkling, and Jerusalem was as a city by night, only iiien were not in their beds. How stnrtled were mankind! Around the great death-bed an appropriate quiet was secured. I doubt not that a shuddering awe came over the masses of the people, and the thoughtful f.-resaw terrible things. Those who had stood about the cross, and had dared to insult the majesty ot Jesus were paralyzed with fear. They ceased their ribaldry, and with it their cruel exultation. They were cowed though not convinced, even the basest of them; while the better sort “smote their breasts and returned.” As many as could do so, no doubt, stumbled to their chambers, and endeavoured to hide themselves, for fear of avvtul judgments which they feared were near. I do not wonder that there should be traditions of strange things that were said during the hush of that darkness. Those whispers of the past may or may not be true they have been the subject of learned controversy, but the labour of the dispute was energy ill spent. Yet we could not have wondered if one did say as he is reported to have done, “God is suffering, or the world is perishing.” Nor should I drive from my beliefs the poetic legend that an Egyptian pilot passing down the river heard among the reedy banks a voice out of the rustling rushes, whispering, “The great Pan is dead.” Truly, the God of nature was expiring, and things less tender than the reeds by the river might well tremble at the sound thereol.

We are told that this darkness was over all the land; and Luke puts it, * over all the earth.” That portion of our globe which was then veiled in natural night was not affected thereby; but to all men awake, and at their employment, it was the advertisement of a great and so emn event. It was strange beyond all experience, and all men marvelled; for when the light should have been brightest, all things were obscured for the space of three hours., ^.

There must be great teaching in this darkness; for when we come so near the cross, which is the centre of history, every event is lull of meaning.

THE THREE HOURS DARKNE^ 561

Light will come out of this darkness. I love to feel the solemnity of the three hours of death-shade, and to sit down therein and meditate, with no companion but the august sufferer, around whom that darkness lowered. I am going to speak of it in four ways, as the Holy Spirit may help me. First, let us bow our spirits in the presence of a miracle which amazes us; secondly, let us regard this darkness as a veil which conceals; thirdly, as a symbol which instructs; and fourthly, as a display of sympathy, which forewarns us by the prophecies which it implies.

I. First, let us view this darkness as A miracle which amazes us.

It may seem a trite observation that this darkness was altojiether out of the natural course of things. Since the world began was it not heard that at high noon there should be darkness over all the land. It was out of the order of nature altogether. Some deny miracles; and if they also deny God, I will not at this time deal with them. But it is very strange that any one who believes in God should doubt the possibility of miracles. It seems to me that, granted the being of a God, miracle is to be expected as an occasional declaration of his independent and active will. He may make certain rules for his actions, and it may be his wisdom to keep to them; but surely he must reserve to himself the liberty to depart from his own laws, or else he has in a measure laid aside his personal Godhead, deified law, and set it up above himself. It ‘would not increase our idea of the glory of his Godhead if we could be assured that he had made himself subject to rule, and tied his own hands from ever acting except in a certain manner. From the self-existence and freedom of will which enter into our very conception of God, we are led to expect that sometimes he should not keep to the methods which he follows as his general rule. This has led to the universal conviction that miracle is a proof of Godhead. The general works of creation and providence are to my mind the best proofs; but the common heart of our race, for some reason or other, looks to miracle as surer evidence; thus proving that miracle is expected of God. Although the Lord makes it his order that there shall be day and night, he in this case with abundant reason interposes three hours of night in the centre of a day. Behold the reason. The unusual in lower nature is made to consort with the unusual in the dealings of nature’s Lord. Certainly this miracle was most congruous with that greater miracle which was happening in the death of Christ. Was not the Lord himself departing from all common ways? Was he not doing that which had never been done from the beginning, and would never be done again? That man should die is so common a thing as to be deemed inevitable. We are not startled now at the sound of a funeral knell: we have become familiar with the grave. As the companions of our youth die at our side we are not seized with amazement; for death is everywhere about us and within us. But that the Son of God should die, this is beyond all expectation, and not only above nature, but contrary thereto. He who is equal with God deigns to hang upon the cross, and die. I know of nothing that seems more out of rule and beyond expectation than this. The sun darkened at noon is a fit accompaniment of the death of Jesus. Is it not so?

Further, this miracle was not only out of the order of nature, but it was one which would have leen;pronounced impossible. It is not possible gg2 METROPOLITAN TABBRNACLB PULPIT.

that there should be an eclipse of the sun at the time of the full moon The moon at the time when she is m her full is not ma position in which she could possibly cast her shadow upon the earth. The Passover was at the time of the full moon, and therefore it was not possible that the sun should then undergo an eclipse. This darkening of the sun was not strictly an astronomical eclipse; the darkness was doubtless produced in some other way: yet to those who were present it did seem to be a total eclipse of the sun — a thing impossible. Ah, brothers! when we come to deal with man, and the fall, and sin, and God, and Christ, and the atonement, we are at home with impossibilities. We have now reached a region where prodigies, and marvels, and surprises, are the order of the day: sublimities become commouplaces when we come within the circle of eternal love. Yea, more; we have now quitted the solid land of the possible, and have put out to sea, where we see the works of the Lord, and his wondere in the deep. When we think of impossibiUties in other spheres we start back; but the way of the cross is ablaze with the divine, and we soon perceive that “with God all things are possible.” See, then, in the death ot Jesus, the possibility of the impossible 1 Behold here how the Son of God can die We sometimes pause when we meet with an expression in a hymn which implies that God can suffer or die; we think that the poet has used too great a license: yet it behoves us to refrain from hypercriticism, since in Holy Writ there are words like it. We even read (Acts XX 28) of” the church of God which he hath purchased with his own blood ‘’ — the blood of God I Ah well! I am not careful to defend the language of the Holy Ghost; but in its presence I take liberty to jastity the° words which we sang just now:

“Well might the sun in darknees hide, And shut his glories in. When God, the mighty Maker, died For man, the creature’s sin.” I will not venture to explain the death of the incarnate God. I am content to believe it, and to rest my hope upon it. ,, ^, j.

How should the Holy One have sin laid upon him? That also 1 do not know. A wise man has told us, as if it were an axiom, that the imputation or the non-imputation of sin is an impossibility. Be it so: we have become familiar with such things since we have beheld the cross Things which men call absurdities have become foundation truths to us. The doctrine of the cross is to them that perish toolishness. We do know that in our Lord was no sin, and yet he his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree. We do not know how the innocent Son of God could be permitted to suffer for sins that were not his own; it amazes us that justice should permit one so perfectly holy to be forsaken of his God, and to cry out, - Eloi, Eloi, lama sabach. thani?” But it was so; and it was so by the decree of the highest justice; and we rejoice therein. As it was so, that the sun was eclipsed when it was impossible that he should be eclipsed, so has Jesus performed on our behalf, in the agonies of his death, things which m the ordinary judgment of men, must be set down as utterly impossible. Our faith is at home in wonder-land, where the Lord s thoughts are seen to be as high above our thoughts as the heavens are above the earth.

Concerning this miracle, I have also further to remark that Ms darkening of the sun surpassed all ordinary and natural eclipses. It lasted longer than an ordinary eclipse, and it came in a different manner. According to Luke, the darkness all over the land came first, and the sun was darkened afterwards: the darkness did not begin with the sun, but mastered the sun. It was unique and supernatural. Now, among all griefs no grief is comparable to the grief of Jesus: of all woes none can” parallel the woes of our great Substitute. As strongest light casts deepest shade, so has the surprising love of Jesus cost him a death such as falls not to the common lot of men. Others die, but this man is “obedient unto death.” Others drink the fatal draught, yet reck not of its wormwood and gall; but he “tasted death.” “He poured out his soul unto death.” Every part of his being was darkened with that extraordinary death-shade; and the natural darkness outside of him did but shroud a special death which was entirely by itself

And now, when I come to think of it, this darkness appears to have teen most natural and fitting. If we had to write out the story of our Lord’s death we could not omit the darkness without neglecting a most important item. The darkness seems a part of the natural furniture of that great transaction. Read the story through and you are not at all startled with the darkness; after once familiarizing your mind with the thought that this is the Son of Grod, and that he stretches his hands to the cruel death of the cross, you do not wonder at the rending of the veil of the temple; you are not astonished at the earthquake or at the rising of certain of the dead. These are proper attendants of our Lord’s passion; and so is the darkness. It drops into its place, ip seems as if it could not have been otherwise.

“That sacrifice! — the death of him — The high and ever Holy One! *
Well may the conscious heaven grow dim,
And blacken the beholding sun.”

For a moment think again. Has not it appeared as if the death which that darkness shrouded was also a natural part of the great whole? We have grown at last to feel as if the death of the Christ of God were an integral part of human history. You cannot take it out of man’s chronicle; can you? Introduce the Fall, and see Paradise Lost, and you cannot make the poem complete till you have introduced that greater Man who did redeem us, and by his death gave us our Paradise Regained. It is a singular characteristic of all true miracles, that though your wonder never ceases they never appear to be unnatural: they are marvellous, but never monstrous. The miracles of Christ dovetail into the general run of human history: we cannot see how the Lord could be on earth and Lazarus not be raised from the dead when the grief of Martha and Mary had told its tale. We cannot see how the disciples could have been tempest-tossed on the Lake of Galilee and the Christ not walk on the water to deliver them. Wonders of power are expected parts of the narrative where Jesus is. Everything fits into its place with surrounding facts. A Romish miracle is always monstrous and devoid of harmony with all beside it. What if St. Winifred’s head did come up from the well and speak from the coping to the astonished peasant who was about to draw water! I do not care whether it did or did not; it does not alter history a bit, nor even colour it; it is tagged on to the record, and is no part of it. But the miracles of Jesus, this of the darkness among them, are essential to human history; and especially is this so in the case of his death and this great darkness which shrouded it. All things in human story converge to the cross, which seems not to be an afterthought nor an expedient, but the fit and foreordained channel through which love should run to guilty men.

I cannot say more from want of voice, though I had many more things to say. Sit down, and let the thick darkness cover you till you cannot even see the cross, and only know that out of reach of mortal eye your Lord wrought out the redemption of his people. He wrought in silence a miracle of patience and of love, by which light has come to those who sit in darkness and in the valley of the shadow of death.

II. Secondly, I desire you to regard tins darkness as A veil which CONCEALS. The Christ is hanging on yonder tree. I see the dreadful cross. I can see the thieves on either side. I look around, and I sorrowfully mark that motley group of citizens from Jerusalem, and scribes, and priests, and strangers from different countries, mingled with Roman soldiers. They turn their eyes on him, and for the most part gaze with cruel scorn upon the Holy One who is in the centre. In truth it is an awful sight. Mark those dogs of the common sort and those bulls of Bashan of more notable rank, who all unite to dishonour the meek and lowly One. I must confess 1 never read the story of the Master’s death, knowing what I do of the pain of crucifixion, without deep anguish: crucifixion was a death worthy to have been invented by devils. The pain which it involved was immeasurable; I will not torture you by describing it. I know dear hearts that cannot read of it without tears, and without lying awake for nights afterwards.

But there was more than anguish upon Calvary: ridicule and contempt embittered all. Those jests, those cruel gibes, those mockeries, those thrustings out of the tongue, what shall we say of these? At times I have felt some little sympathy with the French Prince who cried, “If I had been there with my guards, I would soon have swept those wretches away.” It was too terrible a sight: the pain of the victim was grievous enough, but the abominable wickedness of the mockers who could bear? Let us thank God that in the middle of the crime there came down a darkness which rendered it impossible for them to go further with it Jesus must die; for his pains there must be no alleviation, and from death there must be for him no deliverance; but the scoffers must be silenced. Most effectually their mouths were closed by the dense darkness which shut them in.

What I see in that veil is, first of all, that it was a concealment for those guilty enemies. Did you ever think of that? It is as if God himself said, “I cannot bear it. I will not see this infamy I Descend, 0 veill” Down fell the heavy shades.

“I asked the heavens, ‘What foe to God hath done
This unexampled deed?’ The heavens exclaiaa,
‘Twas man; and we in horror snatched the sun
From such a spectacle of guilt and shame.’”

Thank God, the cross is a hiding-place. It furnishes for guilty men a shelter from the all-seeing eye, so that justice need not see and strike. When God lifts up his Son, and makes him visible, he hides the sin of men. He says that “the times of their ignorance he winks at.” Even the greatness of their sin he casts behind his back, so that he need not see i but mfy indulge his long-suffering, and permit his pity to endure their provocations. It must have grieved the heart of the eternal God to see such wanton cruelty of men towards him who went about doing good, and healing all manner of diseases. It was horrible to see the teachers of the people rejecting him with scorn, the seed of Israel, who ought to have accepted him as their Messiah, casting him out as a thing despised and abhorred. I therefore feel gratitude to God for bidding that darkness cover all the land, and end that shameful scene. I would say to any guilty ones here: Thank God that the Lord Jesus has made it possible f<r your sins to be hidden more completely than by thick darkness. Thank God that in Christ he does not see jou with that stern eye of justice which would involve yotir destruction. Had not Jesus interposed, whose death you have despised, you had wrought out in your own death the result of your own sin long ngo; but for your Lord’s sake you are allowed to live as if God did not see you. This long-suffering is meant to bring you to repentance. Will you not come?

But, further, that darkness was a sacred concealment for the blessed Perso7i of our divine Lord. So to speak, the angels found for their King a pavilion of thick clouds, in the which his Majesty might be sheltered in its hour of misery. It was too much for wicked eyes to gaze so rudely on that immaculate Peison. Had not his enemies stripped him naked, and cast lots upon his vesture? Therefore it was meet that the holy manhood should at length find suitable concealment. It was not fit that brutal eyes should see the lines made upon that blessed form by the graving tool of sorrow. It was not meet that revellers should see the contortions of that sacred frame, indwelt with Deity, while he was being broken beneath the iron rod of divine wrath on our behalf. It was meet that God should cover him, so that none should see all he did and all he bare when he was made sin for us. I bless God devoutly for thus hiding my Lord away: thus was he screened from eyes which were not fit to see the Sun much less to look upon the Sun of Righteousness.

This darkness also warns us, even us who are most reverent. This darkness tells us all that the Passion is a great mystery, into which we cannot pry, I try to explain it as substitution, and I feel that where the language of Scripture is ex[)licit, 1 may and must be explicit too. But yet I feel that the idea of substitution does not cover the whole of the matter, and that no human conception can completely grasp the whole of the dread mystery. It was wrought in darkness, because the full, far-reaching meaning and result cannot be beheld of finite mind. Tell me the death of the Lord Jesus was a grand example of self-sacrifice — I can see that and much more. Tell me it was a wondrous obedience to the will of God — I can see that aird much more. Tell me it was the bearing of what ought to have been borne by myriads of sinners of the human race, as the chastisement of their sin — I can see that, and found my best hope upon it. But do not tell me that this is all that is in the cross. No, great as this would be, there is much mora

^gg METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE PULPIT.

in our Redeemer’s death. God only knows the love of God: Christ only knows all that he a«complished when he bowed his head and gave up the ghost. There are common mysteries of nature into which it were irreverence to pry; but this is a divine mystery, before which we put our shoes from off our feet, for the place called Oalvary is holy ground. God veiled the cross in darkness, and in darkness much of its deeper meaning lies; not because God would not reveal it, but because we have not capacity enough to discern it all. God was manifest in the flesh, and in that human flesh he put away sin by his own sacrifice: this we all know; but “without controversy great is the mystery of godliness.”

Once again, this veil of darkness also pictures to me the way in which the powers of darkness will always endeavour to conceal the cross of Christ. We fight with darkness when we try to preach the cross. “This is your hour, and the power of darkness,” said Christ; and I doubt not that the infernal hosts made in that hour a fierce ass lult upon the spirit of our Lord. Thus much also we know, that if the prince of darkness be anywhere in force, it is sure to be where Christ is lifted up. To becloud the cross is the grand object of the enemy of souls. Did you ever notice it? These fellows who hate the gospel will let every other doctrine pass muster; but if the atonement be preached, and the truths which grow out of it, straightway they are aroused. Nothing provokes the devil like the cross. Modern theology has for its mam object the obscuration of the doctrine of atonement. These modern cuttle-fishes make the water of life black with tneir ink. They make out sin to be a trifle, and the punishment of it to be a temporary business; and thus they degrade the remedy by underrating the disease. We are not ignorant of their devices. Expect, my brethren, that the clouds of darkness will gather as to a centre around the cross, that they may hide it from the sinner’s view. But expect this also, that there darkness shall meet its end. Light springeth out of that darkness — the light eternal of the undying Son of God, who having risen from the dead, liveth for ever to scatter the darkness of evil.

IIL Now we pass on to speak of this darkness as A symbol which

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The veil falls down and conceals; but at the same time, as an emblem, it reveals. It seems to say, “Attempt not to search within, but learn from the veil itself: it hath cherub work upon it.” This darkness teaches us what Jesus suffered: it aids us to guess at the griefs which we may not actually see.. ^, ■,. i r n i. -

The darkness is the symbol of the wrath of God which fell on those who slew his only begotten Son. God was angry, and his frown removed the light of day. Well might he be angry, when sin was murdering his only Son; when the Jewish husbandmen were saying, ihis is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. This is God’s wrath towards all mankind, for practically all men concurred in the death of Jesus. That wrath has brought men into darkness; they are ignorant, blinded, bewildeied. They have come to love darkness lather than light because their deeds are evil. In that darkness they do not repent, but go on to reject the Christ of God. into this darkness God cannot look upon them in complacency; but lie viewa

THE THIiEE HOURS’ DARKNESS. 667

them as children of darkness, and heirs of wrath, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.

The symbol also tells us luhat our Lord Jesus Christ ondurpd. the darkness outside of him was the figure of the darkness that was within him. In Gethsemane a thick darkness fell upon our Lord’s spu-it. He was “exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.” His joy was communion with God — that joy was gone, and he was in the dark. His day was the lisht of his Father’s face: that face was hidden and a terrible night gathered around him. Brothers, I should sin against that veil if I were to pretend that I could tell you what the sorrow was which oppressed the Saviour’s soul: only so far can I speak as it has been given me to have fellowship with him in his sufferings. Have you ever felt a deep and overwhelming horror of sin — your own sin and the sins of others? Have you ever seen sin in the light of God’s love? Has it ever darkly hovered over your sensitive conscience? Has an unknown sense of wrath crept over you like midnight gloom; and has it been about jou, around you, above you, and within yon? Have v on felt shut up in your feebleness, and yet shut out from God? Have you looked around and found no help, no comfort even in God — no hope, no peace? In all this you have sipped a little of that salt sea into which our Lord was cast. If, like Abraham, you have felt a horror of great darkness creep over you, then have you had a taste of what your divine Lord snftei-ed when it pleased the Father to bruise him and to put hira to grief. This it was that made him sweat great drops of blood falling to the ground; and this it was which on the cross made him utter that appalling cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me “? It was not the crown of thorns, or the scourge, or the cross which made him cry, but the darkness, the awful darkness of deseriion which oppressed his mind and made him feel like one distraught. All that could comfort him was withdrawn, and all that could distress him was piled upon him. “The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear’? Our Saviour’s spirit was wounded, and he cried, “My heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.” Of all natural and spiritual €omfort he was bereft, and his distress was utter and entire. The darkness of Calvary did not, like an ordinary night, reveal the stars; but it darkened everv lamp of heaven. His strong crying and tears denoted the deep sorrow of his soul. He bore all it was possible for his capacious mind to bear, though enlarged and invigorated by union with the Godhead. He bore the equivalent of hell; nay, not that only, but he bore that which stood instead of ten thousand hells so far as the vindication of the law is concerned. Our Lord rendered in his death agony a homage to justice far greater than if a world had been doomed to destruction. When I have said that, what more can I say? Well may I tell you that this unutterable darkness, this hiding of the Divine face, expresses more of the woes of Jesus than words can ever tell.

Again, I think I see in that darkness, also what it was that Jesus was haitUng with; for we must never forget that the cross was a battle-field to him, wherein he triumphed gloriously. He was fighting then with darkness; with the powers of darkness of which Satan is the head; with the darkness of human ignorance, depravity, and falsehood. The battle thus apparent at Grolgotha has been raging ever since. Then was the conflict at its height; for the chiefs of the two great armies met in personal conflict. The present battle in which you and I take our little share is as nothing compared with that wherein all the powers of darkness in their dense battalions hurled themselves against the Almighty Son of God. He bore their onset, endured the tremendous shock of their assault, and in the end, with shout of victory, he led captivity captive. He by his power and Godhead turned midnight into dny again, and brought back to this world a reign of light which, blessed be God, shall never come to a close. Come to battle again, ye hosts of darkness, if ye dare! The cross has defeated you: the cross shall defeat you. Hallelujah! The cross is the ensign of victory; its light is the death of darkness. The cross is the light-house which guides poor weather-beaten humanity into the harbour of peace: this is the lamp which shines over the door of the great Father’s house to lead his prodigals home.

Let us not be afraid of all the darkness which besets us on our way home, since Jesus is the light which conquers it all.

The darkness never came to an end till the Lord Jesus broke the silence. All had been still, and the darkness had grown terrible. At last he spoke, and his voice uttered a psalm. It was the twenty-second Psalm. “My God,” saith he, “my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Each repeated “Eloi” flashed morning upon the scene. By the time he had uttered the cry *’ Why hast thou forsaken me? “men had begun to see again, and some even ventured to misinterpret his words, more in terror than in ignorance. They said, “He calleth Elias”: they may have meant a mock, but I think not. At any rate there was no heart in what they said, nor in the reply of their fellows. Yet the light had come by which they could see to dip the sponge in vinegar. Brethren, no light will ever come to dark hearts unless Jesus shall speak; and the light will not be clear until we hear the voice oi his sorrows on our behalf, as he cries, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” His voice of grief must be the end of our griefs: his cry out of the darkness must cheer iway our gloom, and bring the heavenly morning to our minds.

You see how much there is in my text. It is a joy to speak on such theme when one is in good health, and full of vigour; then are we as Jfaphtali, a hind let loose; then give we goodly words: but this day I am n pain as to my body, and my mind seems frozen. Nevertheless, the Lord can bless my feeble words, and make you see that in this darkness there is meaning deep and wide which none of us should neglect. If God shall help your meditations this darkness will be light about you.

IV. I come to my fourth point, and my closing words will deal with THE SYMPATHY WHICH PROPHESIES. Do you See the sympathy of nature with her Lord — the sympathy of the sun in the heavens with the Sun of Righteousness? It was not possible for him by whom all things were made to be in darkness, and for nature to remain in the light.

The first sympathetic fact I see is this: all lights are dim token Christ shines not. All is dark when he does nut shine. In the church, if Jesus e not there, what is there? The sun itself could not yield us light if Jesus were withdrawn. The seven golden lamps are ready to go out unless he walks among them, and trims them with the holy oil. Brethren, you soon grow heavy, and your spirits faint, and your hands are weary, if the Christ be not with you. If Jesus Christ be not fully preached, if he be not with us by his Spirit, then everything is in darkness. Obscure the cross, and you have obscured all spiritual teaching. You cannot say, “We will be perspicuous in every other point, and clear upon every other doctrine, but we will shun the atonement, since so many cavil at it. No, sirs, if that candle be put under a bushel the whole house is dark. All theology sympathizes with the cross, and is coloured and tinctured by it. Your pious service, your books, your public worship, will all be in sympathy with the cross one way or another. If the cross is in the dark, so will all your work be.” What think ye of Christ? is the test

To trj both your wrk and your scheme;
You cannot be right in the rest,

Unless you think rightly of him.”

Conjure up your doubts; fabricate your philosophies; and compose your theories: there will be no light in them if the cross be left out. Vain are the sparks of your own making, you shall lie down in sorrow. All our work and travail shall end in vanity unless the work and travail of Christ be our first and sole hope. If you are dark upon that poin, which alone is light, how great is your darkness!

Next, see the dependence of all creation upon Christ, as evidenced by its darkness when he withdraws It was not meet that he who made all worlds should die, and yet all worlds should go on just as they had done. If he suffers eclipse, they must suffer eclipse too; if the Sun of Righteousness be made to set in blood, the natural sun must keep touch with him. I believe, my friends, that there is a much more wonderful sympathy between Christ and the world of nature than any of us have ever dreamed. The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now, because Christ in the Church is in his travail pangs. Christ in his mystical body is in travail, and so the whole creation must wait for the manifestation of the Son of God. We are waiting for the coming of the Lord tVom heaven, and there is no hill or dale, there is no mountain or sea, but what is in perfect harmony with the waiting church. AVonder not that there should be earthquakes in divers places, biasing volcanoes, terrible tempests, and sore spreadings of deadly disease. Marvel not when you hear of dire portents, and things that make one’s heart to quail, for such things must be till the end shall come. Until the great Shepherd shall make his crook into a sceptre, and shall begin his unsnffering reign, this poor earth must bleed at every vein. There must be darkness till these days of delay are ended. You that expect placid history till Chiist shall come expect you know not what. You that think that generous politics shall create order and content, and that the extension of free-trade shall breathe universal peace over the nations, look for the living among the dead. Till the Lord shall come, the word has gone out, “Overturn, overturn, overturn,” and overturned all things must be, not only in other kingdoms, but in this also, till Jesus comes. All that can be shaken shall be shaken, and only his immovable throne and truth shall abide. Now is the time of the Lord’s battle with darkness, and we may not hope as yet for unbroken light.

Dear friends, the sin which darkened Christ and made him die in the

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dark darkens the whole world. The sin that darkened Christ and made him hang upon the cross in the dark is darkening you who do not believe in him, and you will live in the dark and die in the dark unless you get to him who only is the light of the world, and can give light to you. There is no Uht for any man except in Christ; and till you believe in him thick darkness shall blind you, and you shall stumble ia it and perish. That is the lesson I would have you learn.

Another practical lesson is this: If we are in the dark at this time, if our spiiits are sunk in gloom, let us nob despair, for the Lord Christ himself was there. If I have fallen into misery on account of sin, let me not give up all hope, for the Father’s Well-beloved passed through denser darkness than mine. 0 believing soul, if thou art in the dark thou art near the King’s cellars, and there are wines on the lees well refined lying there. Thou hast gotten into the pavilion of the Lord, and now mayelt thou speak with him. You will not find Christ in the gaudy tents of pride, nor in the foul haunts of wickedness: you will not find him where the viol, and the dance, and the flowing,’ bowl inflame the lusts of men, but in the house of mourning you will meet the Man of Sorrows. He is not where Herodias dances, nor where Bernice displays her charms; but he is where the woman of a sorrowful spirit moves her lips in prayer. He is never absent where penitence sits in darkness and bewails her faults.

“Yes, Lord, in hours of gloom,

When shadows fill my room,

When pain breathes forth its groans,

And grief its sighs and moans,

Then thou art near.”

If you are under a cloud, feel after your Lord, if haply you may find him. Stand still in your black sorrow, and say, “0 Lord, the preacher tells me that thy cross once stood in such darkness as this — 0 Jesus hear me! “He will respond to you: the Lord will look out of the pillar of cloud, and shed a light upon you. ♦’ I know their sorrows,” saith he. He is no stranger to heart-break. Christ also once suffered for sm. Trust him, and he will cause his light to shine upon you. Lean upon him, and he will bring you up out of the gloomy wilderness into the land of rest. God help you to do so!

Last Monday I was cheered beyond all I can tell you by a letter from a brother who had been restored to life, light, and liberty by the discourse of last Sabbath morning. I know no greater joy than to be useful to your souls. For this reason, I have tried to preach this morning, though I am quite unfit for it physically. Oh, I do pray I may hear more news from saved ones! Oh that some spirit that has wandered out into the dark moorland may spy the candle in my window, and find its wav home! If you have found my Lord, I charge you never let him go, but cleave to him till the day break, and the shadows flee away. God help you so to do for Jesus’ sake! Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon — Matthew xxvii. 26 — 54,

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book” — 30G, 279, 280.

“LAMA SABACHTHANI?”

% ^ttm

Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, March 2nd, 1890, by
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou loisaken me r- — Matthew xxvii. 46.

“There was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour “: this cry came out of that darkness. Expect not to see through its every word, as though it came from on high as a beam from the unclouded Sun of Righteousness. There is light in it, bright, flashing light; but there is a centre of impenetrable gloom, where the soul is ready to faint because of the terrible darkness.

Our Lord was then in the darkest part of his way. He had trodden the winepress now for hours, and the work was almost finished. He had reached the culminating point of his anguish. This is his dolorous lament from the lowest pit of misery — “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” I do not think that the records of tmie, or even of eternity, contain a sentence more full of anguish. Here the wormwood and the gall, and all the other bitternesses, are outdone. Here you may look as into a vast abyss; and though you strain your eyes, and gaze till sight fails you, yet you perceive no bottom; it is measureless, unfathomable, inconceivable. This anguish of thefeaviour on your behalf and mine is no more to be measured and weighed than the sin which needed it, or the love which endured it. We will adore where we cannot comprehend. r.,

I have chosen this subject that it may help the children of God to understand a little of their infinite obligations to their redeeming Lord You shall measure the height of his love, if it be ever measured, by the depth of his grief, if that can ever be known. See with what a price he hath redeemed us from the curse of the law! As you see this, say to yourselves: What manner of people ought we to be ‘What measure of love ought we to return to one who bore the utmost penalty, that we might be deHvered from the wrath to come? I do not profess that I can dive into this deep: I will only venture to the edge of the precipice, and bid you look down, and pray the Spirit of God to concentrate your mind upon this lamentation of

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our dying Lord, as it rises up through the thick darkness — “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Our first subject of thought will be the fact; or, what he suffered — God had forsaken him. Secondly, we will note, the enquiry; or, why he suffered: this word “why” is the edge of the text. ‘’Why hast thou forsaken me?” Then, thirdly, we will consider the answer; or, what came of his suffering. The answer flowed softly into the soul of the Lord Jesus without the need of words, for he ceased from his anguish with the triumphant shout of, “It is finished.” His work was finished, and his bearing of desertion was a chief part of the work he had undertaken for our sake.

I. By the help of the Holy Spirit, let us first dwell upon the FACT; or, what our Lord suffered. God had forsaken him. Grief of mind is harder to bear than pain of body. You can pluck up courage and endure the pang of sickness and pain, so long as the spirit is hale and brave; but if the soul itself be touched, and the mind becomes diseased with anguish, then every pain is increased in severity, and there is nothing with which to sustain it. Spiritual sorrows are the worst of mental miseries. A man may bear great depression of spirit about worldly matters, if he feels that he has his God to go to. He is cast down, but not in despair. Like David, he dialogues with himself, and he enquires, “Why art thou cast down, 0 my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him.” But if the Lord be once withdrawn, if the comfortable light of his presence be shadowed even for an hour, there is a torment within the breast, which I can only liken to the prelude of hell. This is the greatest of all weights that can press upon the heart. This made the Psalmist plead, “Hide not thy face from me; put not thy servant away in anger.” We can bear a bleeding body, and even a wounded spirit; but a soul conscious of desertion by God is beyond conception unendurable. When he holdeth back the face of his throne, and spreadeth his cloud upon it, who can endure the darkness?

This voice out of “the belly of hell” marks the lowest depth of the Saviour’s grief. The desertion was real. Though under some aspects our Lord could say, ‘* The Father is with me “; yet was it solemnly true that God did forsake him. It was not a failure of faith on his part which led him to imagine what was not actual fact. Our faith fails us, and then we think that God has forsaken us; but our Lord’s faith did not for a moment falter, for he says twice, “J/y God, wy God.” Oh, the mighty double grip of his unhesitating faith! He seems to say, “Even if thou hast forsaken me, I have not forsaken thee.” Faith triumphs, and there is no sign of any faintness of heart towards the living God. Yet, strong as is his faith, he feels that God has withdrawn his comfortable fellowship, and he shivers under the terrible deprivation.

It was no fancy, or delirium of mind, caused by his weakness of body, the heat of the fever, the depression of his spirit, or the near approach of death. He was clear of mind even to this last. He bore up under pain, loss of blood, scorn, thirst, and desolation; making no complaint of the cross, the nails, and the scoffing. We read not in the Gospels of anything more than the natural cry of weakness, “I thirst.” All the tortures of his body he endured in silence; but when it came to being forsaken of God, then his great heart burst out into its “Lama sabachthani?” His one moan is concernmg his God. It is not, “Why has Peter forsaken me? Why has Judas betrayed me?” These were sharp griefs, but this is the sharpest. This stroke has’cut him to the quick: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” It was no phantom of the gloom; it was a real absence which

he mourned. -. j- n 4 +

This was a very remarhalle desertion. It is not the way o± brod to leave either his sons or his servants. His saints, when they come to die, in their great weakness and pain, find him near. They are made to sino- because of the presence of God: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.” Dying saints have clear visions of the living God. Our observation has taught us that if the Lord be away at other times, he is never absent from his people in the article of death, or m the furnace of affliction. Concerning the three holy children, we do not read that the Lord was ever visibly with them till they walked the fires of Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace; but there and then the Lord met with them Yes, beloved, it is God’s use and wont to keep company with his afflicted people; and yet he forsook his Son in the hour of his tribulation! How usual it is to see the Lord with his faithful witnesses when resisting even unto blood! Read the Book of Martyrs, and I care not whether you study the former or the later persecutions, you will find them all lit up with the evident presence of the Lord with his witnesses. Did the Lord ever fail to support a martyr at the stake? Did he ever forsake one of his testifiers upon the scaffold t The testimony of the church has always been, that while the Lord has permitted his saints to suffer in body he has so divinely sustained their spirits that they have been more than conquerors, and have treated their sufferings as light afflictions. The fire has not been a ‘’bed of roses,” but it has been a chariot of victory. The sword is sharp, and death is bitter; but the love of Christ is sweet, and to die for him has been turned into glory. No, it is not God s way to forsake his champions, nor to leave even the least of his children m the trial

Ts to our Lord, this forsaking was singular. Did his father ever leave him before? WiU you read the four Evangelists through and find any previous instance in which he complains of his Father for having forsaken him? No. He said, - 1 know that thou hearest me always.” He lived in constant touch with God. His fellowship with the Father was always near and dear and clear; but now, for the first time he cries, “why hast thou forsaken me y” It was very remarkaWe It was a riddle only to be solved by the fact that he loved us and gave himself for us, and in the execution of his loving purpose came even unto this sorrow, of mourning the absence of his God.

This forsaking was very terrible. Who can fully tell what it is to be forsaken of God? We can only form a guess by what we have our- •elves felt under temporary and partial desertion. God has never lett us, altogether; for he has expressly said, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee “; yet we have sometimes felt as if he had cast us off. We have cried, *’ Oh, that I knew where I might fiiK^ him! ‘’ The clear shillings of his love have been withdrawn. Thus we are able to form some little idea of how the Saviour felt when his God had forsaken him. The mind of Jesus was left to dwell upon one dark subject, and no cheering theme consoled him. It was the hour in which he was made to stand before Q-od as consciously the sin-bearer, according to that ancient prophecy, “He shall bear their iniquities.” Then was it true, “He hath made him to be sin for us.” Peter puts it, “He his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” Sin, sin, sin was everywhere around and about Christ. He had no sin of his own; but the Lord had “laid on him the iniquity of us all.” He had no strength given him from on high, no secret oil and wine poured into his wounds; but he was made to appear in the lone character of the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world; and therefore he must feel the weight of sin, and the turning away of that sacred face which cannot look thereon.

His Father, at that time, gave him no open acknowledgment. On certain other occasions a voice had been heard, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased “; but now, when such a testimony seemed most of all required, the oracle was dumb. He was hung up as an accursed thing upon the cross; for he was “made a curse for us, as it is written. Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree”; and the Lord his God did not own him before men. If it had pleased the Father, he might have sent him twelve legions of angels; but not an angel came after the Christ had quitted Gethsemane. His despisers might spit in his face, but no swift seraph came to avenge the indignity. They might bind him, and scourge him, but none of all the heavenly host would interpose to screen his shoulders from the lash. They might fasten him to the tree with nails, and lift him up, and scoff at him; but no cohort of ministering spirits hastened to drive back the rabble, and release the Prince of life. No, he appeared to be forsaken, “smitten of God and afflicted,” delivered into the hands of cruel men, whose wicked hands worked him misery without stint. Well might he ask, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

But this was not all. His Father now dried up that sacred stream of peaceful communion and loving fellowship which had flowed hitherto throughout his whole earthly life. He said himself, as you remember, “Ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” Here was his constant comfort: but all comfort from this source was to be withdrawn. The divine Spirit did not minister to his human spirit. No communications with his Father’s love poured into his heart. It was not possible that the Judge should smile upon one who represented the prisoner at the bar. Our Lord’s faith did not fail him, as I have already shown you, for he said, “My God, my God “: yet no sensible supports were given to his heart, and no comforts were poured into his mind. One writer declares that Jesus did not taste of divine wrath, but only suffered a withdrawal of divine fellowship. What is the difference? Whether God withdraw heat or create cold is all one. He was not smiled upon, nor allowed to feel that he was near to God; and this, to his tender spirit, was grief of the keenest order. A certain saint once said that in his sorrow he had from God “necessaries, but not suavities “; that which was meet, but not that which was sweet. Our Lord suffered to the extreme point of deprivation. He hnd not the light which makes existence to be life, and life to be a boon. You that know, in your degree, what it is to lose the conscious presence* and love of God, you can faintly guess what the sorrow of the Saviour was, now that he felt he had been forsaken of his God. “If the foundations be removed, what can the righteous do?” To our Lord, the Father’s love was the foundation of everything; and when that was gone, all was gone. Nothing remained, within, without, above, when his own God, the God of his entire confidence, turned from him. Yes, God in very deed forsook our Saviour.

To be forsaken of God was much more a source of anguish fo Jesur, than it would he to us. “Oh,” say you, “how is that?” I answer, because he was perfectly holy. A rupture between a perfectly holy being and the thrice holy God must be in the highest degree strange, abnormal, perplexing, and painful. If any man here, who is not at peace with God, could only know his true condition, he would swoon with fright. If you unf orgiven ones only knew where you are, and what you are at this moment m the sight of God, you would never smile again till you were reconciled to him. Alas! we are insensible, hardened by tho deceitfulness of sin, and therefore we do not feel our true condition. His perfect holiness made it to our Lord a dreadful calamity to be forsaken of the thrice holy God.

I remember, also, that our blessed Lord had lived in unbroken fellowship with God, and to be forsaken was a new grief to him. He had never known what the dark was till then: his life had been lived in the light of God. Think, dear child of God, if you had always dwelt in full communion with God, your days would have been as the days of heaven upon earth; and how cold it would strike to your heart to find yourseK in the darkness of desertion. If you can conceive such a thing as happening to a perfect man, you can see why to our Well-beloved it was a special trial. Remember, he had enjoyed fellowship with God more richly, as Mell as more constantly, than any of us. His fellowship with the Father was of the highest, deepest, fullest order; and what must the loss of it have been? We lose but drops when we lose our joyful experience of heavenly fellowship; and yet the loss is killing: but to our Lord Jesus Christ the sea was dried up — I mean his sea of fellowship with the infinite God.

Do not forget that he was such a One that to him to be without God must have been an overwhelming calamity. In every part he was perfect, and in every part fitted for communion with God to a supreme degree. A sinful man has an awful need of God, but he does not know it; and therefore he does not feel that hunger and thirst after God which would come upon a perfect man could he be deprived of God. The very perfection of his nature renders it inevitable that the holy man must either be in communion with God, or be desolate. Imagine a stray angel! a seraph who has lost his God! Conceive him to be perfect in holiness, and yet to have fallen into a condition in which he cannot find his God! I cannot picture him; perhaps a Milton might have done so. He is sinless and trustful, and yet he lias an overpowering feeling that God is absent from him. He has drifted into the nowhere — the unimaginable region behind the back of God. I think I hear the wailing of the cherub: “My God, my God, my God, where art thou?” What a sorrow for one of the sons of the morning! But here we have the lament of a Being far more capable of fellowship with the Godhead. In proportion as he is ‘more fitted to receive the love of the great Father, in that proportion is his pining after it the more intense. As a Son, he is more able to commune with God than ever a servant-angel could be; and now that he is forsaken of God, the void within is the greater, and the anguish more bitter.

Our Lord’s heart, and all his nature were, morally and spiritually, so delicately formed, so sensitive, so tender, that to be without God, was to him a grief which could not be weighed. I see him in the text bearing desertion, and yet I perceive that he cannot bear it. I know not how to express my meaning except by such a paradox. He cannot endure to be without God. He had surrendered himself to be left of God, as the representative of sinners must be, but his pure and hoiy — nature, after three hours of silence, finds the position unendurable to love and purity; and breaking forth from it, now that the hour was over, he exclaims, ““Why hast thou forsaken me?” He quarrels not with the suffering, but he cannot abide in the position which caused it. He seems as if he must end the ordeal, not because of the pain, but because of the moral shocli. We have here the repetition after his passion of that loathing which he felt before it, when he cried, “If it be possible let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” is the holiness of Christ amazed at the position of substitute for guilty men.

There, friends; I have done my best, but I seem to myself to have been prattling like a little child, talking about something infinitely above me. So I leave the solemn fact, that our Lord Jesus was on the tree forsaken of his God.

II. This brings us to consider the enquiry, or, why he suffered.

Note carefully this cry — “My God, my God, why“- hast thou forsaken me?” It is pure anguish, undiluted agony, which crieth like this; but it is the agony of a godly soul; for only a man of that order would have used such an expression. Let us learn from it useful lessons. This cry is taken from “the Book.” Does it not show our Lord’s love of the sacred volume, that when he felt his sharpest grief, he turned to the Scripture to find a fit utterance for it? Here we have the opening sentence of the twenty-second Psalm. Oh, that we may so love the inspired Word that we may not only sing to its score, but even weep to its music!

Note, again, that our Lord’s lament is an address to God. The godly, in their anguish, turn to the hand which smites them. The Saviour’s outcry is not against God, but to God. “My God, my God “: he makes a double effort to draw near. True Sonship is here. The child in the dark is crying after his Father — <’My God, my God.’* Both the Bible and prayer were dear to Jesus in his agony.

Still, observe, it is a faith-cry; lor though it asks, ‘’Why hast thou forsaken me? “yet it first says, twice over, “My God, my God. The o-rip of appropriation is in the word” my “; but the reverence of humility is in the word “God.” It is “‘My God, my 6^oc?,’ thou art over God to me, and I a poor creature. I do not quarrel with thee. Ihy rights are unquestioned, for thou art my God. Thou canst do as thou wilt, and I yield to thy sacred sovereignty. I kiss the hand that smites me, and with all my heart I cry, ‘My God, my God.’ “When you are delirious with pain, think of your Bible still: when your mmd wanders, let it roam towards the mercy seat; and when your heart and your flesh fail, still live by faith, and still cry,” My God, my God

Let us come close to the enquiry. It looked to me, at first sight, like question as of one distraught, driven from the balance of his mmd — not unreasonable, but too much reasoning, and therefore tossed about. “Why hast thou forsaken me?” Did not Jesus know? Did he not linolx ‘why he was forsaken? He knew it most distinctly, and yet his manhood, while it was being crushed, pounded, dissolved, seemea as thouo-h it could not understand the reason for so great a grief. He musbe forsaken; but could there be a sufficient cause for so sickenino- a sorrow? The cup must be bitter; but why this most nauseous of ingredients? I tremble lest I say what I ought not to say. I have said it and I think there is truth — the Man of Sorrows was overborne with horror At that moment the finite soul of the man Christ Jesus came into awful contact with the infinite justice of God. The one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, beheld the holiness of God in arms against the sin of man, whose nature he had espoused. God was for him and with him in a certain unquestionable sense; but for the time, so far as his feeling went, God was against him, anc” necessarily withdrawn from him. It is not surprising that the holy soul of Christ should shudder at finding -itself brought into pamiul contact with the infinite justice of God, even though its design was only to vindicate that justice, and glorify the Law-giver. Our Lord, could now say,” All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me; and therefore he uses language which is all too hot with anguish to be dissected by the cold hand of a logical criticism. Grief has small regard for the laws of the grammarian. Even the holiest, when in extreme agony, though they cannot speak otherwise than according to purity and truth, yet use a language of their own, which only the ear of sympathy can fully receive. I see not all that is here, but what. I can see I am not able to put in words for you. r r a

I think I see, in the expression, submission and resolve. Our Ijord does not draw back. There is a forward movement in the question: they who quit a business ask no more questions about it. He cloe» not ask that the forsaking may end prematurely, he would only understand anew its meaning. He does not shrink, but the rather dedicates, himself anew to God by the words, “My God, my God and by seeking to review the ground and reason of that anguish which he is resolute to bear even to the bitter end. He would fam feel anew the motive which has sustained him, and must sustain him to the end. The cry sounds to me like deep submission and strong resolve, pleading with God. -37

Do you not think that the amazement of our Lord, when he torn “made sin for ««” (2 Cor. v. 21), led him thus to cry out? For such a sacred and pure being to be made a sin-offering was an amazing experience. Sin was laid on him, and he was treated as if he had been guilty, though he had personally never sinned; and now the infinite horror of rebellion against the most holy God fills his holy soul, the unrighteousness of sin breaks his heart, and he starts back from it, crjnng, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Why must I bear the dread result of conduct I so much abhor?

Do you not see, moreover, there was here a glance at his eternal purpose, and at his secret source of joy? That “why” is the silver lining of the dark cloud, and our Lord looked wishfully at it. He knew that the desertion was needful in order that he might save the guilty, and he had an eye to that salvation as his comfort. He is not forsaken needlessly, nor without a worthy design. The design is in itself so dear to his heart that he yields to the passing evil, even though that evil be like death to him. He looks at that “why,” and through that narrow window the light of heaven comes streaming into his darkened life.

“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’* Surely our Lord dwelt on that “why,” that we might also turn our eyes that way. He would have us see the why and the wherefore of his grief. He would have us mark the gracious motive for its endurance. Think much of all your Lord suffered, but do not overlook the reason of it. If you cannot always understand how this or that grief worked toward the great end of the whole passion, yet believe that it has its share in the grand “why.” Make a life-study of that bitter but blessed question, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” Thus the Saviour raises an inquiry not so much for himself as for us; and not so much because of any despair within his heart as because of a hope and a joy set before him, which were wells of comfort to him in his wilderness of woe.

Bethink you, for a moment, that the Lord God, in the broadest and most unreserved sense, could never, in verj’ deed, have forsaken his most obedient Son. He was ever with him in the grand design of salvation. Towards the Lord Jesus, personally, God himself, personally, must ever have stood on terms of infinite love. Truly the Only Begotten was never more lovely to the Father than when he was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross! But we must look upon God here as the Judge of all the earth, and we must look upon the Lord Jesus also in his ofiicial capacity, as the Surety of the covenant, and the Sacrifice for sin. The great Judge of all cannot smile upon him who has become the substitute for the guilty. Sin is loathed of God; and if, in order to its removal, his own Son is made to bear it, yet, as sin, it is still loathsome, and he who bears it cannot be in happy communion with God. This was the dread necessity of expiation; but in the essence of things the love of the great Father to his Son never ceased, nor ever knew a diminution. Restrained in its flow it must be, but lessened at its fountain-head it could not be. Therefore, wonder not at the question, “Why hast thou forsaken me?”

III Hoping to be guided by the Holy Spirit, I am coming to

THE ANSWER, concerning which I can only use the few minutes which remain to me. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” “What is the outcome of this suffering? What was the reason for it? Our Saviour could answer his own question. If for a moment his manhood was perplexed, yet his mind soon came to clear apprehension; for he said, It is finished “; and, as I have already said, he then referred to the work which in his lonely agony he had been performing. Why, then, did God forsake his Son? I cannot conceive any other answer than this — he stood in our stead. There was no reason in Christ why the Father should forsake him: he was perfect, and his life was without spot. God never acts without reason; and since there were no reasons in the character and person of the Lord Jesus why his Father should forsake him, we must look elsewhere. I do not know how others answer the question. I can only answer it in this one way.

Yet all the griefs he felt were ours,
Ours were the woes he bore;
Pangs, not his own, his spotless soul
With bitter anguish tore.

*’ “We held him as condemn’d of heaven,
An outcast f»om his God;
Whil- for our sins he groaned, he bled,
Beneath his Father’s rod.”

He bore the sinner’s sin, and he had to be treated, therefore, as though he were a sinner, though sinner he could never be. With his own full consent he suffered as though he had committed the transgressions which were laid on him. Our sin, and his taking it upon himself, is the answer to the question, “Why hast thou forsaken me?”

In this case we now see that His obedience was perfect. He came into the world to obey the Father, and he rendered that obedience to the very uttermost. The spirit of obedience could go no farther than for one who feels forsaken of God still to cling to him in solemn, avowed allegiance, still declaring before a mocking multitude his confidence in the afflicting God. It is noble to cry, “My God, my God,” when one is asking, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” How much farther can obedience go? I see nothing beyond it. The soldier at the gate of Pompeii remaining at his post as sentry when the shower of burning ashes is falling, was not more true to his trust than he who adheres to a forsaking God with loyalty of hope.

Our Lords suffering in this particular form was appropriate and necessary. It would not have sufficed for our Lord merely to have been pained in body, nor even to have been grieved in mind in other waA’s: he must suffer in this particular way. He must feel forsaken of God, because this is the necessary consequence of sin. For a man to be forsaken of God is the penalty which naturally and inevitably follows upon his breaking his relation with God. What is death? What was the death that was threatened to Adam? “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Is death annihilation? Was Adam annihilated that day? Assuredly not: he lived many a year afterwards. But in the day in which he ate of the for — bidden fruit he died, by being separated from God. The separation of the soul from God is spiritual death; just as the separation of th» soul from the body is natural death. The sacrifice for sin must be put in the place of separation, and must bow to the penalty of death. By this placing of the Great Sacrifice under forsaking and death, it would be seen by all creatures throughout the universe that God, could not have fellowship with sin. If even the Holy One, who stood the Just for the unjust, found God forsaking him, what must the doom of the actual sinner be! Sin is evidently always, in every case, a dividing influence, putting even the Christ himself, as a sin-bearer, in the place of distance.

This was necessary for another reason: there could have been nolaying on of suffering for sin without the forsaking of the vicarious Sacrifice by the Lord God. So long as the smile of God rests on the man the law is not afflicting him. The approving look of the great Judge cannot fall upon a man who is viewed as standing in the place of the guilty. Christ not only suffered from sin, but /or sin. If God will cheer and sustain him, he is not suffering for sin. The Judge is not inflicting suffering for sin if ho is manifestly succouring the smitten one. There could have been no vicarious suffering on the part of Christ for human guilt, if he had continued consciously to enjoy the full sunshine of the Father’s presence. It was essential to being a victim in our place that he should cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Beloved, see how marvellously, in the person of Christ, the Lord our God has vindicated his law! If to make his law glorious, he had said, “These multitudes of men have broken my law, and therefore they shall perish,” the law would have been terribly magnified. But, instead thereof, he says, “Here is my Only Begotten Son, my other self; he takes on himself the nature of these rebellious creatures, and he consents that I should lay on him the load of their iniquity, and visit in his person the offences which might have been punished, in the persons of all these multitudes of men: and I will have it so.” When Jesus bows his head to the stroke of the law, when he submissively consents that his Father shall turn away his face from him, then myriads of worlds are astonished at the perfect holiness ani stern justice of the Lawgiver. There are, probably, worlds innumerable throughout the boundless creation of God, and all these will see, in the death of God’s dear Son, a declaration of his determination never to allow sin to be trifled with. If his own Son is brought before him, bearing the sin of others upon him, he will hide his face from him, as well as from the actually guilty. In God infinite love shines over all, but it does not eclipse his absolute justice any more than his justice is permitted to destroy his love. God hath all perfections in perfection, and in Christ Jesus we see the reflection of them. Beloved, this is a wonderful theme! Oh, that I had a tongue worthy of this subject! but who coidd ever reach the height of this great argument:

Once more, when enquiring. Why did Jesus suffer to be forsaken of the Father? we see the fact that the Captain of our salvation was thus made perfect through suffering. Every part of the road has been traversed by our Lord’s own feet. Suppose, beloved, the Lord Jesus had never been thus forsaken, then one of his disciples might have been called “lama sarachthani?” 581

to that sharp endurance, and the Lord Jesus could not have sympathized with him in it. He would turn to his Leader and Captain, and say to him, “Didst thou, my Lord, ever feel this darkness? “Then the Lord Jesus would answer,” No. This is a descent such as I never made.’’ What a dreadful lack would the tried one» have felt! For the servant to bear a grief his Master never knew would be sad indeed.

There would have been a wound for which there was no ointment, a pain for which there was no balm. But it is not so now. “In all their affliction he was afflicted.” “He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” Wherein we greatly rejoice at this time, and so often as we are cast down. Underneath us is the deep experience of our forsaken Lord.

I have done when I have said three things. The first is, you and I that are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, and are resting in him alone for salvation, let us lean hard, let us bear with all our weight on our Lord. He will bear the full weight of all our sin and care. As to my sin, I hear its harsh accusings no more when I hear Jesus cry, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” I know that I deserve the deepest hell at the hand of God’s vengeance; but I am not afraid. He will never forsake me, for he forsook his Son on my behalf. I shall not suffer for my sin, for Jesus has suffered to the full in my stead; yea, suffered so far as to cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Behind this brazen wall of substitution a sinner is safe. These “munitions of rock” guard all believers, and they may rest secure. The rock is cleft for me; I hide in its rifts, and no harm oan reach me. You have a full atonement, a great sacrifice, a glorious vindication of the law; wherefore rest at peace, all you that put your trust in Jesus,

Next, if ever in our lives henceforth we should think that God hath -deserted us, let us learn from our Lord’s example how to behave ourselves. If God hath left thee, do not shut up thy Bible; nay, open it, as thy Lord did, and find a text that will suit thee. If God hath left thee, or thou thinkest so, do not give up prayer; nay, pray as thy Lord did, and be more earnest than ever. If thou thinkest God has forsaken thee, do not give up thy faith in him; but, like thy Lord, cry thou, “My God, my God,” again and again. If thou hast had one anchor before, cast out two anchors now, and double the hold of thy faith. If thou canst not call Jehovah “Father,” as was Christ’s wont, yet call him thy “God.” Let the personal pronouns take their hold — “My God, my God.” Let nothing drive thee from thy faith. Still hold on Jesus, sink or swim. As for me, if ever I am lost, it shall be at the foot of the cross. To this pass have I come, that if I never see the face of God with acceptance, yet I will believe that he will be faithful to his Son, and true to the covenant sealed by oaths and blood. He that believeth in Jesus hath everlasting life: there I <5ling, like the limpet to the rock. There is but one gate of heaven/- and even if I may not enter it, I will cling to the posts of its door. What am I saying? I shall enter in; for that gate was never shut against a soul that accepted Jesus; and Jesus saith, “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”

The last of the three points is this, let us abhor the sin which brought such agony upon our beloved Lord. What an accursed thing is sin, which crucified the Lord Jesus! Do you laugh at it? Will you go and spend an evening to see a mimic performance of it? Do you roll sin under your tongue as a sweet morsel, and then come to God’s house, on the Lord’s-day morning, and think to worship him? Worship him! Worship him, with sin indulged in your breast! Worship him, with sin loved and pampered in your life! 0 sirs, if I had a dear brother who had been murdered, what would you think of me if I valued the knife which had been crimsoned with his blood? — if I made a friend of the murderer, and daily consorted with the assassin, who drove the dagger into my brother’s heart? Surely I, too, must be an accomplice in the crime! Sin murdered Christ; will you be a friend to it? Sin pierced the heart of the Incarnate God; can you love it? Oh, that there was an abyss as deep as Christ’s misery, that I might at once hurl this dagger of sin into its depths, whence it might never be brought to lights again! Begone, 0 sin! Thou art banished from the heart where Jesus reigns I Begone, for thou hast crucified my Lord, and made him cry, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” 0 my hearers, if you did but know yourselves, and know the love of Christ, you would each one vow that you would harbour sin no longer. You would be indignant at sin, and cry,

“The dearest idol I have known,
Whate’er that idol be,
Lord, I will tear it from its throne,
And worship only thee.”

May that be the issue of my morning’s discourse, and then I shall be well content. The Lord bless you! May the Christ who suffered for you, bless you, and out of his darkness may your light arise! Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon — Psalm xxii.

Hymns from ‘’Our Own Hymn Book” — 313, 299, 22 (Part 11).