Early and Late

“For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard.... And he went out fcbout the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the market-place.... Again he went out, about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle f — Matthew xx. 1, 3, 5, 6.

WE have frequently observed that we do not think it right to neglect the connection of Scripture. We have no right to tear passages of Scripture from their context and make them to mean what they were not intended to teach; and therefore I have in the reading given you, according to my ability, what I think to be the immediate design of the present parable. It is a rebuke to those who fall into a legal spirit and begin calculating as to what their reward ought to be in a kingdom where the legal spirit is entirely out of place, since its reward is not of debt but of grace. I think I may now, without any violation of pro-

?riety, dwell upon one very distinct fact in connection with the parable, t is not right to violate the drift of the parable, but having already observed it and made it as clear as we can, we believe that we are now authorized to make use of one of the main circumstances mentioned in it.

This morning I intend to call your attention to the fact that the labourers were hired at different periods of the day, by which doubtless we are taught, that God sends his servants into his vineyard at different times and seasons; that some are called in early youth, and others are not led to enter into the service of the Master until declining years have brought them almost to the eventide of life.

I must, however, ask you to remember that they were all called: by the mention of which the Saviour would teach us that no man comet into the kingdom of heaven of himself. Without exception, every labourer for Jesus has been called in one sense or another, and he would not have come without being so called. They are all called. Were a man what he should be he would need no pressing and invitation to come to the gospel of Christ; but since human nature is perverted, and men put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter, darkness for light and light for darkness, man needs to be caller? by the outward word-Xo. 664.

he needs to be invited, persuaded, and entreated; he needs, to use the strong expression of the apostle Paul, that as though God did beseech him by us we should pray him in Christ’s stead to be reconciled to God. Nay, further than this, although some men come to work in a legal spirit in the vineyard through this common call of the gospel, yet no man in spirit and in truth comes to Christ without a further call, namely, the effectual call of God’s Holy Spirit. The general call is given by the minister, it is all that he can give. If the preacher attempts to give the particular call as some of my hyper-calvinistic brethren do, confining the gospel command to a certain character and trying to be themselves the discoverers of God’s elect, and to make that particular which is always universal; if the preacher acts thus, and virtually endeavours to give the particular call, he makes a sorry mess of it, and usually fails altogether to preach the gospel of glad tidings to the sons of men. But when man is content to do what he can do, namely, preach the commandment “that we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,” and that “God commandeth all men everywhere to repent,” then there comes with the general call to the chosen of God a particular and special call which none but the Holy Ghost can give, but which he gives so effectually that all who hear it become willing in the day of God’s power, and turn with full purpose of heart unto the Lord. In what sense is it true that many are called but few chosen, if none are to be called by the preaching of the Word but those who are chosen? There are two callings, the one is general to all who hear of Jesus, and many who are thus called are not chosen; the other is personal and peculiar to the elect, “for whom he did predestinate them he also called.” To return to our point; all in the vineyard are in some sense called. There is not a solitary exception to this rule in the entire 1 Christian Church. The doctrine of free-will has not a single specimen to show to prove itself. There is not a sheep in all the flock that came back to the shepherd unsought; there is not a single piece of money which leaped again into the woman’s purse, she swept the house to find it: nay, I will go further, and say there is not even a single prodigal son in the entire family who did ever say, “I will arise, and go unto my Father,” till first the Father’s grace, veiling itself in the afflicting providence of a mighty famine, had taught the prodigal the miserable results of sin, as he fed the swine, and fain would have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat, but could not do so.

I want you to notice another fact before I come to the subject now in hand, and that is, that all those who are called are said to have been hired. Of course in a parable no word is to be construed harshly; we are to give the meaning according to the drift; but still I think we may say that there is this likeness between hiring a servant and the engagement of a soul to Christ, that henceforth a man hired has no right to serve another, he serves the master who has hired him. When a soul is called by grace into the service of the Lord Jesus Christ, he cries, “0 Lord, other lords have had dominion over me, but now thee only will I serve.” He plucks off the yoke of sin, its pleasure, its custom, and he puts upon him that yoke of which the Master says it is easy, and he bears that burden which Jesus tells us is light. A hired servant must .ot work for another, he works for his master; and so a

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man who is called by grace lives not for any sinister object or motive, but to his Master only. A hired servant, again, does not work on his own account, he is not his own master; and “ye are not your own, ye are bought with a price.” Henceforth, though he calls no man “Master” on earth, yet he remembers that one is his Master in heaven, to whom all his service is due. There is a compact between the hired man and his master, and there is a solemn compact of spirit between the true believer and his Lord. We have devoted ourselves to his service, we have given up all liberty of self-will, and henceforth our will is at the government of our Lord, and all our powers and passions are to be, we hope will be, through God’s grace, obedient to him who has hired U3 into the vineyard. Now the word “hired” was used in order to bring in the idea of reward. It was used to suit Peter’s view of the case; it was used in order that his legal question of “What shall we have therefore?” might be clearly brought out, and its folly shown in the light of that sovereign grace which does as it wills with his own. Yet for all that believers are hired in an evangelical sense, they do not serve God for nought, they shall not work without a reward. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.” We shall have our reward for what we do for the Master, and though it be not wages in the sense of debt, yet verily I say unto you, there shall not be a single true-hearted worker for God who shall not receive of his Master most blessed wages of grace in the day when he comes to take account of his servants.

Now to the point, the master calls these hired servants of his at different hours of the day; and, in the second place, distinguishing grace shines forth in each case, and is illustrated and made more manifest in its varieties of glorious compassion and lovingkindness by the different hours at which the chosen ones are called.

I. ALL ARE NOT CALLED BY GRACE AT THE SAME TIME. Some,

according to the parable, are called early in the morning. Thrice happy are these! The earliest period at which a child may be called by grace it would be difficult for us positively to define, because children are not all of the same age mentally when they are of the same age physically, and even in the matter of mental development we -dare not limit the Holy One of Israel as to the chosen period of operation. As far as our observation goes, grace works upon some little ones at the very dawn of moral consciousness. There are, no doubt, precocious children, whose intellect and affections are very much developed, and very deeply sanctified even so early as two or three years of age. Such children usually are intended by the Master to be taken home at once. There are interesting biographies extant, which prove that holiness may bloom and ripen in the youngest heart, and many anecdotes are treasured up in sui-h collections as “Janeway’s Token” for Children,” of children whom I might call infants with strict propriety, out of whose mouth God ordained praise, and did, through them, still the enemy and the avenger. Little prattlers, whose tongues it would have been supposed could only have talked of toys, have been able to speak with an apparent profundity of knowledge of spiritual, and especially of heavenly things. It is certain that some have wrought their day’s work for the Master in their mother’s arms; they have spoken of the

Saviour in tones which have melted a mother’s heart and erone to a father’s conscience, and then they have been taken home. “Whom the gods love die young,” said the heathen, and doubtless it is no small privilege to be so soon admitted into glory. Only shown on earth, and then snatched away to heaven, too precious to be left below. Precious child, how dear wer’t thou to the good God who sent thee here and then took thee home! Fair rose bud! yet in the perfection of thy young beauty taken to be worn by the Saviour on his bosom, how can we mourn thy translation to the skies?

“No bitter tears for thee be shed,

Blossom of being seen and gone!
With flowers alone we strew thy bed,

0 blest departed one!
Whose all of life, a rosy ray,
Blush’d into dawn and pass’d away.”

“Early in the morning,” would also include those who have passed the first hour of the day, but who have not yet wasted the second opening hour. I mean those hopeful lads and girls who perhaps would rather I should call them youths; — those who have reached their teens, have overleaped infancy and childhood, and are growing up in the heyday and vigour of youth. Youngsters still more at home in the playground than in the work-field, fitter, as Satan tells them, to be sporting in the market-place than busy in the vineyard; such as these, to the praise of divine love, are often hired by the householder. It is worth while to warn some of our brethren who seem to be exceedingly dubious of boyish and girlish piety, — to warn them against indulging harsh and suspicious doubts. We have remarked, and I think those who have watched our membership carefully will have remarked it too. that among all the slips and falls which have caused us sorrow, we have had but little sorrow from those who were added to us as boys or girls. There are those preaching the gospel this day with acceptance and power whom these hands baptized into Jesus Christ very early in their boyhood, and there are among us honoured servants of God who have served this Cl.urch well, who, while they were yet at school were joyful followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. With our earliest gettings some of us got an understanding of the things of the kingdom; our Bible was our child’s primer, our spelling-book, the guide of our youth and the joy of our earliest years. We thank God that there are Timothys still among us, and those not lew and far between; and young Samuels, who, being brought as infants to the Lord’s house, have from that day forth worn the linen ephod and served after their fashion as priests unto God, serving him with all their hearts. Happy those who are called early in the morning! they have peculiar reasons for blessing and praising God.

“Grace is a plant, where’er it grows,

Of pure and heavenly root;
But fairest in the youngest shows,
And yields the sweetest fruit.”

Let us spend a minute in thinking of their happy case who are saved in boyhood. Early in the morning the dew still twinkles on the leaves, the maiden blush of dawn remains and reveals an opening

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beauty, which is lost to those who rise not to see the birth of day. There is a beauty about early piety which is indescribably charming, and unutterably lovely in freshness and radiance. We remark in childhood an artless simplicity, a child-like confidence, which is seen no where else. There may be less of knowing but there is more of loving; there may be less of reasoning, but there is more of simply believing upon the authority of revelation; there may be less of deep-rootednesa, but there is certainly more of perfume, beauty, and emerald verdure. If I must choose that part of the Christian life in which there is the most joy, next to the land Beulah, which I must set first and foremost by reason of its lying so near to Canaan, I think I would prefer that tract of Christian experience which lieth toward the sun-rising, which is sown with orient pearls of love, and cheered with the delicious music of the birds of hope.

Early in the morning, when we have just risen from slumber, work is easy; our occupation in the vineyard is a cheerful exercise rather than a toil such as those find ii who bear the burden and heat of the day. The young Christian is not oppressed with the cares and troubles of the world as others are; he has nothing else to do but to serve his God. He is free from the embarrassments which surround so many of us, and prevent our doing good when we would consecrate ourselves wholly to it. The lad has nought to think of but his Lord. There are his books and his lessons, but he can be fervent of spirit in the midst of them. There are the companions of his childhood, but in guilelessness and simplicity he may be of service to them and to God through them. Give me, I say, if I would have an auspicious time to work for Jesus, give me the blessed morning hours, when my heart is bounding lightest and joy’s pure sunbeams tremble on my path; when my glowing breast lacks no ardour, and my happy spirit wears no chain of care.

One would prefer early conversion because such persons have not learned to stand idle in the market-place. A fellow, you know, who has been for hours standing with his hands in his pocket, talking with drunken men and so on, is not worth much at the eleventh hour, nay even by the middle of the day it has become so natural to him to prop the walls, that he is not likely to take to work very readily. Begin early with your souls, break in the colts while they are young, and they are likely to take well to the collar. There are no workers like those who commenced work while they were yet children. What a promise of a long day there is for young believers; the sun has just risen, and he has to travel to his zenith and to descend again. There is ample room and verge enough though none to spare. If God in his providence permit it so to happen, that youngster yonder has twelve hours’ work before him — what may he not accomplish? For a grand and glorious life early piety if not essential, is certainly a very great advantage. To give those first days to Jesus will spare us many sad regrets, prevent us acquiring many evil habits, and enable us to achieve good success through the Holy Spirit’s blessing. It is well to begin to fly while yet the wings are strong, for if we live long in sin the wins: may be broken and then they will flap wearily through the rest of our days, even when grace shall call u •<. Let it be the desire of parents here to have their children converted as children! And oh! may God cast that desire into the hearts of some of you young people that are here this morning that before you reach one-and-twenty, before you are called men, you may be perfect men in Christ Jesus, that while you are yet children you may be children of God. May you as “newborn babes receive the sincere milk of the Word,” and the Lord grant that you may “grow thereby.” Happy, happy, happy souls, whom the Master thus by distinguishing grace brings “early in the morning!”

The householder went out again at the third hour. This may represent the period in which we have mounted above being children and youths and are entitled to be called men. Suppose we settle the first hour as extending over the earliest seven or eight years of age; then the second hour runs on from that to twenty-one or thereabouts; and then we have a good length of time between twenty and thirty and onwards to reckon as the third, and fourth, and fifth hours. There are some whom divine grace renews at the third hour. This is late! pne-and-twenty is grievously late, when you consider how much of early joy is now impossible, how much of sinful habit has now been acquired, how many opportunities for usefulness are now gone past recall. A quarter of the day has flown away for ever when we reach the third hour. It is the best quarter of the day, too, that has gone past re call. The first meal of the day is over, — that blessed breaking of the fast with Christ is no more possible. A very precious meal is that, when the Saviour gives us the morning portion, the manna which melteth when the sun is up. Blessed is the child’s feeding upon Jesus: truly I remember when I was awakened like Elias from under the juniper tree, and fed on such dainty fare that to this day the flavour abideth with me. The man of one-and-twenty has lost that first meal, breakfast is all over; Christ will say to him as he will to some others, “Come and dine,” and that is precious; but the daintiest meal is over, the first early enjoyment, the first early rapture can never be known.

I have no doubt there are many here who think that to be converted at one-and-twenty is very soon; but why one-and-twenty years givei? to Satan? Why a fourth of man’s existence devoted to evil? Besides,, it may not be a fourth, it may be one half, nay, in how many cases it is the whole of life. The sun goes down ere it is yet noon, and the idler in the market-place has no hope of ever being a worker in the vineyard. Death who comes when God wills, and gives us no notice, may cut down the flower before it has fully opened. “In the morning it is like grassthat groweth up, in the evening it is cut down and withereth.” It is late, it is sadly late! It is a sad thing to have lost those bright days in which the mind was least engaged, in which it was the most susceptible of forming godly habits. It is a sad thing to have learned so much of sin as one may have learned by one-and-twenty, a sad thing to have seen so much of iniquity, to have treasured up in one’s memory so much of defilement. Twenty years with God; one might have been in such a time a good scholar in the kingdom; but twenty years in the world one begins to be like scarlet that has been lying in the dye till it is stained through and through. It is late, hit we thank God that it is not too lute. Nay, it is not too late even for the grandest of purposes. Not only is this period of life not too late for salvation, but it is not too late to do much for Jesus Christ. Some of us when we were one-and-twenty, tad finished five years of Christian ministry, and had been the means of bringing many souls to the cross of Christ; but if others are led by grace to begin then, why there is a good period still remaining if God in providence spares our lives. The young man is now in all his strength and vigour, his bones are full of marrow, and his heart is full of fire. He ought to have acquired a good degree of education, and be prepared to acquire more.

Now he is just in the time when he should work. His plans of life are not settled as yet; he is not married yet, probably; as yet there are no children about him to have been injured by his ill example; he has an opportunity of rearing up a household in the fear of God. He is commencing business, he has an opportunity of so conducting that business that there may never need to be a time when he shall have to tack about and steer another course. He may, if called by God’s grace at one-andtwenty, begin an honourable career, in which there need not be an angle or a curve, but straight to the harbour’s mouth he may steer and mark upon the sea of life one shining furrow which shall reach in a direct line from the present moment straight to the lights of heaven, which he shall reach with his sail full and a priceless cargo on board to the praise of the glory of divine grace. It is late, it is very late in some respects, but oh! it is not too late to serve the Master w’ell, and to win a crown of great reward, the gift of love divine.

There is abundance of work to do for us who are in this third, fourth, and fifth hour of the day. In fact, I suppose the Church must look to us for its most active work. After this period and the next, a man frequently becomes rather a recipient from the Church than a donor to it in the matter of activity. Its fresh blood, its energy, its warmth of heart, its ready action, must to a great extent come from the young men who are converted. Oh, you of one-and-twenty, I would to God that you were all born from heaven! You maidens, in your early beauty may the Master in his infinite mercy bring you in! Oh, could you know the sweetness of his love, you would not need persuading! Could you understand the joy of true religion, you would not want entreating! There is more hallowed mirth enjoyed in secret with the Lord Jesus Christ, than in all the merriment the world can yield. One ounce of Christ’s love is better than a ton of the world’s flatteries. The world offers bubbles with fair hues, bright to look upon, but vanishing at a breath; but Christ gives real treasure, enduring as eternity. The world’s gold is all base money; it glitters, but it is not precious. There may be less glitter about the things of God, but there is a “solid joy and lasting pleasure,” which “none but Zion’s children know.” May the Master come this morning to your hearts, and by my simple words may he call you at the third hour of the day into the vineyard.

The Master’s grace was not exhausted, and therefore he went out at Ihe sixth hour. We find him going into the market at high noon. Half the day was over. Who is going to employ a man, and give him a whole day’s wages when twelve o’clock has come? He will not do too much if you hire him at six, what will he do if you engage him at twelve? Half a day’s work! that is a poor thing to seek or to offer. The Master, however, seeks and accepts it. He promises, “Whatsoever ie right, I will give you;” and there are some found who at the sixth hour enter into the vineyard and, being saved by grace, begin their work for Jesus. This may represent the period of life in which man is supposed to be in his prime — when he is past forty and onward. This is sadly late, very sadly late. Sadly late in a great many respects, not only because there is so little time left, but because so very much of energy, and zeal, and force, which should have been given to God, has been wasted; and has to some extent been used to fight against God. Forty years of hardness of heart! That is a long time for divine patience. Forty years of sin! That is a long season for conscience to mourn over. “Forty years long was I grieved with this generation,” said God. In the wilderness they hardened their hearts all that time; and he sware in his wrath that they should not enter into his rest. What a blessing for you of forty and unconverted, that he has not sworn so terrible an oath concerning you, that still his longsuffering lingers, etill his patience bears with you, still does he say to yon, “Go, work, my son — go work this day in rny vineyard.” It is sadly late, because it has become so more than natural to you to walk in the way of sin. You will have so much to contend with in future, as the result of the past. Putting the ship of the soul about is not such easy work as turning a vessel by her helm; only a divine hand can steer a soul upon the tack of grace. You will need much grace to conquer those corruptions which have had forty years to take root in. You have a tenant in your house who is in possession, and you will find that possession to be nine points of the law; it will be a hard ejectment for you to effect, so hard indeed, that only a “stronger than he” can cast him out. To your dying day the recollection of evil things which you heard during these forty years of unregeneracy will stick by you; you will hear the echoes of an old song just when you are trying to pray, and some deed which you regret and monrn over, will come to check you just when you are about to say, “Abba Father,” with an unstammering tongue. It is late, it is very, very late, this sixth hour, but it is not too late. It is not too late for some of the richest enjoyments; you can yet dine with Jesus; he can yet manifest himself unto you, as he doth not unto the world; you can have yet much time to serve him in. It is not too late yet to be distinguished among his servants. Take John Newton’s life; he was called in the middle of the day, but John Newton left his mark in God’s vineyard, a mark that will never be forgotten. I suppose Paul could not have been much less than of that age’when he was called by sovereign grace; nay, the most of the apostles were probably very little short of this age when mercy met with them; still they did a glorious day’s work. If saved by grace in middle life, my brother, you must work harder, you must let the time past suffice you to have wrought the will of the flesh, and now you must redeem the time, because the days are evil. Why, a man converted at forty should go double quick march to heaven, there should not be a moment lost now. Work the engine at high pressure, and give two strokes for every one that might be given by younger men and younger minds. Seek

in the divine strength to do twice as much in the time, since you have only half the time to do a life’s workan. Crowns for Christ, I know you wish to win them; then be up and doing, beloved. You are saved by grace, and by grace alone. You pant to honour Christ, because of his free love to you; cannot you endeavour to honour him as much in the remnant which remains as others do in the whole length of their life? You may by zeal, and prudence, and discretion, and perfect consecration, yet serve the Master well.

The householder went out at the ninth hour, at three o’clock in thr afternoon. Nobody thinks of engaging day-labourers at three o’clock in the afternoon. A day’s work to be done from three till six! It shows you that this gospel hiring is nothing like a legal hiring; it must be all of grace, or a man would not think of doing such a thing. Well now, three o’clock in the afternoon, that is from sixty to seventy. The prime of life has gone. It is late, it is sadly late, very sadly late. It is late because all the powers of the man are weak now. His memory begins to fail; he thinks his judgment better than ever it was, but probably that is only his own opinion. Most of the faculties lose their edge in old age. He has acquired experience, but still there is no fool like an old fool; and a man who has not been taught by divine grace learns very little of any value in the school of providence. Sixty thousand years would not make a man wise if grace did not teach him. Now think of it, is it not late? Here is the man: if he be converted now, what is there left of him? He is just a candle end. He may give a little light, but it is almost like a snuff burning in the socket. All those sixty years, seventy years, have been spent, where? Cover it all up. Let us go backward as Noah’s sons did, and cover it all up; and oh, may almighty grace cover it too! The fact is terribly appalling — sixty, seventy years spent in the service of Satan! Oh what good the man might have done! Had he but served his God as he served the world, what good he might have done! He has made a fortune, has he! How rich he might have been in faith by this time. He has built a house! Yes, but how he might have helped to build the Church. The man has been playing at card-houses; he has been like boys by the sea-shore building castles of sand, which must all come down, and must come down very soon too, for I hear the surges of the dread tide of death, it is rolling in even now. Those teeth which have fallen out, those pains and rheumatics, and so on, all show that this is not his rest. The tabernacle is beginning to crumble about the man, and the warning is loud which reminds him that he must soon be gone, and leave his wealth and his house; and so if this be all, in the end it will turn out that he has done nothing; he has piled up shadows, heaped together thick clay, and that is all he has done; when he might, if he had believed in Jesus, have done so much for God and for the souls of men. What evil habits he has acquired! What can you ever make of this man? If he be saved, it will be so as by fire. He is called, and he shall enter heaven, but oh! how little can he do for the Master, and what strong corruptions will he have to wrestle with, and what an inward conflict even till he gets to heaven! It is late, it is very late, but oh! blessed be God! it is not too late. We have had within these walls persons who have long passed the prime of their days, who have come forward and said, “We will cast in our lot with you because the Lord is with you.” We have heard their joyous story of how the old man has become a babe, and how he that was hoary with years has been born again into the kingdom of Christ. It is not too late. Did the devil say so? The gate ig shutting; I can hear it grating on the hinges, but it is not shut! The sun is going down, but he is not lost beneath the horizon yet; and if the Master calls thee, only run thou the faster because it is so; and when thou art saved, serve him with all thy might and main, because thou hast so little time to glorify him here on earth, and short space in which to show thy sense of deep indebtedness to his surpassing love. The day is nearly over, it has come to the eleventh hour, five o’clock! The men have been looking at

their watches to see whether it will not soon be six; they are longing to hear the clock strikes they hope the day’s work will soon close. See; the Master goes out into the market-place among those hulking fellows who are still loitering there, and he pitches upon some and asks them, “Why stand ye here all the day idle? Go and work! and whatsoever is right I will give you.” At the eleventh hour they come in — half-ashamed to come I will be bound, — hardly liking the others to see them; ashamed to begin work so late. Still they did steal in somewhere; and there were generous labourers who looked over the tops of the vines, and said to them, “Glad to see you, friends! glad to see you, however late.” There were a few, I dare say, among the labourers, at least there are if this be the vineyard, who would even stop their work and begin to sing and praise God to think that their fellows had been brought in at the eleventh hour. Now the eleventh hour must be looked upon as any period of life which is past threescore years and ten; how late it may extend I cannot tell. There is an authentic instance of a man converted to God at the age of a hundred and four, during the last Irish revival, who walked some distance to make a confession of his faith in Jesus Christ; and I recollect a case of -one converted in America by a sermon which he had heard, I think, eighty-one years previously. He was fifteen when he heard Mr. Flavell at the end of a discourse, instead of pronouncing the blessing, say, “I cannot bless you. How can I bless those who do not love the Lord Jesus Christ? * If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be Anathema Maranatha;’” and eighty-one years or more afterwards that solemn sentence came to the man’s recollection when he was living in America, and God blessed it to his conversion. There have been some to whom the eleventh hour has been the very hour of death; some, I say, how many or how few is not for me to know. There is one instance we know in Scripture, it was the dying thief. There is but one; God however, in his abundant mercy can do as he wills to the praise of the glory of his grace, and at the eleventh hour he can call his chosen. It is very late, it is very very, very late, it is sorrowfully late, it is dolefully late, out it is not too late, and if the Master call thee, come — though an hundred years of sin should make thy feet heavy to thee, so that thy steps are painfully limping. If he call thee it is late but not too late, and therefore come, Have you ever thought of how the thief worked for his Lord? It was not a fine place for working, hanging on a cross dying, just at the eleventh hour; but he did a deal of work in the few minutes. Observe what he did. First he confessed Christ — he acknowledged him to be Lord, confessed him before men. In the second place he justified Christ — “This man has done nothing amiss.” In the next place he worshipped the Lord Jesus, calling him “Lord.” He even began to preach, for he rebuked his fellow sinner; he told him that he should not re rile one who was so unrighteously condemned. He offered a petition which has become a very model of prayer — “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” At any rate I wish I could say of myself what I can say of the thief, he did all he could; I cannot say that of myself, I am afraid I cannot say it of any of you. I do not know any thing the thief could have done on the cross which he did not do. As soon as ever he was called, he seems to have worked in the vineyard to the utmost extent of his ability; and so let me say to you, if you should be called at the eleventh hour, my dear hearer, though thou be well stricken in years and aged, yet for Jesus Christ’s sake out of great love for all the great things which he hath done for thee, go thy way and praise him with all thy might.

II. My time has gone, and I wanted to have shown that DISTIN GUISHING GRACE SHONE RESPLENDENTLY IN EVERY INSTANCE. Those

called in the early morning have delightful reason for admiring sovereign grace, for they are spared the ills and sins of life. I must content myself, however, by repeating concerning them the lines of Ralph Erskine.

“In heavenly choirs a question rose,
That stirred up strife will never close;
What rank of all the ransomed race,
Owes highest praise to sovereign grace.

Babes thither caught from womb and breast,
Claimed right to sing above the rest;
Because they found the happy shore,
They never saw nor sought before.”

What distinguishing grace is that which called us when we were young! Herein is electing love. “When Ephraim was a child then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.” Some of us in time and in eternity will have to utter a special song of thankfulness to the love which took us in our days of folly and simplicity, and conducted us into the family of God. It was not because we were better disposed children than others, or because there was naturally anything good about us; we were wilful, heady, and high-minded, proud, wayward, and disobedient as other children are, and yet mercy separated us from the rest, and we shall never cease to adore its sovereignty.

Look at the grace which calls the man at the age of twenty, when the passions are hot, when there is strong temptation to plunge into the yices arid the so-called pleasures of life. To be delivered from the charms of sin, when the world’s cheek is ruddy, when it wears its best attire, and to be taught to prefer the reproach of Christ to all the riches of Egypt, this is mighty grace for which God shall have our sweetest song.

To be called of the Lord at forty, in the prime of life. This is a wonderful instance of divine power, for worldliness is hard to overcome, and worldliness is the sin of middle age. With a family about you, with much business, with the world eating into you as doth a canker, it is a wonder that God should in his mercy have visited you then, and made you a regenerate soul. You are a miracle of grace, and you will have to ft*4 »t and to praise God for it in time and eternity.

Siity again. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard hii spots? If so, then ye who are accustomed to do evil may learn to do well.” Arid yet you have learned, you have had a blessed schoolmaster who sweetly taught you. and you have learned to do well. Though your vessel had begun to rot in the waters of the Black Sea of sin, you have got a new owner, and you will run up a new flag, and you will sail round the Cape of Good Hope to the Islands of the Blessed, in the Land of the Hereafter.

But what shall I say of you that are called when you are aged? Ah you will have to love much, for you have had much forgiven. I do not know that you may be in thankfulness a whit behind those of us who are called in our early youth; we have much to bless God for, and so have you. We are at one extreme and you are at the other; we would love much because we have been spared much sinning, and you must love much because you have been delivered from much sinning. Xot to go through the fire is a theme for song; but to traverse the flame and not be burned, to walk the furnace and to be delivered from its vehement fire, oh! how should you find words with which to express your gratitude! Called early or called late, called at midday or called at early noon, let us together, since we have been called by grace alone, ascribe it all to the Lord Jesus, and moved by the mighty constraints of his love, let us work with body, soul, and spirit — work for him till we can work no longer, and then praise him in the rest of glory.

I pray you, brethren, suffer no idleness to creep over you. If you have sought to extend the Redeemer’s kingdom, do it more. Give more, talk more of Christ, pray more, labour more! I often receive the kind advice, “Do less.” I cannot do less. Do less! Why, better rot altogether than live the inglorious life of doing less than our utmost for God. We shall none of us, I am afraid, kill ourselves with working too hard for Jesus. It were such a blessed act of suicide that if there be a sin that is venial, it would certainly be that. I am not afraid that you are likely to perpetrate such an enormity. Work for the Master! Labour for the Master! We must spend and be spent, and wear ourselves out for him! Make no reserve for the flesh to fulfil the lusts of it! And oh, how happy shall we be, if we may be privileged to finish the work, and hear him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” May the Lord bless you for Christ’s sake. Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON — Matthew xix. 27 to end of chapter; xx. to end of verse 29.

Sitfbrrnacle f itlpit

THE FIKST LAST, AND THE LAST FIKST.

INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD’S-DAY, SEPTEMBER IGTH, 1891,
DELIVERED BY

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON,
On Thursday Evening, March 12th, 1891.

“But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.” — Matthew xix. 30. “So the last shall be first, and the first last.” — Matthew xx. 16.

WE must be saved if we would serve the Lord. We cannot serve God in an unsaved condition. “They that are in the flesh cannot please God.” It is vain for them to attempt service while they are still at enmity against God. The Lord wants not enemies to wait upon him, nor slaves to grace his throne. We must be saved first; and salvation is all of grace. “By grace are ye saved through faith.” After we are saved, and as the result of salvation, we serve. Saved — we serve. He that is saved becomes a child of God, and then he renders a child-like service in his Father’s house. That service is also all of grace. He serves not under the law of the old commandment, “This do, and thou shalt live;” for he is not under the law, but under grace. Therefore, sin shall not have dominion over him, but grace shall have dominion over him; and he shall seek to serve the Lord and please him all the days of his life. When we are saved, we must never forget that we are saved that we may serve; made free from sin, that we may become servants to God. David says, “0 Lord, truly I am thy servant; I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds.” Because our bonds are loosed, we are under new bonds, bonds of love, which bind us to the service of the Most High.

Now, when we come thus to be servants, we must not forget that we are saved men and women; for if we begin to fancy that, while we serve, we are working to win life by our merits, we shall get upon legal ground; and a child of God on legal ground is going back, he is departing from his true standing before God. Still remember, ‘• Ye are not under the law, but under grace.” But if you begin to forget your indebtedness to your Saviour, not only for eternal life, but for everything you are, and have, and do, you will be like the Galatians, who began in the Spirit, but sought to be made perfect by the flesh. No. 2,221. 3

You will be like the young man, whose question we have just read: “What lack I yet?” You will be like Peter, who puts in a sort of claim for reward: “Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?” You will be like the men who had worked in the vineyard from early morning, and who murmured because the penny was given to those who had only worked for a single hour. Christ will not have his servants under bondage to a legal spirit. Wherever he spies it out, he strikes it on the head; for pboth the service and the reward are all of grace. The service itself is given us of God, and God rewards the service which he himself has given. We might almost speak of this as an eccentricity of grace. God gives us good works, and then rewards us for the works which he himself has given. So all is of grace from first to last, and must never be viewed with a legal eye. Into this subject I want on this occasion to conduct you.

I dare say that you have heard sermons from this text, but probably mot preached from it in its connection. I like to take the text as it stands, and get from it a bit of exposition for my own heart, which I may pass on to you; for, remember, although the text away from its connection may be true, yet it is not the truth which God there intended to teach us, and it becomes us to look about us to see what conies before the text, and what comes after, in order that we may ‘Catch the exact meaning of the Holy Ghost in giving the words.

I. I shall begin by dwelling upon this remark: IN THE SERVICE •OF OUR LORD FREE GRACE is MANIFESTED. It may not strike you as being upon the surface of the text, but it lies on the very surface of the whole connection: in the service of our Lord free grace is manifested. Think that over.

It must be so, in the first place, because, although it is rewarded, <all our service is already due to God. Under the law we are bound to love the Lord with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind, and with all our strength. There can be nothing beyond that. All that we can do we are already bound to do, under the law. Works of supererogation must be impossible, since the law comprehends all holiness, and condemns every form of sin. When we have done all, we are unprofitable servants, we have done no more than it was our duty to do. Hence, brethren, if there be a service to which we are called, and for which a reward is promised, it must be a service of grace. It cannot be any other. Under the gospel, the same thing is true; all that we can do is already due. “Ye are not your own j for ye are bought with a prioe.” There is no faculty, there is no capacity, there is no possibility of your nature which is not redeemed, and which does not belong to Christ by virtue of the ransom price which he has paid for it. You will gladly and gratefully own the obligation to do all that lieth in you, for him who loved you, and bought you with his precious blood.

“Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears for ever flow;”

surely they are all due to niy Lord already in repentance and gratitude. .All the zeal of missionaries, all the patience of martyrs, all the faith of confessors, all the holiness of godly men, is Christ’s by right, and therefore there can be no reward for them, seeing that they are his due already. If there be a service for which a reward is given to us, it is a service granted to us of grace, that we may receive grace thereby.

But, next, there is this reflection — all our service is in itself unacceptable. When all conies to all, it is still, in and of itself, a thing so mean and poor, so imperfect and defiled, that it could not claim any reward. Job was made to feel this in the day of his humiliation. He said “If I say, I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse. Though I were perfect, yet would I not know my soul: I would despise my life.” If it were possible for us to stand before God in any merit of our own, we feel so certain that we have come short of the glory of God, and that in many things we have offended, that we would tear off our righteousness from us, and throw it away as filthy rags, even the best of it. “I count all things but loss,” saith Paul, “that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ; the righteousness which is of God by faith.” If then we are so conscious of our failures, and shortcomings, and transgressions, and if we have to cry for mercy even on our holy things, and to confess sin in them, how can we suppose that any reward that may be given can be otherwise than of grace, seeing that the whole service itself must be of grace?

Think again. The ability to serve God is the gift of God’s grace. I refer not only to mental ability; but to the capacity which men of substance have to help the cause of God by their generous gifts. It is God who gives the power to get wealth, as it is he who gives the brain to think, and the mouth to speak. “What hast thou that thou didst not receive?” If any here present are serving God with gifts and graces, I am sure that they must own that these were given to them. They did not win them themselves. Or, if some of them be acquirements, yet the power to acquire was given them of him from whom cometh every good gift and every perfect gift. Thus the ability to serve God is the gift of grace.

Beloved, the call to serve God in any special way is also of grace. If we are called to the ministry, remember how Paul puts it: “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.” If our kings put upon their coins “Dei gratia” — kings, by the grace of God — well, well, let them say so; but we can put it on our lives. “Sunday-school teachers, by the grace of God.” “Street-preachers, by the grace of God.” “Students in the College, by the grace of God.” “Preachers of the gospel, by the grace of God.” It is God who calls us to our several sacred employments. Our ordination, if it be an ordination at all, is from that great Shepherd and Bishop of souls, who went up into a mountain, and called unto him whom he would, and made them to be his first messengers. Before he left them, he gave them that great commission which is still binding upon all his followers, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” It is of grace that we are put into any sphere of service; and what a grace it is to be permitted to do anything for him! His shoes’ latchets we are not worthy to unloose; his shoes we are not worthy to bear. Though it be a menial’s work, it is a monarch’s work to do anything for Christ. Blessed be his name, if he will let me be anywhere in his service, though it were but as a scullion in the kitchen! The kitchen is in the palace, and Christ’s kitchen-maids are maids of honour. He that serveth God, reigneth. To serve him on earth is to be glorified. To serve him in heaven will be a part of our endless glory. Surely this, then, is by grace.

Still further, every opportunity of serving God is a gift of grace. ± am sure that when I have been shut out from the pulpit by sickness, I have thought it a great grace from God to be permitted to creep into the pulpit once more. When one’s hand has been unable to hold a pen, we count it a grace to be able to write again some loving words that may be blessed to men. I think that it is God’s grace that puts in your way people to whom you may speak privately. It is God’s grace that brings those children to the Sunday-school to you, that you may teach them. If we were wide awake, we should see, all day long, opportunities of usefulness, and we should be saying, u Blessed be God who puts me by providence where I can be of some little service to him, and bring forth some fruit to his praise!” It is all of grace; these providential openings, and the spirit and the power to avail ourselves of them, come as gifts from God.

Another thing I know: when you have the call to a work, and the opportunity, still it is a gift of grace to be in a right state of mind to do your Lord’s service. Do you never feel sluggish and dull? Would you not alicays be so if his Spirit did not quicken you? Are you not sometimes frost-bitten, so that your soul seems like a great iceberg? Would the waters ever flow unless the Spirit came with melting- power? Do you not thank God, dear brother, that you have had gracious occasions in which the Lord has made you like Naphtali, “a hind let loose’’? When you have given forth goodly words, from whom has come the unction? whence the power? You have spoken: ah, that is a poor thing! But God has spoken through you: ah, that is a grand thing! Is not that wholly the work of grace? Every tear of sympathy that the preacher sheds when he is wooing men to Christ, every heart-throb and all the anguish of his soul when he would fain compel them to come in, the whole bearing and carnage of a grace-taught minister or teacher — all this is of grace, and unto God must be the glory of it. It is not under law that we are working; for law provides no strength, no tone, no savour. It is grace that makes us work; for it gives us the strength with which to work. “God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this, that power belongeth unto God. Also unto thee, 0 Lord, belongeth mercy: for thou renderest to every man according to his work.” Thou givest him strength proportioned to his need, and the guidance necessary because of the difficulties of his task. Here is grace. Is it not so?

You will be sure to join with me in the next point without a single demur: success in holy service is wholly of the Lord. If we were so wicked as to attribute to ourselves the sowing, and to ourselves the watering, apart from grace, yet we dare not attribute to ourselves the increase.

“I have planted,” said Paul; “Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.” Would a single persuasion of ours prevail with man’s hard heart if the Holy Spirit did not convince him of sin, and make him repent? Would the preaching of the gospel in our poor way ever enlighten a single eye if Jesus Christ were not seen in his own light? Could we comfort the broken-hearted, could we proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound, if the Spirit of God were not upon us? Why, if we did make the proclamation, would it not fall flat to the ground apart from the work of God, who doeth all things through us and by us? We are labourers together with him. We lift our hand, and God lifts his. We speak, and he speaks. We would fain lay hold of men’s hearts, and he does lay hold upon them. We would weep them to Christ, and he brings them weeping to Christ, and saves them to eternal life. Blessed be his name! After many years of prophesying in his name, dare any of us say that we have made the dry bones to live? After having long given the invitation, do we say that we have persuaded one to come to the wedding-feast apart from the Lord’s divine working? Do we take any of the glory of a saved soul to ourselves? It were treason; it were blasphemy. We dare not commit such a sin. Our work, if it succeeds at all, if it is worth calling good work, is all of grace.

And if, my dear friends, any of you are called to suffer for Christ’s sake, the honour of suffering is a special gift. If you have been reviled, if you have lost position, if you have suffered those moderate martyr doms which are possible in a free country like this, then “Unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake.” “Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.” But take no credit to yourself. You are elevated to the peerage of suffering: it is your King who brought you there. You have his gracious permission to pass through great tribulation: that were nothing to you, if you had not washed 3-0111* robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. You owe your patience, your courage, your steadfastness, all to the Spirit of God. You had long since been carried away by the fear of man, which bringeth a snare; you had long since been a traitor to the truth, and to your Lord, if he had left you. It is your duty to be faithful. When you are faithful, it is not in yourself that you are so. He works all our works in us, and he must have the praise of them. “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Work it out to the very full. Be thorough with it. “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” “Be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.” God will reward you; but your steadfastness, your diligence, your patience, all these are the work of the grace of God, and you know it. If you, indeed, possess them, you ascribe them all to him.

Now, then, we have established this, I think, beyond all contradiction, among spiritual men — that in the service of the Lord free grace is magnified.

II. So we take another step, and we say, as our second head,

HENCE THE LORD HAS HIS OWN WAY OF MEASURING WHAT WE DO. YOU see that in the case of these persons who had toiled in the vineyard ;. their master measured their work after his own fashion. He did not go by the regular pay-way of so much an hour; but, inasmuch as it was all of grace, this great householder made the reward to be after his own measure, a penny for one hour and a penny for twelve hours. He made the last equal to the first. So shall it be: “The last shall be first, and the first last.” This is because we are dealing here, not with a legal paymaster, but with a God of grace, who measures our service, which itself is all of grace, by his own measurement, and not by ours.

He will reward every worker, but not as we judge. He will do no man any injustice, even in the omnipotence of his grace. He will be able to say to every worker, “Friend, I do thee no wrong.” He will da no wrong to any one of his servants, whoever they may be; rest sure of that; but still he will reply, “Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?” and he will reward his workers in his own royal yet gracious way.

So, then, he will not reivard- us according to the time spent, or surfacecovered. Some may be Christians for thirty or forty years, and may never be among the first. It is not the length of your service, good as that is, that will be God’s gain. There may be some who shall come to Christ and go home to heaven in a single year, and yet shall bring great honour to their Master. It is not the length of time in which you are engaged in the Lord’s service. Neither is it the space that is apparently covered. Some seem to do a great deal, skimming over a wide surface; but it is not so that the Master measures: neither by the hour, nor yet by the acre. That might be a legal way of measurement, but his gracious way of measurement is not so.

And he will not measure out the reward according to our ability, whether it be mental ability, ability of substance, or ability of opportunity; for some of us might come in for a large share, and others might come in for a very little, if this were the rule. But this is not the way the Master measures. If to one man he gives the gift of speech, to another the great gift of diving deeply into the meaning of his word, and to another experience, and so on, yet the reward to the persons holding these various gifts will not be in proportion to the gifts they have, but after quite another rule.

The reward will not be according to the judgment of men. A. brother has served God in his way, and his brethren think much of him, and appoint him to an office. He is a deacon, or an elder, or, peradventure, he becomes a pastor. It is a high reward to be allowed thus to increase our opportunities of usefulness; but we shall not at last be rewarded according to the height of office. That is not the standard in this kingdom where Christ rules.

Above all, no man shall be measured by his own judgment; else I know some friends who would have a very grand reward. They are free from sin; they are perfect, they say: their Master knows, if they do not, whether that is true or not. Another says, “I have done this, and I have done that.” But it is not what you say that you have done, that will gauge your Master’s reward to you. There are some that speak very loudly of what they have accomplished. I do not.

think that their brethren, for the most part, think the more of them for thinking so much of themselves. I believe that those who have lower opinions of their own capacity and usefulness are much more honoured in the presence of the saints of God. No, our self -judgment, our tall talk, our loud profession, and so forth, will not be the measure with which we shall be rewarded; else those who said, “We have borne the burden and heat of the day,” would have had twopence, at least, if not threepence, or, perhaps, even a shilling, in proportion to those poor creatures, whom the master made equal to them, though they had only come in at the eleventh hour.

Our reward will not be according to the impression made among men. “We may have made our mark upon our age, and neighbourhood, and surroundings. Some men’s names will go down to posterity; others have no fame at all. It will be found of some men that their lives are written and emblazoned everywhere. Others will live in the little circle of their family, but not beyond that narrow range. But God will not measure so. The godly housewife, with four or five children trained for God in her cottage, may be reckoned of God among the first; and the able speaker, in his pulpit, who has thousands hanging on his lips, may be reckoned of God among the last. God has his own ways of measuring up men’s works.

But let me add that we shall not be rewarded even according to our success. To some men success is meted out in large measure; that success which really is not their own, but is the fruit of other men’s labours. A man preaches the gospel with many te”ars for years, and sees little fruit. He dies: another man, of earnest spirit, follows him, and gathers in the old man’s sheaves. The former man planted; the other man entered into his labours. To whom shall the reward be ^iven? The success is not due to him who seems to have achieved it. You remember the old Romish legend, which contains a great truth. There was a brother who preached very mightily, and who had won many souls to Christ, and it was revealed to him one night, in a dream, that in heaven he would have no reward for all that he had done. He asked to whom the reward would go; and an angel told him that it would go to an old man who used to sit on the pulpit stairs, and pray for him. Well, it may be so, though it is more likely that both would share their Master’s praise. We shall not be rewarded, however, simply according to our apparent success.

Neither shall we be put down as one of the last because of non-success. God intends that some men shall never succeed, according to the rule of success that appertains among men; for he sent even his servant Isaiah to go and make the people’s hearts hard, and their ears <lull of hearing; and he sent Jeremiah to weep over a nation to whom his tears brought no repentance and no reformation. He may send you, like Noah, to preach for one hundred and twenty years, and never get a soul beside your own family into the ark. But if you are faithful, that is well pleasing in his sight. Here lies the good pleasure of God. I do not suppose that it will happen that you are to do all the ploughing and all the sowing, and there should never be an armful of sheaves for you in all your life; though, if it should be thus, and you shall have been at the last found faithful to the commission that your God has given to you, verily, I say unto you, you shall have your reward; but the reward is not measured out according” to man’s rule of success.

Let me tell you what I think is a rule with God. It is a many-branched kind of rule. Some men stand first because of their strong desire. Oh, they would have saved the people if they could; they would have persuaded men to be Christians if they could; they would have laid down their lives to do it. They preached their very hearts out in their desire for their hearers’ salvation. Their souls ran over at their lips while they talked with men. God knows their desires, and he takes the will for the deed, and “so the last shall be first.”

God also measures proportions. The brother never had more than one talent, but he did as much with it as some with ten; yet it did not seem to come to much in his eye. He was always mourning because he was so little. He thought that he was like one of those coral insects at the bottom of the sea, just making a little bit of coral which never came above the waves; but it was part of a great whole that would afterwards rise into a fairy island of the sea. Our Lord will measure, not according to what a man hath not, but according to what a man hath.

And here is one who has little to commend him except his spirit. He waits upon God. He is very gracious. He trembles at God’s word. He speaks with his whole heart very reverently, very tenderly, desiring always to be silent if God would have him silent, and only to speak when God would move him to speak. His delight is to do the Lord’s will, and nothing but the Lord’s will, and he is quite content to be nothing. Indeed, he cries for that —

“Oh, to be nothing, nothing,
Only to lie at his feet!”

Now, God may put that man among the first; whereas the self-contained man, who does work for God sincerely, may, nevertheless, have to go into the back rank, and be among the last.

Here is one, again, who, whatever he does, does it with thoroughness. He does not attempt many things, but he does one thing. It is all that he can do, and he throws his whole soul into it, and works at it like some Eastern artist working at a cameo for a prince. All his life is put into that little bit of a thing; and, it may be, that our great King will count him first; while another who did much in a slovenly, slurring style, and was thought to have done a great deal, will have all his work rejected, for it is not up to the Prince’s mark, and he will not adorn his palace therewith.

I think, dear friends, that God will measure our work very much by our thought of him in it. If we did it all to him; if we did it all for him; if he was always in our mind in the doing of it; and we did not think of our friends, nor of our own reputation, God would be more likely to honour us, for he will put those who think much of him among the first, and others among the last. “Them that honour me,” saith the Lord, “I will honour.”

And especially, again, if all that we do is baptized with love. Why, see that woman who brought her alabaster box, and broke it, and poured the precious ointment of spikenard upon Christ’s head! She is put among the first, and Christ makes honourable mention of her wherever the gospel is preached. Some that did much have to go among the last; for they had not such love as she had.

Some work for God with great faith; and the Lord loves to see us working in faith. To do a great deal of work with a great deal of unbelief, is to do very little after all; for if a prayer that is unbelieving does not prosper, preaching or teaching that is unbelieving is not likely to do so. Put faith into thy work, and, may be, thou wilt be among the first.

I am sure that God measures much of our work according to the prayer we expend over it. Oh, yes, it was a fine sermon! You could tell how the preacher had worked at it; you could see how he had polished up that phrase, and how he had cut that sentence into dicepieces to make it tell; but you could also see that he had never prayed over it. A sermon that is prayed over is worth ten thousand that are merely prepared, or copied, or that spring out of a man’s mind without being wrought by the Holy Spirit in his heart. Oh, to pray down the sermon, and then to pray up the sermon, and pray it all over, resting upon God alone!

God will often look upon our work in giving, not according to how much we give, but I think that the Lord’s rule is to take notice of how much we have left. That woman who gave all her living, gave more than all the rich men gave, because she had nothing left. It was but two mites that make a farthing; but then it was all her living; and so she goes into the front rank. My lord has given a thousand pounds, and we are very much obliged to him. He must go into the back rank, for all that; for he has so much left.

And then, it may be, that they will take the first place who did not get any reward for what they did. Our Lord tells us that when we are making a feast we should call in the blind, and the halt, and the lame. Why? “For,” he says, “they cannot recompense thee.” He speaks of the Pharisees again, and says, “Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.” You will not be paid twice. If you have done something for Christ — for instance, defended the faith — and you are denounced for it, and traduced for it, very well, you have not had your pay for it. There remaineth the recompense for unrewarded services. It is a grand thing when, by the grace of God, you have some thing standing in God’s book, not of law, but of grace. You helped a poor man, and he was not grateful. Oh, be so thankful that he was not grateful, because, if he had been grateful, you would have had your reward, may be! When those you relieve are very kind after wards, and speak well of you, and do you some good service in return, it is very nice; of course it is. Well, but you are paid. But those who have done good and suffered for it; who, for the best thing that they did have had the worst return; who have rendered kindness, and have only received unkindness as the result; it may be that the Lord will say of them, “These were last, but they shall be first;” whereas many that stood first in men’s esteem, and in the gratitude they received, will have to go last.

III. Now, my time almost fails me, but you must bear with me on my third head; for here is the practical part of free grace in our service.

Hence, WE HAVE INSTRUCTION AS TO OUR SPIRIT AS WORKERS. If the work is all of grace, and if God has a way of measuring up that work, which is not at all according to the law, but of his own grace; then there are two things to be observed. First, do not be proud; secondly, do not be discouraged.

Do not bu proud, for many that are first shall be last. Suppose, niy dear friend, that you really are first, and are doing a great deal for God, will you be proud? Why, you are only a greater debtor. You owe all the more to that grace, which has enabled you to be of some service in the kingdom of your Lord. Lie low at your Lord’s feet, and be very humble.

Next, remember that though you may think that you are first, you may, even now, be among the last. Your assessment of your service may not be the divine assessment at all. You may think that you are u rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing “; and, in God’s repute, you may be “Wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” Your work may be like very big trusses of hay, and loads of straw, and stacks of stubble; and yet, when God conies to try it, it may be all burned down to a handful of ashes; whereas the friend, of whom you think so little, may only have built a small portion, but he has built it of gold, and silver, and precious stones.

Let us also recollect that, even if it is true that we are among the first, we may, if we get proud of it, find ourselves among the last. Oh, how some of God’s greatest servants have been shrivelled up when they began to swell out with pride and vanity! God blessed them as long as they were feeble, and weak, and leaned upon his strength; but when they were strong, and relied on themselves, there came a dreadful failure.

There is one thing which is absolutely certain. If you are among the first, you will reckon yourself to be among the last. He that is best thinks himself worst. What a description Paul gives of himself in the seventh of Romans! “Oh,” says one, “I heard a person say that Paul was not a converted man when he wrote that!” Let me tell you that he had been in the third heaven when he wrote that bit of deep experience. He had so much likeness to his Lord that he excelled every other man then living, except, perhaps, John; and if it had not been for his extraordinary holiness he would never have been able to pen those tremendous groanings wherein he says, “0 wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” The man who thinks that he is holy has never seen the holy God. If he had — if he had ever beheld him, he would say with Job, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” The superlative perfection of the Lord God, and the absolutely perfect example of our Lord Jesus Christ, are such that if a man has ever had communion with these, he shrinks into nothing in his own esteem. He that is really first is always the man who is willing to be accounted last. Paul, though he is not a whit behind any of the apostles, yet calls himself less than the least of all saints, and describes himself as having been the chief of sinners. Ah, beloved! a low idea of self is one of the labels with which God marks the best of his possessions; therefore, do not be proud.

In the next place, do not be discouraged. If you feel that you are last, God’s measure is not yours. Though you may think that you are last, he may not think so at all. Though you say, “I am not worthy to be an apostle,” yet he may think you worth putting into the apostleship. God’s idea of your worthiness and your own may greatly differ; and his estimate is the true one.

Besides, suppose that you are last, yet “He giveth more grace.” •Christ has come, not only that we may have life, but that we may have it “more abundantly.” Do not be content with what you have. “Covet earnestly the best gifts.” Covet still more the best graces. God is able to do for us “exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.” Go in for great things. Hath not the Lord said, “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it” ‘t I spoke to a man of God this morning, and I told him how God had graciously enabled me to draw near to him in prayer, and of the glorious way he had granted my requests. My friend said, “Yes, and he has made your mouth bigger than it used to be.” Is it not so? The faculty of believing prayer grows by being used The more you ask, the more you may ask; and the more you have asked, the more you will ask. The capacity to receive is increased by receiving. God grant that it may be so with us if we are last!

Remember, too, that if you really are among the least useful, yet a riff ftt spirit may compensate for your poverty, and make your little service very precious. If you cannot get a wide sphere, do not want it. A young minister said to an old one, “Ah, sir! I preach only to about one hundred people. I wish that I could get where I could gather a thousand.” His friend answered, “Young man, a hundred people are quite enough for you to be accountable for; and if you faithfully discharge your duty to their souls, you have quite enough to do.” Wish for a larger sphere if you are capable of filling it; but remember that the best preparation for greater usefulness is to be faithful in your present position.

My last word to God’s children is this: what does it matter, after all, whether we are first or whether we are last? Do not let us dwell too much upon it, for we all share the honour given to each. When we are converted, we become members of Christ’s living body; and as we grow in grace, and get the true spirit that permeates that body, we shall say, when any member of it is honoured, “This is honour for us.” If any brother shall be greatly honoured of God, I feel honoured in his honour. If God shall bless your brother, and make him ten times more useful than you are, then you see that he is blessing you — not only blessing him, but you. If my hand has something in it, my foot does not say, “Oh, I have not got it!” No, for if my hand has it, my foot has it; it belongs to the whole of my body. If my mouth alone eats, yet it does not eat for my mouth alone; but it eats for my brain, my hand, my backbone, for every part of me. So, when you get to feel your oneness with Christ, and your oneness with his people, your only thought will be, “Let God be glorified; let him be magnified. It does not matter whether I am first or last.” You will stand up and say, “That brother, who was converted only a week or two ago, get his penny, and I am glad of it.” Here is another, who has done very poor work; but you will thank God that he has got his penny.

He is one of the family. It all comes from the same hand, and it will all come home to the same house. We are something like men in a great shop, where there are different people serving. One young man has a counter where ladies come, and he serves them, and he takes a lot of money in the day; another counterman, at the back, sells goods that take a deal of trouble to dispose of, and upon which there is but a trifling profit. Does the master praise the men of the shop according to the quantity of money each takes? The one who is put in the back place, and sells poor goods, is just as diligent and just as worthy in his master’s sight as the others. Suppose that they are all members of one family, when they meet at night, one will say, “I took so much.” Another will say, “I took ten times as much as that;” but they are all glad, because it all goes into the firm; it is all a part of the same concern. Go then, dear brothers and sisters, and work away for Christ, and do not envy one another, but all be glad to be permitted, in this work of grace, to take any part or any portion for your Lord.

One thing more, and I have done. I have only been talking to God’s people all this while, because you that are not saved cannot serve him. What a miserable position yours is! You are out of the pale of service. God will receive nothing of you till you come to Christ. The only way to bring a sacrifice is to bring it through the great High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ. “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven;” much less shall you be accepted as servants there. I beseech you, by the thought of the grace of which I have been speaking, to rest not until you can say that Christ has saved you, made you a partaker of his grace, and sent you forth into his royal service. The Lord bless you! Amen.

PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON — Matthew xix. 16 — 30;

xx. 1 — 16.

HYMNS FROM “OuR OWN HYMN BOOK” — 639, 663, 235*
futyit

A SERMON TO OPEN NEGLECTERS AND NOMINAL
FOLLOWERS OF RELIGION.

ennon

DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAY MORNING, MARCH 24TH, 1867, BT

AT THE AGRICULTURAL HALL, ISLINGTON.

«’ But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, nd said, Son, go work to day in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went. And he came to the second and said, likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not. Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The first. Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans arid the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterwards, that ye might believe him.” — Matthew xxi. 28 — 32.

THE eight of this vast arena, and of this crowded assembly, reminds me of other spectacles which, in days happily long past, were seen in the amphitheatres of the old Roman Empire, .lround, tier upon tier, were the assembled multitudes, with their cruel eyes and iron hearts; and in the centre stood a solitary, friendless man, waiting till the doors of fhe lion’s den should be uplifted, that he might yield himself up a witness for Christ and a sacrifice to the popular fury. There would have been no difficulty then to have divided the precious from the vile in that audience. The most thoughtless wayfarer who should enter into the amphitheatre, would know at once who was the disciple of Christ and who were the enemies of the Crucified One. There stood the bravely-calm disciple, about to die, but all around, in those mighty tiers of the Colosseum, or of the amphitheatre of some provincial town, AS the case might be, there sat matrons and nobles, princes and peasants, plebeians and patricians, senators and soldiers, all gazing downward with the same fierce, unpitying look; all boisterous for their heathen gods, and all vociferous in the joy with which they gazed upon the agonies of the disciple of the hated Galilean, butchered to make a Roman holiday. Another sight is before us to-day, with far more happy associations; but alas! it is a far more difficult task this day to separate the chaff from the wheat, the precious from the vile, thiin in the day when the apostle fought with beasts at Ephesus. Here, in this arena, I hope there are hundreds, if not thousands, who would be prepared to die for our Lord Jesus; and in yondor crowded seats, we may count by hundreds those who bear the uam« and accept the No. 742. 4 p-spcl of the Man of Nazareth; and yet, I fear me, that both ir» these living hills on either side, and upon this vast floor, there are many enemies of the Son of God, who are forgetful of his righteous claims — who have cast from them those cords of love which should bind them to his throne, and have never submitted to the mighty love which showed itself in his cross and in his wounds. I cannot attempt the separation. You must grow together until the harvest. To divideyou were a task which at this hour angels could not perform, but which one day they will easily accomplish, when at their Master’s bidding,, fche harvest being come, they shall gather together first the tares in bundles to burn them, and afterwards the wheat into Jehovah’s barn. I shall not attempt the division, but I shall ask each man to attempt it for himself in his own case. I say unto you, young men and maidens, old men and fathers, this day examine yourselves whether you be in the faith. Let no man take it for granted that lie is a Christian because he has helped to swell the numbers of a Christian assembly. Let no man judge his fellow, but let each man judge himself. To each one of you I say, with deepest earnestness, let a division be made by your conscience, and let your understandings separate between him that feareth God and him that feareth him not. Though no man clothed in linen, with a writer’s inkhorn by his side, shall go through the midst of you to set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and cry for all the abominations of this city, let conscience take the inkhora and honestly make the mark, or leave the favoured sign unmade, and let each man question himself this morning, “Am I on the Lord’s side? Am I for Christ, or for his enemies? Do I gather with him, or do I scatter abroad?” “Divide! divide!” they say in the House of Commons; let us say the same in this great congregation this day. Political divisions are but trifles compared with the all-important distinction which I would have you consider. Divide as you will be divided

to the right and to the left in the great day when Christ shall judge the world in righteousness. Divide as you will be divided when the bliss of heaven, or the woes of hell, shall be your everlasting portion*

If the whole of us were thus divided into two camps, and we could Bay these have made a covenant with God by sacrifice, and those on the other hand are still enemies to God by wicked works, looking at the last class we might still feel it necessary by way of personal application to make a division among them; for although all unbelievers are alike unpardoned and unsaved, yet they are not alike in the circumstances of their case and the outward forms of their sins. Alike in being without Christ, they are still very varied in their mental and moral condition. I trust I was guided by the Spirit of God to my text this morning, for it is of such a character, that while it enables “me to address the whole mass of the unconverted, it gives me a hopeful opportunity of getting at the conscience of each by dividing the great company of the unconverted into two distinct classes. 0 that for each tribe of unbelievers, there may be a blessing in store this day.

First, we shall speak to those who are avowedly disobedient to God t and, secondly, to those who are deceptively submissive to him.

I. First, we have a word for THOSE WHO ABE AVOWEDLY DISOBEDIENT 10 GOD. There are many such here. God has said to you as he say to all who hear the gospel, “Son, go work to day in my vineyard;” and yon have replied, perhaps honestly, but certainly very boldly, verj unkindly, very unjustly, “I will not.” You have made no bones about it, but L-iven a refusal point-blank to the claims of your Creator. You have spoken your mind right out, not only in words, but in a more forcible and unmistakable manner, for actions speak far more loudly than words. You have said, over and over again, by your actions, “I will not serve God, or believe in his Son Jesus.” My dear friend, I am glad to see you here this mornjng, and trust that matters will change with you ere you leave this hall; but at present you have not yielded even an outward obedience to God, but in all ways have said, “I will not.” Practically you have said, “I will not worship God, I will not attend a place of worship on the Sunday — it is a weariness intolerable to me. I shall not sing the praise of my Maker — I will not pretend to bless the God for whom I have no love. In public prayer I shall not join — I have no heart for it. I shall not make a pretence of repeating morning and nightly prayer in private — what is the good of it? I will not pray at all; I do not believe in its efficacy, and I will not be Buch a hypocrite as to follow a vain practice in which I have no belief whatever. As for what is called sin, I love it and will not give it up.” You are proud of being called an honest man, for you own the claims of your fellow men upon you, but you scorn to be thought religious, for you do not admit the rights of your Maker. To the righteous requests of others you yield a cheerful obedience, but to the just and tender requests of God you give a plain a: id evident denial. As clearly as actions can speak, you say by your neglect of the Sabbath, by your disregard of prayer, by your never reading the Bible, by your perseverance in known sin, and by the whole course of your life, “I will not.” Like Pharaoh, you have demanded, “Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice?” You are of the same mind as those of old, who said, “It is vain to serve God, and what profit is there if we keep his ordinances?”

Moreover, my friend, you have not as yet given an assent to the doctrines of God’s Word; on the contrary, intellectually as well as practically, you go not at God’s bidding. You have set up in your mind the idea that you must understand everything before you will believe it — an idea, let me tell you, which you will never be able to cany out, for you cannot understand your own existence; and there are ten thousand other things around you which you never can comprehend, but whicK you must believe or remain for ever a gigantic fool. Still you cavil at this doctrine and that doctrine, railing at the gospel system in general; and if you were asked at a working man’s conference, why you did not go to a place of worship, you would perhaps say that you kept away from worship because you did not like this doctrine or that. Let me say on my own account, that as far as I am personally concerned, it is a very small consideration to me whether you do like my doctrine or do not; for your own sake I am anxious above measure that you should believe the truth as it is in Jesus; but while you live in sin, your dislike of a doctrine, will very probably only make me feel the more sure of its truth, and lead me to preach it with more confidence and vehemence. Think you that we are to learn God’s truth from the likings or dislikings of those who refuse to worship him, and want an excuse for their sins. 0 unconverted men and women, it is very long br.fore we shall come to you to learn what you would have us preach, and when we fall so low as to do that, you yourselves will despise us. What! shall the physician ask his patient what kind of medicine he would wish to have prescribed? Then the man needs no physician, he can prescribe for himself. Show the doctor out at the back door directly. What is the use of such a physician? Of what service is a minister who will truckle to depraved tastes and sinful appetites, and say, “How would you like me to preach to you? What smooth things shall I offer you?” Ah souls! we have some higher end to be served than merely pleasing you. We would save you by distasteful truths, for honeyed lies will ruin you. That teaching which the carnal mind most delights in, is the most deadly and delusive. With many of you, your beliefs, and tastes, and likes, must be changed, or else you will never enter heaven. I admit that in a measure I like your honesty in having said outright, “I will not serve God;” but it is an honesty which makes me shudder, for it betrays a heart hard as the nether millstone.

Again, you have said, “I will not serve God,” and up to this time it is very possible that you have never been in the humour to repent of having said it, for the ways of sin are sweet to you, and your heart is fixed in its rebellion. You have never felt that conviction of sin which the Holy Spirit has wrought in some of us; if you had felt it, you would soon have been shaken out of your “I will not.” If God’s power of grace, of which thousands of us bear witness that it is as real a power as that which guides the stars or wings the wind — if God’s almighty grace should once get a hold of you, you would no longer say, “I do not believe this or that;” for, as tremblingly as any of those whom you now despise, you would cry out, “What must I do to be saved?” Up till now you have never felt that power, and therefore I cannot wonder that you do not acknowledge it, although the testimony of honest witnesses ought to have some weight with you. You are practically, intellectually, and avowedly no Christian; you have never deceived yourself and others by making a profession which you do not honour, but you have gone on in your own chosen path, saying with more or [ess resolution, in answer to every call of the gospel, “I will not.”

We said just now that the answer of the son to his father as recorded in our text was very plain; it was not, however, very genuine, or such as his father might have expected. His father said. “Son, go work to day in my vineyard;” and the son rudely said, “I will not, that is flat;” and without another word of apology or reason went his way. This is not quite as it should be. Is it? Even so, my friend, you may have been too hasty and so have been unjust. Is it not very possible you have denied to God and to his gospel the respect which both really deserve? You have spoken very plainly, but at the same time very thoughtlessly, very harshly to the God who has deserved better things of you. Have you ever given the claims of the Lord Jesus a fair consideration? Have you not dismissed the gospel with a sneer quite unworthy of you? Have you not been afraid to look the matters between God and your sod-fairly in the face? I believe it to be the case of hundreds here; I know it to be the case of thousands and tens of thousands in London. They have put their foot down, and they have said, “None of your religion for me! I have made up my mind and I will never alter; I hate it and will not listen to it.” Does no small voice within ever tell them that this is not fair to themselves or to God? Is the matter so easily to be decided? Suppose it should turn out that the religion of Jesus is true, what then? What will be the lot of those who despised him? My hearer, the religion of Jesus is true, and I have proved its truth in my own case; do, I pray you, consider it, and do not trifle away your immortal soul. Thus saith the Lord, “Consider your ways.”

It is now time for me to tell the openly ungodly what is his real state. You have been more than a little proud of your honesty; and looking down upon certain professors of religion you have said, “Ah! I make no such pretences as they do, I am honest, I am.” Friend, you cannot have a greater abhorrence of hypocrites than I have; if you can find a fair chance of laughing at them, pray do so. If by any means you can stick pins into their wind-bags, and let the gas of their profession out, pray do so. I try to do a little of it in my way, do you do the same! You and I are agreed in this, I hope, in heartily hating anything like sham and falsehood; but if you begin to hold your head up, and think yourself so very superior because you make no profession, I must take you down a little by reminding you that it is no credit to a thief that he makes no profession of being honest, and it is not thought to be exceedingly honourable to a man that he makes no profession of speaking the truth. For the fact is, that a man who does not profess to be honest is a professed thief, and he who does not claim to speak the truth is an acknowledged liar; thus in escaping one horn you are thrown upon another, you miss the rock but ran upon the quicksand. You are a confessed and avowed neglecter of God, a professed despiser of the great salvation, an acknowledged disbeliever in the Christ of God. When our Government at anytime arrests persons suspected of Fenianism, they have no difficulty about those gentlemen who glory in wearing the green uniform and flaunting the Dig feather. “Come along,” says the constable, “you are the man. for you wear the regimentals of a rebel.” Even so when the angel of justice arrests the enemies of the Lord, he will have no difficulty in accusing and arresting you, for, laying his hand upon your shoulder, he will say, ‘’You wear the regimentals of an enemy of God; you plainly, and unblushingly, acknowledge that you do not fear God nor trust in his salvation.” No witnesses need be called concerning you at the last great day; you will stand up, not quite so bravely as you do to-day, for, when the heavens are on a blaze, and the earth is rocking to and fro, and the great white cloud fills the field of vision, and the eyes of the great Judge shall burn like lamps of fire, you will put on a different mien and a different carriage from that which you maintain before a poor preacher of the gospd Ah! my ungodly hearer, with such a case as thine there shall be no need to judge, for out of thine own mouth shalt thou be condemned.

Yet I came not here to tell you of your sins only, but to help you to escape from them. It is necessary that this much should be said, but we now turn to something far more pleasant. I am in hopes this daj that some of you will listen to that little word in the text, “afterward” He said, “I will not; but afterward he repented, and went.” It is long lane which has no turning, let us trust that we have come to the turning now. There is space left you for repentance; though you may have been a drunkard, or a swearer, orunchas e, the die is not yet cast, a change is yet possible. May God grant that you may have reached the time when it shall be said of you, “Afterward he repented; he changed his mind; he believed upon Jesus, and obeyed the word of the Lord, and went.” Perhaps the son in the parable thought a little more calmly about it. He said to himself, “I will consider the matter, second thoughts are often best. I growled at my good father, and gave him a sharp answer, and I saw the tear standing in the good man’s eye. I am sorry I grieved him. The thought of grieving him makes me change my mind. I said ‘No’ to him,” said he, “but I did not think about it. I forgot that if I go and work in my lather’s vine yard, I shall be working for myself, for I am his eldest son, and ailthat he has will belong to me, so that I am very foolish to refuse to work to my own advantage1. Ah! now 1 see my father had my advantage at heart, I wiM even go as he bade me.” See, he shoulders his tools, and away he marches to labour with all his might. He said, “I will not,” but he repented and went, and it is admitted by all that he did the will of his father. Oh, I hope that, many a man and woman now in this Agricultural Hall will this day cry, “I do retract what I have said. I will go to my Father, and will say to him, ‘I will do thy bidding. I will not grieve thy love. I will not lose the opportunity of advancing my soul’s best interest; I obey the gospel command.’ “I will suppose that I see one such before me, and I will speak to him. Perhaps he said,” I will not,” because he really did not understand what religion was. How few after all know what the way of salvation is; though they go to church, and to chapel, they have not yet learned God’s plan of pardoning sinners. Do you know the plan of salvation? Hear it and live by it. You have offended God; God must punish sin; it is a fixed law that sin must be punished; how then can God have mercy upon you? Why, only in this way: Jesus Christ came from heaven and he suffered in the room, place, and stead of all who trust him; suffered what they ought to have suffered, so that God is just, and yet at the same time he is able to forgive the very chief of sinners through the merits of his dear Son. Your debts, if you be a believer in him,. Christ has paid on your behalf. If you do but come and rest upon Jesus and upon Jesus only, God cannot punish you for your sins, for he punished Jesus for them, and it would not be just of him to punish Christ and then to punish you, to exact payment first from the Surety and afterwards from the debtor. My dear hearer, whoever thou mayst be, whatever thy past life may have been, if thou wilt trust Christ, thou shall be saved from all thy sin in a moment, the whole of thy past life shall be blotted out; there shall not remain in God’s book so much as a single charge against thy soul, for Christ who died for thee, shall take thy guilt away and leave thee without a blot before the face of God. Read the last verse of my text, and you will see that it wa& by believing that men entered into the kingdom of God of old, and ife is still by believing that men are saved. “Behold the Lamb of said John the Baptist, and if you look to that bleeding Lamb, you shall live.

Do you understand this? Is it not simple? Is it not suitable to you. Will you still refuse to obey it? Does not the Holy Spirit prompt you to relent? Do you not even now say.” Is it so simole? I will even trust in Jesus:

* Guilty, but with heart relenting,
To the Saviour’s wounds I’ll fly.’

I will come, by God’s help, this morning, lest death should come before the sun sets. I will trust Christ to S’tve me. Precious way of salvation! Why should I not be saved?”

It is possible too, that you may have said, “I will not,” because you really thought there was no hope for you. Ah! my friend, let me assure you — and oli! how glad I am to be able to do it — that there ia hope for the vilest through the precious blood of Jesus. No man can have gone too far for the long arm of Christ to reach him. Christ delights 10 save the biggest sinners. He said to his apostles, “Preach the gospel to every creature, but begin” — where? “begin at Jerusalem. There live the wretches who spat in my face. There live the cruel ones that drove the nails throup my hands. Go and preach the gospel to them first. Tell them that I am able to save, not little sinners merely, but the very chief of sinners. Tell them to trust in me and they shall live.” Where are you, you despairing one? I know the devil will try to keep the sound of the gospel from your ears if he can, and therefore, I would “cry aloud and spare not.” 0 ye despairing sinners, there is no room for despair this side the gates of hell. If you have gone through the foulest kennels of iniquity, no stain can stand out against the power of the cleansing blood.

“There is a fountain filled with blood,

Drawn from Immanuel’s veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood,
Lose ALL their guilty stains.”

Oh, I trust, now that you know there is hope for you, you will say, “1 will even come at once, and put my trust in Jesus.”

While I would thus encourage you to repent of your neglect of God, let me invite you to come to Jesus, and press it upon you yet again. Ah! my dear friend, you will soon be dying, and though some wicked men, in their stupid insensibility, die very calmly, and as David said, “They are not in trouble as other men, neither are they plagued like other men, but their strength is firm,” yet, whether they perceive it or not, it is a dreadful thing to die with unpardoned sin hanging about you. What wiH your guilty soul do when it leaves the body? Think of it a minute. It is a matter worthy of your thought. Some of you, in all probability, will die this week. It is not probable that so many thousands of us will march through a whole week, and be found alive at the other end of it. Well then, as we may some of us go soon, and all of us must go ere long, let us look before us and think a bit. Imagine your soul unclothed of the body. You have left the body behind you, and your disembodied spirit finds itself in a new world. Oh, it will be a glorious thing if that separated spirit shall see Jesus whom it has loved, and fly at once into his bosom, and drink for ever of the crystal fountain of ever-flowing bliss: but it will be horrible thing if instead of it, your naked shivering spirit should waku up to find itself friendless, homeless, helpless, hopeless, tormented with remorse, afflicted with despair. What if it should have to cry out for ever, “I knew my duty but I did it not, I knew the way of salvation but I would not run in it. I heard the gospel, but I shut my hears to it. I lived and at length left the world without Christ, and here I am, past hope, no repenting now, no believing now, no escaping now, for mercy and love no longer rule the hour.” Have pity on thyself, my hearer. I have pity on thee. Oh, if my hand could pluck thee from that flame, how cheerfully would I do it! Shall I pity thee and wilt thou not pity thyself? Oh, if my pleadings should by God’s grace persuade you to trust in Christ this morning, I would plead with you while voice, and lungs, and heart, and life held out! But oh, have pitj on thyself! Pity tnat poor naked spirit which so soon will be quivering with utmost agony, a self-caused agony, an agony from which it would not escape, an agony of which it was warned, but which it chose to endure sooner than give up sin and yield to the sceptre of sovereign grace.

I would fain hope that you are saying, “I do now repent, and jy God’s grace I will go.” If so, let me tell you there are a great many in heaven who once, like you, said, “I will not,” but they afterwards repented and are now saved. I will give you one picture. Yonder, I see a company of men on horseback, and there is one, the proudest of them all, to whom they act as a guard; they are going to Damascus, that he may take Christians to prison and compel them to blaspheme. Saul of Tarsus is the name of that cruel, murderous persecutor. When Stephen was put to death, God said to this man Saul, “Go, work in my vineyard,” but Saul said plainly, “I will not,” and to prove his emnity, he helped to put Stephen to death. There he is riding in hot haste, upon his evil errand, none more set and determined against the Lord. Yet my Lord Jesus can tame the lion, and even make a lamb of him. As he rides along, a bright light is seen, brighter than the sun at noonday; he falls from his horse, he lies trembling on the ground, and he hears a voice out of heaven, saying, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” Lifting up his eyes with astonishment, he sees that he had ignorantly been persecuting the Son of God. What a change that one discovery wrought in him. That voice, “I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest,” broke his hard heart, and won him to the cause. You know how three days after that, that once proud and bigoted man was baptized upon profession of the faith of Christ, whom he had just now persecuted! and if you want to see an earnest preacher, where can you find a better than che apostle Paul, who, with heart on fire, writes again and again, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” I hope there is a Saul here, who is to be struck down this morning. Lord, strike him down! Eternal Spirit strike him down now! You did not know perhaps, that you had been fighting God, but you thought the religion of Jesus to be a foolish dream. You did not know that you had insulted the dying Saviour; now you do know it, may your conscience be affected, and from this day forth may you serve the Lord.

I must leave this second point when I have just said this. If there be one here who after a long refusal, at last relents, and is willing to become a servant of God by faith in Jesus Christ, let me tell him for his encouragement, he shall not be one whit behind those who have been FO long making a profession without being true to it, for the text says, “The publicans and harlots go into the king dom;” but what else? “Go into the kingdom” before those who made a profession of serving God, but who were not true to it. You great sinners shall have no back seats in heaven! There shall bo no outer court for you. You great sinners shall have as much love as the best, as much joy as the brightest of saints. You shall be near to Christ; you shall sit with him upon his throne; you shall wear the crown; your fingers shall touch the golden harps; you shall rejoice with the joy which is unspeakable and full of glory. Will ye not come? Christ forgets your past ill manners, and bids ye come to-day. “Come,” saith he, “unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” Thirty years of sin shall be forgiven, and it shall not take thirty minutes to do it in. Fifty, sixty, seventy years of iniquity shall all disappear as the morning’s hoar-frost disappears before the sun. Come and trust my Master, hiding in his bleeding wounds.

“Raise thy downcast eyes, and see

What throngs His throne surround!
These, though sinners once like thee,

Have full salvation found.
Yield not then to unbelief;

He says, ‘There yet is room: ’
Though of sinners thou art chief,

Since Jesus calls thee, come.”

II. Bear with me a little time while I speak to the second character, THE DECEPTIVELY SUBMISSIVE, by far the most numerous everywhere in England, probably the most numerous in this assembly. Oh! you, my own regular hearers, you who have heard my voice these thirteen years, many of you are in this class. You have said to the Great Father, “I go, sir!” but you have not gone. Let me sorrowfully sketch your portraits: you have regularly frequented a place of worship, and you would shudder to waste a single Sunday in an excursion, or in any form of Sabbath breaking. Outwardly you have said,” I go, sir.” When the hymn is given out, you stand up and sing, and yet you do not sing with the heart. When I say, “Let us pray!” you cover your faces, but you do not pray with real prayer. You utter a polite, respectful “I go, sir,” but you do not go. You give a notional assent to the gospel. If I were to mention any doctrine, you would say, “Yes, that is true. I believe that.” But your heart does not believe: you do not believe the gospel in the core of your nature, for if you did, it would have an effect upon you. A man may say, “I believe my house is on fire,” but if he goes to bed and falls to sleep, it does not look as if he believed it, for when a man’s house is on fire he tries to escape. If some of you really believed that there is a hell, and that there is a heaven, as you believe other things, you would act very differently from what you now do. I must add that many of you say, “I go, sir,” rn very solemn sense, for when we preach earnestly the tears run dowi* your cheeks, and you go home to your bedrooms, and you pray a little, and everybody thinks that your concern of mind will end in conversion: but your goodness is “like the morning cloud and the early dew.” You are like dunghills with snow upon them: while the snow lasts you look white and fair, but when the snow melts the dunghill remains a dunghill still. Oh, how many very impressible hearts are like that You sin, and yet you come to a place of worship, and tremble under the word; you transgress, and you weep and transgress again; you feel the power of the gospel after a fashion, and yet you revolt against it more and more. Ah! my friends, I can look some of you in the face And know that I am describing some of your cases to the letter. You have been telling lies to God all these years, by saying, “I go, sir,” while you have not gone. You know that to be saved you must believe in Jesus, but you have not believed. You know that you must be born again, but you are still strangers to the new birth. You are as religious as the seats you sit on, but no more; and you are as likely to get to heaven as those seats are, but not one whit more, for you are dead in sin, and death cannot enter heaven. 0 my dear hearers, I lament that ever I should be called to say such a thing as this, and not be more affected by the fact; and, wonder of wonders, that you, some of you, know it to be true, and yet do not feel alarmed thereby 1 Ik is the easiest thing in the world to impress some of you by a sermon, but, I fear me, you never will get beyond mere transient impressions. Like the water when lashed, the wound soon heals. You know, and you know, and you know; and you feel, and feel, and feel again, and yet your sins, your self-righteousness, your carelessness, or your wilful wickedness, cause you, after having said, “I go, sir,” to forget the promise and lie unto God.

Now, I spoke very honestly to the other class, and must be equally plain with you. You, too, criminate yourselves. There will be no need of witnesses against you. You have admitted that the gospel is true. You did not quarrel with the doctrine of future punishment or future glory. You attended a place of worship, and you said that God was good and worthy to be served; you confessed that you owed allegiance to him, and ought to render it. You have even knelt down and in prayer you have said, “Lord, I deserve thy wrath.” The great God has only to turn to some of your formal prayers to find quite enough evidence to secure your condemnation. Those morning prayers of yours, those evening prayers, hypocritical every one of them, will be more than sufficient to condemn you of your own mouth. Take heed 1 take heed, I pray you, while you are yet in the land of hope.

All this while, as the thirty-second verse reminds me, while you have remained unsaved, you have seen publicans and harlots saved by the very gospel which has had no power upon you. Do not you know it, young man? You, I mean, the son of a godly mother? You know that you are not saved, and yet you had a drunken workman in your “iither’s employment, and he has been these last few years a sober Christian man, he is saved, and you perhaps have taken to the habits which he has forsaken. You know that there have been picked off of the streets poor fallen women who have been brought to know Christ, who are among the sweetest and fairest flowers in Christ’s garden now. though they were once castaways; and yet some of you respectable people who never committed any outward vice in your lives, are still unconverted, and still saying to Christ,” I go, sir,” but you have not gone. You are still without God! Without Christ! Lost, lost, lost! Yet fairer outward characters could scarcely be found. I could fain weep for you! Oh! beware, beware of being” like the apples of Sodom, which are green to look upon, but when crushed, crumble to ashes. Beware of being like John Bunyan’s trees that were green outside, but inwardly rotten, and only fit to be tinder for the devil’s tinder-box. Oh! beware of saying as some of you do, “I go, sir,” while you go not. I sometimes see sick people who quite alarm and distress me. I say to them, “My dear friend, you are dying; have you a hope?” There is no answer. “Do you know your lost state?” “Yes, sir.” “Christ died for sinners.” “Yes, sir.” “Faith gives us of his grace.” “Yes, sir.” They say, “Yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir.” I sometimes wish before God they would contradict me, for if they would but have honesty enough’ to say, “I do not believe a word of it,” I should know how to deal with them. Stubborn oaks are levelled by the gale, but those who bend like the willow before every wind, what wind shall break them? 0 dear brethren, beware of being gospel-hardened; or, what is the same thing, softened but for a season. Beware of being a promising hearer of the word, and nothing more!

I do not mean to close my discourse by speaking to you in this apparently harsh way, which, harsh as it seems, is full of love to your soul. I have a jrood word for you too. I trust that you, in this Agricultural Hall, will have a changd wrought in you by the Holy Ghost, for although these many years you have made false’ professions before God; there is yet room in his gospel feast for you. Did you notice the text? “The publicans and sinners enter into the kingdom of heaven before you.” Then it is clear you may come after them, “because it could not be said they entered before you, if you did not come after them. If the Lord shall break your heart, you will be willing to take the Lord Jesus for your all in all in just the ‘same way as a drunkard must, though you have not been a drunkard. ‘• You will be willing to rest in the merit of Jesus just as a harlot must, though you have never been such. There is room for you, young people, yet, though you have broken your vows, and quenched your convictions. Ay, and you grey headed people may be brought yet, though you have lived so long in the outward means, but have never given up your hearts to Jesus. Oh, come! This twenty- fourth day of March, may the Lord bring you ID this very place may the Lord lead you to say ‘silently,” By the gi-ace of God I will not be an open pretender any longer; I will give myself up to those dear hands that bled for me, and that dear heart that was pierced for me, and I will this day submit to Jesus’ way.

The fact is, to close the subject, there is, my Idear friends, the same gospel to be preached to one class of men as to every other class. I pray God the day may never come when we shall be found in our preaching talking about working classes, and middle classes, and upper classes. I know no difference between you, you are the same to me when 1 preach the gospel, whether you are kings and queens, or crossing sweepers; satin and cotton, broadcloth and fustian, are alike to the gospel. If you are peers of the realm, we trim not our gospel to suit you, and if you are the basest of thieves, we do not exclude you from the voice of mercy. The gospel comes to men as sinners, all equally fallen in Adam, equally lost and ruined by sin. I have not one gospel for Her Majesty the Queen, and another gospel for the beggar-woman. No, there is but one way of salvation, but one foundation, but one propitiation, but one gospel. Look to the cross of Christ and live. High was the brazen serpent lifted, and all that Moses said was, “Look.” Was a prince of the house of Judah bitten, he was told to look; without looking his lion standard of costly emblazonry could not avail him; was some poor wretch in the camp bitten, he must look, and the efficacy was the same for him as for the greatest of the host. Look! look! look to Jesus. Believe in the Son of God and live! One brazen serpent for all the camp, one Christ for all ranks and conditions of men. What a blessing would it be if we were all enabled to trust Christ this morning! My brethren, why not? He is worthy of the confidence of all. The Spirit of God is able to work faith in* all. 0 poor sinner, look to him! Dear hearers, I may never speak to some of you again, and I would therefore be pressing with you; by the hour of death, by the solemnities of eternity, I do implore and beseech you accepi the only remedy for sin which even God himself will ever offer to the dying sons of men, the remedy of a bleeding Substitute, suffering in your room and stead, believed on and accepted in the heart. Cast yourself flat upon Christ. The way of salvation is just this — rest alone upon Christ! Depend wholly upon him. The negro was asked what he did, and he said, “I jest fall down on de rock, and he dat is down on de rock cannot fall no lower.” Down on the rock, sinner 1 Down on the rock! The everlasting rock of ages! You cannot fall lower than that. I will conclude with a well-known illustration. Your condition is like that of a child in a burning house, who, having escaped to the edge of the window, hung on by the window-sill. The flames were pouring out of the window underneath, and the poor lad would soon be burnt, or falling would be dashed to pieces; he therefore held on with the clutch of death. He did not dare to relax his grasp till a strong man stood underneath, and said, “Boy! drop! drop! I’ll catch you.” Now, it was no saving faith for the boy to believe that the man was strong — that was a good help towards faith — but he might have known that and yet have perished; it was faith when the boy let go and dropped down into his big friend’s arms. There are you, sinner, clinging to your sins or to your good works. The Saviour cries, “Drop! drop into my arms!” It is not doing, it is leaving off doing. It is not working, it is trusting in that work which Jesus has already done. Trust! that is the word, simple, solid, hearty, earnest trust. Trust and it will not take an hour to save you, the moment you trust you are saved. You may have come in here as black as hell, but if you trust in Jesus you are wholly forgiven. In an instant, swifter than a flash of lightning the deed of grace is done. 0 may God the Spirit do it now, bringing you to trust, that you may be saved.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON — Psalm ciii.

|fleti|opotitau

WORK FOR JESUS.

DELIVERED BY

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

“Son, go work to-day in my vineyard.” — Matthew xxi. 28.

I AM not going to confine myself to the connection of these words, nor to use them strictly after the manner in which they were first spoken. I may, perhaps, explain the parable very briefly at the close; but I take leave to withdraw these words from their immediate context, and use them as a voice which, I believe, sounds often in the ears of God’s people, and sometimes sounds in vain. — “Son, go work to-day in iny vine yard.” It is certain that God still speaks to us. He has spoken to us in his word. There are his precepts and promises; his statutes and testimonies. He that hath ears to hear let him hear these sacred oracles. But beside this open revelation there are counsels and rebukes more closely and personally addressed to the conscience; voices — soft some times as whispers, at other times loud as the thunders that pealed from Sinai. The Lord has a way of speaking to men when “he openeth the ears of men and sealeth their instruction,” as Elihu said. Thus he speaks when he calls them effectually by his grace in conversion. So he once called “Samuel, Samuel,” till the child answered. So he said, “Matthew, follow me.” So he called out, “Zaccheus, come down.” So he cried out, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” So he bid some of ns till the divine accents were clear and irresistible. In like manner we have, many of us, heard him say, “Son, give me thy heart;” and we have given him our hearts: we could do no otherwise. That voice exerted such a charming spell and swayed us with such a divine power that we were subdued by it, and we yielded our hearts to the God of love. Since then you who know the Lord must often have heard a voice speaking to you and bidding you seek his face in prayer. Perhaps you have been busy with the world, but you found an impulse of a mysterious kind coming over you, and you have been fain to withdraw yourself for a few minutes to the closet that you might speak with God. You know how it has been when you have been meditating alone, and yet not alone. One whose presence you knew, whose fact you could not see, was with you. You felt as if you must pray. It has not been any effort on your part. The exercise has been as easy aa No. 1,338. 5 to breathe and as pleasant as to partake of your daily bread. Yon felt the Lord drawing you to the mercy-seat and saying in your soul, “My son, ask what thou wilt and it shall be done unto thee.” You must have been conscious of such a voice as that.

And have you not at times, in the silence of your mind, heard the Lord call you to a closer communion with himself? Has not the sense, if not the words, of the spouse in the canticle been heard in your soul, — “Come, my beloved, let us see if the vines flourish. Come with me from Lebanon my spouse, with me from Lebanon “? You have been up and away. You have gone into the secret places where Christ hasshown you his love, till you sat under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit has been sweet to your taste. Our experience makes us know that there are heavenly voices that invite prayer and call to communion. And probably some of you have also been conscious of another voice which I earnestly desire we may all hear to-night, namely, the more martial and stirring call to service for the Lord Jesus Christ. Some of you have been obedient to the call these many years, and it calls louder and louder and louder still. You have been reaping, and bearing the heat and burden of the day, but you cannot throw down your sickle, your hand cleaves to it. Yea, rather do you take more gigantic strides and sweep down more of the precious corn at every stroke you take. You feel that you can never cease from it till you do

“Your body with your charge lay down,
And cease at once to work and live.”

A voice divine seems calling thee and saying, “Follow me, and I will make thee a fisher of men. Behold I have made thee a chosen vessel to bear my name unto the Gentiles.” You have heard that voice, and you are striving to obey it more and more.

Others either have never heard it, or hearing it have forgotten it. There are none so deaf as those who will not hear, and there are some who have a very deaf ear to any admonitions of this kind. They are like Issachar — a strong ass crouching down between two burdens, but yet lifting neither. I fear lest upon them should come the curse of Meroz, because they come not “to the help of the Lord — to the help of the Lord against the mighty.” Now, mayhap this evening there are some Christian men or women here that shall feel as if the hand of the Crucified were laid upon them, and they hear him say to them, “Ye are not your own. Ye are bought with a price; wherefore glorify God in your bodies and in your spirits, which are his. Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.”

The text, I hope, may be blest of God to be such a voice as that. Listening to it, we notice four things. First, the character under which it calls us, “Son”: secondly, the service to which it calls us, “go work”; thirdly, the time for which it calls us, “go work to-day”; and fourthly, the place to which it directs us, “go work to-day in my vineyard.”

1. First, then, THE CHARACTER UNDER WHICH IT CALLS us.

It appears to me to be a very powerful selection of terms. “Son, go? work to-day in my vineyard.” It puts work on a very gracious footing, when we are bidden to work for the Lord, not as slaves, nor as mere servants, but as sons. Moses speaks to us, and he says, “Servant, go and work for thy wages.” But the Father in Christ speaks to us, and he says, “Son, go work to-day in my vineyard.” No more as a servant, hut as a son, shalt thou serve the Lord. The returning prodigal said “Make me as one of thy hired servants.” That was not an evangelical prayer, and was not answered. The father said, “This my son was dead, and is alive again,” and so he received him, not as a hired servant at all, but as a son. Oh, dear people of God, I trust you always draw the distinction very clearly between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. When you work for God you do not work for life but from life. You do not try to serve Christ in order that you may be saved, but because you are saved. You do not obey his commands that you may become his children, but because you are his children, and therefore are imitators of God as dear children. You say “Abba, Father,” because you feel the spirit of adoption within you, and you endeavour to obey the commands of your Father for the self same reason. I do not, therefore, say to anyone here, “Go and work for God that you may be saved.” I would not venture to put it on that footing. “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” But turning to those who are saved, the gospel exhortation is put after a gospel sort — “Son, go work to-day in my vineyard,”

And it has all the more strength on this account, because, in addressing us as sons, it reminds us of the great love which has made us what we are. We were by nature heirs of wrath even as others, but, beloved, “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.” Think of the love which chose us when we were still aliens and enemies; the love which adopted us, and put us into the family, itself wondering while it did it, for the Lord is represented as saying, “How shall I put thee among the children?” — as if it were a strange thing that such as we are should ever be numbered among the children of God. The love which adopted us did not stay there, but having given us the rights of children, it gave us the nature of children, wherefore we were regenerated —” Begotten again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead;

born, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God which liveth and abideth for ever.” Now, just think of election, adoption, regeneration, and when the Lord addresses you by that term of “son,” think of all that and say, “I owe to God an immeasurable debt of gratitude for having enabled me to become his son: giving me power and privilege to become a child of God. Therefore do I feel the claims of obligation, and I would endeavour to work in the vineyard because I am his child, his son, his daughter, made so by his grace.”

This you see, dear friends, engages us to work in the vineyard all the more cogently, because we may reflect not only on the grace which has made us sons, but on the privileges which that same grace bestowed upon us in making us sons; for, if children of God, the Lord will provide for us, will clothe us, will heal us, will protect us, will guide us, will educate us, will make us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. Remember, too, that precious passage, “If children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.” If heirs of God, how large is oar inheritance, and if joint heirs with Christ how sure that inheritance is; and we have been brought now, beloved, to such an estate as this that the angels themselves might envy us, for I venture to apply a passage of Scripture to this case — I hope without wresting it — “Unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son?” But he speaks thus to us poor worms of the dust, and when he is bidding us serve him. he comes to us under this character, and addresses us in this relationship, and he says, “Son, daughter, go work to-day in my vineyard. I have given thee privileges boundless in making thee my child. I have given thee this world and worlds to come. Earth is thy lodge, and heaven thy home. And therefore, because I have done all this for thee — and what could I have done more for thee than have made thee my child? — therefore I say, Go, work to-day in my vineyard.”

In appealing thus to us under the name of son, it is supposed that we have some feelings within us correspondent to the condition to which our heavenly Father has called us. He says, “son.” If any of you, being a son, hath a father, and if that father wished you to do something for him, and he addressed you as “my son,” you would feel at once that whatever you could do you were bound to do because you were a son. It would awaken in you the filial feeling which is swift at once to yield obedience and love. And when the Lord looks upon thee, my brother, and says to thee “Son,” it is supposed that there is in thy heart a child’s nature given by his grace, and that this filial instinct prompts the quick response, “My Father, what dost thou say to me? Speak, Lord, speak. Father, for thy son heareth thee. I long to do thy will. I delight in it, for to me it is the greatest joy I know that thou .art my Father and my God. Therefore, Lord, my heart stands ready now to listen to whatever thou hast to say, and my hand is ready to do it, as thy grace shall enable me, only strengthen me in thy ways.” Son, daughter, go work to-day in my vineyard.

By the use of that term “son,” also, it is supposed that you have something of the qualification that will fit you to do what he bids you. A man who has a vineyard naturally supposes that his son knows some thing about vineyards. The boy will have learned something through his sire, and you that know the Lord are the only people that can serve him in his vineyard — that is to say, in winning souls for Christ none can do this but those who are won themselves. If there be a lost child to be reclaimed, he shall be brought in by one of the children who has him self been found. Unto the wicked God saith, “What hast thou to do to declare my statutes?” but to you who are his sons and daughters he entrusts the gospel, putting you in trust with it that you may bear it to others and bring others to know and love his name. Oh, dear friends, it must be a dreadful thing to be trying to save the souls of others while you yourselves are lost; and what an unhappy mortal must he be who has to preach the gospel that he never knew — to tell of promises that he has never believed, and to preach a Christ in whom his soul has never trusted! But when the Lord speaks to you as his son and hie daughter, the very fact that you stand in that relationship to him proves that you have some qualification for the service; and, therefore, dear brother or sister, you must not back out of it. You must not wrap your talent in a napkin, for you have got some talent in the very fact of being a child of God — a son or daughter of the Most High.

Thus bare I tried to open up the character to whom the Lord speaks, but I cannot do it so as to interest those who are not his people. But I do say this to those of you who are a people near unto him, to whom he stands as a Father, that this fact has strong claims upon you. If I be a Father, where is my honour? If ye be my children, where is your fear? If indeed the Lord has put you into his family, do you not owe to him the obedience and the love of children, and what can be more natural that if there be a household work to do — vineyard work to do — your Father should look to you to do it, and turn to you whom he has loved so long and loved so well, and say, “Son, daughter, go work to-day in my vineyard “?

II. Well, now, secondly, let us turn to the next point, and that is,

THE SERVICE TO WHICH THE LORD CALLS US — “Go WOrk.”

I know some Christians who do not like the name of work, and they look very black in the i’ace if you say anything about duty. As for the matter of that, I do not mind how black they look, because there are some people who very much expose their own disposition by black looks and sullen moods; and when they turn sour they only manifest what is in their own nature. He that quarrels with the precept quarrels with God. Let him mind that. And he that docs not like the practical part of Christianity may do what he likes with the doctrinal part of it, for he has neither part nor lot in this matter. The language of the true child of God is, “I delight myself in thy precepts”; and, as David put it, “Thy precepts have been my song in the house of my pilgrimage.” He would even sing about the precepts of the gospel. And now the text says, “Go work.” That is something practical, something real. Go work. He does not say, “My son, go and think and speculate, and make curious experiments, and fetch out some new doctrines and astonish all thy fellow creatures with whims and oddities of thine own.” “My son, go work.” And he does not here say, “My son, go and attend conferences one after another all the year round and live in a perpetual maze of hearing different opinions and going from one public meeting and one religious engagement to another, and so feed thyself on the fat things full of marrow.” All this is to be attended to in its proper proportion, but here it is “Go work: go work.” How many Christians there are that seem to read, “Go plan; “and they always figure in a way with some wonderful plan for the conversion of all the world, but they are never found labouring to convert a baby — never having a good word to say to the tiniest child in the Sunday-school. They are always scheming, and yet never effecting anything. But the text says,” My son, go work.” Oh, yes, but those who do not like to work themselves display the greatness of their talents in finding fault with those who do work, and a very clear perception they have “of the mistakes and the crotchets of the very best of workers, whose zeal and industry are alike unflagging. Howbeit the text does not say, “My son, go and criticize;” what it distinctly says, is, “Go and work.” 1 remember that when Andrew Fuller had a very severe lecture from some Scotch Baptist brethren about the discipline of the church, he made the reply, “You say that your discipline is so much better than ours. Very well, but discipline is meant to make good soldiers. Now, my soldiers fight better than yours, and I think therefore .that you ought not to say much about my discipline.” So the real thing is not to be for ever calculating about modes of church government, and methods of management and plans to be adopted and rules to be laid down, which it shall be accounted a serious breach to violate. All well in their place, for order is good in its way. But come, now, let us go to work. Let us have something done. I believe the very best working for God is often done in a very irregular manner. I get more and more to feel like the old soldier of Waterloo when he was examined about the best garment that could be worn by a soldier. The Duke of Wellington said to him, “If you had to fight AVaterloo over again how would you like to be dressed?” The answer was, “Please, sir, I should like to be in my shirt sleeves.” I think that is about the best. Get rid of everything superfluous, and get at it and hack away. I would to God that some Christians could do that, just strip to it, get rid of the superfluities of orderliness and propriety, and everything else which hampers them in trying to get back poor souls. There they are, going down to hell, and we are stickling about this mode and that, and

considering the best way not to do it, and appointing committees to consider and debate, to adjourn and to postpone, and to leave the work in abeyance. The best way is to arise and do it, and let the committee sit afterwards. God grant we may. My son, go work to-day. Let it be something practical, something real, something actually done.

And by good work is meant something that will involve effort, toil, earnestness, self-denial, perhaps something that will want perseverance. In right earnest you will need to stick to it. You will have heartily to yield yourself up to it, and give up a good deal else that might hinder you in doing it. Oh, Christian men and women, you will not glorify God much unless you really put your strength into the ways of the Lord, and throw your body, soul, and spirit — your entire manhood and womanhood — into the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. To do this you need not leave your families, or your shops, or your secular engagements. You can serve God in these things. They will often be vantage grounds of opportunity for you, but you must throw yourself into it. A man does not win souls to Christ while he is himself half asleep. The battle that is to be fought for the Lord Jesus must be fought by men who are wide awake and quickened by the Spirit of God. “My son, go work to-day.” Do not go and play at teaching in Sunday-schools. Do not go and play the preacher. Do not go and play at exhorting people at the corners of streets, or even play at giving away tracts. “My son, go work.” Throw thy soul into it. If it is worth doing it is worth doing well; and if it is worth doing well, it is worth doing better than you have ever done it yet; and even then it will be worth doing better still, for when you have done your best you have still to reach forward to a something far beyond; for the best of the best is all too little for such a God and for such a service. “My son, go work.”

Well, now, such a claim as this may, perhaps, you think, sound rather hard; but I could tell you of many who would be very glad indeed if the Lord would say that to them. I might tell you of some who seldom leave their couches, some who can seldom sit upright through their weakness, to whom the nights are often full of pain, and the days arc spent; in weariness. They have learned, by God’s teaching, to be content to suffer; but sometimes they cannot stifle an ardent wish; they wish the Lord would let them serve him. They do not envy, but yet there sometimes crosses over their mind the shadow of something like envy when they recollect what opportunities some of you have, who are full of health and strength. I have seen my brother minister laid aside, the voice perhaps gone, the lungs feeble, the heart prone to palpitate, and, oh, how he has wished that he could preach. With what fervour has he said, “Oh, if I had but those opportunities over again, how I would try to use them better than when I was favoured with them! I tell you there are thousands of God’s servants who would kiss the dust of his feet if he would only say to them, “Go work.” I remember reading of a minister who had been labouring in America till he had fairly broken down. He had to take a tour for his health. He had not been away many days before he wrote in his diary, “There may be some ministers who count it a pleasure to be relieved from the duty of preaching, but I count it a misery. I would sooner preach as I ‘have done in my own pulpit continually than I would see all the kingdoms of the world.” And, indeed, there is no pleasure in the world like that of serving God. You will soon get tired if you have a vacation, but you will never get tired of a divine vocation, though you may some times grow tired in it. Now, think that the Lord might have said to you, “Now, go and lie on that bed for ten years. Go and pine away in consumption. I have nothing much for you to do. You have got to bear my will.” Are you not very glad that you are full of strength, or that you have some share of it, and that now your heavenly Father says, •“Son, go work. I have given you strength: go work”? Lord, we thank thee for so kind and gentle a command.

Besides, there is a great deal of honour in this work. You know how much your little boy wants to be a man. All boys do. When he first wears stick-up collars he congratulates himself upon the sign of any thing like being a man. How proud he is of it! And if you, being a lather, were to say to your boy, “My son, you are now of such an age that I can trust you to do some work for me”; see how the little man would begin to lift himself up: he is glad of it. And 1 am sure that if we look at it rightly, we who are the children of God ought to feel honoured by our heavenly Father saying to us, “You may do something for me.” We must be very humble, for, after all, we cannot do anything except as he worketh in us to will and to do. But it is really very gratifying and ennobling to a poor mortal spirit to be allowed to do anything for God, ay, and to do what perfect saints above and holy angels cannot do; for oh, dear brother, there is no glorified spirit that can go down that back street and up that blind alley, and up those staircases that seem as if they would tumble down under your feet. Go and talk to that dying woman about Christ. You have a privilege which honoured Gabriel has not got: be thankful that you have it. There is no angel that can take that little child in the Sunday-school * -class and tell it of “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,” and carry the little, lamb for the Good Shepherd. The Lord sends you to do it. And it should be a point of thankfulness with us all that he has counted us worthy, and put us into the ministry — into any part or parcel of that cniiiisiry — to do something for his name’s sake. Well, we are always receiving — always receiving, and it is very blessed; but still in this, as in other things, “it is more blessed to give than to receive; and when we can give back to God some little trifle of service, stained with our tears because it is no better than it is, oh, it is a happy and a blessed thing, How grateful you ought to be that the Lord does say to you, “Son, go work to-day.”

And remember, once more, on this point, that the work to which the Lord calls us is very varied, therefore there is a great deal of change in it; and, besides that, it suits the different temperaments, constitutions, dispositions, and abilities of his people. He says, “My son, go work to day in my vineyard.” But he does not give you to do my work, and he does not give me to do your work. Dear sister, you would like to do the work of such and such an excellent Christian woman, would not you? Yes, but that is naughty of you. Be satisfied to do your own. Suppose your housemaid always wanted to do the cook’s work, the house would soon be in bad order. Better keep to your own place, dear sister. Ah, there is a brother here who says, “I think I could preach if I only had such and such a congregation.” Very likely, brother, but you had better preach to your own and do what good you can there. Very likely I should do better with my own congregation, and you will do better with yours than I should. Every man had better keep to his own work in his own place. And how thankful we ought to be that if one can preach a sermon, yet another can offer a prayer, — that if one can go and speak to thousands, yet another can speak to ones and twos. There is work in the school; there is work in the family; there is work in the street; there is work in the workshop; there is work every where for Jesus if thou wilt but stretch out thy hand to find it and follow Solomon’s good advice, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”

III. Now, THE TIME is the next thing. “My son, go work to-day.” That means directly — now.

Brother, sister, I will not say a word about what it is your duty to do to-morrow. Let the morrow take care of itself. I will have nothing to say about what it will be right for you to do in ten years’ time. If you are alive, grace will be given to you for that. But what 1 have to say to you in God’s name is, “Go work to-day,” and as the sun has gone down, let it be, “Go work to-night in my vineyard,” if there be opportunity, even to-night, ere another day’s sun has dawned upon the world. “And why to-day?” Because, brother, thy Father wants thee to be at it at once. “Why stand ye here all the day idle?” If thou hast done nothing for Christ thou hast wasted enough time. Do not rest to-day, but be at it now. He wants thee to do it now, because the vines are in a certain condition that just now require work. There is somebody in the world who is in a tender state of mind, to whom thou mayesfe speak successfully. There is a mourner here who wants comfort to night. There is one struggling against his conscience, who wants urging on to-night in the right way. If the case be neglected to-night it will be like neglecting to trim the vines just at the proper time for taking away the superfluous wood. Now canst thou do it. Thou canst not do it on any other day. Therefore, “go work to-day.”

“To-day,” because there are certain dangers to which those whom thou art about to bless are just now exposed. The devil is tempting them: it is needful that thou go and help them against that temptation. They are just now in despair; it is needful that thou step in with the word of comfort from thy Master’s mouth. They are, perhaps, this very night, before they go to their rest, about to commit a great sin. Mayhap the Lord means thee to interpose just now, ere that sin be done. Son, go work to-day; thou art wanted. There are very few labourers just now: many of them have gone. Son, do thou go to-day, while the others have gone out for their recreation — while the others are asleep and grown idle. There is a gap just now: it is at this moment. Many a brave deed of valour owed its success to being done at once. If Horatius had not kept the bridge just in that same moment when the enemy endeavoured to pass over, we should never have heard of him, nor of the brave deeds of old. There is a time of dearth — of want: there is an urgency. Son, God saith to thee, “Haste thee now, even now, and go work to-day in my vineyard.” “To-day:” mark that.

It means work all the day: work as long as ever you live. Son, if once thou get into that vineyard do not come home again until the day is done. I am always sorry when I hear of Christian people beginning to give up some of their work before the infirmities of old age come on; although I think that many a minister, when he gets old, had better give up a charge for which he is not equal and take one smaller for which his strength would avail. But I know that some give up this work and that, and they say, “Let the young people come and take their turn.” Yes, yes, but suppose the sun were to stop shining and say, “There is a star over there; let him have a turn and shine instead of me.” Suppose the moon were for ever to give up shining in the night watches, and say that she has had enough of being out at night; and suppose the earth were to say it has had enough of yielding karvests. “Why should I yield any more? Let the sea take its turn and grow corn,” And so, dear Christian friends, keep on as long as you can. Who can blame dear old John Newton? When he got too feeble to get up the pulpit stairs of St. Mary Woolnoth, he was helped up, and then, leaning on his pulpit Bible he poured out his soul. A friend of his said to him, “Dear Mr. Newton, don’t you think you ought to give up preaching?” “What!” said he, “shall the old African blasphemer ever give up praising the grace of God as long as there is breath in his body? Never.” And so he went to his work again. Oh, for more of that spirit to persevere in the Master’s service.

Only there is this thought: it is only a day. “Son, go work to-day.” It will only be a day. The longest life is no more, and then the shadows of death will gather: but there will be no night, for instead thereof the day shall break and the shadows shall flee away, and then life’s service here below will all be over. There will be no troublesome children to teach, no hard-hearted sinners to rebuke, no backsliding, lukewarm Christians to reprove, no decoivers to encounter, no sceptics to answer with the testimony that cannot be shaken, no scoffers to put up with, patiently bearing their contumely. It will be all over then; and then shall those who have served their Master behold him gird himself and sit down and serve them, and they shall feast at his table and enter into his joy. “My son, go work to-day,” for thou shalt rest to-morrow. Work on, for there is rest enough in heaven: work on, for eternity shall well repay thee for the toils of time.

IV. Then; as to THE PLACE WHERE THE LORD CALLS us TO THE
WORK. “My son, go work to-day in my vineyard.’”

I like to think of this special sphere of labour, because it must be a pleasure to work in our Father’s vineyard, for there everything that we do will be done for him. I trim this vine; it is my Father’s vine. I dig this trench; but it is my Father’s ground I turn. I gather out these stones; it is my Father’s vineyard that I am engaged in clearing. I repair this fence; it is my Father’s soil that I am thus hedging about. It is all done for him. Who would not do all that he could for the dear Redeemer, dying Lamb, and for the blessed Father of our spirits? “Go work to-day in my vineyard.”

Then what interesting work it is, for it is our own vineyard because it is our Father’s vineyard. All that belongs to him belongs to us. We are sons working in our Father’s vineyard; so we can say, “This vine; why, I have an interest in it, for I am the heir of my Father’s property. This ground that I endeavour to dig about and manure; it is my ground, it is my Father’s. And this wall that I try to mend; it is mine, it is my Father’s.” It is always pleasant to work for ourselves, you know; and, in a blessed sense, when we are working for Ood we are working for ourselves. Ye are labourers, ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s people; and when ye are working for the Lord ye really are taking shares with him.

And what a work it is, too! “Go work to-day in my vineyard.” One likes working in a vineyard, because it pays. Working in a desert may be thankless toil; but working in a vineyard where there will be clusters is very different. One can think already of those juicy .grapes that will be ready for the winepress, and for the festival, when the ruddy juice comes freely forth — when they make merry and joy in the vintage. And you will have the new wine, and the wine on the lees well refined. All sorts of pleasures await the man who serves the Lord.

“Go work in my vineyard.” Does it not mean that the work is plentiful? There is always something to be done in a vineyard. If you ask those who keep vines they will tell you that there is much labour required. From one part of the year right on there is something still to be done, many dangers to be averted, and many enemies to be <kept off from the vine; so there is plenty to do, brother. Go work in the vineyard, where there will be need of all thy hands. It is close at -hand; hard by you; for the heavenly Father did not say, “Son, take a ship and go to Tarshish, or to Ophir.” He said, “My son, go work in my vineyard”; and the vineyard was just out of the back door there. Now. your heavenly Father’s vineyard is close to you. Those streets where you live — the very house in which you dwell — perhaps the very chamber in which you sleep — is God’s vineyard, where you are to work for him. It is your heavenly Father’s own work, to be done by you in your heavenly Father’s own strength. Oh, if I might to-night set one young man on fire with love to Christ I should be glad. If I could but be the humble means of inspiring some Christian woman with the high mission of being useful in her day and generation, how much would my soul rejoice! There came into this Tabernacle one evening a young gentleman who was well known as being a great hand with his cricket bat. He was a Christian and full of earnestness in laying hold upon the great truths of revelation; but he had never served his God. He thought it right to spend his leisure time in manly exercises, and in such pursuits he sought recreation. But while I spoke a fire kindled within him, and he went home to begin to preach the gospel in the street of the city where he lived, and now he is the pastor of a large and influential church which he has gathered together. Since then he has preached more than once in this place the gospel of Jesus Christ. Oh, that some other believer who may happen to be in that condition — some young man of ability who is spending all his strength on the world without going into anything grossly wrong* but simply wasting his talent — might hear a voice saying to him to-night, as he goes down that aisle, •“My son, go work to-day in my vineyard.”

After dwelling so long upon the practical admonition, I have but h’ttle time left for that brief explanation of the parable, or more properly the parables of the vineyard with which on the outset I promised to close. The occasion on which they were spoken is memorable. Assailed “while he was teaching — rudely interrupted by the legal sanhedrim of the Jews with the high priest in the forefront, they confronted our Lord as it were with a warrant and propounded to him two questions; — one as to the authority or title by which he acted — the other as to the source from which his authority was derived. You all know how skilfully he evaded his unscrupulous antagonists.” I also will ask you one thing” he said. Therewith he put to them a question that proved a poser, and left them to a ridiculous parley, for “they reasoned among themselves” went aside to whisper, and then drew back in sheer timidity declining an answer, for “they feared the people” or as you may read it, they were afraid of the mob. The advantage our Lord thus gained he quickly followed up with a parable — in fact, with the parable we have been talking about. He opened it thus, — “What think ye* “— putting a query about two sons, the one forward in profession, yet utterly disobedient, the other sullen in appearance though afterwards penitent in spirit and diligent in labour. The thing was so obvious that they answer without hesitation with a reply that nailed the censure to their own breasts. ‘* Whether of these twain did the will of his father?” They say unto him, “the first.” Read it, read the parable for yourselves. Realize the force of it if you can. The penitent harlot and the -obdurate high priest are put in the scales. “In the way of righteousness” — according to the truthful caricature — the chief priests and elders themselves admit that “the first” of these twain did the will of our heavenly Father. Digest this parable, I pray you. Almost without a break the vineyard supplied him yet again with another parable which he insisted on their hearing — a parable that brought out the character of the dispensation and “the signs of the times” «o distinctly, that they could not fail to read it in the light of their own prophets, and at the same time it so exposed the treachery of their counsel and conspiracy that they recognized their own portrait at once and perceived that he spake of them. “The vineyard,” you are all aware, was the constant symbol of the Jewish nation as a theocracy.

The men that safe in Moses’s seat were the stewards in charge of that. rineyard which was Jehovah’s special property. They, like the perverse rulers of every age, sought to shelter their evil designs under cover of syndicates and conferences. But the words and warnings of Jesus, his proverbs and parables, were keen enough to probe all their subtleties, and leave them to stand abashed without an excuse for the guile of their hearts or the guilt of their conduct. Now remember that the kingdom of God was taken from them and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. To what nation is it given? Is it not to the church which is called “a chobcu generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light”? The vine is the express symbol of our Christian life as all believers are incorporated with Christ. Well then, there is a vineyard of God’s own planting; you believe that. He has let it out to husbandmen; you believe that. He will come seeking fruit of this vineyard; you believe that. You are, .dear brethren, the children of the husbandmen; you believe that, or else you would not presume to sit at his table and drink of his cup. He says therefore to you, “Son, go work in my vineyard.” What answer do you give with your lips? What answer do you give with your life?

Thus far I have not been speaking to unconverted people. I have not said a word to them. To them, however, f have this word to say, and I have done. 1 shall not ask you to work for Christ. I cannot exhort you to do anything for him. You are not in a state of mind to do it. You must first believe in him. Oh, let it be a sorrow to you to night that you are incapable of serving Christ. Till you get a new heart and a right spirit you have no capacity to serve him. You have first to trust Christ, and to prove in your own souls that this gospel is the power of God to your salvation. Your eyes must be opened; you must be turned from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that you may receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith in Jesus, before can do anything for him. Then, not till then, will ye be meet to

made witnesses both of those things which ye shall have seen and of those things in the which he will hereafter appear unto you. You must be born again yourselves before ye can travail in birth for others, till Christ be formed in them. You cannot testify, those of you by whom the testimony of Christ has not been received and in whom it is not confirmed. Your unskilled labour would be mischievous. Hands off such holy work till those hands have been washed clean by Jesus Christ. Come ye unto him, and trust him, and believe in him, and when he has saved you, then he will say to you, “Son, go work to-day in my vineyard.”

|fUti[0pIitmt SJabenrade

THE PARABLE OF THE WEDDING FEAST.

DKMVBBKD os LORD’S-DAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 12TH, 1871, BY
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

“The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come. Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are’bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage.” — Matthew xxii. 2, 3, 4.

IF God grant me strength I hope to go through this parable, but at this present we shall confine our thoughts to the opening scene of the royal festival. Before, however, we proceed further, it is most fitting that we give expression to our deep gratitude, that it has pleased the infinite mind to stoop to our narrow capacities, and instruct us by parable. How tenderly condescending is God to devise similitudes, that his children may learn the mysteries of the kingdom! If it be sometimes marvelled at among men that great minds are ever ready to stoop, what a far greater marvel that God himself should bow the heavens and come down to meet our ignorance and slowness of comprehension! When the learned professor has been instructing his class in the hall in recondite matters of deep philosophy, and then goes home and takes his child upon his knee, and tries to bring down great truth to the grasp of his child’s mind, then you see the great love of the man’s heart: and when the eternal God, before whom seraphim are but insects of an hour, condescends to instruct our childishness and make us wise unto salvation, we may well say, “herein is love.” Just as we give our children pictures that we may win the attention, and may by pleasing means fix truth upon their memories, so the Lord with loving inventiveness has become the author of many a charming metaphor, type, and allegory, by which he may gain our interest, and through his Holy Spirit enlighten our minds. It’ he who thunders till the mountains tremble, yet deigns to speak with us in a still KIII all voice, let us gladly sit in Mary’s place at his gracious feet, and willingly learn of him. 0 that God would give to each one a teachable spirit, for this is the greatest step towards understanding the mind of God. He who is willing to learn, in a childlike spirit, is already in a considerable measure taught of God. May we all so study this instructive purable No. 975. 6 as to be quickened by it to all that is well-pleasing in the sight of God, for after all true learning in godliness may be judged of by its result f upon our lives. If we are holier we are wiser, practical obedience to th% will of the Lord Jesus is the surest evide-ice of an understanding heart.

In order to understand the parable before us we must first direct our attention to the design of the “certain king” here spoken of. He had a grand object in view; he desired to do honour to his son upon the occasion of his marriage. We shall then notice the very generous method by which he proposed to accomplish his purpose; he made a dinner, and bade many: there were other modes of honouring his son, but the great king elected the mode which would best display his bounty. We shall then observe, with sad interest, the serious hindrance which arose to the carrying out of his generous design — those who were bidden would not come. There was nothing to hinder the magnificence of the festival in the riches of the prince — he lavished out his stores for the feast; but here was a hindrance strange and difficult to remove, they would not come. Then our thoughts will linger admiringly over the gracious rejoinder which the king made to theopposers of his design; he sent other servants to repeat the invitation, “Corne ye to the marriage.” If we shall drink deep into the meaning of these three verses, we shall have more than enough for one meditation.

I. A certain king of wide dominions and great power designed to give a magnificent banquet, with a GRAND OBJECT in view. The crown prince, his well beloved heir, was about to take to himself a fair bride, and therefore the royal father desired to celebrate the event with extraordinary honours. From earth, look up to heaven. The great object of God the Father is to glorify his Son. It is his will “that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father.” (John v. 23.) Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is glorious already in his divine person. He is ineffably blessed, and infinitely beyond needing honour. All the angels of God worship him, and his glory fills all heaven. He has appeared on the stage of action as the Creator, and as such his glory is perfect, “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that ure in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him.” He said, “Light be,” and it flamed forth. He bade the mountains lift their heads, and their summits pierced the clouds. He created the water- floods,he bade them seek their channels,and he appointed their bounds. Nothing is lacking to the glory of the Word of God, who was in Che begining with God, who spake and it was done, who commanded, and it stood forth. He is highly exalted also as the preserver, for he is before all things, and by him all things consist. He is that nail fastene-l in a sure place, upon which all things hang. The keys of heaven, and death, and hell, are fastened to his girdle, and the government shall be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called. Wonderful. He hath a name which is above every name, before which all things shall bow, in heaven, and earth, and under the earth. He is God over all. He is blessed for ever. To him that is, and was, and is to come, the universal song goeth up.

But there is another relation in which the Son of God has graciously been pleased to sfcund towards us. He has undertaken to be a Saviour + in order that, lie might be a ‘bridegroom. He had enough glorv before, but ill the greatness of his heart, he would magnify his compassion even above his power, and he therefore condescended to take into union with himself the nature of man, in order that he might redeem the beloved objects of his choice from the penalty due to their sins, an«£ might enter into the nearest conceivable union with them. It is six Saviour that the Father seeks to honour the Son, and the gospel feast is not for the honour of his person merely, but for the honour of his person in this new, yet anciently purposed relationship. It is for the honour of Jesus as entering into spiritual union with his church, that, the gospel is prepared as a royal entertainment.

Brethren, when I said that here was a grand occasion, it certainly is so in God’s esteem, and it should be so in ours; we should delight to glorify the Son of God. To all loyal subjects in any realm, the marriage of one of the royal family is a matter of great interest, and it is usual and fitting to give expression to congratulations and sympathies by suitable rejoicings. In the instance before us the occasion calls for special joy from all the subjects of the great king of kings. For the occasion in itself is a subject for great delight and thankfulnessto us personally. The marriage is with whom? With angels? He took not up angels. It is a marriage with our own nature, “he took up the seed of Abraham.” Shall we not rejoice when heaven’s great Lord is incarnate as a man, and stoops to redeem humanity from the ruin of the fall? Angels rejoice but they have no such share in the joy as we have. It is the highest personal joy to manhood that Jesus-Christ who thought it not robbery to be equal writh God, was made in the likeness of men that he might be one flesh with his chosen. Arise ye who slumber! If there was ever an occasion when ye should bestir your spirits and cry “wrake up my glory, awake psaltery and harp” it is now, when Jesus comes to be affianced to his church, to make himself of one flesh with her, that he may redeem her, and afterwards exalt her to sit with him upon his throne. Here were abundant reasons why the invited guests should come with joyful steps, and count themselves thrice happy to be bidden to such a banquet. There is overwhelming reason why mankind should rejoice in the glorious gospel of Jesus and hasten to avail themselves of it.

Beside that we must consider the royal descent of the Bridegroom. Remember that Jesus Christ our Saviour is very God of very God. Are we asked to do him honour? It is right, for to whom else should honour be given? Surely we should glorify our Creator and Preserver! Wilful must be the disobedience which will not pay reverence to one so highly exalted and so worthy of all homage. It is heaven to serve such a Lord. His ylory reacheth unto the clouds; let him be adore* i for ever and ever; 0 come let us worship and bow down, let us cheerfully obey those commands of God which aim at the honour of his Son.

Remember also the person of Immanuel, and you will desire his glory. This glorious Son, whose fame is to he spread abroad, is most certainly God — of that we have spoken, but he is also most assuredly man, our brother, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh. Do we not delight to believe that he, tempted in all points as we are, has never yet submitted LO be stained by sin? Never such a man as he, head of the race.- the second Adam, the everlasting Father — who among us would not da him reverence? Will we not seek his honour, seeing that now he lifts our race to be next to the throne of God.

Remember, too, his character. Was there ever such a life as his? I will not so much speak of his divine character, though that furnishes abundant reason for worship and adoration, but think of him even as a man. 0 beloved, what tenderness, what compassion, yet what holy boldness; what love for sinners, and yet what love for truth! Men who have not loved him have nevertheless admired him, and hearts in which we least expected to see such recognition of his excellencies have nevertheless been deeply affected as they have studied his life. We must praise him, for He is “chief among ten thousand, and altogether lovely.” It were treason to be silent when the hour has come to speak of him who is peerless among men and matchless among angels Clap, clap your hands at the thought of the marriage of the King’s Son, for whom his bride hath made herself ready.

Think, too, of his achievements. We take into reckoning whenever we do honour to a prince all that he may have done for the nation over which he rules. What, then, has Jesus done for us? Rather let me say what has he not done? Upon his shoulders were laid our sins; he carried them into the wilderness, and they are gone for ever. Against him came forth our foes; he met them in shock of battle, and where are they now? They are cast into the depths of the sea. As for death itself, that last of foes, he has virtually overcome it, and ere long the weakest of us through him shall say, “0 death, where is thy sting? 0 grave, where is thy victory?” He is the hero of heaven. He returned to his Father’s throne amidst the acclamations of the universe. Do we not, for whom he fought, for whom he conquered, do we not desire to honour him? I feel I speak with bated breath upon a theme where all our powers of speech should be let loose. Bring forth the royal diadem and crown him! Is it not the universal verdict of all who know him? Ought it not to be the cry of all the sons of men? East and west, and north and south, ought they not to ring the joy bells and hang out streamers on his marriage day, for joy of him? Is the King’s Son to be married, is there a festival in his honour? 0 then let him be great, let him be glorious! Long live the King! Let the maidens go forth with their timbrels, and the sons of music make sweet melody — yea, let all creatures that have breath break forth with his praises. “Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.”

II. Secondly, here is a GENEROUS METHOD of accomplishing the design. A king’s son is to be honoured on the day of his marriage, in what way shall it be done? Barbarous nations have their great festivals, and alas, that men should have sunk so low; on such occasions rivers of human blood are made to flow. To this very day, on the borders of civilisation, there is found a wretched tyrant whose infernal customs, for I dare not call them by a less severe term, command the murder of hundreds of his fellow creatures in cold blood, on certain high days and festivals. Thus would the monster honour his son by acting like a fiend. ] To blood is poured forth to honour the Son of heaven’s great King. I doubt not Jesas will have honour even in the destruction of men if they reject his mercy, but it is not so that God elects to glorify his Son. Jesus the Saviour, on his wedding-day with manhood, is glorified by mercy, not by wrath. If blood be mentioned on such a day, it is his own by which he is glorified. The slaughter of mankind would bring no joy to him, he is meek and lowly, a lover of the sons of men. It has been the custom of most kings to signalise a princely wedding by levying a fresh tax, or demanding an increased subsidy from ttieir subjects. In the case of the anticipated wedding of our beloved Queen’s daughter, the dowry sought will be given with greater pleasure than upon any former occasion, and none of us would lift a whisper of complaint; but the parable shows that the King of kings deals with us not aftei the manner of man. He asks no dowry for his Son; he makes the marriage memorable not by demands but by gifts. Nothing is sought for from the people, but much is prepared for them, gifts are lavishly bestowed, and all that is requested of the subjects is, that they for awhile merge the subject in the more honourable character of the guest, and willingly come to the palace, not to labour or serve at the table, but to feast and to rejoice.

Observe, then, the generous method by which God honours Christ is set forth here under the form of a banquet. I noted Matthew Henry’s way of describing the objects of a feast, and with the alliteration of the Puritans, he says, “A feast is for love and for laughter, for fulness and for fellowship.” It is even so with the gospel. It is for love; in the gospel, sinner, you are invited to be reconciled to God, you are assured that God forgives your sins, ceases to be angry, and would have you reconciled to him through his Son. Thus love is established between God and the soul. Then it is for laughter, for happiness, for joy. Those who come to God in Christ Jesus, and believe in him, have their hearts filled with overflowing peace, which calm lake of peace often lifts up itself in waves of joy, which clap their hands in exultation.

It is not to sorrow but to joy that the great King invites his subjects, when he glorifies his Son Jesus. It is not that you may be distressed, but that you may be delighted that he bids you believe in the crucified Saviour and live. A feast, moreover, is for fulness. The hungry famished soul of man is satisfied with the blessings of grace. The gospel fills the whole capacity of our manhood. There is not a faculty of our nature which is not made to feel its need supplied when the soul accepts the provisions of mercy; our whole manhood is satisfied with good things and our youth is renewed like the eagles. “For I have satisfied the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul.” To crown all, the gospel brings us into fellowship with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ. In Christ Jesus we commune with the sacred Trinity. God becomes our Father, and reveals his paternal heart. Jesus manifests himself unto us as he doth not unto the world, and the communion of the Holy Ghost abides with us. Our fellowship is like that of Jonathan with “David, or Jesus with John. We feast on the bread of heaven, and drink wines on the lees well refined. We are brought into the heavenly banqueting house where the secret of the Lord is revealed to us, and our heart pours itself out before the Lord. Very near is our communion with God; most intimate love and condescension does he show to us. What say you to this? Is there nofc here a rich repast worthy of him who prepares it. Here all your capacious powers can wish, 0 sinner, shall be given to you; all you want for time and for eternity God prepares in the person of his dear Son, and bids you receive it without money and without price.

I have already told you that all the expense lies with him. It was a very sumptuous festival, there were oxen, and there were fatlings, but none of these were taken from the pastures, or stalls of the guests. The gospel is an expensive business; the very heart of Christ was drained to find the price for this great festival; but it costs the sinner nothing nothing of money, nothing of merit, nothing of preparation. You .may come as you are to the gospel feast, for the only wedding dress required is freely provided for you. Just as you are, you are bidden to believe in Jesus. You have nothing to do but to receive of his fulness, for to “as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” You are not asked to contribute to the provision, but to be a feaster at the divine banquet of infinite compassion.

How honourable, too, is the gospel to those who receive it. An invitation to a regal marriage was a high honour to those who were bidden. I do not suppose that many of us are likely to be invited to the Princess’s wedding, and, if we were, we should probably be greatly elated, for we should most of us feel it to be one of the great events of our lives. So was it with these people. A king’s son is not married every day, and it is not everybody that is bidden to the monarch’s entertainment. All their lives long they would say, “I was at his wedding, and saw .nil the splendour of the marriage festival.” Probably some of them had never before enjoyed such a feast as the luxurious potentate had prepared for that day, and had never before been in such good company. My brethren, nothing so honours a man as for him to accept the gospel. While his faith honours Christ, Christ honours him. It is no mean thing to be a king’s son, but those who come to the marriage feast of God’s own Son shall become King’s sons themselves — themselves parti cipators in the glory of the great heir of all things. While I am speaking of this generous method my heart glows with sacred ardour, and my wonder rises that men do not come to the banquet of love which honours all its guests. When the banquet is so costly to the host, so free to the guests, and so honourable to all concerned, how is it that there should be found any so unwise as to refuse the favour. Surely here is an illustration of the folly of the unrenewed heart, and a proof of the deep depravity which sin has caused. If men turn their backs on Moses with his stony tables, I do not marvel, but to despise the loaded tables of grace, heaped up with oxen and fatlings — this is strange. To resist the justice of God is a crime, but to repel the generosity of heaven, what is this? We must invent a term of infamy with which to brand the base ingratitude. To resist God in majesty of terror is insanity but to spurn him in the majesty of his mercy is something more than madness. Sin reaches its climax when it resolves to starve sooner than owe anything to divine goodness. I feel I must anticipate the period for delivering my message, and as I have described to you the way in which God honours his Son, I must at once proclaim the invitation, and cry to you, “Come to the wedding feast. Come ye, and glorify Jesus by accepting the provisions of grace. Your works will not honour him, if you set them up as a righteousness in competition with his righteousness. Not even your repentance can glorify him, if you th ink to make it a rival to his precious blood. Come, guilty sinner, as you are, and take the mercy Jesus freely presents to you, and accept the pardon which his blood secures to those who believe in him.” Methinks when the messenger went out from the King and first of all marked signs of neglect among those who were bidden, and saw that they would not come, he must have been mute with astonishment. He had seen the oxen, and seen the fatlings, and all the goodly preparations, he knew the King, he -knew his Son, he knew what joy it was to be at such a feast; and when the bidden ones began to turn their backs on him, and go their way to their farms, the messenger, repeated his message over and over again with eagerness, wondering all the while at the treason which dared insult so good a King. I think I see him, at first indignant for his Master’s sake, and afterwards melted to pity as he saw what would surely come of such an extravagance oi ingratitude, such a superfluity of insolence. He mourned that hig fellow-citizens whom he loved should be such fools as to reject so good an offer, and spurn so, blessed a proclamation. I, too, am tossed to and fro in soul, with mingled but vehement feelings. 0, my God,

thou hast provided the gospel, let none in this house reject it, and so slight thy Son and dishonour thee, but may all rejoice in thy generous way of glorifying Jesus Christ, the Bridegroom of his church, and may they come-, and willingly grace the festival of thy love..

III. “We now advance to our third point, and regretfully remember THE SERIOUS HINDRANCE which for awhile interfered with the joyful event.

The king had thought in his mind, “I will make a great feast, I will invite a large number. They shall enjoy all my kingdom can afford, and I shall thus show how much I love my son, and moreover all the guests will have sweet memories in connection with his marriage.” When his messengers went out to intimate to those who had received previously an express invitation that the time was come, it is written, “They would not come;” not they could not, but they “would not come.” Some for one reason, some for another, but without exception they would not come. Here was a very serious hindrance to the grand business. Cannot the king drag his guests to the table? Tea, but then it would not accomplish his purpose. He wants not slaves to grace his throne’. Persons compelled to sit at a marriage-feast would not adorn it. What credit could it be to a king to force his subjects to feast at his table? No, for once, as I have said before, the subject must be merged in the guest. It was essential to the dignity of the festival that the guests should come with cheerfulness to the festival, but they would not come. Why? Why would they not come? The answer shall be such as to answer another question — Why do not you come and believe in Jesus! With many of them it was an indifference to the whole aftair. They did not see what concern they had in the king or his son. Royal marriages were high things and concerned high people; they were plain-speaking men, farmers who went hedging and ditching, or tradesmen who made out bills and bold by the yard or pound. What cared they for the court, the palace, the king, the prince, bis bride, or his dinner! They did not say quite that, but such was their feeling; it might be a fine thing, but it was altogether out of their line. How many run in the same groove at this hour? We have heard it said, “What has a working man to do with religion?” and we have heard others of another grade in life affirm that persons who are in business cannot afford time for religion, but had better mind the main chance. The Lord have mercy upon your folly! Here is one great obstacle to the gospel, the stolid indifference of the human mind concerning this grandest of all conceptions — God’s glorifying his dear Son by having mercy upon sinners.

At the bottom the real reason for the refusal of those in the parable was that they were disloyal, they would not come to the supper because they saw an opportunity for the loyal to be glad, and not being loyal they did not wish to hear the songs and acclamations of others who were. By staying away they insulted the king, and declared that they cared not whether he was a king or not, whether his son was a prince or not. They determined to disavow their allegiance by refusing the invitation. They said in effect, “Anyhow, if he be a king and his son a prince, we will do him no honour, we will not be numbered with those who surround his board and show forth his splendour. No doubt a feast is worth having, and such a feast as there will be provided t’were well for us to participate in, but for once we will deny our appetites that we may indulge our pride. We proclaim a revolt. We declare we will not go.” Ah, ye who believe not in Jesus, at the bottom of it your unbelief is enmity to your Maker, sedition against the great Ruler of the universe, who deserves your homage. “The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib,” but ye know not, neither do ye consider; ye are rebels against the Majesty of heaven.

Moreover, the refusal was a slight to the prince as well as to his father, and in some cases the gospel is refused mainly with this intent, because the unbeliever rejects the deity of Christ, or despises his atonement. 0 sirs, beware of this, I know of no rock more fatal than to dishonour Christ by denying his sonship and his deity. Split not upon it, I beseech you — “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little.” Indifference covered the refusal in the text, “they made light of it,” but if you take off the film you will see that at the bottom there was treason against th* majesty of the king, and distaste to the dignity of his son.

No doubt some of them despised the feast itself. They must have known that with such a king it could not be a starveling meal, but they pretended to despise the feast. How many there are who despise the gospel which they do not understand, I say which they do not understand, for almost invariably if you hear a man depreciate the gospel, you will find that he has scarcely even read the New Testament and is a utter stranger to the doctrines of grace. Listen to a man who is voluble in condemnation of the gospel, and you may rest assured that he is loud because he is empty. If he understood the subject better he would find, if he were indeed a man of candour, that he would be led at least to be silent in admiration if he did not become loyal in acceptance.

Beloved friends, the feast is such as you greatly need, let me tell you what it is. It is pardon for the past, renewal of nature for the present, and glory for the future. Here is God to be our helper, his Son to be our shepherd, the Spirit to be our instructor. Here is the love of the Father to be our delight, the blood of the Son to be our cleansing, the energy of the Holy Spirit to be life from the dead to us. You cannot, want anything that you ought to want, but what is provided in the gospel, and Jesus Christ will be glorified if you accept it by faith. But here is the hindrance, men do not accept it, “they would not come.” Some of us thought that if we put the gospel in a clear light, and if we were earnest in stating it our hearers must be converted, and God forbid we should ever try to do otherwise than make it plain and be earnest, but for all that the best ministry that ever was, or ever could be, will be unsuccessful in a measure; yea, and altogether so, unless the effectual work of the Spirit be present. Still will the cry go up, “Who hath believed our report?” Still will those who serve their Master best, have reason to mourn that they sow on stony ground, and cast their bread on thankless waters. Even the prince of preachers had to say, “Ye search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, but ye will not come to me that ye might have life.” Alas, alas, that mercy should be rejected and heaven spurned.

IV. So now we must close with the most practical matter of consideration, THE GRACIOUS REJOINDER of the king to the impertinence which interfered with his plans. What did he say? You will observe that they had been bidden, and then called; after the Oriental custom, the call intimated that the festival was now approaching, so that they were not taken unawares, but knew what they did. The second invitation they rejected in cold blood, deliberately, and with intent. What did the monarch do? Set their city in a blaze, and at once root out the rebels? No, but in the first place, he winked at their former insolent refusal. He said in himself, “Perad venture they mistook ray servants, peradventure they did not understand that the hour was come. Perhaps the message that was delivered to them was too brief, and they missed its meaning. Or, if perchance, they have fallen into some temporary enmity against me, on reconsideration, they will wish that they had not been so rude, and ungenerous to me. What have I done that they should refuse my dinner? What has my son done that they should not be willing to honour him by feasting at my table. Men love feasting, my son deserves their honour — why should they not come? I will pass over the past and begin again.” My hearers, there are many of you who have rejected Christ .after many invitations, and this morn ing my Lord forgets your former unkindnesses, and sends me again with the same message, again to bid you “come to the wedding.” It is no small patience which overlooks the past and perseveres in kindness, honestly desiring your good.

The King sent another invitation — “all things are ready, come ye to the marriage,” but you will please to observe that he changed the messenger. “Again he sent forth other servants.” Yes, and I will say it, for my soul feels it, if a change of messengers will win you, much as I love the task of speaking in my Master’s name, I would gladly die now, where I am, that some other preacher might occupy this platform, if thereby you might be saved. I know my speech to some of you must be monotonous. I seek out images fresh and many, and try to vary my voice and manner, but for all that one man must grow stale to you when heard so often. Perhaps my modes are not the sort to touch your peculiarities of temperament — well, good Master, set thy servant aside, and consider him not. Send other messengers if perchance they may succeed. But to some of you I am another messenger, not a better, but another, since my brethren have failed with you. Oh, then, when my voice cries, “Come unto Jesus, trust in his atonement, believe in him, look to him and live;” let the new voice be successful, where former heralds have been disregarded.

You notice, too, that the mess ge was a little changed. At first it was very short. Surely if men’s hearts were rijrht, short sermons would be enough. A very brief invitation might suffice if the heart were right, but since hearts are wrong God bids his servants enlarge, expand, and expound. “Come, for all things are ready. I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fatlings are killed, all things are ready, come to the marriage.” One of the best ways of bringing sinners to Christ is to explain the gospel to them. If we dwell upon its preparations, if we speak of its richness and freeness, some may be attracted whom the short message which merely tells the plan of salvation might not attract. To some it is enough to -say, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,” for they are asking, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

but others need to be attracted to the wedding feast by the description of the sumptuousness of the repast. We must try to preach the gospel more fully to you, but we shall never tell you of all the richness of the grace of God. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are his thoughts above your thoughts, and his ways above your ways. Forsake your sins and your thoughts and turn to the Lord, for he will abundantly pardon you. He will receive you to his heart of love, and give you the kiss of his affection at this hour, if, like prodigal children, you come back and seek your Father’s face. The gospel is a river of love, it is a sea of love, it is a heaven of love, it is a universe of love, it is all love. Words there arc none, fully to set forth the amazing love of God to sinners, no sin too big or too black, no crime too crimson or too cursed for pardon. If you do but look to his dear crucified Son all manner of sin and of blasphemy shall be forgiven you. There is forgiveness. Jesus gives repentance and remission. And then the happiness which will be brought to you here and hereafter are equally beyond description. You shall have heaven on earth and heaven in heaven; God shall be your Godp Christ shall be your friend, and eternal bliss shall be your portion.

In this last message the guests were pressed very delicately, but still in a way which if they had possessed any generosity of heart at all, must have touched them. You see how the evangelist puts it, he does not say, “Come, or else you will miss the feast; come, ‘or else the king will be angry; come, come, or else 3 ou will be the losers.” No, but he puts it, as I read it, in a very remarkable way. I venture to say — if I be wrong, the Master forgive me so saying — the king makes himself the object of sympathy, as though hs were an embarrassed host. See here, “My dinner is ready, but there is no one to eat it; my oxen and fatlings are all killed, but there are no guests.” “Come, come,” he seems to say, “for I am a host without guests.” So sometimes in the gospel you will see God speaks as if he would represent himself as getting an advantage by our being saved. Now we know that herein he condescends in love to speak after the manner of men. What can he gain by us? If we perish what is he the loser? But he makes himself often in the gospel to be like a father who yearns over his child, longing for him to come home. He makes himself, the infinite God, turn beggar to his own creatures, and beseeches them to be reconciled. Wondrous stoop; for, like a chapman who sells his wares, he cries, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; and he that hath no monej, let him come.’’ Do you observe how Christ, as he wept over Jerusalem, seems to weep for himself as well as for them. “How often would I have gathered thy children together.” And God, in the prophets, puts it as his own sorrow, “How can I set thee as Admah, how can I make thee as Zeboim,” as if it were not the child’s loss alone, but the futuer’i

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loss also, if the sinner died. Do you not feel, as it were, a sympathy with God when you see his gospel rejected? Shall the cross be lifted high, and none look to it? Shall Jesus die, and men not be saved by his death? 0 blessed Lord, we feel, if nothing else should draw us, we must come when we see, as it were, thyself represented as a host under our embarrassment, for lack of guests. Great God, we come, we come right gladly, we come to participate of the bounties which thou hast provided, and to glorify Jesus Christ by receiving as needy sinners that which thy mercy has provided.

Brethren and sisters since Christ finds many loath to honour him, my exhortation is to you who love him, honour him the more since the world will not. You who have been constrained to corne, remember to sing as you sit at his table, and rejoice and bless his name. Next go home and intercede for those who will not come, that the Lord will enlighten their understandings, and change their wills, that they may be yet constrained to believe in Jesus; and as for those of you who feel half inclined this morning by the soft touches of his grace to come and feast, let rne bid you come. It is a glorious gospel — the feast is good. He is a glorious king — the Host is good. He is a blessed Saviour, he who is married, he is good. It is all good, and you shall be made good too, if your souls accept the invitation of the gospel which is given to you this day. “He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved: he that believeth not shall be damned.” “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” The Lord send his Spirit to make rb» call effectual, for his dear Son’s sake. Amen.