The Reward of the Righteous

“When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I w»§ in prison, and ye came unto me.” — Matthew xxv. 31 — 36.

IT is exceedingly beneficial to our souls to mount above this present evil world to something nobler and better. The cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches are apt to choke everything good within us, and we grow fretful, desponding, perhaps proud, carnal. It is well for us to cut down these thorns and briars, for heavenly seed sown among them is not likely to yield a harvest, and I do not know a better sickle with which to cut them down than thoughts of the kingdom to come. In the yalleys in Switzerland many of the inhabitants are deformed and dwarfish, and the whole of them wear a sickly appearance, for the atmosphere Is charged with miasma, and is close and stagnant; you traverse them ag rapidly as you can, and are glad to escape from them. Up yonder on the mountain you will find a hardy race, who breathe the clear fresh air as it blows from the virgin snows of the Alpine summits. It would be well for their frames if the dwellers in the valley could frequently leave their abodes among the marshes and the fever mists, and get themselves up into the clear atmosphere above. It is to such an exploit of climbing that I invite you this morning. May the Spirit of God bear ns as upon eagles’ wings, that we may leave the mists of fear and the fevers of anxiety, and all the ills which gather in this valley of earth, and get ourselves up to the mountains of future joy and blessedness where it is to be our delight to dwell world without end! Oh may God disentangle us now for a little while, cut the cords that keep us here below, and permit us to mount! We sit, some of us, like chained eagles fastened to the rock, only that, unlike the eagle, we begin to love our chain, and would, perhaps, if it came really to the test, be loth to hart it snapped. May God now grant us grace if we cannot at once escape from the chain of mortal life as to our bodies, yet to do so as to o*r spirits; and leaving the body like a servant at the foot of tke hill, No. 671. 13 may our soul, like Abraham, go to the top of the mountain, and there may we have communion with the Most High.

While expounding my text, I shall ask your attention this morning, first, to the circumstances which surround the rewarding of the righteous; secondly, to their portion; and thirdly, to the persons themselves.

I. There is MUCH OF TEACHING IN THE SURROUNDING CIRCUM
STANCES.

We read, “When the King shall come in his glory? It appears, then, that we must not expect to receive our reward till by-and-by. Like the hireling we must fulfil our day, and then at evening we shall have our penny. Too many Christians look for a present reward for their labours, and if they meet with success, they begin doating upon it as though they had received their recompense. Like the disciples who returned saying,” Lord, even the devils are subject unto us,” they rejoice too exclusively in present prosperity; whereas the Master bade them not to look upon miraculous success as being their reward, since that might not always be the case. “Nevertheless,” said he, “rejoice not in this, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” Success in the ministry is not the Christian minister’s true reward: it is an earnest, but the wages still wait. The approbation of your fellow-men you must not look upon as being the reward of excellence, for often you will meet with the reverse; you will find your best actions misconstrued, and your motives ill interpreted. If you are looking for your reward here I may warn you of the apostle’s words, “If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable:” be cause other men get their reward; even the Pharisee gets his: “Verily, I say unto you, they have their reward;” but we have none here. To be despised and rejected of men is the Christian’s lot. Among his fellow Christians he will not always stand in good repute. It is not unmitigated kindness nor unmingled love that we receive even from the saints. I tell you if you look for your reward to Christ’s bride herself you will miss it; if you expect to receive your crown from the hand even of your brethren in the ministry who know your labours, and who ought to sympathize with your trials, you will be mistaken. “When the King shall come in his glory,” then is your time of recompense; but not to-day, nor to-morrow, nor at any time in this world. Reckon nothing which you acquire, no honour which you gain, to be the reward of your service to your Master; that is reserved to the time “when the King shall come in his glory.”

Observe with delight the august person by whose hand the reward is gfiven. It is written, “When the King shall come.” Brethren, we love the King’s courtiers; we delight to be numbered with them ourselves. It is no mean thing to do service to him whose head — “Though once ’twas crowned with thorns, is crowned with glory now.” But it is a delightful thought that the service of rewarding us will not be left to the courtiers. The angels will be there, and the brethren of the King will be there; but heaven was not prepared by them, nor can it be given by them. Their hands shall not yield us a coronation; we shall join their songs, but their songs would be no reward for us; we shall bow with them and they with us, but it will not be possible for them to give us the recompense of th reward — that starry crown is all too weighty for an angel’s hand to bring, and the benediction all too sweet bo be pronounced, even by seraphic lips. The King himself must say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” What say you to this, my dear brother? Yon have felt a temptation to look to God’s servants, to the approbation of the minister, to the kindly look of parents, to the word ot commendation from your fellow- worker; all these you value, and I do not blame you; but these may fail yon, and therefore never consider them as being th$ reward. You must wait till the time when the King cometh, and then it will neither be your brethren, your pastors, your parents, nor your helpers, but the King himself who shall say to you, “Come, ye blessed.” How this sweetens heaven! It will be Christ’s own gift. How this makes the benediction doubly blessed! It shall come from his lips, which drop like rnyrrh and flow with honey. Beloved, it is Christ who became a curse for us, who shall give the blessing to us. Roll ye this as a sweet morsel under your tongues.

The character in which our Lord Jesus shall appear is significant. Jesus will then be revealed as truly “the King.” “When the King shall come.” It was to him as King that the service was rendered, and it is from him as King that the reward must therefore come; and so upon the very threshold a question of self-examination arises: “The King will not reward the servants of another prince — am I therefore his servant? Is it my joy to wait at the threshold of his gates, and sit like Mordecai at the courts of Ahasnerus — at the entrance of his door? Say, soul, dost thou serve the King?” I mean not the kings and queens of earth; let them have loyal servants for their subjects; but saints are servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, the King of kings — -are ye so? If ye be not so, when the King cometh in his glory, there can be no reward for you. I long in my own heart to recognize Christ’s kingly office more than ever I have done. It has been my delight to preach to you Christ dying on the cross, and “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross;” but I want for my own self to realize him on his throne, reigning in my heart, having a right to do as he wills with me, that I may get to the condition of Abraham, who, wjien God spoke, though it was to tell him to offer up his own Isaac, never asked a question, but simply said, “Here am I.” Beloved, seek to know and feel the controlling power of the King, for else when he comes, since you have not known him as King, he cannot know you as servant; and it is only to the servant that the King can give the reward which is spoken of in the text, — “When the King shall come.”

Now pass on. “When the King shall come in his glory.” The fulness of that it is impossible to conceive.

“Imagination’s utmost stretch,
In wonder dies away.”

But this we know, — and it is the sweetest thing we can know, — that if we have been partakers with Jesus in his shame, we also shall be sharers with him in the lustre which shall surround him. Art thou, beloved, one with Christ Jesus? Art thou of his flesh and of his bones? Does a yital union knit thee to him? Then thou art to-day with him in his ahame; thou hast taken up his cross, and gone with him without the camp bearing his reproach; thou shalt doubtless be with him whexy the cross is exchanged for the crown. But judge thyself this morning; if thou art not with him in the regeneration, neither shalt thou be with him when he shall come in his glory. If you start back from the black side of communion, you shall not understand its bright, its happy period, when the King shall come in his glory and all his holy angels with him. What, are angels with him? And yet he took not up angels, he took up the seed of Abraham. Are the holy angels with him? Come, my soul, then thou canst not be far from him. If his friends and his neighbours are called together to see his glory, what thinkest thou if thou art married to him? Shall thou be distant? Though it be A day of judgment, yet thou canst not be far from that heart which having admitted angels into intimacy has admitted thee into union. Has he not said to thee, 0 my soul, “I have betrothed thee unto me in faithfulness, and in judgment, and in righteousness”? Have not his own lips said it, “I am married unto thee, and my delight is in thee “? Then if the angels, who are but the friends and the neighbours, shall be with him, it is abundantly certain that his own beloved Hephzibah, in whom is all his delight, shall be near to him and shall be a partaker of his splendour. It is when he comes in his glory, and when his communion with angels shall be distinctly recognised, — it is then that his unity with his Church shall become apparent. “Then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory” Here is a repetition of the same reason why it should be your time and my time to receive the reward from Christ if we be found among his faithful servants. When he sits upon his throne it were not fit that his own beloved ones should be in the mire. When he was in the place of shame they were with him, and now he is on the throne of gold they must be with him too. There were no oneness, — union with Christ were a mere matter of talk, — if it were not certain that when he is on the throne they shall be upon the throne too.

But I want you to notice one particular circumstance with regard to the time of the reward. It is when he shall have divided the sheep from the goats. My reward, if I be a child of God, cannot come to me while I am in union with the wicked. Even on earth you will have the most enjoyment of Christ when you are most separated from this world: -rest assured, although the separated path does not seem an easy one, and it will certainly entail upon you persecution and the loss of many friends, yet it is the happiest walking in the world. You conforming Christians, who can enter into the world’s mirth to a certain degree, you cannot, you never can know as you now are, the inward joys of those who live in lonely but lovely fellowship with Jesus. The nearer you get to the world the further you must be from Christ, and I believe the more thoroughly a bill of divorce is given by your spirit to every earthly object upon which your soul can set itself, the more close will be your communion with your Lord. “Forget also thine own country and thy Father’s house; so shall the King greatly desire thy beauty, for he is thy Lord, and worship thou him.” It is significant that not antil the King has separated the sheep from the goats does he say, 44 Come, ye blessed;” and though the righteous will have enjoyed * felicity as disembodied spirits, yet as risen from the grave in their bodies, their felicity is not fully accomplished till the great Shepherd shall have appeared to separate them once for all, by a great gulf which cannot be passed, from all association with the nations that forget God Now then, beloved, these circumstances all put together come to this, that the reward of following Christ is not to-day, is not among the sons of men, is not from men, is not even from the excellent of the earth, is not even bestowed by Jesus while we are here, but the glorious crown of life which the Lord’s grace shall give to his people is reserved for the second advent, “when the King shall come in his glory, and all hia holy angels with him.” Wait with patience, wait with joyful expectation, for he shall come, and blessed be the day of his appearing.

II. We have now to turn to the second point — THE PORTION ITSELF. Every word is suggestive. I shall not attempt to exhaust, but merely to glance at all. The reward of the righteous is set forth by the loving benediction pronounced to them by the Master, but their very position gives some foreshadowing of it. He put the sheep on his right hand. Heai en is a position of the most elevated dignity authoritatively conferred, and of Divine complacency manifestly enjoyed. God’s saints are always at his right hand according to the judgment of faith, but here after it shall be more clearly manifested. God is pleased to be close to his people, and to place them near to himself in a place of protection. Sometimes it seems as if they were at the left hand; they certainly have, some of them, less comfort than the worldlings. “I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree; their eyes stand out with fatness, they have more than heart could wish;” whereas his people are often made to drink waters of a full cup, and their meat and their drink are bittered with wormwood and gall. The world is upside down now; the gospel has begun to turn it the right way uppermost, but when the day of grace is over, and the day of glory comes, then shall it be righted indeed; then those that wandered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins shall be clothed in glittering apparel, being transfigured like the Saviour upon Tabor; then those of whom the world was not worthy shall come to a world that shall be worthy of them; then those who were hurried to the stake and to the flames shall triumph with chariots of fire and horses of fire, and swell the splendour of the Master’s pompous appearing. Yes, beloved, you shall eternally be the object of Divine complacency, not in secret and unmanifested communion, but your state and glory shall be revealed before the sons of men. Your persecutors shall gnash their teeth when they see you occupying places of honour at his right hand, and themselves, though greater far than you on earth, condemned to take the lowest room. How shall Dives bite his fire-tormented tongue in vain as he sees Lazarus, the beggar on the dunghill, made to sit at the right hand of the King eternal and immortal! Heaven is a place of dignity. “There we shall be as the angels,” saith one, but I wot we shall be even superior than they. Is it not written of him who in all things is our representative, “Thou hast put all things under his feet nl Even the very seraphs themselves so richly blessed, what are they but “ministering spirits sent forth to minister to the heirs of salvation?”

But now turning to the welcome uttered by the judge, The first word in “Come.n It is the gospel symbol. The law said “Go;” the gospel §aith “Come.” The Spirit sa’ith it in invitation; the Bride saith it io intercession; “let him that heareth “say it by constantly, laboriously endeavouring to spread abroad the good news. Since Jesus saith” Come,” we learn that the very essence of heaven is communion. “Come!” Ye came near enough to say “Lord, we believe, help thou our unbelief!” On the cross ye looked to me and were lightened. Ye had fellowship with me in bearing my cross. Ye filled up that which was behind of the sufferings of Christ for his body’s sake, which is the Churoh. Still come! Ever, come! For ever come! Come up from your graves, ye risen ones! Come up from among the ungodly, ye consecrated ones! Come up from where ye cast yourselves down in your humiliation before the great white throne! Come up to wear my crown, and sit with me upon my throne! Oh, that word has heaven lurking within it. It shall be to you your joy for ever to hear the Saviour say to you, ‘* Come.” I protest before you my soul has sometimes been so full of joy that I could hold no more when my beloved Lord has said “Come” to my soul; for he has taken me into his banqueting house, and his love-banner has waved over my head, and he has taken me away from the world, and its cares and its fears, and its trials and its joys, up to “the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon,” where he manifested himself to me. When this “Come” shall come into your ear from the Master’s lips there shall not be the flesh to drag you back, there shall be no sluggishness of spirit, no heaviness of heart; you shall come eternally then; you shall not mount to descend again, but mount on and on in one blessed Excelsior for ever and for ever. The first word indicates that heaven is a state of communion — “Come.”

Then it is “Come, ye Messed,” which is a clear declaration that this is a state of happiness. They cannot be more blessed than they are. They have their hearts’ desire, and though their hearts have been enlarged and their desires have been expanded by entering into the Infinite, and getting rid of the cramping influences of corruption and of time, yet even when their desire shall know no bound they shall have all the happiness that the utmost stretch of their souls can by any possibility conceive. This much, and this is all we know — they are supremely blessed. Their blessedness you perceive does not come from any secondary joy, but from the great primary Source of all good. “Come, ye blessed of my Father.” They drink the unadulterated wine At the winepress itself, where it joyously leaps from the bursting clusters; they pluck celestial fruits from the unwithering boughs of the immortal tree; they shall sit at the well head and drink the waters as they spring with unrivalled freshness from the depths of the heart of Deity; they shall not be basking in the beams of the sun, but they shall be like Uriel, the angel in the sun; they shall dwell in God, and so their souls shall be satisfied with favour, and full and more than full wiih his presence and benediction.

Notice, once again, that according to the words used it is a state where they shall recognise their riipht to be there; a state therefore of perfect freedom, and ease and fearlessness. It is — “inherit the kingdom” A. man does not fear to lose that which he wins by descent from his parent. If heaven had been the subject of earning, we might have feared that our merits had not really deserved it, and therefore suspect that one day a Writ of Error would be issued and that we should be sjected; but we do kno? whose sons we are; we know whose love it is that makes glad our spirits, and when we “inherit” the kingdom we shall enter it not as strangers or as foreigners, but as sons coming to their birthright. Looking over all its streets of gold and surveying all its walls of pearl; we shall feel that we are at home in our own house, and have an actual right, not through merit but through grace, to everything that is there. It will be a state of heavenly bliss; the Christian shall feel that law and justice are on his side, and that those stern attributes have brought him there as well as mercy and loving-kindness. But the word “inherit” here imports full possession and enjoyment. They have inherited in a certain sense before, but now as an heir when lie has arrived at full maturity, begins to spend his own money, and to farm his own acres, so do they enter into their heritage. We are not full grown as yet, and therefore are not admitted to full possession. But wait awhile; those grey hairs betoken, my brethren, that you are getting ripe. These, these, these my still youthful locks show me alas that I may have to tarry for a little longer, and yet I know not, the Lord may soon permit me to sleep with my fathers; but later or earlier, be it as he wills, we shall one day come into possession of the goodly land. Now if it is sweet to be an heir while you are in nonage, what is it to be an heir when arrived at perfect manhood? Was it not delightful to sing that hymn just now, and to behold the land of pure delight, whose everlasting spring and never-withering flowers are just across the narrow stream of death. Oh ye sweet fields! Ye saints immortal who lie down therein! When shall we be with you and be satisfied? If the mere thinking of heaven ravishes the soul, what must it be to be there, to plunge deep into the stream of blessedness, to dive and find no bottom, to swim and find no shore? To sip of the wine of heaven as we sometimes do makes our hearts so glad that we know not how to express our joy; but what will it be to drink deep and drink again, and sit for ever at the table and know that the feast will never be over and the cups will never be empty, and that there will be no worse wine to be brought out at the last, but if possible better still and better still in infinite progression?

The word “kingdom” which stands next, indicates the richness of the heritage of saints. It is no petty estate, no alms rooms, no happy corner in obscurity. I heard a good man say he should be content to win a corner behind the door. I shall not be. The Lord says we shall inherit a kingdom. We would not be satisfied to inherit less, because less than that would not suit oar character. “He hath made us kings and priests unto God,” and we must reign for ever and ever, or be as wretched as deposed monarchs. A king without a kingdom were an unhappy man. If I were a poor servant, an alms room would be a boon, for it would consort with my condition and degree; but if I am made by grace a king, ] must have a kingdom, or I shall not have attained to a position equal to my nature. He who makes us kings will give us a kingdom to fit the nature which he hath bestowed upon us. Beloved, do strive alter, more and more, that which the Spirit of God will give you, a kingly heart; do not be among those who are satisfied and contented with the miserable nature of ordinary humanity. A child’s glass bead is all the world is to a truly royal spirit; these glittering diadems are only nursery toys to God’s kings; the trut jewels are up there; the true treasury wealth looks down upon the stars, Do not stint your soul; be not straitened! Get a kingly heart — ask the King of kings to give it to you, and beg of him a royal spirit. Act royally on earth towards your Lord, and for his sake towards all men. Go about the world not as mean men in spirit and act, but askings and princes of a race superior to the dirt-scrapers who are on their knees, crawling in the mud after yellow earth. Then, when your soul is royal, remember with joy that your future inheritance shall be all that your kingly soul pants after in its most royal moments. It will be a state of unutterable richness and wealth of soul.

According to the word “prepared” we may conceive it to be a condition of surpassing excellence. It is a kingdom prepared, and it has been so long a time prepared, and he who prepares it is so wondrously rich in resources, that we cannot possibly conceive how excellent it must be. If I might so speak, God’s common gifts, which he throws away as though they were but nothing, are priceless; but what will be these gifts upon which the infinite mind of God has been set for ages of ages in order that they may reach the highest degree of excellence? Long before Christmas chimes were ringing, mother was so glad to think her boy was coming home, after the first quarter he had been out at school, and straightway she began preparing and planning all sorts of joys for him. Well might the holidays be happy when mother had been contriving to make them so. Now in an infinitely nobler manner the great God has prepared a kingdom for his people; he has thought, “that will please them, and that will bless them, and this other will make them superlatively happy,” He prepared the kingdom to perfection; and then, as if that were not enough, the glorious man Christ Jesus went up from earth to heaven; and you know what he said when he departed, — “I go to prepare a place for you.” “We know that the infinite God can prepare a place fitting for a finite creature, but the words smile so sweetly at us as we read that Jesus himself, who is a man, and therefore knows our hearts’ desires, has had a finger in it; JIB has prepared it too. It is a kingdom prepared for you, upon which the thoughts of God have been set to make it excellent “from before the foundation of the world.”

But we must not pause: it is a “kingdom prepared for you” Mark that! I must confess I do not like certain expressions which I hear sometimes, which imply that heaven is prepared for some who will never reach it; prepared for those who will be driven as accursed ones into the place of torment. I know there is a sacred expression which says, “let no man take thy crown;” but that refers to the crown of ministerial success, rather than of eternal glory. An expression which grated on my ear the other evening from the lips of a certain good man, ran something in this fashion: “There is a heaven prepared fiv all of you, but if you are not faithful you will not win it. There is a crown in heaven laid up for you, but if you are not faithful it will be without a wearer.” I do not believe it, I cannot believe it. That the crown of eternal life which is laid up for the blessed of the Father will ever be given to anybody else or left without possessor, I do not believe. I dare not conceive of crowns in heaven and nobody to wear them. Think you that in heaven, when the whole number of saints is complete, yon

THK REWARD OF THE RIGHTiQOim. 45

will find a number of unused crowns? “Ah! what are these for? Where are the heads for these?” “They are in hell!” Then, brother, I have no particular desire to be in heaven, for if all the family of Christ are not there, my soul will be wretched and forlorn because of their sad loss, because I am in union with them all. If one soul that believed in Jesus does not get there I shall lose respect for the promise and respect for the Master too; he must keep his word to every soul that resteth on him. If your God has gone the length of actually preparing a place for his people and has made provision for them and been disappointed, he is no God to me, for I could not adore a disappointed God. I do not believe in such a God. Such a being would not be God at all. The notion of disappointment in his eternal preparations is not consistent with Deity. Talk thus of Jupiter and Venus if you please, but the Infinite Jehovah is, as far as human speech can dishonour him, dishonoured by being mentioned in such a connection. He has prepared a place for you. Here is personal election. He has made a distinct ordinance for every one of his people that where he is there shall they be.

“Prepared from before the foundation of the world.” Here is eternal election appearing before men were created, preparing a crown before heads were made to wear it. And so God had before the starry skies began to gleam carried out the decree of election in a measure which when Christ shall come shall be perfected to the praise of the glory of his grace, “who worketh all things after the counsel of his will.” Our portion then is one prepared from all eternity for us acccording to the election of God’s grace, one suitable to the loftiest character to which we can ever attain, which will consist in nearness to Christ, communion with God, and standing for ever in * place of dignity and happiness.

III. And now I have very little time to speak, as I hoped to have spoken this morning about THE PERSONS WHO SHALL COME THERE.

They are recognisable by a secret and by a public character. Their name is — “blessed of the Father,” — the Father chose them, gave his Son for them, justified them through Christ, preserved them in Christ Jesus, adopted them into the family, and now accepted them into his own house. Their nature you have described in the word “inherit.” None can inherit but sons; they have been born again, and have received the nature of God; having escaped the corruption which is in the world through lust, they have become partakers of the Divine nature: they are sons. Their appointment is mentioned; “inherit the kingdom prepared for you, from before the foundation of the world.” Their name is “blessed,” their nature is that of a child, their appointment is that of God’s decree.

Their doings, their outward doings, these we want to speak a minute upon. They appear to have been distinguished among men for deeds of charity, and these were not in any way associated with ceremonies or outward observances. It is not said that they preached — they did so, •ume of them; it is not said that they prayed — they must have done so, or they would not have been spiritually alive. The actions which are selected as their type, are actions of charity to the indigent and forlorn. Why these? I think, because the general audience assembled around the mrone tvould know how to appreciate this evidence of their newborn nature. The King might think more of their prayers than of their alms, but the multitude would not. He speaks so as to gain the verdict of all assembled. Even their enemies could not object to his calling those blessed who had performed these actions; for if there be an action which wins for men the universal consent to their goodness, it is an action by which men would be served. Against this there is no law. I have never heard of a state in which there was a law against clothing the naked and feeding the hungry. Humanity at once, when its conscience is so seared that it cannot see its own sinfulness, yet detects the virtuousness of feeding the poor. Doubtless this is one reason why these actions were selected. And again, they may have been chosen as evidences of grace, because, as actions, they are a wonderful means of separating between the hypocrite and the true Christian. Dr. Gill has an idea, and perhaps he is right, that this is not a picture of the general judgment, but of the judgment of the professing Church, and if so, it is all the more reasonable to conclude that these works of mercy are selected as the appropriate discerner between the hypocrite and the sincere. I fear that there are some of you high professors who could not stand the test. “Good praying people” they call you, but what do you give to the Lord? Your religion has not touched your pockets. This does not apply to some of you, for there are many here of whom I would venture to speak before the bar of God, that I know their substance to be consecrated to the Lord and his poor, and I have sometimes thought that beyond their means they have given both to the poor and to God’s cause. But there are others of a very different disposition. Now here I shall give you a little plain English talk which none can fail to understand. You may talk about your religion till you have worn your tongue out, and you may get others to believe you; and you may remain in the Church twenty years, and nobody ever detect you in anything like an inconsistency; but, if it be in your power, and you do nothing to relieve the necessities of the poor members of Christ’s body, you will be damned as surely as if you were drunkards or whoremongers. If you have no care for God’s Church this text applies to you, and will as surely sink you to the lowest hell as if you had been common blasphemers. That is very plain English, but it is the plain meaning of my text, and it is at my peril that I flinch from telling you of it. “I was an hungred, and ye gave me” — what? good advice; yes, but no meat. “I was thirsty, and ye gave me” — what? a tract, and no drink. “I was naked, and ye gave me” — what? your good wishes, but no clothes. I was a stranger and — ye pitied me, but — ye took me not in. I was sick, you said you could recommend me a doctor, but you did not visit me. I was in prison, I, God’s servant, a persecuted one, put in prison for Christ’s sake, and you said I should be more cautious; but you did not stand by my side and take a share of the blame, and bear with me reproach for the truth’s sake. You see this is a very terrible winnowing fan to some of you niggardly

ones whose main object is to get all you can and hold it fast, but it is a fan which frequently must be used. Whoever deceives you or spares you, by the grace of God, I will not, but will labour to be more bold than ever in denouncing sin. “Well,” says one, “what are those U> do who are so poor that they have nothing to give away?” My dear brother, do you notice how beautifully the text takes care of you. Ic hints that there are some who cannot give bread to the hungry, and clothes to the naked, but what about them? Why you see they are the persons spoken of as “my brethren,” who receive the boon of kindness, so that this passage comforts the poor and by no means condemns them. Certain of us honestly give to the poor all we can spare, and then of course everybody comes to such; and when we say, “Really, I cannot give any more,” somebody snarls and says, “Call yourself a Christian?”” Yes, T do, I should not call myself a Christian if I gave away other

People’s money; I should not call myself a Christian if I gave away what have not got; I should call myself a thief, pretending to be charitable when I could not pay my debts.” I have a very great pity indeed for those people who get into the Bankruptcy Court, I do not mean the debtors, I have seldom much sympathy with them, I have a good deal for the creditors who lose by having trusted dishonest people. If any man should say, ‘* I will live beyond my means in order to get a good character,” my dear brother, you begin wrong, that action is in itself wrong. What you have to give must be that which is your own. “But I shall have to pinch myself,” says one, “if I do it.” Well, pinch yourself! I do not think there is half the pleasure in doing good till you get to the pinching point. This remark of course applies only to those of us of moderate means, who can soon distribute our alms and get down to the pinch point. When you begin to feel, “Now, I must go without that; now I must curtail these in order to do more good.” Oh! you cannot tell; it is then when you really can feel, ‘Now I have not given God merely the cheese parings and candle ends that I could not use, but I have really cut out for my Master a good piece of the loaf; I have not given him the old crusts that were getting mouldy, but I have given him a piece of my own daily bread, and I am glad to do it, if I can show my love to Jesus Christ by denying myself.” If you are doing this, if you are thus out of love to Jesus feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, I believe that these are put down as tests, because they are such blessed detectives between the hypocrites and the really godly people. When you read “for” here, yon must not understand it to be that their reward is because of this, but that they are proved to be God’s servants by this; and so, while they do not merit it because of these actions, yet these actions show that they woie aaved by grace, which is evidenced by the fact that Jesus Christ wrought such and such works in them. If Christ does not work such things in you, you have no part in him; if you have not produced such works as these you have not believed in Jesus. Now somebody says, “Then I intend to give to the poor in future in order that I may have this reward.” Ah, but you are very much mistaken if you do that. The Duke of Burgundy was waited upon by a poor man, a very loyal subject, who brought him a very large root which he had grown. He was a very poor man indeed, and every root he grew in his garden was of consequence to him; but merely as a loyal offering he brought to his prince the largest his little garden produced. The prince was so pleased with the man’s evident loyalt) and affection that he gave him a very large sum. The steward thought, 14 Well, I aee this pays; this man has got fifty pounds for his large root,

I think / shall make the duke a present.” So he bought a horse and he reckoned that he should have in return ten times as much for it as it was worth, and he presented it with that view: the duke, like a wise man, quietly accepted the horse, and gave the greedy steward nothing. That was all. So you say, “Well, here is a Christian man, and he gets rewarded. He has been giving to the poor, helping the Lord’s Church, and see he is saved; the thing pays, I shall make a little investment.” Yes, but you see the steward did not give the horse out of any idea of loyalty, and kindness, and love to the duke, but out of very great love to himself, and therefore had no return; and if you perform deeds of charity out of the idea of getting to heaven by them, why it is yourself that you are feeding, it is yourself that you are clothing; all your virtue is not virtue, it is rank selfishness, it smells strong of selfhood, and Christ will never accept it; you will never hear him say, “Thank you” for it. You served yourself, and no reward is due. You must first come to the Lord Jesus Christ, and look to him to save you; you will for ever abjure all idea of doing anything to save yourself, and being saved, you will be able to give to the poor and so on without selfishness mixing with your motive, and you will get a reward of grace for the love token which you have given. It is necessary to believe in Christ in order to be capable of true virtue of the highest order. It is necessary to trust Jesus, and to be yourself fully saved, before there is any value in your feeding the hungry or clothing the naked. God give you grace to go to my Master wounded yonder, and to rest in the precious atonement which he has made for human sin; and when you have done that, being loved at such a rate, show that you love in return; being purchased so dearly, live for him that bought you; and among the actions by which you prove it, let these gleam and glisten like God-given jewels, — the visiting of the sick, the comforting of the needy, the relieving of the distressed, and the helping of the weak. God accept these offerings as they come from gracious souls, and to him be praise evermore. Amen.

OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SER1IOJT — Matt. XXY. 14, to
eti[aplitmt

THE FINAL SEPARATION.

DELIVERED BY

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTOW.

“And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them ont from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.” — Matthew xxv. 32.

JESUS Christ, the man of Nazareth, who is also the Son of God, was crucified, dead, and buried, and the third day he rose again from the dead. After he had showed himself to his disciples for forty days — some times to one alone, at other times to two or three together, and on one occasion to above five hundred brethren at once — he ascended into heaven. From the Mount Olivet, from the midst of his disciples, he rose into mid air, and by-and-by a cloud received him out of their sight. That same Jesus who is gone into heaven shall so come in like manner as he was seen to go up into heaven; that is to say, in person, in his own risen body. The same Christ who rose into the skies will in the latter day surely descend again. The time of his coming is not revealed to us, — “Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of God;” but the time is certainly growing nearer every day, and we cannot tell when the hour shall be. We are told that he will come quickly. It seems a long time since that was said, even sighteen hundred years, but we remember that things which are slow with us may be very quick wfbh the Lord; for one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. It is not for us to know the times and the sevens; they remain hidden in the purpose of God.

For excellent reasons these times and seasons are unrevealed, that we may be always on the watch-tower, not knowing at what hour the Lord Jesus may be revealed. To the ungodly world he will come as a thief in the night, and take them at unawares; but we, brethren, are not in darkness that that day should overtake us as a thief. Being children of the day, we are taught to be wakeful, and standing in the clear light, with our lo’ns girt, we ought to be always looking for our Master’s appearing. Always are we to be watching, never sleeping.

No. 1,234. 14

Our text tells us that as one result of his coming there will be a general judgment. I am not going to-night to try and arrange the other events which will happen at the Lord’s coming. It is probably true that at his coming there will be first of all a resurrection and rewarding of his saints, a dividing of the ten cities, and the five cities, according to the faithfulness of those who were entrusted with talents; and at the close of that period will come that last tremendous day of which prophets and apostles have spoken.

“The day that many thought should never come j
That all the wicked wished should never come;
That all the righteous had expected long;
Day greatly feared, and yet too little feared
By him who feared it most.”

A day of fear and wrath, a day of destruction of the ungodly, a testing day to all mankind, a day which shall burn as an oven. We may tremblingly say of it, “Who may abide the day of his coming, and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner’s fire and like fuller’s soap.”

At that day when Christ shall come he shall judge all nations. There will be gathered before him, not only the Jews, to whom the law was given, but the Gentiles also; not merely those nations who for many an age have heard the gospel, but those to whom it shall then have been but lately published, for the kingdom of God must be published throughout all nations as a testimony against them. Everywhere Christ will have been preached, and then from all regions men shall be summoned to stand before him. Remember, not merely all the living nations, but all the nationalities that have passed away. There shall rise from the dead the hosts that perished before the flood and those also who were drowned amid its awful surges. There, too, shall appear the myriads that followed at the call of Nimrod, the swarms of the sons of Japheth, who divided the isles of the Gentiles, and the hordes that marched to battle at the command of the kings of Assyria and Babylon. The dead of Egypt shall rise from their beds of spices, or from the earth with which their dust has mingled. The tens of thousands shall be there over whom Xerxes wept when he remembered how soon they would all pass away. The Greek and the Persian, these shall rise, and the Roman too, and all the hordes of Huns and Goths that swarmed like bees from the northern hives. They all passed into the unknown land, but they are not lost, they shall each answer to the muster-roll in the great day of the Lord. The earth, which is now becoming more and more a graveyard, shall yield up her dead, and the sea itself, transformed into a solid pavement, shall bear upon its bosom the lonely ones who lie asleep to-day in her gloomy caverns. All of woman born shall come forth from the prolific womb of the sepulchre — myriads, myriads countless as the drops of the morning, or as the sands of the sea shore. Multitudes, multitudes shall be gathered together in the valley of decision. Their bones shall come together, and breath shall enter their bodies anew, and they shall live once more. Long as they have slept in the tomb, they shall all rise with one impulse and start up with one thought — to appear before their Judge.

The great white throne shall be set on high, all pure and lustrous, bright and clear like a sapphire stone, as one vast looking-glass in which every man shall see himself and his sins reflected; and on that throne shall sit the Son of Man. That same Jesus who was nailed to the tree, and rose to heaven shall sit upon the judgment seat, appointed to determine the cases of all mankind of every age. What an assemblage! No imagination can compass it. Far as the eye can carry — ay, far as the eagle’s pinion can soar — the earth shall be covered with men, like a field with grass in the springtide; and there will they all stand with the Judge upon the great white throne as the common Centre of observation, for every eye shall see him, and they also that crucified him, and all the kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. It will be a motley throng, as you may well imagine, but the Shepherd, the great Shepherd, the Judge himself, shall divide them. That division will be the one work of the judgment day. He will divide them as readily and unerringly as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. My business to-night shall be to draw the attention of each one to that division, that each of you may enquire what will be the result of it upon himself. I have thought it over on my own account, and desire to think of it still: I would bid my mind fly into the future, and see for a moment “the pomp of that tremendous day when Christ with clouds shall come;” I would anticipate the verdict of that hour, and bethink me of the dread alternative of heaven or hell. I pray we may all think of it, and especially you who are unprepared for it, that you may at once fly to him whose blood and righteousness alone can make you hold up your head in that tremendous hour.

Three things we shall speak about: the first is the division; the second is the divider; and the third is the rule of the division.

I. The first, then, is THE DIVISION. “Before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.”

That is to say, first, they shall be divided into two parts — his sheep and the goats. There shall be two positions: he shall put his sheep on the right hand, but the goats on the left. Is there no place for a third party? No, for the simple reason that there will then be no third class; and there will then be none for this other reason, that there never was a third class. I know there are some even here to night who dare not say they believe in Jesus, but they would not like to be put down among the ungodly: yet I pray you remember that there are but two books, and in one or other of those two your name must stand recorded by the hand of God, for there is no third book. There is the Lamb’s Book of Life, and if your name is there happy are you. If it is not there your sins still stand recorded in the books which contain the condemning evidence which will seal the death-warrants of unbelievers. Listen to me. There are in this world no where any other sort of people beside those who are dead in sin and those who are alive unto God. There is no state between. A man either lives or is dead; you cannot find a neutral condition. A man may be in a swoon, or he may be asleep, but he is alive; no state is there that is not within the boundary of either life or death. Is not thii clear enough? There is no state between being converted and verted — between being quickened and being dead in sin. There is no condition between being pardoned and having our sins upon us. There is no state between dwelling in darkness and being brought into marvellous light. One or the other must always be our condition; and this is the great folly of mankind in all times — that they will dream of a middle state and try to loiter in it. It was for this cause that the old prophet, standing on CarmePs brow, said, “How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, follow him.” And it is for this reason that we have constantly to call the attention of mankind to the great declaration of the gospel, — “He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved: he that believeth not shall be damned.”

God has given to the preacher two hands, that he may set the people on each side, and deal out the truth to two characters and no more. Be not deceived about it, you are either in the way to heaven er on the road to hell. There is no purgatory or middle condition in the next world. Purgatory is an invention of the Pope for the filling of his cellar and his larder; and no more profitable speculation has ever been set agoing than the saying of masses and the robbing of dupes, under the pretence of altering that state which is fixed for ever. Purgatory Pickpurse was the name the first reformers gave it. You will go to heaven or to hell, and you will remain in one place or the other; for you have either a character that is fit for heaven or a character that is fit for hell, and there is no character which can be supposed, if we understand the Scriptures aright, which would be fit for a middle place, neither is there any middle place prepared for it. “He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.” The human flock will be divided into two companies.

Observe, next, that they will be divided readily. It is not everybody that could divide sheep from goats. I suppose according to your ordinary judgment of goats you would very readily tell them from sheep; but one who has travelled in the East, and even in Italy, knows that it takes a somewhat tutored eye to know a certain kind of goat from a certain kind of sheep. They are extremely like each other: the wool of some sheep in a warm climate becomes so like hair, and the hair of a kind of goat is so much like wool, that a traveller scarcely knows which is which; but a shepherd who has lived among them know a the difference well. So in this world, it is easy enough to tell the sinner from the saint in some cases: you need no great wit to discern the characters of the grossly dishonest, the drunken, the debauched, the-Sabbath-breaking, the profane. You know that they have no part amongst the people of God, for they bear upon their forefront the ensigns of the children of the evil one: the immoral are easily separated from the pure in heart. But inside the church there are a number of persons who have so much about them that looks good, and yet so much that is terribly inconsistent, that we are quite unable to discover which is their true nature. Thank God we are not called upon to judge them, nor even allowed to do so. The most experienced pastor must scarcely attempt to do so: certainly, if he feels so much trouble about the matter that he takes it to his Lord, and asks for directions as to how to deal with these tares, he will be told to let them grow on till harvest time, lest in rooting up the tares he should root up also the wheat with them. I talked to-day to a certain good man who labours hard among the poor in the East-end. He said, “We have a great number who profess to be converted; but,” he said, “I do not think that much more than one in five actually stay and turn out to be really so. But,” said he, “we have no trouble about them in the church — not such trouble as you would be likely to have with your people, because,” said he, “amongst the class of people who go to the Tabernacle there is a feeling that it is right to go to the House of God at least once on the Sabbath, if not twice; and if persons join the church there they will from habit continue to attend. But,” said he, “the moment a man of the poorest class ceases to be a Christian in heart, he ceases at the same time to attend the public services, because there is no fashion to keep him up to it; and so he follows his own tastes, stops at home and loafs about, and in all probability gets drunk, or falls into some other of the common vices of his class, and he is sifted off at once.” In such cases the classes are easily separated. But among a more respectable class of people, who do not drink and who observe the Sabbath-day, you will have a number of people who remain in the church, though they have no secret piety, no real love to Christ, no private prayer; and hence there is all the more danger. Now, dear friends, what tee cannot do, and must not try to do, Jesus Christ will do easily enough. The shepherd when he comes will soon separate his sheep from the goats. His eye of fire will read each heart; the hypocrites in the church will tremble in a moment, instinctively reading the meaning of that glance, as Christ will by that eye say to them, “What do ye here amongst my people?”

Remember, that as the division will be made readily it will be made infallibly; that is to say, there will not be found amongst the goats one poor trembling sheep left to be driven off with the unclean herd. When Christ says “Depart, ye cursed,” he will not say that to one sincere but feeble soul. Ah no, you may condemn yourself, but if you really have a living faith the*Lord will not condemn you. You may often be afraid that he will bid you depart, but he will not. No lamb of his flock shall be among the goats. The whole company of his redeemed shall be safely gathered into their eternal mansions.

“Lord, those shall bear that day, so dread, so splendid,

Whose sins are by thy merits cover’d o’er,
Who when thy hand of mercy was extended,

Believ’d, obey’d, and own’d thy gracious power;
These, mighty God, shall see without dismay

The earth and heaven before them pass away.”

The sword cuts the other way too: and therefore be ye sure of this, that there will be no goat suffered to enter the pastures of the blessed among the sheep; no unconverted graceless person will follow the Great Shepherd to those living fountains above which afford eternal draughts of bliss to the purchased flock. Though the sinner may have led a sort -of outwardly consistent life for forty or fifty years, though he may have preached the gospel and done many wonderful works, yet Christ will say to him, “I never knew you.” He will not be able to keep on his sheep’s clothing then, or bleat any longer in sheep fashion: Christ will know him under whatever disguise he may wear, he will find him out, and drive him to his own place, so that not a single one of the accursed shall enter into the city with the blessed. It will be an infallible judgment; there is, therefore, good reason that we be prepared for it. There is no bribing or deceiving the judge, and no avoiding his tribunal. Oh, be ye ready to face that eye which will read you through and through!

That division, when it shall take place, let me further beg you to remember, will be very keen and sharp. Think it over, think it over; for some of you may have to smart through it. Two men shall be in the field, one shall be taken and the other left: these were two labourers who worked together, they had guided the same plough and driven the same oxen; but the one shall be upon the right hand and the other on the left. Two carpenters at the same bench had handled the same adze and the same plane, but ono shall be taken and the other left: two had served in one shop at the same counter with the same goods, and one shall be taken and the other left; they were familiar acquaintances and old shopmates, but one shall rejoice to hear the welcome “Come,” and the other shall tremble as he receives the dread sentence, “Depart.” Alas, the division will come closer home still. Two women shall be in one house: the one shall be taken and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; that is, engaged about the household duties, grinding the morning’s breakfast corn — one shall be taken and the other left. So you may be two servants in the same house, cook and housemaid, one saved arid the other lost: two sisters living together under the same roof, one brought into glory and the other cast into shame: two of you may be dwellers under the same roof, eating bread at the same table, drinking from the same cup, and yet one of you shall feast at the eternal banquets and the other shall cry for a drop of water to cool his burning tongue. You would not like to be separated, but separated you must be. Alas, there will be a separation still more painful yet! Two shall be in one bed, the one shall be taken and the other left — the husband torn away from the wife, and the wife sundered from her husband. Oh, there will be partings, there will be partings; and consequently there will be weeping, there will be weeping at the judgment-seat of Christ; not for the godly, for in them the glory of their Lord will swallow up all other thought, but for the Christless, the prayerless, the graceless. Oh, the wailing of the children, and the wailing of the women, and the wailing of the husbands, and the wailing of the fathers, when their children are saved, or their parents are saved, or their husbands and wives are saved, and tHey themselves are cast out for ever!

“O there will be mourning

Before the judgment seat,
When this world is burning
Beneath Jehovah’s feet.

“Friends and kindred then shall part,

Shall part to meet no more;

Wrath consume the rebel’s heart,

“While saints on high adore!”

The separation will be agony indeed to the lost. I could scarce have the heart to bid a man “good bye” if I knew that I should never see him again. The worst wish I could entertain concerning the worst enemy I ever had — though I do not know that I have one in the world — would not go so far as to say I wished I might never see him again, for since I hope I shall be where Jesus is I should like to see him, be he who he may, and see him there amongst the blessed. But it must not be; it must not be if sinners will not repent of sin; if they will persist in rejecting Jesus Christ. Except ye believe in Jesus the parting will be keen and cutting, dividing between joints and marrow, tearing asunder marriage ties, and bonds of filial or parental affection; slaying all vain hopes for ever. 0 souls impenitent, I could weep for you! If you are linked in blood relationship with the saints it will not help you if you die unregenerate! Though you were bone of each other’s bone and flesh of each other’s flesh, yet must you be separated unless you are one with Christ. I entreat you unregenerate ones to lay this to heart at once, and trifle no longer!

That diviswn, dear friends, remember, will le very wide as well aa very keen; for the division will be such as will be represented in its distance by heaven and by hell: and what a distance is that! The distance between God and devil! Between happiness and misery! Between glory and everlasting contempt! Between infinite joy and boundless sorrow! Between songs and weeping! Between triumphs and wailing, feasting and gnashing of teeth! If the only division would be such as might arise from difference in degrees of glory (if such there be), one might still pine to have the companionship of our dear ones: but the difference is between heaven and hell, and Christ says of it that there is “a great gulf fixed” so that they that would pass from us to you cannot; neither can they come to us that would come from thence. The distance will be wide as eternity, the separating gulf will be deep as the abyss, and impassable as hell.

And, remember, the separation will be final. There is no flinging a bridge across that vast abyss. Damned spirits may look down into that dread gulf, into the unutterable blackness of its darkness, but they will never see a hope of crossing to the land of the blessed. The key is lost; they can never come out of the dungeon of despair. “For ever, for ever, for ever,” is written upon the chain which binds the lost spirit. No hope of restoration was ever indulged by a man in hell, and it is idle to dream about it now. Of all figments of the brain it has the least support in Scripture. The lost sinner is for ever separated from Jesus and from the disciples of Jesus, however near akin in the flesh those disciples may have been to him. Unalterable is the separation and eternal.

Beloved, these are such weighty things that while I dwell upon them I feel far more inclined to sit down and weep than to stand up and speak to you. The theme causes me to feel the weakness of mere wordg, and in a measure makes me lose the power of expression; for what if any of you should be lost for ever? It was a touching thing to me yesterday when I saw a sister in Christ who has been my hearer for many years, and she told me that she was decided for Christ by my saying, when I went away last time, that perhaps I might never address you again, and might find a grave in a foreign land. I felt that it might be so at the time I uttered the words, though I am glad that they have not been fulfilled. She thought, “Well, he has been preaching to me these many years, and if I die unconverted I shall never see him again:” and then it flashed across her mind, “How much worse to feel that I shall never see the King in his beauty; I shall never see the Saviour;” and she was thus led by the Holy Ghost to give her heart to Jesus. Perhaps the Lord may use the thought of this separation to move some of you to say, “I will come to Jesus, and I will rest in him.” 0 Lord, my God, grant it may be so, for Jesus’ sake.

II. “We have spoken about the division, we will now have a few words about THE DIVIDER. “He shall separate them one from another.”

Christ Jesus will be the divider of the race of men into two parts; and this I am glad to know, because, first of all, this will be the occasion of lasting, yea, of eternal joy to all the saints. No child of God will ever have a doubt in heaven; but it is needful that they begin their bliss with a very strong assurance of divine love, or else, methinks, they might. Unless God had ordained the method at which the text hints, I could well imagine myself in heaven saying to myself, after I had been there a little while, “Oh, can it be, can it be that I am here? I do remember the sin of such a day, and the short comings of such an hour, and my murmurings, and my unbelief, and all my departures from my God; and am I here, after all?” I could imagine, if there had not been the means used to put an end to such a possibility, my saying, “Surely I am to taste this only for a moment that I may be driven to my due deserts after all, that my hell may be made the more terrible because I have seen what heaven is, and that my hunger may grow the more intolerable because I have eaten of the bread of angels.” If such a fear were possible, behold the answer to it. “He, the judge, the judge, the judge himself has said, ‘Come, ye blessed of my Father.’” That judge cannot be mistaken, for he is Jesus the infallible Son of God. God himself has blessed his chosen, and Jesus tells them so in the plainest terms — “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you.” Since Jesus has decreed his everlasting happiness, the child of God cannot doubt throughout eternity. That voice will sound for ever in his ears, sweeter than music of flute or harp or dulcimer. “Come, ye blessed of my Father.” Why, it will be the very basis of the bliss of heaven to think, “Jesus bade me come. Who shall ask me the question, How earnest thou in hither? Did not Ae admit me? Who shall question my right to be here? Did not he say, ‘Come, ye blessed of my Father ‘?” Do you not see that it is a choice and comforting fact that we shall not divide ourselves at the last, nor shall an angel do it who might err, but the divider will be Jesus himself, the Son of God; and therefore the glory which he metes out to us will be most surely ours, and we may enjoy it without fear.

But then, note on the other hand, that this will increase the terror of the lost, that Christ will divide them.

Christ, full of infinite love, would he destroy a sinner unless it must be! He that would have saved Jerusalem, and wept because it must be destroyed! The guilty city was resolved to perish, but as her Lord pronounced the sentence he wept. When I hear of a judge putting on the black cap to condemn a man, I like to read in the papers, “The judge’s voice faltered, and he was evidently unable to suppress hia emotion as he uttered the sentence of death.” What right-minded man could be otherwise than moved when compelled to deliver his fellow-creature to the gallows? But no judge on earth has such compassion for his fellow man as Jesus has for sinners; and when it comes to this that he says, “I must do it, I must condemn you,” then, sinner, it must be so indeed. When incarnate love says, “Depart, ye cursed,” you must be cursed with an emphasis. You must be infamous beings indeed when he whose lips drop blessings as lilies drop sweet-smelling myrrh, — when he calls you so! There must be something very horrible about you that lie should bid you “depart;” and, indeed, there is an abominable thing in you, for unbelief in God is the most horrible thing, even in hell. Not to believe that God is love is worthy of the utmost condemnation. You will have to say if you are lost, “I was condemned by the most loving judge that ever sat upon a judgment seat. The Christ that died lifted his pierced hand at the very moment when he said, ‘Depart, ye cursed!’”

Yet there is something more, though this might be enough. If you should be lost, as God forbid you should, it will infinitely add to your terror to know that you were condemned by one who is infinitely just. You will feel that the Christ who condemned you was the holiest of men, in whom was no sin, and that, besides, he is pure and perfect God; so that yon will not be able to cavil at the sentence. Neither will there be any question about a new trial; your own conscience will make you feel that the decision is final, for it is just; and you will be too well assured of its reality and certainty, for he who will pronounce that sentence is the God of truth. He said, “I am the way and the truth:” you would not have him for a way, but you will find him to be “the truth”: and when he pronounces you cursed, cursed you will be beyond all question.

Once more. If he that condemns you will be the Christ of God you will know that he has power to carry out the sentence, for all power is given unto him in heaven and in earth, and the government shall be upon his shoulders, and if he says, “Depart into everlasting fire” into that fire you must go. If he declares that the fire shall never be quenched, depend upon it, it will burn on for ever; and if he decrees that the worm shall never die, that worm will live and gnaw to all eternity, for he who gives forth the sentence is able to make it good. Remember how he said, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall never pass away.” Firmer than the rocks shall stand the irrevocable decree — “these shall go away into everlasting punishment, and the righteous into life eternal.” My soul trembles while I thus proclaim Jesus as the judge whose awful voice divides the sinners from the saints.

III. Lend me your ears but for a minute or two longer, while I notice, in the third place, THE RULE OF THE DIVISION. Did you notice where the division is made? It is very wonderful to me — very wonderful indeed! The great division between the sons of men is Christ. Here are the sheep: there are the goats. What parts them? Christ! He is the centre. There is no great barrier set up, as it were, on that last tremendous day, but he himself is the division. He shall set the sheep on his right hand, and the goats on his left. Now, that which parts us to-night into two portions is our relationship to Jesus Christ. On which side of Christ are you to-night? I want you to question yourselves about that. If you are on his right hand you are among his people. If you are not with him you are against him, and so are on his left hand. That which parts the saint and the sinner is Christ; and the moment a sinner comes to Christ he passes over to the other side, and is numbered with the saints. This is the real point of separation. Christ stands between the believers and the unbelievers, and marks the boundary of each class. When Aaron stood between the living and the dead swinging the censer full of incense, what separated the dead from the living? Realise the scene before you answer the question. There they lie! There they lie, I say, stricken with pestilence! The unseen avenger has slain them in heaps. But here are the living, rejoicing and safe. What separates them? The priest standing there with the censer. Even thus our great High Priest stands at this moment between the living and the dead, while the incense of his merits ascends before God, and makes the most real dividing wall between dead sinners and those who are alive unto God by Jesus Christ. Christ is the divider, Christ is himself the division.

But what is the rule by which he separates the people? The rule of the division is, first, actions. Actions! Did you notice that? He says nothing about words. He dwells upon deeds of mercy, “I was an hungered and ye gave me meat, I was thirsty and ye gave me drink, I was naked and ye clothed me.” These are all actions. Now, perhaps you would have liked the judge to have said: “You were wont to sing hymns out of ‘Our Own Hymn Book.’ You were wont to talk very sweetly about me, and call me Master and Lord. You were accustomed to sit at the communion table.” Not a word is said about these things. No, nor is anything said about ceremonial actions. He does not say, “You used to bow before the pyx; you reverently stood up at one part of the service, and knelt at another; you walked round the church singing the processional hymn.” Nothing is said about these performances, only common actions are noticed, “I was an hungered and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink”; these are all commonplace matters. Actions will be the great rule of judgment at last. I am not preaching now contrary to the gospel, but only repeating in other words what our Lord himself has said. “We shall give an account tor the deeds done in the body, whether they be good, or whether they be evil,” is the statement, not of the law, but of the New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Those that have done evil shall go away into eternal punishment.

Are we, then, saved by our works? By no manner of means. Yet our works are the evidences of ou~ being saved, and grace will bring out these evidences in our lives if we possess them. A magistrate judges by the actions which are proved upon evidence; it is true he may and will have respect to the motive which urged the action, but first of all the actions themselves must be before him in evidence; and so here the King mentions the actions that were done.

Let us notice that the actions which were the rule of judgment were all of them actions about Christ. I want you carefully to note this: the Lord says, “/ was hungry and ye gave me meat; / was thirsty and ye gave me drink; / was sick and ye visited me.” This summary is made up of actions about Christ. I will, therefore, very earnestly put this question — What actions have you ever done in reference to Jesus? “I am a church member,” says one. I will not hear about that just now, because the judge will not say any thing about it. I am glad you are an avowed disciple, if you are honestly so; but do your actions prove that you are really go? That is the question. Have you ever done anything for Christ? Have you ever given anything to Christ? Could Christ say to you, “I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink”? Now, I know some professors of whom I fear that Jesus Christ could not speak thus, for he cannot speak that which is not true. Their pockets are hermetically sealed, like tins of Australian meat; even the smell of their money never reaches Christ’s poor. Give meat to a hungry man? Not they. Let him go to the parish. (Jive clothes to a naked man? Not they. What do we pay rates for? The idea of giving anything to another, or doing anything for another, without getting paid for it or praised for it, seems to them to be out of all character. Now, selfishness is as much opposed to the spirit of the gospel as the cold of the northern region is to the warmth of the sun. If the sun of Christ’s love has shone into your heart you will love others, and you will show your love to others by desiring to do them good in all sorts of ways, and you will do it for Christ’s sake — -for Christ’s sake: so that when he comes he will be able to say, “/ was an hungered and ye gave me meat; / was thirsty and ye gave me drink; /was sick and ye visited me; /was in prison under reproach and ye came unto me.” What have your actions been with regard to Christ? I pray you, brethren and sisters, who are one with me in the profession of allegiance to Christ, judge yourselves by your actions with regard to him, as I also will judge myself.

Now, notice that Christ, as it were, inferentially, tells us that the actions which will be mentioned at the judgment day, as the proof of our being the blessed of the Lord, spring from the grace of God, for he says, “Ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you ironi before the foundations of the world.” They fed the hungry, but sovereign grace had first fed them. They clothed the naked, but infinite love first clothed them. They went to the prison, but free grace had first set them free from a worse prison. They visited the sick, but the good Physician in his infinite mercy first came and visited them. They evidently had no idea that there was anything meritorious in what they did; they had never dreamed of being rewarded for it. When they stand before the judgment-seat, the bare idea of there being any excellence in what they have done will be new to the saints, for they have formed a very lowly estimate of their own performances, and what they have done seems to them too faulty to be commended. The saints fed the hungry and clothed the naked because it gave them much pleasure to do so. They did it because they could not help doing it, their new nature impelled them to it. They did it because it was their delight to do good, and was as much their element as water for a fish or the air for a bird. They did good for Christ’s sake, because it was the sweetest thing in the world to do anything for Jesus. Why is it that a wife is so kind to her husband? Because it is her duty, you say. All very well, but the real reason is because she loves him so intensely. Why is a mother so careful over her babe? Is there any rule or act of parliament commanding mothers to be fond of their little ones? No, there is no act of parliament; there is an act of God, in the bosom somewhere, passed nem. con. in the chamber of the heart, and the mother cannot but be kind. Now, when the Lord puts a new nature into us, and makes us one with Jesus Christ, we cannot help loving his people, and seeking the good of our fellow-men; and the Lord Jesus Christ will own this at the last day as an evidence that there was love in the heart, because love was shown by the hand. May God grant that when the Judge of all shall come we may be found renewed in heart and full of love through the power of his Holy Spirit.

“Oh,” saith one, “I wish I had that renewed heart which would produce such actions.” Jesus can give it you. You will always live for self in some sense or other until you are saved: even the most philanthropic who have loved their fellow-creatures best, without religion, have generally sought for their esteem, and the verse is true concerning the praise of our fellow-creatures —

“The proud, to gain it, toils on toils endure;
The modest shun it but to make it sure.”

But when you receive a new heart you will not live for the approbation of your fellow-men. Then your alms will be done in secret, and you will not let your left hand know what your right hand doeth. Then, when you do your kindnesses, it will not be that others may publish abroad the announcement that you have visited the sick and clothed the naked, but your alms’ deeds will be done behind the door and in the corner, where none shall know of them but your God and the grateful recipients of your bounty. You will quietly put into the treasury the two mites that make a farthing, and think yourself unobserved, but One who sits over against the treasury, who knows your heart, will take good note of it. Your Lord will accept what you do because you do it out of love to him; and at the last, while you blush to hear it, he will tell it to the angels and to the listening hosts of earth and heaven, and swing wide the gates of immortal bliss, and let you in, according to the promise of his grace.

God bless you, beloved, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON — Matthew xxr.

HYJINS FROM” OUR OWN HYMN Bo — 346, 362, 365.

ctwplitan SEalwmade flutpi

WHAT THE FARM LABOURERS CAN DO, AND WIIAT
THEY CANNOT DO.

DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAY MORNING, JUNE 12TH, 1881, BY

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

“And he said, So in the kingdom of God, as If a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the sued should spring and grow up, ha kuoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.’.’ — Mark iv. 26 — 29.

LAST Lord’s-day morning our subject was the labourers upon God’s farm and their great Master; and then we tried to show how far human agency was necessary in the work of the gospel. We also saw how thoroughly all holy results depend upon God, for neither he that soweth nor he that watereth is anything, but God who giveth the increase. We have much the same subject this morning, only it goes a little deeper, and yet more fully shows how far the labourer can go, and how far he cannot go; where man may enter with holy industry, and where no human work can possibly intrude. Our subject on this occasion will mainly be the measure and limit of human instrumentality in the kingdom of grace. If we shall be taught of the Spirit of God we shall find this Scripture lo be full of instruction upon the matter.

It is remarkable that the parable before us is peculiar to Mark. No other evangelist, has recorded it, but we do not think any the less of it on that account. If it had been told to us four times we should have been glad to hear the repetition, and would have given it a fourfold attention; as it is told us but once, we will give the more earnest heed to a voice which speaketh once for all. We are glad that the Holy Spirit led Mark to reserve this pearl out of the many excellent things which our Lord said which have been lost. John tells us that if a record of all the works which Jesus did could have been preserved they would have made a library so large that scarce the world itself could have contained all the books. Many of the things that Jesus said floated about, no doubt, for a time, and were gradually forgotten, and we have to be thankful to the Spirit of God for perpetuating this choice similitude by the hand of his servant Mark. Preserved in the amber of inspiration, this choice instruction is of priceless value.

Here is a lesson for sowers, — for the labourers upon the farm of God.

No. 1,603. IK

It is a parable for all who are concerned in the kingdom of God. It will be of little value to those who are in the kingdom of darkness, for they are not bidden to sow the good seed: “Unto the wicked God saith, what hast thou to do to declare my statutes?” But all who are loyal subjects to King Jesus, all who are commissioned’ to scatter seed for the Royal Husbandman, will be glad to know how the kingdom advances, glad to know how the harvest is preparing for him whom they serve. Listen, then, ye that sow beside all waters; ye that with holy diligence seek to fill the garners of your God, — listen, and may the Spirit of God speak into your ears as you are able to bear it.

I. We shall, first, learn from our text WHAT WE CAN DO AND WHAT WE CANNOT DO. Let this stand as our first head.

“So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground”: this the gracious worker can do. “And the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how “: this is what he cannot do, it belongs to a higher power. Man can neither make the seed spring nor grow up, he is out of the field in that respect, and may go home “to sleep, and rise night and day.” Seed once sown is beyond human jurisdiction, and is under divine care. Yet ere long the worker comes in again: — “When the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle.” We can reap in due season, and it is both our duty and our privilege so to do. You see, then, that there is a place for the worker at the beginning, and though there is no room for him in the middle passage, yet another opportunity is given him further on when that which he sowed has actually yielded fruit.

Notice, then, that we, can sow. Any man who has received the know ledge of the grace of God in his heart can teach others. I include under the term “man” all who know the Lord, be they male or female. We cannot all teach alike, for all have not the same gifts; to one is given one talent, and to another ten. Neither have we all the same opportunities, for one lives in obscurity and another has far-reaching influence. Yet there is not within the family of God an infant hand which may not drop its own tiny seed into the ground. There is not a man among us who needs to stand idle in the market-place, for work suitable to his strength is waiting for him. There is not a saved woman who is left without a holy task; let her do it and win the approving word. “She hath done what she could.” Something of sacred service is within the reach of everyone’s capacity, whether it be the mother in the family, the nurse-girl with the infant, the boy in the school, the workman at the bench, or the nurse at the bedside. Those with the smallest range of opportunities can, nevertheless, do something for Christ and his cause. The precious seed of the word of God is small as a grain of mustard-seed, and may be carried by the feeblest hand where it shall multiply a hundred-fold.

We need never quarrel with God because we cannot do everything if he only permits us to do this one thing; for sowing the good seed is a work which will need all our wit, our strength, our love, our care. Holy seed sowing may well be adopted as our highest pursuit, and be no inferior object for the noblest life that can be led. You will need heavenly teaching that you may carefully select the wheat, and keep it free from the darnel of error. We must even winnow out of it our own thoughts and opinions, for these may not be according to the mind of God. Men are not saved by our word, but by God’s word. We are bound to see that we know the gospel, and teach the whole of it. To difieient men we must, with discretion, bring forward that part of the word of God which will best bear upon their consciences; for much may depend upon the word being in season, and not a chance sentence thrown out at random. We shall have enough to do if we look well. -to the seed-basket, lest, perad venture, we should sow tares as well as wheat, or should cast good seed wantonly, where it can only feed evil birds.

Having selected the seed, we shall have plenty of work if we go forth and sow it broadcast everywhere, for every day brings its opportunity, and every company furnishes its occasion. “In the morning sow thy seed, arid in the evening withhold not thy hand.” “Sow beside all waters.” Imitate the sower in the parable, who was not so penny-wise that he would only cast the seed where, according to his judgment, all was good soil, but who, feeling that he had other work for his judgment besides the selecting of the soil, threw the seed right and left as he went on his way, and denied not a handful even to thorny and rocky soils. You, dear fellow-workers, will have enough to do if at all times, and in all places, as prudence and zeal suggest, you spread abroad the living word of the living Lord.

Still, wise sowers discover favourable opportunities for sowing, and gladly seize upon them. There are times when it would clearly be a waste to sow; for the soil could not receive it, it is not in a fit condition. After a shower, or before a shower, or at some such time as he that hath studied husbandry knows, then is the time to be up and doing. So while we are to work for God always, yefc there are seasons when it were “Casting pearls before swine to talk of holy things; and there are other times when if we were slothful it would be a shameful waste of propitious seasons. Sluggards in the time for ploughing and sowing are sluggards indeed, for they not only waste the day, but throw away the year. If you watch for souls, and use hours of happy vantage, and moments of sacred softening, you will not complain of the scanty space allowed for agency. Even should you never be called to water, or to reap, your office is wide enough if you fulfil the work of the sower.

For little though it seem to teach the simple truth of the gospel, yet it is essential. How shall men hear without a teacher? The farm never brings forth a harvest without sowing. Weeds will grow without our help, but not so wheat and barley. The human heart is so depraved that it will naturally bring forth evil in abundance, and Satan is quite sure not to let it lie without a sowing of evil seed; but if ever a man’s soul is to yield fruit unto God the seed of truth must be cast into it from without. Servants of God, the seed of the word is not like thistledown, which is borne by every wind, nor like certain seeds wafted by their own parachutes here, there, and everywhere, but the wheat of the kingdom needs a human hand to sow it, and without such agency it will not enter into men’s hearts, neither can it bring forth fruit to the glory of God. The preaching of the gospel is the necessity of every age; God grant that our country may never be deprived of it. Even if the Lord should send us a famine of bread and a famine of water, may he never send us a famine of the word of God. Faith couieth by hearing, and how can there be hearing if there is no teaching? Scatter ye, scatter ye, then, the seed of the kingdom, for this is essential to the harvest. The spreading of the gospel is not a thing that ye may do or may not do, according to your pleasure, but it is a duty urgently needful, to be neglected at your peril. Ye can sow the seed, and the seed must be flown.

This seed should be sown often, for the times are such that one sowing may not suffice. Sow again and again, tor many are the foes of the wheat, and if ye repeat not your sowing ye may never see a harvest. The seed must be sown everywhere, too, for there are no choice corners of the world that you can afford to let alone, in the hope that they will be self-productive. Ye may not leave the rich and intelligent under the notion that surely the gospel will be iound among them, for it is not so: the pride of life leads them away from Grod. You may not leave the poor and illiterate, and say, “Surely they will ot themselves feel theii need of Christ.” Not so: they will sink from degradation to degradation unless you uplift them with the gospel. No tribe of man, no peculiar constitution of the human mind, may be neglected by us, but everywhere we must preach the word, in season and out of season. T have heard that Captain Cook, the celebrated circumnavigator, was in pne respect an admirable example to us. Wherever he landed, in whatever part of the earth it might be, he took with him a little packet of divers English seeds, and he was often observed to scatter them in suitable places. He would leave the boat and wander up from the shore. He said nothing to anybody, but quietly scattered English seeds wherever he went, so that he belted the world with the flowers and herbs of his native land. Imitate him wherever you go; sow spiritual seed in every place that your foot shall tread upon. Some of you will before long be at the seaside, or amidst the mountains of Switzerland, or in some other regions of the earth, in the search of variety and beauty; carry the heavenly seeds with you, and be not satisfied unless in every place you let fall a grain or two that may bring forth fruit unto your God. This is what you can do; mind that you do it.

Let us now think of what you cannot do. You cannot, after the seed has left your hand, cause it to put forth life. I am sure you cannot make it grow, for you do not know how it grows. The text saith, “And the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how.” That which is beyond the range of our knowledge is certainly beyond the reach of our power. Can you make a seed germinate? You may place it under circumstances of damp and heat which will cause it to swell and break forth with a shoot, but the germination itself is beyond you. How is it done? We know not. After the germ has been put forth, can you make it further grow, and develop its life into leaf and stem? No; that, too, is out of your power. And when the green, grassy blade has been succeeded by the ear, can you ripen it? It will be ripened; but can you do it? You know you cannot; you can have no finger in the actual process, though you may promote the conditions under which it is produced. Life is a mystery; growth is a mystery; ripening is a mystery: and these three mysteries are as fountains sealed against all intrusion. How comes it that there is within the ripe seed the preparations for another sowing and another growth?

What is this vital principle, this secret reproducing energy? Knowest thou anything about this? The philosopher may say that he can explain life and growth, and straightway he will, according to the ordinary process of philosophy, bamboozle you with terms which are less understandable than the ordinary talk of infants; and then he will say, “There is the whole matter! It is as clear as possible.” He cloaks his ignorance with learned jargon, and then calls it wisdom. To this day it still remaineth true of the growth of the commonest seeds, — “He knoweth not how.” The scientific man may talk about chemical combinations and physical permutations, and he may proceed to quote analogies from this and that; but still the growth of the seed remains a secret, it springs, “He knoweth not how.” Certainly tin’s is true of the rise and progress of the word of God in the heart. It enters the soul, and roots itself ye know not how. Naturally men hate the word, but it enters and it changes the heart, so that they come to love it, but we know not how. Their whole nature is renewed, so that instead of producing sin it yields repentance, faith, and love, but we know not how. How it is that the Spirit of God deals with the mind of man, how hecreates the new heart and the right spirit, how we are begotten again unto a lively hope, how we are born of the Spirit, we cannot tell. Thfr Holy Ghost enters into us; we hear not his voice, we see not his light, we feel not his touch; yet he worketh an effectual work upon us, which we are not long in perceiving. We know that the work of the Spirit is a new creation, a resurrection, a quickening from the deud; but all these words are only covers to our utter ignorance of the mode of his working, with which it is not in our power to meddle. We do not know how he performs his miracles of love, and, not knowing how he works, we may be quite sure that we cannot take the work out of his hands. We can not create, we cannot quicken, we cannot transform, we cannot regenerate, we cannot save.

This work of God having proceeded in the growth of the seed, what next? We can reap the ripe ears. After a season God the Holy Spirit uses his servants again. As soon as the living seed has produced first of all the blade of thought, and afterwards the green ear of conviction, and then faith, which is as full coru in the ear, then the Christian worker comes in for further service, for he can reap. “When the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle.” This is not the reaping of the last great day, for that does not come within the scope of the parable, which evidently relates to a human sower and reaper. The kind of reaping which the Saviour here intends is that which he referred to when he said to his disciples, “Lift up now your eyes, for behold the fields are white already to the harvest.” After he hud been sowing the seed in the hearts of the Samaritans, and it had sprung up, so that they began to evince faith in him, the Lord Jesus cried, “The fields are white unto the harvest.” The apostle saith, “One soweth, and another reapeth.” Our Lord said to the disciples, “I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour.” Is there not a promise, “in due season ye shall reap if ye faint not”?

Christian workers begin their harvest work by watching carefully to see when men evince signs of faith in Christ. They are eager to sec the bla-K njid delighted to mark the ripening ear. They often hope ihat men are believers, but they long to be sure of it: and when they judge that at last the fruit of faith is put forth, they begin to encourage, to congratulate, and to comfort. They know that the young believer needs to be housed in the barn of Christian fellowship, that he may be saved from a thousand perils. No wise farmer leaves the fruit of the field long exposed to the hail which might beat it out, or the mildew which might destroy it, or the birds which might despoil it. Evidently no believing man should be left outside of the garner of holy fellowship, he should be carried into the midst of the church with all the joy which attends the home-bringing of sheaves. The worker for Christ watches carefully, and when he discerns that his time is come he begins at once to fetch in the converts that they may be cared for by the brotherhood, separated from the world, screened from temptation, and laid up for the Lord. He is diligent to do it at once, because the text saith, “immediately he putteth in the sickle.” He does not wait for months in cold suspicion; he is not afraid that he shall encourage too soon when faith is really present. He comes with the word of promise and the smile of brotherly love at once, and he says to the new believer, “Have you confessed your faith? Is not the time come for an open confession? Hath not Jesus bidden the believer to be baptized? If you love him, keep his commandments.” He does not rest till he has introduced the convert to the communion of the faithful. For our work, beloved, is but half done when men are, made disciples and baptized. We have then to encourage, to instruct, to strengthen, to console, and succour in all times of difficulty and danger. What saith the Saviour? “Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you.”

The reaper is the man who gathers in the converts, and he fulfils an honourable and useful office. If I preach the gospel to-day, and some shall be converted, I shall be the sower; but if going home to the respective towns in which you live, you who have dropped in here as strangers, shall be received into the churches by your own pastors, they will be reaping what I have sown. I envy not iny brother minister his success in gathering in the converts, but I rejoice with him. The sower and the reaper may well rejoice together, for our work is one, and we labour for one Lord.

Observe, then, the sphere of agency. We can introduce the truth to men, but that truth the Lord himself must bless; the living and growing of the word within the soul is the operation of God alone. When the mystic work of growth is done we are able to introduce the saved ones into the church. To bring them into the fellowship of the faithful is our work, and we must not fail to do it. For Christ to be formed in men the hope of glory is not of our working, that remains with God; but when Jesus Christ is formed in them, to discern the image of the Saviour and to say, “Come in, thou blessed of the Lord, wherefore standest thou without?” this is our duty and delight. To create the divine life is God’s, to cherish it is ours. To cause the hidden life to grow in secret is the work of the Lord; to see the uprising and perfecting of that life, and to rejoice in it is the work of the faithful, sven as it is written, “when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.”

This, then, is our first lesson; we see what we can do and what we cannot do.

II. Our second head is like unto the first, and consists of WHAT WE

CAN KNOW AND WHAT WE CANNOT KNOW.

First, what we can know. We can know when we have sown the good seed of the word that it will grow; for God has promised that it shall do so. Not every grain in every place; for some will go to the bird, and some to the worm, and some to be scorched by the sun; but as a general rule God’s word shall not return unto him void, it shall prosper in the thing whereto he hath sent it. This we can know. And we can know that the seed when once it takes root will continue to grow; that it is not a dream or a picture that will disappear, but a thing of force and energy, which will advance from a grassy blade to corn in the ear, and under God’s blessing will develop to actual salvation, and be as the “full corn in the ear.” God helping and blessing it, our work of teaching will not only lead men to thought and conviction, but to conversion and eternal life.

We also can know, because we are told so, that the reason for this is mainly because there is life in the word. In the word of God itself there is life, for it is written — “The word of God is quick and powerful,” — that is, “living and powerful.” It is “the incorruptible seed which liveth and abideth for ever.” It is the nature of living seeds to grow, and the reason why the word of God grows in men’s hearts is because it is the living word of the living God, and where the word of a king is there is power. We know this, because the Scriptures teach us so. Is it not written, “Of his own will begat he us by the word of truth”?

Moreover, the earth, which is here the type of the man, “bringeth forth fruit of hersel£” We must mind what we are at in expounding this, for human hearts do not produce faith of themselves; they are as hard rock on which the seed perishes. Bat it means this, — that as the earth under the blessing of the dew and the rain is, by God’s secret working upon it, made to take up and embrace the seed, so the heart of man is made ready to receive and enfold the gospel of Jesus Christ within itself. There is a something congruous in the earth to the seed which is sown in it, so that the seed is adopted and nourished by the soil. Just so is it by the heart of man when God makes it honest and good ground. Man’s awakened heart wants exactly what the word of God supplies. Moved by a divine influence the soul embraces the truth, and is embraced by it, and so the truth lives in the heart, and is quickened by it. The* man’s love accepts the love of God; man’s faith wrought in him by the Spirit of God believes the truth of God; man’s hope wrought in him by the Spirit of God lays hold upon the things revealed, and so the heavenly seed grows in the soil of the soul. The life comes not from you who preach the word, but it is placed within the word which you preach by the Holy Spirit. The life is not in your hand, but in the man himself who is led to take hold upon the truth by the Spirit of God. Salvation comes not from the personal authority of the preacher, but through the personal conviction, personal faith, and personal love of the hearer. You, the sower, are thub taught by the parable that spiritual life and growth are of (rod, and come by the seed and the soil far more than by you. So far as the truth is concerned, its intrinsic power is the same whoever preaches it. It is not because such and such a divine, whom God has blessed, tells out the gospel, that therefore it lives in men’s hearts. Oh, no; it is because of the truth itself, and because of the hearts themselves which receive the truth by the secret working of God’s blessed Spirit. So much as this we may know, and is it not enough for all practical purposes?

Still, there is a something which we cannot “know: a secret into which we cannot pry. I repeat what I have said before, you cannot look into men’s inward arts and see exactly how the truth takes hold upon the heart, or the heart takes hold upon the truth. Many have watched their own feelings till they have become blind with despondency, and others have watched the feelings of the young till they have done them rather harm than good by their rigorous supervision. In God’s work there is moreroom for faith than for sight. The heavenly seed grows secretly. You must bury it out of sight, or there will be no harvest. Even if you keep the seed above ground, and it does sprout, you cannot discover how it grows; even though you microscopically watched its swelling and bursting, you could not see the inward vital force which moves the seed. Behind the veil which conceals the secret working of God in the mysteries of natural life and growth you cannot pry; and as for the divine life in man, it must for ever be hidden from all mortal eyes. The result of it you shall be able to see, and something about the way of its development you shall be able to know; but the actual modus operandi,, the secret and innermost mystery of the new birth, it shall not be given to you to perceive. Thou knowest not the way of the Spirit. His work is wrought in secret, and.thou canst not tell whence he cometh or whither he goeth. “Explain the new birth,” says somebody. “My answer is, “Experience the new birth, and you shall know what it is.” There are secrets into which we cannot enter, f~r their light is toobright for mortal eyes to endure. 0 man thou canst not become omniscient, for thou art a creature, and not the Creator. For thee there must ever be a region not only unknown but unknowable. So far shall thy knowledge go, but no further; and thou mayest thank God it is so, for thus he leaves room for faith, and gives cause for prayer. Cry mightily unto the Great Worker to do what thou canst not attempt to perform, that so, when thou seest the salvation of men, thou mayest give him all the glory evermore.

III. Thirdly, our text tells us WHAT WE MAY EXPECT IF WE WORK FOB GOD, AND WHAT WE MAY NOT EXPECT. According to this parable we may expect to see fruit The husbandman casts his seed into the ground, and the seed springs and grows, and he may expect a harvest. I wish I could say a word to stir up the expectations of Christian workers; for I fear that many work without faith. If you have a garden or a field, and you sow seed in it, you would be very greatly surprised and grieved if it did not come up at all; but many Christian people seem quite content to work on, and they never reckon upon, result so much as to look for it expectantly. This is a pitiful kind of working — pulling up empty buckets by the year together. iSurely I must either see a result for my labour and be glad, or else, tailing to see it, I must be ready to break my heart if I be a true servant of the great Master. We ought to expect results: if we had expected more we should have seen more, but a lack of expectation lias been a great cause of failure in God’s workers.

But we may not expect to see all the seed which we sow spring up the moment we sow it. Sometimes, glory be to God, we have but to deliver the word, and straightway men are converted: the reaper overtakes the sower, in such instances, but it is not always so. Some sowers have been diligent for years upon certain plots of ground, and apparently all has been in vain, till at the last the harvest has come, a harvest which, speaking after the manner of men, had never been reaped if they had not persevered to the end. This world, as I believe, is to be converted to Christ; but not to-day, nor to-morrow, peradventure not for many an age; but the sowing of the centuries is not being lost, it is all working on towards the grand ultimatum. A crop of mushrooms may soon be produced, but a forest of oaks will not reward the planter till generations of his children have mouldered into the dust. It is ours to sow, and to hope for quick reaping; but still we ought to remember that u the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain,” and so must we. We are to expect results, but not to be dispirited if we see them not to-day or on the morrow.

We are also to expect to see the good seed grow, but not always after our fashion. We are nearly all of us like children, for still there are not many fathers, and like children we are apt to be impatient. Your little boy sowed mustard and cress yesterday in his little garden. This afternoon Master Johnny will be turning over the ground to see if the seed is growing. There is no probability that his mustard and cress will come to anything, for he will not let it alone long enough for it to grow. So is it with hasty workers; they must see the result of the gospel directly, or else they will leave off, and distrust the blessed word. Although the people may have taken the word into their minds and may be considering it, certain preachers are in such a hurry that they will allow no time for thought, no space for counting the cost, no opportunity for men to consider their ways and turn to the Lord with full purpose of heart. All other seeds take time to grow but the seed of the word must grow before the speaker’s eyes like magic, or he thinks nothing has been done. Such good brethren are so eager to produce blade and ear there and then, that they roast their seed in the fire of fanaticism, and it never lives at all. They make men think that they are converted, and thus effectually hinder them from coining to a saving knowledge of the truth. I am solemnly convinced that some men are prevented from being saved by being told that they are saved already, and by being puffed up with a notion of perfection when they are not even broken in heart. Perhaps if such people had been taught to look for something deeper they might not have been satisfied with receiving seed on stony ground; but now they are content with that which comes of seed sown on unbroken rocks, they exhibit a rapid development, and an equally rapid decline and fall. Let us believingly expect to see the seed grow; but let us lo-jk to see it advance after the manner of the preacher, — firstly secondly, thirdly; first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.

You are in a hurry, my brother, but it were better to exhibit the patience of principle than the heat of passion. Leb all men be in a hurry to be saved, but let those who are preaching the truth be content to see men convinced of sin, delivered from self-confidence, enlightened as to the grace of God, and thus led by sure steps to faith. Some of the best of Christians do not know the exact point at w,hich they were converted; it was a gradual process, from green blade to ripe ear, and they -cannot tell exactly when the actual fruit of faith was formed in them. Some of the most thoughtful minds are not jerked on a sudden into religion, but are brought gradually into light, even as the noon of day dra weth on by degrees. With many there is at first nothing out a little blade, you cannot tell whether it is not grass and grass only; their feeling looks like a natural emotion caused by the fear of hell, and this might lead to nothing effectual. Then follows a little belief, so formed as to be like the wheat-ear of faith, and yet it may be only a notion: it takes time with such persons before they show the full corn of assured faith in Jesus. Growth is often, if not generally, gradual, and shall we wish to alter God’s method of working? We may expect the seed to grow, but «very soil is not equally sharp and speedy, and we must not demand of God that he shall work uniformly after the same rate of speed.

We may expect also to see the seed ripen. Our work will lead up by God’s grace to real faith in those he hath wrought upon by his word, and Spirit, but we must not expect to see it perfect at the first. How many mistakes have been made here. Here is a young person under impression, and some good sound brother talks with that young person and asks profound questions. He shakes his experienced head, and knits his furrowed brows. He goes into the corn-field to see how the crops are prospering, and though it is early in the year, he laments that he oannot see an ear of corn; indeed, he perceives nothing but mere grass. “I cannot see a trace of corn,” says he. No, brother, of course you cannot; for you will not be satisfied with the blade as an evidence of life, but must insist upon seeing everything at full growth at once. If you had looked for the blade you would have found it; and it would have encouraged you. For my own part, I am glad even to perceive a faint desire, a feeble longing, a degree of uneasiness, or a meaire of weariness of sin, or a craving after mercy. Will it not be wise for you, also, to allow things to begin at the beginning, and to be satisfied with their being small at the first? See the blade of desire, and then watch for more. Soon you shall see a little more than desire; for there shall be conviction and resolve, and after that a feeble faith, small as a mustard seed, but bound to grow. Do not despise the day of small things. Do not examine the new- born babe about Calvinism in its different shades, to see whether he is sound after your idea of soundness; ten to one he is a long way off sound, and you will only worry the dear heart by introducing difficult questions. Speak to him about his being a sinner, and Christ a Saviour, and you will in this way water him, so that his grace in the ear will become the full corn. It may be that there is not much that looks like wheat about him yet, but by-and-by you shall say, “Wheat! ah, that it is, if I know wheat. This man is a true ear of corn, and gladly will I place him among my Master’s sheaves.” If you crush the blades, where will the ears come from? If you cut off the green ears, where will the ripe ones be? Expect grace in your converts, but do not look to see glory in them just yet. It is enough if you see heaven begun: do not look to see it complete in them here below.

Expect, then, brethren — for you may expect it — to see a harvest, but do not expect to find every seed springing up. “There,” says one. “that is a discouraging word.” It may be so, but it is a true word. There is an old worldly proverb which saith, “Blessed are those who expect nothing, for they shall never be disappointed.” I do not believe in that proverb, but I believe in a moderate form of it: “Blessed are those who do not expect what is unreasonable, for they will not get it.” If you young people who begin to work for God expect that every word you speak will be useful to all who hear it, it will not happen, and you will grow discouraged; therefore I would raise your expectation as high as truth permits, and no higher. I would have you climb to the top of the ladder; but if I encourage you to go any higher you will soon be going down the other side, under the notion that you are ascending. I never like to see a man expecting what he will not obtain. Now, I know that some of our seed will fall among thorns, and some in stony places, and I do not despair when it happens to be so. I do not expect when I preach the gospel that everybody who hears it will receive it, because I know it will be a savour of life unto life to some, and of death unto death to others. I pull the net in, hauling away with all my might; but I know that when it comes to shore it will contain some queer things that are not fish, which will have to be thrown away, and I am heartily glad that there will also be in it a cheering number of good fishes. The results of our ministry in these days will be mixed, even as they were when Paul preached, and some believed and some believed not; we must be prepared for that, and yet I bid you let your expectations be very large, for you may have sixty or a hundred-fold of fruit from the seed if God be with you, and that will abundantly repay you, even if the crows and the worms should eat their share of the grain.

IV. The last head is this, WHAT SLEEP WORKERS MAY TAKE, AND WHAT THEY MAY NOT TAKE; for it is said of this sowing man, that he sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed springs arid grows up he knoweth not how. They say a farmer’s trade is a good one because it is going on while he is abed and asleep; and surely ours is a good trade, too, when we serve our Master by sowing good seed, for it is growing even while we are asleep.

But how may a good workman for Christ lawfully go to sleep? I answer, first, he may sleep the sleep of restfulness born of confidence* You are afraid the kingdom of Christ will not come, are you? Who asked you to tremble for the ark of the Lord? Afraid for the infinite Jehovah that his purposes will fail? Shame on you! Your anxiety dishonours your God. You degrade him by a suspicion of his failing. Shall Omnipotence be defeated? You had better sleep than wake to play the part of Uzzah. Rest patiently, God’s will will be done, and his king dom will come, and his chosen will be saved, and Christ shall see of the travail of his soul. Take the sweet sleep which God gives to his beloved, the sleep of perfect confidence, such as Jesus slept in the hinder part of the ship when it was tossed with tempest. The cause of God never was in jeopardy, and never will be; the seed sown is insured by omnipotence, arnd must produce its harvest. In patience possess your soul, and wait till the harvest comes, for the pleasure of the Lord must prosper in the hands of Jesus.

Also take that sleep which leads to a happy waking of joyful expectancy. Get up in the morning and feel that the Lord is ruling all things for the accomplishment of his own purpose. Look for it. If you do not sleep you certainly will not wake up in the morning refreshed, and ready for more work. If it were possible for you to sit up all night and eat the bread of carefulness you would be unfit to attend to the service which your Master appoints for the morning; therefore take your rest and be at peace, and work with calm dignity; for the matter is safe in the Lord’s hands.

Take your rest because you have consciously resigned the work into God’s hands. After you have spoken the word resort to God in prayer, and commit it into God’s hand, and then do not fret about it. It cannot be in better keeping — leave it there.

But do not sleep the sleep of un watch fulness. The farmer sows his seed, but he does not therefore forget it. He has to mend his fences to keep the cattle out; it may be he has to drive away birds, to remove weeds, or to prevent floods. AVhile he is not sitting down to watch the growth, he has plenty else to do. He never sleeps the sleep of indifference or even of inaction; for each season has its demand upon him. He has sown one field, but he has another to sow. He has sown, but he has also to reap; and if reaping is done, he has something else to do. He has never done; for in one part or other of the farm he is needed. His sleep is but an interlude that gives him strength to continue in his occupations. Consider that the parable teaches us that we have not to intrude into the domain of God; but with regard to the secret working of truth upon man’s mind, we are to take our rest, and go 011 our way, serving our day and generation according to the will of God.

I want you, clear brethren and sisters, to come to that point this morning. “Lord, this is thy work. Lord, thou canst do thine own work. Lord, do thine own work — we entreat and beseech thee to do it. Lord, help us to do our work, both at the beginning <>!’ the chapter and at the end of the chapter, confident that thou wilt not fail in the middle of the chapter; but that thou wilt do thy work. Help us to exercise faith in thee, and to go about our labour in the confidence that thou art with us, and we are workers together with thee.” Up, brethren, to the mountain, to the brow of Carmel this afternoon, up there and pray that God will send a shower of heavenly rain by his Spirit. Up, Elijah; put your head between your knees and cry till you are certain that the cloud, though it be little at first as a man’s hand, will cover all the earth and water the land with blessing. Up and pray that God would sweep away all the doubts which, like locusts, devour the church in-day, and all love of sin and all rejection of Christ, that at this hour, even at this hour. God may glorify himself by the feeble hand of his sower while he scatters the seed. I beg your prayers, my dear and faithful friends, this afternoon, and this evening, that the word of the Lord may be divinely victorious. 1 stand back that God may work, and then come forward that God may work through me, and to him be praise for ever. Amen.

SFabermicle pulpit,

THE CHOICE OF A LEADER.

DELIVERED ox LORD’S-DAY MORNING, AUGUST IST, 1875, BY
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEVYINGTON.

“And he spake a parable unto them, Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch f The disciple is not above his master: but every one that is perfect shall be us his master.” — Luke vi. 39, 40.

MAN can hardly be retained in the place of wisdom, even if brought thither. Truth lies between two extremes, and man, like a pendulum, swings either too much this way or that. He abides not long in one stay, but tosses from side to side; never, except by divine grace, finding rest in the middle point of wisdom at all. Two extremes exist in reference to the pilgrimage and scholarship of life. Some assert that man needs no guide whatever. Is he not a noble creature, gifted with high intelligence? Can he not reason and judge, and understand and discern? He can surely find his own way without direction from without. As a learner, why needs he a teacher? He can instruct himself. Is he not possessed of science? Has he not already found out many inventions? Such self-sufficient boasters will not, therefore, condescend to sit at the feet of a master, or follow the track ot a guide, and consequently they frequently become erratic, singular, lawless, and unreasonable in their modes of thought, and even of act. Into the mazes of infidelity and atheism such pilgrims wander; into foolishness and strong delusion such teachers of themselves conduct their own minds. This scheme is dangerous, but its opposite pole is not less so. Deliver a man from rationalism, and he often swings into superstition, and says, “I see that I need a guide, I will take the one nearest to hand.” Finding a guide constituted by this authority or that, the man who has ceased to use his judgment surrenders himself at once to his leadership and reckons that to question is to be guilty of wicked unbelief. With out considering whether the guide be a seeing man or blind, or the teacher an instructed and qualified instructor, the credulous yield themselves up to priests or leaders, and are misled. Weary of thinking, No. 1,248. 16 they beg others to think for them, and there leave the matter. This is the religion of a great many, and they find much peace in it; the peace of slumbering stupidity. They meet with a church which claims to be venerable for antiquity, and then they believe whatever that church chooses to teach: they consider that they have no right any longer to judge or to use their understandings. They hang conscience and reason in a sling, as if they were broken arms, no longer usable, and give themselves up to be wheeled about like invalids in the chairs of tradition and dogmatism; they do not dare to question; — that would spoil the whole thing; — they shut their eyes and let other people see for them, nay, they shut their eyes to be guided by blind men; they give up thinking, to be directed by those who have also given up thinking, who have long ago shut their eyes and opened their mouths to take in whatever a supreme council or a pope may please to put into them. Between these two extremes there is a narrow path of right, and happy is he who finds it, namely, the honestly and sincerely judging who the leader and teacher should be, the discovery that a leader has been appointed in the person of the Lord Jesus, and a teacher in the divine Spirit, and then a complete, willing and believing submission of the whole man to this infallible guidance. Happy is that man who neither in the pride of intellect determines to be a guide to himself, and so to be guide to a fool; nor in the indolence of superstition surrenders himself up to be guided by his fellow man, call him priest, or pope, or minister, or what you will; but who, having found that God has sent his Son into this world of ours to be the Captain of salvation, who shall bring many sons into glory, follows where his commander leads the way, and having seen this same Jesus appointed to be the prophet of his people, delights to sit at his feet and receive of his words ;. reason, affection, contemplation, and will, all finding perfect rest in him. He with his eyes open follows the All-seeing One, and with his mind illuminated, becomes a disciple of the Eternal Light.

It is clear that the most important thing, if we are agreed that we need a guide, is to examine the claims of those who aspire to the office. Some take a guide because, as I have said before, he is appointed by authority; he happens to be the parson of the parish, or the family minister, and he is at once accepted without consideration. He would be a very foolish person who would in climbing the mountains of Switzerland take a guide merely because he professed to be one, and carried the usual certificates, if upon looking at him it was clear that the man was stone blind. Would you say that does not matter, he says he is appointed by authority? Would you go to the top of Mont Blanc with him? If so, he would soon conduct you into a crevasse, and there would be an end to your folly. Yet multitudes resolve upon taking their religion by prescription, feeling confident that what is patronised by the great, and established and endowed by the nation, must of course be right. Whether the guide can see or not seems to be a trifle, but he must have been properly ordained, and duly inducted; if that be settled, the unthinking many ask no more. For my part, I like to look at my guide’s eyes; I like to know whether he has ever traversed the country, and whether he has had experience of the way; and if he cannot satisfy me on those points I look elsewhere, to one who is all sight, and has had all experience, even the Lord Jesus. Hit authority I cannot question; I take for granted all that he teaches me. I ain glad to be a seeing man following a seeing leader, and I endeavour to be an intelligent scholar learning of a wise and sympathetic teacher.

GUI’ text has., much wisdom about it as to this matter; for, first, it announces to us a great general principle, as a warning, namely, that a disciple does not get above his Master, but becomes like him: secondly, it gives a special application of the great general principle to Christ, that as we are perfected we shall become like him, even as in the case of all other disciples who grow like their masters. After these points, I shall try to use the text for the encouragement of those who desire Christ as their Master, by saying that we may put the fact mentioned in the text to a practical test.

I. Let us take THE GREAT GENERAL PRINCIPLE as a warning.

Several truths are involved in the text, and these all illustrate the main point. It is evident that the disciple is generally drawn to the master wlw is most like himself; — the blind man is led by the blind. It is not merely that birds of a feather flock together, and hence men of kindred minds form association with each other, but there is about us all a natural tendency to admire our own image, and to be willing to submit to any who are superior to us, and yet are of our type. A teacher who does not shock our prejudices, but shows a sympathy with our tastes, we are at home with at once. The priest is like the people because the people are pleased to have him so. It is true of teachers as of idols, “they that make them are like unto them.” If the blind man only could see he would not choose a blind man to be his guide, but as he cannot see he meets with one who talks as blind men talk, who judges things as they are in the dark, and who does not know what sighted men know, and therefore never reminds the blind man of his infirmity, and at once he says, “This is my ideal of a man, he is exactly the leader I require, and I will commit myself to him.” So the blind man takes the blind man to be his guide, and this is the reason why error has been so popular. No error would live if it did not chime in with some evil prospensity of human nature, if it did not gratify some error in man to which it is congruous. Idolatry is a prevailing sin because man is alienated from God who is a Spirit, and in his carnal folly demands a god whom his senses can apprehend. When you hear of crowds going over to Popery do not wonder at it. Popery is the religion of depraved human nature put into shape by the devil, and therefore it is no marvel that the nations are fascinated by it, for what they love and what the god of this world sweetens to their tooth must go down with them. Popery and other forms of sacramentarianism are a soft bed for idle limbs; and as surely as a lazy man lies down, so surely does a superstitious man take to these systems. Give a superstitious man the information contained in the Bible, and a pair of scissorsto cut his coat according to his shape, and Popery in some shape or other will be the religion which he will cut out for himself; consequently it is popular. You cannot at first understand how the blind man who sets up for a guide could expect to find clients; neither would he, only there are so many other blind people about who know nothing about his blindness, and are sure to come to him. Mind you are not so blind yourself as to follow their example. Young man, mind who it is you choose for a guide. Your tendencies will be to select a wrong one, because your tendencies themsel selves are wrong. Pray that you may begin aright the journey of life having grace infused into your hearts, that you may choose the Christ of Gq,d who is ““the way, the truth, and the life.” 0 Lord let no soul here be so blind as to choose blind atheism, blind scepticism, or blind superstition to be his leader, but do thou take the blind by the hand and lead them by a way that they know not and by paths which they have not seen. Do thou these things unto them, and do not forsake them.

Having chosen his tutor, the student gradually becomes more and more like his Master, or, having taken his guide, the tendency is to tread more closely in his footsteps, and obey his rules more fully every day. We must be all conscious that we imitate those whom we admire. Love has a strange influence over our nature, to mould it into the form beloved. A true disciple is like clay on the wheel, and his Master fashions him after his own image. We may be scarcely conscious of it, but we are most surely being conformed to the likeness of those to whose influence we submit ourselves. AVhoever then your Master may be, dear friend, you are changing into his image: if you choose to be led by the votary of pleasure, you will become more and more frivolous; if you admire the slave of avarice, you will become avaricious; if you feel the sway of the minion of vice, you will grow vicious yourself. If a man who despises the word of God becomes your hero, you will ere long despise it too: while you are gazing upon him with admiration, a kind of photography is going on, and you, like a sensitive plate, receive his image. I charge you, therefore, to be careful who becomes your guide.

And mark, the pupil does not go beyond the tutor, nor does the man who submits to be led go beyond his guide. Such a case is very rarely found; indeed, I may say never; for when the one who is led goes beyond his leader, he is not in truth led any longer: rarely enough does it ever come to that. Men, if they outstrip their leaders, generally do so in the wrong direction. They seldom exaggerate their virtues, those they frequently omit, but they usually exaggerate peculiarities, follies /ailings, and faults. It is said that in the court of Richard III., because the king was round-shouldered, the courtiers gradually became humpbacked, and we have seen a whole country idiotic enough, not in the last century, but in this century, to have almost all its women limping because a popular princess was afflicted with a temporary lameness. It is the way of mankind; they imitate each other as if by instinct, and this is the only excuse I know of for Darwin’s theory of our having descended from the ape. Iinitativeness is well developed in us, but if left to itself it works with a bias the wrong way, and the imitation is most forcible in the direction of deformity and defect. In music, and painting, and poetry, and literature, men of a school seldom excel their master, or, if they do, they leave him; but the habit is to perpetuate the master’s mannerisms and weaknesses. It is even more so in the art of living. Young men, in the task of choosing a master for your faith, I beseech you be careful to have none but the best, for you will not excel, but rather fall behind the master you follow. If you are cl loosing a leader, choose one who knows the road, for if he has made some blunders you will make ten times as many, and in all probability you will exaggerate each one of his mistakes.

The most solemn truth remains to be noted. When a man chooses a bad leader for his soul, at the end of all bad leadership Ihere is a ditch. A man teaches error which he declares he has drawn from Scripture, and he backs it up with texts perverted and abused. If you follow that error, and take its teacher for a leader, you may for a time be very pleased with yourself for knowing more than the poor plain people who keep to the good old way; but, mark my word, there is a ditch at the end of the error. You do not see it yet, but there it is, and into it you will fall if you continue to follow your leader. At the end of error there is often a moral ditch, and men go down, down, down, they scarce know why, till presently, having imbibed doctrinal error, their moral principles are poisoned, and like drunken men they find themselves rolling in the mire of sin. At other times the ditch beyond a lesser error may be an altogether damnable doctrine. Thi first mistake was comparatively trifling, but, as it placed the mind on an inclined plane, the man descended almost as a matter of course, and almost before he knew it, found himself given over to a strong delusion to believe a lie. The blind man and his guide, whatever else they miss, will be sure to find the ditch, they need no sight to obtain an abundant entrance into that. Alas! to fall into the ditch is easy, but how shall they be recovered? I would earnestly entreat especially professing Christians, when novelties of doctrine come up, to be very cautious how they give heed to them. I bid you remember the ditch. A small turn of the switch on the railway is the means of taking the train to the far east or to the far west: the first turn is very little indeed, but the points arrived at are remote. There are new errors which have lately come up which your fathers knew not, with which some are mightily busy, and I have noticed when men have fallen into them their usefulness ceased. I have seen ministers go only a little way in speculative theories, and gradually glide from latitudinarianism into Socinianism or Atheism. Into these ditches thousands fall. Others are precipitated into an equally horrible pit, namely, the holding nominally of all the doctrines in theory and none of them in fact. Men hold truths nowadays with the bowels taken out of them, and the very life and meaning torn away. There are members and ministers of evangelical denominations who do not believe evangelical doctrine, or if they do believe it they attach but little importance to it; their sermons are essays on philosophy, tinged with the gospel. They put a quarter cf a grain of gospel into an Atlantic of talk, and poor souls are drenched with words to no profit. God save us from ever leaving the old gospel, or losing its spirit, and the solid comfort which it brings; yet into the ditch of lifeless profession and philosophic dreaming we may soon fall if we commit ourselves to wrong leaderships. All this should prevent us, as I think, from taking any man whatever as our leader, for if we triiet to any mere man, though he may be right in ninety-nine of the hundred, he is wrong somewhere, and our tendency will be to be more influenced by his one wrong point than by any one of his right ones. Depend upon it in matters of religion that ancient malediction is abundantly verified, “Cursed is he that trusteth in man and maketh flesh his arm.” There is one whom you may follow implicitly, and one only. There is one whom you may trust without reserve, and only one, — the man Christ Jesus, the Son of God: but if you do not wish to be led into errors of heart and practice, beware of men, and follow none but Jesus, and no footsteps but the footsteps of that flock which follows at his heel. You will do best not even to follow the

sheep, but to follow the Shepherd only, and to do that even if you walk alone. May the Holy Spirit be given you to lead you into all truth. Thus much upon the great principle; let it act as a warning.

II. ITS SPECIAL. APPLICATION TO OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST is GUI’

encouragement. If we have the Lord Jesus Christ as our leader we certainly cannot go beyond our leader, but we shall be privileged to grow more and more like him, and we shall be perfected according to our text, as our leader is.

First, this is what we might have expected. We see ordinarily, as we have said, that the disciple grows like his Master, but with such a Master the process becomes more sure. With such a Master, of whom these lips cannot speak well enough, a Master the hatchets of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose, it may well come to pass that we are melted down with love and poured out into the mould of obedience. He is the Creator, can he not create in us his image? From such an one as he is we confidently expect it.

For, observe, the teaching itself is such that it must have power ovei hearts that yield to it. His doctrine is almighty love; all his teaching is divine, and yet so broken down to human capacity that it exactly suits the man who has taken the yoke of Christ upon him, and deterniinded to learn of him. Other masters teach us crooked and doubtful lessons, and when learned too often the best wisdom is to unlearn them; but with our Lord the teaching is most sure, most heavenly, rnoso potent, and we feel within ourselves that it is so true, so noble, so grand, that it comes to us with authority, and not as the word of man.

If I knew only what Jesus teaches I should conclude that a teacher who gives forth such doctrines and such precepts must influence his disciples; but it is not in his teaching alone that his influence lies; the most potent charm is himself. When he spake here below they said, ‘* Never man spake like this man,” and the reason was because “never man lived like this man.” His word was with power, but then he him self was THE WORD. If you view the precepts of Christ as embodied in his life they glow with beauty and flash with power. You can bear from such a teacher what you could not have endured from anybody else, for his character gives him a right to speak. Many of his precepts would have seemed perfectly preposterous had they first fallen from the lips of fallible men, for their hearers would have cried out, “Physician, heal thyself.” Coming from him they come naturally as good fruit from a good tree; they are the necessary outgushings of such a nature and such a life. Who can help being persuaded when the arguments live before our eyes? We are overpowered by the grandeur of the Redeemer’s goodness, by the splendour of his love, the infinity of his self-sacrifice. Jesus commands our faith by the revelation of himself, and by that same manifestation he conforms us to himself. Was ever such a life as his? Was ever such a death? Was ever such an altogether lovely person as his? Was ever such perfection as his? In life he was so outspoken and yet so gentle, so courageous and yet so kind, so unflinching and yet so tender, wearing his heart upon his sleeve in the transparency of truth, but prudent and guarding himself with infallible wisdom; a match for all, however they might assail him, and yet apparently never on his guard at all, but as a child among them, the holy child Jesus. Oh, if you sit at Jesus’ feet you will not only learn of him and his teaching will have power over you, but you will learn him, for he himself is his own best lesson. Never did eyes look up into those dear eyes of Jesus, which are “as the eyes of doves by the rivers of water, washed with milk and fitly set,” but they were themselves cleansed and purified till they became 41 like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Beth-rabbim.” Who could bear the Lord Jesus on his heart, like a cluster of myrrh, and not be perfumed by his presence? Who could be with him and not be like him?

We feel quite sure that the disciples will grow like their Master in the case of Jesus, because he inspires them with an intense love to himself, which flames forth in enthusiasm for him. Get a teacher whom all the scholars love and admire, and they will soon learn. Make them enthusiastic for him, and no lesson will be too hard. This our dear and blessed Lord, of whom these lips cannot speak as they should, has done. We admire, we love, nay, we adore him: he is our God, our all in all, and hence we pant to be moulded at his will. Live for him? Yes, we find it to be our joy, for the love of Christ constraineth us. Die for him? Ay, his saints in all ages have rejoiced to lay down their lives for him. Full of fervour, and fired with enthusiasm, they have suffered losses and reproaches for his name’s sake. If the teacher inspires such enthusiasm, doubtless he will fashion the disciples in his likeness.

Best of all, our Great Teacher has a spirit with him, a mighty Spirit, God himself, the Holy Ghost, and when he teaches, he teaches not with words alone, but with a power which goes beyond the ear into the heart itself. Other teachers, except as they follow Christ, must depend upon the charms of eloquence, or the force of argument, but our Lord, though most eloquent of all, for his lips are like lilies dropping sweet-smelling myrrh, though full of arguments, for his is the wjsdorn of God, relies upon the energy which he felt when he said, “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for the Lord hath anointed me.” The divine Spirit casts a light into the soul, of such a brilliance that things not seen stand out in clearest evidence, and things hoped for are grasped in their very substance. With that light there comes also life to feel, power to realise, and discernment to judge, and so the soul is led into all truth, and the scholar receives the lessons of his lord in their life and energy. Who else can give this Spirit? By what other teacher can the Holy Ghost be breathed into us? Who would not sit at the feet of a Master so transcendently above all others in possessing such an infinite gift? I would to God while I am speaking thus, that some here present would ay, “Fain would I commit myself to that great teacher.” Remember.

beloved, if you want him to be your Master, he equally longs for you to be his disciple.

I think I have now shown that it was to be expected that with such a Master the disciple should become like him. Now let me observe that this was virtually promised. It is promised to us in effect in the great decree of predestination, “for whom he did foreknow he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son.” This is the great purpose of God, that Christ may be the first-born among many brethren, and that the brethren may be a company in whose faces the Lord shall discern the image of the Only Begotten. What God pre destinates we may confidently expect.

It is promised to us in the very name of Jesus Christ, for that name is Jesus, “for he shall save his people from their sins.” But saving men from their sins is the bringing of them back into a condition of purity and holiness. This, indeed, is the salvation which we preach, not the mere forgiveness of sin, as some think, but the conquering of sin, the driving out of sin, the making of men like to the Lord Jesus by the Spirit of God. The very name of Jesus tells us that he means to make his disciples free from sin as he is.

We know also that this was our Lord’s object, for the design of Christ’s life is clearly seen in his last prayer when he prayed, “Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through thejbruth.” You can see that his one object is to make his people holy, as he is holy, to keep them from evil even as he was kept, and to make them conquerors over sin even as he conquered. All his life long he laboured at this with the twelve and with others who followed with him, and his last prayer breathes this, “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.” Everywhere this is seen to be true. The relationships which he assumes suppose it, for brethren are like their brother, and friends are like their friend. The metaphors which he uses imply the same thing, for the ingrafted branch drinks in the nature of the stem, the spouse grows like her husband, and the members of the body are of the same nature as the head. The mystical Christ it not like the image of the Babylonian monarch’s dream with head of gold and feet oi clay, but Christ is one throughout, the grace which dwells in the head, transforming the whole body. It is our delightful expectation that “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is,” and then shall we be satisfied, for we shall wake up in his likeness.

Well, brethren, what we might have expected, and what God has thus virtually promised, has been actually seen, for the disciples have been like their Lord, and this is where I want to lay the most stress. Have not the disciples been like their Lord in points of character? It would be very absurd for me to say that the Old Testament saints were disciples of Christ in a literal sense, and yet in spirit they all were so, for the gospel is the same in all ages, and it is the same light which lighteneth every man that cometh into the world. The inner teaching of the Spirit was the same to Abel and to Noah as it was to John and Paul, and while apostles looked back to Jesus and were enlightened, patriarchs looked forward and had light too. Now each of the saints in the olden time had some likeness to the Lord Jesus Christ. Think uf a few of them, and you will see some of his beauties. Abel reveals his righteousness, and Enoch his walking with God. Job shows his patience, and Abraham his faith; Moses his meekness, and Samuel his power of intercession. Daniel is like him in his integrity, and Jeremiah in his weeping. Like drops of morning dew, all these reflected the light of the Sun of Righteousness. In the New Testament we see the transforming power of his teaching in many instances. Peter and John were like their Master, for we read that when their enemies “saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus.” The likeness was so striking that they were obliged to confess it. Take John alone, for a minute, and who can read his epistles without saying, “Even thus his Master spake?” John was far behind his Lord, but yet how marvellously like him! You have smiled at your children sometimes when you have seen your own ways repeated in them. You have beheld your own peculiarities as in a looking-glass. Almost unconsciously they have been yourself in miniature. So was it evidently with John. If it be true, as tradition fiaith, that he was carried into the assembly when he was too old to walk, and was wont to say to them, “Little children, love one another: little children, love one another,” it was so like our Lord Jesus Christ, you might have thought the Master had returned to earth. As for Paul, in many aspects he is the counterpart of his Lord, and as I read that strange passage in Romans which staggers some, where he says, “I could wish myself accursed from Christ for my brethren, according to the flesh,” I am led to say, “Herein he resembles that Blessed One who was actually made a curse for us, as it is written, cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” Now, all the saints of God, more or less, according as they have fully been disciples of Jesus, display his characteristics. I cannot stop this morning to tell you what characteristics I see in you which are like my Lord; I rejoice that I do know brothers and sisters here of whom I have often said to myself, “I can see their Master in them.” I wish I could say so of all of you, but still I am glad to see in so many the points of true likeness to Jesus, the family characteristics which mark all the children of God. There are little touches of their Father in all the heirs of salvation which make us feel that they belong to the same family as Jesus, they could not have learned those ways, they must have been imparted by a birth from above.

It is a very noteworthy thing that those who are disciples of Christ even become like him as to their life-story. Going back to the old saints as being really disciples of the doctrine of the Redeemer, there is Melchizedek bringing forth bread and wine to refresh Abraham — would you not have thought it was Christ himself? There is Isaac gently submitting to his father while he draws the knife to slay him — tould you not have said that it was Jesus? There is Joseph making himself known to his brethren, and ruling all Egypt for their goodmight we not have thought that it was our Lord come on earth before his time to bless his chosen ones? Yonder is David coming back with Goliath’s head, while all the maidens of Israel rejoice around him — could you nofc have thought it was our Lord returning from Edom with dyed garments from Bosra? The saints are types of him because they are of the same type as he is. As for the disciples after Christ came you will often find them in positions which set forth Jesus Christ most evidently. See Stephen boldly declaring the gospel until his enemies stone him. Have you not read of his Master many times, “They would have stoned him, but he conveyed himself out of their sight “? Look at Paul at Lystra. They are about to sacrifice to him: it makes you think of days when the crowd cried “Hosanna, Hosanna.” Lo, the apostle rebukes the throng, and now they are stoning him, and it recalls to your memory the time when the crowd shouted, “Crucify him, crucify him; away with such a fellow from the earth.” Kead the story of Paul in the shipwreck, when he says to the captain of the ship, and to the officer of the troops, “Be of good cheer, for there shall be no loss of any man’s life among you.” You might almost have thought it was the Saviour himself saying to the winds and waves, “Peace, be still,” there was so much of his Master in him. Indeed Christ is in all his members; his life is written out again in their lives. Beloved, I could mention many saints of modern times in whose lives we may see Jesus. That poor woman who dropped into the treasury her two mites, which were all her living; is she not very like to him who gave up all for us, and became poor that we through his poverty might be rich. Others are like to the woman who brake the alabaster box of precious ointment, to give their best things to her Lord. Do they not remind you of the lover of our souls, who brake the precious alabaster box of his body and filled all earth and heaven with the perfume? Everyone who gives up self for God’s glory is Jesus in miniature. Look at John Howard going about among the dungeons of Europe, spying out poor prisoners to do them good. Is not that Christ over again, with glad tidings for the captives? Or John Williams landing at Erromanga, with his life in his hand, to convert cannibals; was not that laying down his life for the sheep? Now, dear friend, do you think if we had your life before us we could make out anything like Jesus Christ in it? If you are his disciple it will be so. There will be in your biography as your children will read it — for they will read it better than anybody else — as your wife will read it, as those you work with will read it, some thing which looks as if it were extracted from the life of Jesus. Students in Christ’s college must be like their Tutor, and they are. I dare say the brother is present here of whom I am about to speak, and if so he will be sorry to hear me tell the story, and would stop my mouth if he could; I will, however, make bold to go on. I know a house painter who was working with other men over the top of the Great Northern Kail way, at a great height. One of his fellow work men had been drinking very heavily, and was unsteady on the lofty scaffold.

He said to himself, “That man will never get down alive,” and rather than he should perish he actually offered to carry him down on his back. I believe it would have been death to them both if the attempt had been made, but he cheerfully offered. He said, “My soul is safe; I am a Christian; I am afraid you will be killed, and if you are your soul will be lost. I will carry you down if you will only keep quiet.” The man rejected the kind offer, though persuaded again and again, and alas, in trying to descend he fell into the middle of the railway, from a dreadful height, and was taken up dead. When I heard of my good brother, a humble member of the church doing that, I thought, “There is our Master, revealed in his disciple.” Our life is a painting, and if we are in Christ’s studio there will be traces of his hand, and men will exclaim that was no common painter; that stroke, that line, is just the line that the great Master used to make; I am sure he has put in those touches.” 0 brethren, we need none of us wish to be originals; let us piagarise Christ, and that will be the grandest originality. God help us in this.

Now I was going to say, but time has fled, that Christ’s disciples grow like him in their struggles and in their temptations. They are met by Satan as Christ was, they are tried by the world as Christ was, they are assailed by Sadducean unbelief and Pharisaic superstition as Christ was, they have to go through the same fight, and, blessed be God, they win the same victories. Christ’s disciples overcome sin; by their Master’s help they rise above doubt, they vanquish the world, and they stand in purity and faith. By-and-by they shall be like him in their rewards. “To him that overcometh,” saith he, u will I give to sit upon my throne, even as I have overcome and have sat down with my Father upon his throne.”

It is a beautiful subject, if I had the power to work it out, the way in which the disciple of Jesus thus by sure steps becomes perfected into the image of Christ, till the likeness is so near and so close that even the blear eyes of this wicked world in the dim atmosphere of its ignorance cannot help seeing that the man is like the Master.

III. Now, lastly, we will dwell for two or three minutes upon this encouraging fact, that WE MAY PUT ALL THIS TO THE TEST this morning if we will. Brethren and sisters, if you are not disciples of Jesus Christ, remember he will receive you. He will receive you though you have been to other masters, and learned a great deal under them, all of which you will have to unlearn. It is a very easy thing to take a man and teach him if his mind is clear and clean, but you have learned a great deal that you will have to forget. 0 you of forty, fifty, or sixty, what a world of mischief there is in you that will have to come out. Well, my Master will take you for pupils, though you have been with other masters all this while; and, though you do not know even the rudiments of what he is going to teach, he will take you. My Lord Jesus keeps an A B C school; he begins with the infants. What a mercy it is that he takes such poor, stupid heads as ours, who know nothing except what we ought not to know. And I will add, if you have but very little capacity, or none at all, it does not matter.

“He takes the fool, and makes him know
The wonders of his dying love.”

Not many great men, not many mighty are chosen; but God has chosen the poor of this world, and things that are not, and things that are despised, yea, and weak things and foolish things, has God chosen. Come to him, for if you are incapable, he is not, and his capacity will soon overcome your incapacity. You say, “I cannot learn.” Ah, but you do not know how well he can teach, for he can teach so well that even those who think they cannot learn are soon instructed in his school. Stand not back, dear friend, because you cannot pay the fee, for iny Master’s is a free school; he takes nothing from us, but he gives everything to us. The only admission ticket that you want is simply to be willing to be taught, to be conscious that you need teaching and guiding, and to submit yourself to his guidance and instruction. Are you willing so to do? “Oh,” say you, “I shall grieve him till he gives me up.” Well, I have often thought so. I do not wonder that you are troubled with that thought; it has often come across me when I see what little progress I have made after being so many years in his school. If I had any human master he would have been out of patience with me long ago, but the Lord Jesus Christ never gives up a scholar; having once commenced to teach, he continues his divine lessons till they are fully learned, and the more difficult it is for him to teach the more honour it will be when he gets all his scholars educated for the skies. He will not brook a defeat in this matter; he will overcome ignorance, and sin, and hardness of heart, and infirmity, and incapacity, till he shall have instructed us in the lore of heaven, and made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. Come, dear brethren and sisters, you that are scholars of Christ, let us sit at his feet, let us follow in his ways more closely than ever. And you, dear friends, who as yet are not in his school, he says to you, “Whoso is simple let him turn in hither; as for him that wanteth understanding let him eat of my bread and drink of the wine which I have mingled.” May the good Lord incline your hearts to learn of him, for Christ’s sake. Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON — Luke vi. 20 — 40.

HYMNS FROM “OUR OWN HYMN BOOK” — 852,262,705.

JJlrtropItot (ftabtrmirie fjulgit.

BANKRUPT DEBTORS DISCHARGED.

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DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 16TH, ISs.’i, BY AT THE MKTROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINQTON.

“And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both.” — Luke vii. 42.

THE two debtors differed very considerably in the amounts which they owed: the one was in arrears five hundred pence, and the other fifty. There are differences in the guilt of sins, and in the degrees of men’s criminality. It would be a very unfair and unrighteous thing to say that all men are exactly alike in the extent of their transgression. Some are honest and upright, kind and generous, even though they be but natural men: while others appear to be of a malicious, envious, selfish disposition, and rush into evil, sinning, as it were, with both hands greedily. The man who is moral, sober, and industrious is only a fifty pence debtor as compared with the vicious, drunken blasphemer whose debt is written at five hundred pence. Our Saviour recognizes the distinction, because it exists and cannot justly be overlooked. There are distinctions among unconverted men, very great distinctions. One of them, a young man, came to Jesus, and he had so many fine traits in his character that the Lord looking upon him loved him; whereas when t.he Pharisees gathered about him our Lord looked round upon them with indignation. The soil, which was none of it yet sown with the good seed, yet varied greatly, and some of it was honest and good ground before the sower came to it. Sinners differ from each other.

But I call your particular notice to this fact — that though there was one point of difference in the two debtors, there were three points of similarity; for they were both debtors: and so ail men have sinned, be it little or be it much: and, secondly, they were both alike bankrupt, neither of them could meet his debt; the man who owed fifty pence could no more pay than he who owed five hundred pence, so that they were both insolvent debtors. But what a mercy it is that they were alike in a third point! for “when they had nothing to pay,” their creditor “frankly forgave them both.”

Oh, my dear hearers, we are all alike in the first two things! Oh

that we might be all of us alike in this last point, that the Lord our God

may grant to every one of us the free remission of sins according to the

riches of his grace through Christ .Jesus! Why should it uut lxp o,

No. 1,739 17 since Jesus is exalted on high to give repentance and remission of sins? There is forgiveness with God. He delighteth in mercy. He can cast all our sins into the depths of the sea, that they may not be mentioned against us any more for ever. While we are compelled to go together two-thirds of the road, what a pity it would be that we should be divided in the third portion of it! That first two-thirds of the road is a very muddy, boggy piece of way, and we sorrowfully wade along it in company, — all in debt and all of us unable to pay; but that next part of the road is well-made, smooth, and good for travellers, and it leads into the gardens of felicity. Oh that we may traverse it, and find the free pardon of God! Oh for free remission for all of us without exception I Why not? God send it of his great mercy at this good hour! To that end I wish to speak with you, dear friends; for I believe that the Lord Jesus has somewhat to say unto you, and I pray that your hearts may be open to him, crying gladly, “Master, say on!”

Our first point for consideration is, their bankruptcy — “they had nothing to pay”; the second is, their free discharge — “he frankly forgave them both”; and the third is, the connection between these two things: for that little word “when” marks the connection — “when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both.”

I. First, let us think of THEIR BANKRUPTCY. This was their condition. They were unquestionably in debt. If they could have disputed the creditor’s claim, no doubt they would have done so. If they could have pleaded that they were never indebted, or that they had already paid, no doubt they would have been glad to have done so; but they could not raise a question; their debt could not be denied. Another fact was also clear to them, namely, that they had nothing to pay with. No doubt they had made diligent search; they had turned out their pockets, their cash-boxes, and their lockers, and they had found nothing; they had looked for their household goods, but these had vanished piece by piece. They had nothing at home or abroad that they could dispose of. Things had come to such a pass with them that they had neither stock nor money, nor anything in prospect which they could draw upon: they were brought to the last extremity, reduced to absolute beggary. Meanwhile, their great creditor was pressing them for settlement. That idea lies in the heart of the text. The creditor had evidently brought his over-due accounts, and had said to them, “These claims must be met. There must be an end to this state of affairs; your accounts mast be discharged.” They were just brought to this condition — they must confess the debt, and they must also humbly acknowledge that they had nothing to meet it with: the time for payment had come, and it found them without a penny. No condition could be much more wretched.

So far I have stated the parable, and it most truly sets forth the condition of every man who has not come to Jesus Onrist and so received the frank forgiveness of his sins. Upon this we will enlarge. We are all by nature and by practice plunged in debt, and this is the way in which we came to be so. Hear it and mark it well. As God’s creatures we from the very first owed to him the debt of obedience. We were bound to obey our Maker. It is he that made us, and not we ourselves; and we we.re. therefore, bound reverently to recognize our Creator, affect ion ately to worship him, tmd dutifully to serve him. This is an obligation so natural and reasonable that nobody can dispute it. If you are the creatures of God, it is nothing more than right that you should honour him. If you receive daily the breath in your nostrils and the food that you eat from him, then you are bound to him by the ties of gratitude, and should do his will.

But, dear friends, we have not done his will. We have left undone the things we ought to have done, and we have done the things we ought not to have done, and so we have come in a second sense into hisdebt. We now stand liable to penalty, yea, we are condemned already. There is due from us to God, in vindication of his broken law, both suffering and death; and in the word of God we find that the righteous penalty for sin is something utterly overwhelming. “Fear him,” saith Christ, “which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Yea, I say unto you, fear him! Very terrible are the metaphors and symbols by which the Holy Spirit sets forth the misery of a soul upon which the Lord pours forth his fiery indignation. The pain of loss and pain of woe which sin at last brings upon guilty men are inconceivable: they are called “the terrors of the Lord.” There is not one among us, apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, but what owes to God’s law a debt which eternity cannot fully meet, even though it be crowded with agonizing regrets. A life of forgetfulness of God and breaking of his law must be recompensed by a future life of punishment. That is where we stand: can any man be at rest while this is his condition before God? We are debtors: the debt is overwhelming; it brings with it consequences tremendous to the last degree.

And we are utterly unable to make any amends for this. If he should meet with us and call us to account we cannot answer him one of a thousand. We cannot excuse ourselves, and we cannot by any possibility render to him his righteous due. If any think they can, let me remind them of this, that to cancel the debt which we owe to God we must pay it all. God demands, righteously demands, from us thfr keeping of his entire law. He tells us that he that is guilty in onepoint is guilty of all: for God’s law is like a fair vase of alabaster, lovely in its entireness; but if it be chipped in any part, it may not be presented in his court; the least flaw in it mars its perfection and destroys its value. A perfect obedience to a perfect law is that which is required by the justice of the Most High; and is there any one of us who can render it, or who can attempt to pay the penalty due for not rendering it? Our inability to obey comes of our own fault, and i» part of our crime. Ah me! may none of us ever have to bear the penalty! To be banished from his presence, and from tho glory of his power! to be cast away from all hope and light and joy for ever! Why,, there are those at this moment in the abyss of woe who have for thou« sands of years endured the heavy hand of justice, and yet their debt remains undischarged even now; for they have yet to appear before the judgment-seat of Christ at the last day and answer for their transgressions. It is certain that to meet the whole payment is impossible; neither in the form of obedience, nor in the form of penalty, may we ever hope to meet it — it would be all in vain to make the attempt.

Remember, too, that if there is anything that we can do for God ID the way of obedience it is already due to him. All that T can do if I love God with all my heart and soul and strength, and my neighbour as myself, throughout the rest of my life, is already due to God: I shall but be discharging new duties as they occur — how will this affect old disobediences? In what way can I cleanse myself from my former stains by the resolve that I will not be defiled with fresh ones? If your hand be blood red can you make it clean by the mere resolution that you will not plunge it again into the dye? You know it is not so: past sin cannot be removed by future carefulness.” Could my tears for ever flow,

Could my zeal no respite know,

All for sin could not atone;

Christ must save, and Christ alone.”

We have nothing with which to meet our liabilities because everything that we can possibly earn or obtain in the future is already due to justice, and so we have nothing left unmortgaged, nothing of our own.

Moreover, the debt is immense and incalculable! Fifty pence is but a poor representation of what the most righteous person owes; five hundred pence is but an insignificant sum compared with the transgressions of the greater offenders. Oh, friends, when I think of my life it seems to be like the sea, made up of innumerable waves of sin; or like the sea-shore, constituted of sands, that cannot be weighed nor counted. My faults are utterly innumerable, and each one deserving death eternal. Our sins, our heavy sins, sins against light and know ledge, our foul sins, our repeated sins, our aggravated sins, our sins against our parents, our sins against all our relationships, our sins against our God, our sins with the body, our sins with the mind, our sins of forgetfulness, our sins of thought, our sins of imagination — who can reckon them up in order unto God? Who knoweth the number of his trespasses? Now, to think that we can ever meet such a debt is indeed to bolster up ourselves with a notion thac is utterly absurd: — we have nothing to pay.

Moreover, I go a little further. Even if these sins were somewhat within compass, and if we were not indebted for the future as to all we even can do, yet what is there that we can do? Does not Paul say of himself that he was not sufficient to think anything of himself? Did not the Lord tell his Israel of old, “From me is thy fruit found “? Did not Jesus say to his disciples and even to his apostles, “Without me ye can do nothing “? Then, 0 bankrupt sinner, what is there good that you can do of yourself? You must first of all get the good work from God before you can perform it yourself. It is true you are to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”; but what must come first? Read the passage, “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” If the Lord does not work salvation in us, we cannot work it out. Every good thing in man is the work of God, the produce of the Spirit of God operating upon the heart and mind. Men are dead in trespasses and sins, dead to all that is holy and acceptable with God, and life itself is a gift. What then can sinners do? Their bankruptcy is utter and entire; and this is true of every man that is still out of Christ — he is a debtor, and he has nothing to pa/,

This being the case, I want to spend a minute in noticing certain temptations to which all bankrupt sinners are much subject. One of these is to try and forget their spiritual estate altogether. Some of you here to-day have never given serious thought to your souls and to your condition before God. It is an unpleasant subject. You suspect that it would be still more unpleasant if you looked into it. You want amusement, something to while away the time, because you do not care to examine into the state of your heart before God. Solomon exhorts the diligent man to know the state of his flocks, and look well to his herds; but he that is careless and idle would rather leave such enquiries, and let things go as they please. The man who is going backward in business has no pleasure in stock-taking. “Oh,” says he, “don’t bring me my books; I shall not sleep at nights if I look into them.” He knows that he is sinking lower and lower, and will soon be a ruined man; and the only way in which he can endure his life is to drive dull care away by drink, or by going into company, or idle amusement. He labours to beguile the hours that he may conceal from himself his true condition. But what a fool he is! Would it not be infinitely wiser if he would look the thing in the face and have it out, and know his actual state? Such ignorance as he chooses is not bliss to a right-hearted man, but suspense and misery. I have often prayed this prayer — “Lord, let me know the very worst of my case,” for I do not wish to entertain a hope that will at last deceive me. Disappointment will be bitter in proportion as false hope was sweet. This is the temptation of the bankrupt soul, to shut its eyes to unwelcome truth. The ostrich is fabled when hunted to bury its head in the sand, and conceive that the huntsman is gone when he is no longer seen. But he is not gone: the unseen danger is quite as real as if it stared us in the face. However forgetful you may be, God does not forget your sins.

Another temptation to a man in this condition is to make as good a show as he can. A man who is very near bankruptcy is often noticed fur the dash he cuts. What a horse he drives as he comes up to business! What fashionable parties he gives! Just so, he desires to keep up his credit as long as ever he can. He is going to make a smash of it by-and-by, but for a season he assumes the airs of my lord, and everybody near him imagines that he has money enough and to spare. The governor of a besieged city threw loaves of bread over the wall to the besiegers, to make them believe that the citizens had such large supplies that they could afford to throw them away; yet they were starving all the while. There are some men of like manners; they have nothing that they can offer unto God, but yet they exhibit a glittering self-righteousness. Oh, they have been so good, such superior people, so praiseworthy from their youth up; they never did anything much amiss; there may be a little speck here and there upon their garments, but that will brush off when it is dry. They make a fair show in the flesh with morality and formality, and a smattering of generosity. Besides, they profess to be religious: they attend divine service, and pay their quota of the expenses. Who could find any fault with such good people? Just BO; this profession is the fine horse and trap with which they too are cutting a dash just before going through the court. There ia nothing at all in you, and there never was, il you are as nature has made you; wherefore then do you try to brazen it out, and make yourself to seem somewhat when you are nothing. You may by this means deceire yourself, but certainly you will not deceive (rod.

Another temptation which lurks in the way of a bankrupt sinner is that of making promises of what he will do. Men in debt are generally Tery promising men; they will pay next week for certain; but when that next week comes, they meant the next week further on, and then payment shall be doubly certain; yet they pat in no appearance even then, or, if they do, they give a bill. Is not that a precious document? is it not as good as the money itself? They evidently think so, for they feel quite as easy as if they had really paid that debt. But when the bill falls due, what then? It falls, never to rise again. Ah me! a bill is often just a lie with a stamp on it. So will debtors go on as long as they can. This is what every sinner does before he becomes cleared by the sovereign grace of God. He cries, “I mean to do better.” Never mind; tell us no more what you mean to do, but do it. To promise and vow so falsely is only adding to your sins! “Oh! but you know I do not intend to go on in this way always. It is a long lane that has no turning. I shall pull up short one of these days, and then you will see.” What shall we see? What we shall see; and that will not be much. Yes. We shall see the dew of promise disappear, and the morning cloud of resolution pass away. Dear sir, you cannot raise our hopes now. Neither God nor man will trust you; you have promised these twenty years, and in no one year have you made a real move in the right direction. You have not lied unto men only, but unto God, and how will you answer for it? Know you not that every promise that you make to God which you do not keep is a great addition to your transgressions, and helps to fill up the measure of your iniquities? Give up the way of lying, I pray you.

Another temptation is, always to ask for more time — as if this was all that was needed. When the debtor, in another parable, was arrested, he said to his creditor, “Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.” We cannot pay any of our debt to-day, and yet dote upon to morrow. Yes, it does seem such a relief to get a little longer time; somehow a vague shadowy hope seems to pervade the months to come. The sinner cries, “Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.” It is not convenient just now, but do wait a little bit, a suitable hour will come. With this temptation Satan has destroyed multitudes of men, tempting them to ask for more time, instead of coming up to the mark at once and asking for immediate pardon. What are the fabled virtues of to-morrow? Why do men dote upon the unknown future? To immediate decision I would press you at this moment; and may God by his divine Spirit deliver you as a bird from the hand of the fowler, that you may no longer procrastinate and waste your life in disobedient delay.

This being the temptation, let me hint to those of you who are bankrupt what your wisdom is. It is your wisdom to face the business of your soul. Your soul-matters are the most important things you will ever have on hand, for when your wealth must be left, and your estate shall see you no more, and when your body is dead, your soul will still be living in eternal happiness or endless woe; therefore, do not let your gtate in reference to God have the go-by. It is the most important matter; give it the first place. Settle this business before you attend to anything else.

Take care that you face it, like an honest man, and not as one who makes the best of a bad story. Though it be bad, yet still the best thing you can do is to go right through with it in truth and soberness before the Lord. Hope lies that way. Do not let your danger be concealed like a thief who hides in the good man’s cupboard till the hour to rob his house. Suffer not the sparks to smoulder where they may consume your all. Quench the fire before you sleep. When you face the matter, be very true and sincere with yourself and with God; because you are not now dealing with creditors who may be cheated, but you are dealing with One who knows the secret thoughts and intents of your heart. Before God nothing but truth can stand; the painted hypocrite is spied out immediately. The Lord takes off all masks, and men stand before him as they really are, and not as they would seem to be; so be true with yourself. Do not take your pen and write down sixty if you owe a hundred; but put the fair hundred down. Tricks and falsehoods had better be put away once for all when you deal with God.

One thing more: it will be your wisdom to give up all attempts to pay, because you have nothing to pay with. Do not delude yourself into the idea that you will pay one day, for you never will Do not make the slightest attempt at paying, for you cannot do it; but take quite another course, plead absolute poverty, and appeal to mercy. Say, “Lord, I have nothing, I am nothing, I can do nothing. I must throw myself upon thy grace.” Of this grace I am now going to speak. May I so speak as to encourage you who are bankrupts to corne to the Lord, that he may frankly forgive you all.

II. Our second head is, THEIR FREE DISCHARGE. “He frankly forgave them both.” What a blessing they obtained by facing the matter! These two poor debtors, when they went into the office, were trembling from head to foot, for they had nothing to pay, and were deeply involved; but see! they come out with light hearts, for the debt is all disposed of, the bills are receipted, the records are destroyed, Even thus the Lord has blotted out the handwriting that was against us, and has taken it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.

In this free discharge I admire, first of all, the goodness of the great creditor. What a gracious heart he had! What kindness he showed! He said, “Poor souls, you can never pay me, but you need not be cast clown because of it, for I freely cancel your debts.” Oh, the goodness of it! Oh, the largeness of the heart of God! I was reading of Caesar the other day. He had been at fierce war with Pornpey, and at last he conquered him, and when he conquered him he found among the spoil Pompey’s private cabinet, in which were contained letters from the various noblemen and senators of Rome who had sided with him. In many a letter there was fatal evidence against the most eminent Romans, but what did Caesar do? He destroyed every document. He would have no knowledge of his enemies, for he freely forgave them and wished to know no more. In this Caesar proved that he was fit to govern the nation. But look at the splendour of God when he puts all our sins into one cabinet, and then destroys the whole. If the sins of his people be sought for they cannot now be found. He will never mention them against us any more for ever. Oh, the goodness of the infinite God, whose mercy endureth for ever! Bow before that goodness with joy.

Bat, then, observe the freeness of it — “He frankly forgave them both.” They did not stand there and say, •’ Oh, good sir, we cannot pay,” and plead and beg, as for their lives; but he freely said to them, “You cannot pay, but I can forgive. You ought never to have got into my debt, and you ought not to have broken your promises to me; but behold, I make an end of all this weary business: I freely blot out all your obligations!” Did not this open a fountain in their eyes? Did they not hasten home to their wives and children, and tell them th,at they were out of debt, for the beloved creditor had forgiven it all most freely? This is a fair picture of the grace of God. When a poor sinner comes to him bankrupt, he says, “I forgive you freely: your oifence is all gone. I do not want you to earn a pardon by your tears, and prayers, and anguish of soul. You have not to make me merciful, for I am merciful already; and my dear Son Jesus Christ has made such a propitiation that I can be just and yet can forgive you all this debt. Therefore, go in peace.”

Furthermore, this debt was fully discharged.. Tha creditor did nob say, “Come, my good fellow, I will take fifty per cent, off the account if you find the remainder.” As they had nothing wherewith to pay, they would not have been a bit the better if he had reduced them ninety per cent. If he had taken half the debt, the one would have owed two hundred and fifty and the other twenty-five; but still their case would have been hopeless, since they had not a farthing of their own. Now the Lord, when he blots out his people’s sin, leaves no trace of it remaining. My own persuasion is that when our Lord Jesus died upon the cross he made an end of all the sins of all his people, and made full and effectual atonement for the whole of those who ever shall believe in him. I can sing with all my heart —

4* Here’s pardon for transgressions past,

It matters not how black their cast;

And, O my soul, with wonder view,

For sins to come here’s pardon too! °

All the sin of believers has been once for all carried into the wilderness of oblivion by our great Scapegoat, and none shall ever find a sin wherewith to condemn one soul of the chosen band. There is no debt left against a believer: no, not one single pennyworth of debt remains upon the score. Does not the Spirit of God himself ask the question, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” The Lord has frankly forgiven their debt, and he has not done so in part, but as a whole. As for our sins, “the depths have covered them;” “there is not one of them left.” Hallelujah!

Observe that it was a very effectual forgiveness too. The only person that can forgive a debt is he to whom the debt is due. God only can forgive sin, seeing it is a debt to him. What think you of those folk who are said to be able to forgive you for a shilling? Why, I say that to pay them their fee would be elevenpence three farthings and another farthing thrown away. When you have got their forgiveness what is the good of it? Suppose I were to forgive you for injuries done by you to the Queen, of what value would my forgiveness be? He against whom I have transgressed is the only one that can pronounce my pardon; but if he absolves me, how effectual is the sentence! When the creditor said, “I freely forgive you both,” why, the deed was done: his lips had power, he had finished the debt by his word. And so when the Lord Jesus Christ is looked unto by the eye of faith, there comes a voice from his dear wounds which cries to the poor trembling bankrupt sinner, “Your sins, which are many, are all forgiven. I have blotted out your sins like a cloud, and like a thick cloud your iniquities.” What an effectual pardon it is! How it charms the heart, and lulls every fear to rest! He frankly, he fully, he freely, he effectually forgave them both.

And I believe that when this is done, I may add another adjective — it is an eternal discharge. That creditor could never summon those debtors again for debts which he had remitted. He could never think of such a thing with any show of justice. He had frankly forgiven them, and they were forgiven. God does not play fast and loose with his creatures, and forgive them and then punish them. I never shall believe in God’s loving a man to-day, and casting him away to-morrow. The gifts and calling of God are without repentance on his part. Justification is not an act which can be reversed, and followed with damnation. No; no; “whom he justified, them he also glorified.” “If sin be pardoned I’m secure,

Death has no sling beside;
The law gave sin its damning power,

But Christ my ransom died.”

By his death our Redeemer effectually swept away sin once for all, and all the curse of the law he removed. In the offering of bullocks and lambs there was a continual remembrance made of sin, for the blood of bulls and of goats could not take away sin; but the apostle writes, “This Man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God,” because his work was effectually and eternally done.

Only one more remark on this point: this frank forgiveness applied to loth the debtors — “he frankly forgave them both.” The man that owed only fifty pence needed a free discharge as truly as the debtor who owed five hundred; for though he was not so deep in the mire, yet he was as truly in the slough. If a man was lying in prison for debt, as men used to do under our old laws, if he only owed fifty pounds he was shut within walls just as closely as the greater debtor who owed fifty thousand; and he could no more get out without the payment or forgiveness of his smaller liability than the bigger debtor could. A bird held by a string is as much a prisoner as a bull that is tied by rope. Now, you good people who have always tried to do your duty, and are numbered with the fifty pence debtors, you must confess that you have become somewhat indebted to God by committing a measure of sins. Take note that you cannot be saved except by the free forgiveness of God through the precious blood of Christ. The fifty pence debtor must obtain his discharge by grace alone. It is also a most blessed thing to perceive that he forgave the five hundred pence debtor with equal freeueaft. Perhaps I have some here, men and women, who have never made any pretence of being good, who from their childhood have gone from bad to worse. There is a possibility of free and instantaneous forgiveness for you at this moment. You that are over head and ears in debt to God can be freely forgiven by the same Lord who forgives the smaller debtors. When a man has his pen in his hand, and is writing receipts, it takes him no morp, trouble to write a receipt for five hundred pounds than it does for a bill of fifty — the same signature will suffice: and when the Lord has the pen of his Spirit in his hand, and he is about to write upon a conscience the peace which comes of reconciliation, he can write upon one as well as upon another. Ho, you with a little bill, bring it here that infinite grace may write upon it “CANCELLED!” Ho, you with a more weighty account, come and place it near that gracious right hand, for though your bill be never so long and heavy, the hand of Infinite Love can write “CANCELLED” in a moment! My joy overflows at having such a gospel to preach to you: whatever your guilt, my gracious God is ready to forgive you for Jesus’ sake, because he delighteth in mercy.

III. I now beg your very special attention to the last point, and

that is THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THIS BANKRUPTCY AND THIS FREE

DISCHARGE. It is said “When they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both.” There is a time when pardon comes, and that time is when self-sufficiency goes. If any person in this place has in his own conscience come to this point, that he feels he has nothing to pay, he has come to the point at which God is ready to forgive him. He that will own his debt, and confess his own incapacity to meet it, shall find that God frankly blots it out. The Lord will never forgive us until we are brought to the starvation of pride and the death of boasting. A sense of spiritual bankruptcy shows that a man has become thoughtful; and this is essential to salvation. How can we believe a thoughtless person to be a saved man? If we so think about our state as to mourn our sin and feel its wickedness, and if we have made a close search into our hearts and lives, and find that we have no merit and no might, then are we prepared in all thoughtfulness to say, “In the Lord have I righteousness and strength.” Must there not be serious thought before we can hope for mercy? Would you have God save us while we are asleep, while we are giddy, frivolous, trifling, and without concern about our sin? Surely that would be giving a premium to folly! God acts not so. He will have us know the seriousness of our danger, for else we shall treat the whole matter with lightness; and we shall miss the moral effect of pardon, while he will be robbed of his glory.

Next, when we come to feel our bankruptcy we then make an honest confession, and to that confession a promise is given — “he that confesseth his sin shall find mercy.” The two debtors had owned to their debts, and they had also openly confessed, though it must have gone against the grain a bit, that they could not pay. They humbled themselves before their creditor, and then he said, “1 frankly forgive you.” If one of these debtors had bounced and bragged, “Oh, we can pay; “in all probability ho would have been sent to prison. As for you, poor trembler, I do noi know where you are this morning, but here is comfort for you: when you go unto God in your chamber and cry, w Lord, have mercy upon me, for I am guilty, and I cannot justify myself before thee, nor offer any excuse to thee:” then it is that he will say, “Be of good cheer; I have put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.” When you have nothing to pay arid confess your insolvency, the debt shall be wiped out. When you are brought to your worst, you shall see the Lord at his best.

It is in their utter destitution that men value a discharge. If God were to give his mercy to every man at once, without his ever having had any sense of sin at all, why men would count it cheap and think nothing of it. “God is merciful,” is a common saying everywhere; and it is such a bit of valueless talk with them, that they let it roll glibly out as if it were no mutter. They do not worship him for his mercy or serve him for his grace. They say, “Oh, God is merciful,” and then they go on to sin worse than ever; the idea has no effect upon their hearts or lives; they have no esteem for that mercy of which they speak BO freely. So the Lord takes care that the sinner shall know his need of mercy by feeling the pinch of conscience and the terror of the law. If I may so speak, he puts in the sheriff’s officer, and makes a distraint upon the soul by convincing the man of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. The Lord puts an execution into the heart, and then it is, when the poor creature cries, “I have nothing to pay with,” that free discharge is given by the Lord, and heartily prized by him to whom it comes. When our account is long and heavy, it is a blessed thing to see the Lord write “Cancelled,” and to behold the whole mountain of debt swallowed up in the sea of love. Christ is precious when sin is bitter. Is it not wise on God’s part that the cancelling of the debt shall come just when we have nothing to pay, and therefore are prepared to prize a free forgiveness?

Under conviction a poor soul sees the reality of sin and of pardon. My dear hearer, you will never believe in the reality of forgiveness till you have felt the reality of sin. I remember when I felt the burden of sin, and though but a child, my heart failed me for anguish, and I was brought very low. Sin was no bugbear to scare me; it was a grim reality; as a lion it tore me in pieces. And now, to-day, I know the reality of pardon: it is no fancy, no dream, for my inmost soul feels its power. I know that my sins are forgiven, and I rejoice therein; but I should never have known the real truth of this happy condition if I had not felt the oppressive load of sin upon the conscience. I could not afford to play at conversion, for sin was an awful fact in my soul. Our heavenly Father does not wish us to use lightness in a matter concerning which Jesus shed his blood, and so he brings us into trouble of soul, and afterwards into a vivid realization of free grace. He lets the whip fall on our shoulders until we bleed again, and this makes us weary of the slavery of sin. He sets conscience and the law upon us, and these two gaolers thrust us into the inner dungeon, and make our feet fast in the stocks. All this prepares us for the delivering power which shakes the prison walls, and looses our bonds, and for the tender love which washes our stripes and sets meat before us.

1 do believe that the Lord will give us our quittance when we have got to our last farthing, and not till then, because only then do WB took to the Lord Jesus Christ. Ah, my dear friends, as lon«- as we have anything else to look to, we never will look to Christ. That blessed port into which no ship did ever run in a storm without finding a sure haven is shunned by all your gallant vessels: they will rather put into any port along the coast of self-deceit than make for the harbour which is marked out by the two lighthouses of free-grace and dying love. As long as a man can scrape the meal-barrel and find a little in it, as long as he can hold up the oil-cruse, and it drips, if it only yields a drop in a week, he will never come to Christ for heavenly provision. As long as he has one rtisty counterfeit farthing hidden away in the corner of his till, the sinner will never accept the riches of redeeming love; but when it is all up with him, when he has nothing in the parlour, nothing in the kitchen, nothing in the cellar, when there is neither stick nor stock left, then he prizes Jesus and his salvation. We break to make. We are emptied to be filled. When we cannot give, God can forgive. If any of you have any goodness of your own you will perish for ever. If you have anything you can trust to of your own you will be lost as sure as you are living men and women; but if you are reduced to sore extremity, and God’s tierce wrath seems to burn’ against you, then not only may you have mercy, but mercy is yours already.

“*Tis perfect poverty alone

That sets the soul at large;
While we can call one mite our own
We get no full discharge.

But let our debts be what they may,

However great or small,
As soon as we have nought to pay

Our Lord forgives us all.”

Blessed are ye poor, for ye shall be rich! Blessed are ye hungry, for ye shall be fed! Blessed are ye that are empty, for ye shall be filled! But woe unto you that are rich and are increased in goods, and have need of nothing, and boast of your own goodness! Christ has nothing to do with you, and we have nothing to preach to you except this — “They that be whole need not a physician.” The heavenly Surgeon did not oome to save those who have no need of saving. Let those who are sick prick up their ears and hear with delight, for the Physician is come with a special eye to them. Are you a sinner? Then Christ is the Saviour of sinners. Join hands with him by faith, and the work is done: you are saved for ever 1 God bless you, for Christ’s sake. Amen.