A Visit to Calvary
“And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man I” — John, xix. E
It had been insinuated against Pilate, that he was in league With Jesus Christ to set up a new monarchy in opposition to that of CiTesar. In order to refute that accusation, Pilate orders Jesus to be scourged. The soldiers put upon his head a crown of thorns; they spit upon him; they pluck his hair; they buffet him; and when all these cruelties and insults have been exercised upon his person, Pilate brings forth Jesus Christ upon the balcony. Standing there, he addresses the people assembled in the street, tersely exclaiming, “Ecce homo,” “Behold the man! This is the man with whom you charge me of conspiring against Csesar. Is this how I would treat my accomplice? Would I in this way exercise my kindness for one whom I intended to set up as CiBsar’s rival? Do you fancy that here you see marks of honor? Is that purple robe of shame the purple robe of the empire which you say I wish to fling upon his shoulders? Are these my kindnesses to my friend?” It must have been a very telling answer to their accusations; and they must have seen that a repetition of the charge would be a bare-faced falsehood. Methinks, also, that Pilatj had another purpose to serve by bringing up Jesus m tlis array of misery: he sincerely desired to deliver our Saviour from crucifixion, and he thought that, blood-thirsty as the people were, their vengeance would be satisfied at the sight of their victim in this extremity of suffering and misery, and they would then say: “Let him go.” “Surely,” he thought, “it will satisfy them; though they had demon’s hearts, this might content them; though, like fiends, they thirst for cruelty, surely this were quite enough.” But no; like the wolf which hath tasted blood, they were insatiable, and the very sight of his emaciated form, stained all over with the streaming gore, did but excite them the more loudly to cry: “Crucify him! crucify him!” We believe that one of Pilate’s purposes was answered: the people no longer suspected him of being an accomplice with our Saviour. But the other purpose, blessed be God, loas not accomplished; for if it had been, we had been unredeemed at this hour, and the sacrifice of Calvary had been unoiFered for our redemption.
We shall leave Pilate, however, and I shall endeavor, by the help of God, to stand in Pilate’s place, and with an infinitely different motive, to say to each of you: “Behold the man!” And may our Master be with us, and, by his grace, reveal our Lord Jesus Christ, visibly set forth crucified among you! so that by the eyes of faith every one of you, whether you have seen him before or no, may now be enabled to look unto him who was crucified for our sins, who bore our griefs, and carried our sorrows!
A view of Christ on Calvary is always beneficial to a Christian. We never hear a sermon concerning Christ of which we disapprove, however inelegant in its diction, if it be sound in doctrine. We never complain of our minister that he preaches too much concerning the cross of Jesus Christ. ISTo; there can be no tautology where his name is mentioned. Though a sermon should be a mere repetition of his name, we would rejoice to hear it, and say:
“Jesus, I love thy charming name;
‘Tis music to mine ear,”
The French king said of Bourdaloue, that he “would rather hear the repetitions of Bourdaloue than the novelties of another.” So we can say of Jesus Christ, that we had rather hear the repetitions of Jesus than any novelty from any preacher whatsoever. O! how are our souls dissatisfied when we listen to a sermxon .destitute of Christ. There are some preachers who can manage to deliver a sermon and leave out Christ’s name altogether. Surely the true believer will stand like Mary Magdalene, over the sermon, and say: “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.” Take away Christ from the sermon, and you have taken away its essence. The marrow of theology is Christ; the very bone and sinew of the gospel is preaching Christ. A Christless sermon is the merriment of hell. A Christless sermon is a fearful waste of time; it mcurs the blood of souls, and dyes that man’s skirts with gore who dares to preach it. But too much of Christ we can not have. Give us Christ always, Christ ever. The monotony of Christ is sweet variety, and even the unity of Christ hath in it all the elements of harmony. Christ, on his cross and on his throne, in the manger and in the tomb — Christ everywhere is sweet to us. We love his name, we adore his j)erson, we delight to hear of his works.
Come, then, to Calvary awhile, with me, that there I may say to you as Pilate did in his palace: “Behold the man.” We would take you there for one or two reasons; first, to instruct your intellect; secondly, to excite your emotions; and thirdly, to amend your practice. For Ave hold that religion consists of three things: sound doctrine affecting the intellect; true experience dealing with the emotions; and a holy life fashioning the outward visible practice of every-day existence. Jesus Christ will benefit us in all these three; and if by faith we are enabled to see him now, we shall go away profited in each of these particulars — edified in doctrine, blessed in experience, and sanctified in practice.
I. First, we beseech you to “behold the man,” to instruct
YOUR INTELLECT.
The first lesson I would indicate to you — for I shall not teach it, but leave him to teach it — is the lesson of the evil nature of sin. See there that man crucified, his hands extended. Do you mark the droppings of his gore? Do you Bee the thorny crown u2:>on his head? Do you note the scars of misery upon him? Do you see his lacerated back as the wood doth tear it? Do you observe his eyes sunk in their sockets? Do you behold the dull, dead misery settled on his countenance? Do you perceive the acute, unutterable imguish which he suffers? Can you see him? If thou dost gee aright thou wilt see in him the evil of sin. In no other place wilt thou ever know how desperately vile sin is. This is the spot where sin committed its direst crimes. Sin is exceeding sinful when it is a homicide, but it is most sinful when it turns deicide and kills its God. The vilest deed sin ever did was when it nailed the Saviour to his cross, and there let him hang, the murdered victim, the victim of our sin.
Would you see sin? I might show you a thousand pictures of it. I might let you see fair Eden blasted and withered, with all its fruits smitten, the moisture of its trees dried uj); its fair walks covered with the leaves of decay. I might show you a heavenly pair banished, with the cherubim behind them, driven out to till the ground whence they were taken; and when you saw that, you would execrate sin as a thing which drew the plowshare over paradise. I might make you hate sin, too, if I should show you, yonder, a drowned world, deluged by a flood. See there men, women, and children are sinking in the mighty waters — the deeps above and the deeps below are clasping hands. Did you not hear the shriek of the last strong swimmer in his agony, who has just now been overcome by the boundless, shoreless waves? Behold the earth dull and void, save where yon ark floats alone above the deluge. Do you require the cause of this desolation? What loosed the chambers of the great deep? What brought forth this destruction? Sin did it. And who smote Egypt at the Red Sea? What was that which devoured Sodom and Gomorrah and rained hail out of heaven upon them? What was that which swallowed up Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and took them down alive into the pit? What was that wdiich slew Sennacherib’s host? What hath peopled death’s dominions? Whence those skeletons and bones? Whence yon hearse and funeral? And what has builded the gloomy chambers of Hades? What has made Gehennah hot with unquenchable Are? And what is that which hath eiven hell its everlastinjx torments, and furnished it wdth inhabitants beyond number, who live in eternal tortures and twist themsehes on uneasy racks of unutterable woe? S’m thou didst all this; therefore do we execrate thee; thou didst drown a world; thou didst dig the grave; thou didst pile the faggots of hell. We hate thee, sin; but yet methinks we might forgive thee if thou hadst not put Jesus Christ to death.
“TTho would know sin, let him repair
Unto Mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man, so wrung with pains?, that all his hair,
His skin, his garments, bloody be.
Si7i is that press and vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruel food thi’ough every vein.”
Christian, wilt thou not henceforth hate sin from this very fact, that the blood of thy Saviour is on it. Thou art tempted to do an act which thou knowest is wrong: it is fair, it is beautiful, it is goodly; examine it, it seems lovely and excellent, and thy heart goeth after it. Stoj)! Turn it round. Do you see the blood-mark on it? That sm is stained with thy Saviour’s blood. Wilt thou touch it? Surely, nothing which has in the least contributed to his death can be loved by us. Will we not henceforth abjure, abhor, detest, and avoid every thing that is sinful? What! call yourselves Christians, and yet live in sin! Nurse in your bosom the murderer of your Saviour! Ilang upon your walls the dagger wherewith your friend was stabbed, and embroider on your clothes the image of his murderers! Will you? Will you still harbor sin, and love it, when sin slew your Lord? ISTay, surely your heart cries, “I’ll take vengeance against my sins, and slay the murderers too.”
Another lesson we would give your understandings is — “Be hold the man,” for then you will see the inflexibility of divhie justice. Have we not heard that God’s justice is inflexibly severe? If any man sin, the law saith, “Cursed is that man.” The law alters not in its thunder. “Cursed! Cursed! Cursed!” sounds from Sinai every day. Have we not read that God has said, “He wall by no means spare the guilty?” And do we not know it to be a fact? Yet, beloved, there be some who preach an atonement which looks very much like the alteration of dildne justice. We have heard and read of many divines whose atonement is something like this: although God hath declared himself solemnly at wrath with man, and hath vowed to punish every smner, yet Jesus Christ in some way did — we understand not how — do something which allows God now to pass by our sins without punishing them at all. We understand not such an atonement as that. We believe that God is so just, that every sinner must be punished, that every crime must inevitably have its doom. We do not believe that the atonement of Christ remits a single solitary sin; we believe that all the punishment which God’s people ought to have endured was laid upon the head of Christ. We look to Christ’s cross, and we see God’s justice unchanging, im varying, when we hold the doctrine that all our guilt was laid upon his shoulders, and that the punishment for that guilt was actually and absolutely borne by Christ. God doth not absolutely pass over sin; he punishes sin in Christ, and henceforth sin ceases to be punishable in the persons of those for whom Christ died. O ye who do not know how inflexible justice is, stand at the foot of you cross, and hear his dying groans; stand there and see his looks of misery; mark his lineaments of woe, and ye shall know how severe is justice. No man ever thought Brutus so severely just as when he put his own sons to death. “Surely,” they said, “he will spare them.” But, no; the inflexible senator said, “They have broken the laws of my country, and they shall die.” And so in a higher and more sublime sense, we might never have known how just God was, if he had not put his own son to death. Bring forth the sinner, justice! bring forth the sinner! “Nay,” saith justice, “I will let the sinner go free; but here is the smner’s substitute.” Bring him forth, O justice! “Art thou the substitute for sm?” “I am, my Father, I am.” “Well, my son, I love thee, I have loved thee; but since thou art become the substitute for sinners, I will punish on thy head every sin which they did commit.” See! the lash is uphfted: will it not fall gently on his shoulders? He is the Son. See there! the sword is unsheathed. O sword, sleep in thy scabbard; he is the Son! he is the Son!! Aye, but Son though he be, he is the sinner’s representative, and he must die. Mark how the sword unsparingly smites him; see how the rod falls on him; mark how thongful after thongful of his quivering flesh is torn ofl” as they lash him at Pilate’s pillar; mark how he bleeds at every pore, while in the garden he sweats under his
Father’s wrath. O! brethren, God is just; but we never know that half so well till in Gethsemane’s glooms and in the midst of Golgotha’s horrors we have tarried for awhile. What thinkest thou, O unpardoned man or woman? If God punished his Son, surely he will punish thee. If Christ, who only had imputed guilt, must sufler like this, how wilt thou suffer! for thou hast thine oxen sin. If Ae, the perfect, the pure, the spotless, must suffer so fearful an amount of agony, how shalt thou escape if thou dost neglect so great salvation? How hopest thou to be delivered, if on his Son’s head such vengeance fell? Where, where wilt thou find a covering for thyself? Know this, that he Vvho is awfully just, not having remitted the penalty, but having exacted all at Christ’s hands, will surely exact it at thine if thou diest impenitent, and if thou approach est before his bar unshriven and unwashed in a Saviour’s blood.
Next, we think we may learn here the omnipotence of love, O Love, thou art the conqueror of all hearts. O Love, thou art the sum of Godhead, thou art the explanation of divinity. What is this world, this great world of ours, but “love” spelled out large? The stars, if we could read them rightly, spell “love.” If we could interpret the language of the floods, we should hear them whispermg “love.” And could we gather together all flowers, and distil their essence, and get an extract from them, we should find that its smell was “love.” Every thing in this world telleth of love. But would you know the heights and depths, and lengths and breadths of the love of God which passeth knowledge, come hither to the cross. We never know our own love to our country till we are called to make some sacrifice for it. You remember that in Russia there was a law which exempted the only son of a widow from going to war; but it is said that so closely were they driven for recruits, that the law was for a time rescinded, and the widow’s only son was taken. Suppose such a thing happened here, and there should be a widow whose only son was demanded of her. See her come forward, saying, “Ay, take him; my country is dearer to me even than he is.” She puts him forward, and says, “Go forth, my son, to die if it be necessary; I give thee up, I give thee willingly.” You see the red, red eye of the widow; she hath wiped it dry, but she hath wept in secret; and if we steal behind the door when her son is gone, and see her pouring out whole flood’s of sorrow, we can tell how great must have been her love for her country which made her give up him — her all. Beloved, we never should know Christ’s love in all its heigths and depths if he had not died; nor could we tell the Father’s deep afiection if he had not given his Son to die. As for the common mercies we enjoy, they all sing of “love,” just as the sea-shell, when we put it to our ears, whispers of the deep sea whence it came; but ah! if you desire to hear the ocean itself, if you would hear the roarings of the floods, you must not look at every-day mercies, but at the mercies of that night, that day, that midday night, when Christ was crucified. He who would know love, let him retire to Calvary and see the Man of Sorrows die:
““While from his head, his hands, his feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down.
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet.
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?”
II. N“ow, beloved, we come to the cross to excite ouk EMOTIONS. We will again go to Calvary in imagination, and if God help us, by something more than that; we will endeavor to hold fellowship with Christ, first, that our emotions of S07T0W may be excited. We do not love a sorrovful religion, but we do not think any thing of that religion which hath no sorrow in it. That which is entirely made of sorrow came not from God, for God loves happiness, he rejoices to see his creatures happy, and his religion has that tendency; but still he who never knew spiritual sorrow hath not known spiritual joy; if we have never shed the tear of penitence, we must not expect to sing the song of acceptance. Go you to Calvary, if you would weep. There be times when we would give a world for a tear, when our icy hearts are so cold, that all the heat of mercy can not thaw them; when our iron souls are so hard that it seems impossible they should ever be moved. O! what would I give if I might sometimes weep at my Saviour’s feet! You, Christians, who have long walked in his ways, have you not sometimes cried, “O! if I could weep as once I did, when I was young and tender in the fear of God! Then I could pour my heart out in tears, but now this rocky heart will not weep; though there be things which I hear concerning Jesus that might make my heart run over at my eyes in perpetual torrents, yet I can not weel) a single tear now!” Well, would you weep, come with me to Calvary. See there that Saviour with thorns upon his brow. Canst thou not afford a tear for Jdm? See the wounds in his side. What! Canst thou not drop a tear of grief there, especially when I remind thee that he is thy best friend? Sure, might I say, “if you have tears prepare to shed them now.” You ought to shed them while you see his hands nailed to the accursed wood, his feet nailed too, and his side gushing like a fountain of blood. Ah! well might we say —
“Alas! and did my Saviour bleed,
And did my Sovereign die?
Would be devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?”
Did he die? Ay, he did. O! all ye clouds, ye floods, ye rains, dwell in mine eyes; my grief hath need of all the watery things that nature can produce. Let every vein suck up a river to supply mine eyes; for sure I have need to weep full rivers of grief, that I slew my Saviour. If by any accident I had killed my best earthly friend, I would go mourning all my days; but since I have slain my Saviour by my own accursed sin, O! let me carry to my grave my grief — not hopeless misery, but sorrow that I slew my Saviour. Can I ever hear that word Calvary without remembering the sad tragedy connected with it? Shall I ever see the cross without droping a tear upon it? Shall I ever hear the music of his name without mixing in it the plaintive notes of my grief, crying yet again —
“Thy body slain, sweet Jesus, thine,
And bathed in its own blood,
“While all exposed to wrath divine
The injured sufferer stood.’*
A VlalT TO CALVARY. 337
Ilere let me weep myself away:
“But drops of grief can no’cr repay
Tho debt of love I owe;
Hero, Lord, I give myself away
‘Tis all that I can do.”
But, as we have said, religion is not all sorrow, nor much of it even. True religion makes us happy; it lights up the 3yo like the lamps of heaven; it makes our foot bound over this weary earth, and makes our soul elastic. They who have most religion will have least of misery, for religion will turn their bitterest draughts of grief into cups of joy. He who liveth near to Christ, come what may, must be blessed; but lie who wandereth from him, give him all the mercies of this life, and he can not be happy, because he hath not God. Well, you poor distressed, you mourning souls, are you seeking to have joy in your hearts? Come, let me take you to Calvary. Your desponding hearts can never mourn long with the air of Calvary around you. Keady-to-IIalt never leaned on his crutches when he went by the cross; for once, good man, he walked without them. Faint-Heart never carried his faint heart when he clasped that cross. No; his heart was as strong as Valiant-for-Truth’s when he was there. Are you often given to depression of spirits? Do you labor under despondency? Let me for once prescribe to you; let mo recommend you something which will effectually cure you. When thou art low and miserable, go into thy chamber, and there on thy knees think of him who groaned in Gethsemane, and thou wilt say, “What are all my soi-rows compared with his?” Go up, then, think of Calvary, and when thou hast been there a little while, sing to thyself —
0 1 how sweet to view the flowing
Of his soul-redeeming blood,
“Willi divine assurance knowing
That he made my peace with God.”
Or if thou canst not reach so high a flight as that, still say —
“Hero I’d sit for ever viewing
Lrercy’s streams in streams of blood;
Precious drops my soul bedewing,
Plead and claim my peace with God.”
An infallible remedy for misery is the cross. If thou wilt mix the cross in thy cup, thou wilt find it like the tree cast into the fountain of Mara, it wall make the water thereof sweet. li th(»u wilt take some of the gall Christ drank, that gall is marvelous — it maketh all other galls sweet. If thou wilt cut some of the shivers fror? +he tree on which he hung, and prick thy veins when they are coo full of murmuring lust, and therefore make thy spirit low and miserable, then the heavenly lancet shall effect its cure; and thou shalt know that Christ’s cross maketh thee happy. The happiest men are those who know most of Christ. Do not tell us that the epicure is happy; tell us not that the dissipated man is happy, who says,
“Fill up to the brim,
Let the sparkHng liquor kiss the rim.”
Say not that he is happy who runneth the mad career of lust; say not that he is happy whose whole soul is set on ambi’tious desires: he is not — he is miserable, and let his conscience iay “Amen;” he is miserable, and let the silence of the midnight (for he shakes at that hour) tell us so; he is miserable, and in his inmost heart he knows it; though the upper floods of his soul do sometimes seem to leap with joy, down in the deep caverns of his heart there is darkness — darkness, compared with which, midnight is as blazing day. If you would be happy — if you would rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, “behold the man!” the man of sorrows who hath died for you.
Again, there is another emotion which we think should always be excited when we behold the cross of Christ, and that is the emotion of the most ardent love. Believe me, beloved, to hold on in this world as a true Christian, requires much love to your Master. If you are content to conform to all the rules of society, when you think them wrong, you will go on well enough; but if you have a principle which will not let you stooj) — if you have a soul within you which can not be cramped or fettered — if you say, “If I am right it is no folly to be singular, and if I stand alone, let the heavens fall, I must stand by my Lord,” you wdll find that to persevere in such conduct as that, requires much love to the Saviour. If wo knew Luther’s heart when he stood before the assembly and challenged them all, we should have seen deeply cut in it Christ’s name. If you could know the heart of those who labor for men’s souls amid obloquy, contempt, and shame, you would see stamped in the very center the name of Jesus Christ. You can not long persevere as a Christian in the midst of persecution and trouble unless you have much love to the Saviour. But, alas! we often hear persons complain that they can not love the Saviour. That is a common complaint, but there is one easy cure for it. The more you live with Christ the better you will love him. There are some people in the world of so unloveable a nature, that to see them once in seven years is quite enough, if you ^Ylsh to love them: the less you know of them, perhaps, the better. But of Jesus Christ it can be said, the longer you live with Inm the better you will love him. Ah! ask the gray-headed saint wdiether ho loves Christ more or less than he did. O! if you could have asked old Ignatius in the Roman theater whether he still loved his Master, would he not have said, “These many years have I served him; he never did me a displeasure; I can not curse him, but I can die for him!” Why do you not love Christ? It is because you do not live with him, and think enough of him, for
“Living with Christ his image wo gain.”
Do not try to pump yourselves up into a certain degree of love to Christ by some extraordinary means. Go and live with him, meditate upon him continually, picture to yourself his sufierings for you, and then you will love him — it will become easy to you, and he will lift up your hearts. Me thinks it would have been almost impossible for any of us to have seen Christ when he was here below without loving him, if we once had grace in our hearts. Alas! we may look at him for ages without loving him, unless grace be within. One of the wishes of my soul is to see the Man Christ Jesus once more on earth. I do look for his pre-millennial advent, and expect he w411 come here again; and O! if we might clasp his feet, if we might kiss his bleeding hands, if we might see the pleasing luster of his eyes, which outshines the glories of the stars, then, love him! why we should none of us be saying, “I want to* love him,” but we should love hira at once, for we could not help it. O! if we are in fellowship with him, we shall never say “I can not love him,” but we shall say,
“His worth if all the nations knew,
Sure the whole earth would love him too.”
III. Now we come to the next point: “Behold the man” Christ Jesus that you may amexd youk teactice: for religion is not emotional, or intellectual, merely; it is practical also. That man has no religion, however beautifully varnished, if he does not carry it out in daily life. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth that shall ho also reap.” Come with me to Calvary once more, and you will amend your practice.
Let me remind you of one thing, wherein your practice will be very much improved if you come to Calvary. Here are members of difierent denominations of Christ’s church, but how often are we affected with that cruel disease, bigotry! How frequently are our spirits set against each other! I^ow, if we would Ioa’C all Christians, we must “behold the man” Christ Jesus. We have seen Christians fight, and fight manfully against each other — we say manfully, for we can not use that other word we would have said; Ave have seen Christians fight Avoefully against each other; but there is one spot that never wlas yet profaned by the foot of controversy, and that is Calvary; there the word goes forth, “Sheath swords, combatants! the battle is over, this is holy ground;” here Jesus died. O! there is something that touches our hearts, when we begin to talk of Jesus. “We care not who the man is, whether he be the sweet George Herbert, of the Church of England, or the equally excellent Rutherford, of the Church of Scotland, whether he be Dissenter, or Conformist, when he comes to talk of Christ, we all stand with him then. “Come,” we say, “we would fight each other fearfully on other points, but when Ave come here we are all one in Christ Jesus;” and out go our hands at once, for Ave feel Ave are at one. That stroke, that touch, not of nature but of grace, makes the whole Christian world one at once. O! thou little-souled man, who hast no love for any unless he conform to thine own sect, thou knowest little of Christ, for if thou livedst near to him, thou wouldst have a large heart.
Again, you will, by going to Calvary, amend your practice in regard to outicard holmess. Do not tell me that man has any sense of Christ’s love to him, who can wilfully sin against the Saviour. We do see some strange prodigies now and then, but the strangest of all would be a Christian who could afford to live like a worldling, and yet maintain communion with Jesus Christ. We have heard men talk of their experience, who can give us whole yards of godliness, if that consists in the tongue; but when they come to practice, ah! their religion is not made to bear every-day pressure, it is a kind ol confectionery religion, not made to be carried about in the rough world; it was made more as an ornament for their drawing-room; a fashionable religion, a pretty religion, to come out on Sundays, and be carried to a jDlace of worship; but it was never intended for business. The exchange — what! bring their religion there! why it would stand in the way of their business. Ileligion in their shop! Religion in their ordinary dealings! They never thought of such a thing; they thought religion was intended for their closet, though that has its door listed over; they thought religion was intended for them simply when they were reading the Bible, or turning over other religious books. Do you conceive that such men know Christ? Alas! no. Those who live near Jesus, those who “behold the man,” will become like Christ. There is no such thing as having an interest in the blood of Jesus, and holding fellowship with him, and yet living in sin. Be not deceived concerning this. The follies and the fashions of this world are not consistent with godliness, and he who hopes to have Christ, and to have the world too, hath made a great mistake. Have you ever heard that pretty fable told by the Persian Saadi moralist? He took up in his hand a piece of scented clay and said to it, “Oh, clay, whence hast thou thy perfume?” And the clay said, “I was once a piece of common clay, but they laid me for a time in company with a rose, and I drank in its fragrance, and have nov, become scented clay.” Believer, thou too art nothing but a piece of common clay, but if thou liest with the Rose of Sharon — if thou hast
Jesus in thy company, thou wilt be a piece of scented clay, and where’er thou goest, thou wilt smell of him. I will know the company thou keepest by the fragrance thou hast. If thou hast lain in beds of spices, thou wilt smell of the myrrh, and the spikenard, and the aloes. I will not believe thee a child of God, unless thou hast the lineaments of thy Father, nor will I think that thou hast been with Jesus, unless I can perceive that thou hast learned of him. Oh! if you would reform yourselves, if you would amend your lives, if you would curb sin, and restrain the hot-mouthed steeds of your lust — if you would overcome your iniquities, and persevere in holiness, here are the means: “Behold the man;” look you there at Christ Jesus.
Now I have only time to apply niy text to all classes of you, and then I have done. “Behold the man!” It is an exhortation which I will use to every one of you. I have some here, I trust, who are weeping on account of sin. You have discovered yourselves to be lost and ruined by the fall. God’s sovereign mercy has looked upon you, and taught you your own nothingness. You once thought your morality good enough, and that your own integrity would carry you to heaven; but now a hue and cry is raised in your soul concerning the lire of sin within you, and you have discovered that you are lost and ruined. To you I come to preach; to you especially:
“Not the righteous, not the righteous;
Smners, Jesus came to save.”
If you now acknowledge and feel yourselves to be sinners, the glorious gospel of the blessed God is, “Behold the man;” look there to Jesus; see your sin laid on his head; and mark there the awful expiation of your guilt. “Behold the man,” is the lesson for penitents.
Allow me to tell you an anecdote, which I have often told before, because I love to tell it. A friend of mine, who has been a clergyman in Ireland related it to me himself as a veritable narrative. A clergyman of an Irish parish said, that “he went round to visit all his parishioners, but,” said hOj “there was one poor woman in the parish who had been an abandoned character, and I dared not go to visit her, because I thought it would ill become my position, so I passed by. Ah! brother,” He said, “I know it was an evil pride, or else I should have gone after the chief of sinners, for the care of her soul was in some measure committed to my hands.” One day he saw her in church, and he thought he heard her repeating the responses, and fcincied he saw the tears rolling down her cheek. O how his bowels yearned for her soul! He longed to speak with her, but he dared not. She came there month after month, a constant worshiper, and yet he passed by her door and did not visit her. At last one day she came to the door, and said, “Sir, I want you;” he then “svent in, and she put out her hand, and taking hold of his, said, “O, sir! if your Master had been in this village half as long as you have, I am sure he would have been to see me, for I am the worst sinner in the parish, and therefore I want his help the most; but though you have not been to see me, I know who has said: * This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the y>’orld to save sinners, of whom I am chief.’” Ah! and are not we chief of sinners too? You may never sin as she did; but you have sinned. You may not have openly transgressed as she did; but if God the Spirit be at work in your heart, you will be content to stand side by side with her, and both of you will say at once, “I the chief of sinners am.”
Again, I must remind you that Jesus died for poor sinners, even for you. I will not speak to any other character but to you, but I will have an extra vrord with you now. O, would to God I could bring you now, poor penitent, to my Saviour’s feet. Art not thou seeking rest and finding none? Man, where art thou seeking it? Art thou seeking it by the works of the law, and endeavonng, by leaving olf this sin, and reforming that error, to save thyself? 0, 1 charge thee, do not film the wound thus, for all the rancorous venom will still be within. Go not to Sinai, for on its thorny sides no mercies grow; go not there, for the thunder comes from the law; the law says, “Sinner, thou shalt die.” But ah! my hearers, if you are guilty now, and laboring under a sense of condemnation, let me beseech you, let me implore you, by the love you have to yourselves, to come to Christ, and believe in him, and you shall most assuredly find salvation. There never yet was a sinner spurned from his gates — shall you be the first? There never was a penitent sent away without a blessing; and if you now call on him, you shall not be rejected. Mercy’s door is always open to the man who knocks with sincerity. Go thou and knock, and mercy shall be thine. What if thy sins are more than others? I thank God they are, for I have all the more ground to preach to thee. The only warrant to believe in Christ is that thou art a sinner. If thou knowest thy sinnership, thou mayest know the Saviour to be thy Saviour. Christ came to save sinners. Are you a sinner? If so, I can tell you, on scriptural authority, that Jesus came to save you. But ah! ye good moral people, who trust m your own works. Ah! ye who are sewing to yourselves fig-leaves, and working out day by day the garments of your own righteousness, you will find your good works to be utterly insufiicient. All that is of nature’s spinning, death will unravel. All that nature ever girded about the sinner was vain, worse than vain. O, cast thy righteousness away, thou moralist, cast thy good works away, and believe in Christ. A good man, when dying, was asked what he was doing, and he said, “I am throwing all my good works overboard, and am trusting wholly in Jesus; I am throwing my good works away, and lashing myself to the plank of free grace; for I hope to swim to glory on it.”
I have done, but not till I have told you the way of salvation. It is written in God’s word, “He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved.” Do you ask me what it is to believe? To believe is to cast yourselves simply and wholly on the blood of Christ for salvation. I know of no better utterance of faith than this,
“Nothing in my hands I bring;
Simply to thy cross I chng.”
God of his grace help you- to say this. Amen.