The Dew of Christ's Youth

“Thou hast the dew of thy youth.” — Psalm cx, S.

You have walked in the garden early in the morning, and you must have remarked the singular freshness and beauty which a summer’s morning always seems to give to the earth; the dewdrops glisten like tears, standing in the eyes of the flowers, as if they wept for joy to see the sun again after the long night of darkness; the greenness of vegetation has about it a more than emerald hue; and every “thing of beauty” looks more beautiful than at any other season. You have gone out, perhaps, at noon, and you have noticed how dry and dusty every thing appears; for the sun has risen, and by his burning heat he has exhaled the dew, and the freshness of the morning has died into the drought of noon. Now, this is just a picture of all things here below! Ay, and a portrait of ourselves. When Ave begin with things, they have dew upon them, and they sparkle; wait a little while, and all their brightness is gone, and their brilliance scattered. Ye have entered into pleasure, and ye have found it a delusion; ye have intermeddled with all kinds of knowledge, and ye have found that in the making and reading of books there was much pleasure; but ere long ye have discovered, that in reading many books and in making them there was no end, and much study was a weariness of the flesh. Every thing terrestrial has its dew in the morning, but its burning heat at noon; and we too, beloved — I mean those of us who have received the anointing of the Holy Spirit — is not this too much the case with us? When we were Arst converted, what a sparkling dew there was upon our leaf! We could not sing God’s praises loud enough; v.’e could not sufficiently leap for joy before the ark. All the exultations of those that went before seemed utterly insufficient for us. There was such unction and savor in the Word to us, that we could feast upon it every day — yea, and all night long, and yet never be weary. We ran in the way of our Lord’s commandments without weariness, and we mounted aloft as on the wings of eagles, and never thought that we could mount too high. But, alas! beloved, is it not the case with many of us, that the early freshness of the morning of our youth is exhausted, and some, at least, of our excellence hath proved to be like the early cloud and the morning dew 1 Though in some things we trust we have grown, yet we are compelled to confess, that in many others we have diminished; while in depths of self-knowledge we feel we have made progress, yet in the height of joy in Christ, in the sublimities of a full devotion to him, we sometimes fear that we have gone backward, and that we have not the joy of our youth, the dew of the morning. But you will observe, that the text here speaks of Jesus Christ: he has the dew of his youth. We are certain it is Christ, for we have the infallible witness of the New Testament, that Jesus Christ is spoken of in this Psalm. See Matt. xxii. 44; Heb. i. 13, and many other places. “The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool. Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning.” And then, there is added this, which evidently alludes to Jesus Christ: Thou hast the dew of thy youth.”

Having, therefore, set ourselves and all terrestrial matters in contrast, it only remains for me now to enter, as fully as God may help me, into the sweet doctrine of this text — that Jesus Christ ever has, and ever will have, the early dew, freshness, and brilliance of his youth. First, permit me to state the fact; secondly, to show the reasons for it; and, thirdly, to deduce the lessons from it.

I. First of all, let me show the fact — Christ has the dew OF his youth.

Speak we of Christ 2)erso)icdIi,; has he not all the freshness, all the vigor, all the strength of ancient times 1 His goings forth were of old, even from eternity; and behold he goeth forth every day in the preaching of his Word, and in the ministrations of his Spirit, in the chariots of salvation still he rideth forth, he walketh still among the golden candlesticks. And have we ever imagined that he has lost the strength of his youth 1 do his steps falter ‘? has his arm begun to feel the palsying influence of old age 1 Is there a scar of decrepitude and wasting upon his sublime brow 1 His head and his hair are white like wool, as white as snow, for he is the Eternal of Ages; yet, saith the spouse, his locks are bushy and black as a raven, for he has the strength of youth, while he has the age of an eternity upon him. Well might he now rise up before us and say of himself personally, “Is mine ear heavy that I cannot hear? Is mine arm shortened that I cannot save 1 Am I not to-day what I was yesterday 1 Was I the Creator of the world 1 did I speak it out of nothingness 1 — and am I not still its Sustainer 1 Was I the Redeemer of the Church? did I purchase her with mine own blood 1 — and do I not still preserve with power those whom I redeemed with blood 1 Did I not on earth, with cries and groans, off*er up my prayer before my Father? and do I not now plead, not with less vigor but with greater strength, when with authority I advocate my people’s cause before his throne ^”

Brethren, you can enlarge in your private meditations upon this most blessed and excellent truth, that the person of Jesus is an ever young person; he is the holy child Jesus, he is never the old man Jesus; he never was an old man on earth, and he never can be old in the sense of becoming senile or full of decrepitude; he has the dew of his youth upon him; Christ’s person is in every thing to-day what it was before the foundation of the world. Nor is this freshness confined to Christ in his person; it is just the same if you take him in his doctrine. We have Christ among us not incarnate in flesh, but incarnate in doctrine. The doctrines of grace are in a certain sense the body of Christ. We speak sometimes of a body of Divinity; but if any man would know what the body of Divinity is, it is neither Calvin’s “Institutes,” nor Dwight’s “Theology,” nor Gill’s “Body of Divinity,” — it is Christ that is the hochj of Divinity. It was the only body Divinity ever did take when it became incarnate; but, taking Divinity in another sense to mean Divine doctrine, Christ, what

Christ said, and what he did, is the only body which Divinity — that is, the Gospel — ever will take. Now. the Gospel is always fresh. There are many subjects, beloved, that ai’e worn threadbare; but who ever heard of the Gospel being exhausted ] You have conae up to the house of God, some of you, these thirty or forty years. Did you ever feel that you wanted any thing fresh? Did you ever say as you went out, when you had heard a Gospel sermon, “I should like to have some improvements made upon it 1” If you have gathered the goodly bread-corn of the kingdom, have you not said, “That was the food of my childhood in grace, it is my food now that by reason of years I am able to discern, and it shall be my food all through the wilderness, until I eat of the corn of the kingdom on the other side the Jordan.”

It is a wonderful thing, that any man should be able, day after day, and week after week, to attract thousands to hear him talk. I do not believe any man could do it with any other subject except the Gospel. I have the most intense respect for that great man and mighty orator, Mr. Gough; but with all his ability, if he were to deliver a teetotal lecture twice every Sabbath-day, if he were in any pulpit in England, he could not command a congregation for twenty-one years at a stretch; but the Christian minister, with only one subject — Christ crucified — may not only keep on twenty-one years, but if he should live as long as Methuselah, he niay stUl keep on preaching none other Gospel than Jesus Chi’ist, and him crucified, and he would still find that the people of God would come around to hear him, and never crave for a fresh subject. Let any great historian open, if he please, a lecture room, and attempt to deliver two lectures upon history every week, and let him see whether he does not find the congregation which would at first gather around him, fearfully dinainished. We have had an instance in London of one who has delivered an amusing lecture a thousand times, always to great multitudes; but then they were different persons every time. No one thought of going to hear him lecture upon the same subject the whole thousand times. It would have become a most intolerable penance even to have heard xllbert Smith delivering his lecture upon Mont Blanc, however interesting it might seem, once or twice to some people; it would certainly pall upon the mind if we heard

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it many times repeated; but the Christian minister may keep on and on, and on the same good theme — Christ Jesus, Christ Jesus; the same cross, the same crown of thorns, the same bleeding wounds — from the first time that he enters his pulpit to the time when he lays down his charge. He may keep on, and the people may always say, and he shall always feel, that the Gospel has the dew of its youth upon it, and is always fresh and always new.

But I can say yet another thing. This is specially true of this old book, the Bible. Many other valuable books have been written, but, however interesting they may be, read them over half-a-dozen times and you may be quite satisfied you need not read them any more. Next to the Bible, the book that I value most i John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and I imagine that I may have read that through perhaps a hundred times. It is a book of which I never seem to tire. But then the secret of that is, that John Bunyan’s ‘• Pilgrim’s Progress“’ is the Bible in another shape. It is taken out of this same well of the Gospel — it is a book full of the same heavenly water; but even of that wondrous allegory you would tire at last. You would say,” Well, now I know all this, I want something more. Here is the experience of a Christian; I know this to be true, and I delight in it, but I want to go somewhat further.” And the mind would crave for something else. But read the Bible, and, strange to say, the more you read it the more satisfied you will be with it. When you begin to read the Bible, perhaps you want fifty other books to become a thorough Bible student; but your library will diminish gradually, until at last, the more you understand the Bible the fewer books you will want, and you will come to say, ‘• If I might have all my days over again this should be the only book that I would study, and I would concentrate all my powers upon the understanding of this one volume.” Other books you can get to the bottom of. You dive into them, and at first they seem to be very deep; but every time you dive they appear to grow shallower and shallower, until at last you can see the bottom at a glance. But in God’s Word, every time you dive the depths grow deeper. The first time you read, in your ignorant conceit, you fancy you have got the full meaning of a text;

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but you look at it again, and you find that though you had the meaning in one sense, yet you had not the full meaning; and you meditate again and again and again, and you fmd each time you dive the meaning is still far beyond your reach, and that the Bible is far above your comprehension. It expands, it grows, it increases in interest. There is such a charm about the Bible, that he who reads it little may never perhaps feel the whole of it.. It is something like the Maelstrom you have heard of, only in a different and more excellent sense. The Maelstrom is a great whirlpool on the coast of Norway. A ship at a long distance from it will feel a little of its attracting influence, a very little, yet enough to make it veer from its course; but the nearer it floats to the centre the stronger becomes the current, and the more forcibly is the vessel carried along by it, until at last, if the ship should be so unhappy as to near it, it would whirl round at a tremendous rate until it was thoroughly engulphed in its depths. In a higher and better sense the like is true of the Bible. The nearer you go to it, and the more closely you study it, the more rapidly do you revolve in its circles, the more voraciously do you devour its contents, until at last you are swallowed up in its glory, and long for nothing else than to prove the heights and depths of this bliss unfathomable — the love of God revealed to us in Christ, in his sacred Word. Truly, of this book we may say, “Thou hast the dew of thy youth.”

Again, I may add, every thing that has to do with Christ is always young. The beds of spices where he lieth is always green; the trees planted by him, who is the river of water, have their leaves of such a sort that they never wither, and their fruits always comes to perfection. Every thing lives where he is, for he is life, and in him there is no death at all; and because he is life, therefore is he always full of freshness, and therefore doth he beget living verdure wheresoever he goeth; and this shall we know best when we shall follow him to the living fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from our eyes.

II. Thus have we done with the first point, and now we take notice of the second. What is the reason for this? What is

THE REASON WHY ChrIST JeSUS, AND HIS GoSPEL, AND HIS

Word, and all things about him are always so fresh? Why have we always an abidmg dew upon these holy thmgs? I answer, first, no man that understands what it is to have Christ in his heart will ever get tired of him from want of variety. The reason why we are weary of a thing is because there is a sameness about it. There are many men that have a very weighty speech to deliver — very good matter — but it is a pain to sit and hear them, because they deliver their words in a monotone, as if they were touching a bell. Word follows word with no difference of tone. Now, the human ear loves variety; it cannot bear monotony. And so it is with the whole of manhood. Nothing monotonous will ever long retain its freshness. However sweet the music may be, if we always heard the same notes we should, most assuredly, be as disgusted with even the sweet music of an archangel if we were compelled to hear it all day and all night long, as we are with the cackling of a goose. Every thing is apt to lose its interest when it is repeated over and over again. But there is no fear of any tautologies in Christ; you may look at Christ a thousand times, and you shall have, if you please, a thousand different aspects. If you choose to turn to one book of the Old Testament you shall see him in a vast variety of aspects. You shall see him as a Paschal Lamb; you shall see him as the scapegoat; you shall see him at one time as the bullock, strong to labor, and then you shall see him as the lamb, patient to endure; you shall behold him as the dove, full of innocence; you shall see him in the blood sprinkled, in the incense burning, in the laver filled with water; you shall see him in Aaron’s rod that budded, and in the golden pot that was full of manna; you shall see him in the ark; you shall see him over the ark: in the ark you shall see him having the law within his heart, and over the ark you shall see the golden light and the mercy-seat, and say, “Christ is here.” In every type you shall see Christ — in so many different shapes, too, that you shall say, “Turn this whichever way I like, there is something fresh.” Christ Jesus, if I might compare so glorious a person to so humble a thhig, is like the kaleidoscope. As often as you look through the kaleidoscope you see a fresh arrangement of colors and a fresh appearance, so as often as you look at the Lord

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Jesus Christ you always discover some new beauty in his position Look at him typically, and when you have done with looking at him typically look at him officially; you have not time to consider all his glories as a priest — you have hardly passed your eyes over his flowing vesture, and his glittering breastplate, and listened to the ringing of the bells, and marked the beauty of the pomegranates, before you see him come forth as a King; and you can scarcely stop to look at the many crowns on his head before he comes forth as a Prophet; and you have hardly time to admire him as a Prophet before he comes forth as Mediator, as Shepherd, as Captain of our salvation, as Head of the Church, as the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. And if you go further and look at his person, his person is wonderful. You see him as the child born, the Son given. He comes into this world, and you mark him to be God, and there you are lost in divinity; you mark him to be man, you have not lost your wonder yet, and you still stand astonished when you regard him in that aspect as bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. The reason why every thing else loses its freshness to us is because of its want of variety. You may go to any exhibition that has ever been opened to attract attention and awaken interest, but you will find that after a certain time there is a want of variety in it; but with Christ there never is such a want, and therefore to the mind’s eye he always has the dew of his youth. There is yet another reason: Christ has the dew of his youth because of his excellence. To-day, stepping in to see a gentleman, I observed a table which had upon it a great variety of objects. I wondered what they were, and took the liberty of asking him. He told me that he had some beautiful stereoscopic views there which had been taken at an immense expense in Egypt, in the Holy Land, and in all parts of the world; and he ho wed me one or two Scriptural subjects which very much interested me. They were certainly pre-eminently excellent as works of art. He said, “There, sir, I never get tired of looking at those things. I could look at them constantly, and never get tired of them.” “Well,” I said, “I quite understand that; they are excellent; for really there is the study of half an hour in this one picture; and then one might begin again, it is so full of beauty, and it seems so true to the original.” But I thought to myself,” Excellent as they are, I think, if I call to see my friend in a year’s time he will tell me that he has had to buy a fresh lot of views, for he has been looking at these so often, that he has become altogether tired of them. They would have no freshness to him, because he had seen them so many times. But mark; the reason why he could look at them so often was because they were so excellent. If they had been bad views, if there had not been great skill and great art bestowed upon them, he would soon have become tired of looking at them. There are some views in nature which a man might look at a hundred times, and yet always wonder at them; but the reason is, because they are so beautiful. There are other things which might strike one’s eye at first, but which when they are looked into would lose their freshness, because there would be no real ground for admiration, because there was no excellency. But Christ Jesus will always have the dew of his youth, because he is always so excellent. Ah, brethren, you thought Christ was sweet when first you tasted him; but you shall know him to be sweeter still when you shall know more of him, and taste and see that he is good; but you shall never know all his sweetness, for you shall eat, and eat, and eat to the full; and perhaps scarcely in heaven itself shall you know all the

sweetness of Christ. You imagine, perhaps, that you know all the excellency of his love to you; but remember, it passeth knowledge. You imagine that you have proved his faithfulness; but you have not proved it as you will prove it. All the tests to which you have ever put the Saviour are but little compared with those that are to come after. You have proved him with the footmen, you will soon prove him with the horsemen; you have proved him in the land of peace, and you shall soon know him in the swellings of Jordan. But the more you prove him the more shall you discover that he is excellent, and worth the proving, and because his excellence shall become the more and the more manifest, the more you shall look at him; you shall say of him continually, “Thou hast the dew of thy youth. 1 find thee better and better. Fairest of the sons of men, thou growest fairer. Bread of heaven, thou growest sweeter! Thou wast once like wafers made with honey, thou art sweeter than angels’ food now. Water of life, thou growest more cooling to my taste and more refreshing to my mouth. I loved thee once, I love thee more now; I delighted in thee once, but I delight in thee more fully still.” He has the dew of his youth, because he has real excellence.

But still, I do not know but that the most excellent thing you and I have ever seen would still lose its freshness to us, because we should discover all its excellence; but Christ will never lose his freshness to us, because he is divine. Whatever is not divine, in due time must lose its freshness. Suppose, now, the Lord should give to us, to engross our attention and to interest us, the whole fields of space. Suppose in a future eternity the Lord should say, “Now I will give to you the works of my creation to be for ever objects of your attention.” My dear friends, there is enough in a single flower, the botanist tells us, to occupy a man’s wonder and admiration for a number of years. There is so much skill and wisdom in but a single flower of the field, that a man might look and wonder as long as that. Well, just put together all the flowers and all the creatures of this world, and all the mighty rocks that are full of ancient secrets — and imagine that these are to be the objects of our eternal study and interest. I can suppose that a man should exhaust all the knowledge of this world in due time. It might take him thousands upon thousands of years, yet I can imagine that he should so exhaust every thing that was noble about this world, that at last he should sit down and say, “I know every secret, I have made every rock tell out its story; I have ripped open every vein of truth, and I have ransacked all its secret treasures. But there are the stars yet to look at” — and imagine the man going from star to star, and discovering all the wonders of God in the seemingly boundless universe. Here is a great conception for you. Imagine that all these stars were inhabited, and all full of fresh wonders; yet I can imagine that in myriads of myriads of years all the’se might be exhausted. Some stupendous mind, growing by that upon which it fed, might at last say, of all the secrets of God’s works, “I know them all. I have found out every wonder, and all the storehouses of God’s wisdom have I ransacked;” but, beloved, Jesus Christ is such a boundless field of knowledge, and Christ

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has such a miracle of wonders, such a gathering up of all the secrets of God, that a whole eternity must run dry before we can exhaust them. He will have, he must have, the dew of his youth, because he is divine. The wing of knowledge, though it had the fields of space to fly in, must at last reach a boundary. The ship of wisdom, though it sail across the sea that seems without a shore — the as yet unnavigated sea of ether — must at last reach a haven; but give a man Christ to be the subject of study, the object to awaken his interest and excite his wonder, and then you have indeed shot an arrow, but it shall never reach its mark. It shall fly on, on, on, and shall never stay. You have bidden the man plunge into a sea without a bottom. You have launched him, like Noah’s ark, upon a sea without a shore. He may go on, and on, and on, climbing up the steps, but he can never reach the summit. Christ must be full of interest to him, because he is divine, and, therefore, inexhaustible.

Another reason why Christ will always have the dew of his youth, is, because he meets all the cravings of our nature. I am introduced into a place full of the wonderful works of man. 1 look, and I look on; but why is it that I shall get tired of them, however interesting they may be 1 Because it is all for my eye. But suppose that there is the sweetest music at the same time, then I have something for my ear. Why is it that even then I shall get tired 1 Because I have another craving — I hunger and I thirst. But suppose I have the richest dainties aflforded me; and I sit and feast, and look and hear sweet sounds all the time, why is it that, even then, I should, for a time, however excellent might be the entertainment, grow tired 1 Why, because I have other propensities that are not brought into play — other animal desires, even, which have not their fair room for exercise. But suppose me to become a Solomon, so that I have all which the eye, or the ear, or the passions can delight in. Should I, after all, be tired 1 Yes, Solomon tried it, and he said, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Why? Because there were other cravings in Solomon’s mind which all these things did not satisfy. The mind was craving after knowledge, and Solomon satisfied that, for he wrote of all things, from the hyssop on the wall up to the cedar of Lebanon. But there was one thing that was not satisfied, that was his spirit. His spirit was craving for communion. There was a hunger and thirst that went after something higher than mere mental food, and his mind could not be contented with mere wine to drink and meat to eat, but wanted knowledge. His spirit could not be contented with mere knowledge, and he was wanting something higher than that — the ethereal and celestial ambrosia of the glorified. His spirit was panting for communion, and therefore Solomon felt that all here was vanity, because it could not satisfy that craving. But give me Christ, and I have no other craving beyond that — Christ is all. Whatever we may wish for, it is all in Christ; it is impossible for the mind that is filled with Christ to imagine any thing else; and in the day when we shall get to heaven — we talk a great deal about golden harps, and golden crowns, and golden streets — I imagine we shall find that all those golden harps and crowns and streets are contained in that word “Christ;” and when we shall get Christ, and shall enjoy him, we shall feel that we have nothing else that we can wish for. He that drinketh desireth to eat; but he that drinketh Christ drinketh food. He that eats desires to be clothed; but he that feedeth on Christ is clothed at the same time. He that is clothed needeth something wherewithal to adorn himself; but he that is clothed in the righteousness of Christ is clothed in the court dress of heaven, and hath all the jewels of divinity upon him. He that is adorned yet needeth something wherewithal to wash himself and keep himself beauteous; but he that is clothed in the righteousness of Christ and adorned with God’s grace, is washed and is clean every whit. And he that is clean needs to be kept clean; he that has Christ shall be kept clean. Dear friends, there is nothing that a sinner can want — there is nothing that a saint can want, that is not in Christ. There are many things that we think we want that are not in him, but nothing we really want can be absent from him, for “in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,” and the fulness of the Godhead must be more than fulness for manhood. “It pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell;” and if all fulness cannot meet our wants, what can “? Therefore, shall we never be weary of Christ, because every craving of the heart is satisfied in him.

I will mention only one other cause. We shall never be tired of Christ, because the want that we have after Christ can never cease. While I am on earth I shall never cease sinning; therefore I shall never cease wanting a fountain filled with blood to wash me in. While I am here my conscience will never stay accusing me; therefore I shall never cease seeking an advocate. While I am here I shall never cease from trouble; therefore 1 shall never cease from wanting him who is the consolation of Israel. While I am here I thall never get rid of weakness, therefore I can never weary of him who is my strength and consolation. While I am here I shall never, I fear, cease from backsliding; therefore can I never cease from love to him who restoreth* my soul, and leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. You have heard the story of the company who crossed the desert; they had exhausted all their water, and they knew not where they should find any; but at last, after some days’ march, they came near a turbid stream of the most filthy water, and in dashed the camels and defiled it worse, by moving all the mud at the bottom, and mixing it with the water. But the poor thirsty creatures who had come across the arid desert were so thirsty that they drank what was more earth than water, and thought it sweeter than any wine they had ever tasted. But after they had satisfied their thirst did they think so? did they then think the water sweet 1 No, then they understood what it was that they had been drinking; and after their thirst was removed, you could not have compelled them to drink it again until their thirst again returned in all its force. And so long as th,e Christian is here he will always have the pangs of hunger, he will always have all the sufferings of a spiritual thirst if Christ be removed from him, and, therefore, that will always make even the bitter thing sweet. How much more shall the inward and everlasting hunger of the saint make a sweet thing of Christ yet more sweet! He must have the dew of his youth upon him, because we shall always have an appetite for him as long as we are here, or if we lose it for a little while — for fools will abhor all manner of meat sometimes — yet that appetite must and shall return again, and we shall again fly to those living waters with the wings of a dove — hasten again to these cooling streams, with all the speed of the panting hart that longs after the water-brook, for it must drink or die. Therefore, beloved, you see, yet again, that because we shall always want Christ, therefore will he always be fresh to us.

“But,” says one, “we shall not want him in heaven.” Who told you that? Whoever told you has misled you. Not want Christ in heaven! Why, beloved, if you could take Christ away from heaven you would take heaven away altogether, and leave every saint in hell. They do not want Christ in heaven in one sense of the word, because they have got him. Therefore they do not want him as the Scotch use the word “want.” But they still need to have Christ with them every hour, for he is the sum and substance of heaven. If I shall not want Christ to cleanse me in heaven, yet I shall want Christ to commune with him. If I shall not need the blood to wash me, yet I shall need the burnt-offering wherewithal to bless and praise God. If I shall not want him to pray to him, I shall need him to praise him. If I shall not require him to forgive me, yet I shall want him to embrace me. If I shall not need him as a Shepherd, I shall need him as a Husband. If I shall not want him as a Priest, I shall want him as a King, that I may for ever serve him with joy and gladness. He shall have in eternity the dew of his youth.

III. What are the lessons we should learn from this? The first is a lesson /or the indpit a lesson of admonition. Dear brethren, we who occupy the pulpit must take .care we never entertain the idea for a moment that the Gospel is worn out. There is a good deal of nonsense talked about a Gospel adapted to the times. People say that the way Whitfield preached, and the way that John Berridge and Rowland Hill preached, was all wrong. True, many sinners were converted under their ministry, but you know sinners then were a different sort of sinners to the sinners of these days, different shaped sinners, and they do not want the same sort of preaching. They do say the devil is improved. I don’t know, I find him worse if any thing — improved the wrong way. They say that sinners are improved, and do not require to be addressed with the same fiery, burning words as of old. The nineteenth century has become so learned that it has got beyond the simple knowledge of Christ crucified; it has become so erudite that the simplicity of the Gospel is far behind

THE DEW OF Christ’s youth. 2G3

it, it has marched on so far ahead that it has left the cross miles in the distance. Well, do not believe them for a moment, my dear brethren. If you want to wake up the people of England, preach an old-fashioned Gospel; if you want to crowd your halls, and gather thousands round you, it is the truth as it is in Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, that you must preach. And as for the matter of your style, you may leave that to the occasion, and never study that. Only stick to your subject. Stick to the simple Gospel in all its freshness and glory. Pentecostal youth shall return to the Gospel again when it is preached in all its fulness and purity. I know why it is that some preachers like to be obscure; it is because it gives a man a peculiar kind of popularity. I believe some people like to hear a man whom they cannot understand; and some, when they hear a man they can only just understand themselves, are very flattered by it, because the minister seems to say to them, “Now, you know you are all very clever people, I must therefore preach you a very clever sermon;” and then they feel pleased to think that the minister should have such a good opinion of them, and should think them so enlightened. But when you go to hear some plair blunt fellow that just blurts out the Gospel and believes that to try to be eloquent when he is preaching would be just as stupid as to paint the rose or to whitewash the lily, then you say, “Well, now, he did not compliment me; why he talked to me and all of us as if we had been a common lot of clod-hoppers and crossing-sweepers. He told us just the simple story of the cross, and there is nothing flattering in it.” Ay! and by the grace of God I trust that from our pulpits there will never be any thing that is flattering to you. “We preach Christ and him crucified, not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but with the demonstration of the Spirit and with power.” And rest assured that there will be more unction and more dew resting upon the enunciation of the simple truths of the Gospel, there will be more freshness to the hearers, than there will be upon the most polished oratory garnished with almost seraphic eloquence, and elaborated until it grows far beyond the comprehension of ordinary intellects.

The second lesson is a caution a homily of self-examination to each one here present. Do you take less interest in the Gospel?

do you find it grows dull to you, that Christ has lost his freshness 1 Let me tell you that Christ never has lost his freshness. You may have lost yours. What you should ask yourselves is — “Have I found the right Christ 1 If the Christ I have found has lost his freshness to me, is it not very likely I have found a wrong Christ, one of my own making, one of my own conception? for the real Christ is always fresh, always interesting, always new. Have not I either got the wrong truth, or got it the wrong way?” I said the wrong truth; have 1 contradicted myself? And yet that is the palpable contradiction of this age. One man says, “Yes,” and another man says, “No.” I am told it is uncharitable to say he is wrong if I am right; but I cannot make it out how both are to be right, or how yea and nay are to be made to run together. He will be a clever man that is able to tie the tails of yes and no together, and make them run in the same row. But so it is. If you have lost your interest in the Gospel, it is not a right one that you have received; if you have lost your interest in Christ, it is because it is not the Christ of God. It is very probable that if your former zeal and your former delight in Christ have departed, that you have made a mistake, and it is well that you question yourselves very solemnly, lest you should be found building upon the sand when you thought you were building upon a rock.

I have just another word to add, and that is a 2V07’d of asjnration. If Christ has the dew of his youth upon him, let us, my dear friends, who serve the Lord Jesus Christ, aspire to show the world that we do so. In the olden time, such was the dew of Christ’s youth, he made his people love him so much that they were ready to die for him; they gave all their substance to him; they lived a life of shame, and they were prepared to die a death of pain. Now let us prove to the world that Christianity has not lost its ancient vigor, that there is blood yet left in the earth, that the arm of the Church is not yet withered. Let us prove to the world that if Christ made his people holy in olden time he makes his people holy now; that if the religion of Christ made men disinterested, and devoted to him, zealous for his cause, prepared them to live and helped them to die, it can do so now. It is for you and for me to prove to the world that our religion has not lost its force by letting them see its force in our daily life. Emulate the noble army of martyrs, the glorious host of confessors; seek to live like the goodly fellowship of the prophets, and like that noble company of the apostles; and when you shall live the holy and devoted lives they did, then shall all the world say, “These men have been with Christ, for they have got the dew of the youth of Christianity upon them. They are like the old Christians, and therefore the old religion has not grown old, so as to be likely to depart and pass away.” 12