The Sight of Iniquity

“Wiliy dost thou show me iniquity, and cause me to behold grievance V — Hab. i. 3.

In this discourse it will be my endeavor to assign some reasons why God causes his people to see iniquity in themselves and others.

I. And we will begin with the first. Why does God cause us to see iniquity in ourselves? What is the reason of the Holy Spirit’s discoveries, which he sometimes makes to us, of the evil of our hearts 1 It is well known to all who love the Lord, that there are seasons when the Holy Spirit takes us into the chambers of imagery. “Son of man,” saith he, “I will show thee greater abominations than these.” He lays bare the loathsome kennel of the human heart, and lets us look at all our deformity and depravity; he takes us to the “rock whence we were hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence we were digged.” He bids us look with horror upon our natural state, and see that awful and hideous corruption that still remaineth in our hearts, even though we be regenerate. Why doth he do this 1 We will answer the question in several ways.

Sometimes he does it io confirm us in the doctrines of grace. My brethren, Arminianism is the natural religion of us all. I think one of the surest ways in the world to put down all our self-sufficiency, and all our erroneous views of the Gospel, is for God the Holy Spirit to show us our own depravity. A man maytalk about free will, while he knows nothing about himself; but when the Lord has shown him what he is by nature, he will say no more about it; or if he says something about it in mere theory, he cannot believe it in his inmost spirit. A man says that sinners of their own will turn to God; he says that they do of their o^Yn strength, at least to a great degree, though assisted by the Holy Spirit, keep themselves, and that to some extent their final perseverance is dependent on their own diligence, and is not left entirely in the hands of God. This I am sure of, that if the Spirit takes him into the chambers of imagery, and lets him see his own iniquity, he may go in talking about his own will, but he will come out singing of free grace; for he will say, “O Lord, if thou hadst not begun the good work in me, it never could have originated in such a filthy pool as my heart; and if thou dost not carry on the work from first to last, it will soon come to a stand-still. If I am to stand in any righteousness except the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, I must stand naked before the bar of God; and if the work be not entirely thine own, or if thou art to be turned away by any sin or sinfulness in the creature, then, O Lord, I know I must perish.” And this, when he has got right views upon the subject, will drive him to believe in discriminating grace, in irresistible vocation, in omnipotent keeping, and in the infallible perseverance of all the children of God.

It is very extraordinary how the belief of one of the doctrines of grace naturally leads to the belief of all the rest. The system o the Gospel is so logical, its truths fit so well into one another, that you cannot get a right knowledge of one, without at once, or in a very short time, discovering the others. The Lord begins by teaching us this foundation truth, our utter depravity, one that is burned into our conscience by bitter experience, and by terrible discoveries of our sinfulness; he knows right well that the other doctrines will follow, and that when this is really understood, we shall not be long before we have orthodox views of the whole covenant of grace, and the great system of the Gospel of Jesus. This, I think, is one reason why the Lord gives his people discoveries of their iniquity and grievance, that they may be sound in the faith, and that they may hold nothing but the doctrines of grace.

Moreover, it is to keep them humble. If our Master did not sometimes let us have a look at ourselves, we should be fearfully proud. The old Puritans used to say, that God had given the peacock black feet, that he might not be proud of his bright feathers. So, said they, God has allowed his people to have black feet still, that they may not glory in any of the graces which God the Spirit has given them; but that while they have those graces, so bright and beautiful, they may still look down on their black natural depravity, and humble themselves before God. We are all, by nature, as proud as Lucifer. If any man thinks himself to be incapable of pride, he is very proud indeed. “Ah!” says one, “I know I never can be flattered.” But, sir, you flatter yourself to an extraordinary degree, when you say that. Pride is natural to us; it is woven into the warp and woof of our being; we shall never get rid of it, till the worm has eaten up our flesh; nothing will ever cover up our pride except our winding sheets; and when our bodies are in them, and our souls are caught up to dwell with God, then pride shall be thoroughly cast out. Our high communion, our progress towards heaven, our increased knowledge, our good works, all these things have, through the evil heart of our unbelief, a tendency to puff” us up, though, in truth, being all borrowed, and all given us by the Spirit, there is no legitimate cause of pride in any of us; and therefore, God, to keep his people in the right place, humbles them with discoveries of their sinfulness. If they had all sail,,and no ballast, they would soon be wrecked; so that when he fdls his people with abundant revelations, he sends this thorn in the flesh; and this messenger of Satan is sent to buffet them, that they may walk humbly with God, and bow their heads in submission before him, knowing themselves to be still unclean, apart from the work of Christ Jesus, which he has wrought out for them.

Beloved, you can bear me witness, that when you have had sad discoveries of your own heinous guilt, you have been humbled. Sometimes your good works have been a great evil to you, because you have prided yourself upon them, and brought yourself to the precipice of ruin. But manifestations of your guilt, by God’s Spirit, brought home to your conscience, have been of essential service to you, by teaching you not to be high-minded, but rather to fear and to remember that your standing in grace is not of yourself, and therefore you must not boast. That is another good reason why we may bless God for showing us iniquity, if there were no other.

But a third reason is, that God sometimes shows his people their own wickedness, to make them submissive in the hour of trouble. A Pharisee, of all people, would be the worst man to be in Job’s position. If I must be in a hospital, I would rather be there as a publican, than as a Pharisee. For a Pharisee nothing would be good enough; he would think his pangs and miseries great indeed for so righteous a man as he; he would think he had no right to suffer. But the poor publican would say, “I am a sinner, and these miseries are not a millionth part of what I deserve to suffer; these aches and pains are nothing, compared with what I merit at the hand of God; therefore I will bear all these things with submission. Why should a living man complain 1 I am out of hell yet, and therefore I must not murmur.” Ah! brethren, we can never keep murmuring down. There is very much in the old English word murmur. Just sound it — it is mur-mur. Any child can say that. It is one of the easiest words to speak; and that is why, I think, we have got it for murmuring. Because murmuring is such a very easy thing; any one can murmur, any one can grumble, any one can complain. Murmuring seems to have been bred in the bone of I-srael; for Israel in the wilderness were always murmuring; murmuring for water when they were thirsty, then murmuring for bread, then murmuring for meat, then murmuring because the Anakims were tall, then murmuring because they were to go and fight them, and then murmuring because they were not to go and fight them; murmuring first for one thing, and then for another thing; they were always at it; they were continually murmuring for forty years long in the wilderness. Ay, but the surest way to cure us of murmuring is to let us know our own ill-deserving. A man that has been taught his own wickedness and his own ill-deserving, will be less likely to murmur than any one else. The poor wretch that has had the rope round his neck, and been ready to be turned off, when he gets his pardon, and goes his way, you will not find him murmuring at the fare that is provided for him. But he will say, “Oh! it is such a wonder to be alive at all, such an act of mercy that I have had my life spared, that this dry bread becomes like royal dainties, and this cup of cold water becomes to me like the richest wine.” The Lord does thus take his children into the stripping-room, and into the starving-room, and let them see that all their afflictions are less than they deserve; that their troubles are but as the small dust of the balance, compared with the mountains of tribulation and anguish which they deserve to have received in hell.

Again. It is to put us on our watch-toiver. When the Lord shows us the sin in our heart, it is like a captain pointing to a few skirmishers that have just come before an army that is advancing. “There, my men,” says the captain, “you see those. They are the outposts, the men that are the advanced guard of the enemy; look sharp after them; there is a great army behind; be on your watch.” So the Holy Spirit discovers to us our evil desires and corruptions for a moment; he wakes us up to see them; and when we have seen them, he says to us, “Take care; this little that I have shown thee is to warn thee of a greater thing that is behind. These few evil ones that have just appeared to thy vision are but the outriders of a host of black things that are ready to attack thee. Be upon thy watch-tower always; be constantly looking out for foes. I think that soldiers need to have a few skirmishes on their march; if they had not they might become careless and relax discipline, and then they might be enticed into a defile, and so be surprised and cut off. But when they have a few enemies to harass them on the flank and rear, they are very likely to be watchful and to keep a sharp look-out, so that in case of a sudden charge they would be ready to repel the foe. So the temptations of our flesh are often useful to wake us up. God often makes use of our sins, our inbred sins, to act like watchdogs in a house to wake us up, to let us know there are thieves trying to get in. Our few sins bark and bite, and then we start up to skirmish. But, ah! if we had not been awakened, if these had not been developed, there might have been hideous open sins, that would have surprised us in some moment when we were not upon our guard; and so we might have been slain by the hand of the enemy. Old Ralph Erskine said a very true thing, and a very right thing, when he said, “I would rather a roaring devil than a sleeping one at me;”’ by which he meant, I would rather be tempted, I would rather be tried, I would rather be persecuted, I would rather be perplexed, than lead an easy life of it, and so go sailing along in self-confidence till I struck upon a rock, —

“For more the treacherous calm I dread,
Than tempests rolling o’er my head.”

Because the calm is apt to breed a slothfulness which disables; and times of ease seldom suit God’s soldiers. Holidays ruined the army of Hannibal; and many an easy hour and day, when we have been free from our inbred sins, has been the means of throwing us off our guard, and leading us into worse sins on the morrow God stirs up the Amalekites to make us ready for the battle, lest we should be surprised.

But one more answer to this question, then I will pass to the other point. The Lord shows us often our iniquity and our grievance, to make us value salvation more. You know, the man that thinks the most of a doctor, is generally the man who wants him most. When we are well, we often make jokes of doctors; we talk about their killing the people, and so on; but when we get ill, we always send for them. We laugh at the men; but we use them when we are sick ourselves. Ah! and so it is with the Lord’s people; they, perhaps, may think lightly of Christ, when they do not see any present need for him; but when they discover their own leprosy, then it is they value the Physician. When they see their own ruin, then it is they prize the remedy. It is a great service to us, sometimes, to show us our bankrupt’s schedule. Every man has had a bankrupt’s schedule, because we are bankrupts by nature. We set up in trade for ourselves, and we soon turned bankrupts; we never paid a farthing in the pound, Jesus Christ stepped in and paid it all. But we should not know how great was his grace in so doing, did he not show us again our debt, and how very poor were our own hopes of meeting debts so immense, so infinitely beyond all our comprehension. God says to his children, “I brought you out of prison, and you do not think much of my deliverance to-day; I will take you back to prison, and let you see what kind of place it is, and then you will think more of the Breaker that broke your chains and set you free. I have opened a fountain that sparkles with living water; you have been drinking of it day by day, till you are full, and you do not know its value.. Come, I will put you in the waste, howling wilderness, and you shall suffer hunger, have your water spent in your bottle, and then you will know the preciousness of the rippling fountain which Christ hath opened for thirsty sinners. You have been eating at my table, every day feasting; you have scarce known what hunger is; I will just put you again in the furnace of conviction, and make you hunger after righteousness, and then you will prize the bread that came down from heaven, and think more of Jesus than you would have done, had it not been for this showing of iniquity and grievance.”

All these things I have now spoken of, are matters of heart experience. Many persons do not know the plague of their heart. But you that love the Lord will own that, however quaintly I have put these things, there is great truth in them.

It is even so: we have had very solemn times, all of us, since we first knew the Lord; when we could not tell the right hand from the left in matters of Christianity; when, if any one had asked, “Are you the Lord’s or no 1” we dared not have stumbled out, “I am the Lord’s.” For our corruptions were so strong, and unbelief had become so rampant, and poor faith seemed to be so slumbering, like the fire in the ashes, that we could not tell whether there was any fire or not. Oh! brethren, do we not remember when we have sometimes knelt down in anguish, and said, “O Lord, I long to have this point decided — am I thine or am I not 1 If it be so, why am I thus 1 Why this wrestling of two armies in the Shulamite 1 Why is it that these confusions and these warrings are carried on in my spirit? Show me wherefore thou contendest with me, and why my sin contends with me. O Lord, do show me where I am vile!” And have we not found that these times have been of essential benefit to us 1 We have grown strong by these griefs; the sight of iniquity has made us wiser, more cautious, more prudent, more humble, more affectionate, and made us more firm in our belief in our Saviour afterwards, than we had ever been before.

II. Now I come to answer the question in another sense. Sometimes the iniquity and grievance are not in ourselves, but

IN OTHERS. Some of you may not have much of this world’s goods; you, perhaps, live in a house where there are very ungodly people; down in your court the Sabbath is always broken; in the street where you reside, you seldom hear any thing on the Sabbath-day except oaths, and curses, and profanity, and a breach of the day of rest; and others of you, by your very connections, are called to mix with bad companions, whose speech, instead of being seasoned with salt, seems seasoned with brimstone, flavored only with blasphemy, and having perpetually in it the very brogue of hell. There are some of you called to labor with workmen, who, instead of endeavoring to help you to heaven, seem trying, like Christian’s neighbors and wife, of whom you read in the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” to pull you back to the City of Destruction. You are, perhaps, asking this question, “O Lord, why am I in such a condition “? Why has thy providence put me where I am thrown into contact with evil men 1 Why dost thou show me iniquity and cause me to behold grievance f I will tell you two or three reasons.

The first is, to let you see what you might have been yourselves. John Bradford — you have heard the story of John Bradford a hundred times — when he used to see people taken by his window to Tyburn, to be hanged, said, “There goes John Bradford; if it had not been for the grace of God, John Bradford would have been hanged too.” When you hear men swearing, you say, “That is what I would have been, if the Lord had not kept the door of my lips.” When you see men taken up for robbery, you say, “That is what I might have been, if God had not kept me from sin.” When you hear of the drunken brawl, or the murderous affray, you put your hand on your heart, and say, “Ah! the same thing might have come out of this; for hearts are very much alike. ‘As face answereth to face in water, so the heart of man to man.’ There is not much difference between one heart and another by nature; that man is a picture of what I might have been, if the restraining hand of God had not kept me back from sin.” You know sometimes drunkards make men sober, good apostles of temperance drunkards are. For when they come reeling through the streets, in all their bestial stupidity, a man very naturally says, “What a fool that fellow makes himself!” and it leads him ta say, “I must avoid that thing, because I would not make myself so foolish.” I think it was the old Greek lords used to make their slaves drunk, in order to keep their children from the vice, by seeing how absurd it looked.

Thus, perhaps, God allows wicked men to come in our way, to make iis see the evil of sin, thai we may turn from it, pass by it abhor it, and not indulge in it. I have no doubt that the wickedness of men may be employed under the divine wisdom, and the overruling hand of God, for the sanctification of his own people. Just as, sometimes, a book that is full of bad orthography is one of the best things for teaching a child how to spell well, by leading him to set about correcting the bad spelling: so the Lord gives us bad spelling in order to teach us how to spell right. We have to correct ourselves by the evil of others, and learn from them to avoid the sins into which they have fallen. Wrecks may sometimes be made beacons; the ruin of one man may sometimes be a warning to another. And it is so with the Christian; for he knows how to use his sight of iniquity, and of grievances beheld in others, by avoiding the same iniquity himself.

In the second place, God sometimes allows us to see the sins of others, to teach us to admire his sovereignty, which plucked us as brands from the burning. We look at our neighbors that live in our street, and see them drinking down sin as a greedy ox drinketh down water, and we say, “Who hath made me to differ V Grace — free grace. And then we ask, “Why has grace come to me more than to them 1 Why these favors to me above the rest 1” And we are obliged to say, with Christ, “Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.” When one of a family is converted, what a specimen that is of divine sovereignty! When there is a holy mother, with an ungodly husband, and wicked children, what an illustration that is of the sovereignty of God, in that one is taken and the others left! And when in a house two women have been grinding at the mill, and one has accompanied her grinding with the song of Sion, and the other with the voice of cursing, what a proof there has been of the sovereignty of God, in that “he Mill have mercy on whom he will have mercy:” that “it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that rumieth, but of God that showeth mercy.” Ay, Christian, God hath put thee in the very midst of sin, to make grace the more conspicuous. If you ride in the country, sometimes, you see a field of wheat; you will very likely not notice one of the ears at all; but as you are going along you will see a hedge, and by some chance or other there has been an ear dropped into the ground under the hedge, and this one ear of corn has grown up through the brambles, and there it stands alone. Very likely you nudge your friend who is riding with you, and say, “There is an ear of wheat growing up among the brambles.” It seems the more astonishing and notable thing from the place where it is. So, I think, a Christian in the Church is not a thing to be wondered at so’ much. The sovereignty of God is not so much seen amongst the righteous, as it is when we find the Christian growing up amongst the bushes and brambles of an ungodly world, showing forth his light in the midst of “a wicked and perverse generation.” Who ever noticed glow-worms in the day time? But in the night time you will see them under the leaves. They were there by day, I dare say, but nobody saw them; but in the night, with their little lamps on their back, they glisten, and every one admires them. So the Christian, when he is in good company, is a blessed thing, and a great instance of divine love; but when in providence he is put into a dark place, where there is little of Gospel light and truth, then it is that his little lamp begins to glimmer, and he is more noticed than he ever was before. This is why the Lord sometimes puts his people there, to make his sovereignty, his power, his might, and his grace the more apparent. Even as men sometimes set jewels in foils to show their brightness, and put dark spots in their picture to make the lights become more apparent, so the Lord in his providence permits his people sometimes to sojourn in evil places; like Lot, to dwell in Sodom, and like Abraham, to go down among the Egyptians, or with the Philistines, in order that grace may be displayed, and the Lord’s name may be called.

And now, I think I have another reason, and a better one, perhaps. “Why dost thou show me iniquity, and cause me to behold grievance ^” Why, my brethren, God shows us the sin of our fellow-men, that tve maij set more earnestly to work, and that ive may be the means of saving souls and extending the kingdom of righteousness. When a captain takes his soldiers out to look at the enemy, it is like what I heard of a celebrated Scotchman, whose words I am scarcely able to pronounce: “Now, lads,” said he, “there they are; if you dinna kill them they’ll kill you.” That was their choice. So it is with us. God brings us to walk in this city, where harlotry and vice on every side are to be seen, almost in noonday. Now then, soldiers of the cross, if ye dinna kill them they’ll kill you. If you do not stand up for your Master, to keep them down, and keep the banner of the cross in the air, the enemy will be more than a match for you. I have been struck sometimes, when I have looked in a print window, and seen there pamphlets full of all manner of obscenity and infidelity and wickedness, and they have had the most blessed effect on my mind; for I have thought, “Well, if there is so much wickedness, so much the more reason why every minister should be in earnest, and why every Christian should seek with all his might to do good.” You may live in very nice villas in the country; you do not go among the poor people, and you do not know what they are at. If you were to walk through some of the back slums and narrow alleys of London, you would say, “Oh, I never thought there could have been such places upon earth!” and if you could go where I have sometimes gone, up an old creaking staircase, where you have to stoop your head for fear of hitting it against a beam, and go into a room, and see a whole family there; go into another room, and see a whole family there; a little further, and see another family, all crowded and packed together, and then hear their language, and see their utter ignorance of every thing concerning Christ, almost as unenlightened as the Hottentots in their kraals in Africa — you would go away after seeing them, and say, “There is great reason that we should be up and in earnest. We ought to be doing, sirs; we ought to be working well for our Master, after such a sight as this!” Oh! but we cover up our iniquity in this land a great deal; we fringe all London with glorious streets, so that when a foreigner rides through them he says, “What a grand city it is!” A varnished hypocrisy! What is there behind those streets 1 What will you find behind those palaces at the West-end 1 The very lowest of places upon earth, where the poor are stowed away together by hundreds. We fringe the city just with a gauze and coating — with something that looks respectable and excellent. But, alas! for the internals of this city, how much of wickedness and sin dwell there! I bless God that there are some of you obliged to live where you see the wickedness of this city; I thank God that some of you cannot go to your houses at night, without seeing wickedness on the road. “Why,” you say, “do you bless God that there is the wickedness V No, I do not; but I bless God that you have to see it, because you will be the people who will go to others and say, “Strive for the salvation of men. Work, I beseech you, to do good, because the world is still full of wickedness, and the dark places even of this city are full of the habitations of cruelty.” It is a long time since I have made a good speech at a public meeting; but I do remember doing it once. I stepped out, as one of the speakers was delivering a very, very pretty oration, and I went into a neighboring house to speak with a woman who wished to join the church. It was not in

London. When I stepped into the house, there was the husband beastly drunk; he had got his wife up in a corner, and was with all his might trying to bruise her face, and tear her arms with his nails, till the blood flowed from her arms and face. Two or three rushed in, and dragged him away. She said she had endeavored with all her meekness to persuade him to allow her to go to the house of God that night; and the only reason why he ill-treated her was, because he said she would always be going to that place of worship. And when I had seen this sight, and looked on the poor woman, with tears in her eyes, I went into the place, and spoke like a man who had got his face and heart, and whole body, full of fire. I could not help it: I was all on flame against the sin of drunkenness, and sought with all my might to urge the members of the church to do all they could to scatter the light of the Gospel into a neighborhood which was so dark and black and filthy and abandoned. And I think it would do all of us good, when we preach, if we were sometimes to be dragged through some of the worst parts of London, to let us see the wickedness of it. It would do our Sunday-school teachers good, many of them, for they would then be more in earnest Yitli their cliildrcn; and I think it ^yould do good to some of our old friends, who sit and sleep almost all the service through, and are never much more than sleeping partners in the concern. If they did but know how the battle was going on, how tough the struggle and how stern the conflict, they would wake up from their slumbers, and go forth to the battle, and stand shoulder to shoulder, and deal blow after blow against the common enemy of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the welfare of man. Ah, my brethren, we want to know more of the evil of men, to make us more earnest; for if there be any thing in which the Church is lacking more than in any other matter, it is in the matter of earnestness.

Whitfield said, in one of his sermons, “O my God, when I think how this wicked city is perishing, and how many are dying for lack of knowledge, I feel I could stand on the top of every hackney coach in the streets of London to preach the Gospel.” Why should he say that 1 Why was his zeal so burning? Because he had seen the sinfulness of men, and marked their follies. We shall never be thoroughly in earnest, till we are thoroughly aware of the evil that is before us. When the horse sees the precipice, he throws himself back, and will not madly dash himself down. So with the Church: if she could see the evil that is before her, she would surely draw herself back with energy, to save her own children from plunging into the yawning gulf. Ay, sirs, ye have iniquity in your very teeth, and at your doors; ye have iniquity every where round about you, — and yet how few of you are striving to do any thing for Christ! Ye are asked to help in this great battle: ye have so many calls ye cannot afford it. Ye are asked to do something in this cause, to give it a little time; ye cannot manage it. Ye are asked to speak; ye have so little ability, ye cannot do it. One half of the people that call themselves Christians want to be pressed fifty times to do a thing; and then, when they are got to do it, they are not worth having, because they are only pressed men — they are not oneJialf so good as volunteers. I would that all knew the evil this world is subject to, and the wickedness of men; and I think all of us who love the Saviour would start up from our seats to-night, and say, “Here am I j let me be a volunteer against the enemy j let me, in my measure, whatever little measure that may be, go forth to serve my God, to practise virtue, and, by a holy example, and by every other means, seek to stem the raging torrent of the iniquity of the age.”

And now, my dear friends, in closing, allow me just this one remark to another class of hearers. There is one who, but a little while ago, was an abandoned sinner; he could drink, he could swear, he could break the Sabbath, and curse God. One day he stepped into the house of God, and the Lord met with him, and now he is in misery, such as he cannot describe; his heart is all broken, his conscience is as if it had been lashed with the cenfold whip of the law, and as if brine had then been rubbed into his wounds; he is smarting all over with the wounds of his conscience, inflicted by the angry and fiery law of God. He is saying to himself, “O Lord, I must perish, I know I must; I see such wickedness in me, that I must perish and be cast away.” Nay, poor soul, nay, that is not the right answer to the question. The question is. Why doth the Lord show thee iniquity 1 I will give thee the right answer. li is to deliver thee from it. If God has broken thine heart, he has broken it on purpose to give thee a new one. If he has killed thee by the law, he has killed thee on purpose to make thee alive by the Gospel; if he has wounded thee in thy conscience, he has done it that he may have room to pour in the oil and the balm of Christ Jesus. If he has stripped thee, he has only pulled thy rags off”, that he may put on thee a perfect robe of spotless righteousness; and if he has cast thee into the ditch, so that thine own clothes abhor thee, as Job words it, it is that he may take thee to the fountain filled with blood, and give thee a perfect washing. And when the Lord pulls a man down, he does not do it to burn the old materials; he does it to build him up again. When he breaks a man’s heart, it is not for the mere breaking’s sake, it is that he may make it anew. If you have misery in your conscience on account of sin, God has dealings of love for you, and purposes of love for you. “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.” If you are a convinced sinner, he died for you; for he died for sinners. If you can truly say you are a sinner, Christ Jesus hung upon the cross for you. Look at him there, bleeding; every drop of blood says to you, “I drop, poor simier, for thee.” Look to that gasii in his side, whence flows the double stream of water and blood; it says, “Sinner, this stream runs for thee.” Art thou a sinner 1 If so, Christ died for thee. He hath not died in vain: thou shalt be saved. If thou dost but know thyself to be a bona fide sinner, a real one, no complimentary, sham sinner, but a real, actual one, who means what he says, when he declares himself to be guilty and vile; then, as the Lord liveth, Jesus Christ died for you on Calvary; you shall behold his face with joy; you shall be numbered with the Church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven, and you shall sing eternal hallelujahs round the throne of God and the Lamb.