Invitation

The Pearl of Great Price. — I will suppose this morning that I am sent here by high authority to sell the Koh-inoor, or a diamond worth ten thousand times as much, a jewel worth a thousand millions of pounds. I am bound to sell it to you now, but I am sure you cannot purchase it at any price worthy of it; all you could offer would be BO small a portion of its value that I would sooner give it away than lower the repute of the jewel by taking such a trifle for it. The gospel is so precious a thing that if it is bought the whole world could not pay for it, and therefore, if bought at all it must needs be without money and without price.

The Bell of Welcome. — At the top of the Hospice of St. Bernard, in the storm, when the snow is falling fast, the monks ring the great bell, and when the way cannot be seen, the traveller can almost hear the way to the house of refuge across the snowy waste. So would I ring that bell this morning. Poor lost traveller, with thy sins and thy fears blowing cold into thy face, “Come and welcome, come and welcome,” to a Savior once dead and buried for thee, but now risen and pleading at the right hand of God. If thou canst not see thy way, yet hear it. “Hear, and your soul shall live; and he will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.”

“Whosoever Will.” — “Ah!” saith one, “God knows I am willing, but still I do not think I am worthy.” No, I know you are not, but what is that to do with it? It is not “whosoever is worthy” but “whosoever will, let him come.” “Well,” says one, “I believe that whosoever will, may come, but not me, for I am the vilest sinner out of hell.” But hark thee, sinner, it says, “whosoever.” What a big word that is! Whosoever! There is no standard-height here. It is of any height and any size. Little sinners, big sinners, black sinners, fair sinners, sinners doubled-dyed, old sinners, aggravated sinners, sinners who have committed every crime in the whole catalogue, — whosoever. Doth this exempt one? Who can be excluded from this whosoever? It mattereth not who thou mayest be, nor what thou mayest have been, if thou art willing to be saved; free as the air thou breathest is the love and grace of God. “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” Whosoever. — I am deeply in love with that word “whosoever.” It is a splendid word. A person who kept many animals had some great, dogs and some little ones, and in his eagerness to let them enter his house freely he had two holes cut in the door, one for the big dogs and another for the little dogs. You may well laugh, for the little dogs could surely have come in wherever there was room for the larger ones. This “whosoever” is the great opening, suitable for sinners of every size. “Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”