Salvation by Faith
[Delivered in London, England, Jan., 19th., ‘’Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thoushalt be saved Acts. xli, 31.
STANDING IN THE PHILIPPIAN DUNGEON!
r AILS are dark, dull, damp, loathsome places even L now, but they were worse in the apostolic times. I imagine today we are standing in the Philippian dungeon. Do you not feel the chill? Do you not hear the groan of those incarcerated ones who for ten years have not seen the sunlight and the deep sigh of women who remember their father’s house and mourn over their wasted estates? Listen again. It is the cough of
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a consumptive or the struggle of one in a nightmare of a great horror. You listen again and hear a culprit, his chains rattling as he rolls over in his dreams, and 5^ou say: “God pity the prisoner,” But there is an other sound in that prison. It is a song of gladness. What a place to sing in! The music comes winding through the corridors of the prison, and in all the dark wards the whisper is heard: What’s that? What’s that?,’ It is the song of Paul and Silas. They cannot sleep. They have been whipped, very badly whipped. The long gashes on their backs are bleeding yet. They lie flat on the cold ground, their feet fast in wooden sockets; and of course they can not sleep. But they can sing.
Jailer, what are you doing with these people? Why have they been put in here? Oh, they have been trying to make the world better. Is that all? That is all. A pit for Joseph.
A lion’s cave for Daniel. A blazing furnace for Shadrach. Clubs for John Wesley. An anathema for Philip Melanchton. A dungeon for Paul and Silas.
But while we are standing in the gloom of the Philippian dungeon, and we hear the mingling voices of sob, and groan, and blasphemy, and hallelujah, suddenly an earthquake! The iron bars of the prison twist, the pillars crack off, the solid masonry begins to heave and rock till all the doors swing open, and the walls fall with a terrific crash. The jailer, feeling himself responsible for these prisoners! and feeling suicide to be honorable — since Brutus killed himself, and Cato killed himself, and Cassius killed himself — puts his sword to his own heart, proposing with one strong, keen thrust
SALVATION HY rMTII.
to put an end to his excitement and agitation. But Paul cries out: Stop! stop! Do thyself no harm, we are all here.’* Then I see the jailer running through the dust and amid the ruin of that prison, and I see him throwing himself down at the feet of these prisoners, crying out: What shall I do? What shall 1 do?’ Then Paul answers: ‘Get out of this place before there is another earthquake; put handcuffs and hobbles on these other prisoners lest they get away.’* No word of that kind. Compact, thrilling, tremendous answer; answer memorable all through earth and heaven: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.’*
THE CRASH OF EARTHQUAKES.
Well, we have all read of the earthquake in Lisbon, in Lima, in Aleppo, and in Caraccas, but we live in a latitude where in all our memory there has not been one severe Volcanic disturbance. And yet we have seen fifty earthquakes. Here is a man who has been building up a large fortune. His bid on the money market was felt in all the cities. He thinks he has got be^ond all annoying ri^alries in trade and he says to himself:
Now I am free and safe from all possible perturbation.’* But a national panic strikes the foundations of the commercial world and crash! goes all the magnificent business establishment. He is a man who has built up a very beautiful home. His daughters have just come home from the seminary with diplomas of graduation. His sons have started in life, honest, temperate, and pure. When the evening lights are struck there is a happy and an unbroken family circle. But there have been an accident down at the beach. The young man ventured too far out in the surf. The telegraph hurled the terror up to the city. An earthquake struck under talmage’s sermons.
the foundation of that beautiful home. Thf. piano closed; the curtains dropped; the laughter hushed. Crash! go all those domestic hopes and prospects and expectations. So, my friends, we have all felt the shaking down of some great trouble, and there was a time when we were as much excited as this man of the text, and we cried out as he did: **What shall T do? What shall I do? “The same reply that the apostle made to him is appropriate to us: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved?”
THE SAVIORS NAME. ‘There are some documents of so little importance that you do not care to put any more than your last name under them, or even your initials, but there are some documents of so great importance that you write out your full name. So the Savior in some parts of the bible is called “Lord,’’ and in other parts of the bible he is called ‘’Jesus,” and in other parts of the bible he is called ‘’ Christ,’’ but that there might be no mistake about this passage all three names come in together — the ‘’ Lord Jesus Christ.” Now, who is this being that you want me to trust in and believe in? Men sometimes come to me with credentials and certificates of good character; but I can not trust them. There is some dishonesty in their looks that makes me know I shall be cheated if I confide in them. You cannot put your heart’s confidence in a man until you know what stuff he is made of, and am I reasonable this morning when I stop to ask you who this is that you want me to trust in? No man would think of venturing his life on a vessel going out to sea that had never been inspected. No, you must have the certificate hung amidships, telling how many tons it carries, and how long ago it was l)niltj rnid wh ^liili i(, rr-;l all about it.
And you can not expect me to rivsk the cargo of 111y immortal interests on board any craft till you tell me what it is made of, and where it was made, and what it is.
When, then, I ask you who this is you want me to trust in, you tell me he is a very attractive person. You tell me that the contemporary writers describe him, and they give the color of his eyes, and the color of his hair, and they describe his whole appearance as being resplendent. Christ did not tell the children to come to him. Suffer little children to come unto me was not spoken to the children; it was spoken to the Pharisees. The children had come without any invitation. No sooner did Jesus appear than the little ones pitched from their mothers arms, an avalanche of beauty and love, into his lap. Suffer little children to come unto me.’’ That was addressed to the Pharisees; not to the children. Christ did not ask John to put his head down on his bosom; John could not help but put his head there. Such eyes, such cheeks, such a chin, such hair, such physical condition and appearance — why, it must have been completely captivating and winsome. I suppose’ a look at him was just to love him. Oh! how attractive his manner. Why, when they saw Christ coming along the street they ran into their houses, and they wrapped up their invalids as quick as they could, and brought them out that he might look at them. Oh! there was something so pleasant, so inviting, so cheering in everything he did, in his very look. When these sick ones were brought out did he say: “Take away these sores; do not trouble me with these leprosies?” No, no; there was a kind look, there was a gentle word, there was a healing touch. They could not keep away from him.
Ill cidditioii to this softness of character, there was a fiery momenttini. How the old hypocrites trembled before him. How the kings of the earth turned pale. Here is a plain man, with a few sailors at his back, coming off the sea of Galilee, going up to the palace of the Caesars, making that palace quake to the foundations, and uttering a word of mercy and kindness which throbs through all the earth, and through all the heavens, and through all the ages. Oh! he was a loving Christ. But it was not effeminacy or insipidity of character; it was accompanied with majesty, infinite and omnipotent.
THE WONDROUS DEATH.
Lest the world should not realize his earnestness, this Christ mounts the cross. You say: ^’If Christ has to die, why not let him take some deadly potion and lie on a couch in some bright and beautiful home? If he must die, let him expire amid all kindly attentions.’^ No, the world must hear the hammers on the heads of the spikes. Thev/orld must listen to the death-ratt le of the sufferer. The world must feel his warm blood dropping on each cheek, while it looks up into the face of his anguish. And so the cross must be lifted and the hoc is dug on the top of Calvary. It must be dug three feet deep, and then the cross is laid on the ground, and the sufferer is stretched upon it, and the nails are pounded through nerve, and muscle, and bone, through the right hand, through the left hand, and then they shake his right hand to see if it is fast and then they sha.ke his left foot to see if it is fast, and then they heave up the wood, half a dozen shoulders under the weight, and they put the end of the cross to the mouth of the hole, and they plunge it in, all the weight of his body coming down for the first time on the spikes, and while some
SAVATION BY FAlTH. hold the cross upright others throw in the dirt and trample it down, and trample it hard. Oh, plant that tree well and thoroughly, for it is to bear fruit such as no other tree ever bore. Why did Christ endure it? He could have taken those rocks and with them crushed his crucifiers. He could have reached up and grasped the sword of the omnipotent God and with one clean cut have tumbled them into perdition. But no; he was to die. He miust die. His life for my life. His life for your life.
A STORY OF A YOUNG MAN.
In one of the European cities a young man died on the scaffold for the crime of murder. Some time after the mother of this young man was dying and the priest camxC in, and she made a confession to the priest that she was the murderer, and not her son; in a moment of anger she had struck her husband a blow that slew him. The son came suddenly into the room and was washing away the wounds and trying to resuscitate his father when some one looked through the window and saw him and supposed him to be the criminal. That young man died for his own mother. You sa: *’It was wonderful that he never exposed her.^^ But I tell you of a grander thing. Christ, the son of God» died, not for his mother, not for his father, but for his sworn enemies. Oh, such a Christ as that — so loving, so self-sacrificing — can you not trust him?
HOW ‘to trust CHRIST.
I think there are many under the spirit of God who are saying: ‘’I will trust him if he will only tell me how,’’ and the great question asked by thousands in this assemblage is: *^How? How?’’ And while I answer your question I look up and utter the prayer
TALMAGE*S vSERMONS.
which Rowland Hill so often uttered in the midst of his sermons: Master, help! How are you to trust in Christ? Just as you trust any one. You trust your partner in business with important things. If a commercial house give you a note payable three months hence you expect the payment of that note at the end of three months. You have perfect confidence in their word and in their ability. You go home to-day. You expect there will be food on the table. You have confidence in that. Now, I ask you to have the same confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ. He says: ‘’You believe; I take away your sins,” and they are all taken away. ‘’What!” you say, ‘’before I pray anymore? Before I read my bible any more? Before I cry over my sins any more? Yes, this moment. Believe with all your heart and you are saved.
Why, Christ is only waiting to get from you what you give to scores of people every day. What is that? Confidence. If these people whom you trust day by day are more worthy than Christ, if they are more faithful than Christ, if they have done more than Christ ever did, then give them the preference; but if you really think that Christ is as trustworthy as they are, then deal with him as fairly. “Oh!’’ says some one in a light way, “I believe that Christ was born in Bethlehem; and I believe that he died on the cross.” Do you believe it with your head or your heart?
SAVING FAITH.
I will illustrate the difference. You are in your own house. In the morning you open a newspaper, and you iWad how Capt. Braveheart on the sea risked his life for thro salvation of his passengers. You sa: “What a grand fellow he must have been! His family deserves very well of the country.” You fold the newspaper and sit down at the table, and perhaps do not think of that incident again. That is historical faith. But now you are on the sea, and it is night, and you are asleep, and are awakened by the shriek of Fire! You rush out on the deck. You hear, amid the wringing of the hands the fainting, the cries: No hope! We are lost! we are lost! The sail puts out its wings of fire, the ropes make a burning ladder in the night heavens, the spirit of wreck hisses in the waves, and on the hurricane deck shakes out its banner of smoke and darkness.
Down with the life boats! cries the captain. Down with the life boats!,’ People rush into them. The boats are about full. Room only for one more man. You are standing on the deck beside the captain. Who shall it be? You or the captain? The captain says: “You.” You jump and are saved. He stands there and dies. Now, you believe Capt. Braveheart sacrificed himself for his passengers, but you believe it with love, with tears, with hot and long continued exclamations, with grief at his loss and with joy at your deliverance. That is saving faith. In other words, what you believe with all the heart, and believe in regard to yourself. On this hinge turns my sermon; aye, the salvation of your immortal soul.
You often go across a bridge yoti know nothing about. You do not know who built the bridge, you do not know what material it is made of, but you come to it, and walk over it, and ask no questions. And here is an arched bridge, blasted from the ‘’Rock of Ages” and built by the architect of the whole universe, spanning the dark gulf between sin and righteousness, and all God asks you is to walk across it, and you start, and you come to it, and you go a little way on, and you stop, and you fall back, and you experiment. Yoti talmage’s sermons.
say: ‘’How do I know that bridge will hold me? instead of marching on with firm step, asking no questions, but feeling that the strength of the eternal God is under you.
Oh, was there ever a prize offered so cheap as pardon and heaven are offered to y6u? For how much? A million dollars? It is certainly worth more than that. But cheaper than that you can have it. Ten thousand dollars? Less than that. Five thousand dollars? Less than that. One dollar? Less than that. One farthing? Less than that. Without money and without price. No money to pay. No journey to take. No penance to suffer. Only just one decisive action of the soul: ‘’Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.’’
A HAPPY LIFE. Shall I try to tell you what it is to be saved? I can not tell you. No man, no angel, can tell you. But I can hint at it. For my text brings me up to this point: “Thou shalt be saved.’’ It means a happy life here, and a peaceful death and a blissful eternity. It is a grand thing to go to sleep at night, and to get up in the morning, and to do business all day, feeling that all is right between my heart and God. No accident, no sickness,, no persecution, no peril, no sword can do me any permanent damage. I am a forgiven child of God, and he is bound to see me through. He has sworn he will see me through. The mountains may depart, the earth may burn, the light of the stars may be blown out by the blast of the judgment hurricane, but life and death, things present and things to come are mine,
A PEACEFUL DEATH. Yea, farther than that — it means a peaceful death.
Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Sigourney, Dr. Young, and almost all the poets have said handsome things about death. There is nothing beautiful about it. When we stand by the white and rigid features of those whom we love and they give no answering pressure of the hand and no returning kiss of the lip, :we do not want anybody poetizing around about us. Death is loathsomeness and midnight and the wringing of the heart until the tendrils snap and curl in the torture unless Christ be with us. I confess to you of an infinite fear, a consuming horror of death unless Christ shall be with me. I would rather go down into a cave of wild beasts or a jungle of reptiles than into the grave unless Christ goes with me. Will you tell me that I am to be carried out from my bright home and put away in the darkness? I cannot bear darkness. At the first coming of the evening I must have the gas lit, and the further on in life I get the more I like to have my friends around me. And am I to be put off lor thousands of years in a dark place, with no one to speak to? When the holidays come and the gifts are distributed shall I add no joy to the ‘’Merry Christmas or the ‘’Happy New Year?’’ Ah, do not point down to the hole in the ground, the grave, and call it a beautiful place; unless there be some supernatural illumination. I shudder back from it. My whole nature revolts at it.
But now this glorious lamp is lifted above the grave and all the darkness is gone and the way is clear. I look into it now without a single shudder. Now my anxiety is not about death; my anxiet^ is that I may live aright, for I know that if my life is consistent when I come to the last hour, and this voice is silent, and these eyes are closed, and these hands with which I beg for your eternal salvation to-day are folded over the talmage’s sermons.
still heart, that then I shall only begin to live. What power is there in anything to chill me in the last hour if Christ wraps around me the skirt of his own garment? What darkness can fall upon my eyelids then, amid the heavenly daybreak? O death, I will not fear, thee then! Back to thy cavern of darkness, thou robber of all the earth. Fly, thou despoiler of families. Wich this battle-ax I hew thee in twain from helmet to sandal, the voice of Christ sounding all over the earth, and through the heavens: ’ ‘O death, I will be thy plague.
0 grave, I will be thy destruction.’’
A BLISSFUL ETERNITY. To be saved is to wq-ke up in the presence of Christ. You know when Jesus was on earth how happy he made every house he went into, and when he brings us up to his house how great our glee. His voice has more music in it than is to be heard in all the oratorios of eternity. Talk not about banks dasked with efflorescence. Jesus is the chief bloom of heaven. We shall see the very face that beamed sympathy in Bethany and take the very hand that dropped its blood from the short beam of the the cross. Oh, I want to stand in eternity with him. Toward that harbor I steer. Toward that goal I run.
1 shall be satisfied when I awake in his likeness. Oh, broken-hearted men and women, how sweet it will be in that good land to pour all your hardships, and bereavements and losses, into the loving ear of Christ, and then have him explain why it was best for you to be sick, and why it was best for you to be widowed, and why it was best for you to be persecuted, and why it was best for you to be tried, and have him point to an elevation proportionate to your disquietude here,
v5ni»-: *’Y()ii suffered with me (n enrtli. rome up now elm l)c glorified with me in heaven.’
A MOTHERS STORY.
Some one went into a house where there had been a good deal of trouble and said to the woman there: “You seem to be lonely.” “Yes/^ she said, ^’I am lonely.’^ “How many in family? “Only myself “Have you had any children?” “I had seven children.” “Where are they?” “Gone.” “All gone?” “All.” “All dead?” Then she breathed a long sigh into the loneliness, and said: “Oh, sir, Ihave been a good mother to the grave.” And so there are hearts here that are utterly broken down by the bereavements of life. I point you today to the eternal balm of heaven. Are there any here that I am missing this morning? Ohyougoodwaiting-maid! your heart’s sorrow poured in no human ear, lonely and sad’ how glad you will be when Christ shall disl:>and all your sorrows and crown you queen unto God and the iamb forever! O aged men and women, fed b his love and warmed by his grace for three-score years and ten! will not your decrepitude change for the leap of a hart when you come to look face to face upon him whom, having not seen, you love? Oh, that will be the good shepherd, not out in the night and watching to keep off the wolves, but with the lambs reclining on the sunlit hill! That will be the captain of our salvation, not amid the roar, and crash, and boom of battle, but amid the’ disbanded troop keeping victorious festivity. That will be the bridegroom of the church coming from the altar, the bride leaning upon his arm while he looks down into her face and says; Behold, thou art fair, my love! Behold, thou art fair!”
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‘’For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.’’