Sermon Extracts
Providence Like a Wheel.
You know in a wheel there is one portion that never turns round, that stands steadfast, and that is the axle. So, in God’s Providence there is an axle which never moves. Christian, here is a sweet thought for thee! Thy state is ever changing; sometimes thou ar; exalted, and sometimes depressed; yet there is an unmoving point in thy state. What is that axle? What is the pivot upon which all the machinery revolves? It is the axle of God’s everlasting love towards his covenant people. The exterior of the wheel is changing, but the centre stands forever fixed. Other things may move, but God’s love never moves; it is the axle of the wheel, and this is another reason why Providence should be compared to a wheel.
Babel Building.
But’ I know you will go away, many of you, and try to build up your own Babel tower, to go to heaven. Some of you will go one way to work, and some another. You will go the’ceremony way; you will lay the foundation of the structure with infant baptism, build confirmation on it, and the Lord’s Supper. “I shall go to heaven;” you say, “do not I keep Good Friday and Christmas Day? I am a better man than those dissenters. I am a most extraordinary man. Do I not say more prayers than anyone?” You will be a long while going up that treadmill before you get an inch higher. That is not the way to get to the stars. One says, “I will go and study the Bible, and believe right doctrine; and I have no doubt that by believing right doctrine I shall be saved.” Indeed, you will not! You can be no more saved by believing right doctrine than you can by doing right actions.
“There,” says another, “I like that; I shall go and believe in Christ, and live as I like.” Indeed you will not! For if you believe in Christ he will not let you live as your flesh liketh; by His Spirit he will constrain you to mortify its affections and lusts. If he gives you the grace to make you believe, he will give you the grace to live a holy life afterwards. If he gives you faith, he gives you good works afterwards. You cannot believe in Christ unless you renounce every fault, and resolve to serve him with full purpose of heart.
How TO Go A Begging.
Sometimes you say, “But I am not fit to go to Christ. “The fittest way to go to Christ is to go just as you are. What is the best livery to wear when you go a begging? I recollect, some time ago, when I lived not far from here, in the extremeness of my greenness, I gave a man who begged at the door a pair of patent leather boots. He put them on, and expressed great gratitude; but I met him afterwards, and I was not at all surprised to find that he had pulled them off. They were not at all the style of things to go about begging in. People would look at him and say: “What! you needing coppers while wearing those handsome boots? Your tale won’t do.” A beggar succeeds a great deal better barefoot than in fine shoes. Rags are the livery of mendicants. When you go to beg for mercy at the hands of God, do not put on those pretty righteousness of yours, but go with all your sin and misery, and emptiness, and wretchedness, and say: “Lord, here am I. Thou hast san that Christ is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by him. I am a soul that wants saving to the uttermost, and here I am, I have come. Lord, save me.”
The Accuser of the Brethren.
I now turn to another individual, a very common personage, the accicser of the brethren, I fear I have not a few here of that sort. I know I have some, but I fear there may be more than I think. Do you not know the man, who, whenever ne can say a vile thing of a Christian will do it; who, whatever a Christian man may do will make mischief of it, who is inclined at all times to be turning that which is good into- evil; a man described by Spenser in his picture of envy in the “Faerie Queen.” Envy, who always did chaw between his dripj)ing lips a toad, but “inwardly he chawed his own man,” eating his own heart, spitting on every one’s good thing, imagining that every creature was as foul and as loathsome as himself. I have seen the dirty mangy wretch, himself abominable as sin, daring to insinuate that all others were as deceitful, vile and filthy as himself. This is when the evil has come to its full grown state. Such persons then become the most loathsome creatures in all society, and the most despicable. Who is there that respects the wretch who has no respect for others? whose only life is to pull other men’s characters to pieces, and whose death would be sure to follow the universal reign of truth and goodness. I have seen, however, this disease before it has broken out and assumed its basest shape. I have seen men, and women too — let me lay a stress on that second word, for there is a stress sometimes needed there, though I would not be too severe — men and women who seem to have a propensity rather to observe that which is evil in another than that which is good. Now, I will put this home question. My friend, it is all very well for you to have those eyes so sharp, and to wear those magnifying glasses for other people, but “are there not with you, even with you, sins against the Lord your God?” What about your own life? I will tell you something about it. Whatever you think of other people is true of yourself; that is an invariable rule. We always measure other people’s corn with our own bushel, and if you think you find other people’s corn gritty, the dirt was originally in your own. Depend upon it, that your judgment of others will be God’s judgment of you, for with what measure ye mete the same shall be measured to you again.
Butcher.
Then see the butcher. How doth the beast speak to him? He sees the lamb almost lick his knife, and the bullock goes ii8 IVrr A^D WISDOM OF SPURGEON.
unconsciously to the slaughter. How might he think every time that he smites the unconscious animal, (who knows nothing of death,) of his own doom? Are we not, all of us who are without Christ, fattening for the slaughter? Are we not more foolish than the bullock, for doth not wicked man follow his executioner, and walk alter his own destroyer unto the very chambers of hell? When we see a drunkard pursuing his drunkenness, or an unchaste man running in the way of licentiousness, is he not as an ox going to the slaughter, until a dart smite him through the liver? Hath not God sharpened his knife and made ready his ax, that the fatling of this earth may be killed, when He shall say to the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field: “Behold, I have made a feast of vengeance for you, and ye shall feast upon the blood of the slain, and make yourselves drunken with the streams thereof!” Ay, butcher, there is a lecture for you in your trade, and your business may reproach you.
Builder.
Are you busy in building all day long, laying the stone upon its fellow and the mortar in its crevice? Then remember thou art building for eternity, too. Oh, that thou mayest thyself be built upon a good foundation 1 Oh, that thou mayest build thereon, not wood, hay or stubble, but gold, and silver, and precious stones, and things that will abide the fire! Take care, man, lest thou shouldest be God’s scaffold, lest thou shouldest be used on earth to be a scaffolding for building His church, and when His church is built, thou shouldest be cast down and burned up with fire unquenchable. Take heed that thou art built upon the rock, and not upon the sand, and that the vermillion cement of the Savior’s precious blood unites thee to the foundation of the building, and to every stone thereof.
The Excuses of Sinners.
But one cries: “I shall not plead guilty, for though I am well aware that I have not continued in all things which are written in the book of the law,’ yet I have done the best I could.” That is a lie — before God a falsehood. You have not! Yon have not done the best you could. There have been many occasions upon which you might have done better. Will that young man dare to tell me that he is doing the best he can now? That he cannot refrain from laughing in the house of God? It may be possible that it is hard for him to do so, but it is just possible he could, if he pleased, refrain from insulting his Maker to His face. Surely we have none of us done the best we could. At every period, at every time, there have been opportunities of escape from temptation. If we had had no freedom to escape from sin, there might have been some excuse for it; but there have been turning points in our history when we might have decided for right or for wrong, but when we have chosen the evil and have eschewed the good, and have turned into that path which leadeth unto hell.
Personal Experience.
First, then, here is what they are to tell. It is to be a story q>{ personal experience. “Go home to thy friends and tell them how great things the Lord has done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee.” You are not to repair to your houses and forthwith begin to preach. That you are not commanded to do. You are not to begin to take up doctrinal subjects, and expatiate on them, and endeavor to bring persons to your peculiar views and sentiments. You are not to go home with sundry doctrines you have lately learned and try to teach these. At least, you are not commanded so to do. You may, if you please, and none shall hinder you; but you are to go home and tell not what you have believed, but what you havey<?/// what you really know to be your own; not what great things you have read, but what great things the Lord hath do7ie for you; not alone what you have seen done in the great congregation, and how great sinners have turned to God, but what the Lord has done for you. And mark this: There is never a more interesting story than that which a man tells about himself.
Those who Do Not Profess to be Godly.
It is now time for me to tell the openly ungodly what is his real state. You have been more than a little proud of your honesty, and looking down upon certain professors of religion, you have said, “Ah! I make no such pretenses as they do; I am honest, I am.” Friend, you cannot have a greater abhorrence of hypocrites than, I have; if you can find a fair chance of laughing at them, pray do so. If by any means you can stick pins into their windbags, and let the gas of their profession out, pray do so. I try to do a little of it in my way; do you do the same? You and I are agreed in this, I hope, in heartily hating anything like sham and falsehood; but if you begin to hold your head up, and think yourself so very superior because you make no profession, I must take you down a little by reminding you that it is no credit to a thief that he makes no profession of being honest, and it is not thought to be exceedingly honorable to a man that makes no profession of speaking the truth. For the fact is, that a man who does not profess to be honest is a professional thief; and he who does not claim to speak the truth is an acknowledged liar. Thus, in escaping one horn you are thrown upon another; you miss the rock, but run upon the quicksand. You are a confessed and avowed neglecter of God, a professed despiser of the great salvation, an acknowledged disbeliever in the Christ of God. When our Government at any time arrests persons suspected of Fenianism, they have no difficulty about those gentlemen who glory in wearing the green uniform and flaunting the big feather. “Come along,” says the constable, “you are the man, for you wear the regimentals of a rebel.” Even so when the angel of Justice arrests the enemies of the Lord, he will have no difficulty in accusing and arresting you, for laying his hand upon your shoulder, he will say: “You wear the regimentals of an enemy of God; you plainly and unblushingly acknowledge that you do not fear God, nor trust in His salvation.”
A Faithful Friend.
Faithfulness to us in our faults is a certain sign of fidelity in a friend. You may depend upon that man who will tell you of your faults in a kind and considerate manner. Fawning hypocrites, insiduous flatterers, are the sweepings and offal of friendship. They are but the parasites upon that noble tree. But true friends put enough trust in you to tell you openly of you faults. Give me for a friend a man who will speak honestly of me before my face; who will not tell first one neighbor, and then another, but who will come straight to my house and say: “Sir, I feel there is such and such a thing in you, which, as my brother, I must tell you of.” That man is a true friend; he has proved himself to be so; for we never get any praise for telling people of their faults; we rather hazard their dislike; a man will sometimes thank you for it, but he does not often like you any the better.
Grit.
It is said by an old writer, that in the olden times men used to take care of their houses, but now the houses take care of the men; that they used to eat off oaken porringers, and then they were oaken men; but now they are willowmen, can bend any how; they are earthenware men, which can be dashed to pieces. Scarcely in business, in politics, or in religion, have you got a man. You see a lot of things, which are called men, who turn the way the wind blows. I pray God to send a few men with what the Americans call “grit” in them; men, who when they know a thing to be right, will not turn away, or turn aside, or stop; men who will persevere all the more because there are difficulties to meet or foes to encounter; who stand all the moi e true to their Master because they are opposed; who, the more they are thrust into the fire, the hotter they become; who, just like the bow, the further the string is drawn the more powerfully it sends forth its arrows, and so the more they are trodden upon, the more mighty will they become in the cause of truth against error.
The Human Heart.
If, then, the all-seeing eye of God takes in at one glance the wide regions of death, and wide they are, wide enough to startle any man who shall seek to range them through — if I say, with one glance God seeth death and seeth hell through, with all its bottomless depths, with all its boundlessness of misery, surely, then, he is quite able to behold all the actions of the little thing called man’s heart. Suppose a man so. wise as to be able to know the wants of a nation and to remember the feelings of myriads of men, you cannot suppose it difficult for him to know the actions of his own family and to understand the emotions of his own household. If the man is able to stretch his arm over a great sphere, and to say: “lam monarch of all this,” surely he shall be able to control the less. He who in his wisdom can walk through centuries, shall not say that he is ignorant of the history of a year; he who can dive into the depths of science, and understand the history of the whole world from its creation, is not to be alarmed by some small riddle that happens at his own door. No, the God who seeth death and hell seeth our hearts, for they are far less extensive.
Hypocrisy.
This age is full of shams. Pretence never stood in so eminent a position as it does at the present hour. There be few, I fear, who love the naked truth; we can scarce endure it in our houses; you would scarcely trade with a man who absolutely stated it. If you walked through the streets of London, you might imagine that all the shops were built of marble, and that all the doors were made of mahogany and woods of the rarest kinds; and yet you soon discover that there is scarce a piece of any o’f these precious fabrics to be found anywhere, but that everything is grained, and painted, and varnished. I find no fault with this, except that it is an outward type of an inward evil that exists. As it is in our streets, so it is everywhere; graining, painting and gilding are at an enormous premium. Counterfeit has at length
attained to such an eminence that it is with the utmost difficulty that you can detect it. The counterfeit so near approacheth to the genuine, that the eye of wisdom itself needs to be enlightened before she can discern the difference. Specially is this the case in religious matters. There was once an age of intolerant bigotry, when every man was weighed in the balance, and if he was not precisely up to the orthodox standard of the day, the fire devoured him; but in this age of charity, and of most proper charity, we are very apt to allow the counterfeit to pass current, and to imagine that outward show is really as beneficial as inward reality. If ever there was a time when it was needful to say, “Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy,” it is now. The minister may cease to preach this doctrine in the days of persecution; when the faggots are blazing, and when the rack is in full operation, few men will be hypocrites. These are the keen detectors of impostors; suffering, and pain, and death, for Christ’s sake, are not to be endured by mere pretenders. But in this silken age, when to be religious is to be respectable, when to follow Christ is to be honored, and when godliness itself has become gain, it is doubly necessary that the minister should cry aloud, and lift up his voice like a trumpet against this prevailing sin, “The leaven of the Pharisees, which is sin.”
Absurdity of Indecision.
And is it not true, that a man who is neither one thing or another is in a most absurd position? Let him go among the worldlings; they laugh under their sleeve, and say, “This is one of the Exeter Hall saints,” or, “This is one of the elect” Let him go among Christian people, those that are saints, and they say, “How a man can be so inconsistent, how he can come into our midst one day, and the next be found in such and such society, we cannot tell.” Methinks even the devil himself must laugh at such a man in scorn. “There,” says he, “I am every thing that is bad; I do sometimes pretend to be an angel of light, and put on that garb; but you do really excel me in every respect, for I do it to get something by it, but you do not get anything by it. You do not have the pleasure of this world, and you do not have the pleasures of religion either; you have the fears of religion without its hopes; you are afraid to do wrong, and yet you have no hope of heaven; you have the duties of religion without the joys; you have to do just as religious people do, and yet there is no heart in the matter; you have to sit down and see the table all spread before you, and then you have not power to eat a single morsel of the precious dainties of the gospel.”
The Insincere Man.
Sometimes Saul was among prophets, easily turned into a prophet, and then afterwards among the witches; sometimes in one place and then another, and insincere in everything. How many such we have in every Christian assembly; men who are very easily molded. Say what you please to them, they always agree with you. They have affectionate dispositions, very likely a tender conscience; but then the conscience is so remarkably tender, that when touched it seems to give, and you are afraid to probe deeper; it heals as soon as it is wounded. I think I used the very singular comparison once before, which I must use again; there are some men who seem to have India-rubber hearts. If you do but touch them, there is an imprescion made at once, but then it is of no use, it soon restores itself to its original character. You may press them whichever way you wish, they are so elastic you can always effect your purpose, but then they are not fixed in character and soon return to be what they were before.
Friendship.
Cicero has well said, ‘Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed,” Friendship seems as necessary an element of a comfortable existence in this world as fire and water, or even air itself. A man may drag along a miserable existence in proud solitary dignity, but his life is scarce life; it is nothing but an existence, the tree of life being stripped of the leaves of hope and the fruits of joy. He who would be happy here must have friends; and he who would be happy hereafter, must, above all things, find a friend in the world to come, in the person of God, the father of His people.
Friendship, however, though very pleasing and exceedingly blessed, has been the cause of the greatest misery to men when it has been unworthy and unfaithful; for just in proportion as a good friend is sweet, a false friend is full of bi’.terness. “A faithless friend is sharper than an adder’s tooth.” It is sweet to repose in some one; but O! how bitter to have that support snapped, and to receive a grievous fall as the effect of your confidence. Fidelity is an absolute necessary in a true friend. We cannot rejoice in men unless they will stand faithful to us. Solomon declares that “there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” That friend, I suppose, he never found in the pomps and vanities of the world. He had tried them all, but he found them empty; he passed through all their joys, but he found them “vanity of vanities.” Poor Savage spoke from sad experience when he said:
“You’ll find the friendship of the world a show! Mere outward show! ‘Tis like the harlot’s tears, The statesman promise, a false patriot’s zeal, Full of fair seeming, but delusion all,”
And so for the most part they are. The world’s friendship is ever brittle trust to it, and you have trusted a robber, rely upon it. and you have leaned upon a sham; aye, worse than that, upon a spear, which shall pierce you to the soul with agony!
Living for Self.
There is a minister; when he first began his ministry he would say, “God is my witness; I have but one object; that I may free my skirts from the blood of every one of my hearers, that I may preach the gospel faithfully and honor my Master.” In a little time, tempted by Satan, he changed his tone and talks like this: “I must keep my congregation up. If I preach such hard doctrine they won’t come. Did not one of the newspapers criticise me, and did not some of my people go away from me because of it? I must mind what I am at. I must keep this thing going. I must look out a little sharper and prune my speech down. I must adopt a little gentler style, or preach a new-fashioned doctrine; for I must keep my popularity up. What is to become cf me if I go down? People will say, ‘Up like a rocket, down like the stick;’ and then shall all my enemies laugh.” Ah, when once a man begins to care so much as a snap of the finger about the world, it is all over with him. If he can go to his pulpit and say: “I have got a message to deliver; and whether they will hear or whether they will not hear, I will deliver it as God puts it into my mouth; I will not change the dot of an z, or the cross of a /, for the biggest man that lives, or to bring in the mightiest congregation that ever sat at a minister’s feet” — that man is mighty. He does not let human judgments move him, and he will move the world.
Losses. ’
Losses, too, are frequently the means God uses to fetch home his wandering sheep; like fierce dogs, they worry the wanderers back to the shepherd. There is no making lions tame if they are too well fed; they must be brought down from their great strength, and their stomachs must be lowered a bit, and then they will submit to the tamer’s hand; and often have we seen the Christian rendered obedient to his Lord’s will by straightness of bread arid hard labor. When rich and increased in goods, many professors carry their heads much too loftily, and speak much too boastfully. Like David, they boast: “My mountain standeth fast; it shall never be moved.” When the Christian groweth wealthy, is in good repute, hath good health, and a happy family, he too often admits Mr. Carnal Security- to feast at his table. If he be a true child of God, there is a rod preparing for him.
True Parentage of Love.
But how is this to be? How is the world to be brought back? How is it to be restored? We answer, the reason why there was this orignal harmony between earth and heaven was because there was love between them twain, and our great reason for hoping that there shall be at last re-established an undiscordant harmony between heaven and earth is simply this, that God hath already manifested His love towards us, and that in return, hearts touched by His grace do even now love Him; and when they shall be multiplied, and love re-established, thea shall harmony be complete.
Want of Observation.
But we do not observe God’s hand as much as we should. Our good puritanic forefathers, when it rained, used to say, that God had unstopped the bottles of heaven. When it rains nowadays, we think the clouds have become condensed. If they had a field of hay cut, they used to plead of the Lord that he would bid the sun shine. We, perhaps, are wiser, as we think; and we consider it hardly worth while to pray about such things, thinking they will come in the course of nature. They believed that God was in every storm; nay, in every cloud of dust. They used to speak of ,a present God in every thing; but we speak of such things as laws of nature, as if laws were ever anything, except there was some one to carry them out, and some secret power to set the whole machinery in motion. We do not get our assurance, because we do not observe enough.
Men at All Times Alike.
The passage tells us nothing about the statue of men’s bodies, but as far as they are spiritually concerned the photograph which Elihu took is the portrait of many of those who are brought to Jesus now. Reading the passage over, we find that men in those times needed converting; for they were deaf to God’s voice; they were obstinate in evil purposes, and puffed up with pride. They needed chastening to arouse them to thought, and required sore distress to make them cry out for mercy. They were loth to say, ‘*I
have sinned,” and were not at all inclined to prayer. Nothing but sharp discipline could bring them to their senses, and even then they needed to be born again. Men in those days were sinful, and yet proud; sinful self and righteous self were both in power; it was one part of conversion to withdraw them from their purposes of sin, and another part of their conversion to “hide pride” from them. Though they were sinful, they thought that they were righteous, and though they were condemned by the law of God they still entertained the fond hope that they should by their own merits obtain the favor of the Most High. They were then, as they are now, poor as poverty, and yet proud of their wealth, Publicans in sin, and yet Pharisees in boasting.
Henry of Navarre.
Notice the blessing: ‘’And they shall be to me a people.’*^ All flesh belongs to God in a certain sense. All men are His by right of creation, and He hath an infinite sovereignty over them. But He looks down upon the sons of men, and He selects some, and He says: “These shall be my peculiar people.” When the King of Navarre was fighting for his throne, the writer, who hymns the battle, says:
“He looked upon the foemen, and his glance was stern and high; He looked upon his people, and the tear was in his eye.”
And when he saw some of the French in arms against him —
“Then out spoke gentle Henry, ‘No Frenchman is my foe; Down, down with every foreigner, but kt your brethren go.’”
The king had an eye to his people even when they were in rebellion against him, and he had a different thought towards them from what he had towards others. “Let them go,” he seemed to say, “they are my people.” So, mark you, in the great battles of strifes of this world, when God lets loose the dread artillery of heaven. His glance is stern upon His enemies, but the tear is in His eye towards His people. He is always tender towards them. “Spare my people,” saith He, and the angels interpose lest those chosen ones should dash their feet against a stone.