The Solar Eclipse
A Sermon
(No. 183)
Delivered on Sabbath Morning, March 14th, 1858 by the
REV. C.H. SPURGEON
at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.
"I form the light, and create darkness.'–Isaiah 45:7.
WE ARE ALL expecting to-morrow to witness one of the greatest sights in
the universe–the annular eclipse of the sun. It is possible that many
of us shall have gone the way of all flesh before such a sight shall
again be seen in this country and we are therefore looking for it with
some degree of expectation. It is probable that hundreds and thousands
of the human race will be attracted by it, to study for a few hours at
least, the science of astronomy. Certain it is that our astronomers are
making the most capital they possibly can of it by endeavouring to
thrust it in every way under our notice, in order to induce us to make
the sun, the moon, and the stars a little more the object of' our
attention than they have been hitherto. Surely I need offer no apology
whatever if religion comes forward to-day, and asks that attention
should be drawn to her, even by the eclipse itself. Without a doubt, if
there be sermons in stones, there must be a great sermon in the sun;
and if there be books in the running brooks, no doubt there is many a
huge volume to be found in a sun suffering eclipse. All things teach
us, if we have but a mind to learn. There is nothing which we can see,
or hear, or feel, which may not be the channels of great instruction to
us. Let us see whether this may not lead us this morning into a train
of thought which may, under God's blessing, be something far better to
us than the seeing of an eclipse.
I shall note this morning, in addressing you, that since the Lord
creates darkness as well as light; first of all, eclipses of every kind
are part of God's way of governing the world; in the second place, we
shall notice that since God creates the darkness as well as the light,
we may conclude beyond a doubt that he has a design in the eclipse–in
the darkness as well as the light; and then, thirdly, we shall notice
that as all things that God has created, whether they be light or
whether they be dark, have a sermon for us, no doubt there are some
sermons to be found in this.
I. First of all, ECLIPSES ARE A PART OF GOD'S PLAN. In the olden times
the ignorant people in England were frightened at an eclipse, they
could not understand what it meant. They were quite sure that there was
about to be a war, or a famine, or a terrible fire. They were
absolutely certain that something fearful would happen; for they
regarded it as being a prophecy of coming ills. They were totally at a
loss to account for it, and knew nothing about the theory which now so
satisfactorily sets our minds at rest. And you are aware, that till
this day, in the East and in other parts of the world still in the
ignorance of barbarism, an eclipse is looked upon as a very horrible
and a very unaccountable thing. The Hindoos still believe that a great
dragon swallows the sun, and they may be seen by thousands plunging
into their sacred river, the Ganges, praying to the gods that they may
set the sun at liberty, that the dragon may be compelled to disgorge
him. Hundreds of other most stupid and absurd theories are still
prominently believed and held in different parts of the world, and I
believe that here amongst a very great number of us, an eclipse is
looked upon as something contrary to the general law of nature. Now,
beloved, all that understand anything of God's works, know very well
that eclipses are as much a part of nature's laws as the regular
sunshine, that an eclipse is no deviation from God's plan, but that it
is a necessary consequence of the natural motion of the moon and the
earth around the sun and each other, that there should at some stated
periods be eclipses, and when we see the eclipse to-morrow, we shall
not look upon it as a miracle or anything out of the ordinary course of
God's providence, but we shall say it was a necessity involved in the
very plan whereby God governs the earth.
And now, beloved, I have only said these things to draw your attention
to other eclipses. There are certain eclipses which happen in God's
providence as well as in God's grace. As in nature an eclipse is part
of God's plan, and is in fact involved in it, so we believe that in
providence the eclipse shall sometimes overshadow the earth. I mean,
the adversities, the wars, the famines, which sometimes fall on the
human race, are but a part of God's divine plan of governing the earth,
and have some beneficial object in their falling upon us.
First, let me invite your attention to providence at large. How many
times have we seen providence itself eclipsed with regard to the whole
race. Behold, the Lord creates the world, and placed man upon it.
"Increase and multiply," is his law. Man multiplies, fills the earth,
and replenishes it. The whole earth is populated, and its valleys and
hills rejoice with the voice of song. On a sudden comes an eclipse. God
sends a flood of rain; he draws the plugs of the great fountains of the
mighty deep, and lets the water burst up upon the earth. He bids his
rain descend, not in showers, but in whole cataracts at once, and the
earth becomes a void waste covered with water, and afterwards a dreary
swamp covered with mud, the whole human race, with the solitary
exception of eight persons, having been swept away. This is what I mean
by a providential eclipse. After that God again suffers man to
multiply, and the earth to be replenished. Year after year the earth
laughs with harvest, and the fields are made glad with God's bounties.
For seven years following each other there is such an abundance of
plenty on the earth that men know not how to gather up by handfuls the
stores which God has east. These seven years are overpassed, and lo!
there comes an eclipse of God's bounty. There is no calf in the stall,
the olive fails, and the fields yield no meat, all the land goes to
Egypt to buy corn, for only in Egypt is there corn to be found. There
is a great eclipse of God's bounty which happens to the world. But I
need not stop to particularize the thousand instances that have
happened in history. Nations have grown strong and mighty; anon there
has come an eclipse of their glories, and all that has been builded has
crumbled to the earth. Vast empires have been builded, and they have
become great, and beneath their sway some of their people have become
happy. Some savage conqueror from the north has descended with his
barbarous hordes, and swept away every vestige of civilization, and the
earth seems to have gone back hundreds of years. There has been a dark
eclipse. Or it may have happened differently. A city is prosperous and
rich. In one unhappy night a fire seizes upon it, and like the stubble
before the flame, the whole city is consumed, and over the ashes of
their houses the inhabitants sit down to weep and die. At another time
a plague is upon the multitudes, and the pits are filled with the dead.
Nations die and perish, and whole hosts of men are carried to their
graves. Now, all these great eclipses of God's favour, these darkenings
of the heavens, these sudden glooms that fall upon the human race, are
parts of God's plan of providence. Beloved, believe me, it is God's
providence, when his paths drop fatness, and when the valleys rejoice
on every side. It is a part of his plan when the fields are covered
with corn, and when there is grass for the cattle; but it is equally as
much a part of the plan of his providence to reduce the earth to
famine, and bring the human race to misery at certain stated seasons,
when he sees that an eclipse is absolutely necessary for their good.
It is just the same with you in your own private concerns. There is a
God of providence to you. Lo, these many years has he fed you, and has
never denied you the supply of your wants. Bread has been given to you,
and your water has been sure. Your children have been about you. You
have washed your feet with butter, you have rejoiced; you have stood
fast in the ways of God, and in the ways of happiness. You have been
able to say, "Our ways are ways of pleasant ness, and all our paths are
peace." You have not been, of all men, the most miser able, but in some
respects connected with your life, and blessed by God's providence, you
have been the happiest amongst the human race; and now a dark cloud has
fallen upon you. The sunlight of God's providence has set while it was
yet noon. When you were rejoicing in the brightness of your light, on a
sudden a midday-midnight has fallen upon you, to your horror and
dismay. You are made to say, "Whence does all this evil come upon me?
Is this also sent of God?" Most assuredly it is. Your penury, your
sickness, your bereavement, your contempt, all these things are as much
ordained for you, and settled in the path of providence, as your
wealth, your comfort, and your joy. Think not that God has changed. It
involves no change of the sun when an eclipse overshadows it. The sun
has not moved from its predestined spot. There standeth it, fixed and
secure; or if it be true that it moveth, still it moveth with such
regularity that to us it seemeth still. Beloved, so it is with God. It
may be that his purposes are moving onward to some great and distant
goal, which yet we cannot see, circling around himself in some greater
circle than human knowledge yet can guess; but this is certain, that,
so far as we are concerned, God is the same, and of his years there is
no end, and from his fixed and settled path he hath not swerved. His
glory is undimmed, even when eye cannot see it. His love is just as
bright, even when the shinings of it are concealed. He hath not moved
to the right hand nor to the left. With the Father of lights there is
no variableness, neither the shadow of turning. He abideth fast and
fixed, though all things pass away. Let me confide then in him.
Eclipses in providence, like eclipses in nature, are but a part of his
own grand plan, and necessarily involved in it.
I suppose that it is impossible that the earth should revolve around
the sun, and that the moon should spin continually round the earth, in
the same plane of their orbit, without there being eclipses. Since God
has made the ellipse, or the circle, the great rule of nature, it is
impossible but that eclipses should occur. Now, did you ever notice
that in providence the circle is God's rule still. The earth is here
to-day; it will be in the same place this day next year; it will go
round the circle; it gets no further. It is just so in providence. God
began the circle of his providence in Eden. That is where he will end.
There was a paradise on earth, when God began his providential dealings
with mankind; there will be a paradise at the end. It is the same with
your providence. Naked came ye forth from your mother's womb, and naked
must ye return to the earth. It is a circle. Where God has begun, there
will he end; and as God has taken the rule of the circle in providence,
as well as in nature, eclipses must be sure to occur. Moving in the pre
destined orbit of divine wisdom, the eclipse is absolutely and
imperatively necessary in God's plan of government. Troubles must come;
afflictions must befall; it must, needs be that for a season ye should
be in heaviness, through manifold temptations.
But I have said, that eclipses must also occur in grace, and it is so.
God's rule in grace is still the circle. Man was originally pure and
holy; that is what God's grace will make him at last, He was pure when
he was made by God in the garden. That is what God shall make him, when
he comes to fashion him like unto his own glorious image, and present
him complete in heaven. We begin our piety by denying the world, by
being full of love to God; we often decline in grace, and God will
bring us back to the state in which we were when we first began, so
that we shall rejoice in none but Christ, and give our hearts to him as
we did at first. Hence, there must be an eclipse in grace, because even
there the circle seems to be the rule of God's gracious government.
Now beloved, you are in the eclipse some of you to-day. I hear you
crying, "Oh that it were with me as in months past, when the candle of
the Lord shone round about me! I looked for light, but lo, darkness
came; for peace, but behold, trouble. I said in my soul, my mountain
standeth firm, I shall never be moved. Lord, thou didst hide thy face,
and I am troubled. I sink in deep mire where there is no standing. All
thy waves and thy billows have gone over me. It was but yesterday that
I could read my title clear; to-day my evidences are bedimmed, and my
hopes clouded. Yesterday I could climb to Pisgah's top and view the
landscape o'er, and count the fields that were flowing with milk and
honey, and rejoice with confidence in my future inheritance. To-day my
spirit sees no heaven, it has no hopes, but many fears; no joys, but
much distress;" and you are apt to say, dear friends, "Is this a part
of God's plan with me? Can this be the way in which God would bring me
to heaven?" Yes, it is even so. The eclipse of your faith, the darkness
of your minds, the fainting of your hopes, all these things are but the
parts of God's plan for making you ripe for the great inheritance into
which you shall soon enter. These trials are but waves that wash you on
to the rocks; they are but winds that waft your ship the more swiftly
towards the desired haven. As David says in the psalm, so might I say
to you, "So he bringeth them to their desired haven." By honour and
dishonour, by evil report and by good report, by plenty and by poverty,
by joy and by distress, by persecution and by comforts, by all these
things is the life of your soul, and by each of these are you helped to
hold on your way, and to be brought at last to the great goal and haven
of your hopes. Oh! think not, Christian, that your sorrows are out of
God's plan; they are necessary parts of it; and inasmuch as he will
bring many heirs of God unto glory, it is necessary that through much
tribulation he should bring them thither.
I have thus tried to bring out the first truth, that the eclipse is a
part of God's government, and that our temporal afflictions, and our
own sorrows of heart, are but a part of that grand scheme. Permit me to
trespass on your patience one minute more, when I notice, that in God's
great plan of grace to the world, it is just the same. Sometimes we see
a mighty reformation worked in the church. God raises up men who lead
the van of the armies of Jehovah. See! error flies before them like
shadows before the sunlight. Behold! the strongest towers of the enemy
are tottering to their fall. The shout of a King is heard in the midst,
and the saints of the Lord take courage, that their great and final
victory at last is come. A few more years and those reformers are dead,
and their mantle has not fallen upon any. After great mountains come
deep valleys. The sons of great men are often small and drivelling; so
there cometh a poor lukewarm church. After the Philadelphian, state of
love, there comes the Laodicean state of lukewarmness. The church
sinks! and in proportion as she sinks the enemy advances. Victory!
victory! victory! shout the hosts of hell; and pushing on their course,
they drive back the Lord's host, and the world trembles as in the
balances, for victory seems to be on the side of the enemy. Again there
comes another time of refreshing, another Pentecost; some other leader
is raised up of God. Another mighty judge is brought into Israel, to
drive out the Hittites and the Amorites that have invaded God's Canaan.
Once more, the world rejoices and the creature that hath toiled so
long, hopeth to be delivered from its bondage–alas! it sinks again.
The rising hath its ebb, the summer hath its winter, and the joyous
time hath its season of despondency to follow it; but, beloved, all
this is a part of God's plan. Do you see how God governs the ocean?
When he means to produce a flood-tide, he does not make the water come
marching straight up upon the shore, but as you stand there you are
absolutely certain that the sand will be covered, and that the flood
will dash against the cliff at the foot of which you are standing. But
you see a wave come marching up, and then it returns again, and then
another wave, then it dies and rolls back and another follows it. Now,
it is even so in the church of God. The day must be, when the knowledge
of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. But this
must be accomplished by different waves, by up-growing and decrease, by
multiplying and by division. It must be by triumph and by victory, by
conquest and by defeat, that at last God's great purpose shall ripen,
and the world shall become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ.
Think not then that eclipses of our holy religion, or the failure of
great men in the midst of us, or the decline of piety, is at all apart
from God's plan; it is involved in it, and as God's great purpose
moving in the circle to bring forth another gracious purpose on earth
must be accomplished, so beloved, an eclipse must necessarily follow,
being involved in God's very way of governing the world in his grace.
II. But, secondly, EVERYTHING THAT GOD DOES HAS A DESIGN. When God
creates light he has a reason for it, and when he creates darkness he
has a reason for it too. God does not always tell us his reason; he
always has one, We call him a sovereign God, because sometimes he acts
from reasons which are beyond our knowledge; but he is never an
unreasoning God. It is according to the counsel of his will that he
works; not according to his will, but according to the counsel of his
will, to show you that there is a reason, a wisdom and counsel in
everything that he does. Now I cannot tell you what is God's design in
eclipsing the sun to-morrow; we can see many gracious purposes answered
by it in our minds, but I do not know of what use it is to the world.
It may be that if there never were an eclipse some great change might
happen in the atmosphere, something far beyond the reach of all
philosophical knowledge at present, but which may yet be discovered. It
may be that the eclipse, like the tornado and the hurricane, has its
virtue in operating upon this lower world in some mysterious way, but
that we know not. However, we are not left in any darkness about other
kind of eclipses; we are quite certain that providential eclipses, and
gracious eclipses, have both of them their reasons. When God sends a
providential eclipse he does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the
children of men for nought. When pestilence stalks through the land and
sweeps away its myriads, think not that God has done an unthought-of
act without an intention in it. When war, with its blood-red sword,
sweeps the nations and lays the mother bleeding with her child, imagine
not that this cometh in vain; God hath some design in all these things,
and permit me to tell you what I believe to be God's design, when he
sends troubles into the world, and when he sends troubles upon us. It
is this, it is to draw our attention to himself. Well, said an old
divine," Nobody ever looks at the sun except when he is in an eclipse."
You never thought about the sun yesterday; you will all of you be
staring at him to-morrow. Pieces of smoked glass, telescopes, and all
kinds of inventions down to a pail of water, will be used in order to
look at the sun. Why don't you look at him when he is shining brightly?
There is nothing interesting in that, because it is an ordinary object.
Now do you not notice, that when everything goes well with the world
they never think about God? People always get religious when they get
into trouble. The churches were fuller in London when we had the
cholera here, than they had been for many a long day. There were more
ministers went to see sick people in those times than had ever been
known before. People that never read their Bible, never prayed, never
thought of going to God's house, were hurrying off to a place of
worship, or reading their Bibles, or pretending at least to pray,
though, afterwards, when it went away, they forgot all about it; yet
they did think a little of it when they were in trouble. "Surely in
trouble they will seek the Lord; in the day of their distress they will
seek me early." Doubtless, we should entirely forget God, if it were
not for some of those eclipses which now and then happen. God would not
have his name remembered on earth at all by the race of man if he did
not make them recollect his name, when he scourged it into them with
his rod. Famine, pestilence, the sword, the flood, all these must come
upon us to be terrible remembrancers, to make us think of the dread
King who holds the thunders in his hand, and keeps the lightnings in
his power. Doubtless, this is God's great design in his afflictive
providences, to make us think of him. But there is another design. Some
times troublous times tend to prepare the world for something better
afterwards. War is an awful thing; but I doubt not, it purges the moral
atmosphere, just as a hurricane sweeps away a pestilence. It is a
fearful thing to hear of famine, or to hear of plague; but each of
these things has some effect upon the human race. An evil generally
goes to make room for a greater good. Men may bewail the fire of
London, but it was the greatest blessing God could have sent to London.
It burnt down a set of old houses that were placed so close together
that it was impossible for them to be without the plague; and when
these old things had been burnt down, there was then room for a
healthier action; and there has been less plague, and less disease ever
since. Many of the troubles that come to the great wide world, are
meant to be like axes, to cut down some deadly upas tree, and lay it
level with the ground. That tree, when it stood, scattered greater
evil, though it scattered it gradually, than the injury which God sent
on a sudden, did inflict, though it was more apparent to the mind,
having come all at once. Ah, my hearer, God has sent thee providential
trouble. Thou art not his child; thou dost not fear his name nor love
him. Thou art saying, "Why has this trouble happened to me?" God has a
gracious design in it. There are many men that are brought to Christ by
trouble. Many a sinner has sought the Saviour on his sick bed who never
would have sought him anywhere else. Many a merchant whose trade has
prospered, has lived without God; he has been glad to find the Saviour
when his house has tottered into bankruptcy. We have known many a
person who could afford to despise God while the stream flowed smoothly
on, but that same man has been compelled to bow his knee, and seek
peace through the blood of Christ, when he has come into the whirlpool
of distress, and the whirlwind of trouble hath got hold upon him. There
is a story told, that in the olden times, Artaxerxes and another great
king were engaged in a furious fight. In the middle of the battle a
sudden eclipse happened, and such was the horror of all the warriors,
that they made peace there and then. Oh, if an eclipse of trouble
should induce you to ground arms and seek to be reconciled unto God!
Sinner, you are fighting against God, lifting the arm of your rebellion
against him. Happy shall you be if that trouble which is now fallen
upon you should lead you to throw down the weapons of your rebellion,
and fly to the arms of God and say, "Lord have mercy upon me a sinner."
It will be the best thing that thou hast ever had. Thy trouble will be
far better to thee than joys could have been, if thy sorrows shall
induce thee to fly to Jesus who can make peace through the blood of his
cross. May this be the happy result of thine own troubles and sorrows.
But furthermore, eclipses of grace have also their end and design. The
Christian asks why it is that God does not seem to favour him in his
conscience as much as he did aforetime. "Why is it that I have not more
faith? Why have the promises lost their sweetness? Why has the Word of
God seemed to fail in its power in operating upon my soul? Why has God
hidden his face from me?" Christian, it is that thou mayest begin to
search thyself, and say, "Show me wherefore thou contendest with me."
God's people are afflicted in order that they may not go astray.
"Before I was afflicted," said the Psalmist, "I went astray, but now
have I kept thy Word." Leave a Christian alone, and he becomes like a
piece of iron covered with rust; he loses all his brightness. Take the
file of affliction, and once more the brightness becomes apparent.
Christians without trouble would be like oysters without the sickness;
they would not have produced pearls. The pearl oyster would have no
pearl unless some disease had fallen upon it; and were it not that
trouble lights upon the Christian, he would live without producing the
pearl of a holy and contented piety. God's rods are improvers; when
they are laid upon us they always mend us. God scarifies the Christian,
that he may cleanse him of his weeds; he ploughs him deep that he may
turn up the subsoil to the air, that the influence of the Divine Spirit
may rest upon him. He puts us into the crucible and into the furnace,
that the heat may burn away our dross, and may consume all our
impurities. He sends us into the deep waters, that they may be like a
sacred baptism to us, and may help in sanctifying us, by delivering us
from our pride, our lust, our worldliness, and our conceit. Happy is
the man who understands this –who knows that all things work together
for good to them that love God, and believes that even an eclipse of
God's countenance hath its end and design, in making him perfectly
conformed to the image of Christ Jesus the Lord.
III. And now not to detain you longer, I have got a sermon or two more
to preach to you from the eclipse. To-morrow, Christians, if you will
just remember what I am about to say you will learn a useful lesson.
What is that which will hide the sun from us to-morrow? It is the
ungrateful moon. She has borrowed all her light from the sun month
after month; she would be a black blot, if the sun did not shine upon
her, and now see all the return she makes is, she goes impudently
before his face and prevents his light from shining upon us. Do you
know anything at all like that in your own history? Have you not a
great many comforts which you enjoy upon earth that are just like the
moon? They borrow all their light from the sun. They would be no
comforts to you unless God shone in them and they reflected back the
light from his countenance. What is your husband, your wife; what are
your children, your friends, your house, your home? What are all these
but moons that borrow their light from the sun? Oh how ungrateful it is
when we let our comforts get before our God; no wonder that we get an
eclipse when we put these things that God gave to be our comforts into
God's own throne and make them our idols. Oh! if our children take half
of our hearts, if our friends take away our souls from Jesus, if like
it was with Solomon, the wife leads the heart astray, if our goods, our
house, our lands become the object of our life, if we set our
affections upon them instead of setting them upon the things above, no
wonder that there is an eclipse. Oh ungrateful heart that allows these
moons of comfort to hide the sun. Old Master Brookes very prettily
says, the husband gives his wife rings which she wears upon her finger
as remembrances of his love. Suppose a wife should be so foolish as to
love her jewels better than her husband, suppose she should set her
heart more upon his love-tokens than upon his person, oh, what marvel
if he should then take the rings and the jewels away that she might
again love him. It is even so with us; God loves his children and he
gives us strong faith and gives us joy and comfort, and then if we
begin to set our hearts upon these more than upon him, he will come and
take them away, for saith he, "I must have all thy love. I gave thee
these to win thy love, not to rob me of it, and inasmuch as thou dost
divert thine heart into them, instead of allowing thy love to flow in
one channel towards me; I will stop up the channel of thy comfort, that
thy heart may cleave to me, and to me alone.' Oh. for a heart that is
like Anacreon's lyre, that would sing of love alone, that whatever
subject you tried to bring to it, it would not resound with anything
save love! Oh, that our hearts were like that towards God, so that when
we tried to sing of comforts and of mercies, our hearts would only sing
of God! Oh, that every string were made so divine, that it would never
trill to any finger but the finger of the chief player upon my stringed
instruments, the Lord Jesus Christ! Oh, that we had a heart like
David's harp, that none but David could play; a soul that none but
Jesus could make glad and cause to rejoice! Take care Christian, lest
thy comforts like the moon eclipse thy sun. That is a sermon for thee,
remember it, and be wise from it.
And let the Christian recollect another sermon. Let him take his child
out, and when he takes him outside the door, and he sees the sun begin
to grow dark and all things fade away, and a strange colour coming over
the landscape, the child will begin to cry and say, "Father the sun is
going out, he is dying; we shall never have any light again." And as
gradually the black moon creeps over the sun's broad surface and there
remains only a solitary streak of light, the tears run down the child's
eyes as he says, "The sun is nearly quenched; God has blown it out, it
will never shine upon us again. We shall have to live in darkness;" and
he would begin to weep for sorrow of heart. You would touch your child
on the head, and say, "No, my little boy, the sun has not gone out; it
is only the moon passing across its face; it will shine bright enough
presently." And your boy would soon believe you; and as he saw the
light returning, he would feel thankful, and would believe what you had
said, that the sun was always the same. Now, you will be like a child
to-morrow. When you get into trouble you will be saying, "God has
changed." Then let God's Word speak to you as unto children, and let it
say, "No, he has not changed; with him is no variableness, neither
shadow of a turning."
"My soul through many changes goes,
His love no variation knows."
And now, last of all, a total eclipse is one of the most terrific and
grand sights that ever will be seen. We shall not see the eclipse here
in all its majestic terror, but when the eclipse of the sun is total it
is sublime. Travellers have given us some records of their own
experience. When the sun has been setting far away, the mountains
seemed to be covered with darkness, except upon their summits, where
there was just a streak of light, when all below was swathed in
darkness. The heavens grew darker and darker and darker, until at last
it became as black as night, and here and there the stars might be seen
shining, but beside them there was no light, and nothing could be
discerned. I was thinking that if on a sudden the sun should set in
ten-fold darkness, and never should rise again, what a horrid world
this would be! If to-morrow the sun should actually die out, and never
shine any more, what a fearful world this would be to live in! And then
the thought strikes me–;Are there not some men, and are there not some
here, who will one day have a total eclipse of all their comforts?
Thank God, whatever eclipse happens to a Christian, it is never a total
eclipse: there is always a ring of comfort left; there is always a
crescent of love and mercy to shine upon him. But mark thee, sinner,
when thou comest to die, bright though thy joys be now, and fair thy
prospects, thou wilt suffer a total eclipse. Soon shall your sun set,
and set in everlasting night. A few more months, and your gaiety shall
be over; your dreams of pleasure shall be dissipated by the terrible
wailing of the judgment-trump; a few more months, and this gay dance of
revelry on earth shall all have passed away; and that passed away,
remember, you have nothing to expect in the world to come but "a
certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation." Can you
guess what the Saviour meant, when he said "outer darkness, where there
is wailing and gnashing of teeth?" Can any tell except those eclipsed
spirits that have been these many years writhing in the torments of
eternal judgement; can any tell what is meant by that "Outer darkness
!" It is darkness so thick, that hope, which lives anywhere, cannot
dart even a feeble ray through its impenetrable gloom; it is a darkness
so black that you have no candle of your own fancy, no fair imagination
to illuminate. A horror thicker than the darkness of Egypt, a darkness
that may be felt will get hold upon the spirit. "Depart, ye cursed,"
shall roll, like volumes of cloud and darkness over the accursed
spirit. "Cursed, cursed, cursed," pronounced by the Sacred Trinity
thrice, shall come, come like a three-fold ocean of unutterable depth,
and shall in its caverns hide the soul beyond the reach of hope.
I am but talking in simile and figure of a matter which none of us can
thoroughly understand, but which each of us must know, unless we are
saved by grace. My fellow-sinner, hast thou to-day any hope that when
death shall come thou shalt be found in Christ? If thou hast none,
beware and tremble; if thou hast any, take care it is "a good hope
through grace." If thou hast no hope, but art seeking one, hear me
while I tell thee the way of salvation. Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
became man; he lived in this world, he suffered and he died; and the
object of his death was this–that all who believe may be saved. What
you are required to believe is simply this. Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners: do you feel that you are a sinner? If so, he
came to save you. All you have to do–and that grace makes you do–is
to believe that he came to save sinners, and therefore came to save
you. Mark, he did not come to save all; he came to save sinners. All
men who can claim the title of sinners, Christ came to save. If you are
too good to be a sinner, then you have no part in this matter; if you
are too proud to confess that you are a sinner, then this has nothing
to do with you; but if with a humble heart, with a penitential lip, you
can say, "Lord, have mercy upon me a sinner," then Christ was punished
for your sins, and you cannot be punished for them. Christ has died
instead of you; believe on him, and you may go your way rejoicing that
you are saved now, and shall be saved eternally. May God the Holy
Spirit first teach you that you are a sinner, then lead you to believe
that Christ died for sinners and then apply the promise, so that you
may see that he died for you; and that done, you may "rejoice in hope
of the glory of God," and your sun shall never set in an eclipse, but
shall set on earth to rise with tenfold splendour in the upper sphere
where it shall never know a cloud, a setting, or an eclipse.
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