The Scales of Judgment
A Sermon
(No. 257)
Delivered on Sabbath Morning, June 12th, 1859, by the
REV. C.H. SPURGEON
at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.
"Tekel; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found
wanting."–Daniel 5:27.
THERE IS A WEIGHING TIME for kings and emperors, and all the monarchs
of earth, albeit some of them have exalted themselves to a position in
which they appear to be irresponsible to man. Though they escape the
scales on earth, they must surely be tried at the bar of God. For
nations there is a weighing time. National sins demand national
punishments. The whole history of God's dealings with mankind proves
that though a nation may go on in wickedness it may multiply its
oppressions; it may abound in bloodshed, tyranny, and war, but an hour
of retribution draweth nigh. When it shall have filled up its measure
of iniquity, then shall the angel of vengeance execute its doom. There
cannot be an eternal damnation for nations as nations; the destruction
of men at last will be that of individuals, and at the bar of God each
man must be tried for himself. The punishment, therefore, of nations,
is national. The guilt they incur must receive its awful recompense in
this present time state. It was so with the great nation of the
Chadleans. They had been guilty of blood. The monuments which still
remain, and which we have lately explored, prove them to have been a
cruel and ferocious race. A people of a strange language they were, and
stranger than their language were their deeds. God allowed that nation
for a certain period to grow and thrive, till it became God's hammer,
breaking in pieces many nations. It was the axe of the Almighty–his
battle axe, and his weapon of war. By it he smote the loins of kings,
yea, and slew mighty kings. But its time came at last. She sat alone as
a queen, and said, "I shall see no sorrow," nevertheless, the Lord
brought her low, and made her grind in the dust of captivity, and gave
her riches to the spoiler, and her pomp to the destroyer. Even so must
it be with every nation of the earth that is guilty of oppression.
Humbling itself before God, when his wrath is kindled but a little, it
may for awhile arrest its fate; but if it still continue in its bold
unrighteousness, it shall certainly reap the harvest of its own sowing.
So likewise shall it be with the nations that now abide on the face of
the earth. There is no God in heaven if the iniquity of slavery go
unpunished. There is no God existing in heaven above if the cry of the
negro do not bring down a red hail of blood upon the nation that still
holds the black man in slavery. Nor is there a God anywhere if the
nations of Europe that still oppress each other and are oppressed by
tyrants do not find out to their dismay that he executes vengeance. The
Lord God is the avenger of every one that is oppressed, and the
executor of every one that oppresseth. I see, this very moment,
glancing at the page of the world's present history, a marvellous proof
that God will take vengeance. Piedmont, the land which is at this time
sodden with blood, is only at this hour suffering the vengeance that
has long been hanging over it. The snows of its mountains were once red
with the blood of martyrs. It is not yet forgotten how there the
children of God were hunted like partridges on the mountains; and so
has God directed it, that the nations that performed that frightful act
upon his children, shall there meet. rend, and devour each other in the
slaughter, and both sides shall be almost equal, and nothing shall be
seen but that God will punish those who lift their hands against his
anointed.
There has never been a deed of persecution–there has never been a drop
of martyr's blood shed yet, but shall be avenged, and every land guilty
of it shall yet drink the cup of the wine of the wrath of God. And
especially certain is there gathering an awful storm over the head of
the empire of Rome–that spiritual despotism of the firstborn of hell.
All the clouds of God's vengeance are gathering into one–the firmament
is big with thunder, God's right arm is lifted up even now, and ere
long the nations of the earth shall eat her flesh and burn her with
fire. They that have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication,
shall soon also have to drink with her of the wine of the fierceness of
his wrath; and they shall reel to and fro, their loins shall be loose,
their knees shall smite together, when God fulfils the old handwriting
on the rock of Patmos.
Our duty at this time is to take heed to ourselves as a nation that we
purge ourselves of our great sins Although God has given so much light,
and kindly favored us with the dew of his Spirit, yet England is a
hoary sinner. Favourably with mercy does God regard her, so much the
rather then let each Christian try to shake off the sins of his nation
from his own skirt, and let each one to the utmost of his ability labor
and strive to purify this land of blood and oppression, and of
everything evil that still clingeth to her. So may God preserve this
land; and may its monarchy endure till he shall come, before whom both
kings and princes shall lose their power right cheerfully even as the
stars fade when the king of light–the sun–lifteth up his golden head.
With this brief preface, I will leave nations and kings all to
themselves, and consider the text principally as it has relation to
each one of us; and may God grant that when we go out of this hall most
of us may be able to say, "I thank God I have a good hope that when
weighed in the scales at last I shall not be found wanting." Or, if
that is too much to expect, may I yet trust some will go away convinced
of sin, crying in their own spirits, "I am wanting now, but if God in
his mercy meet with me, I shall not be wanting long."
I shall notice, first, that there are certain preliminary weighings
which God would have us put ourselves to in this world, and which
indeed he has set up as kind, of tests whereby we may be able to
discover what shall be the result of the last decisive weighing. After
I have mentioned these, I shall then come to speak of the last
tremendous weighing of the judgment day.
I. LET US JUDGE OURSELVES THAT WE THAT WE MAY NOT BE JUDGED. It is for
us now to put ourselves through the various tests by which we may be
able to discover, whether we are, at this present time, short weight or
not.
The first test I would suggest is that of human opinion. Now understand
me. I do believe that the opinion of man is utterly valueless when that
opinion is based upon false premises, and, therefore, draws wrong
conclusions. I would not trust the world to judge God's servants, and
it is a mercy to know that the world shall not have the judging of the
church, but rather, the saints shall judge the world. There is a sense
in which I would say with the apostle, "With me it is a very small
thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment: yea. I
judge not myself." Human opinion is not to be put in competition with
divine revelation. But I speak now of judging ourselves, and I do not
think it safe, when weighing our own character, to prefer our own and
exclude our neighbour's judgment. The esteem or contempt of honest men,
which is instinctively shown without reference to party or prejudice,
is not by any means to be despised. When a man knows that he is right
he may snap his fingers in the face of all men but when a man's
conscience tells him that he is wrong–if at the judgment bar of men he
is found guilty, he must not despise it, he must rather look on the
judgment of men as being the first intimation of what shall be the
judgment of God. Are you, my hearer, at this time in the estimation of
all your fellow-creatures condemned as one who should be avoided? Do
you clearly perceive that the righteous shun you, because your example
would contaminate them? Have you discovered that your character is not
held to be estimable amongst honest and respectable men? Let me assure
you, that you have good reason to be afraid for if you cannot stand the
trial of an honest fellow-creature–if the law of your country condemn
you–if the very laws of society exclude you–if the imperfect
judgments of earth pronounce you too vile for its association, how
fearful must be your condemnation when you are put into the far more
rigid scale of God's justice, and terrible must be your fate when the
perfect community of the first-born in heaven shall rise as one man,
and demand that you shall never behold their society? When a man is so
bad that his fellow-creatures themselves, imperfect though they be, are
able to see in him, not the mere seeds, but the very flower, the full
bloom of iniquity, he should tremble. If you cannot pass that test, if
human opinion condemn–if your own conscience declare that opinion to
be just, you have good need to tremble indeed, for you are put into the
balances and are found wanting.
I have thought it right to mention this balance. There may be some
present to whom it may he pertinent, but at the same time, there are
far better tests for men, tests which are not so easily to be
misunderstood. And I would go through some of these. One of the scales
into which I would have every man put himself, at least once in his
life–I say at least once, because, if not, heaven is to him a place,
the gates of which are shut for ever–I would have every man put
himself into the scales of the divine law. There stands the law of God.
This law is a balance which will turn, even were there but a grain of
sand in it. It is true to a hair. It moves upon the diamond of God's
eternal immutable truth. I put but one weight into the scale; it is
this: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all
thy mind, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength," and I invite
any man who thinks himself to be of the right stamp, and flatters
himself that he has no need of mercy no need of washing in the blood of
Jesus Christ, no need of any atonement–I invite him to put himself
into the scales, and see whether he be full weight, when there be but
so much as this one commandment in the other scale. Oh, my friends, if
we did but try ourselves by the very first commandment of the law, we
must acknowledge that we are guilty. But when we drop in weight after
weight, till the whole sacred ten are there, there is not a man under
the cope of heaven who has one grain of wit left, but must confess that
he is short of the mark,–that he falls below the standard which the
law of God requires. Mrs. Too-good has often declared that she herself
has done all her duty, and perhaps a little more; that she has been
even more kind to the poor than there was any occasion for; that she
has gone to church more frequently than even her religion requireth;
that she has been more attentive to the sacraments then the best of her
neighbors, and if she does not enter heaven she does not know who will.
"If I have not a portion amongst the saints, who can possibly hope to
see God's face in light?" Nay, madam, but I am sorry for thee; thou art
light as a feather when thou goest into the scales. In these wooden
balances of thine own ceremonies thou mayest, perhaps, be found right
enough, but in those eternal scales, with those tremendous weights–the
ten commandments of the law–the declaration is suspended over thy poor
foolish head. "Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting,"
There may, perhaps, in congregations like this, be some extremely
respectable body who has from his youth up, as he imagines, kept God's
law; his country, family, or associates can bring no charge against
him, and so he wraps himself up and considers that really he is the
man, and that when he appears at the gate of heaven, he will be
received as a rightful owner and proprietor of the reward of the
righteous. Ah, my friend if thou wouldest take the trouble just to sit
down and weigh thyself in the scales of the law–if thou wouldst take
but one command, the one in which thou thinkest thyself least guilty,
the one that thou imagines thou hast kept best, and really look at its
intent, and spirit, and view it in all its length and breadth in truth
I know thou wouldst keep out of the scale and say, "Alas, when I hoped
to have gone down with a sound of congratulation, I find myself hurled
up, light as the dust of the balance, while the tremendous law of God
comes sounding down and shakes the house." Let each man do this, and
every one of us must retire from this place saying, "I am weighed in
the balances and I am found wanting."
And now the true believer comes forward and he claimed to be weighed in
another balance, for saith he, according to this balance, if I be what
I profess to be, I am not found wanting, for I can bring with me the
perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, and that is full weight, even
though the ten commandments of the law be weighed against it. I bring
with me the full atonement, the perfect satisfaction of Jesus, blood,
and the perfect righteousness of a divine being, the spotless
righteousness of Jesus the Son of God. I can be weighed against the
law, and yet sit securely, knowing that now and for ever, I am equal to
the law. It hath nought against me since Christ is mine, Its terrors
have no power to affright me, and as for its demands they can exact
nothing of me for they are fulfilled to the utmost in Christ. Well, I
propose now to take professors and put them into the scales and try
them. Let each one of us put ourselves into the scale of conscience.
Many make a profession of religion in this age. It is the time of shams
There were never so many liars in the world since the days of Adam, as
there are now. The Father of Lies has been more prolific of children at
this than at any other period. There is such an abundance of
newspapers, and of talkers, and of readers: and consequently flying
reports, wrong news, and evil tales, are far more numerous than ever.
So, too, there is a great deal of vain shew with religion. I sometimes
fear we have not a grain more religion in England now than we had in
the time of the Puritans. Then, though the stream in which it ran was
narrow, it did run very deep indeed; now, the banks have been burst; a
great extent of country is covered with religious profession; but I
tremble lest we should find at last, that the flood was not deep enough
to float our souls to heaven. Will each one now in this congregation,
put himself into the scale of conscience, sit down and ask, "Is my
profession true? Do I feel that before God I am an heir of the
promises? When I sit at my Saviour's table, have I any right to be a
guest? Can l truly say, that when I profess to be converted, I only
profess what I have actually proved? When I talk experimentally about
the things of the kingdom of God, is that experience a borrowed tale,
or have I felt what I say in my own breast? When I stand up to preach,
do I preach that which I have really tasted and handled, or do I only
repeat that which I have learned to utter with the lip, though it has
never been fused in the crucible of my own heart?" Conscience is not
very readily cheated. There are some men whose consciences are not a
safe balance; they have by degrees become so hardened in sin that
conscience refuses to work; but still I will hope that most of us may
abide by the test of our own conscience, if we let it freely work. Dear
friends, I would that you would often retire to your chambers alone;
shut the door and shut out all the world, and then sit and review your
past life; scan carefully your present character and your present
position; and do, I beseech you try to get an honest answer from your
own conscience. Bring up everything that you can think of that might
lead you to doubt. You need be under no difficulty here; for are there
not enough sins committed by us every day, to warrant our suspicions
that we are not God's children? Well, let all these black accusers for
death, let them all have their say. Do not cloak your sins. Head your
diary through, let all your iniquities come up before you; (this is the
pith of confession) and then, ask conscience whether you can truly say,
"I have repented of all these. God is my witness, I hate these things
with a perfect hatred. God also heareth me witness, that my trust is
fixed alone in him who is the Saviour of sinners, for salvation and
justification. If I be not awfully deceived, I am a partaker of divine
grace, having been regenerated and begotten again unto a lively hope."
Oh that conscience may help each of us to say, "I am not a mere painted
image of life, but I trust I have the life of Jesus made manifest in my
body." My profession is not the pompous pageantry with which dead souls
are carried respectably to perdition; but it is the joy, the hope, the
confidence of one who is being borne along in the chariot of mercy, to
his Father's home above. "Ah! how many people are really afraid to look
their religion in the face! They know it to be so bad, they dare not
examine it. They are like bankrupts that keep no books. They would be
very glad for a fire to consume their books, if they ever kept any, for
they know the balance is all on the wrong side. They are losing,
breaking up, and they would not wish to keep an account of their losses
or villainies. A man who is afraid to examine himself, may rest assured
that his ship is rotten, and that it will not be long before it
founders in the sea, to his eternal shipwreck. Call up conscience; put
yourself in the scale, and God help you, that the verdict may not be
against you–that it may not be said of you, "Thou art weighed in the
balances and art found wanting."
I would have every man also weigh himself in the scales of God's
Word–not merely in that part of it which we call legal, and which has
respect to us in our fallen state; but let us weigh ourselves in the
scale of the gospel. You will find it sometimes a holy exercise, to
read some psalm of David, when his soul was most full of grace; and if
you were to put questions as you read each verse, saying to yourself,
"Can I say this? Have I felt as David felt? Have my bones ever been
broken with sin as his were when he penned his penitential psalms? Has
my soul ever been full of true confidence, in the hour of difficulty,
as his was when he sang of God's mercies in the cave of Adullam, or the
holds of Engedi? Can I take the cup of salvation, and call upon the
name of the Lord? Can I pay my vows now unto the Lord, in the courts of
his house, in the presence of all his people?" I am afraid that the
book of Psalms itself would be enough to convince some of you that your
religion is but superficial, that it is but a vain show, and not a
vital reality. God help you often to try yourselves in that scale. Then
read over the life of Christ, and as you read, ask yourselves whether
you are conformed to him, such as he describes a true disciple.
Endeavour to see whether you have any of the meekness, any of the
humility, any of the lovely spirit which he constantly inculcated and
displayed. Try yourselves by the sermon on the mount, you will find it
a good scale in which to weigh your spirits. Take then the epistles,
and see whether you can go with the apostle in what he said of his
experience. Have you ever cried out like him:–"O wretched man that I
am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? "Have you ever
felt like him, that this is a faithful saying, and worthy of all
acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners?"
Have you ever known his self-abasement? Could you say that you seemed
to yourself the chief of sinners, and always accounted yourself less
than the least of all saints? And have you known anything of his
devotion? Could you join with him and say, "For me to live is Christ,
and to die is gain?" Oh, brethren! the best of us–if we put the Bible
into the scales for the proof of our state, if we read God's Word as a
test of our spiritual condition–the very best of us has cause to
tremble. Before Almighty God, on our bended knees, with our Bible
before us, we have good reason to stop many a time and say, "Lord, I
feel I have never yet been here, oh, bring me here! give me true
penitence, such as this I read of Give me real faith. oh, let me not
have a counterfeit religion! give me that which is the current coin of
the realm of heaven–thine own sterling grace, which shall pass in the
great day, when the gates of heaven shall be opened, and alas! the
gates of hell wide open too." Try yourselves by God's Word, and I fear
there are some who will love to rise from it, and say, "I am weighed in
the balances and found wanting."
Yet again, God has been pleased to set another means of trial before
us. When God puts us into the scales I am about to mention, namely, the
scales of providence, it behoves us very carefully to watch ourselves
and see whether or not, we be found wanting. Some men are tried in the
scales of adversity. Some of you, my dear friends, may have come here
very sorrowful. Your business fails, your earthly prospects are growing
dark; it is midnight with you in this world; you have sickness in the
house; the wife of your bosom languishes before your weeping eyes; your
children perhaps, by their ingratitude, have wounded your spirits. But
you are a professor of religion, you know what God is doing with you
now; he is testing and trying you. He knows you, and he would have you
know that a summer-time religion is not sufficient; he would have you
see whether your faith can stand the test of trial and trouble.
Remember Job; what a scale was that in which he was put! What weights
of affliction were those east in one after another, very mountains of
sore trouble; and yet he could bear them all, and he came out of the
scales proof against all the weight that even Satanic strength could
hurl into the scale. And is it so with you? Can you now say–"The Lord
gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord?"
Can you submit to his will without murmuring? Or if you cannot master
such a phase of religion as this, are you able still to feel that you
cannot complain against God? Do you still say, "Though he slay me, yet
will I trust in him?" Oh, my friends, remember that if your religion
will not stand the day of adversity, if it afford you no comfort in the
time of storms, you would he better in that ease without it than with
it; for with it you are deceived, but without it you might discover
your true condition, and seek the Lord as a penitent sinner. If thou
art now broken in pieces by a little adversity, what will become of
thee in the day when all the tempests of God shall be let loose on your
soul? If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee,
what wilt thou do in the swellings of Jordan? If thou canst not endure
the open grave, how canst thou endure the trump of the archangel, and
the terrific thunders of the last great day? If thy burning house is
too much for thee, what wilt thou do in a burning world? If thunder and
lightning alarm thee, what wilt thou do when the world is in a blaze,
and when all the thunders of God leave their hiding-place, and rush
pealing through the world? If mere trial distress thee and grieve thee,
oh, what wilt thou do when all the hurricanes of divine vengeance shall
sweep across the earth and shake its very pillars, till they reel and
reel again? Yes, friends, I would have you, as often as you are tried
and troubled, see how you bear it–whether your faith then stance and
whether you could see God's right hand, even when it is wrapped in
clouds, whether you can discover the silver lining to the black clouds
of tribulation. God help you to come out of the scales, for many are
weighed in them and have been found wanting.
Another set of scales there is, too, of an opposite color. Those I have
described are painted black; these are of golden hue. They are the
scales of prosperity. Many a man has endured the chills of poverty who
could not endure sunny weather. Some meets religion is very much like
the palace of the queen of Russia, which had been built out of solid
slabs of ice. It could stand the frost. the roughest breeze could not
destroy it; the sharp touch of winter could not devour it; they but
strengthened and made it more lasting. But summer melted it all away,
and where once were the halls of revelry, nothing remained but the
black rolling river. How many have been destroyed by prosperity? The
fumes of popularity have turned the brains of many a man. The adulation
of multitudes has laid thousands low. Popular applause hath its foot in
the sand, even when it hath its head among the stars. Many have I known
who in a cottage seemed to fear God but in a mansion have forgotten
him. When their daily bread was earned with the sweat of their brow,
then it was they served the Lord, and went; up to his house with
gladness. But their seeming religion all departed when their flocks and
herds increased, and their gold and silver was multiplied. It is no
easy thing to stand the trial of prosperity. You know the old fable, I
will just put it in a Christian light. When the winds of affliction
blow on a Christian's head, he just pulls around him the cloak of
heavenly consolation, and girds his religion about him all the tighter
for the fury of the storm. But when the sun of prosperity shines on
him, the traveler grows warm, and full of delight and pleasure, he
ungirds his cloak, and lays it aside; so that what the storms of
affliction never could accomplish, the soft hand and the witchery of
prosperity has been able to perform. It has loosed the loins of many a
mighty man. It has been the Delilah that has shorn the locks and taken
away the strength of many a Samson. This rock has witnessed the most
fatal wrecks.
"More the treacherous calm I dread,
Than tempests rolling over head."
But shall we be able to say after passing through prosperity, "this is
not my rest, this is not my God. Let him give me what he may, I will
thank him for it, yet will I rejoice in the giver rather than the gift;
I will say unto the Lord thou only art my rest." It is well if you can
come out of these scales enabled honestly to hope that you are not
found wanting.
There are again the scales of temptation. Many and many a man seemeth
for a time to run well; but it is temptation that tries the Christian.
In your business you are now honest and upright, but suppose a
speculation cross your path, which involve but a very slight departure
from the high standard of Christianity, and indeed would not involve
any departure from the low standard which your fellow tradesmen follow.
Do you think you would be able to say "How can I do this great
wickedness and sin against God." Could you say, "Should such a man as I
do this? Shall I haste to be rich, for if I do I shall not be
innocent?" How has it been with you? You have had your trial-time.
There has been an opportunity of making a little: have you taken it?
Has God enabled you to endure when tempted, whether to unlawful gain,
or to lustful pleasure, or to pride and vanity? Have you been enabled
to stand proof against all these, and to say, "Get thee behind me Satan
for thou savourest not the things which be of God, but those which be
of man and of sin?" How have you stood the test of temptation? If you
have never been tempted you know nothing about this. How can we tell
the worthiness of the ship till she has been at sea in the storm? You
cannot know what you are till you have been through the practical test
of every day life. How then has it been with you? Have you been weighed
in the balance, and have you been enabled to say, "I know through grace
I have been kept in the hour of temptation, and with the temptation the
Lord has always sent a way of escape. And here I am glorying in his
grace; I cannot rest in myself, but still I can say, I am truly his.'
The work within me is not of man, neither by man: it is the work of the
Spirit. I have found succor and support when my heart and my flesh have
failed me."
It is probable, my hearers, that most of you are professors of
religion; let me ask you again very earnestly to test and try
yourselves, whether your religion be real or not. If there be many
false prophets in the world, and those prophets have followers, must
there not be many false men who are fatally deceived? Do not suppose, I
beseech you, because you are a deacon, or have been baptized, or are a
member of the church, or are professors, you are therefore safe. The
bleaching bones of the skeletons of self-deceived ones should warn you.
On the rock of presumption thousands have been split that once sailed
merrily enough. Take care, O mariner! though thy bark may be gaily
trimmed and may be brightly painted, yet it is none the surer after
all. Take heed, lest the rocks be seen beneath the keel, lest they
pierce thee through, and lest the waters of destruction overwhelm thee.
Oh! do not, I entreat you, say, "Why make this stirs? I dare say I
shall be all right at last." Do not let your eternal state be a matter
of suspicion or doubt. Decide now, I beseech you, decide now in your
conscience whether you are Christ's or not. Of all the most miserable
men in the world, and the most hopeless, I think those are most to be
pitied who are indifferent and careless about religion. There are some
men whose feelings never run deeper than their skin; they either have
no heart, or else it is so set round with fatness that you can never
touch them. I like to see a man either desponding or rejoicing; either
anxious about his eternal state or else confident about it. But you who
never will question yourselves–you are just like the bullock going to
the slaughter, or like the sheep that will enter the very
slaughter-house and lick the knife that is about to take its blood. I
wish I could speak this morning somewhat more earnestly. Oh that some
sparks from the Divine fire could now light up my soul, I think I could
speak to you like some of the prophets of old, when they stood in the
midst of a professing generation, to warn them. Oh that the very voice
of God would speak to each heart this morning! While God is thundering
on high may he thunder below in your souls! Be warned, my hearers,
against self deception. Be true to yourselves. If God be God, serve
him, and do it truly; if the devil be God, serve him, and serve him
honestly, and serve him faithfully. But do not pretend to be serving
God, while you are really indifferent and careless about it.
II. I must now close by endeavoring to speak of THE LAST GREAT BALANCE;
and here would I speak very solemnly, and may the Spirit of God be with
us. Time shall soon be over; eternity must soon begin, death is
hurrying onward; the pale horse at his utmost speed is coming to every
inhabitant of this earth. The arrow of death is fitted to the string,
and soon shall it be sent home. Man's heart is the target. Then, after
death, cometh the judgment; the dread assize shall soon commence. The
trump of the archangel shall awake the sleeping myriads, and, standing
on their feet, they shall confront the God against whom they have
sinned. Methinks I see the scales hanging in heaven, so massive that
none but the hand of Deity can uphold them. Let me cast my eye upward,
and bethink me of that hour when I must myself enter those scales and
be weighed once for all. Come, let me speak for each man present. Those
scales yonder are exact; I may deceive my fellows here, but deceive God
I cannot then. I may be weighed in the balances of earth, which shall
give but a partial verdict, and so commit myself to a false idea that I
am what I am not, that I am hopeful when I am hopeless. But those
scales are true. There is no means whatever of flattering them into a
false declaration; they will cry aloud and spare not. When I get there,
the voice of flattery shall be changed into the voice of honesty. Here
I may go daily on crying, "Peace, peace, when there is no peace;" but
there the naked truth shall startle me, and not a single word of
consolation shall be given me that is not true. Let me therefore ponder
the fact, that those scales are exactly true and cannot be deceived.
Let me remember also, that whether I will or not, into those scales I
must go. God will not take me on my profession. I may bring my
witnesses with me; I may bring my minister and the deacons of the
church to give me a character, which might be thought all-sufficient
among men, but God will tolerate no subterfuge. Into the scales he will
put me do what I may; whatever the opinion of others may be of me, and
whatever my own profession. And let me remember, too, that I must be
altogether weighed in the scales. I cannot hope that God will weigh my
head and past over my heart–that because I have correct notions of
doctrine, therefore he will forget that my heart is impure, or my hands
guilty of iniquity. My all must be cast into the scales. Come, let me
stretch my imagination, and picture myself about to be put into those
scales. Shall I be able to walk boldly up and enter them, knowing whom
I have believed, and being persuaded that the blood of Christ and his
perfect righteousness shall bear me harmless through it all; or shall I
be dragged with terror and dismay? Shall the angel come and say, "Thou
must enter?" Shall I bend my knee and cry, "Oh, it is all right," or
shall I seek to escape? Now, thrust into the scale, do I see myself
waiting for one solemn moment. My feet have touched the bottom of the
scales, and there stand those everlasting weights and now which way are
they turned? Which way shall it be? Do I descend in the scale with joy
and delight, being found through Jesus' righteousness to be full
weight, and so accepted; or must I rise, light, frivolous, unsound in
all my fancied hopes, and kick the beam? Oh, shall it be, that I must
go where the rough hand of vengeance shall seize, and drag me downward,
into fell despair? Can you picture the moments of suspense? I can see a
poor man standing on the drop with the rope round his neck, and oh,
what an instant of apprehension must that be; what thoughts of horror
must float through his soul! How must a world of misery be compressed
into a second? But O. my hearers, there is a far more terrible moment
still for you that are Godless, Christless, careless: that have made a
profession of religion, and yet have it not in your hearts. I see you
in the scales. but what shall we say? The wailings of hell seem not
sufficient to express your misery, In the scales without Christ! Not
long ere you shall be in the jaws of hell, without pity and without
compassion. O, my dear hearers! if you could hope to get to heaven
without being weighed–if God would believe what you say without
testing you, I would not care admit asking you this morning to
ascertain the state of your own hearts. But if God will try you, try
yourselves; if he will judge you, judge your own hearts. Don't say that
because you profess to be religious therefore you are right–that
because others imagine you to be safe that therefore you are so. Weigh
yourselves put your hearts into the balance. Do not be deceived. Pull
the bandage from your eyes, that your blindness may be removed, and
that you may pass a just opinion upon yourselves as to what you are. I
would have you not only see yourselves as others see you, but I would
have you see yourselves as God sees you; for that after all, is your
real state; his eye is not to be mistaken; he is the God of but;, and
just and right is he. How fearful a thing will it be, if any of us who
are members of Christ's church shall be cast into hell at last. The
higher we ascend, the greater will be our fall, like Icarus in the old
parable, who flew aloft with waxen wings, till the sun did melt them
and he fell. And some of you are flying like that: you are flying up
with waxen wings. what if the terrible heat of the judgement day should
melt them! I sometimes try to picture, how terrible the reverse to me
if found to be rejected at last. Let what I shall say for myself suit
for all. Nay, and must it be, if I live in this world and think I am a
Christian and am not–must it be that I must go from the songs of the
sanctuary to the cursings of the synagogue of Satan? Must I go from the
cup of the Eucharist to the cup of devils? Must I go from the table of
the Lord to the feast of fiends? Shall these lips that now proclaim the
word of Jesus, one day utter the wailings of perdition? Shall this
tongue that has sung the praises of the Redeemer be moved with
blasphemy? Shall it be that this body which has been the receptacle of
so many a mercy–shall it become the very house and home of every
misery that vengeance can invent? Shall these eyes that now look on
God's people one day behold the frightful sights of spirits destroyed
in that all-consuming fire? And must it be that the ears that have
heard the hallelujahs of this morning, shall one day hear the shrieks,
and groans, and howls, of the lost and damned spirits? It must be so if
we be not Christ's. Oh how frightful will it be! Methinks I see some
grave professor at last condemned to hell. There are multitudes of
sinners, lying in their irons, and tossing on their beds of flame;
lifting themselves upon their elbows for a moment, then seem to forget
their tortures as they see the professor come in, and they cry–"Art
thou become like one of us? Is the preacher himself damned? What! is
the deacon of the church below, come to sit with drunkards, and with
swearers? "Ah," they cry, "aha, aha, art thou bound up in the same
bundle with us after all?" Surely the mockery of hell must be itself a
most fearful torture; professing sinners mocked by those who never
professed religion.
But mortal life can ne'er describe the miseries of a disappointed
blasted hope, when that hope is lost–it involves the loss of mercy,
the loss of Christ, the loss of life–and it involves moreover, the
terrible destruction and the awful vengeance of Almighty God. Let us
one and all go home this day, when yet God's sky is heavy, and let us
bend ourselves at his altar, and cry for mercy. Every man
apart–husband apart from wife. Apart, let us seek our chambers of
praying again and again, "Lord renew me: Lord forgive me: Lord accept
me." And whilst, mayhap, the tempest which is now lowering over the
sky, and ere another tempest direr still shall fall on us with its
fearful terrors, may you find peace. May we not then find ourselves
lost, lost for ever, where hope can never comet It shall be my duty to
search myself. I hope I shall be enabled to put myself into the scale;
promise me my hearers, that each of you will do the same.
I was told one day this week by some one, that having preached for
several Sabbaths lately upon the comforting doctrines of God's Word, he
was afraid that some of you would begin to console yourselves with the
idea that you were God's elect when perhaps you were not. Well, at
least, such a thing shall not happen, if I have done what I hoped to do
this morning. God bless you, for Jesus sake.