Resurrection With Christ

Resurrection With Christ

A Sermon

(No. 805)

Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, April 12, 1868, by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the [16]Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.

"But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which
He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, has quickened us
together with Christ, (by Grace you are saved)." Ephesians 2:4, 5.

THERE have been conferences of late of all sorts of people upon all
kinds of subjects, but what a remarkable thing a conference would be if
it were possible for persons who have been raised from the dead! If you
could somehow or other get together the daughter of the Shunammite, the
daughter of Jairus, the son of the widow at the gates of Nain, Lazarus,
and Eutychus, what strange communing they might have one with another!
What singular enquiries they might make, and what remarkable
disclosures might they present to us! The thing is not possible, and
yet a better and more remarkable assembly may be readily gathered on
the same conditions, and more important information may be obtained
from the confessions of its members.

This morning we have a conference of that very character gathered in
this house, for many of us were dead in trespasses and sins, even as
others–but we hope that through Divine energy we have been quickened
from that spiritual death, and are now living to praise God! It will be
well for us to talk together, to review the past, to rejoice in the
present, to look forward to the future. "You has He quickened who were
dead in trespasses and sins." And as you sit together, an assembly of
men and women possessed of resurrection life, you are a more notable
conclave than if merely your bodies and not your spirits had been
quickened!

The first part of this morning's discourse will be occupied with a
solemnity in which we shall take you into the morgue. Secondly, we
shall spend awhile in reviewing a miracle, and we shall observe dead
men living. We shall then turn aside to observe a sympathy indicated in
the text, and we shall close with a song, for the text reads somewhat
like music–it is full of thankfulness, and thankfulness is the essence
of true song. It is full of holy and adoring wonder! It is evermore
true poetry even though expressed in prose.

I. Celebrate, first, a great SOLEMNITY and descend into the morgue of
our poor humanity. According to the teaching of sacred Scripture, men
are dead, spiritually dead. Certain vain men would make it out that men
are only a little disordered and bruised by the Fall–wounded in a few
delicate members but not mortally injured. However, the Word of God is
very explicit upon the matter and declares our race to be not wounded,
not merely hurt, but slain outright and left as dead in trespasses and
sin.

There are those who fancy that fallen human nature is only in a sort of
swoon or fainting fit–and only needs a process of reviving to set it
right. You have only, by education and by other manipulations, to set
its life-floods in motion and to excite within it some degree of
action–and then life will speedily be developed. There is much good in
every man, they say, and you have only to bring it out by training and
example. This fiction is exactly opposite to the teaching of sacred
Scripture! Within these truthful pages we read of no fainting fit, no
temporary paralysis–DEATH is the name for nature's condition–and
quickening is its great necessity.

Man is not partly dead, like the half-drowned mariner in whom some
spark of life may yet remain if it be but fondly tendered, and wisely
nurtured. There is not a spark of spiritual life left in man–manhood
is to all spiritual things an absolute corpse. "In the day you eat
thereof you shall surely die," said God to our first parents, and die
they did–a spiritual death–and all their children alike by nature lie
in this spiritual death. It is not a sham death, or a metaphorical one,
but a real, absolute, spiritual death. Yet it will be said, "Are they
not alive?" Truly so, but not spiritually. There are grades of life.
You come first upon the vegetable life–but the vegetable is a dead
thing as to the vitality of the animal. Above the animal life rises the
mental life, a vastly superior life. The creature, which is only an
animal, is dead to either the joys or the sorrows of mental life.

Then, high above the mental, as much as the mental is above the animal,
rises what Scripture calls the spiritual life– the life in Christ
Jesus. All men have more or less of the mental life, and it is well
that they should cultivate it–get as much as they can of it. It is
well that they should put it to the best uses, and make it subserve the
highest ends. Man, even looked upon as merely living mentally, is not
to be despised or trifled with. But still, the mental life cannot of
itself rise to the spiritual life–it cannot penetrate beyond that
mystical wall which separates forever the mere life of mind from the
life of that new principle, the Spirit, which is the offspring of God
and is the living and incorruptible seed which He casts into the soul.

If you could conceive a man in all respects like yourselves with this
one difference–that his soul had died out of him–that he only
possessed his animal faculties and had no intellectual faculties, so
that he could breathe and walk, sleep and eat, and drink, and make a
noise, but all mental power was gone–you would then speak of him as
being entirely dead to mental pursuits. He might be a most vigorous and
well-developed animal, but his manhood would be dead. It would be of no
use explaining a proposition to him, or working out a problem on the
black board for his instruction, or offering him even the simplest
school book–for if he had no mind to receive, how could you impart?
Now, spiritually, this is the condition of every unregenerate man. It
is of no use whatever, apart from the Spirit of God, to hope to make
the man understand spiritual things for they are spiritually discerned,
says the Apostle.

The carnal mind cannot understand the things which are of God–when
best trained it has no glimmering of the inward sense of spiritual
things. It stumbles over the letter and loses the real meaning, not
from lack of mental capacity, but from the absence of spiritual life. O
sons of men, if you would know God, "You must be born again." "Except a
man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." He cannot
understand it, he cannot know it. The carnal man cannot understand the
things which are of God, which are eternal and invisible, any more than
an ox can understand astronomy, or a fish can admire the classics. Not
in a moral sense, nor a mental sense, but in a spiritual sense, poor
humanity is dead, and so the Word of God again and again most
positively describes it.

Step with me, then, into the sepulcher, and what do you observe of
yonder bodies which are slumbering there? They are quite unconscious.
Whatever goes on around them, neither occasions them joy nor causes
them grief. The dead in their graves may be marched over by triumphant
armies, but they shout not with them that triumph. Or, friends they
have left behind may sit there and water the grass upon the green mound
with their tears, but no responsive sigh comes from the gloomy cavern
of the tomb.

It is thus with men spiritually dead–they are unaffected by spiritual
things. A dying Savior, whose groans might move the very stones and
make the rocks dissolve–the spiritually dead can hear all–and be
unmoved. Even the all-present Spirit is undiscerned by them, and His
power unrecognized. Angels, holy men, godly exercises, devout
aspirations–all these are beyond and above their world. The pangs of
Hell do not alarm them and the joys of Heaven do not entice them. They
hear, after a sort, mentally, but the spirit-ear is fast shut up and
they do not hear. They are unconscious of all things which are of a
spiritual character– they have eyes but they see not, and ears, but
they hear not.

You can interest them in the facts of geology, or the discoveries of
art, but you cannot win their hearts to spiritual emotions and pursuits
because they are as unaware of their meaning as an oyster or snail is
unacquainted with the disestablishment of the Irish Church. Carnal men
blunder over the first words of spiritual knowledge as Nicodemus did
who, when he was told that he must be born again, began to enquire,
"How can a man be born again when he is old?" or, like the woman of
Samaria, who, when she was told of living water, could not understand
the spiritual Truth, and exclaimed in wonder, "You have nothing to draw
with, and the well is deep–from where, then, have You that living
water?" Men are spiritually unconscious of spiritual Truth, and so far
dead to it.

Observe that corpse–you may strike it, you may bruise it, but it will
not cry out. You may pile burdens upon it, but it is not weary. You may
shut it up in darkness, but it feels not the gloom. So the unconverted
man is laden with the load of his sin but he is not weary of it. He is
shut up in the prison of God's justice, but he pants not for liberty.
He is under the curse of God, as it is written, "Cursed is everyone
that continues not in all things which are written in the Book of the
Law to do them," but that curse causes no commotion in his spirit
because he is dead! Well may some of you be peaceful, because you are
not aware of the terrors which surround you.

A man totally deaf is not startled by thunder! If totally blind, he is
not alarmed by the flashes of lightning! He fears not the tempest which
he does not discern! Even thus is it with you who are at ease in your
sins–you cannot discern the danger of your sin, you do not perceive
the terror that rises out of it–else let me tell you there would be no
sleep to those wanton eyes, no rest to those giddy spirits! You would
cry out in grief the very moment you received life, nor would you rest
till delivered from those evils which NOW ensure for you a sure
damnation. Oh, were you but alive, you would never be quiet till you
were saved from the wrath to come! Man remains unconscious of spiritual
things and unmoved by them because, in a spiritual sense, he is dead.

Invite yonder corpse to assist you in the most necessary works of
philanthropy. The pestilence is abroad–ask the buried one to kneel
with you and invoke the power of Heaven to recall the direful
messenger. Or, if he prefers it, ask him to assist you in purifying the
air and attending to sanitary arrangements. You ask in vain, however
necessary or simple the act, he cannot help you in it. And in spiritual
things, it is even so with the graceless. The carnal man can put
himself into the posture of prayer, but he cannot pray. He can open his
mouth and make sweet sounds in earth-born music, but to true praise he
is an utter stranger. Even repentance, that soft and gentle Grace which
ought to be natural to the sinful is quite beyond his reach. How shall
he repent of a sin, the weight of which he cannot feel? How shall he
pray for a blessing, the value of which he has no power to perceive?
How shall he praise a God in whom he feels no interest, and in whose
existence he takes no delight?

I say that to all spiritual things the man is quite as unable as the
dead are unable to the natural works and services of daily life. "And
yet," says one, "we heard you last Lord's Day tell these dead people to
repent and be converted." I know you did and you shall hear me yet
again do the like. But why do I speak to the dead thus, and tell them
to perform actions which they cannot do? Because my Master bids me, and
as I obey my Master's errand, a power goes forth with the Word spoken
and the dead awake in their sleep! They wake through the quickening
power of the Holy Spirit–and they who naturally cannot repent and
believe–do repent and believe in Jesus and escape from their former
sins and live!

But, believe me, it is no power of theirs which makes them thus awake
from their death-sleep, and no power of mine which arrests the guilty,
slumbering conscience–it is a Divine power which God has yoked with
the Word which He has given forth when it is fully and faithfully
preached. Therefore have we exercised ourselves in our daily calling of
bidding dead men live–because life comes at the Divine bidding. But
dead they are, most thoroughly so, and the longer we live the more we
feel it to be so! And the more closely we review our own condition
before conversion, and the more studiously we look into our own
condition even now, the more fully do we know that man is dead in sin,
and life is a gift, a gift from Heaven–a gift of undeserved love and
Sovereign Grace–so that the living must every one of them praise God
and not themselves.

One of the saddest reflections about poor dead human nature is what it
will be. Death in itself, though a solemn matter, is not so dreadful as
that which comes of it. Many a time when that dear corpse has first
been forsaken of the soul, those who have lost a dear one have been
glad to imprint that cold brow with kisses. The countenance has looked
even more lovely than in life! And when friends have taken the last
glimpse, there has been nothing revolting, but much that was
attractive. Our dead ones have smiled like sleeping angels, even when
we were about to commit them to the grave. Ah, but we cannot shake from
us a wretched sense of what is sure to be revealed before long.

It is only a matter of time before corruption must set in, and it must
bring with it its daughter putridity, and by-and-by, the whole must be
so noxious that if you had kept it above ground so long, you would
vehemently cry with Abraham, "Bury my dead out of my sight!" for the
natural and inevitable result of death is corruption. So it is with us
all. Some are manifestly corrupt–ah, how soon! While yet they are
youths we see them plunging into infamous vice. They are corrupt in the
tongue with lying words and lascivious speaking. They are corrupt in
the eyes with wanton glances–corrupt, certainly at heart, and then
corrupt thoroughly in life.

There are many about us in the streets every day, the stink of whose
corruption compels us to put them out of society, for we are very
decent. Even those who are dead, themselves, are very scrupulous not to
associate with those who are too far gone in corruption. The dead bury
their dead and roll the stone and put away the debauched and dissolute.
We do not ask the rotten sinners into our households because they might
corrupt us too fast. And we flatter ourselves that we are so much
superior, whereas they are only a stage or two ahead in a race which
all unregenerate men are running.

This corruption, though not developed in all to the same extent
visibly, will be plain enough at the last in another world. When God
finds us dead, He will cast us out where the worm dies not, and the
fire is not quenched. What will be the development of an unregenerate
character in Hell, I cannot tell, but I am certain it will be something
which my imagination dares not now attempt to depict, for all the
restraints of this life which have kept men decent and moral will be
gone when they come into the next world of sin!

And as Heaven is to be the perfection of the saint's holiness, so Hell
will be the perfection of the sinner's loathsomeness–and there will he
discover, and others will discover–what sin is when it comes to its
worst. "When lust has conceived, it brings forth sin: and sin, when it
is finished, brings forth death." And this, dear Hearer, do we solemnly
remind you will be your portion forever and ever, unless God is pleased
to quicken you. Unless you are made to live together with Christ, you
will be in this world dead, perhaps in this world corrupt, but
certainly so in the next world where all the dreadful influences of sin
will be developed and discovered to the very fullest–and you shall be
cast away from the Presence of God and the glory of His power.

There can be no death in Heaven, neither can corruption inherit
incorruption. And if you have not been renewed in the spirit of your
mind–within those pearly gates you can never have your portion. And
where the light of Heaven shines in perpetual noonday your lot can
never be cast. Weigh these thoughts, I pray you. If they are not
according to this Book, reject them! But as they most certainly are,
refuse them at your own peril. But rather, let them take possession of
your careful spirit and lead you to seek and find eternal life in
Christ Jesus the Lord.

II. We now change the subject for something more pleasant, and observe
A MIRACLE, or dead men made alive! The great object of the Gospel of
Christ is to create men anew in Christ Jesus. It aims at resurrection
and accomplishes it. The Gospel did not come into this world merely to
restrain the passions or educate the principles of men, but to infuse
into them a new life which, as fallen men, they did not possess. I saw
yesterday what seemed to me a picture of those preachers whose sole end
and aim is the moralizing of their hearers, but who have not learned
the need of supernatural life.

Not very far from the shore were a dozen or more boats at sea dragging
for two dead bodies. They were using their lines and grappling irons,
and what with hard rowing and industrious sailing, were doing their
best most commendably to fish up the lost ones from the pitiless sea. I
do not know if they were successful, but if so, what further could they
do with them but decently to commit them to their mother earth? The
process of education and everything else, apart from the Holy Spirit,
is a dragging for dead men–to lay them out decently, side by side, in
the order and decency of death– but nothing more can man do for man.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ has a far other and higher task. It does not
deny the value of the moralist's efforts, or decry the results of
education, but it asks what more can you do–and the response is,
"Nothing." There it bids the bearers of the bier stand away and make
room for Jesus, at whose voice the dead arise. The preacher of the
Gospel cannot be satisfied with what is done in drawing men out of the
sea of outward sin–he longs to see the lost life restored–he desires
to have breathed into them a new and superior life to what they have
possessed before. Go your way, Education, do your best, you are useful
in your sphere! Go your way, teacher of morality, do your best, you,
too, are useful in your own manner. But if it comes to what man really
needs for eternity, you, all put together, are of little worth–the
Gospel, and the Gospel alone, answers men's requirements–man must be
regenerated, quickened, made anew–have fresh breath from Heaven
breathed into him or the work of saving him is not begun.

The text tells us that God has done this for His people, for those who
trust in Him. Let us observe the dry bones as they stir and stand
before the Lord. And observing, let us praise the Lord that according
to His great love with which He loved us, He has quickened us together
with Christ. In this idea of quickening, there is a mystery. What is
that invisible something which quickens a man? Who can unveil the
secret? Who can track life to its hidden fountain? Brother, you are a
living child of God–what made you live? You know that it was by the
power of the Holy Spirit.

In the language of the text, you trace it to God. You believe your new
life to be of Divine implantation. You are a believer in the
supernatural. You believe that God has visited you as He has not
visited other men, and has breathed into you life. You believe rightly,
but you cannot explain it. We know not of the wind, from where it comes
or where it goes. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit. He that
should sit down deliberately and attempt to explain regeneration, and
the source of it, might sit there till he grew into a marble statue
before he would accomplish the task. The Holy Spirit enters into us,
and we who were dead before to spiritual things, begin to live by His
power and indwelling.

He is the great Worker, but how the Holy Spirit works is a secret that
must be reserved for God Himself. We need not wish to understand the
mode–it is enough for us if we partake of the result. It is a great
mystery, then, but while it is a mystery it is a great reality. We know
and do testify, and we have a right to be believed, for we trust we
have not forfeited our characters. We know and testify that we are now
possessors of a life which we knew nothing of some years ago–that we
have come to exist in a new world–and that the appearance of all
things outside of us is totally changed from what it used to be. "Old
things have passed away, behold all things are become new."

I bear witness that I am this day the subject of sorrows which were no
sorrows to me before I knew the Lord, and that I am uplifted with joys
which I should have laughed at the very thought of if anyone had
whispered the name of them in my ears before the Divine life had
quickened me. This is the witness of hundreds of us, and although
others disbelieve us, they have no right to deny our consciousness
because they have not partaken of the same. If they have never tried
it, what should they know about it? If there should be an assembly of
blind men, and one of them should have his eyes opened and begin to
talk of what he saw, I can imagine the blind ones all saying, "What a
fool that man is! There are no such things."

"Here I have lived in this world 70 years," says one, "and I never saw
that thing which he calls a color, and I do not believe in his absurd
nonsense about scarlet and violet, and black and white! It is all
foolery." Another wiseacre declares, "I have been up and down the
world, and all over it for 40 years, and I declare I never had the
remotest conception of blue or green, nor had my father before me. He
was a right good soul and always stood up for the grand old darkness.
Give me," says he, "a good stick and a sensible dog, and all your
nonsensical notions about stars, and suns, and moons, I leave to fools
who like them." The blind man has not come into the world of light and
color, and the unregenerate man has not come into that world of spirit,
and hence neither of them is capable of judging correctly.

I sat one day, at a public dinner, opposite a gentleman of the gourmand
species who seemed a man of vast erudition as to wines, spirits and all
the viands of the table. He judged and criticized at such a rate that I
thought he ought to have been employed by our provision merchants as
Taster in General! He had finely developed lips and he smacked them
frequently. His palate was in a flue-critical condition. He was also as
proficient in the quantity as in the quality, and disposed of meats and
drinks in a most wholesale manner. His retreating forehead, empurpled
nose and protruding lips made him, while eating at least, more like an
animal than a man.

At last, hearing a little conversation around him upon religious
matters, he opened his small eyes and his great mouth, and delivered
himself of this sage utterance, "I have lived 60 years in this world
and I never felt or believed in anything spiritual in all my life." The
speech was a needless diversion of his energies from the roast duck. We
did not want him to tell us that. I, for one, was quite clear about it
before he spoke. If the cat under the table had suddenly jumped on a
chair and said the same thing, I should have attached as much
importance to the utterance of the one as to the declaration of the
other. And so, by one sin in one man and another in another man, they
betray their spiritual death.

Until a man has received the Divine life, his remarks thereon, even if
he is an archbishop, go for nothing. He knows nothing about it
according to his own testimony–then why should he go on to try to beat
down with sneers and sarcasms those who solemnly avow that they have
such a life, and that this life has become real to them–so real that
the mental life is made to sink into a subordinate condition compared
with the spiritual life which reigns within the soul? This life brings
with it the exercise of renewed faculties. The man who begins to live
unto God has powers now which he never had before–the power to really
pray, the power to heartily praise, the power to actually commune with
God, the power to see God, to talk with God–the power to receive
tidings from the invisible world and the power to send messages up
through the veil which hides the unseen up to the very Throne of God!

Now the man, instead of asking, "Is there a God?" feels that there is
not a place where God is not! He sees God in everything! He hears Him
in the wind, discerns Him in every creature that surrounds him. Now the
man, instead of dreading God and betaking himself to some outward form,
ceremony, or other outward way of pushing God further off, puts away
his ceremonies, casts away the beggarly elements which once might have
pleased him and draws near to his God in spirit, and speaks with him.
"Father," he says, and God owns the kindred. I wish we all possessed
this life, and I pray if we have it not that God may send it to us. If
we have it not, the testimony of the Word of God is that we are dead
when most we seem to be alive.

I shall not, however, keep you longer upon this quickening except to
say that you may easily image to yourself the inward experience of a
man who receives new life from the dead. You may conceive it by the
following picture. Suppose a man to have been dead and to have been
buried like others in some great necropolis, some city of the dead, in
the catacombs. An angel visits him and by mercy's touch he lives! Now,
can you conceive that man's first emotion when he begins to breathe?
There he is in the coffin–he feels stifled, pent up. He had been there
20 years, but he never felt inconvenienced until now. He was easy
enough, in his narrow cell, if ease can be where life is not. The
moment he lives he feels a horrible sense of suffocation–life will not
endure to be so hideously compressed–and he begins to struggle for
release.

He lifts with all his might that dreadful coffin lid! What a relief
when the decaying plank yields to his pressure! So the ungodly man is
content enough in his sin–his Sabbath-breaking, his covetousness, his
worldliness–but the moment God quickens him his sin is as a sepulcher
to the living! He feels unutterably wretched. He is not in a congenial
position and he struggles to escape. Often at the first effort the
great black lid of blasphemy flies off, never to be replaced. Satan
thought it was screwed down fast enough, and so it was for a dead man,
but life makes short work of it and many other iniquities follow.

But to return to our resurrection in the vault–the man gasps a minute
and feels refreshed with such air as the catacomb affords him. But soon
he has a sense of clammy damp about him and feels faint and ready to
expire. So the renewed man at first feels little but his inability and
groans after power. He cries, "I want to repent. I want to believe in
Jesus. I want to be saved." Poor wretch! He never felt that before–of
course he did not–he was dead! Now he is alive and therefore he longs
for the tokens, signs, fruits, and refreshments of life. Do you not see
our poor friend who has newly risen? He has slipped down from that
niche in the wall where they laid him, and finding himself in a dark
vault, he rubs his eyes to know whether he really is alive, or whether
it is all a dream!

It is such a new thing, and as by the little glimmering of light that
comes in he detects hundreds of others lying in the last sleep, and he
says to himself, "Great God! What a horrible place for a living man to
be in! Can I be alive?" He begins to wander about, searching for a door
by which he may escape. He loathes those winding-sheets in which they
wrapped him. He begins stripping them off. They are damp and
mildewed–they do not suit a living man. Soon he cries out for
help–perhaps there is some passerby who may hear him and he may be
delivered from his confinement. So a man, who has been renewed by
Divine Grace, when he partly discovers where he is, cries out, "This is
no place for me!"

That giddy ballroom–why, it was well enough for one who knew no
better. That ale-bench was suitable for an unregenerate soul–but what
can an heir of Heaven do in such places? Lord, deliver me! Give me
light and liberty! Bring my soul out of prison that I may live and
praise Your name. The man pines for liberty, and if, at last he
stumbles to the door of the vault and reaches the open air, I think he
drinks deep draughts of the blessed oxygen! How glad he is to look upon
the green fields and the fresh flowers! You do not imagine that he will
wish to return to the vaults again, do you? He will utterly forsake
those gloomy abodes! He shudders at the remembrance of the past and
would not, for all the world, undergo again what he has once passed
through.

He is tenderly affected at every remembrance of the past and is
especially fearful lest there should be others like himself, newly
quickened, who may need a Brother's hand to set them at liberty. He
loathes the place where once he slept so quietly. So the converted man
dreads the thought of going back to the joys which once so thoroughly
fascinated him. "No," he says, "they are no joys to me. They were joys
well enough for my old state of existence, but now, having entered into
a new life, a new world, they are more joys to me than the spade and
shroud are joys to a living man, and I can only think of them with
grief, and of my deliverance with gratitude.

III. I must pass on very briefly to the third point. The text indicates
a SYMPATHY–"He has quickened us together with Christ." What does that
mean? It means that the life which lives in a saved man is the same
life which dwells in Christ! To put it simply–when Elisha had been
buried for some years, we read that they threw a dead man into the tomb
where the bones of Elisha were, and no sooner did the corpse touch the
Prophet's bones than it lived at once!

Yonder is the Cross of Christ, and no sooner does the soul touch the
crucified Savior than it lives at once, for the Father has given to Him
to have life in Himself, and life to communicate to others. Whoever
trusts Christ has touched Him, and by touching Him he has received the
virtue of eternal life! To trust in the Savior of the world is to be
quickened through Him. We are quickened together with Christ in three
senses–first, representatively. Christ represents us before the
Eternal Throne. He is the second Adam to His people. So long as the
first Adam lived the race lived, and so long as the second Adam lives,
the race represented by Him lives before God. Christ is accepted,
Believers are accepted. Christ is justified, the saints are justified.
Christ lives, and the saints enjoy a life which is hid with Christ in
God.

Next we live by union with Christ. So long as the head is alive the
members have life. Unless a member can be severed from the head and the
body maimed, it must live so long as there is life in the head. So long
as Jesus lives, every soul that is vitally united to Him, and is a
member of His body, lives according to our Lord's own word, "Because I
live you shall live also." Poor Martha was much surprised that Christ
should raise her brother from the dead, but He said, as if to surprise
her still more, "Whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do
you believe this?" This is one of the things we are to believe–that
when we have received the spiritual life it is in union with the life
of Christ–and consequently can never die! Because Christ lives, our
life must abide in us forever.

Then we also live together with Christ as to likeness. We are quickened
together with Christ, that is, in the same manner. Now Christ's
quickening was in this wise–He was dead through the Law, but the Law
has no more dominion over Him now that He lives again. So you,
Christian, you are cursed by the old Law of Sinai, but it has no power
to curse you now, for you are risen in Christ. You are not under the
Law–its terrors and threats have nothing to do with you. Of our Lord
it is written, "In that He lives," it is said, "He lives unto God."
Christ's life is a life unto God! Such is yours. You are not,
therefore, to live unto the flesh or to mind the things of it–but God,
who gave you life, is to be the great Object of your life. In Him you
live, and for Him you live.

Moreover, it is said, "Christ, being raised from the dead dies no more.
Death has no more dominion over Him." In that same way the Christian
lives. He shall never go back to his spiritual death–having once
received Divine life, he shall never lose it. God plays not fast and
loose with His chosen. He does not save today, and damn tomorrow. He
does not quicken us with the inward life and then leave us to perish.
Divine Grace is a living, incorruptible seed which lives and abides
forever. "The water that I shall give him," says Jesus, "shall be in
him a well of water springing up unto everlasting life." Glory be to
God, then, you who live by faith in Christ live an immortal life, a
life dedicated to God, a life of deliverance from the bondage of the
Law! Rejoice in it, and give your God all the praise!

IV. And this brings us to the last word, which was A SONG. We have not
time to sing it–we will just write the score before your eyes and ask
you to sing it at your leisure–your hearts making melody to God.
Brothers and Sisters, if you have, indeed, been thus made alive as
others are not, you have first of all, in the language of the text, to
praise the great love of God, great beyond all precedent! It was love
which made Him breathe into Adam the breath of life and make poor clay
to walk and speak.

But it is far greater love which makes Him now, after the Fall has
defiled us, renew us with a second and yet higher life. He might have
made new creatures by millions out of nothing. He had but to speak and
angels would have thronged the air, or, beings like ourselves, only
pure and unfallen, would have been multiplied by myriads upon the
greensward. If He had left us to sink to Hell as fallen angels had done
before us, who could have impugned His justice? But His great love
would not let Him leave His elect to perish. He loved His people and
therefore He would cause them to be born again. His great love with
which He loved us defied death, and Hell, and sin!

Dwell on the theme, you who have partaken of this love! He loved
us–the most unworthy–who had no right to such love! There was nothing
in us to love and yet He loved us–loved us when we were dead! Here His
great love seems to swell and rise to mountainous dimensions–love to
miserable sinners, love to loathsome sinners–love to the dead and to
the corrupt! Oh, heights and depths of Sovereign Grace! Where are the
notes which can sufficiently sound forth your praise? Sing, O you
redeemed, of His great love with which He loved us even when we were
dead in sins! And cease not to praise God as you think of the riches of
His mercy, for we are told that He is rich in mercy, rich in His Nature
as to mercy, rich in His Covenant as to treasured mercy, rich in the
Person of His dear Son as to purchased mercy, rich in Providential
mercy–but richest of all in the mercy which saves the soul.

Friends, explore the mines of Jehovah's wealth if you can. Take the key
and open the granaries of your God and see the stores of love which He
has laid up for you. Strike your sweetest notes to the praise of God,
who is rich in mercy, for His great love with which He has loved us!
And let the last note and the highest and the loudest of your song be
that with which the text concludes, "By Grace are you saved."

O never stammer there! Brothers and Sisters, whatever you do–hold or
do not hold–never be slow to say this, "If saved at all, I am saved by
Grace–Grace in contradistinction to human merit, for I have no merit.
Grace in contradistinction to my own free will, for my own free will
would have led me further and further from God. Preventing Grace
brought me near to Him." Do bless and magnify the Grace of God, and as
you owe all to it, cry, "Perish each thought of pride!" Consecrate
yourself entirely to the God to whom you owe everything! Desire to help
to spread the savor of that Divine Grace which has brought such good
things to you. Vow, in the name of the quickening Spirit, that He who
has made you live by faith shall, from this day till you enter into
Heaven, have the best of your thoughts, and your words, and your
actions–for you are not your own–you have been quickened from the
dead and you must live in newness of life.

The Lord bless you, dear Friends. If you have never spiritually lived,
may He give you Grace to believe in Jesus this morning, and then you
are alive from the dead. And if you are alive already, may He quicken
you yet more and more by His eternal Spirit till He brings you to the
land of the living on the other side of the Jordan. Amen.
__________________________________________________________________

A Young Man's Vision

Delivered on Thursday evening, April 16, 1868, by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the [17]Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington,

Being the Annual Sermon of the Young Men's Association in Aid of the
Baptist Missionary Society.

"Your young men shall see visions.'" Acts 2:17.

MANY visions have led to the most disastrous results. When Napoleon had
a vision of a universal monarchy over which he should preside, with the
French eagle for his ensign, he drenched the lands in blood. Many
visions have been wretchedly delusive. Men have dreamed of finding the
fairy pleasure in the dark forest of sin. Carnal joys have danced
before their eyes as temptingly as the mirage in the desert, and they
have pursued the phantom forms to their misery in this world and to
their eternal ruin in the next. Mistaking license for liberty, and
madness for mirth, they have dreamed themselves into Hell! Many dreams
have sucked the life-blood out of men as vampires do.

Men have passed from stern reality into dreamland and while seemingly
awake, have continued like sleepwalkers to do all things in their
sleep. Many pass all their days in one perpetual daydream–speculating,
building castles in the air, thinking of what they would do–and vowing
how they would behave themselves. With fine capacities they have
driveled away existence! As their theory of life was born of smoke, so
the result of their lives has been a cloud. The luxurious indolence of
mere resolve, the useless tossing of regrets–these have been all their
sluggard life.

But for all this, good and grand visions are not unknown–visions which
came from the excellent glory. Visions which, when young or old men
have seen them, have filled them with wisdom, Divine Grace and
holiness. Visions which have worked with such effect upon their minds
that they have been lifted up above the level of the sons of men and
made sons of God, co-workers with the Eternal! Such visions are given
to men whose eyes have been illumined by the Holy Spirit–visions which
have come of that eye-salve which only the Holy Spirit can apply.
Visions which are not bestowed on carnal men nor unveiled to the impure
in heart. Visions reserved for the men elect of God who are sanctified
by the Holy Spirit, and made meet to be partakers of the witness of God
and the testimony of His Son.

All Divine things, when they first come to men from the Lord, are as
visions because man is so little prepared to believe God's thoughts and
ways that he cannot think them to be real. They appear to us to be too
great, too good to be real. We look at them rather as things to be
desired and wished for, than as things that may be actually ours. It
must be so while Jehovah's ways are higher than our ways, and His
thoughts than our thoughts. It must be so, that even Divine mercy
should at first be a burden to the Prophet who has its message to
deliver, and that the eternal promise should be a vision to the Seer
who first receives it.

We are so gross and carnal, even when most clarified and made fit to
receive Divine impressions, God's spiritual messages and directions to
us must usually at the first float dimly before the sense, and only in
after thoughts become solid and clear. We must take care that we do not
neglect heavenly monitions through fear of being considered visionary.
We must not be staggered even by the dread of being styled fanatical,
or out of our minds–for to stifle a thought from God is no mean sin.
How much of good in this world would have been lost if good men had
quenched the first half-fashioned thoughts which have flitted before
them!

I mean, for instance, had Martin Luther taken the advice of his teacher
when he said to him, "Go your way, silly monk! Go to your cell and pray
God, and if it be His will He will reform the abuses of this Church,
but what have you to do with it?" Supposing the agitated monk had
administered an opiate to his soul, what then? Doubtless the Gospel to
Luther at the first was dim enough, and the idea of reform most vague
and indistinct–but had he closed his heart to his vision, how long
might not the Romish darkness have brooded over the multitudes of
Europe? And George Fox, that most eminent of dreamers who dreamed more
and more vividly than any other man! Where had been all the testimonies
for a spiritual religion? Where all the holy influences for
benevolence, for peace, for anti-slavery, for I know not what besides
which have streamed upon this world through the agency of the Society
of Friends, if the wild Quaker had been content to let his impressions
come and go and be forgotten?

These things, which nowadays are ordinary Christian doctrines, were
considered in his day to be but the prattle of fanatics, even as the
reforms which some of us shall live to see are denounced as
revolutionary, or ridiculed as Utopian. O young men, if you have
received a thought which dashes ahead of your times, hold to it and
work at it till it comes to something! If you have dreamed a dream from
the Lord, turn it over and over again till you are quite sure it is not
steam from a heated brain, or smoke from Hell–and when it is clear to
your own heart that it is fire from off God's altar– then work and
pray and wait your time.

Perhaps it may take 50 years to work that thought out, or what is
worse, you may never live to see it realized, but what of that? You may
have to leave that thought sown in the dust, but the thought will not
die. It may produce a harvest when you are with the angels! Do not, I
pray you, because the thing happens to seem new, or too enthusiastic,
or too far ahead, be snubbed into putting it into a corner. But take
care of it and nurture it–and if it is not of God, a little experience
will disabuse you of it, let us hope. But if it is of the Lord, you
will grow in your attachment to it and by-and-by God will find an
opportunity for you to make it practical.

The great Father of spirits does, in fact, say to you when He puts a
great design into your keeping, as Pharaoh's daughter said to Jochebed,
"Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give you your
wages." And though the Moses that you nurse may not deliver Israel in
your lifetime, yet shall you have your wages if you nurse the thought
for God. Many suggestions which come from God to men are not so much
visions to them as they are to the outside world. And need we wonder at
this? Why, men of science and art have to endure the same ordeal!
Stephenson declares that he will make a machine which will run, without
horse-power, at the rate of 12 miles an hour–and how the Tory benches
of the House of Commons, loaded then, as now, with stupidity, roared at
the man as a born fool!

How was it proved to a demonstration that if the engine began to work,
the wheels might revolve, but the engine never would move an inch! Or
if it moved at a great speed, the passengers would not he able to
breathe! Yet Stephenson lived to see his dream fulfilled and we have
lived to see it a much more wonderful power still. Now, if men of
science can endure this, and if we members of the Baptist Mission
remember still the roars of laughter which were launched by Sydney
Smith against "the inspired cobbler," when he talked about the conquest
of India for the Lord Jesus Christ, we may well be prepared, when we
obtain an inspiration from God, to put up with a world of scorn,
opposition and contempt for a little time, and to say, " Never mind,
there is a day coming that shall reverse the hasty judgment of this
world. You sons of darkness are not a fair jury to sit upon questions
of light. You blind men who know not God, nor the glory of His power
are not qualified to mount the bench and sit in judgment upon thoughts
which flash from the eternal mind. You may give your judgment, but the
Lord shall reverse it, and time, which is always with the Truth of God,
will before long turn the laugh in another direction.

With this rather too long preface about dreaming, I will now confess
that, after my own fashion, I, too, have seen a vision. And though you
should say of me in days to come, "Behold, this dreamer comes," yet, as
he that has a dream is bid to tell his dream, so I tell mine. My dream
is this–I have seen in vision, missionary spirit in England, now so
given to slumber, marvelously quickened, awakened and revived! I have
seen–the wish was father to the sight–I have seen the ardor of our
first missionary days return to us! I have seen young men eager for the
mission field, and old men and fathers sitting in united council to
correct mistakes, to devise new methods, or to strengthen the old ones,
so that by any means the great chariot of Christ might roll onwards and
that His victories might be more rapid.

I thought that I saw, from one end of England to the other, the
Christian Church stirred with a deep sense of her duty to the heathen
Christian ministers full of pangs and sorrows on account of dying
myriads. I thought that I saw Christian men and women universally
contributing liberally of their substance, while men fitted for the
work pushed forward at the call of the great Lord of the harvest to
toil in the great harvest field. I have seen such a vision. By God's
Grace, we shall see it a fact! Would to God that the captivity of our
Zion might be turned–then should we be like they that dream! Then
should our mouth be filled with laughter and our tongue with singing
while the heathen would cry, "The Lord has done great things for them."

First, this evening, I shall try to justify my vision and show that it
is by no means unreasonable. Secondly, I shall, in a few words,
elaborate the vision or give the details of it. And then, in the third
place, as time may suit us, I shall endeavor to promote its
realization.

I. First, LET US JUSTIFY OUR VISION. We have dreamed that the
missionary spirit was suddenly revived among us, that missions were
pushed on with greater ardor and that God vouchsafed to them a far
greater blessing than He has done of late. There have been more
incoherent dreams than that in this world, and for this reason–first,
that which we have dreamed of is evidently needed. Brethren, we are not
among those who are prepared to croak and complain at the very first
difficulty that may arise in a great enterprise, but no man can look
upon our own Baptist Mission–and I suppose we are not much worse than
others–without feeling that there is a pretty general flagging in
missionary interest.

And albeit that the funds may not much have fallen off, yet the annual
recurrence of a debt, which is far from being welcome, together with
other matters goes to show that missionary zeal needs rekindling. This
results partly from the fact that the novelty of the thing has worn
off–the work having now been on the anvil for 50 years and more–and
partly because we have had few very startling incidents of late to
evoke a display of enthusiasm.

That the missionary fire exists is certain, for when the recent events
in Jamaica acted, as it were, as a refreshing breeze, the embers glowed
and flamed anew. It is there, certainly, for the heart of the Church is
alive. It is there, but it is slumbering. You who remember the
thundering voice of William Knibb and the great meetings which would be
gathered when some such Brethren returned home to tell what God had
done among the heathen, must feel that you have fallen upon dull,
uninteresting days in mission life. It is as when the thing is flat and
stale, and when men have reached the dregs of the wine and the new wine
is not in the cluster.

Well, then, if it is so, let it be remembered that missionary zeal
ought not to flag–if there is any one point in which the Christian
Church ought to keep its fervor at a white heat, it is concerning
missions to the heathens. If there is anything about which we cannot
tolerate lukewarmness, it is in the matter of sending the Gospel to a
dying world. How can we expect, in such an enterprise, with
difficulties to our poor weakness so insuperable, that we shall ever
succeed if any of our strength is left unused? With all we have we are
weak enough, but if we send but part of the army to the battle–if we
exert but half of our strength–how can we expect that the blessing of
God shall rest upon us? Depend upon it, that the flagging of zeal at
home acts like a canker abroad!

When the heart of Christianity in England does not throb vigorously,
every single limb of the missionary body feels the decline, and there
is not a missionary anywhere, from the snows of Labrador to the burning
heats of Africa, who is not enervated and injured when the Christian
public at home begin to weary in well doing. It needs then, it
imperatively needs, that our vision should be made a fact. We may be
excused our vision because it is very possible that it may be realized.
It is not a thing too hard to look for. It was far harder work, surely,
to have established the mission than it will be most thoroughly and
earnestly to revive it!

If we will but enquire into what may have been the causes of any
decline that exists, we shall not find them, I think, to be very deep,
nor to be difficult of remedy. They are but superficial, and a little
loving earnestness will soon remove them. Brethren, as a denomination
we are beginning to cluster more closely around our standard. We have
been up to now somewhat scattered over the field–isolated,
divided–and therefore weak. But now we feel that our strength must
lie, under God, in our unity, and our ranks are classing each man to
his Brother. We feel the fire of sacred love burning in our hearts, and
as we come together and begin to talk of the difficulties before us in
a fraternal spirit, they will all vanish!

Lovingly correcting errors, carefully removing excrescences and boldly
advancing, the stone shall be rolled away from the sepulcher before we
reach it, for if not in God's name and by His strength, we will never
roll it away ourselves. And if there has been a flagging, this very
meeting, in which there are young and ardent spirits, shall help to
supply the material with which to kindle a fire which shall nevermore
grow dim. More than that–it is not only possible that our dream may
become a reality, but it is very probable–for so it always has been.
If ever God's Church has declined for a little while, unexpectedly
there has been yielded a season of refreshing from the Presence of the
Lord. We know not what God has in store. He is great at surprises! His
best wine last amazes us all.

When the devil is most secure upon his throne, then God springs a mine
and blows his empire into atoms. Just when the wise virgins and the
foolish alike have allowed their lamps to burn low, then is the cry
heard, "Behold, the bridegroom comes!" and those virgins arise and trim
their lamps. So will it be among us. I am hopeful that, in answer to
earnest prayer, God will speedily send among us a general intensity of
desire for the glory of Christ, accompanied by broken hearts and
weeping eyes for the perishing heathen, and a solemn resolve that, in
Jehovah's strength we will spare no pains and neglect no efforts by
which we may make the Gospel known unto the ends of the earth!

Yes, a thorough renovation of the missionary society, a resurrection of
the mission spirit, and an arousing of our Churches is delightfully
probable–it were wretched, indeed, if it were not so. One thing more
we will say upon this topic, namely, that such a renewal is solemnly
required of us. What are our personal obligations to the Crucified?
What owe we not to the Gospel which has delivered us from an eternity
of woe and has guaranteed to us an everlasting career of blessedness?
This night, redeemed, regenerated, adopted, justified, sanctified, with
your feet upon the rock, a song in your mouth, and your goings
established–will you not feel it to be a call from Heaven that you
should be in earnest to gather in the Lord's chosen out of all nations
that dwell upon the face of the earth?

Did our Savior slumber in His life-work? Was He tardy in His service
for our redemption? Then might we grow lax? But if, setting His face to
Jerusalem, He panted for the baptism in which He was to be baptized,
and was straitened until it was accomplished, then He claims of us,
according to our measure, the same steadfastness of resolve and
perseverance of purpose, and sacrifice of self! I charge you, young
men, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, be not slow to spend
and be spent for Him. All is too little–shall we give Him less than
all? Fervent services are too poor–shall we be lukewarm? Descend, O
heavenly fire, and now inflame us, for less than Your flames cannot
enable us to live as live we should! I will not tarry upon this point.
You have already forgiven me my dream.

II. LET US PROCEED TO ELABORATE THE VISION. I was asked principally to
address young men this evening.

I am a young man myself, and therefore if I utter anything exceedingly
visionary, you will observe its justification in the text, "Your young
men shall see visions." My dream seemed to take this shape: In order
that missionary work should be reformed, revived and carried on with
energy and with hope of success, it seemed necessary that especially
among our young members there should be a revival of intense and
earnest prayer, and anxious sympathy with the missionary work.

The power of prayer can never be overrated. They who cannot serve God
by preaching need not regret it if they can be mighty in prayer. The
true strength of the Church lies there. This is the sinew which moves
the arm of Omnipotence. If a man can but pray, he can do anything! He
that knows how to overcome the Lord in prayer has Heaven and earth at
his disposal. There is nothing, Man, which you cannot accomplish if you
can but prevail with God in prayer!.

Now, I will not say that we ought to have our Prayer Meetings for
missionary objects more largely attended– everybody knows this–but
does everybody try to attend? But I will say this, which is more likely
to be forgotten–that it were well if we had settled private seasons of
devotion, each of us, especially to intercede with God for the
conversion of the heathen. It will be a notable day when the young men
of this society say, "Not only will we attend the Prayer Meetings for
this object, but we will, each one, as before the Lord, make it a
matter of conscience that there shall be at least one hour in the week
sacredly hedged around and spent in private prayer for the missionary
work."

Beneath the banyan tree you will not stand surrounded by black faces to
tell of Krishnu's Christ–but in your own little room, by the old
armchair you will as surely be bringing down showers of blessings upon
the heathen by importunate entreaties. Here our old men and our
matrons, as well as our young men and maidens, may unite. If it is so,
that the entire Church shall send up one impassioned, continuous,
prevalent cry to God, "O Lord, make bare Your arm for Christ and for
His Truth!" verily, verily, I say unto you He shall avenge you speedily
though He bear long with you! Your prayers shall come up unto the ears
of the Lord God of Sabaoth and He will reveal the glory of His power!

Next, if our young men who see visions will follow up their prayers
with practical effort, then we shall see in our Churches a larger and
more efficient staff of collectors and contributors. We should then
find men who would give of their substance as a matter of principle,
give themselves, or in other fair proportion so that the kingdom of
Christ should never have an empty treasury. I speak to some who sit
often in this place who need not to have a word said to them by way of
stirring them up to liberality, for I can glory in them in this
respect, that they do beyond all that I could expect! But I wish that
the same spirit of giving were paramount throughout all the Church that
men would give, not because they are asked, nor by way of emulation or
compulsion, but because God has given to them, and they recognize their
stewardship. A few men in a Church may often move the whole to
liberality. The example of a few and those few, perhaps, not the
richest, may be contagious to the whole mass. And a few earnest young
people, especially, may often push right and left with their proverbial
enthusiasm till they have stirred the inert mass and constrained the
whole body to be liberal to the cause of Jesus Christ!

Up till now my dream has been reasonable, you will say. I will now be
more visionary. If we were all praying for missions, and all giving for
their support, it might be very well asked of us, "What do you do more
than others?" for what Romanist is there who is not zealous for the
spread of his religion? What heathen is there who does not give quite
as much as any of us give, yes, and a great deal more than we give, to
his superstitions? But, supposing next to this, that there should be a
number of young men here who know each other very well–young men who
have been trained in the same sanctuary, nurtured in the same
Church–who should meet together tomorrow, or at such other time as
shall be convenient, and say to one another, "Now, we are in business,
we have just commenced in life, and God is prospering us, more or less.
We are taking wives to ourselves. Our children are coming around us.
But still, we trust we are never going to permit ourselves to be
swallowed up in a mere worldly way of living–now, what ought we to do
for missions?"

And suppose the enquiry should be put, "Is there one among us who could
devote himself to go and teach the heathen for us? As we, most of us,
may not have the ability, or do not feel called to the work, is there
one out of 12 of us young men who have grown up side by side in the
Sunday school who has the ability and who feels called to go? Let us
make it a matter of prayer, and when the Holy Spirit says, 'Separate
So-and-So to the work,' then we, the other 11 who remain, will do
this–we will say to him, 'Now, Brother, you cannot stay at home to
make your fortune or to earn a competence. You are now giving yourself
up to a very arduous and earnest enterprise, and we will support you.
We know you–we have confidence in you. You go down into the pit–we
will hold the rope. Go forth in connection with our own denominational
society, but we will bear the expense year by year among ourselves!

"Have you faith enough to go trusting that the Lord will provide? Then,
we will have faith enough, and generosity enough to say that your needs
shall be to our care. You preach for Christ–we will make money for
Christ. When you open the Bible for Christ, we will be taking down the
shop shutters for Christ. And while you are unfolding the banner of
Christ's love, we will be unfolding the calicos, or selling the
groceries. And we pledge ourselves always to set aside your portion,
because, as our Brother, you are doing our work."

I wish we had such godly clubs as these–holy confederacies of earnest
young men who thus would love their Missionary, feel for him, hear from
him continually–and undertake to supply his support. Why, on such a
plan as that, I should think they would give 50 times, 100 times as
much as ever they are likely to give to an impersonal society, or to a
man whose name they only know, but whose face they never saw! I wonder
whether I shall ever live to see a club of that kind? I wonder whether
such a club will ever spring up in the midst of this Church, or any of
the Churches in London? If it shall be so, I shall be glad to have seen
a vision of it!

Further, I have dreamed, also, that there would spring up in our
Churches a very large number of young men who would count it to be the
very highest ambition of their lives to give themselves up to the work
of Jesus Christ abroad, and who, seeing that in London and throughout
England men may hear the Gospel if they will, while many of the heathen
cannot hear it, like or no, would feel it to be their duty to serve
Christ in the foreign field. And I have wondered whether we should have
these noble fellows coming by the score, and saying, "Here am I, send
me." Then I have considered whether God would pour out enough of the
missionary spirit upon these men to make them say, "Well, the
missionary society is in debt and cannot take us–it has enough men to
support already–it is doing a good work enough.

"I will not interfere with it. I do not want to be a burden to any
Brethren. Will you send me out and let me exercise my faith in God,
only having this for my comfort–that you will stand at my back and
give me what you can, while I will only draw upon you for what I cannot
get for myself? I wonder whether we shall see 50 or 100 missionaries
within the next year or two leaving our shores, whose passage has been
paid and who will land in some foreign country with just enough about
them to keep them till the language has been learned, and who will
then, in confidence in God, set about working to support themselves?

I set Paul before you, young men. When he preached the Gospel at the
first, he was a tent-maker and he earned his own living. Are there no
occupations in these days by which a man may earn his living and yet
preach the Gospel? It is not the best thing to do–the best thing is
for a man to give all his time to his ministry. But if you cannot have
the best, you must have the second best. Are there not to be found
physicians who, in China and in India, would not only procure a
subsistence, but much more, and might proclaim the Gospel at the same
time? Thank God there is such a thing as a medical mission! Thank God
that the profession of medicine has not been behind in sending heroes
to the field! But are there no other occupations?

Young men, are there no clerkships to be had in India? I find men going
out there by scores to make their fortunes, and ruin their
constitutions. And I see young women going out to get married to Indian
settlers almost on speculation. Have we no young men and women who will
go across the sea and find their way round the Cape of Good Hope to
preach the Gospel, intending to use their commercial pursuits as a
means of introduction and support? Surely it must be so! I know that at
this present moment there are hundreds of Christian men living along
the coasts of South America, especially of the Brazils and the
Argentine Republic, where skilled artisans, engineers, and such like
are in constant request by the government. And I have often hoped to
hear that some of these men were originating Christian missions.

I have often wondered why more has not been done of that kind. We hear
of our young Brethren going forth to Morocco, to Algiers, to Turkey and
Egypt–they are in demand in almost every part of the earth–for the
young men of England are the very pick and prime of humanity! The
various trades which are connected with machinery are scarcely to be
taught except by their means. What about their faith if they do not
become evangelists? O young men and women, what grand opportunities
must open up before some of you! I am sure they must, and if you did
but set your hearts to it with a full resolve that you would not live
the dead-and-alive life of most of us, but would distinguish yourselves
in Christ's service, what might you not achieve!

If there were a will, there would be a way–and if there were a fixed
purpose, God would send the means! And He who quickened you to such a
degree of spiritual life that you could not rest unless you were
telling the Gospel to the ungodly would not let His Providence so
obstruct His Grace as to shut the door in your face when you were
willing to be serviceable to His cause. "That is a dream," says one!
Well, may some of you dream it, and in the midst of the dream may there
rise up before you a face which, as it shall by degrees settle and
become clear, and you shall discern its features, shall be wonderfully
like your own–and as you wake may you have to say, "Here am I, Lord,
send me, for where You would have me go, there will I go to proclaim
the name and the love of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Oh when shall I see once again the missionary going from door to door,
determined, according to his Master's command, that whatever things
they set before him he will eat, believing that the laborer is worthy
of his hire, and that he is to expect to find his hire among those to
whom he preaches the Gospel? When shall I see once again the missionary
believing that the acceptance of hospitality is the master-key of
missions, and that the eating of the strangers' salt is the nearest way
to put before them the Bread of Life and the reception of hospitable
courtesy the very stepping-stone towards the giving out of the precious
Gospel? May we live to see this! We shall, by God's Grace, if His
Spirit visits us.

III. Lastly, and but very briefly–what shall we do to assist THE
REALIZATION OF THIS VISION? We can all do something if we love the Lord
and that something will be eminently a blessing to ourselves. If ever
we are to see the missionary spirit brought to its very highest and
most perfect condition, it must be by each individual's own personal
piety mounting to the very highest degree of elevation. Why, we are not
half saints–we seem, many of us, to forget what sainthood means!

We are content to be just saved, like the drowning man dragged to shore
just alive, and that is all. O that we were not satisfied with this,
but that our love to Christ were flaming! Our hope in Jesus Christ
bright and clear! Our faith in God firm and unstaggering! O that we
served Christ, not at a snail's pace, but within the utmost energy of
the best conditioned manhood! O that we loved Christ and worked for
Christ up to the last ounce at which the engine could be driven! O that
we could but just for once see what manhood could do when God was in
it! O that some of us were raised up to be as Brainerd, living, dying,
through love to Christ! O that we were men who were conquered by Divine
love, led in fetters as slaves to the blessed captivity of love to the
souls of men!

May it grow into a passion with you, Men and Women, to snatch
fire-brands from the flame! You will never be very useful until it is
so. If holy work is a mere diversion for your leisure moments, you will
do nothing. You must make a trade of it, a solemn occupation of it. It
must be your calling, your meat, and your drink to do the will of Him
that sent you. When the Christian Church glows in this fashion it will
swell with an intense heat like a volcano whose tremendous furnaces
cannot be contained within itself, but its sides begin to move and
bulge–and then after a rumbling and a heaving–a mighty sheet of fire
shoots right up to Heaven and afterwards streams of flaming lava run
from its red lips down, burning their way along the plain beneath.

Oh, to get such a fire for God's cause into the heart of the Christian
Church till she began to heave and throb with unquenchable emotion!
Then a mighty sheet of the fire-prayer should go up towards Heaven, and
afterwards the burning lava of her all-conquering zeal should flow over
all lands till all nations should enquire, "What is this new thing in
the earth, and what is this modern miracle, and what is this Cross of
Christ for which men live and die?" I would say, as subsidiary to this
great thing–which is the main matter tonight–that young men and young
women would do well to feed the flame of their zeal with greater
information as to the condition of the world in reference to our
mission-work.

I wish that those who supply us with our periodical missionary
literature had an idea of the great difficulty there is in keeping
awake while reading it. I should be glad if they could, by any means,
put a small allowance of salt into it, or serve it up in a more
tempting form. I do not plead for making it into light literature, far
from it! But if our editors could give us something that would tempt
the literary or the spiritual palate, it would be well. But, young men,
you are not dependent upon periodical literature–I almost regret that
there is such a thing–there are solid books to be read. There are
libraries teeming with the works of missionaries–their travels, their
adventures. You can read of the history of heathen nations–their
desolations, their needs, their crimes, their idolatries, their
infamies.

There is a great literature for you. You may not have time to get
through it all, but if you read some of it I think you will feel a
great accession to your zeal. When you have gained such information,
which may be as fuel to the fire, I pray you keep yourselves right in
this matter by constant, energetic efforts in connection with works at
home. Those who do not serve God at home are of no use anywhere. It is
all very well to talk about what you would do if you could speak to the
Hindus. Nonsense! What do you do when you are in the streets of
Whitechapel? You will be of no use whatever in Calcutta unless you are
of use in Poplar or Bermondsey!

The human mind is the same everywhere. Its sins may take another form,
but there are just the same difficulties in one place as in another. It
is all very well for you to turn a sort of Don Quixote in imagination,
and dream of what you would do if you went out upon a spiritual crusade
as a heavenly knight-errant, tilting against windmills. Just try your
hand at the conversion of that young man who sits next to you in the
pew! See what you can do for Jesus Christ in the shop! See whether you
can serve your Master in that little Bible class of which you are a
member. Rest assured that no missionary ardor really burns in the
breast of that man who does not love the souls of those who live in the
same house and dwell in the same neighborhood!

Give me that man for a missionary of whom it is said that when he took
a lodging in a house, all the other inhabitants were brought to God
within six months! Or he was a son, and his father was unconverted, but
he gave the Lord no rest till he saw his parent saved! Or he was a
tradesman, and while he was pushing his business earnestly, he always
found time to be an evangelist! That is the man who will maintain
missionary fervor alive at home, and that is the man who will help to
promote missionary effort abroad.

Brothers and Sisters, here are the practical points–have a higher
degree of piety, a wider and more extensive knowledge, and a more
practical zeal in God's work near to your hand. But oh, do make sure
that you are saved yourselves! Do make sure that you yourselves know
the Christ whom you profess to teach! That missionary-box, what is it
but an infamous sham if you put into it your offering but withhold your
heart? You talk about missionary collecting, missionary meetings,
lectures to the young, and I know not what, when you yourself are a
stranger to the power of vital godliness! No, my dear Friends–begin at
home! May the Lord begin with you.

O young men, young women, are you yet unsaved? Then instead of your
pitying the heathen, the heathen may well pity you! How might a heathen
with a tender heart stand here and say, "If that Bible is true. If that
Gospel which you talk of has really come from God. If Christ is the
Savior. If there is no salvation but of Him, then how I pity you who
have heard about it and yet have rejected it! How I pity you, because
your own Savior, whom you profess to serve, out of His own mouth of
love has said it–that it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and
Gomorrah in the day ofjudgment than for you!"

Oh, then, let it be tonight that you give your heart to God! And when
you have given your heart to Him, then think of the matter of which I
have spoken. God grant that my vision may become a fact. May you help
to make it so, and Christ shall have the glory. Amen.
__________________________________________________________________

Good News for Loyal Subjects

Delivered on Sunday Morning, April 19, 1868, by

C. H. SPURGEON

at the [18]Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.

"He must reign." 1 Corinthians 15:25.

"MUST" is for the king, and concerning King Jesus there is a Divine
necessity that He must reign. He was once the King of misery–in that
kingdom He reigned supreme. That crown of thorns is preeminent in the
sorrows which it signifies. O King of grief and tears and death, who
shall rival You? Today He is the King of glory, enthroned far above all
principalities and powers! He is so glorious that when seraphs are
asked, "Who is the King of glory?" they mention no other name but His!
He is the King once dishonored but now exalted in the highest Heaven.
Of Him the text says not only that He must live, though that is a
precious truth, for while He lives we shall live, also! Nor merely does
it say that He shall enjoy a degree of reverence, though it is
delightful to us to think of His being honored in any heart and being
had in reverence by even a handful of men.

But it is said, "He must reign'" Not a place, but the chief place shall
be His. Not bare existence, but preeminence. Not honor, but superlative
glory. He must reign! No seat but the Throne shall become Him. No
ornaments but those of royalty shall befit Him–"He must reign." He
must reign because He is God. "The Lord reigns" must ever stand a
Truth. Jehovah exists eternally, infinite in power and wisdom. Who but
He should be King of kings and Lord of lords? And since the Man of
Nazareth is the Everlasting Father, since of His generation there was
no beginning, and none can count the number of His years, He must reign
from the very fact of His essential Deity. He must reign as Man–for
the Lord has made a Covenant with David that the scepter should not
depart from him, that of his seed there should sit upon the throne of
Israel forever a King to rule in righteousness, and Jesus of Nazareth
is that King!

Israel has no other monarch, neither have they sought after any other
king. As a nation they have been broken and scattered and peeled. And
as a united people they cannot be gathered under any other headship
than that of the house of David, of which Jesus Christ is the lineal
and rightful descendant, and who claims and keeps the scepter in His
own hand. He must reign also as the Mediator, the Intercessor, the
Interposer, the Interpreter, one of a thousand. "He must reign."
Behold, at this time the sovereignty of the world is committed to His
keeping. He is the Headship of His Church, the Originator of
Providence. His is the ruling of Heaven, and earth, and Hell, as the
mediatorial Monarch. And until that time when He shall deliver up the
kingdom to God, even our Father, He must reign, for so has God
appointed and settled Him to be a King and a Priest forever after the
order of Melchisedec.

What a sweet comfort it is to think that none can snatch the government
from the hand of Jesus, for, "the government shall be upon His
shoulder." None can drive Christ from the Headship of the Church, nor
the Headship of Providence for the Church. He must be at the helm, none
shall remove Him. Both as God and Man, and as the Mediator of the New
Covenant, according to the express words of our text, "He must reign."
There seemed to me to be so sweet a thought wrapped up in these three
words–so precious, so full of all manner of delights–that if the Holy
Spirit did but enable us to enjoy it, we should not lack today for
wines on the lees, well refined, and fat things, yes, fat things full
of marrow!

I shall endeavor, as I may be helped, first, at some length to discuss
the reasons for this "must." Then, secondly, to draw out encouragement
from it. And, thirdly, to dwell upon its admonitions.

I. First, "He must reign." WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THIS "MUST"? The
answer shall be sevenfold. The Lamb, as seen by John, had seven horns
of power, and here are seven reasons why He should possess the Throne
forever.

1. First, because His empire in itself is such as to ensure perpetuity.
There have been many empires in this world of which men said, for the
time, that they must exist–and they supposed that if they were
overthrown, the very pillars of the earth would be removed. Yet in due
time they grew gray with years and were swept away as worn out things,
and it was a joy for the nations when the hoary abominations were
consumed.

The most colossal empires have melted like visions of the night, and
the most substantial creations of human power have passed away like the
fleeting dew of the morning. But, "He must reign." He must reign, first
of all, because His reign over human mind is based upon the Truth of
God. There have been various dynasties of thought–at one time Plato
reigned supreme over thoughtful minds. Then Aristotle held a long and
rigid rule–he so ruled and governed the entire universe of mind that
even the Christian religion was continually infected and tainted by his
philosophical speculations.

But another philosophy found out his weakness and supplanted him, to be
in its turn subverted by the next. As men grow more enlightened, or the
human mind passes through another phase of change, men say to their
once-revered rabbis and honored teachers, "Stand out of the way! A new
light has arisen! We have come to a new point of thought, and we have
done with you." Things which were accounted sure and wise in years gone
by are now ridiculed by us as the height of folly. And why? Because
these systems of philosophy and thought have not been based upon the
Truth of God. There has been a worm in the center of the fair apple of
knowledge. There has been a flaw in the foundations of the great
master-builder–they have built upon sand, and their edifices have
tumbled to irretrievable ruin.

But the Truth, which Jesus taught from the mountaintop, reads as if it
were delivered but yesterday! Christianity is as suitable to the 19th
century as to the first. It has the dew of its youth upon it. As
Solomon's Song says of Christ, His locks are bushy and black as a raven
to show His youth and vigor. So may I say of the Gospel–it is still as
young and vigorous–as full of masculine energy as ever it was! We who
preach it fear not for the result–give us a fair stage and no favor,
and the Samson of Divine Truth, its locks still unshorn–will yet
remove the pillars of the temple of error, and bring ruin to the powers
of Hell. Jesus must reign as the royal Teacher because all He teaches
is based upon the surest Truth.

Our Lord's dominion over human hearts, too, is absolutely sure, because
it is based upon love. To illustrate what I mean, I need only remind
you of the life of the great Napoleon. He founded an empire–an empire
which has not always been justly estimated–for perhaps unwittingly
Napoleon was a grand advancer of human liberty, since he first taught
the old kings that the pretense of Divine right could not keep crowns
upon unpopular heads, and that young men from the ranks might yet mount
a throne. He produced a code of laws, which, for simplicity of justice,
has never been surpassed. Still, he relied too much upon coercion and
the sword–his enormous armies were his bulwark and security.

Strong battalions were the cornerstone of his empire, and though for
awhile he stood firm, and armies advancing against him were only like
so many waves dashing against the rocks of his tremendous power–yet,
after all his many wars, he was overthrown and he was said to have
uttered in St. Helena that memorable speech–"My empire has passed
away. I founded it upon the sword, and it is gone. Jesus Christ
established an empire upon love, and it will last forever." So it will
last. When all that kings and princes can do with state-craft, and with
power, shall have dissolved as hoar frost in the sun, Christ's kingdom
must stand because it is based upon the law of love. His Person is the
incarnation of love. His teachings are the doctrines of love. His
precepts are the rule of love. His Spirit is the creator of love. His
whole religion is saturated with love–and because of this His kingdom
cannot be moved!

Once more, the empire of Jesus must exist because it is the one great
remedy which this sad woe-begone world requires. Though men know it
not, this is the only balm for earth's poor bleeding wounds. Earth
cries out every now and then like a sleeper in delirium. She cries out
for the coming man, and eyes everywhere are watching! Men scarcely know
why–they look for a man who shall right the wrong of mankind and
commence on a glorious era–that good time coming for which men have
looked so long. Jesus is the coming Man–He alone is the daystar from
on high who shall visit us with light and healing–and replace our
darkness with an everlasting morning!

The world is like the troubled sea that cannot rest, tossed to and fro,
and there is but one foot which can tread its waves, and but one voice
which can say, "Peace, be still." The world's joy lies now in the tomb.
It has been dead four days already, and by this time it stinks and the
poor world does not know that there is only one voice that can bring
back earth's paradise, give a resurrection to her buried mirth. Jesus
of Nazareth it is who is the true Liberator of captive nations, "To
give light to them that sit in darkness, and in the valley of the
shadow of death."

The world will never rest till it rests in Christ! It groans and
travails in pain together until now, scarcely knowing what it wants.
But to us it is given to know that earth needs her Lord to reign over
her, and He shall bring her joy and peace. The agonizing groans of
earth demand the sovereignty of Jesus and therefore we believe that He
must reign, for God will yet give His creature what it needs. Our
Lord's dominion is, in itself, so securely founded upon Truth and love,
and is so demanded by a bleeding world, that "He must reign."

2. Secondly, He must reign because His Father decrees it. How
delightful it is to think of the eternal purposes concerning our Lord!
Our God did not make this world without a plan, nor does He rule it
without a scheme. Whatever Jehovah decrees, stands fast and firm, for
these are His words, "Has He said, and shall He not do it? Or has He
spoken and shall He not make it good?" Whatever the eternal mind
resolves upon is certain to be fulfilled! Though men should strive
against it, and devils should rise with infernal rage, yet, if Jehovah
decrees it, who shall stand against the eternal will?

Go, Fool, who thinks to stand against God, and dash yourself upon the
bosses of His buckler and be broken in pieces! Or run upon the point of
His glittering spear to your own destruction, for, against the Eternal,
who shall stand? His thunder in the heavens, though it is but the
whisper of His voice, makes the nations tremble! The going forth of His
might in nature, though it is the hiding of His power, makes all the
inhabitants of the earth shake. Who shall stay His hand, or say unto
Him, "What are You doing?"

The eternal purpose of God has ordained that Jesus Christ shall reign
eternally! He must reign from the river even to the ends of the earth.
Up till now God has maintained the Throne of His Son. Read the second
Psalm and see: "The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers
take counsel together against the Lord, and against His Anointed,
saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords
from us. He that sits in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have
them in derision. Then shall He speak unto them in His wrath and vex
them in His sore displeasure. Yet have I set My king upon My holy hill
of Zion."

Yes, the Divine determination, the Everlasting Covenant, and the
immutable promises of Covenant Grace all unite in the resolve that
Christ shall reign, and therefore well says the text, "He must reign."

3. But in the third place, Divine justice demands it. Jesus Christ must
reign. Beloved, you cannot imagine for a moment that He who judges all
the earth will be unjust, and unjust to His own Son! Our Lord came into
this world to bleed and die that He might have a reward for His pains.
And the Father covenanted with Him: "He shall see His seed, He shall
prolong His days." "I will divide Him a portion with the great, and He
shall divide the spoil with the strong." The Father promised that He
should be a leader and a commander of the people, and determined, as
the result of His humiliation, that He should mount to a superior
Throne as the Son of Man and the Son of God.

Shall God belie His word? Begone, blasphemous thought! Shall God
defraud the Only-Begotten? Down, suggestion of the pit! Shall Jesus die
in vain? Shall He pour out His soul unto death, and shall there be no
crown for Him? Shall the promised diadem be withheld? Beloved, we know
it cannot be so! As we stand at the foot of the Cross we feel that
every pang He suffered guaranteed to Him that He should be King of
kings, and Lord of lords. Oh, it were, indeed, sad for us to imagine
that yonder wondrous work of His in redemption should remain unrewarded
with the promised crown! It were vain for us to trust in the
Redemption, for we might be as well deluded in it as He if there were
no honor brought to Him for all that He endured for us. Courage,
Brothers and Sisters, there can be no doubt about it–since immutable
justice demands it, Jesus "must reign."

4. The fourth reason is found in this, that Christ's reigning is
inwrought into the order of Providence. A few months ago snow was on
the ground. The frost was sharp, the winds were cold, the trees were
bare–but it was in the order of Providence that there should be a
spring. And though the seasons grew colder and the dreary months passed
on and not a snowdrop peeped up from under the soil, nor a golden
crocus opened its cup, yet God had purposed it–the spring must come.

Walk in your gardens today when all the fruit trees are opening their
blossoms and pouring forth their perfumes in the air, and the birds are
at the highest point of song, and you will think, "Yes, it has surely
come. Spring smiles on us, after all." The cold blustering winds and
the cold dark nights could not prevent it! The vernal blossoms are on
every bough. Here is spring, and in its right hand it holds a faithful
promise of the coming summer. We cannot say that in any one day in all
these last months spring seemed to make any great advance. You cannot
put your finger upon a certain day or hour, and say, "Now the weather
is manifestly turning."

But the sweet days of bud and blossom have been introduced with a
beautiful gentleness and growth. Even when the days lengthened we saw
no great progress, for the cold strengthened–and if we enjoyed a mild
day, there came a biting night of frost. But, surely and steadily the
veins of the trees were filled with the life-blood of sap, and the buds
first swelled and then revealed their glories! Mother earth yielded to
the roots of plants and trees fresh vigor, and helped them to put on
their green array–and now we look for the beauties of summer and the
golden sheaves of autumn with sure and certain hope.

So Christ's reigning is woven into the warp and woof of Providence, and
though He has long been lifted on high and has not yet drawn all men
unto Him, it is coming–and if we have faith we may almost see it. His
kingdom is coming! The time of the singing of the birds is drawing
near! There have been dark times, but the light has arisen! There have
been times of shameful lukewarmness, but, now and then a live coal has
been sent from off the altar to touch the lip of some favored seer
whose power has turned the tide of the Church's zeal once more. Rest
assured that nothing can possibly resist the kingdom of Jesus
Christ–His kingdom shall come! He shall have dominion and His foes
shall bow.

He shall come in His own proper Person and shall sit upon David's
throne. Though the wheels of Providence are so high that they are
terrible, they are all full of eyes, and every eye looks to Christ.
"Upon one stone shall be seven eyes," yes, all the eyes of Providence
look upon Jesus our Cornerstone, and in the Divine economy, "all things
work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the
called according to His purpose," and chiefly for the glory of Him who
loved God best of all, and was first chosen in the Divine decree.

That Jesus shall reign is the end, aim, and design of Providence. How I
rejoice to believe that if we serve God the very stones of the field
are in league with us, and the beasts of the field are at peace with
us! And as it was said by Deborah in her memorable song, "The stars in
their courses fought against Sisera," so all created things are allies
of the righteous cause and adversaries of evil. The marches of years,
the advance of months, and the arrangements of days all fight like
armed men the wrong, and march side by side with the armies of the Lord
of hosts–sworn to do battle for Jesus and His Throne–for, "He must
reign."

5. I must not tarry long on any one point, and, therefore, our fifth
argument for Jesus' kingdom is that the Holy Spirit has been given to
the Church to promote this glorious end. At the day of Pentecost the
Holy Spirit was poured out–then the whole Church was baptized with a
sacred influence–and ever since then the Holy Spirit has never been
withdrawn from the Christian Church. "I will pray the Father, and He
shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever."

We often unbelievingly pray for the Holy Spirit as if He were not still
with us–as if He were not perpetually resident among the sons of men.
He is here, always here–always dwelling in the Christian Church. Now
consider who the Holy Spirit is–He is the blessed God Himself–one
Person of the glorious Trinity in unity, and He is therefore the
possessor of infinite power. In the world of mind He can work according
to His own will, and can convince men of sin, of righteousness and of
judgment. He can soften the most hardened! He can turn to kindness the
most cruel, and lead into light the most darkened. There are none
beyond the range of the operation of the Holy Spirit, and none who
shall be able finally to resist His influence when He puts forth the
fullness of His might, for who can stop Omnipotence?

Now, Brethren, the possession of the Holy Spirit is the Church's
treasury. Here is her battle-ax, and here her weapons of war. Do you
speak of the tower of David where a thousand bucklers did hang, all
shields of mighty men? The possession of the Holy Spirit secures a far
greater power than all the bucklers of mighty men could be! Solomon
speaks of the Church's bed, and says that around it were fourscore men,
each man with his sword upon his thigh, because of fear in the night.
But the Holy Spirit is a greater protection than the ablest bodyguard
of warriors! His dove-like wings perpetually brood over the Lord's
chosen and guard them from every ill, according to the promise, "I, the
Lord, do keep it, I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I
will keep it night and day."

Ho, you who preach Christ in the street, or teach Him in the school, do
not become discouraged under difficulties when you remember that you
are workers together with God, and that with you, when you speak the
truth for Jesus, there goes forth an irresistible power from the Holy
Spirit Himself which none shall be able to gainsay or to resist! This
is the Church's power–let her seek more of it, and, possessing it–let
her rest assured that the purpose for which she has been raised up will
be accomplished, for Jesus Christ must and shall reign if the Spirit of
God is at work to ensure His Sovereignty.

6. Sixthly, our Lord Jesus Christ must reign because He is naturally
the Chief of the human race. When all Israel were gathered together to
choose a king, they selected Saul who was in stature head and shoulders
taller than the rest. They would have the strongest soldier to lead the
van. But if my Lord and Master were to come into this world–if men's
eyes were but opened, and their senses were but trained to right
perception–they would no sooner put eyes on Him than they would say,
"He is the chief among 10,000 and the altogether lovely: let Him wear
the crown." Remember that in this present state the good often go to
the wall, and the most worthy are the least esteemed–but in the long
run it is a rule of God's government that the best shall be uppermost.

And when the last great rectification shall come, you will find that
those who were really lowest in character will be lowest in perdition,
and those who were highest in their service of God shall be highest in
esteem among the sons of men. Jesus Christ must take the highest place,
because He is highest and there is none to rival Him–

"No creature can with Him compare

Among the sons of men,

Fairer He is than all the fair

That fill the heavenly train."

Once but get a clear, spiritual glimpse of Him and you will acknowledge
His surpassing superiority–

"Soon as faith the Lord can see,

Bleeding on the Cross for me,

Quick my idols all depart,

Jesus gets and fills my heart."

O stone-blind eyes, if you could but see Him, how you would be fixed on
Him in one long fascinated gaze! O blind world, if you had Grace enough
to see but half the beauties of Christ, how you would cease your
rebellion and fall down to worship the matchless Prince! But the
blindness and obduracy of humankind make men enemies to their best
Friend and make them see no beauty where there is all beauty, and no
perfection wherever perfection dwells.

As well might men say that there is no light from the sun as declare
that there is no loveliness in Him! As well might they say that there
is no salt in the sea as that there is no sweetness in Christ, for He
is altogether lovely! All preciousness, at its very highest degrees, is
found commingled in His gracious Character. Let Him be King, then! He
must reign! It is impossible that yonder black prince, that fiend of
Hell, that traitor, that enemy of the human race should always reign!
Down with him! Down with him as they did in the town of Mansoul when
they broke the images of Diabolus, casting them to the ground.

It is not possible that the devil should always be king over God's
creatures. Let Immanuel be exalted, and let His loyal subjects bow
before Him and rejoice in His crown and scepter. He must reign, then,
because of the excellence of His Character.

7. And lastly upon this point, He must reign because the power to reign
belongs to Him. "It pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness
dwell." "He has all power given unto Him in Heaven and in earth." "Go
you, therefore," says He, "and teach all nations." Jesus Christ is no
puny pretender to the Throne, nor a rightful owner without power to win
His own, but as His cause is good His arm is strong. The power of
Immanuel is equal to His right–He must, therefore, reign! What a
vision that is of Christ on the white horse, riding forth conquering
and to conquer, and all His saints following Him in the same triumphant
style, His sword going out of His mouth, the preaching of the eternal
Gospel being still the power of God unto salvation!

This is what He is doing now–this is what He shall do till He comes
with His iron rod to break the nations in pieces, like a potter's
vessel, and dash His enemies to pieces. He has the power to reign, a
power of love which He puts into the Gospel which, by-and-by, He will
exchange for the power of vengeance, when He takes the Throne and sits
there to judge the nations according to their works. What a total
overthrow the powers of darkness will sustain! They will not have a
thought with which to comfort themselves. When the last great battle
shall come and the campaign between Christ and the Prince of Evil shall
be over, there will not remain a handful of spoil in the hand of the
enemy–not one old banner or tattered flag belonging to the Lord's
hosts to hang up in the hall.

"They will be beaten," as the text puts it, "like the chaff on the
summer's threshing floor." "And you shall winnow them," says the
Prophet, "and the wind shall carry them away." The black horse went
down to the sea of almighty love with his rider and began to drink up
that sea, but he could not do it. He snorted, and drank, and drank
again of the brine which sickened his very soul, but malice urged him
on, and so he drank again, and waded breast-deep into the ocean. Nor
stayed he in his fury, but plunged farther and farther, till he was
drowned in the inexhaustible depths.

I think I see the black carcass submerged far down in the abyss–death
and Hell drowned in the sea of almighty love and power, and the kingdom
of Jesus rolling like a mighty stream over all those who were
determined upon His destruction. Glory be unto God! We fight and
victory flies to congratulate our banner. Ours is no desperate warfare,
but a royal crusade in which every soldier is even now a priest and a
king, and is on the way to the banqueting halls where men feast with
God, and Jesus forever and ever wears the fadeless diadem.

II. Time allows but a few words upon THE ENCOURAGEMENT to be gathered
from the "must" which lies in the soul of the text.

1. The first encouragement is that if He must reign, then all our
enemies shall be subdued. This text occurs in that memorable chapter
concerning the resurrection and it especially points to death. "He must
reign until He has put all enemies under His feet." "The last enemy
that shall be destroyed is death." Now, beloved Believer, you are
called to fight daily with sin and here is your consolation–Jesus must
reign! The Christ in you must bruise Satan under your feet! His
Atonement has forever destroyed the damning power of your sins. Christ
reigns supreme on the milk-white Throne of mercy as the pardoning God.

Even so Jesus must reign over the active power of sin within your
heart, for His death is the double death of sin. He has pierced its
heart and nailed its hands and feet–it shall not have dominion over
you. Jesus, the King of kings, must hold His court in the castle yard
of your heart, and all your powers and passions must do Him cheerful
homage. Most sweet Prince, You shall wear Your royal robes in the
coronation chamber of my affections! You shall reign over my quick
imperious temper! He shall put His foot on the neck of my pride and
shall command my every thought and wish. Where I cannot rule, Jesus
can!

Rebellious lusts acknowledge the spell of the Cross and indwelling sin
falls like Dagon before that ark. Jesus has made us kings and priests
that we may reign over the triple monarchy of our nature–spirit, soul,
and body–and that by our self-conquest He may be undisputed sovereign
of the Isle of Man. O you who are contending with your corruptions,
push on in the war for He must reign! Corruption is very strong, but
Christ is stronger, and Divine Grace must reign through righteousness
unto eternal life–through Jesus Christ our Lord.

I think I hear you groaning, "O wretched man that I am! Who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?" Hearken to the answer! It
rings like a sweet Sabbath bell, "I thank God, through Jesus Christ our
Lord." You may die with Jesus but you shall certainly rise with Him,
for He will leave none of His members in the grave of their
corruptions. This Joshua will slay all the Canaanites! He will drive
out the old dragon from his throne with all his hellish crew and your
entire manhood shall be a fair temple for the Holy Spirit's indwelling!

As long as we live in this world, and when we live again in the coming
world, Jesus shall be the Well-Beloved Monarch of our hearts! This
ought to put away all fears of death, for Christ must reign, must reign
over death! When the last enemy appears in view it shall only be an
opportunity for new triumphs, when the Lord of life shall reveal
Himself with renewed splendor. Imagine not that death shall ever reign
over Christ! Ah no, in your departing moments you shall have most
extraordinary Grace–so that with joyful heart your lips shall sing, "O
Death, where is your sting? O Grave, where is your victory?"

When your body shall have molded to ashes, Christ must reign, and every
precious particle of that dust shall be attracted to its fellow–bone
shall come to bone, and the flesh shall come upon the whole–and you
shall live! Though worms destroy that body, yet in your flesh shall you
see God. And so in your resurrection Jesus Christ shall reign! What a
lamp is shining in the vaults of death! The day breaks upon all our
darkness when we see that He must reign!

The next cool cup of encouragement springing from this well is
this–our efforts are, after all, not in vain. If Christ must reign,
then every soldier who fights for Christ is contributing to the
victory, and everyone who in any way advances the cause is working with
sure and great results. You have not wasted those many silent prayers
and those bitter tears.

Those feeble efforts of yours which were so imperfect that you could
scarcely hope them to be successful are all cooperating to produce a
victory the shouts of which shall be heard all down the ages!

You may but lay a single stone of the heavenly temple, but if it is
done for Christ, it is a stone which will stand the fire and your share
of the building will remain to the last, while many a great one who has
built a mass of wood, and hay, and stubble shall see his labors all
consumed in the day that tries every man's work. O my fellow Soldiers,
as we rest in this bivouac today waiting till another fight begins, let
us be of good courage and the Lord shall strengthen our hearts! Wait, I
say, on the Lord, for the Lord is on our side!

Our foes are tall as Goliath, and mighty as Pharaoh, and proud as
Nebuchadnezzar–but in the name of God will we destroy them! In the
name of Jesus we will again say Jehovah-Nissi, and setting up the
banner we follow our Captain whose vesture is dipped in blood. He rides
forth conquering and to conquer, and we follow Him to absolute victory!
It is but a little before we shall hear the shout, "Hallelujah! For the
Lord God Omnipotent reigns." One sweet drop of comfort may be pressed
from this text, "He must reign"–I must confess the sweetest comfort I
have ever tasted. I know not why it is, but if I sink in spirit (and I
do full often) I very seldom get any cordial anywhere except from this
one thing–that Christ must reign.

"There," I have said in my soul, "then what becomes of me is of no
consequence at all! If He will only take me into the royal galley and
chain me down to the oar, and let me tug and pull till I have no more
life left, I will be satisfied if I may but row my Lord towards His
Throne and have but the smallest share in making Him great and glorious
in the eyes of men and angels." What cares my heart for herself if she
may but see Jesus set on high? It is a Heaven to me to think that
Christ is in Heaven, and another Heaven to believe that He will reign
among men! If Christ is glorious, it is all the Heaven I ask for! If He
shall be King of kings, and Lord of lords, let me be nothing! If He
shall but reign, and every tongue shall call Him blessed, it shall be
bliss to me to know it! And if I may be but as one of the withered
roses which lie in the path of His triumph, it shall be my paradise!

Comrade in arms, as you and I in this ditch lie bleeding on the skirts
of the battle, it is sweet to hear the shouts of victory! This is
better than wine, better than healing, better than life! See yonder He
rides with His crown upon His helmet! There He rides on His white horse
in the very front of the fray! Can you not hear Him as He cries,
"Onward!" and the enemy flees, and His forces march on to victory? You
and I may lie down and die–what matters it, for the cause is
safe–Jesus is King! Rest assured that Christ's victory is ours and He
will no more forget us than a woman will cease to think of the son of
her womb. Oh, to put our heart into Christ's heart! To wish His wishes
and to love His loves! This is to enjoy peace like a river, and bliss
like the waves of the sea. Blessed thought for you who love Him!
Treasure it. "He must reign."

How this ought to inspire all of you who grow downhearted about the
cause of Christ. Some of my friends are frightened with that
everlasting bugbear of Roman Catholicism. According to some we are
going back to Rome, every mother's son of us, and old England is to be
a rank popish country. Many in these days are fine hands at painting
ugly pictures and believing them to be realities. But I believe my
text, namely, that Jesus must reign. Therefore I do not fear the Pope
or the devil. All the driveling priests of Rome with their Jesuitical
tricks, shall find their master, for Hell itself cannot shake that
decree, "He must reign."

"Jesuits," you say, "are creeping in unawares." I know it! But behold,
we shall tread upon the lion and the dragon–yes, the young lion and
the dragon shall we trample under our feet. Do you not believe in the
Gospel as the power of God? Do you imagine that an unrighteous and
unscriptural church establishment is needed as a bulwark to the Gospel?
Shall rotten wood defend the steel? Nonsense! Blow the establishment to
a thousand pieces with the big guns of Justice and then the Gospel will
hold its own with all the greater ease. The Gospel is quite able to
take care of itself without your hierarchies, and tithes, and royal
headships–you encumber the Church with your bulwarks of wood, and hay,
and stubble! You clog our David with the royal armor.

My Lord Jesus Christ can do well enough in Ireland without Caesar or
his pennies. He needs you not to drain wealth from those who serve
another Lord in order to uphold His cause. He hates your robberies
which you call burnt-offerings. He always has taken care of Himself and
His ministers and will continue to do so. The ark of God of old was
never captured till it was defended with carnal weapons, and even then,
as soon as it was left alone it rescued itself. When there was not a
soldier to take care of it–when it was imprisoned in the temple of
Dagon–Dagon fell, and Philistia was humbled.

And so in England and Ireland, State alliance is bringing the Gospel
into jeopardy, but if that alliance can be broken which is the worst of
ills, then the Gospel in its grandeur of unaided might will confound
all adversaries. Never be afraid–it does not become a Christian to
fear–it is unmanly, unchristian, to talk as if Christ's cause were
going to be trampled out like a spark under our feet! It cannot be! As
enduring as the earth itself, and more eternal–as far as everlasting
as the Throne of God are the Cross and honor and dignity of Christ. Let
us feel this, for He must reign, and anticipated changes, instead of
preventing Him from reigning, will help Him to reign more universally.
And the shaking off of old abuses, instead of being an injury to the
Cross of Christ, will give its glories ampler space, for He must reign,
let men say what they will.

III. Once more, and I have done. There is an ADMONITION in the text,
"He must reign." My Hearer, has He ever reigned in your heart? Where
are you, my Hearer? For I want you now. I must get you by the ear.
"Jesus must reign." What have you to say to this? You have been
opposing Him, have you? You are kicking against the pricks with naked
feet–you are stumbling upon this stone and you will be broken–and if
the stone shall take to rolling down, like a massive rock, on you, it
will grind you to powder.

Persecutor, beware! You have gone upon a very very desperate errand.
You are like a crawling worm that is fighting with the fire–you wiggle
already in the heat of it–but if you continue long, what can you
expect? You are like stubble contending with the fire-brand, or like
chaff wrestling with the whirlwind. What can you do? O Man, sheathe
that sword! Take counsel while you are in the way, "whether you can,
with 10,000 meet him that comes against you with twenty thousand."
"Kiss the Son, lest He be angry and you perish from the way, when His
wrath is kindled but a little."

Another thought, if Jesus Christ must reign, then you who have never
submitted yourselves to Him to accept Him as your Monarch will find His
reign as terrible as it is sure. He will reign over you, either by your
own consent, or without it! He will either reign over you with that
glorious glittering silver scepter of mercy in His hand, or He will
rule over you with the heavy iron rod with which He will break you in
pieces. Now, which is it to be? One or the other. His blood must be on
you–either it must be on you to accuse and condemn you, as the Jews
found it when they said, "His blood be on us, and on our children"–or
else it shall be on you to cleanse, to pardon, to save. Which shall it
be?

This morning, in the name of God I do entreat you answer this question
for your own good! Does Jesus reign over you this morning, or not? Oh,
if He never should reign over you in this life, then, when you die you
shall find that you cannot escape from His power! He will reign over
you while you are a prisoner, manacled in fetters of iron in the place
of everlasting misery! He will reign over you, and you will be
compelled to confess it, too, as you bite your iron bands and weep, and
gnash your teeth in anger and in shame! He will reign over you
absolutely, for you will not be able to lift a finger to contend
against Him in the day when He comes to judge the quick and the dead–

"You sinners, seek His Grace,

Whose wrath you cannot bear!

Fly to the shelter of His Cross,

And find salvation there."

May eternal mercy bring you, now, like loyal subjects, to bow before
Jesus! May you be granted saving Grace to give yourselves up to Him,
trusting in Him, and in Him alone. That is the matter–to confide
simply in Him is life eternal! There is the whole sum and substance of
godliness. Then shall it be your joy to know and feel that "He must
reign." The Lord bless you, and make you a blessing, for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
__________________________________________________________________

Bringing the King Back

Delivered on Sunday Evening, April 19, 1868, by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the [19]Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.

"Now therefore why speak you not a word of bringing the king back?"
2 Samuel 19:10.

THIS morning we were indulged with the Master's blessing while
considering one of the most delightful subjects that can ever occupy
the minds of God's creatures this side of Heaven [Sermon #807, Good
News for Loyal Subjects.] It was a celestial song, fitter for angels'
harps than sinners' tongues. We sang the triumphs of the once rejected
but now exalted Son of Man. We lingered lovingly over the guarantees of
His sure and blessed kingdom, and fed with delight upon that short,
sweet sentence, "He must reign." We tried to show that the Throne of
our Lord Christ is settled on a firm foundation, and that His ultimate
and undisputed sovereignty over all things in Heaven and earth and Hell
is a matter of Divine decree and will be asserted by the Divine power
in due time.

We laid the sheaf upon the threshing floor this morning–let us beat
out the precious grain this evening. We showed you the pearl, now let
us make it a golden setting of practical holiness! The Son of David is
assuredly King, and you know it. "Now therefore why speak you not a
word of bringing the King back?" Israel had revolted, and set up
Absalom against his father–but when the rebel bands had been scattered
and Absalom had been slain, the people thought of their old love–they
remembered the days when David was the terror of the Philistines and
the champion of Israel! Their hearts smote them for their ingratitude
to their valiant deliverer, and they said one to the other, "Now
therefore why speak you not a word of bringing the king back?"

There are three sorts of people in this great throng, to each of whom
this text might well be addressed. May none of my three arrows miss the
mark! I shall endeavor to speak pointedly, and may the Holy Spirit make
an effectual application of each word. May I but win a throne for Jesus
in any one heart, and my joy shall be full!

I. First, my Brothers and Sisters, MANY AMONG US HAVE LOST THE
COMFORTABLE PRESENCE OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. Some have long dwelt in
the cold shade of suspended fellowship. Others, for a shorter period,
have passed through the cloud. But, surely, the shortest period is all
too long–and those who have lost fellowship must be anxiously pining
after its restoration.

Now to such as these, who see no longer the bright and morning star, we
say, "Why speak you not a word of bringing the King back?" My sorrowing
Brother, you have been mourning much concerning your present condition.
Sitting down, perhaps, this very afternoon and taking stock of your
spiritual estate, you have felt yourself to be in an almost bankrupt
condition and you have written bitter things against yourself. Your
barometer has been going down, down, down, for the last month or
two–from rain to much rain and stormy. It now appears as if it never
would ascend again. Upon a review of the past you observe that your
prayers have not been so constant nor so fervent as they used to be. In
reading the Word, the promises have not been laid home to your heart as
once they were, and in attending the means of Grace, you have not so
often said with Jacob, "Surely God was in this place."

You are getting now into a sad condition and all because your eyes have
not lately seen the King in His beauty, neither has He brought you into
His banqueting house, nor waved over you the banner of His love. You
have been turning this forlorn plight over and over and over in your
mind, and you have been anxiously searching for the cause of all this
withering of your spirit. You can see that the cause does not lie in
Him but in yourself. You perceive that your David has not forsaken you,
but that you have forsaken Him, and set up some fair but false Absalom
in His place. He who delivered you has been forgotten, and he who
deceived you has been followed.

Smooth-spoken sin has made you a traitor to your liege Lord. The
luxuriant tresses of Absalom were nets to catch the shallow men of
Israel, and Satan has taken care to find suitable snares for you. You
know this, and you mourn it, and the temptation is to continue morbidly
meditating upon the sin and its cause and consequences until despair
burns its horrible brand into the spirit. My business tonight is to
remind you that all your lamentation over your folly will not of itself
remove the disease. Your remedy does not lie within you, but beyond and
above yourself! It is a good thing to discover where the mischief lies
and to lament it, yet the real cure for it does not lie in
lamentation–it lies in seeking, again, the face of your Lord! "Now
therefore why speak you not a word of bringing the King back?"

The royal hand brings health and cure–healing is to be found nowhere
else in earth or Heaven. Go, then, to Jehovah-Rophi, the healing Lord!
Oh, if you do but get Him back, your sorrow and sighing will flee away!
Though everything else should be dark and doleful, His Presence is
enough, by itself alone, to make a gala day in the heart!–

"Midst darkest shades if He appears,

My dawning is begun;

He is my soul's bright morning star,

And He my rising sun."

If your soul has been nipped with the frosts of a long and dreary
winter. If the Sun of Righteousness does but manifest His meridian
splendor, your summer will return at once! Let the King come and all
His court will follow–all the Graces display themselves where the Lord
of Grace is revealed. One word, then, to you who are under backslidings
and declensions–play not with side issues and secondary remedies–but
go straightforward to the root of the matter! Turn your whole soul to
your absent Master, and make this your one business–to bring the King
back to His palace and throne in your heart.

Ah, I can well imagine what lies Satan will tell you! He will insinuate
that you are no child of God, for if you were your love would never
grow so cold. He will whisper accusingly that never was any of the
whole family of God so lifeless, so graceless as you are. He will say
to you, "Your religion is a sham. Your enjoyment is a delusion! You
never were born again–you felt a little excitement and you thought you
were converted, but you were not. Your repentance was not deep enough.
Your faith is not the faith of God's elect." He will tear up, one after
another, all your comfortable experiences even as the wild boar out of
the wood rends up the vines, till he will reduce your soul to a howling
wilderness of doubt and fear.

How can you best meet this roaring lion? Will you try by your own wit
to answer this accuser of the Brethren? Will you try to prove your
experience to be right and his insinuations to be false? If you are
wise, you will attempt nothing of the kind, for at that sport Satan can
play better than you–and as fast as you set up your evidences he will
knock them down again. There is a surer and safer method, and when I
see you forgetting it, I enquire in the words of the text, "Why speak
you not a word of bringing the King back?" Why not tell the case to
Jesus? That is the true answer to the adversary–answer him by your
Advocate! If you can regain the comfortable Presence of Jesus, your
evidences will all be seen in His light. Satan himself will not be able
to disturb the conviction of your mind that you are a child of God when
your Lord again kisses you with the kisses of His lips, and you drink
of His love which is better than wine.

I can readily conceive that your legal tendencies will suggest to you,
"Now, having fallen into this condition, seeing that it is very
doubtful whether you are saved or not, you should labor after salvation
by being more zealous and more devout." Thus may you hear the voice of
a deluding spirit, gendering unto bondage, crying out, "You must attend
to religious observances and ordinances! You must mortify the flesh in
this direction, and deny yourself in that, and then, by degrees, you
will come back to your old comfort and peace of mind."

This all might be very good advice if it were not thrust into an
improper place and made to be a foundation for renewed confidence. To
thrust out declension by a legal spirit is for Satan to cast out Satan,
which cannot be! God will not have His child's face washed in the
scalding water of the Law. Let the child of God beware of being brought
into legal servitude in which he will find himself wearily working for
life and slavishly toiling for salvation–for then he will be a mere
slave and will be ready to die in the wilderness like Hagar and her
cast out son–instead of enjoying the liberty of the child of the
promise who dwells forever in the Father's house.

Always beware, dear Friends, of any instruction or direction which
would withdraw you from the Cross as the sole and simple ground of your
comfort. Duties, I trust, you will never neglect. Services and
ordinances, I trust, will always be very precious to you. But, when you
have lost your comfort, you might as well search for fire beneath the
ice as look for comfort in duties. And you might certainly as well turn
over the dunghill and look for a diamond as search within yourself for
jewels of consolation. "Why speak you not a word of bringing the King
back?" for if you bring King Jesus back He will be made of God unto you
wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption–you shall find
in Him all you need.

As Charles Wesley puts it so sweetly in the hymn–

"You, O Christ, are all I want;

More than all in You I find."

If you would obtain all good things in one, seek to win Christ and to
be found in Him. Desponding one, your whole business lies with Jesus.
You have nothing to do today with attainments and experiences–it is
not even desirable to practice self-examinations while you are in
despondency–these are to be attended to by-and-by–but just now, while
the present stress of weather lasts, your one cry must be–

"Jesus, lover of my soul,

Let me to Your bosom fly."

While your boat is tossed about at sea, it is very likely that she
needs a new copper bottom, or the deck requires holystoning, or the
rigging is out of repair, or the sails need overhauling, or 50 other
things may be necessary. But if the wind is blowing great guns and the
vessel is drifting towards those white-crested breakers–the first
business of the mariner is to make for the haven at once to avoid the
hurricane. When he is all snug in port, he can attend to hull and
rigging, and all the odds and ends besides.

So with you, child of God–one thing you must do–and I beseech you do
it. Do not be looking to this, or to that, or to the other out of a
thousand things that may be amiss–steer straight for the Cross of
Christ which is the haven for distressed spirits! Fly at once to the
wounds of Jesus, as the dove flies to her nest in the cleft of the
rock. May the Eternal Spirit give you joy and peace through believing.
"Why speak you not a word of bringing the King back?" Perhaps you
reply, "We speak not a word of this because we are afraid that the King
may have forgotten us." Oh, cruel thought, concerning so kind a Friend!
Hear His own words, "I am God. I change not; therefore you sons of
Jacob are not consumed."

Your Lord forgotten you?! Ah, you know what you deserve, but He will
not treat you as your sins demand. Shall Christ forget His people for
whom He shed His blood? He has said, "I have engraved you upon the
palms of My hands." How can He forget what is written there? You have
played the harlot and gone away from your first Husband, but He says,
"Return, return, you backsliding children, for I am married unto you."
You may forget the nuptial tie which binds you to your Lord, but He
neither forgets nor doubts it, but plainly affirms, "I have espoused
you unto Myself in faithfulness." And He declares that He hates putting
away. Though we believe not, He abides faithful.

But you say, "How shall I return to Him? I feel ashamed to come to Him
yet again." And well you may! But the best color you can wear upon your
face, when you enter His Presence, will be that crimson of holy shame.
Remember that bad as you are, you are not now worse than when you first
came to Him. You were then without a spark of Divine Grace, or love, or
holiness. You were once an enemy, dead in trespasses and sins, but His
great love loved you even then. You may well be ashamed, I say, and yet
I entreat you let not this shame keep you from coming just as you are
to Him. Ho, you negligent Believers, you lax professors, you lukewarm
ones, Christ has not cast you away! This is His message to you– let me
give it to you–it was first delivered to the Church at Laodicea when
it had declined into the same state as your own, "Behold, I stand at
the door and knock."

He is not gone! He waits at your door, and knocks at it, longing to
enter. "If any man open to Me, I will enter in and sup with him, and he
with Me." This is the cure for your lukewarmness, and this cure awaits
you now, for Jesus Christ is in this very House of Prayer knocking at
the gate of your heart! O let Him enter, and in a moment all that you
have bewailed of coldness and of lethargy will disappear at His return.
"Why speak you not a word of bringing the King back?" I hope the answer
to that question is not that you have forgotten Him. Forgotten the man
of Gethsemane, crimsoned with His own blood for you? Forgotten Him
whose hands were pierced for you? Forgotten Him who bore the crown of
thorns, and bowed His head, and gave up the ghost for you? Forgotten
that faithful Lover who ever since He ascended above the stars has
never ceased to intercede for you, and such as you? Oh, shame, indeed!

But you have not quite forgotten Him, I know you have not. Perhaps,
however, you have grown so dead in spirit that you hardly care about
His company. What shall I say to you? Shall I remind you of–

"Those peaceful hours you once enjoyed,

How sweet their memory still"?

I bear my testimony tonight that there is no joy to be found in all
this world like that of sweet communion with Christ! I would barter all
else there is of Heaven for that! Indeed, that is Heaven! As for the
harps of gold, and the streets like unto clear glass, and the songs of
seraphs, and the shouts of the redeemed–one could very well give all
these up, counting them as a drop in a bucket–if we might forever live
in fellowship and communion with Jesus. When it is our great privilege
to press close to our Lord, and to feel that He loves us and that we
love Him, and to lean our head upon His bosom–then it is glory this
side of Jordan!

Do you not long for it? Have you forgotten the garden of nuts and the
beds of spices? O willful, wayward heart, have you forgotten the
banqueting house, and the day when you came up from the wilderness
leaning on your Beloved? You said then, "I will never forget You." Then
your heart warbled to itself in words like these–

"O my Soul, forget no more

The Friend who all your misery bore.

Let every idol be forget,

But, O my Soul, forget Him not."

And now what are you doing to be so negligent of your Beloved? O fickle
heart, are you not ashamed at your inconstancy! Content without your
Lord? A spouse content without her husband? A child happy away from its
father's face and under its father's frown? Chide your hearts, my
Brothers and my Sisters, if you know any joy apart from Jesus!

I would gladly provoke you to a sacred jealousy. I would fill you with
an insatiable hunger and thirst for your Beloved. I would not merely
exhort you to speak a word to bring Him back, but I would persuade you
to send up an incessant cry–

"When will You come unto me, Lord?

O come, my Lord, most dear!

Come near, come nearer, nearer still,

I'm blest when You are near."

Remember, the heavenly Lover will come. He forgives the past–He is
ready to come to you now. Come to Him, dear Brother, just as you did at
first. Fall flat on your face before His dear Cross, and then look up
to His streaming wounds, and say, "Jesus, I rest in You." Give
yourselves up to Him afresh. It is a good thing to renew your youth by
renewing your fellowship. See at this season how the year has put on
its new mantle of green! Mark how all animal and vegetable nature has
been refreshed! Will you not renew your youth like the eagle? Will you
not begin again? I trust you will, and if so, the true way to revive is
to speak a word concerning bringing the King back.

II. Secondly, and briefly. MANY PROFESSORS DO VERY LITTLE TO BRING
CHRIST BACK TO HIS KINGDOM IN THE WORLD–and to these we have a
message. I do not think that, on the whole, anybody could fairly
describe us as being a lazy Church. But there never was a hive of bees
without there being at times a few drones to be turned out. And if,
when I am speaking tonight to the drones, any of you should feel that
my rebuke comes rather sharply home, I am sure I shall be
delighted–for it is my sincere desire to be personal.

There are a number of Christians whose whole Christianity seems to lie
in attending two services each Sunday, but do nothing for Jesus. Some
of them think one attendance at worship quite enough for the
Sabbath–they are such very easily satisfied people that one meal in a
week satisfies their spiritual appetite. It is an improvement,
certainly, when we see others regular in coming twice, and some who
drop in on weeknights to the lecture. But there are numbers who never
attend the Prayer Meeting and so deny the Lord Jesus even the cheap
love-token of their prayers. Well, perhaps He is no great loser, for
those who do not come to the Prayer Meeting are not the best of Church
members, but a great deal the worst, as a rule.

I speak not of those who are debarred lawfully–servants, or even
masters whose business detains them–but there are persons who might
come if they would, but forsake the assembling of themselves together.
These miss the blessing, and deserve to do so, seeing that they deny
the Lord even the poor aid of their prayers. How many there are who do
nothing for our King! They are not Sunday school teachers. They are not
street preachers. They do not take a tract district. They are not
subscribers, at least to any great extent, to anything! They have no
object that is dear to them in connection with the Church. They are
very glad to see all the work go on well–like a man on the top of the
coach, they enjoy the riding–but they have no care to draw an ounce,
no inclination to assist in any respect.

Now, to such I say, if you are, indeed, Christians, "Why speak you not
a word of bringing the King back?" Have you no desire whatever that
Jesus Christ should reign among the sons of men? If you, as a Christian
man, have a right to be idle, every man has a right to be the same! And
then where would be the exertions of the Christian Church, and, humanly
speaking, where would be anything like the extension of Messiah's
kingdom? God works by instruments, and those instruments are men and
women who are themselves saved, and who, being saved, are set to
fulfill the loving duty of telling out the plan of salvation to others!

And so you have tied up your tongue, and given up all idea of being of
any service to the Church of God? My dear Brother, my dear Sister, were
you never, then, redeemed by blood? "Yes," you say, "I hope so." Why,
then, you are not your own! On your own showing you are bought with a
price, and how can you, then, live as though you were your own? My dear
Brother, my dear Sister, do you owe Christ nothing? "Oh!" you tell me,
"I owe him everything." Then, I beseech you, do not live as one who is
devoid of gratitude! Selfishness in religion is detestable–that
selfishness which makes us think–"Well, if we get to Heaven, that is
all we need. We shall not worry ourselves about the concerns of the
Church, nor take upon ourselves any labor in connection with the
Master's vineyard."

Ah, but if your Master had said so! Ah, but if your precious Redeemer
had said, "Heaven is glorious, and I cannot have more honor than I
possess already! I will not go to earth to toil and suffer to redeem
the sons of men!" then might you have had an excuse and an example in
your selfishness and sloth! But since He loved not Himself, but gave
Himself to suffer, bleed, and die–my Brothers and Sisters–I do
entreat you be instant in season and out of season for your Master,
that He may be glorified in you!

"Oh, I could not do much," says one. Then do what you can! No one
flower makes a garden, but altogether the fair blossoms of spring
create a paradise of beauty. Let all the Lord's flowers contribute in
their proportion to the beauty of the garden of the Lord. "But I am so
unused to it." Then, my Brother, that is a very powerful reason why you
should do twice as much, so as to make up for your past idleness. "Oh,
but I am afraid nothing would come of it." What has that to do with
you? God has promised a blessing and if the blessing should not come in
your day, yet, if you have done what the Master bade you, you will not
be blamed for lack of success.

"Sir," asks another, "will you give me some work to do?" No, I will
not, for if you are good for anything you will find it for yourself. In
such a place as London, for people to go to their minister to know what
they are to do seems to me to be the height of absurdity! What work can
you do? Put your hand out and begin, for there is plenty within reach.
Your own unconverted child, whose face you kiss tonight, is to be the
first object of your labors. Begin to educate your family of Christ,
and pray for the salvation of your own households. What spheres you may
find in the neighborhoods in which you dwell! They swarm with immortal
souls and abound in sin! The fields are white unto the harvest.

Some of you may not be able to work by using your tongue, then use your
purses–use whatever gift God has given you–only do it! Never let it
be said that you do not "speak a word of bringing the King back." Oh,
when the King comes to His own, how happy shall they be who fought His
battles! I think I see Him riding through the streets of this glad
world with great acclaim! The angels are in mighty squadrons–ten
thousand times ten thousand ranged on either side–and all men are
bowing before Him, scattering His path with roses, and crying,
"Hosanna, blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord!"

Oh, it will be such satisfaction, then, to feel, "I helped to bring
that chariot forth! I helped to subdue the kingdom unto Him!" But where
will you go–where will you hide your heads–you who have done nothing
at all for Him? You cannot, you dare not in your consciences share in
the splendor of His triumph because you took no part in the rigor of
His campaigns–you cannot participate in His crown because you did not
share in His Cross!

III. Thirdly, and lastly. There is a large class here, I fear, a sadly
large class WHO ARE REBELLIOUS SUBJECTS

OF THIS KING. Oh, how I wish they would say a word, if it were only
such a word as the poor publican said, "God be merciful to me a
sinner," for such a word as that would bring the King into their
hearts. O you who do not love Christ listen to me a minute! You are
God's creatures. God has a right to your services. It is God's power
that keeps the breath in your nostrils–you are, therefore, obliged to
God for your very existence!

You would not like it if your child never expressed its obligations to
you–why do you not admit your obligations to your Father? "The ox
knows its owner, and the ass its master's crib," but you do not know
and you have lived all these years without considering. Is it not
unjust? Does not conscience tell you that you do wrong to rebel against
the God that made you? Christ is your lawful King and you are a rebel
against Him tonight. He is so good a King. He is no tyrant! His yoke is
easy and His burden is light, and yet you will not have Him. If He were
a despot, and made you wretched, I could excuse your revolt–but
Immanuel is all love, and they that serve Him are happy.

why, then, do you revolt more and more, and go astray and break His
blessed bands, and resists His sweet love? Let me reason with you. You
are God's, and you confess it. He supplies you with life, and you
acknowledge it. He is a good God and you will not deny it. O why, then,
do you not seek to make Him your King? Why do you not yield yourselves
up to Him? Why do you not give your hearts to His service and be His
forever? Perhaps you have been like Shimei, who cursed king David, and
you are afraid that Jesus will never forgive you. But David forgave
Shimei, and Jesus is ready to forgive you! He delights in mercy!

1 do believe that the harps of Heaven never give to Christ such
happiness as He has when He forgives the ungodly, and says, "Your sins
are forgiven. Go in peace." Then it is that He performs the darling
action of His life, that which is nearest and dearest to His soul. Oh
it is you who are hard to confess! It is not Christ who is hard to
forgive! It is your own heart that is hard towards Him, not His heart
that is hard towards you! He is ready to receive you, young woman, now!
He is ready to receive you, gray-headed offender, and to receive you
now! "Him that comes to Me, I will in no wise cast out." Never has He
cast out any, and never will He! Come and try Him! O that you would
come and try Him now! Why speak you not a word of bringing Him back,
when He is so willing to come back and to forget the past, and to abide
with you forever?

Perhaps you say, "I would gladly have Jesus Christ in my heart to save
me. I would gladly trust Him and be His, but how am I to get Him back?"
There is nothing for you to do whatever–

"All the doing was completed, Long, long ago."

You have only to accept what Christ has finished. If you will but trust
Christ, you are His. Now see, I cast myself with all my weight, and
lean upon this rail, not fearing that I shall fall. Do just so with
Christ. Lean wholly on Him! If you do so, Heaven and earth may pass
away, but His promise to you shall never pass away or fail! Why speak
you not a word of bringing the King back again?

Hasten to your chamber. Kneel by that bedside and confess your sins.
Tell Him that you have lived all these years a stranger to Him. Tell
Him that you have often choked conscience, and stifled the admonitions
of His Spirit. Ask Him to forgive you, for you bemoan your offenses,
and then look to Him and see all the bitter griefs and horrid pangs
which He endured upon the bloody tree, and say, "I do believe that
there is merit enough in what Jesus suffered to put away my sin. It
needs not that I should die, for Jesus died in the sinner's place as a
full vindication of Divine justice, and on His Atonement I fix my
trust."

I trust that some of you may speak a word to bring the King back. Oh, I
have watched some of you with a tender interest–now hoping and then
fearing! O when shall the case be decided and the question settled
forever? I sometimes think I know a great deal about you. As I stand in
this watchtower and look down, there is a curious kind of telegraphing
that goes on between me and some of you–for I have looked at you, and
you have looked at me–and I have read the signals which your eyes have
given me! I know that you have been almost persuaded, but you cannot
decide for the Lord and His service. With some of you it is fear that
keeps you back. You still think it too good to be true that such great
offenders as you are should be forgiven. Jesus is a great God and a
great Savior–O great Sinner, He is just the Redeemer that can save
you! Come, then, and rely upon Him.

Others of you are held back by temptations from evil friends. You get
outside the Tabernacle and somebody meets you who chats and laughs away
all impressions. Others of you, in the week, go into bad society and
the devil ensnares you. O that the snare might be broken and that you
might escape! By the sweet persuasions of the Holy Spirit I beseech
you, decide for Christ tonight! May His eternal Spirit constrain you to
open your heart's doors to Jesus, and your heart being once given to
Him, your state is divinely secure–

"I know that safe with Him remains,

Protected by His power,

What I've committed to His hands

Till the decisive hour.

Then will He own my worthless name

Before His Father's face,

And in the New Jerusalem

Appoint my soul a place."
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The Approachableness of Jesus

A Sermon