The Pleiades and Orion
A Sermon
(No. 818)
Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, June 28, 1868, by
C. H. SPURGEON,
at the [28]Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
"Can you bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands
of Orion?" Job 38:31.
MOST of you know that singularly beautiful cluster of stars called the
Pleiades–very small, but intensely bright. These are most conspicuous
about the time of spring, and therefore, in poetry the vernal
influences which quicken the earth and clothe it with the green grass
and the many-colored flowers are connected with the Pleiades. By the
sweet influences of the Pleiades we understand, then, in plain
language, those benign influences which produce the spring and the
summer. These, it is said, no man can restrain.
Orion, a very conspicuous constellation with its glittering belt, is
best seen towards the close of autumn, just before the coming in of the
winter. It is a southern and wintry sign and therefore, poetically, the
winter is traced to the bands of Orion, and we are told in the text,
literally, that no man is able to loosen the bonds of frost, or check
the incoming of the cold. In other words, the whole verse asserts that
none can stop the revolutions of the seasons! When God ordains the
spring the shining months come laughing on. And when, again, He calls
for winter, snow and ice must rule the dreary hour.
The farmer is entirely dependent upon the God of Heaven. He may plow
with industry and cast in the good seed with hope, but unless the sweet
influences of Heaven shall be given he can reap no harvest. If the
drought is long and severe, he cannot cause the clouds to drench the
thirsty furrows, or, if the rain descends in torrents, drowning the
pastures, he cannot seal up the bottles of Heaven. He is absolutely
dependent upon God, who governs all things according to His will. And
we who know so little of agricultural operations–being so far removed
from the country which God has made and living in the town which man
has made–we, also, are as much dependent as any–for even the king is
nourished by the fruit of the field! And follow what merchandise we
will, ultimately it is still from the fields that our nourishment must
come.
All of us, then, and not us alone, but all the beasts and birds, and
all the creatures are entirely and absolutely dependent upon God, and
unless He helps them, they cannot help themselves. This is the simple
teaching of the verse, but it was doubtless used to teach Job that as
he could not alter the ordinances of Heaven, so neither could he change
the purposes of God in the events of Providence. You cannot hasten the
spring nor postpone the winter! Neither can you prevent those
calamities which plunge nations in distress, nor prohibit those mercies
which lift up tribes into prosperity. Evil comes to the sons of men by
God's purpose, and good comes also. Neither is it in your power, O son
of man, with all your discretion and skill, with all your economy and
industry to avert the evil which God appoints!
The scythe of the dread mower cannot be arrested by wisdom–the
inevitable hour comes to all. Need and sickness, and bereavement invade
us at the Lord's bidding, and although we may greatly mitigate their
rigor, yet we cannot avert them, for the ordinances of God must surely
come to pass. Whatever is written in the folded book of the Divine
decree must, in due season, be fulfilled in the history of man. If you
cannot alter, then bow yourself and submit! If you cannot change the
purpose, then yield to it and ask to have it sanctified to you! O Job,
if your cattle must be taken away, if your children must die, if sore
boils must break out upon your body, if you must sit upon the dunghill,
if you have no power to alter a single circumstance–then accept the
affliction at the hand of the Infinite One! Humbly kiss the hand that
smites, and say, "It is the Lord. Let Him do what seems good to Him."
The doctrine of a Divine Providence is calculated to create in the
minds of the thoughtful and believing, the spirit of resignation. They
might, perhaps, rebel and struggle, if this were of some use, but since
it would be utterly useless–since the great wheels of Providence
proceed in their perpetual revolutions, not pausing for our tears nor
hastening for our groans–then it is best for us to admire it as it
revolves, to believe that it is producing good and to submit ourselves
to whatever the Lord appoints.
However, I do not intend using the text in that sense this morning, but
as we are told that no man can restrain the benign influences of the
Pleiades, so, in the first place men cannot utterly prevent the working
of the gracious Spirit. And as men, in the second place, cannot loose
the bands of Orion, so men, of themselves, are not able to overcome
those wintry powers which sometimes seize upon the human heart. These
two things, and then, in the third place, the lessons from them.
I. WHO SHALL BIND THE SWEET INFLUENCES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT? The Holy
Spirit does not always operate in the same degree of power, but when
His time, His set time, to favor Zion is come, then, blessed be God, He
is like the dew upon the grass that waits not for man, neither tarries
for the sons of men. It is not in human or in diabolical power to
restrain the influences of the Holy One of Israel when He deigns to
visit His Church.
Many attempts have been made against the Church of God but they have
all proven failures because the sweet influence of the Holy Spirit has
frustrated all the purposes of the Lord's enemies. The Church of God,
especially in her early days, has been assailed by the envenomed tongue
of slander. All over the Roman empire it was reported that Christians
were men of the most brutalized habits. I dare not mention, for the
cheek of modesty would be crimsoned, what were the charges brought
against Christians of crimes perpetrated in their assemblies. Suffice
it to say that among the rest, as they met together to break bread and
drink wine in memory of their Lord, it was said they were accustomed to
eat the flesh of a man and that they passed round from hand to hand and
drank together out of a cup of warm human blood.
Of course, the populace believing these horrible stories were violently
opposed to the Christian faith. And how did the Christian faith
overcome the popular opposition stimulated by such calumny as this?
Simply by the power of the Holy Spirit! The sweet influences of the
Holy Spirit which descended upon the disciples at Pentecost remained
with them, so that when they preached they preached with the Holy
Spirit sent down from Heaven! When in their private assemblies they
spoke of Jesus, they spoke in the power with which they had been
endowed at Jerusalem and calumny was of no more avail than chaff
contending with the whirlwind, or stubble warring against the fire!
In fact, these very calumnies brought men out of curiosity to behold
these atrocious sinners in their orgies of vice, and coming, they
listened to the gracious words which proceeded out of their mouths,
and, in the power of the Holy Spirit they believed and became
Christians, too! Beloved, this stands good today. Many a Christian has
to endure slander, and of the most cruel kind, too. To a sensitive
heart, perhaps, slander is a more severe trial than even the whip or
the rack. And yet, glory be to God, if our names are cast out as evil,
they cannot deprive us of the comfort of the Holy One of Israel!
Often, when we are worst spoken of by the world, we are best beloved of
our God. The Lord has a way of taking up His people when they are
despised and rejected of men, and manifesting His love to them after an
unusual sort, so that if the cup might have been dashed with bitters,
God pours in so much of the honey of His own precious love the bitter
is forgotten, and the calumny is swallowed up in the communion. Happy
are you, Beloved, when they say all manner of evil against you for
Christ's name's sake, for you can reply to your accusers, "Can you bind
up the sweet influence of the Holy Spirit? Can you stop from my soul
the Divine and overflowing consolations which proceed from the Pleiades
of promise when they shine full upon my soul?"
If calumny does not do, the world has always been ready with coarser
weapons–she resorts to open persecution. But, Beloved, all the
persecutions which have ever assaulted the Church have never been able
to stop the sweet influence of the Pleiades–I mean to quench the work
of the Spirit and deprive the Church of God of her true comfort. When
it has been her springtime, all the blood which could be shed could not
thrust her back again into her dreary winter. Her flowers bloomed, her
buds began to shoot forth and her fruits adorned her branches to the
glory of our God! Behold Paul and Silas in the dungeon of Philippi!
Their persecutors have scourged them. They have laid them in the
stocks. They have thrust them into the noisome filth of the innermost
prison–but the sweet influences of the Pleiades are felt and they
begin to sing in the dead of night until the prisoners hear them!
Behold the influence of these same Pleiades in every place where the
Apostles went! They were followed by their Jewish persecutors and they
were molested by the Gentile mobs–but their preaching drew to the
Cross of Christ a company whose hearts the Lord had touched and He
added unto the Church, daily, of such as should be saved. After the
Apostolic days, often in the midst of the amphitheater, when the nobles
and the matrons of Rome and the Plebs–in all their ranks were gathered
together and a few defenseless men and women were given up to bears and
wolves and lions in the midst of the arena–how the sweet influence of
the Pleiades fell on them! How they sung their Psalms as the lions
rushed from their dens, or folded their arms in peace, praising the
Lord that He thought them worthy to be partakers of His sufferings!
So was it on the snowy Alps! So was it in the valleys of Piedmont! So
was it among the suffering Huguenots of France! So was it among our
martyred fathers! Smithfield felt the influence of the Pleiades full
often when her flames became as chariots in which the saints mounted to
their thrones! In the glens of Scotland, among her lone hills and
shaggy woods, when such men as Cargill and Cameron opened the Bible and
read the text by a flash of lightning and then preached of the
royalties of King Jesus–in those covenanting days the sweet influence
of the Pleiades were, perhaps, more felt than in these softer hours
when men learn to sleep under the ministry of the Truth–and too many
of them are ready to cancel their principles and give up their hopes if
but a little gain should cross their path.
Persecution, what have you done? March before us, you cruel ranks of
persecutors, each with the Hell-brand on your brow! You sons of Cain,
you brethren of Korah, you disciples of Balaam–you have never been
able to impede the onward march of the Church of God–no, not so much
as for a single hour! Vain were your arts and villainies, for God from
Heaven fought against you! Nor, dear Brethren, have even the crafty
heresies which at different times have crept into the Church of God
been able to bind the sweet influences of the Holy Spirit.
Oftentimes, the very springtime of the Church has come when to all
outward appearance it appeared that evil had altogether triumphed. When
Popery's power had become consolidated and universal, it was then that
Savonarola, Jerome of Prague, and John Huss were raised up together
with our own John Wickliffe to shake the foundations of the throne of
Antichrist! At the darkest hour of the world's history the light began
to shine! These men, when they had either burnt them alive, or consumed
their corpses–these men it was supposed, would be forgotten and their
influence would perish from off the face of the earth–for, were not
all the doctors on the side of Rome? Were not all the school-men
zealous to maintain her dogmas?
What were these few men that they should be able to stand against the
old, the venerable, the wealthy? But, Brothers and Sisters, the old
error had to give way and the light of the Gospel shone forth! And a
new spring life came to the world, and the time of the singing of birds
and the blooming of the flowers was come, and men called it the
Reformation! Rest assured it will be so today. The craft of Satan and
the wickedness of man have invented forms of mischief so insinuating
that they threaten speedily to envelop our land. We have among us a
form of Popery in which Romanism is divested of its grosser idolatries,
clothed with gorgeous vestments, garnished with attractive pomp and
upheld by the most earnest, and to all appearances, the most pious of
men!
Will this prevail? Will this destroy the Gospel by whose dew the nation
has so long been watered? We have among us at the same hour a
rationalism, sufficiently cautious not to deny too much, stealthily
advancing to its ultimate results, but lingering wisely by the way to
talk of liberality and breadth of thought. This is fascinating to the
last degree to many minds, and is subduing to itself hundreds of the
more thoughtful youths of this country. Between these two millstones
will not Christ's kingdom be crushed? May we not fear that rationalism
and ceremonialism will be like the two hands of Samson to remove the
pillars whereon our house does lean?
Ah, not so! If the Holy Spirit does but descend upon the living
Churches of God and put power into the preaching of the Truth, we may
safely laugh all these to scorn, and say to the greatest of them, "Can
you stand for a single second against the benign power of the adorable
Spirit who is the Guardian of the Truth of God, the Life of the Church,
the Defender of the faith, the Vanquisher of errors, the Defier of
Hell, the Establisher of Truth's empire and the Destroyer of the throne
of falsehood?"
Advancing step by step I would remind you that there is a great
opposition in man himself to the sweet influences of the Holy Spirit.
When the time comes for any one man to be saved, his natural enmity is
sure to be on the alert against the Divine power, and Satan is certain,
also, to strengthen him lest he should lose his victim. Now, I glorify
God in this that you, Sinner, though you may resist and grieve the
Spirit for awhile, yet if He comes to you with Omnipotent power
effectually to save, you must yield, for you, even you, with all your
enmity, cannot bind the sweet influences of the Spirit of eternal life!
It is with many men as I have sometimes seen with a village brook–it
has been dammed up for some reason and the water has become a pool. A
heavy shower has, by-and-by, fallen upon the hills and the full stream
has leaped downward. There stands the dam for a little while, but it
trembles as the stream swells. Perhaps the villagers strengthen it, but
if the rain continues to fall the stream increases in volume, and at
last, with one noble outburst, down leaps the torrent and the dam is
swept away like a bowing wall. So with our evil nature–when the Holy
Spirit comes with greater and greater power, descending from the hills
of God's eternal purposes–He at last sweeps away every remnant of
opposition, and on He sweeps in the greatness of His strength.
"You deny, then," says one, "the free will of man?" Who says that? I
never denied it! On the contrary, I insist upon it more than most men!
There is no opposition between the doctrine of Irresistible Grace and
the fact of the free agency of man. "How," you say, "if man is thus
irresistibly carried as by storm, how can he be free?" Think, Man, and
answer for yourself! Were you never overcome in an argument? Did you
never resist an argument for a time, till at last another reason was
given, and then another and you could not but yield to the overwhelming
arguments? Did you then prove that you had no reason of your own?
No, it proved you had a reason, and therefore could be mastered by
arguments fitted to your reason. If you had been bereft of reason–an
idiot–nobody could have spoken of an irresistible argument so far as
you were concerned. But your powers of understanding enabled you to be
overcome by legitimate force. So with the will–we do not dream, as
some falsely imagine, that physical force is used by the Lord with
men's moral natures! We teach that there are appeals and persuasions,
arguments and forces which are applicable to the will which, without
violating its freedom even in the smallest degree, yet overwhelm it and
subdue it to the right and the true–so that the man, with full
consent, yields up himself to the full power of Divine love!
Do not the hymns of Mr. Wesley often express our meaning when he uses
such words as overcoming and forcing? As in the verse–
"Save the vilest of the race,
Force me to be saved by Grace"?
Such expressions mean just what we mean and no more. We do not mean the
violation of the will, but we do mean this, that where the Holy Spirit
comes, though the man's will may have been obstinate enough before,
when He exerts His wondrous influences, He makes the will to yield
itself at once! The man is made willing in the day of God's power–the
sweet influences of the Pleiades are not bound even by human rebellion!
It is cause for thankfulness, also, that no man can bind the sweet
influence completely after he has been saved. If your experience is at
all like mine, you sometimes get into a very horrible state of mind.
You may feel as if you had no spiritual life at all. You cannot
pray–or, if you pray, you do not enjoy it. You go up to the House of
God and get no comfort. You turn to the Bible and behold no gleams of
light. You get wretched and you sing with Dr. Watts–
"Dear Lord, and shall we always live
At this poor dying rate?"
Well, all of a sudden you have such a visitation–you have not had such
a time for months. It may be under a sermon, or, perhaps, at the Lord's
Table or even in the midst of your business! Before you are aware your
soul is made like the chariots of Amminadab–you feel so rejoicing–it
is not bodily excitement, it is spiritual life filled with vigor!
Now you can pray. Now you can pour out your soul in tears. Now you feel
most happy and blessed you wonder how you could have been like a desert
before, for you blossom so much like a garden now. Ah, it is this–the
sweet influences of the Holy Spirit could not be bound even by your
darkness and your death. God determined to visit you, and coming to
you, He overcame every obstacle and made your soul to rejoice with joy
unspeakable! Beloved, it is just so with a Church. I am sure this
Church was in about as bad a plight as we could well suppose for the
sweet influences of the Holy Spirit to work in it. It was a scattered
flock, and divided and brought low–yet, though there were a thousand
discouragements–no sooner did the Holy Spirit visit this Church than
see how it began to multiply and rejoice!
During these years the same influences have blessed us, obstacles have
been overcome, difficulties have been swept away and none have been
able to keep from us the reviving influences of the Holy Spirit! You
have now before you the thought of the freeness of the Spirit of God,
who, like wind, blows as He wishes and is not bound by human might. Let
me only add that although no man can, by his own power, bind or
effectually and finally restrain the power of the Spirit of God, yet
the Lord may withdraw His Spirit either from a Church or from an
individual for a season and so cause sore distress–and prove that
nothing is good or strong without Him.
Be tender, therefore, of the Holy Spirit. O you who know His power,
trifle not with any of His Divine warnings! Be jealous lest you grieve
Him! Follow His faintest monitions, and in all things do Him honor as
your Friend and Guide. He may depart from the sinner who is not
obedient to Him, He may leave altogether, and then such a soul is given
up! From the saint also He may, for a time, be gone, till the good man
repents and humbles himself–and then He will return, like a dove, with
all His peaceful powers, to abide with Him evermore.
II. Now we shall turn to the second half of the text. There is a winter
time both with Churches and with individuals when Orion is in the
ascendant, and then, though we could well wish to do so, WE ARE NOT
ABLE TO LOOSE THE BONDS OF THE FROST. This is sadly true in individual
cases. My dear Brothers and Sisters, I suppose in your endeavors to do
good you have met with persons in despair. There are none who more
thoroughly baffle all the arts of the human comforter than these. You
bring them the Gospel and they see it, but refuse it. If they cannot
help it, they will sometimes get a little light, but only let them have
time enough and they will shut their eyes and get into the dark again.
They bring objections and you answer them so conclusively that you
could almost laugh at them, but they only renounce one set of fears to
raise another. You hunt them out of one hole and you close it so that
they never can get into it again. Alas, they make another! You drive
them forth, again, but they find another retreat. They are most
ingenious in inventing reasons for misery! They are diligent in the
business of tormenting themselves. They are good people–they really
have the fear of God. They are desirous of eternal life–they have it,
even–and yet for all this, are involved in a net in which the more
they struggle the more they are entangled. They are like men in the mud
of the river Nile, who, sinking in it, splash and plunge only to sink
deeper every time.
Have you not felt altogether confused in dealing with them? Have you
not come out of the house and said, "I did think I could comfort
people. I had some sort of conceit that I could have brought forward
precious promises which might have cheered the hopeless, but I am
altogether beaten. I can do nothing." Now you may quote the language of
the Psalm we sang this morning–
"When he shuts up in long despair,
Who can remove the heavy bar?"
Such cases are not at all uncommon. What a happy day it is when God,
having proved to us that we cannot loose the bands of Orion, looses
them Himself and says to the captives, "Go free!" These make the best
of Christians when they obtain liberty! They become among the fairest
of the Divine family when they anoint their faces with the oil of joy!
The terrible experience they have had helps them to sympathize with
others and instructs them in the devices of Satan so that they can
console others. If it sometimes becomes a puzzle how to cheer others, I
am sure it is so with yourself. Whenever I get under the bands of
Orion, I find I cannot loose them from my own hands. There are some
very happy, cheerful spirits who appear to have no winter, but the most
of us occasionally fall into doubts and fears, and spiritual decays
when our liveliness and joy are at a low ebb–
"If anything is felt, 'tis only pain
To find I cannot feel."
We are, in the words of the text, bound with the bands of Orion, frost
bound, ice-bound. The soul which once ran warbling on like a clear
stream is cold and hard as a stone. Its prayers are like icicles, its
emotions like blocks of ice.
Then, Brothers and Sisters, you may try and make the effort, as you
ought to do, to loosen yourself from these bands, but you are
powerless. Then is that text learned experimentally, "Without Me you
can do nothing." Oh then we feel that we are less than nothing and
vanity, while merciless Orion hangs fetters on our soul and hunts our
joys to death! Blessed be God, the warmth of love returns before long
and the Pleiades shine again, and then we, "Rejoice with joy
unspeakable, and full of glory."
Now, Brethren, this same Truth is carried out in our works of faith in
connection with each soul. You are going into your classes this
afternoon and I would be far from dispiriting you, but I would have you
remember that if you attempt to convert a soul yourself, you had better
first answer the question of our text, "Can you loose the bands of
Orion?" It were easier for you to turn winter into summer than to turn
a child of wrath into an heir of Divine Grace. You have a task before
you which is utterly impossible to human strength!
Conversion is no more in your power than creation. Regeneration lies
not with you, but men are begotten again by the great Father of Spirits
unto a lively hope. Bow before the power of God and feel at this moment
your own utter powerlessness in the work to which He has called you. To
turn an understanding from darkness to light, to make the stubborn will
supple, to break the iron sinew of pride and make the neck to bow with
cheerful obedience–this belongs not unto you, but unto the eternal
Spirit who is Omnipotent in the world of mind. Think of this and go in
His strength–not in your own.
Brethren, if it is so with individuals, it is in proportion equally so
with entire congregations. We have, under God, as His servants, to save
a perishing world. We are sent out as laborers in Christ's vineyard to
be the means of reclaiming the wild wastes to the husbandry of Christ.
And what a task is ours! How impossible! We had better first attempt to
loose the bands of Orion before we shall be able, unaided of God, to
loose the bands of wickedness and say to the oppressed, "Go free!" The
missionary enterprise, apart from supernatural influences, is the most
insane that ever crossed the mind of man!
Yes, I will venture to say that the work of preaching the Gospel, even
in Christian England, is of all attempts the most foolish unless we
believe in the celestial power which alone can make preaching to be of
any avail. Withdraw the Spirit–withdraw our belief in His power–and
our teachings become the subjects of deserved ridicule! It is even so
in our attempts to revive a slumbering Church. I discern a sleeping
Church pretty readily. When I am preaching in any place I can soon tell
what kind of people I am preaching to by their looks. There is a fire
that flashes where there is life. Truth draws forth a responsive
glance–good men's bosoms heave while Christ is preached!
But in some places hearers are stolid, cold, dead–you might almost as
well preach to the green hillocks that surround the Church as preach to
them. They stir not, they move not, neither can they be moved. Now, at
such times it is very dispiriting unless one can fall back upon the
belief that the Holy Spirit can, if He wills, on a sudden quicken the
most dead of all professing Churches and make His people again to live!
And like the dry bones of Ezekiel's vision, they shall stand upon their
feet an exceedingly great army, ready to fight the battle of their
Master! Can you loose the bands of Orion? Christian, feel your
powerlessness! Behold, what must be done, and yet how you can do less
than nothing in it!
III. Stand here and hear the voice of God which now speaks to you–that
voice I will try to expound in the third part of the subject which
consists of THE LESSONS DRAWN FROM THIS GREAT TRUTH, that we can
neither restrain nor yet command the influences of the Holy Spirit. On
the very surface lies the lesson of humility. I trust, Brethren, I have
no need to say this, for the doctrine before us must have already had
an effect upon your minds–while you have been thinking of the power of
God, and of your own insignificance–you must have felt bowed down and
humbled.
It is always dangerous to be useful. It is to be desired above silver,
and coveted above fine gold, and yet, when obtained, it has its measure
of dangers, for Satan will whisper, even if natural pride does not,
"What an excellent man you must be! What qualifications there must be
in you! What glory God gets out of you!" "See," says the devil,
"hundreds saved under you! Believers comforted under you!" And then the
foul thought, the wicked thought seeks to build its nest right under
the eaves of God's own temple in the heart, "You are something after
all."
But, Brethren, we need to be brought back to this–"You can do nothing
out of Christ. You are, apart from Him, a withered bough to be gathered
and cast into the fire." Yes, you preacher–powerful, useful, honored
of God–nothing but a withered bough apart from Christ! Yes, you goodly
woman, you godly, earnest man engaged in the Sunday school or in the
Bible-class–all speak well of you and yet you art a cloud without
rain, and a well without water–unless you have a vital union with
Christ! As well might a child uproot an Alp as you attempt to win a
soul apart from Christ! As well an infant creep from the cradle and
pluck the sun from its place, and hurl the moon into the deep as you be
able to deliver a soul from going down into the pit! Oh, this thought,
Brothers and Sisters! I feel as if I should not speak of it for it
prostrates me before God and makes me ask Him never to leave me to
myself to think myself something lest He be angry with me, and use me
no more!
Should not the next thought which comes into the mind be that of
gratitude and adoration to God? If we cannot command the Holy Spirit's
power, yet He can. What if Orion's bands cannot be loosed by us–they
can be loosed by Him! There is no despairing soul that cannot find
comfort when He visits it. "Yes, He makes the barren woman to keep
house, and to be a joyful mother of children." "He raises up the poor
out of the dust, and lifts the needy out of the dunghill, that He may
set him with princes, even with the princes of His people." "The people
that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the
land of the shadow of death, upon them has the light shined." He opens
the blind eyes, and brings "out the prisoners from the prison, and them
that sit in darkness out of the prison house."
Glory be to His name! Where the human arm fails to work results, the
Divine arm, with ease, achieves its purpose. And with us here, within
our hearts, these gardens so frostbitten can be visited by Him. And if
the Well-Beloved comes, the summer comes with all its pleasant fruits!
If Jesus will but walk into this garden and open the doors of our
hearts and enter in, then there will be a paradise where there was
before a wilderness! Blessed be the Lord, we cannot have sunk so low
but He can lift us up! We cannot be so barren and so comfortless but
what He can make us fruitful and give us joy and peace again.
There is no Church which He cannot revive! Are you members of
congregations which are slumbering? Do not despair! You will go home
after the day's service, and say, "I wish I could do some good here,
but I am only one." No, dear Brother, you cannot loose the bands of
Orion, but God can! The great Head of His Church can suddenly come into
His temple and fill it with His glory. He can rake together the almost
expiring ashes and kindle the fire anew, and bring the sacrifice and
make your Church yet to be a temple to His praise! Glorify the name of
God, the All-Powerful One! never let despair cross your soul. While He
lives, who made Heaven and earth. While He works, who bears up the
pillars of the universe. While He loves, who once gave up His Son to
redeem us–there can be no cause for trembling! Zion shall be
comforted! Her days of gladness shall dawn! Her winter of sorrow shall
flee away! God is on her side and Orion relaxes his bonds.
There is another lesson, however, which I must not fail to bring before
you in a word or two, namely this–behold the path and walk of Faith!
She cannot walk in human power. She has quick eyes and she perceives
mortal might to be a mere pretense, but she walks in the power of the
Unseen One. "Can you bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades?" Faith
answers, "I can." If Joshua bound the sun–put chains upon the horns of
the moon–Faith feels that she can do the same. Can you loose the bands
of Orion? "Yes," says Faith, "that I can." If Elijah, after three years
of drought, prayed, and the heavens were covered with clouds and there
was a sound of abundance of rain–and he did this by the prayer of
faith–even so can we do by the power of Him that lives and rules in
the highest heavens!
Faith has the art of getting hold upon the arm of God and then, though
she cannot stir or move in her own strength, yet she moves the arm of
God that moves everything! She touches the motor nerve of Omnipotence
and He acts whose action is conquest, whose work never fails. O
Brothers and Sisters, if we can believe and pray, all things will be
possible to us and we shall hold the Holy Spirit bound in this Church
to remain with us for many and many a year! He will never depart while
His people's cries, and tears, and joyful thanksgivings are like a
golden chain to stop His blessed feet! He will be bound and held by us.
We may do with Him as the spouse did with her Beloved. "I found him,"
says she, "and I would not let him go." O Beloved members of this
Church, make it a resolution that the Holy Spirit shall not go from us!
That we will, with diligent service and unceasing prayer, and constant
gratitude stay Him and compel Him, seeing the day is far spent, to
abide with us! One of the best ways to retain the Holy Spirit is to use
what powers we have. Look at our farmers, how busy they have been
during the last two or three weeks while the sun was shining, to gather
in their hay! We must use every gleam of heavenly sunshine for Jesus'
sake! It does not always come, but when a Church is favored with it,
let it use it to the utmost of its power, for God will not continue to
give while we do not appreciate and prove our appreciation by making
the full use of it.
Yes, prayer and faith can hold the Spirit! Prayer and faith can also
loose the bonds of Orion. We will have sinners saved, we will have
Churches revived, we will have London yet warmed with the life of God!
Not because we can do it, but because we will give Him no rest until He
comes forth from His secret dwelling place and makes the power and life
of His Truth to be known from the ends of the earth!
The drift of the sermon is to cut you off from yourselves and throw you
flat on your faces before God. Sinner, you cannot save yourself! You
cannot bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades! You cannot take away
from yourself those bands of Orion! But Jehovah can, and in simple
faith in Him who offers His blood before the Throne, come to your
Father and ask Him to do these things for you and they shall be done!
And you shall glorify His name! May the blessing of God descend upon
these words, for Jesus' sake. Amen.
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The Minstrelsy of Hope
A Sermon