Gray Hairs
A Sermon
(No. 830)
Delivered on Lord's Day Morning, September 13, 1868, by
C. H. SPURGEON,
at the [40]Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
"Gray hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knows not." Hosea
7:9.
THE Prophet here testified that the kingdom of Israel had learned the
way of the surrounding heathen, and had polluted itself with their
vices, and consequently the strength of the kingdom had decayed. He
declares that he could discern signs of this decay–signs as manifest
and certain as gray hairs which mark the decline of life–yet the
inhabitants of the realm of Israel had not observed their decline, but
had boasted of their strength when all the while it was departing from
them. We need not go into any particulars as to that little kingdom
which after awhile was swept away by Assyria, but there is no doubt
that what happened unto them happens unto many a nation–it may happen
unto our own! Before we are aware of it the scepter may depart from
Britain. A general laxity of commercial morality may, by degrees, sap
and undermine the foundation of our commerce and before we are aware,
our industry may be crippled, our trade withdrawn and our position
among the nations debased. If so, we shall fall by our sins, and by our
sins alone.
Certainly such has often been the case with churches. It was
notoriously so with that presided over by the bishop of Rome. The sins
of that modern Babylon came not all at once, but by slow degrees.
First, it submitted itself to one vain dogma of man's invention. Then
to a superstitious decree of a haughty council. Then to a third
invention of a potent pontiff–and so by degrees the church apostatized
until it ceased to be a church and became the persecutor of the saints!
Thus after their own fashion has it been with some of our churches at
home. Zealous and active, prayerful and united, they grew every day
like cedars which the Lord has planted and they were a blessing to the
neighborhood in which they stood. But discord crept in, or worldliness,
or pride–and by-and-by the Holy Spirit departed–the ministry became
barren, the people looked up to the shepherd and they were not fed.
Soon the church was scattered abroad, the light was blown out and the
place that once was blessed by the Church knew it no more. May this
never be written in the history of this church! May gray hairs never
come upon its head at all, or if they should come may we have Divine
Grace to perceive them at once, and resort unto the Holy Spirit for
strength so that we may be saved from driveling into imbecility or
apostatizing into error!
But I shall not discourse of nations this morning, nor yet of churches.
To handle such extensive themes might rather interest than edify. I
shall now speak of individuals. Brothers and Sisters, let us turn our
thoughts to ourselves. It is an excellent rule for the hearer as well
as the minister concerning a text, to apply himself to the text, and
then, secondly, to apply the text to himself. Keep your thoughts to the
text, and then when you have drawn out its meaning, let all that it has
to say be spoken in your own ears as addressed personally to you. I
pray that God the Holy Spirit may stir us up to self-examination–that
if any strange sin or evil passion may have devoured our strength–at
any rate we may know it and drive out the traitor at once!
First, this morning, I shall endeavor to explain the reason for the
ignorance mentioned in the text, "yet he knows not." Secondly, I shall
hold up the glass, that every Ephraim here may see his gray hairs. And
then, thirdly, I shall recommend remedies for this gradual decay.
I. Let me EXPLAIN THE IGNORANCE here mentioned, or show how it is that
many a man is backsliding and declining in Divine Grace and yet knows
it not. I take it that this often is caused by a lack of acquaintance
with one's own soul. It is said that in London we do not know our next
door neighbors but it is a stranger thing that we should not know
ourselves–that the soul should be so closely allied to the body as to
be even married to it–and yet man scarcely gives his nobler part a
thought–but lives as if he were a horse or a cow!
You have never seen your soul, and yet it is yourself! How is it you
have lived so long, O man, without giving to your immortal spirit some
consideration, some hours of thought, some studious moments? And you, O
Christian, how is it that you, saved as you profess to be by a price
immense–you who have received quickening from the Holy Spirit–that
you think so little of soul affairs? We open our eyes in the morning,
and right on until we close them at night we scarcely look for anything
but that which is external and of the body. Would it not be well if we
could open our spiritual eyes, too, and gaze into ourselves and
understand what business is going on in the world of souls–what vice
increases or what virtue declines within our hearts?
I am afraid we give our thoughts so much to this world that the next
world is neglected. If there is but a scratch on the hand, if there is
but a pimple on the flesh, timid folks must need send for the surgeon!
But ah, they can let the souls be wounded and a deadly gangrene come
upon them–and they send not unto the Beloved Physician that He would
come and heal them of their diseases. Everywhere we see among men a
great lack of acquaintance with their souls, a great forgetfulness of
the motto of the old Delphic oracle, "Man, know yourself!" And
consequently it is that men decline almost unto spiritual death and yet
scarcely know it!
Some there are, again, who do not want to know any evil thing of
themselves. They had rather suppose themselves to be rich than actually
know the true condition. "No," they say, "bring not the day-book! Show
me not the ledger! I am spending now as if I were a wealthy man and
living at a lavish rate. I do not want to know that I am nearly a
bankrupt– I had rather not perceive it." Hear how these wounded ones
dread to be dealt with honestly, and therefore cry, "Surgeon, film over
the sore–it shall be enough for me–I want not the knife! I care not
to have my wound radically healed." Fools are they who talk thus, and
yet how such fools abound!
My Hearer, are you one of this tribe? Are you content to have a fair
name to live? Are you satisfied to dream that you are rich and
increased in goods and in need of nothing, while you are in reality
naked, and poor, and miserable? If so, the Lord have mercy upon you and
make you enough your own friend to be willing to know the truth of your
state! Many see not the gray hairs because they do not took into the
glass to see them. We cannot very well perceive gray hairs without the
use of the mirror, or our sins without the glass of the Word of God.
Many professors search not the Scriptures. They will never win the
blessing of the first Psalm, for they are not day and night found
reading God's Word. They do not come unto this Book, which is God's
looking glass which He hangs up in the chambers of His people that they
may see the natural face, and perceive what manner of men they are. Oh,
these unread Bibles! These neglected Bibles–how they cry out against
us! What swift witnesses will they be against many professors in the
last heart-searching day! What? Does God give us a gauge by which we
may measure ourselves, and will we not use it? Does He send us these
detectors and tell-tales by which we may discover whether all is well
with us or not, and will we close our eyes and refuse to see? Oh, then,
if we die and utterly perish, surely our blood must be upon our own
head! He that will not be saved must be damned! He that will not take
the trouble to look into the glass shall have no one to blame if the
undiscovered evil brings him into grievous ill and irretrievable
mischief!
There are some, again, who look into the glass to see whether there are
gray hairs coming, but they use a false mirror, one which does not
truly reflect the image. I mean this–that multitudes of Christians use
a standard, other than Holy Scripture, of what a Christian ought to be!
They compare themselves among themselves, and they are not wise. They
say, "I am as holy, I am as unworldly, I am as conscientious, I am as
prayerful as So-and-So." Perhaps they even boast that they have more
spirituality of mind than such a one–and being content to have
excelled their fellow creatures they cannot conceive that there can be
gray hairs upon themselves–and so their pride is flattered and their
soul is thus cankered through and through by a false conception of what
they should be.
It is well for us, Beloved, all of us, to aim high. It is said that he
who shoots at the moon, if he does not hit it, will at any rate shoot
higher than he who aims at a bush. And so he that aims at absolute
perfection, if he should not attain it, may, at any rate, be something
better than he who takes some poor imperfect friend of his and makes
him to be a standard. Break your false mirrors! Throw away your
flattering looking glasses and take to the clear crystal of the Word of
God! There see what Jesus was, and ask yourselves how near, or rather
how far, you are from being like He! Look at the Son of God, the image
of perfection, and hear Him say, "Be you perfect, even as your Father
which is in Heaven is perfect," and blush as you see your deformities,
your sins, your gray hairs! And so blushing, may God bless you!
I am ashamed to have to say one more thing, namely, that some men who
are decaying in strength do not see their spiritual gray hairs because
they dye themselves so thoroughly. I mean that they color themselves
with hypocrisy. There are men who, if every hair were gray, would still
wear raven locks in their own judgment–and the judgment of others–for
they are masters of deceit. There are some who, if we speak of private
prayer, retire into their closets as regularly as others–but yet they
never draw near to God in spirit and in truth. How many there are who
are as apparently devout in the externals of religion as if they were
the children of God–while all the while they are formalists, and
Pharisees without the root of the matter in them?
It is the easiest thing in all the world to counterfeit the issues of
the mint of Heaven! Yes, and to pass the spurious coin among your
fellow creatures and to make them think that you are far richer than
they in gracious things, while all the while your virtue is counterfeit
and your profession a lie! O my Hearers, take care of putting formal
prayer, sham holiness and imitation godliness into the place of the
real fruits of the Spirit! You must be not merely washed and cleansed,
but "born again!" You must undergo a radical change and you must serve
the living God in the power of His Eternal Spirit–not with the tongue
and with profession only, but with heart, and soul, and strength–or
else your religion will be nothing but a funeral pall to cover your
dead soul and help to increase the pomp with which you shall be carried
to Hell.
God save us from hiding from ourselves our secret faults. Let us be
willing to be spoken to by the rough preacher's stern voice! Let us be
greedy to read those passages of Scripture which try us most! Let it be
our prayer, "Search me, O God, and try my heart." Daily and hourly let
us desire to feel the refining fire go through our soul. Come with the
fan in Your hand, O Savior, and thoroughly purge my floor and let my
chaff be driven away! And let nothing but the pure wheat remain!
Thus I have, as briefly as I could, shown you why it is that many,
perhaps of ourselves, may have well-marked decay in our souls and yet
we may not know it.
II. Secondly, I am to HOLD UP THE LOOKING GLASS. Remember, Brethren,
that decays in Divine Grace and backsliding are usually very much like
the fall of the autumn leaves. You are watching the trees, for now they
are beginning to indicate the coming fall. They evidently know that
their verdant robes are to be stripped from them for they are casting
off their first loose vestments. How slowly the time of the brown leaf
comes on! You notice here and there a tinge of the copper hue, and soon
the gold leaf or the bronze is apparent. Week after week you observe
that the general fall of the leaves is drawing nearer, but it is a
matter that creeps slowly on.
And so with backsliders. They are not put out of the visible Church all
at once. They do not become open offenders all at once. The heart, by
slow degrees, turns aside from the living God and then, at last, comes
the outward sin and the outward shame. God save us from falling by
little and little! The devil's little strokes have felled many great
oaks. Constant droppings of temptation have worn away many stones. God
save us from it!
Some cities have been carried by storm. Brave soldiers have made the
irons of the scaling ladder bite on the top of the wall, and up they
have swarmed in defiance of death and carried the city by sudden force
within a few hours. But many other cities have been taken by the slow
process of the siege–the supplies have been cut off, warriors have
been slain at the sally-ports, slowly. Entrenchments have been thrown
up nearer and nearer to the wall. Mines have been dug under the
bastions. Forts have been weakened, gates have been shaken–and at last
the city has been subdued.
Where Satan captures one man by force of strong temptation, he captures
ten by the gradual process of sapping and undermining the principles
which should rule within. May God preserve us from this! The cunning
fowler can adapt his arts to suit our case, and if some of us may be
taken by a sudden surprise, he understands how to draw the bow and
bring us down. But if others are to be entrapped by being accustomed to
the lure, he will occupy weeks, and months, and years, for he counts no
time lost so that he may bring a child of God to shame, and bring
disgrace to the name of Jesus!
I will, then, hold up the glass to let those see their own hearts, in
whom the evil is insinuating itself by degrees. One of the gray hairs
which marks decay is a lack of holy grief for daily sin. Comes not this
close to home for some of you? "Repentance? Why," says one, "I repented
when I was converted." What, and not since then? Why, repentance and
faith go hand in hand to Heaven! A Christian must never leave off
repenting for I fear he never leaves off sinning. Where there is none
of the dew of repentance, there is one sign of a curse.
Gilboa's mountain was barren because on it there was no dew, and what
shall I say of you who have lost the dew of repentance? What? Can you
grieve your God and not grieve yourselves? What, Sirs? Can you go into
your business and know that you have spoken and acted amiss, and when
you come home at night are there no lamenting and confession? Have sin
and you grown so friendly that you can carry this viper in your bosom?
Your God is a jealous God! And if He sees that you treat sin so
lightly, rest assured He will make you smart before long and withdraw
His Holy Spirit from you–and leave you to grope in darkness. There is
perhaps not a more common gray hair than this, and yet there is not one
which more surely indicates that the constitution of the Christian is
being secretly undermined. If you see this evil in the looking glass,
God give you Grace to repent over your lack of repentance, and to weep
that you do not weep for sin!
A second gray hair is the absence of lamentation in the soul when Jesus
Christ is dishonored by others. Time was with some of us when, if we
saw others sin, we could sit down and cry our heart out at our eyes–we
could not bear the thought that thousands of our fellow creatures
should be living in continual neglect of our precious Lord Jesus! We
thought we could lay down our lives, or a hundred lives if we had them,
if we might but make Him a throne in men's hearts and write His name on
the very skies so that everyone that ran might read it!
But now we hear of sin and it does not fill us with holy horror as it
once did. Perhaps, dear Hearer, you can hear the precious name of Jesus
dishonored and yet your soul is not pierced through and through as with
a dart. Ah, if you loved the Master it would be a painful thing to live
in such a wicked world as this! If you loved the sweet Lord Jesus your
heart would yearn over those who see not His beauty, and to whom He is
as "a root out of a dry ground." Shame on us! Shame most of all on
myself that I can walk through these streets of London without tears!
Jesus saw Jerusalem and wept, but what was Jerusalem? A petty village
compared with London! And yet He wept over it! Have we no tears for a
city with equal light, and with equal sin, and with a population
multiplied so many times?–
"Did Christ over sinners weep,
And can our cheeks be dry?"
Yes, they are dry–dry from year in to year out–and scarcely a sigh or
cry for poor dying souls is heard from some of us! We can be satisfied
to have our friends saved, and our children and a few neighbors
saved–but as for the rest we talk as if they were delivered over to
ruin by God's decree–and we satisfy ourselves with vain drivel about
sovereignty, or some other idle conjecture! And we do not mourn or
lament, though Hell is filling and Christ's name is blasphemed, and the
Lord's Day disregarded and I know not what of infamy committed beneath
the light of the moon! It is a sure sign that our Divine Grace is not
at flood tide, but sadly at the ebb, when there is no grieving over the
sins of others.
A third gray hair in the Christian, a very plain one, and marking that
the disease is gone far, is the indulgence of certain minor sins. I
call them minor only because they are supposed to be so. When a thief
finds that he cannot enter the door of a good man's house and that the
windows are so barred up that there is no entrance for him, what does
he do, but, finding that there is a little window through which a child
might creep, he fetches a boy and passes him through the narrow
opening. And then the child opens the door to the man, and the house is
plundered.
Even so, when Satan cannot overthrow a Believer with the gross sins of
the flesh, he is certain to find some lesser evil which he introduces
through an unguarded place–and then the lesser sin opens the door for
the next. You know the process of the wedge. Try to put the blunt end
of the wedge into the timber and how useless it would be! But put in
the thin edge first–give it but a gentle stroke with the hammer and
then again, and again, and again–and see how it cleaves its way,
widening little by little.
So some professors begin with a little conformity to the world. "Oh!"
they say, "I cannot see the harm of it," though others of their fellow
Christians are grieved. Then they come to the next, and the next, and
the next–and so by slow degrees they give up virtually all the
truthfulness of their profession and make shipwreck of faith and are
castaways– because the Grace of God was not truly in them, but only
notionally so. While others who go a certain distance in the road to
apostasy are met by Divine Grace and turned back–not without many
broken bones and much sore lamentation all the after days of their
life.
Covetousness, which few men will confess, is yet a very common gray
hair upon the heads of professors. Beware of a growing covetousness,
for covetousness is, of all sins, one of the most insidious. It is like
the silting up of a river. As the river comes down from the land it
brings with it sand and earth and it deposits all these at its mouth.
And by degrees, unless the conservators watch it carefully, it will
block itself up and it will be difficult to find a channel for ships of
great tonnage. You cannot see when the river closes its own mouth, but
so it is–by daily deposit it creates a bar which is dangerous to
navigation.
Many a man, when he begins to accumulate wealth, begins, also, to ruin
his soul–and the more he deposits the more he stops up his liberal
spirit, which is, so to speak, the very mouth of his life. Instead of
doing more for God, he does less. The more he saves the more he needs,
and the more he needs of this world the less he craves for the world to
come. This disease creeps upon men as slowly as certain disorders which
slumber in the blood for months until they find occasion to develop
themselves. Watch against a grasping spirit, dear Friends. If you find
money sticks to your hands, mind what you are doing! It is all well
enough for you to seek to make all you can rightly–you are bound to do
so, and to use it properly–but when the gold begins to cleave to you,
it will eat as does a canker–and will soon prove your ruin unless God
prevents it.
With some it is not quite so much what we call covetousness, though it
is the same sin, as it is worldliness. They are as much taken up with
the little they have as some would be with their much–and as much
drawn away from God by their losses as others would be by their gains.
They are, from morning to night, always fretting and worrying about the
things of this life. Our Lord's great text, "Be careful for nothing,"
they have never understood. The first, last, and middle thoughts of
their life are, "What shall we eat, what shall we drink, and how shall
we be clothed?" They rise up early and sit up late–they eat the bread
of carefulness, but forget the Lord who alone can build the house. Do
not some of you find yourselves falling into this fretful way?
There was a time when it was not so. Oh, that hour of prayer–how you
enjoyed it, but you clip it very short, now! You say you cannot afford
the time. Ah, that Thursday night lecture, that evening Prayer
Meeting–how sweet those used to be! How you went home thanking God
that there were such wells in the desert! But you cannot come out to
them now–you are to pestered with cares–and even on the Sabbath your
business intrudes itself into your thoughts! You have been making
calculations in the pew this morning! You have been worrying yourself
about interest and discount, and mortgage and commission. The
stockbroker's din and the rate collector's knock have sounded in your
ears!
The fact is, my Friend, you are growing worldly. Take a bright knife
from your table and dig with it into the earth in your garden–and
leave it there–see how it will rust. This is what will become of your
soul–put it into the earth, and keep it there–it must corrode. A man
can do as much business as the wealthiest merchant in the world, and if
he lives near to God it will not hurt him! But a man can do a tin-pot
business, as they say, and yet for all that, because he puts his soul
into it, cares about it, worries over it, and departs from the living
God–it will consume the graciousness of his soul and take away all the
sharpness of his Christian zeal and all the brightness of the holy
communion which he once had with his God. Beware of that gray hair! O
my beloved Brothers and Sisters, I have held the glass up! You can see
the evil! Avoid it for the Lord's sake and your own!
In some professors the gray hair of envy is very visible–yes, in some
of the best, too. Some of God's servants are not satisfied to serve God
in their own way, but they must make it their aim to excel some other
Brother, and if that Brother should happen to be more successful, or to
be thought to be so, straightaway they feel aggrieved and are apt to
try and pick a hole in his coat, or pull a feather from his cap lest he
should outshine them. This is the sin of some of the hardest workers in
Christian Churches!
I wish we could all get the spirit of dear Mr. Dodd, the Puritan, who
said, "I wish that I were the worst preacher in all England," by which
he meant, "I wish they were all better than myself." He did not mean
that he would like to he any worse than he was–but he desired that all
his Brothers might be better than himself. We ought to be like the old
Roman, who, when another was elected to an office in preference to
himself, thanked God that his country had better men than himself! So
should we.
But the spirit that was evinced in the days of Luther is often seen
even in our churches–many confessed that Luther had proposed many
excellent reforms–but they could not endure them because they were
proposed, as they said, by a beggarly monk. At this time many would
confess to the notable deed of a zealous Brother, but then they must
find fault because the man is so young, "How shall he be allowed to
outstrip venerable sires?" Or, "He is such a poor man, who is he that
he should be making such a to-do?" Or, "The man has never had an
education, how dare he pretend to be useful?" This is very mean and
despicable, and yet, alas, most common! Let us give no quarter to the
foul spirit of envy. It is a devil with as many lives as a cat, and you
will have to kill it a great many times over to get rid of it–and it
must be slain. It is a gray hair of the most pernicious kind, for it
marks a sad declension of soul from right walking with God.
Another gray hair is pride. When we think ourselves to be something,
then we are nothing. When we boast within ourselves, "I have none of
these gray hairs," we are then snow-white with them. When we conceive
that others might well take a pattern from us, we may soon be beacons
to them. Rocks always lie in the way of the ship of pride. When we
write fine things about ourselves, we shall soon write bitter things
against ourselves. A professor is never lower in the sight of God than
when he is high in his own esteem.
Neglect of prayer, again, is another gray hair. When a town begins to
decay in its commerce, its decline may come by slow degrees–careful
watchers observe it because they perceive that the ships in the harbor
grow fewer and fewer. Our soul is the harbor, and our prayers are the
vessels by which we trade between our souls and Heaven–and when these
prayers begin to be fewer, or are of lighter tonnage–when they make
fewer voyages to the celestial haven, then be sure that our soul's
spiritual trade is under a sad decay.
It is a gray hair, too, when we have no delight in listening to the
Word of God, or reading it. Time was with some of you when you would
cheerfully stand in the aisles with the crowd to listen and were glad,
though you had not a place to lean against, if you might catch a good
Word from the Master. But now it must be a soft cushion so you may sit
easy, and the preacher must mind that he choose out goodly similes and
choice words if he would hold your ear. You are dainty now. When you
were hungry, you could eat Gospel meat from the bone, cut how it might
be! But now it must be daintily carved, or your stomach turns against
it. When the appetite fails, the man's health is wrong and he needs a
tonic, and perhaps the great Physician will before long send him a
bitter draught which will bring him right.
Another gray hair is lack of love to God–when we think hard thoughts
of Him because we are in trouble. When we do not seek His honor. When
we can hear His name blasphemed without a feel of horror. When we do
not, in fact, love Him as a tender child loves a parent. O Beloved, it
is a sweet thing to love God! It is the true life of man, this love of
God in the soul! It is a sweet thing when you can talk with Him, walk
with Him, rejoice in Him, bless Him, praise Him and hold Him to be good
even in the darkest of His dispensations!
But we do not love God as we should. O our dear God, our blessed
Father, our tender Parent, whose truthfulness we have proved 10,000
times, and whose loving kindnesses every day are innumerable–how
little do we praise Him, how often do we complain of Him, how few good
words do we speak to others concerning Him–and how ready are we, at
the very first rebuff from Him, to murmur against Him! May our souls
get to love God better, and this will be a sign that we are in a holy
and happy state.
A lack of love to Believers is another gray hair. They who love not the
Father are not likely to love the children. Many professors seem to be
entirely wrapped up in themselves. Their notion of religion is their
own salvation, and their idea of zeal is simply seeing after their own
prosperity. Brothers and Sisters, see that you love one another!
"Little children, love one another," said John, "for love is of God."
And if you do not love the poor and needy of Christ's Church, and the
feeble and the suffering–yes, if your heart does not go out towards
all in whom there is anything of Christ Jesus–depend upon it, you are
not living so near to God as you should!
Again, lack of love to perishing sinners is a sad gray hair to be
found, I fear, in some of us ministers, as well as in the people–would
God it were not so! Ah, when we can think of the perishing and yet be
not dismayed on their account. When we refuse to speak the Gospel to
them. When we do not warn them. When we never pray for them. When our
closets never witness to our sighs and cries for these poor souls that
will so soon be damned and cast away from all hope. When we can even
think of neighbors, children, friends perishing, and not feel any
brokenness of spirit, nor pour out any lamentations over them–oh then,
indeed, we must have forgotten the compassion of Jesus and our heart
must be terribly diseased!
Look at the gray hair and ask God to deliver you from what it
indicates. One other gray hair is the suspension of communion with God.
We sang of it just now–
"Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I sa w the Lord?
Where is the soul-refreshing view
Of Jesus and His Word?"
How wretched is it to follow Jesus afar off and to be unable to say,
"He brought me into His banqueting house, and His banner over me was
love." When we can no more rejoice with the joy of them that make merry
in His name, nor can weep at His feet–then have we turned aside and
may God in mercy bring us back again!
III. Two or three words shall suffice for the third point, namely, to
recommend to you CERTAIN REMEDIES. I would press it home upon any
professor here who has seen gray hairs in the glass I have held up, to
make an enquiry as to whether he is a child of God or not, for these
things go far to make us doubt whether we ever were born again. And if
this is a question, then all is at stake.
Oh, I pray you make the trial, for it would be better for you to doubt
and fear than to go to Hell blindfolded with carnal security! Young
people, you joined the Church some years ago and you thought then you
felt deep repentance, conviction of sin, and a true faith in Christ.
You have had two or three years to try yourself–how is it with you
now? Is not the world getting the upper hand with you? Does not that
tempting offer of marriage almost persuade you to break the Lord's
command not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers? Do not the
pleasures of the world, which are so congenial to poor evil flesh and
blood–do not they begin to fascinate you?
Then ask yourselves, "Am I built on the rock, or is it a sandy
foundation? Have I received the Grace of God in truth, or am I under
some fond delusion which is lulling my conscience for awhile, and
stupefying my reason? I beg you by the blessed God, by death and by
eternity–make sure work of it–see that you get to Christ and not to a
fancied peace! See that you possess true and living faith in a living
Savior and not a confidence based on mere excitement! I ask you that,
because I believe the answer to that question may very much help you to
get rid of these gray hairs.
Next, I beseech you professors who can honestly feel that you are
converted, to remember what will be the result of decays in Divine
Grace. You cannot always keep those decays inward–even if you could
they would be mischievous. They will lose you the company of Christ!
They will deprive you of the joy of the Lord! They will mar your
prevalence in prayer! They will take away from you much of your
usefulness in outward life–and do you know what it will come to in the
long run, unless Divine Grace prevents? Why, these decays will begin to
tell upon your outward conduct and conversation!
Say not, "I shall never be an open sinner." Little do you know what you
will be! That lip which vows today, "I will never deny Him," may yet
deny Christ with oaths and curses. Who are you that you should be
better than Peter? Do not you start at the thought of it? Then start at
the sight of these gray hairs! Amend, I pray you, and return to God
with grieving and repentance, to think you should already have so much
departed from Him–or else your last end may be worse than the first!
I recommend to every Believer here a daily self-examination. Pythagoras
commanded his disciples three times every night, before they went to
sleep, to go over the errors of the day that they might see them and
avoid them in the future. Repentance is a blessed Grace. Mr. Rowland
Hill used to say it was one of his regrets that he could not take
repentance into Heaven with him. It is so blessed a thing to weep under
a sense of sin, that we may say in the words of our hymn writer–
"Lord, let me weep for nothing but sin,
And after none but You.
And then I would, O that I might,
A constant weeper be."
Look at the great heinousness of the sin of departing from God! See sin
in its true deformity and blackness, and repent of it!
Then with repentance join much supplication, especially supplication
for the power of the Holy Spirit to be shed abroad in you. I do feel,
Brothers and Sisters, as if few of us have ever entered into the power
of religion. We are living in the weakness of it. We live on the
outskirts! We have not pierced into the metropolitan city of intense
vital godliness. We are like those poor Eskimos far away at the poles.
O that we could reach the tropics of true godliness where the sun of
Divine Grace should be vertical all the day long, and its Divine heat
should bring forth in our hearts all the tropical luxuriance of which
renewed nature can be capable! We need to yield sweet fruits for
Christ, delicious flowers and all that human nature can produce when
sanctified by the blessed Spirit! Oh, by supplication, seek to get more
power from on high that you may get rid of these gray hairs!
Brethren, to our supplications let us add renewed faith. Let us go to
Jesus as we went at the first. Living waters from that sacred well we
may draw–waters which shall refresh us still! Let us go with the
penitent's cry, beating on our breast because of our wanderings, and
ask for restoration and a fresh cleansing in the fountain which Jesus
filled! Jesus is not slow to be entreated. He will bind up that which
is broken. He will restore that which has gone astray. And then to this
prayer of faith, let us add a daily watchful activity. Let us guard
ourselves that we slide not down the glassy precipice of declension.
Let us keep our feet with all diligence and cry to the great Keeper who
alone can hold us up and make us safe.
And let us see to it, Brothers and Sisters, that we are not deluded
into the idea that we can get to Heaven safely and yet live at a
distance from God–that so long as we are just saved, it will suffice.
I charge you, Brothers and Sisters, rise! Let your motto be,
"Superior," higher yet! Rise like eagles that God has trained to face
the sun! Rise like angels whose abode is Heaven! Get up! Get up, you
lingerers in the valley! Ascend to clearer atmospheres, to do yet
better service for your God! I long heavily for more Divine Grace to
serve my Master, and more consecration to His service! And I wish the
like for all of you. Let none of us be content to tarry down below in
the marshland of the poor poverty-stricken religion of this present
day–but let us climb the high mountains where the sun of God's Grace
is shining brightest–and stand there enjoying communion with Him,
leaving the world.
So shall gray hairs vanish, and so shall we, like the eagle, renew our
youth. Beloved, there is much that may strike the ungodly in this
sermon as well as the Believer–and I pray God to make it a two-edged
sword to wound and to heal both. "Whoever believes on the Lord Jesus
Christ shall be saved." There is the Gospel! Receive it and live in the
power of it! Amen.
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The Alter
A Sermon