Secondhand

Secondhand

(No. 2624)

INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, MAY 28, 1899.

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING,
FEBRUARY 12, 1882.

"Are you speaking for yourself about this, or did others tell you this
concerning Me?" John 18:34.

I EXPLAINED this morning, [Sermon #1644, Volume 28–" Our Lord's First
Appearance before Plate"] why our Savior put that question to Pilate.
The Roman governor had asked Him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" And
Jesus as good as said to him, "Have you, of your own knowledge, seen
anything in Me that looks like setting up to be a king in opposition to
Caesar? You intend, by asking Me that question, to enquire whether I
have led a rebellion against your government, or the imperial authority
which you represent. Now, has there been anything which you have
observed which would have led you to make this enquiry, or do you only
ask it because of what the Jews have been saying in their enmity
against Me?" You will see, dear Friends, that our Lord asked this
question in order that He might get from Pilate's own lips the
acknowledgment that he had not seen any sign of sedition or rebellion
in Him and that it might be proved that the charge had been brought to
Pilate by those outside, and had not come from the Roman governor
himself.

We will, now, forget Pilate for a while, for I want to use this
question in two ways with reference to ourselves. First, I shall
utilize it as a warning against secondhand quibbles at Christ and His
Gospel Some people have a large stock of them and we might say to each
one of these quibblers, "Are you speaking for yourself about this, or
did others tell you this?" Then, in the second place, I shall use the
text as a warning against all secondhand religion, pressing this
question home upon each one who speaks up for Christ, "Are you speaking
for yourself about this, or did others tell you this?"

I. We will begin with the opponents of the Lord Jesus and consider our
text, first, as A WARNING AGAINST SECONDHAND QUIBBLES AT CHRIST AND HIS
GOSPEL.

There are a great many people in the world who really do not know why
they oppose religion–and if you ask them the reason, they repeat some
old bit of scandal, some stale slander upon Jesus and His Cross–and
they give that as their answer. I firmly believe that there are
thousands, who are ranked among the opposers of the Gospel who have not
anything to say against Christ of their own knowledge, but others have
told them something or other, and they go on repeating and reiterating
the old exploded obsolete objections that have been demolished
thousands of times! And I suppose they and others of their kind will
keep on doing the same thing right to the end of time.

As soon as Jesus Christ's Gospel was launched upon the world's sea, it
had to encounter opposing winds, storms and tempests. Like a scarred
veteran, the Gospel has had battle after battle to fight. In our Lord's
own day it was opposed most vigorously. His Apostles found that
wherever they went, their feet were dogged by those who railed at Jesus
and His Word. And when the Apostles had all fallen asleep, the early
Churches found that they had need of an order of men who became the
apologists for the Gospel and who bravely stood up to defend it against
the attacks of divers heathen philosophers, skeptics and heretics who
arose wherever the Truth of God was preached. There was opposition
everywhere to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ–and His servants
girded up their loins to do battle for Him and for His Truth.

That great campaign has continued even down to this day and there is
this very remarkable fact about it, that, at the present moment, most
of the objections that are brought against the Gospel are those that
were answered and silenced some hundreds of years ago! And even when
they appeared, all those centuries ago, they were then only
reproductions of some older objections which had been answered and, as
the defenders of the faith thought, had been trampled out, like sparks
of fire trodden under foot! But, somehow an ill wind has begun to blow,
again, and the fire, which some hoped was finally extinguished, has
burned up once more. Originality in skepticism has almost ceased to
be–we scarcely ever hear anything fresh in the way of heresy nowadays.
We are troubled with the very errors which our forefathers answered a
hundred years ago, yet the adversaries of the Truth of God go on
cleaning and sharpening their blunted shafts, that they may once more
shoot them at the great shield of faith which is impervious to their
puny assaults, for it can quench even the most fiery darts of the devil
himself! The modern arrows of skepticism will be broken against that
glorious shield, yet they will probably be gathered up by another
generation that will follow the present one and the heretics and
objectors in the future will do just as their fathers did before them.
I want, at this time, to put to any quibbler whom I may be addressing,
the question of our Lord to Pilate, "Are you speaking for yourself
about this, or did others tell you this?"

And, first, I ask you to observe that there are many unreasonable
prejudices. Some persons have great prejudices against the Bible. I
will not repeat what they say, but I would like to ask every person who
thinks ill of this blessed Book, "Have you read the Bible through, and
read it thoroughly? Have you studied it? Are your objections your own?
Come, now, did you make them yourself?" It is almost always found that
objections are like the axe the young Prophet was using–they are
borrowed–and often they are objections against a Book which has not
been read at all, and which has not been allowed to exercise its own
influence upon the heart and the judgment of the person who is
prejudiced against it to his own hurt! Other people have told men,
such-and-such things, so they shut the Book and refuse to look into it
for themselves.

There are other people who are prejudiced against public worship. You
see, I am starting at the very beginning– those matters with regard to
religion which are elementary. Of course, we are told that we shut
ourselves up on Sunday in these dreary buildings of ours, and here we
sit, in a horrible state of misery, listening to the most awful twaddle
that ever was taught, our singing being nothing better than droning and
the whole of our worship being something very terrible! If I were to
read to you the descriptions of an English Sabbath which I have
sometimes seen in newspapers, they might make you almost weep tears of
blood to think that we poor souls should suffer so much as we do! Only
you know that we are altogether unconscious of any such suffering! We
really have been under the notion that we very much enjoyed ourselves
while worshipping the Lord in His House. Many of us have the idea that
the Sabbath is the happiest day in all the week and that, when we hear
the Gospel preached, it is sweeter than music to us and makes our
hearts leap within us for very joy!

Of course we are very much obliged to our friends for telling us how
dull and how unhappy we are and for wishing us to be in a better
condition. We can only say that, not being enabled to perceive any of
these sorrows, we would advise them to retain their pity and exercise
it upon themselves–for they certainly need it far more than we do! To
any of you who make remarks of the kind I have indicated, I ask–"Do
your difficulties concerning public worship really arise out of your
attending the House of God, out of your hearing the Gospel
preached–out of your joining in the songs and praises of God's
people?" Oh, no! It is those people who never come to our services who
believe the Sabbath to be dull, the House of God to be dreary and the
preaching of the Gospel to be a monotonous sound from which every
sensible man would escape! I put the question of my text to every
person who is prejudiced against the Bible, and prejudiced against our
public worship in God's House, "Are you speaking for yourself about
this, or did others tell you this?"

Sometimes, the prejudice concerns the preacher. I will not say that it
is so about myself, though I have had, in my time, more than my fair
share of it. "Hear him?" says one, "I would not go across the road to
listen to such a fellow." Many have said that and the preacher, whoever
he may be, is condemned without a hearing. If the objector were asked
to give a reason for his prejudice, he might answer by quoting the old
lines–

"I do not like you, Dr. Fell. The reason why, I cannot tell, But this I
know, and know full well– I do not like you, Dr. Fell."

I should like to say to everybody who is prejudiced against any servant
of Christ, "Do you say this of yourself?" Those absurd stories about
the preacher–did you really hear them, yourself, or did somebody tell
you them? Would you like to be judged by the mere idle tittle-tattle of
the street or of the newspapers? And if you would not, then be an
honest, reasonable man and at least give the servant of God a hearing
before you condemn him or his message! And, take my word for it, the
most-abused preacher is very likely to be the very man whom God will
bless the most! Not the one who is most praised, but the one who is
most censured by the world, is probably the man who has been most
faithful to his Master and to the Gospel committed to his charge. At
any rate, be honest enough to reply to the question which our Lord put
to Pilate, "Are you speaking for yourself about this, or did others
tell you this?"

There is a remark sometimes made, and I fear it is a very common one,
"Oh, I would not be a Christian, I would not be religious, for it makes
men so dreadfully miserable" Now, Friend, do you say this, yourself, or
did somebody else tell you? Come, now, you say that religion is such a
miserable thing–have you tried it for yourself? Have you experienced
the misery that comes out of prayer–out of faith–out of
repentance–out of love to God–out of being pardoned– out of having a
good hope of Heaven? Have you ever proved what that dreadful misery is?
I think if you had ever really tested these things for yourself, your
verdict would be the very reverse and you would join with us in singing
the lines that express what many of us most firmly believe about this
matter–

"'Tis religion that can give

Sweetest pleasures while we live!

'Tis religion must supply

Solid comfort when we die."

Yet you go on repeating that slander upon religion though you cannot
prove it to be true and might easily learn its falseness! Let me appeal
to you. Had you a godly mother? "Yes," you say, "and it was her life
that prevents my being altogether an unbeliever." I thought so, but, if
I remember her aright, she was a quiet good soul who, in her home,
tried to make everybody happy. And though she had not much pleasure in
her son, for he was wayward and willful, yet there was no unkindness on
her lips–the law of love always ruled the house. She was a weak and
feeble creature who derived but slender gratification from any of the
outward enjoyments of life, but she had a deep, secret spring of peace
and joy which kept her calm, quiet and happy. And now that she has gone
to be with God, she has left a gleam of sunlight still behind in her
sweet memory. You did not get from your mother, nor from other godly
friends, your belief that religion makes men miserable! And I venture
to say that, so far as you have had any actual personal observation of
it, you have been inclined to come to quite the opposite verdict and to
confess that, though you do not know how it is, yet, somehow or other,
godliness does give to the people who possess it, peace of mind,
happiness of heart and usefulness of life.

There is another slander that is spread abroad very widely, and that is
that the Doctrine of the Grace of God–the Doctrine which we try to
preach from this pulpit–has no sanctifying effect. That, on the
contrary, it is likely to lead people into sin. They say that if we
preach, "He that believes on the Son has everlasting life," and do not
preach up good works as the way of salvation, it is clear that such
teaching will lead people into sin! Clear, is it? It is not so to me!
But, my Friend, will you answer this question, "Are you speaking for
yourself about this, or did others tell you this?" Is it not a matter
of history that there never have been stricter living men than the
Puritans? What is the great quarrel against John Calvin, himself, but
that when he ruled in Geneva he was too stern and too exacting in his
requirements? It is an odd thing–is it not–that these Doctrines of
Grace should, on the one hand, make men too strict as a matter of fact,
and yet that the wiseacres who object to them should say that these
doctrines are likely to lead into sin those who accept them? It is not
found to be so by those who believe them!

Let me again appeal to any candid objector. My dear Sir, did you ever
prove what it is to believe in the great love of God to you–that, for
the sake of His dear Son, out of pure, unmerited Grace, He has chosen
you, saved you and appointed you to eternal life? Did you ever believe
that and then feel, as a natural consequence, that you would go and
live in sin? I know that you never did, but that it was quite the
reverse! "Here," said some boys to a companion, "we are going to rob an
orchard. Come along with us, Jack." "No," he said, "my father would not
approve of such a thing." "But your father is very fond of you and
never beats you as our fathers do." "Yes," said the boy, "my father
loves me very much and I love him very much–and that is the reason why
I am not going to rob the orchard and so grieve him." Now, you believe
in the beating of the boys by the rod of the Law, do you not? And we,
on the other hand, feel that because God loves us and will, in His
infinite mercy continue to love us, therefore we must keep out of sin
as much as we possibly can. We cannot do that horrible thing which
would grieve His blessed Spirit. So I ask you, as truthful men, not to
repeat that old slander concerning the Doctrines of Grace leading to
sin until you have really had some reason to assert it because of what
you, yourselves, have witnessed in the lives of Christian people! Do
not say it again until you can truly say it from your own experience or
observation! Do not repeat it simply because others tell you it is so.

Yes, and there are some who say that there is no power in prayer, that
we may pray, if we like, but that we cannot change the purposes of
God–that the laws of nature are fixed and immutable and, therefore, to
pray is a piece of absurdity. "Are you speaking for yourself about
this, or did others tell you this?" I will speak personally to you. Did
you ever try to pray? Did you ever put this matter to the test–whether
God will hear prayer or not? I do not think you can have put it to a
fair test and I would like you to see whether God will or will not hear
even yourprayer if you cry to Him. If any say to me, "God does not hear
prayer," I have scarcely the patience to give them an answer! I live
from day to day crying to God for this or that favor which I receive as
certainly and as constantly as ever my sons had their meals when they
sat at my table! I knew how to give good gifts to my children and I
know that my Heavenly Father gives good gifts to me. My evidence, of
course, is only that of one man–and it may not suffice to convince
others, though many of you, here, could add your testimony to mine–but
I should like all objectors just to give prayer a fair trial before
they are quite so sure about the inefficacy of it. Let them see whether
real prayer, offered in the name of Jesus Christ, will not be heard
even in their case!

I am certain that there is not a praying man anywhere on the face of
the globe who does not bear this testimony– that God hears him. And if
any say, "We do not pray and do not believe that God hears prayer,"
what evidence have you to bring? You are altogether out of court, for
you know nothing about the matter! But the man who does pray and then
says, "God hears me," is the man to be a witness, and the one who has a
right to be heard. I have told you, more than once, what the Irishman
said when there were five witnesses to prove that he had committed
murder. He said to the judge, "You must not condemn me on their
evidence–there are only five people here who saw me do it–I can bring
50 people who did not see me do it!" But that was no evidence at all
and, in like manner, there are many who say, "You bring a certain
number of people who pray, to prove that God hears them. But we can
bring ten times as many, who do not pray, and who do not get heard."
What has that to do with the matter? Where is the evidence? You say it
not of yourself but merely repeat, secondhand, what has been said by
others, so often and so foolishly, that it sickens one to hear it!

It is beginning to be questioned in many quarters, nowadays, whether
there is any real effect produced by prayer, except that of exciting
certain pious emotions in the breasts of those who pray. This is a very
pretty statement! We ought to be extremely obliged to those superior
persons who allow that even so much may be done! I am amazed they do
not assert that prayer is ridiculous, or hypocritical, or immoral!
Their moderation puts us under obligations. And yet I do not know–when
I look again at their admission, I thank them for nothing–for they as
good as call us fools! Do they think that we perform a useless exercise
merely for the sake of exciting pious emotions? We must be grievous
idiots if we can receive benefit from a senseless function! We are not
willing to whistle to the wind for the sake of the exercise. We should
not be content to go on praying to a god who could be proven to be both
deaf and dumb. We have still some little common sense left, despite
what our judicious friends consider to be our fanaticism. We are sure
that we obtain answers to prayer! Of this fact I am certain and I
solemnly declare that I have received of the Lord that which I have
asked at His hands. I am not alone in such testimony, for I am
associated with multitudes of men and women who bear witness to the
same fact and declare that they sought the Lord and He heard them. Take
care, Brothers and Sisters, to record all instances of answered prayer
so as to leave this unbelieving generation without excuse. Accumulate
the facts and demonstrate the grand Truth of God! Multiply the
testimonies till even the philosophers are obliged to admit both the
phenomena and the deduction rightly drawn from them.

There is one other gross slander to which I would reply, and that is a
saying that goes round among troubled consciences–that Christ will not
receive sinners–that the very guilty cannot be saved. They say that
Christ can forgive and deliver up to a certain point, but if you get
beyond that, He is no longer willing to pardon. Dear Hearer, has that
foolish and wicked notion entered your head? Then I ask you, "Are you
speaking for yourself about this?" Did you ever prove it to be true?
Have you ever sought His face? Have you cried to Him for mercy? "Yes,"
you say, "I have." And then, further, have you thrown yourself at His
feet, trusting Him to save you, and have you been refused? I know you
have not! There was never a sinner, yet, who fell down before Him and
determined to lie there and perish if He did not speak a word of mercy,
to whom the Lord has not, sooner or later, spoken the Grace-word which
has sent that poor sinner on his way rejoicing! I would at least like
you to go and see whether Christ will receive you or not before you say
that He will not do so.

Say not that the door of His mercy is shut, but go in while it is still
open! If He casts you out, then He will have broken His word, for He
has said, "Him that comes to Me, I will in no wise cast out." Do not
call Him a liar and say that He will cast you out till you have,
yourself, proved that it is so! And that, I know, will never be the
case. I am afraid that there is another being who has been whispering
that vile insinuation into your ear–and he is your archenemy who is
seeking your destruction and, therefore, he has come and told you this
lie against the infinitely-loving and gracious Savior! Believe him not,
but come even now and put your trust in Jesus and you shall find that
He will give you eternal life!

I have thus examined the question of my text with reference to the
opponents of the Gospel. I shall now leave that part of the subject,
praying the Holy Spirit to bless it to all whom it may concern.

II. Now, in the second place, I am going to speak briefly, but with
much earnestness, to the many here present who are friends of the
Gospel, but who have only a SECONDHAND RELIGION, if they have any at
all. I want to have a word with you, dear Friends, about this matter.
You and I have been talking a great deal about Christ. Now, have we
been simply quoting what others have said? Have we been making extracts
from other people's experience, or is what we have said something that
we can say of ourselves, and not what others have told us?

For, Brothers and Sisters, first, a secondhand testimony for Christ is
a powerless thing. Take a man–as I am afraid is often done–with no
Grace in his heart and send him to Oxford or Cambridge, with the view
of making him a parson. Teach him the sciences, languages, mathematics
and give him a degree. His friends want to get a living for him and the
bishop's chaplain proceeds to examine him. The first question ought to
be, Is this young man a Christian? Is he truly converted? Does he know
the Lord? Does he understand, in his own soul, the things he is going
to preach to others? For, if he does not, what good can he do in the
Christian ministry? Perhaps he is sent to a school of theology to learn
the various systems of doctrine. He must read the judicious Hooker. He
must study Jeremy Taylor. He must take lessons in elocution and
rhetoric. Then, possibly, his friends buy him some lithographed sermons
that he may read and they get him some books, that he may make extracts
from them to put into the sermons he preaches. Suppose that man is, all
the while, unconverted? Suppose that he does not know anything about
the working of the Grace of God in his own soul? What is the good of
him as a teacher of others? No good at all! At any rate, at the best,
he may be only as good as one of those newly invented phonographs which
can repeat what is spoken into them. This man can read out what he has
selected from other books, but that is all. We will suppose that he is
a very decent sort of fellow–an amiable gentleman, well-instructed,
well-behaved and so on–but all that he has to say is what other people
have told him!

But now put into that man's pulpit, only for one Lord's-Day, a preacher
who has known what it is to feel the burden of sin and to have it
removed by faith in Jesus. Let him begin to speak to the people in
downright earnest about the pangs and sorrows of true repentance. Let
him tell them about their need of the new birth and about his
experience of obtaining that great blessing and how, by Sovereign
Grace, he was brought out of the darkness into the light, and even from
death to life. Let that man be moved to speak of the peace of pardon
through the precious blood and of the joys of Heaven laid up for all
Believers–and then the people will wake up, I will guarantee you! This
is something very different from the preaching to which they have been
accustomed–and they will soon feel the power of it.

Yet the Lord sometimes uses even a preacher who does not, himself,
understand the Truth he proclaims. I know a man who went and heard a
certain minister preach, or rather, read a sermon, and it was such a
good one that the hearer's conscience was smitten by it. The discourse
was about the new birth and, the next morning, the man went off to the
clergyman, and said, "Sir, I want you to explain this matter further to
me, for I am dreadfully distressed by what you preached last night."
What, do you think, this preacher said? He said, "Well, Jonathan, I am
sure I never meant to cause anybody any uneasiness. What was it that
gave you such trouble?" "Why," he replied, "it was that part of the
sermon where you said that we must be born again." So the preacher
said, "Well, here is the discourse. You see, by the dates upon it, that
I have used it 13 times before, so I could not have made it with any
special view to your case. I am very sorry, indeed, that it caused you
any discomfort, and I will never preach it again if it brings people
into trouble in this style." That was all the help the poor man could
get from the parson, so he went out and found a true servant of God who
knew the Truth of God, himself, and was not a secondhand retailer of
it, and, through conversation with him and prayer, and the reading of
the Scriptures, he was brought into peace and liberty! I need hardly
tell you that he does not go to hear that secondhand preacher now! He
listens to a far humbler minister, who, nevertheless, preaches what he
has tasted and handled of the good Word of Life.

Now, if any of you are going to be Sunday school teachers, or
street-preachers, do not begin to talk about what somebody else has
told you. Go and say what you, yourself, know, of a heart first broken
by the power of the Holy Spirit, and then bound up by the application
of the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ! Proclaim your message in a
living way from the heart to the heart, or else your hearers will feel
that there is no power about it, however nicely you put the Truth and
however sweetly you describe it. There is all the difference between
personal testimony to the Truth of God and a parrot-like repetition of
it, that there is between the living and the dead! Let us only bear
witness to what we really know–and then no one will need to ask us
what our Lord asked Pilate, "Are you speaking for yourself about this,
or did others tell you this?"

Now, further, the same thing is true with regard to professors. We have
many friends who come, at different times, to join the Church, and
their stories vary greatly. Some who come to see me cannot say much and
they think that I shall be very dissatisfied with them because they
make a great muddle of their narrative, and there is not much, after
all, that comes out. But the people with whom I am least satisfied are
those who reel off their yarn by the yard–they have it all ready to
repeat and everything is arranged as prettily as possible! Yes, and as
I listen to it, I know that someone has told them what to say and they
have memorized it all for me to hear! But I like far better the
testimony that I have to pick out in little bits, but which I know
comes fresh from the heart of the trembling convert! Sometimes it costs
the poor soul a tear or a real good cry–and I have to go round about
in all manner of ways to get hold of the story at all–but that shows
that it is true and that the man never borrowed it. I like to hear the
experience of a Believer, when he comes straight out of the world and
out of the ways of sin, to confess his faith in Christ. He does not
know anything about the terms that Christian people use. He has not
learned our phrases and it is a great delight to hear it all fresh and
new. Yet it is always the same story in all the essential parts of it.
However strangely he may narrate it, it tallies with that of others in
the main points. Take the experience of a Christian man who has been
brought up in the sanctuary from his childhood and extract the pith and
marrow of it. Now take the experience of a man who has been a gambler,
a drunk, a swearer, but who has been truly converted–and extract the
pith of that. Talk to a peer of the realm who has become an heir of the
Kingdom of Heaven and take the pith of his experience. Now get a
chimney-sweep who has been brought to the Lord and get the pith of his
experience. Put them all side by side and you will not know one from
the other! There are always the same essential marks–death, birth,
life, food–Christ in the death, the life, the birth, the
food–repentance, faith, joy, the work of the Spirit of God! But it is
very sweet to hear the story told in the many different ways in which
the converts tell it. The true child of Grace is always the same in
heart, although the outward appearance may continually vary.

But, dear Friends, whenever you begin to make a profession of religion,
take care that you never profess more than you really possess! Go just
as far as you can go, yourself, by the Grace of God, and do not repeat
what others tell you. To borrow another man's experience is dishonest.
If it is not mine, how dare I say that it is? It is also very apt to be
self-deceptive, for a man may repeat another person's experience until
he really thinks he didpass through it, himself, just as a man may
repeat a lie until it almost ceases to be a lie because he, himself,
gets to believe what at first he knows was not true! That borrowing of
the experience of others is usually worthless with those who have had
much to do with men, for we who do know the Lord and are familiar with
His people, very readily trip up those who only repeat what they have
learned! Freemasons recognize one another by various grips and signs. A
man may, perhaps, find out one of the grips, but he does not learn them
all and, at last, he gets caught–and people say to him, "You are
pretending to be what you really are not."

Take, again, a man's handwriting. Someone may imitate my writing for a
long while, but, at last, he does not copy some peculiar dash, or
stroke, or mark which is characteristic of my style. And those who
know, say, "That is not Mr. Spurgeon's writing–it is a forgery." So
there is a something–a sort of freemasonry–about Christianity. People
may learn some of our grips, signs and passwords, but, by-and-by, they
make a blunder and we say, "Ah, you are an impostor!" They may try to
write after the fashion of a child of God and they may make the
pot-hooks, hangers and straight strokes, but, as they get on further,
there is a something or other that comes out in the long run which
proves that they are only copyists after all. Therefore, I say to you,
dear Friends–Do not attempt to repeat what others have told you about
experimental godliness, but let your testimony only consist of what you
can truly say out of your own heart and soul!

Let this be the case, also, with regard to every man, whether he makes
a profession of religion or not May God grant that all that we think we
know, we may really know in our own souls and not have because we have
borrowed it from others! In religion, proxies and sponsors are
altogether out of place. I pray you never to be guilty of that horrible
blasphemy–for I think that it is nothing less than that–of standing
up before God and promising that a child shall keep His Commandments
and walk in the same all the days of its life! Remember that in
religion, there are certain things that must be personal. For instance,
every man must be, himself, born–another person cannot be born for
you. In like manner, "You must be born again"–personally, for
yourself! There is no possibility of another person experiencing that
new birth for you. If a man lives, he must eat for himself. You cannot
take my meals for me–it is I, myself, who must eat them. And we must
eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ by faith, each one for
himself or herself–nobody can do it for another. In daily life each
man must be clothed for himself. You may wear silk and satin, you may
be dressed in the best broadcloth, but you cannot be clothed on my
behalf–I must be dressed myself, or else go naked. So must each man
put on the robe of Christ's righteousness, or be naked, to his shame,
before God. Every man must repent of his own sin– make confession of
his own sin, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for himself–love God for
himself, obey the Lord for himself. There is no possibility of any
other person, by any means, doing this for you! There must be personal
godliness, or else there is no godliness at all. So, whenever you feel
inclined to say for yourself, "I believe that I am a Christian. I
believe this and I believe that," let this question come home to you,
"Are you speaking for yourself about this, or did others tell you
this?"

And, lastly, Brothers and Sisters in Christ, let me utter a word
specially for your ears. Never get, in your prayers, or in your talk,
an inch beyond your actual experience. Our calling is a very high one
and one of the most serious difficulties in the way of ever attaining
its greatest height is the impression that we have reached it when we
have not. My own impression is that some Brothers and Sisters might
have been almost perfect if they had not thought that they were so
already! But they missed the blessing through that very thought! Many a
man might have become wise, but he imagined that he had learned wisdom,
so he was never really wise. You know that if you see a man who thinks
that he is wise, you say to yourself, "How very foolish he is!" And you
speak truly, too. The doorstep of wisdom is a consciousness of
ignorance and the gateway of perfection is a deep sense of
imperfection. Paul was never so nearly perfect as when he cried, "O
wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this
death?" But if he had sat down and said, "I have attained and am
already perfect," then would he have been in a fair way of missing the
blessing of God. No, dear Brothers or Sisters, say no more than you can
justify. There are many who do that in business–mind that you do not
so act in spiritual matters! Look at that shop window–what a wonderful
display! Now go inside the shop. Why, there is nothing there! No, for
the man has all his goods in the window! You would at once say to
yourself, if he wanted to deal with you, "I shall not trust him very
deeply." Ah, and do we not know some who, spiritually, have all their
goods in the window? It is a grand thing to have a great stock in
reserve. Never mind if it is in the cellar, where you cannot see it–it
is none the worse for being out of sight!

The great thing for all Christians is to have a good background,
something behind that is real so that, if you pray, or if you speak to
another, you will be prepared to back it up! I remember trying to be a
blessing to a very shrewd boy in a Sunday school class when first I
knew the Lord. I told him the Gospel–"He that believes and is baptized
shall be saved." Then he asked me a straight question, "Teacher, have
you believed?" I replied, "Yes, I hope so." He said, "Don't you know,
Teacher? You ought to." "Yes," I answered, "yes, I do know. I have
believed in Jesus." "Well, Teacher," he enquired next, "have you been
baptized?" I replied, "Yes, I have." "Then," he said, "Teacher, you are
saved." I said, "I hope so." "But," he insisted, "you are." Just so,
and I found that I must say so, too–that I must not use even Christ's
words unless I meant to back them up by my own consistent
character–otherwise I am throwing suspicion on my Master's
truthfulness! May the Lord bring us up to this point of Christian
honesty–that when we cannot truthfully say a thing from our own
experience, we will be honest enough to resolve, "I shall not say it
till I can truly say it."

When you think of a verse of a hymn, and it is a little in advance of
your own position, wait till you come up to that point. There are
numbers of hymns that I laid by, in that fashion, years ago. I wished
that I could sing them, yet they seemed to stick in my throat and I
could not. But my throat has been cleared a good deal lately, and I
have been obliged, at last, to feel that I must have those very hymns,
for they have become true to my soul and have made my experience a very
happy one. Do not be in too much of a hurry in spiritual things any
more than in temporal things. If you cannot eat meat, stick to your
milk. Milk is for babes, so keep to milk till you outgrow it, You will
choke with that tough bit of meat–you had better leave it for somebody
else. Do not find fault with it, it is good for strong men, they do not
need to be always drinking milk. Do not deny the strong man his meat,
but let him have as much as he likes of it! As for yourself, if you are
a babe in Grace, keep to your milk diet. But, in all your testimony, do
not go beyond what is actually true to yourself. Often let my text lay
its hand upon your shoulder and repeat this searching enquiry, "Are you
speaking for yourself about this, or did others tell you this?"

May God grant a rich blessing to you all, dear Friends, for our Lord
Jesus Christ's sake! Amen.