Spiritual Religion
(No. 2677)
INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, JUNE 3, 1900.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT NEW PARK STREET CHAPEL, SOUTHWARK, ON A THURSDAY EVENING, EARLY IN
THE YEAR 1858.
"It is the spirit that quickens; the flesh profits nothing." John 6:63.
To a casual reader, it looks as if the meaning of this passage lay upon
the very surface, but he who has studied the chapter carefully has
discovered that it is a sentence replete with many difficulties as to
the exact interpretation of it. I shall not, however, waste your time
by entering into any critical discussion of it, but shall only try to
give you simply what I believe to be the mind of the Spirit, as uttered
by the lips of Jesus in this passage. And after I have done that, I
shall then revert to what I shall call the meaning which any person
would give to it who is not a diligent and careful student of
Scripture. That meaning being true, although not the special Truth of
God taught in this passage, I shall briefly enlarge upon it.
"It is the spirit that quickens; the flesh profits nothing." I suppose
there is not a man in the world who could form any intelligent idea of
what a spirit is. It is very easy for persons to define a spirit by
saying what it is not, but I question whether there is, or ever could
be, any man who could form any idea of what it is. We sometimes talk
about seeinga spirit–ignorant persons in ages gone by–and some living
now in benighted villages talk about seeing spirits by night. They must
know that such talk is a contradiction. Matter can be seen, but a
spirit, if it clothed itself in any light substance, could not even
then be seen–it would only be the substance that would be visible! The
spirit itself is a thing which can neither be tasted, handled, seen,
nor discerned in any way whatever by our senses, for if it could thus
be perceived, there would then be proof positive that it was not a
spirit at all, but that it belonged to the material realm. We divide
all things into matter and spirit. And whatever can be recognized by
the senses in any way, is matter, depend on it. A spirit is itself a
thing too subtle to be either seen or in any other way perceived by the
senses, so I repeat what I said just now, that I suppose there is no
man living, and that there never will be any man in this mortal state
who will be able to accurately define a spirit so as to say what it is,
though he may be able to say what it is not.
Now, there is a region where there are spirits dwelling without any
bodies being connected with them. It is certain that, in the world to
come, in that state which now intervenes between the death of the
saints and the day of the resurrection, they are dwelling before the
Throne of God in a disembodied state–pure spirits, without any
corporeal form whatever. It is quite certain that the saints before the
Throne have no semblance of bodily shape whatever. They are pure
spirits–beings whose substance we cannot imagine–purely immaterial,
as they are also immaculate. But, on earth, you can find no such thing
as a pure spirit. We are all spirits in bodies and, somehow, from the
fact that wherever we find souls and spirits, they are always found in
bodies, we are very apt to confuse bodies and spirits together. But let
us always understand that bodies and spirits are distinct things and
though it has pleased God, in this world, never to make a spirit
without making a house for it to dwell in, called the body, yet the
body is not the spirit. "It is the spirit that quickens; the flesh
profits nothing."
You will easily perceive the truth of this passage if you will
recollect that, in man's body, no one can tell where the life is
situated. In vain the surgeon lays the body on the table and dissects
it–he will find life neither in the brain nor in the heart. He may cut
the body in pieces as he pleases, but he will not find anything that he
can lay hold upon, tangible and real, and say, "That is life." He can
see all the effects and evidences of life. He can watch the various
parts of the body
moving. He can behold all the appearances of life which are caused by a
supernatural something, but he cannot see life. That is altogether
beyond his skill and, after all his searching, he must lay down his
scalpel and say at once, "There now, the task is all over. There is a
spirit that quickens this body, but in my search after life, this flesh
profits me nothing. I might as well search for a soul within a stone,
or within one of the pillars that support this house, as search for a
soul within mere flesh and blood if I look for something which I can
see, which I can lay hold of, or which, by either taste, sight,
smelling, or any other sense, I can distinguish and can designate as
being a spirit."
So, Brothers and Sisters, this illustration just brings me to the Truth
of God that is taught in our text. We are here assembled, at this
moment, spirits, souls. Here we are, also, bodies, but these bodies are
not ourselves–they are the houses in which we live. I question whether
there is any man who can define what he, himself, is. The most that any
man can say is, "I am. I know I have an existence, but what kind of
thing my spirit is, I do not know, I cannot tell. I have no knowledge
of what it is. I feel it. I know it moves my body. I feel its outward
manifestations. I am certain of my existence. But what I am, I know
not. God alone can say." "I AM THAT I AM," is comprehensible only to
God Himself. Man is a being incomprehensible to himself and though the
Lord may allow him to say, "By the Grace of God I am what I am," he
cannot tell what he really is–he cannot fully comprehend his own
existence!
Understand, then, that, as in our being there is a mystery in our
flesh, so religion, the true religion of the blessed God, in order to
be made like unto us and to be a something suitable to us, must be a
religion of spirit But, because we also have a body, it must have a
body in which to clothe itself. I want, if I can, to make this plain to
you. And if you do not understand it now, I hope you will before I have
done. We are spirits in bodies. Well, then, in order to meet our cases,
the great work of God in us must be a spiritual thing! But in order
that I may be able to talk about it to you and that you may be able to
hear it with your ears, that spiritual thing must be encased in a body.
Or else, if it were a purely spiritual thing, I could not explain it to
you any more than I could explain to you about a spirit, if there were
no body in which a spirit could be found, and no body in which I could
be able to live to talk about it.
I want to show you this Truth very clearly, because there are some
persons who are so busy about that which concerns merely the body of
religion that they altogether forget that religion has also a spirit. I
believe that what our Lord Jesus meant in this passage was, "The mere
embodiment of religion profits nothing; it is the spirit that
quickens." Just as, to use my figure over again, in order to perform an
act the mere flesh and blood and arms and legs profit nothing, it is
the spirit that quickens all the bones and makes the nerves act as they
ought to do and the sinews work as they should. And so religion has its
outward form, it has its ceremonies, it has its external and visible
developments–its body–but the mere outward body of religion is of no
use whatever unless the inward and invisible spirit quickens it.
I. To begin, then, I WILL FIRST SHOW YOU THIS TRUTH AS OUR SAVIOR, I
THINK, MEANT IT WHEN HE FIRST OF ALL STATED IT.
There were some people, in our Savior's day, who admired Christ merely
as a Man. And they thought there was some marvelous efficacy in His
flesh and blood. To them He said, using almost the very words of our
text, "Even My flesh will profit you nothing; it is the spirit that
quickens." I must state this Truth of God very cautiously, yet very
plainly. When our Savior was upon this earth, there were some, I
repeat, who admired His Person. You remember how our Savior rebuked the
woman who said to Him, "Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the
breasts which nursed You"? He would not have people simply admire His
flesh and think so much of His mere Humanity, so He said to her, "More
than that, blessed are they who hear the Word of God and keep it."
There were some other people who wanted to take the Lord Jesus and make
Him a king, but, in effect, He said to them, "My flesh, even if you
exalt it to a throne, will profit you nothing. I did not come here that
you might bow down and venerate My mere flesh–that you might think the
mere admiration of My mortal frame is vital religion. It is the spirit,
the Gospel that I came to preach, that will benefit you. It is not
these outward appearances. It is My thoughts, Words and acts which are
to bless you." Hear what the Savior says in the next sentence, "It is
not your admiration of My flesh that is of any use to you, for My flesh
profits nothing; it is the spirit that quickens; and if you want to
know what is the spirit of My Incarnation, I tell you that the Words
that I speak to you, they are spirit, and they are life. It is not your
venerating My flesh and blood, it is your reception of My doctrines
that will be the heart and soul of the religion that I desire you to
possess."
Our Savior was, however, led to make these remarks from the fact that
the ignorant Jews, when Jesus talked about eating His flesh and
drinking His blood, really thought that He meant that they were to turn
cannibals and eat Him up. You may well smile at so ridiculous an idea,
yet you know that the idea is still prevalent in the Church of Rome.
The Romish priest solemnly assures us that the people who eat the bread
and drink the wine, or the stuff he calls bread and wine, do actually
act the part of cannibals and eat the body of Christ and drink His
blood. You say to him, "You mean, my dear Sir, that they do it in a
figure, spiritually." "No," he says, "I do not. I mean to say that
after I have pronounced certain words over that bread, it becomes
Christ's flesh. And after I have said a certain prayer over that wine,
it becomes His actual blood." "Well," we reply to him, "it is very
singular, and you certainly cannot expect us to believe you while God
allows our heads to be occupied by brains! But even if we do believe
you, my dear Sir, we refer you to this passage which says, 'It is the
Spirit that quickens; the flesh profits nothing.' You tell the people
that they do actually and really receive the body and blood of Christ.
Suppose they do–it is no earthly use to them! And even if they could
carnally bite the flesh with their teeth and drink the blood down their
throats, it would be of no more use to them than the eating of the
flesh and blood of any other man. It could be of no service whatever to
them, for Christ Himself denounces the error of transubstantiation and
declares that even His flesh profits nothing! It is only the spirit,
the spiritual receiving of that flesh and blood, that can be of any use
whatever."
While I am referring to this point, allow me to say just a few more
words upon it, for Popery prevails in this day, and the doctrine that
the bread and wine are turned into the body and blood of Christ is the
bulwark of Popery. Dr. Carson, of Coleraine, son of Dr. Carson the
eminent Baptist, has challenged Dr. Cahill in a remarkable way. He has
challenged Dr. Cahill to prove that he can turn the bread and wine used
in the sacrament into Christ's body and blood. He offers to give Dr.
Cahill a hundred pounds if he will let him make a wafer for him and, if
Dr. Cahill will then put it on his own tongue and swallow it in Mr.
Carson's presence, "if the Doctor is not dead in an hour," says Dr.
Carson, "I'll give him a hundred pounds." "No," says someone, "that is
not fair." "Oh, but if he can turn it into the body and blood of
Christ, it cannot hurt him, whatever it may contain." "But would you
make it of poison, then?" "Yes, the deadliest I could find." "Would you
give him poison?" "I would not give it to him–he would swallow it
himself–he would do it of his own voluntary choice." Of course Dr.
Cahill will not submit to that test! He knows that he cannot turn the
wafer and the wine into the body and blood of Christ–if he could, Dr.
Carson says it would not hurt him, for the body and blood of Christ
would poison no one.
But some wise Romanist says, "That is not a fair test. Dr. Cahill does
not pretend to turn poison into the body and blood of Christ–it is
only pure bread and wine that can thus be manipulated." "Very well,"
says Dr. Carson, "I'll try him another way. I will let him choose a
youth from seven or eight Catholic boys. He shall take a quart of wine
and turn this wine, in his own peculiar way, into the blood of Christ.
The boy shall drink the quart of wine and if he is not drunk in six
hours, I will pay the hundred pounds." "Now," says Dr. Carson, "if that
liquid is really the blood of Christ, it will not make him drunk! He
might drink a barrel of it and it would not make him intoxicated." But
Dr. Cahill dares not accept such a trial as that, for it would very
soon be found that the so-called "consecrated" wine would make the boy
intoxicated as quickly as any other wine would! Therefore it cannot be
turned, even by the great Doctor, himself, into the blood of Christ.
[We assume Dr. Cahill is a priest.]
The fact is, the lie is so foolish, the delusion is so absurd, that any
child of a reasonable age would as soon think of believing the cock and
bull story which we used to read in our childish days, about what the
bull said, and what the cock said, to be actual truth, as to imagine it
to be a literal fact that any priest, or any man in the world, could
ever turn bread and wine into flesh and blood! But even if they could,
hear again the words of our text–"It is the spirit that quickens; the
flesh profits nothing." So, then, after all, the Roman Catholic
"sacrament," if it is actually a cannibal's feast upon the body and
blood of Christ, is of no earthly use! But that Divinely-appointed
ordinance wherein we do spiritually receive the flesh and blood of
Jesus and, in a spiritual way hold communion with Him, is that alone
which quickens!
This brings me to the Truth of God that I want you, dear Friends,
especially to understand. As Christ Jesus in His flesh was the
embodiment of His own doctrine, and yet not His flesh, but the spirit
of His doctrine quickens souls, so the outward forms and ceremonies
which Christ has made to be the body to contain the spirit of His
Truth, are of no earthly use at all unless the Spirit of God is in
them!
Take, for instance, the ordinance of Believers' Baptism–there are the
pool and the water. That pool and that water are, so to speak, the
flesh and blood of dedication. The right observance of that holy
ordinance signifies that we do solemnly devote ourselves to the Lord
Jesus. Suppose, however, our hearts are in a wrong condition, or that
we are not converted persons–suppose there is no influence of the
Spirit resting upon us during the act of Baptism? Then the act of
Baptism is like the flesh apart from the spirit–it is a dead thing, it
profits nothing because it is without the soul. We come, the next
Sabbath, to the Lord's Table–there is the bread broken by God's
servant. There is the wine reverently handed round by the deacons of
the Church and it is sipped by the communicants. But, mark you, however
devoutly the whole service is performed, unless the Spirit of the
living God breathes through the Divine ordinance, "the flesh"–that is,
the mere embodiment of communion–will profit you nothing! You might
sit at a thousand communion tables and you might be baptized in a
myriad pools–but all this would not avail one jot or tittle for your
salvation unless you had the Spirit of God to quicken you!
No, to go further, it is not these two outward ordinances only that
need the Spirit in them–it is so in everything else. You have
sometimes read, dear Friends, of some eminent Christians who grew to
have much fellowship with Christ by prayer. Perhaps you imbibed the
idea that if you were to go home and spend as many hours in your closet
as they did, you would get as much profit by it–but not thinking about
the Holy Spirit, you simply devote yourself to private prayer as you
might to any manual exercise–with a hope of profiting by the exercise.
I tell you, you might be on your knees till your knees were worn bare
and you might be in your closet till the steam of your devotion ran
down the walls, but unless the Spirit of the Lord was in that closet
with you, the mere fleshly exercise of praying would no more avail and
profit you than if you had been chanting songs to the moon, or standing
in the street to sell your goods!
Another hears that a certain person has been very much blessed by
reading a text of Scripture. "Oh," he says, "has that text been blessed
to such an one? Then I'll go and read the same passage." You think that
if you do the same as he does, you will be equally blessed and you are
marvelously surprised that when you read the passage, it does you no
good. It made his spirit leap for joy. It filled his soul with the wine
of the Kingdom of God, but to you it is like a dry well, or an empty
bottle. Why is this? The mere letter, in which the promise is revealed,
profits you nothing–it is the spirit of the promise, it is the life of
the Holy Spirit running through the veins of the promise that alone can
profit you! You hear that another man meditates on God's Law day and
night and becomes like a tree planted by the rivers of water. You say,
"I will take care that, every morning, I will read a chapter out of the
Scriptures and that, every night, I will read twochap-ters." There are
certain people who think that if they read a good passage out of the
Bible, they have done a great deal. In that kind of spirit, they might
just as well read a portion out of Hudibras, for they just read it
straight through, without thinking or understanding it.
Many of our ministers think that in the public service they must read a
certain quantity of Scriptures and they take, perhaps, three long
chapters out of Ezekiel–and not a soul in the congregation knows the
meaning of what they are reading! If they were to read a Dutch sermon
in an English chapel, it would do the hearers just about as much good,
for no one understands what they read. Instead of reading, as Ezra did,
and expounding the meaning to the people, they must go on over hedge
and ditch–one continual steeple-chase! Instead of stopping to crack
the shells and give the kernels of Truth to the people, they read right
on, without attempting to give any explanation of the passage. To such
persons, we would simply say, "Your Bible reading is but the flesh, it
is of no use to you, 'it is the spirit that quickens.' The mere flesh,
the outward fashion and form of Bible reading will not profit anybody.
One sentence of the Bible prayed over and bedewed with the Spirit, and
made alive, though it is only a short sentence of six words, will
profit you more than a hundred chapters without the Spirit, because
they are 'flesh'–dead! But the one verse with the Spirit is the thing
that quickens."
I do not know whether I have as yet brought out the full meaning of the
text, but I want to let everyone understand that it is not the mere
outward embodiment of our religion that saves the soul and that profits
us–it is the inner spirit of the thing that does us good. Mark, I
would not find fault with any of these forms, any more than I would
find fault with our bodies because they are not spirits. Our bodies are
good things for our spirits to live in and the forms of religion are
good things for the spirit of religion to live in–but the form without
the spirit, though it is the most decorous, and apparently the most
devout that can be presented to God, can be of no use for our soul's
eternal profit and ultimate salvation. "It is the spirit that quickens;
the flesh profits nothing."
Now, my dear Friend, Mr. So-and-So, if you will just take out your
pencil and cast up your accounts for all the years of your life, the
sum of them all will come to very little if what I say is true. "I
think," you say, "I am a tolerably good sort of man. I have a few
faults, but just look at what I have done! I have been to Chapel twice
every Sunday almost since I was a boy–I don't know that I missed once,
except when I was ill–that has been very good of me, and no mistake. I
always read the Bible every morning. I always have family prayer–that
is very good of me. Another item to be reckoned to my account–I say my
prayers when I go to bed at night, and when I get up in the morning. I
very frequently go to Prayer Meetings. I don't think anyone can
reasonably find fault with me. Really, I think I do everything to make
me a truly religious man."
Ah, and did you put at the end of it, "Lord, I thank You that I am not
as other men are–unjust, extortioners," and so on, or even like that
poor fellow, a Sabbath-breaker, whom you saw going the opposite way as
you were coming to your usual place of worship? It is a pity you didn't
finish it up in that fashion–but if you did not in words, you finished
it up so in your heart! I pray God to show you that all these beautiful
things of yours are good for nothing! There are your Chapel-goings–all
flesh! There are your Bible readings–all flesh! There are your family
prayers–all flesh! There are your good works and excellences–all
flesh! You have never received the Spirit of the living God–you dare
not say that you have. Well, then, all these things will profit you
nothing whatever.
"It is the spirit that quickens," you know, my dear Sir–and let me
speak very pointedly–you know that you never enter into the spirit of
the things of which you have been speaking. Though you go to your
church or chapel regularly, yet you know that you might very often just
as well be at home, for when the worshippers sing, you do not sing with
all your heart–and when the minister preaches, it is seldom there is
much that touches you, unless it is what you call "a good intellectual
discourse," which happens to please you–and you believe it just
because it agrees with your views. You know that, into the inward soul,
marrow and heart of devotion, you have never yet learned to penetrate.
Your devotion is like a certain ox which was slain as a sacrifice in
the time of siege in Rome, and was said to forecast evil because, when
the sorcerer slew it, he declared that he could not find a heart
anywhere. He looked through all the entrails, but no heart could he
discover and, therefore, the Romans declared that their city must be
destroyed. It was an omen of ill fortune, they said, when the sacrifice
had no heart in it.
It is just the same with you. You have done all these things and there
has been as much reality in what you have done as there was devotion in
the poor fool's windmill, when he tied a prayer to it and put it up in
the garden–every time it blew round, he counted that as one more
prayer. There was as much heart in your prayer as there was in his
windmill– that is to say, none at all! Go on no longer with this
useless round of performances, I implore you. I would not have you give
up the performances, but seek the spirit that can make them true and
acceptable in God's sight. Stop awhile and ask God to give you that
inward spirit that quickens, for that is what is needed–"the flesh
profits nothing."
But I must also speak to you who are the children of God, and I must
ask you–How often do you forget this all-important Truth of God? I
know it is not likely that I would leave my chamber any morning without
prayer. But, oh, Brothers and Sisters, I have often left it without
having the spirit of prayer! I should not like to pass a day without
reading the Scriptures, but I am afraid it is very often the mere
"flesh" of formal reading and not the spirit breathing in the Word. And
how often is our conscience satisfied with the mere form without the
spirit? Now, if we were what we ought to be, we would never be content
with the form unless we could also see the spirit in it.
Mother, would you be content to have at home a child who was dead?
Suppose someone should say to you, "Why, this child is just as good a
child as ever it was! Look at it! It has not lost a leg, or an arm, or
any part of its body!" "Ah, but," you would say, "it is dead." "Oh,"
says one, "there is no great difference. It looks as beautiful, now, as
ever it did." "Ah," says the poor mother, "but there is a vast deal of
difference between what it was when it was alive, and what it is now it
is dead." Just transfer that idea to your poor dead prayers, your poor
dead Bible readings, your poor dead sacraments, your poor dead goings
to chapel and all that! Ah, how many of our sacrifices are just poor
dead things when we bring them to the Lord! They have died in the night
and then we come and offer them before God! How frequently do we
satisfy our conscience with having "the flesh"–the embodiment of the
sacrifice–and yet, all the while, we forget the spirit! But let us
remember that God only looks for the life. He does not trouble about
the body and we ought, in all we do for him, to take care, first of
all, that the spirit is there and then we may rest quite sure that the
flesh and blood of the devotion will take care of themselves.
II. This, I believe, is the true meaning of the passage. But the common
rendering of it, if anyone reads it without noticing the context, would
be, "Why, that means, 'It is the Spirit that quickens.' That is to say,
'IT IS THE HOLY SPIRIT THAT QUICKENS; THE FLESH PROFITS NOTHING.'"
Our friend will excuse me when I say that it cannot mean that. You
notice that the "s" in the word, "spirit," in the text has not a
capital letter. If it meant the Holy Spirit, it would be so marked, to
separate it from the spirit to which I have just referred–the inward
spirit, the life of a thing. This word, "spirit," here does not mean
the Holy Spirit. Still, almost every ordinary reader would make that
mistake and say, "It is the Holy Spirit that quickens; the flesh
profits nothing." Well, it is a mistake that will not do him any hurt,
because if it does not say so here, it does say so somewhere else! And
if it is not true in this one particular text, it is true all over the
Bible! And it is true in a Christian's experience, so that a man may
make a great many worse mistakes than that. Well, then, let us for once
make that mistake, and then let us get the Truth of God out of it–"It
is the Holy Spirit that quickens; the flesh profits nothing"–
"Can anything beneath a power Divine
The stubborn will subdue?
'Tis Yours, Eternal Spirit, Yours
To form the heart anew.
'Tis Yours the passions to recall,
And upwards bid them rise
And make the scales of error fall
From Reason's darkened eyes.
To chase the shades of death away,
And bid the sinner live–
A beam of Heaven, a vital ray–
'Tis Yours alone to give."
How often have I thought, when I have been preaching, "There is a young
woman in the gallery and down there in that area is a young man–how
interested they look during the sermon!" I have met with them, I have
admired their characters. They have had an amiable carriage and
deportment. There has been much in them that everybody would tell
others to imitate and emulate. I have said, "Ah, I shall soon have them
added to the Church–there is so much that is good about them, it will
be such an easy transition for them–they are so moral and so
excellent, surely it will be very easy for them to take a step into the
Kingdom of Heaven." I don't say that I have said so much as that in
words to my heart, but that has been about what I have thought. Well,
there has been a very different sort of fellow, a strange looking
object, certainly, who came running into the Chapel one Thursday
evening, towards the end of the service. He was not even washed, nor in
any way prepared for Divine worship–he only came to hear something
that would make him laugh, as he thought. I did not expect to have him
converted, but the next time I sat to see enquirers, in he
came–cleaned and brushed up–but I recognized him, for all that, and I
said to him, "Didn't you come into the Chapel, one Thursday night,
after you had been hammering and tinkering away somewhere? I thought
you looked a strange customer, certainly." "Yes," he said, "and the
Lord met with me that night!"
Now, I sat many and many a time to see enquirers, but I did not see the
young man or the young woman come. Why was this? The Lord meant to
teach His servant that "the flesh profits nothing." That man seemed to
me far from God, but that young man and that young woman seemed very
near. But the Lord said to me, "I will let you learn that all their
morality and all their goodness did not put them near the Kingdom of
Heaven, or help towards their salvation. I could save one as well as
the other, and if I chose to show My Sovereignty, I might even let
publicans and harlots enter the Kingdom of Heaven before those who,
becoming proud of their morality, would not stoop before Me."
Have you not, sometimes, met with a person of such a peculiar character
that you have said, "Is it not a pity someone cannot talk with that
man?" I often have notes of this sort. A father writes to me, "I wish
you could get hold of my son. He is a very interesting young man. If
you were to put the Truth before him to suit his turn of mind, he would
be sure to lay hold of it, for if you knew how he was mentally
constituted, you would say at once there was a peculiar adaptation in
his mind for the reception of the Gospel." Well, I have been told that
a dozen times, but I never found it true even once! "The flesh profits
nothing." No peculiar adaptation of mind is any more susceptible of
Gospel influences than another. Dead sinners are all dead and all dead
alike! Some may be black and some may be white–some may be well washed
and
dressed, and some may have all the mire and filth of sensuality about
them–but they are all dead! And when converting Grace comes to deal
with them, it finds as much for its exercise in the one case as in the
other. It finds as much to help it in the one heart as in the
other–that is to say, it finds nothing to help it at all. It brings
all that is helpful within itself–it kindles its own fire with its own
torch! It blows the fire with its own breath and asks for nothing in
the sinner, be he who he may!
Then, again, we have sometimes said, "If such-and-such a man were
converted, dear me, what a shining Christian he would make! He is a man
of brilliant talents, of great intellectual power and of extensive
fortune. Oh, if he were but converted, what a jubilee it would be to
the Church of God! How much he would do for Christ!" Well, do you know,
I have always found out that these fine people who, when they were
converted, were to be something extraordinary–if they have been
converted and we have got them–have not turned out to be quite so
great after all! I knew a minister once, who, with great joy and
gladness, baptized a man. It was on a New-Year's Day and I remember
with what self-congratulation he said, "The Lord has sent me one of the
best New-Year's gifts I ever had." And he looked upon that man and
said, "Ah, this is a Brother! He is a great gain to the Church. He is a
man of such active spirit, of such an excellent turn of mind and he is
everything that could be desired." Well, I have just happened to live
long enough to see that man tear the church apart and drive the
minister out of his pulpit! And he is still alive–a thorn in the side
of that church and a huge prickly bramble that they would be glad
enough to eradicate–but they have not the power to do that. No, the
Lord will show us that "the flesh profits nothing." "You may have him,"
says the Lord, "if he is such a fine fellow, take him. You will find he
will not be much good to you, after all. I will let you know that 'the
flesh profits nothing.' 'It is the Spirit alone that quickens.'"
On the other hand, we have seen some come whose "flesh" could not help
them. They were the poor, the mean, the illiterate, the despised–and
we have seen the Grace of God blaze up in their hearts to an intense
degree of fervor! And we have seen them stand confident and strong,
notwithstanding the nothingness of the flesh. And then we have said,
"Verily, O God, it is marvelous how, when the flesh is weak, Your Grace
is strong." And we have heard an answer from "the excellent glow,"
which said, "Ah, the flesh profits nothing; it is the Spirit that
quickens."
Now, I do not believe that there is any form of our flesh, nor any act
of our flesh, nor anything that our flesh can do, or attempt to do, or
think of, or suggest, that can in any way assist in the great spiritual
work of our salvation. It is the Spirit alone that quickens, and you
will find, till you die, that "the flesh profits nothing," and profits
no one except the devil. It often profits him, but in God's ways. And
in God's holy Gospel, you will always find the flesh lusting against
the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. You will have to feel
this Truth, that the flesh at its best estate profits nothing. "It is
the Spirit that quickens."
Now, my Brothers and Sisters, in conclusion, I will ask you this
question–Have you received the influences of the Holy Spirit? And have
those influences led you to worship God, who is a Spirit, "in spirit
and in truth?" For, if not, though some may put you in the cradle of
ceremonies and rock you to sleep, I will not be one of them! Although
men may tell you you are right enough because you are outwardly so
religious, because you are no Sabbath-breaker, no swearer, no drunkard,
I warn you that unless you are born again from above, you cannot see
the Kingdom of God! And when drunks, harlots and all manner of ungodly
persons shall be driven from the Presence of God, you, also, shall
share their fate, for you are dead in trespasses and sins, even as they
are! If you would ever enter Heaven, you must be quickened by the Holy
Spirit. No more shall I say, but earnestly entreat the Spirit of the
blessed God to impress upon your hearts this solemn thought and lead
you to renounce the works of the flesh–and put your trust in Him "who
is the Savior of all men, especially of those that believe." May the
Lord's mercy rest upon you all, for Jesus' sake! Amen.