Meditation on God
(No. 2690)
INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1900.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT NEW PARK STREET CHAPEL, SOUTHWARK, ON A THURSDAY EVENING IN THE
SUMMER OF 1858.
"My meditation of Him shall be sweet." Psalm 104:34.
DAVID, certainly, was not a melancholy man. Eminent as he was for his
piety and for his religion, he was equally eminent for his joyfulness
and gladness of heart. Read the verse that precedes my text, "I will
sing unto the Lord as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God
while I have my being. My meditation of Him shall be sweet: I will be
glad in the Lord." It has often been insinuated, if it has not been
openly said, that the contemplation of Divine things has a tendency to
depress the spirits. Religion, many thoughtful persons have supposed,
does not become the young–it checks the ardor of their youthful blood.
It may be very well for men with gray heads who need something to
comfort and solace them as they descend the hill of life into the
grave. It may be well enough for those who are in poverty and deep
trial, but that it is at all congruous with the condition of a healthy,
able-bodied, successful and happy man, is generally said to be out of
the question.
Now, there is no greater lie than this! No man is so happy but he would
be happier still if he had true religion. The man with a fullness of
earthly pleasures, whose barns are full of corn and whose presses burst
with new wine would not lose any part of his happiness, had he the
Grace of God in his heart! Rather, that joy would add sweetness to all
his prosperity. It would strain off many of the bitter dregs from his
cup. It would purify his heart and freshen his tastes for delights and
show him how to extract more honey from the honeycomb. Religion is a
thing that can make the most melancholy joyful and, at the same time,
it can make the joyous ones still more joyful! It can make the gloomy
bright, as it gives the oil ofjoy in the place of mourning and the
garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Moreover, it can light
up the face that is joyous with a heavenly gladness. It can make the
eyes sparkle with tenfold more brilliance and, happy as the man may be,
he shall find that there is sweeter nectar than he has ever drunk
before if he comes to the Fountain of Atoning Mercy and knows that his
name is registered in the Book of Everlasting Life!
Temporal mercies will then have the charm of Redemption to enhance
them. They will be no longer to him as shadowy phantoms which dance for
a transient hour in the sunbeam. He will account them more precious
because they are given to him, as it were, in some codicils of the
Divine Testament which has promise of the life that now is, as well as
of that which is to come. While goodness and mercy follow him all the
days of his life, he will stretch forth his grateful anticipations to
the future when he shall dwell in the House of the Lord forever! He
will be able to say, as the Psalmist does here, "I will sing unto the
Lord as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my
being. My meditation of Him shall be sweet."
Taking those last few words as the theme of our discourse, I shall
speak, first, concerning a very profitable exercise– "meditation."
Secondly, concerning a very precious subject–"My meditation of Him.
And, thirdly, concerning a very blessed result–"My meditation of Him
shall be sweet."
I. First, here is A VERY PROFITABLE EXERCISE–"meditation."
Meditation is a word that more than half of you, I fear, do not know
how to spell. You know how to repeat the letters of the word, but I
mean to say, you cannot spell it in the reality of life. You do not
occupy yourselves with any meditation at all. What do many of you who
are merchants know concerning this matter? You rise up in the morning
just in
time to take your accustomed seat in the omnibus. You hasten to your
counting house for your letters and there you continue all day long,
for business when you are busy, or for gossip when business is dull.
And at night you go home too tired for the wholesome recreation of your
minds. Week by week, month by month and year by year it is still with
you one everlasting grind, grind, grind! You have no time for
meditation and you reckon, perhaps, that if you were to set apart half
an hour in the day to ponder the weighty matters of eternity, it would
be to you a clear loss of time. It is very wise of you to economize
your minutes, but I suppose that if half an hour in a day could earn
you a hundred pounds, you would not say that you could not afford it,
because you know how to estimate pecuniary profit! Now, if you equally
knew how to count the great profit of meditation, you would deem it a
positive gain to yourselves to spend some time therein, for meditation
is most profitable to the spirit–it is an extremely healthful and
excellent occupation. Far from being wasted time, it is a judicious
employment of time.
Do not imagine that the meditative man is necessarily
lazy–contrariwise, he lays the best foundation for useful works. He is
not the best student who reads the most books, but he who meditates the
most upon them. He shall not learn most of divinity who hears the
greatest number of sermons, but he who meditates the most devoutly upon
what he does hear. Nor shall he be so profound a scholar who takes down
ponderous volumes, one after the other as he who, reading little by
little, precept upon precept, and line upon line, digests what he reads
and assimilates each sentiment to his heart by meditation–receiving
the Word of God first into his understanding–and afterwards receiving
the spirit of it into his own soul. Meditation is thus a very excellent
employment. Let me for a few minutes tell you some of its uses.
First, I think meditation furnishes the mind somewhat with rest. It is
the couch of the soul The time that a man spends in necessary rest, he
never reckons to be wasted because he is refreshing and renovating
himself for further exertion. Meditation, then, is the rest of the
spirit. "Oh," says one, "I must have rest. I have been working and
toiling incessantly for months! I must have a day's excursion. I must
do this thing and the other." Yes, and such recreation, in its proper
place, is desirable. We ought to have seasons of innocent recreation,
but, at the same time, if many of us knew how to spend a little time
daily in the calm repose of contemplative retirement, we would find
ourselves less exhausted by the wear and tear of our worldly duties. To
meditate would be to us a salutary recreation and, instead of running
ourselves out of breath, and laboring till a respite is compulsory, we
would spread our intervals of ease and refreshing over the whole year
and secure a small portion everyday by turning aside from the bustling
crowd to meditate upon whatever subject we wish to occupy the most
honorable place in our mind.
Just as a change of posture relieves the weariness of the body, a
change of thoughts will prevent your spirits becoming languid. Sit down
in a silent chamber, at eventide. Throw the window up and look at God's
bright stars–and count those eyes of Heaven. Or if you like it better,
pause in the noontide heat and look down upon the busy crowd in the
streets and count the men, like so many ants upon the anthill of this
world. Or if you care not to look about you, sit down and look within
yourself–count the pulses of your own heart and examine the emotions
of your own breast. At times, 'tis well to muse upon Heaven, or, if you
are a man loving to revel in the prophetic future, turn over the mystic
pages and study the sacred visions recorded in the Book of Daniel, or
the Book of Revelation. As you enter these hallowed intricacies and
meditate upon these impressive symbols, you will rise up from your
study mightily refreshed! You will find it like a couch to your mind.
Again, meditation is the machine in which the raw material of knowledge
is converted to the best uses. Let me compare it to a winepress. By
reading, research and study, we gather the grapes, but it is by
meditation that we press out the juice of those grapes and obtain the
wine! How is it that many men who read a lot know very little? The
reason is they read tome upon tome, and stow away knowledge with
lumbering confusion inside their heads till they have laid so much
weight on their brain that it cannot work! Instead of putting facts
into the press of meditation and fermenting them till they can draw out
right inferences, they leave them to rot and perish. They extract none
of the sweet juice of wisdom from the precious fruits of the vine. I
like, when I have read a book for about half an hour, to walk awhile
and think it over. I shut up the volume and say, "Now, Mr. Author, you
have made your speech, let me think over what you have said. A little
meditation will enable me to distinguish between what I knew before and
the fresh subject you have communicated to me–between your facts and
your opinions–between your arguments and those I should make from the
same premises." Animals, after they have eaten, lie down and
ruminate–they first crop the grass and afterwards digest it. So,
meditation is the rumination of the soul whereby we get that nutriment
which feeds and supports the mind.
When you have gathered flowers in the field or garden, you arrange them
in proper order and bind them together with the string of memory, but
take heed that you put them into the water of meditation, otherwise
they will soon fade and be fit only for the dunghill. When you have
gathered pearls from the sea, remember that you will have gathered with
them many worthless shells and much mud–therefore, sort them in your
memory, and only keep those that are worth preserving. You must also
open the oyster to extract the pearl and polish it to make it appear
more beautiful. You may not string it in the necklace of your mind
until it has been rubbed and garnished by meditation. Thus, you see
that we need meditation to make use of what we have discovered. As it
is the soul's rest, so it is, at the same time, the means of making the
best use of what the soul has acquired.
Again, meditation is to the soul what oil was to the body of the
wrestlers. When those old athletes went out to wrestle, they always
took care, before they went, to oil themselves well, to make their
joints supple and fit for their task. Now, meditation makes the soul
supple–makes it so that it can use things when they come into the
mind. Who are the men that can go into a controversy and get the
mastery? Why, the men who meditate when they are alone! Who are the men
that can preach? Not those who gad about and never commune only with
their own hearts, but those who earnestly think as well when no one is
near them as when there is a crowd around them. Who are the authors to
write your books and keep up the constant supply of literature? They
are meditative men. They keep their bones supple and their limbs fit
for exercise by continually bathing themselves in the oil of
meditation. How important, therefore, is meditation as a mental
exercise, to have our minds in constant readiness for any service!
I have thus pointed out to you that meditation is in itself useful to
every man. But you did not come here to listen to a merely moral
essay–you came to hear something about the Gospel of God–and what I
have already said is but an introduction to what I have to say
concerning the great necessity of meditation in religion. As meditation
is good for the mind, even upon worldly topics and natural science, it
is much more useful when we come to spiritual learning. The best and
most saintly of men have been men of meditation! Isaac went out into
the fields at eventide to meditate. David says, "I will meditate on
Your statutes." Paul, who himself meditated continually on all that
related to the Gospel, writing to Timothy concerning the important
things necessary in a good minister of Jesus Christ, says, "Meditate
upon these things; give yourself wholly to them; that your profiting
may appear to all." To the Christian, meditation is most essential. I
would almost question the being of a Christian and I would positively
deny his well-being who lived habitually without meditation. Meditation
and prayer are twin sisters and both of them appear to me equally
necessary to Christian life. I think meditation mustexist where there
is prayer, and prayer is sure to exist where there is meditation.
My Brothers and Sisters, there is nothing more needed to make
Christians grow in Grace, nowadays, than meditation. Most of you are
painfully negligent in this matter. You remind me of a sermon that one
of my quaint old friends in the country once preached from the text,
"The slothful man roasts not that which he took in hunting." He told us
that many people who would hunt for a sermon were too lazy to roast it
by meditation. They knew not how to put the jack of memory through it
and twist it round by meditation before the fire of piety, and so to
cook it and make it fit for their soul's food. So is it with many of
you–after you have caught the sermon, you allow it to run away. How
often do you, through lack of meditation, miss the entire purpose for
which the discourse was designed? Unless you meditate upon the Truths
of God we declare to you, you will gather little sweetness, you will
acquire little profit and, certainly, you will be in no way established
therein to your edification. Can you get the honey from the comb until
you press it? You may be refreshed while you listen to the sermon, but
it is the meditation afterwards which extracts the honey and gets the
best and most luscious savor!
Let me tell you that there ought to be special times for meditation. I
think every man should set apart a portion of each day for this
gracious exercise. A Christian will always be in a lean state if he has
no time for sacred musings before his God. Those men who know most of
God are such as meditate most upon Him. Those who realize most
experimentally the Doctrines of Grace are those who meditate and soar
beyond the reach of all sublunary things. I think we shall never have
much advancement in our churches until the members begin to habitually
accept the counsel, "Come, my people, enter you into your chambers and
shut your doors behind you." Or that other, "Commune with your own
heart upon your bed, and be still." Till the din and noise of business
somewhat abate and we give ourselves to calmer thought and, in the
solemn silence of the mind find at once our Heaven and our God, we must
expect to have regiments of dwarfs, and only here and there a giant.
Giant minds cannot be nourished by mere casual hearing. Gigantic souls
must have medita-
tion to support them. Would you be strong? Would you be mighty? Would
you be valiant for the Lord and useful in His cause? Take care that you
follow the occupation of the Psalmist, David, and meditate! This is a
very happy and profitable exercise.
II. Now, secondly, let us consider A VERY PRECIOUS SUBJECT–"My
meditation of Him shall be sweet." Christian, you need no greater
inducement to excite you than the subject here proposed–"My meditation
of Him shall be sweet." To whom does that word, "Him," refer? I suppose
it may refer to all the three Persons of the glorious Trinity–"My
meditation upon Jehovah shall be sweet." And, verily, if you sit down
to meditate upon God the Father, and muse upon His Sovereign,
Immutable, unchangeable love toward His elect people–if you think of
God the Father as the great Author and Originator of the plan of
salvation–if you think of Him as the mighty Being who, by two
immutable things, wherein it is impossible for Him to lie, has given us
strong consolation who have fled for refuge to Christ Jesus–if you
look to Him as the Giver of His only-begotten Son and who, for the sake
of that Son, His best gift, will, with Him also freely give us all
things–if you consider Him as having ratified the Covenant and pledged
Himself ultimately to complete all His stipulations, in the gathering
in of every chosen, ransomed soul, you will perceive that there is
enough to engross your meditation forever, even were your attention
limited to the manifestation of the Father's love!
Or, if you choose to do so, you may meditate upon God the Holy Spirit
Consider His marvelous operations on your own heart–how He quickened
it when you were dead in trespasses and sins–how He brought you near
to Jesus when you were a lost sheep, wandering far from the fold–how
He called you with such a mighty efficacy that you could not resist His
voice–how He drew you with the bands of love which would not let you
go. Think of how often He has helped you in the hour of peril–how
frequently He has comforted you with His promises in times of distress
and trouble. And if you remember that, like holy oil, He will always
supply your lamp until life's last hour–He will always replenish you
with His influences, proving Himself still your Teacher and your Guide
till you get up yonder, where you shall see your Savior face to face,
in the blessed Presence of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy
Spirit–in such great truth you may well find a vast and, indeed, an
infinite subject for your meditation.
But, tonight, I prefer rather to confine this word, "Him," to the
Person of our adorable Savior ' 'My meditation of Him shall be sweet."
Ah, if it is possible that the meditation upon one Person of the
Trinity can excel the meditation upon another, it is meditation upon
Jesus Christ–
"'Till God in human flesh I see, My thoughts no comfort find. The holy,
just, and sacred Three Are terrors to my mind. But if Immanuel's face
appears, My hope, my joy begins! His name forbids my slavish fears, His
Grace forgives my sins."
Precious Jesus, what can be a sweeter theme for me to think of than
Your exalted Being–to conceive of You as the Son of God, who, with the
golden compasses, struck out a circle from space and fashioned this
round world? To think of You as the God who holds this mighty orb upon
Your shoulders, You who are the King of Glory, before whom angels bow
in lowliest homage? And yet to consider You as, likewise, bone of my
bone, and flesh of my flesh–
"In ties of blood with sinners one"– to conceive of You as the Son of
Mary, born of a virgin, made flesh like ordinary men, clothed in
garments of humanity like mortals of our feeble race–to picture You in
all Your suffering life, to trace You in all Your passion, to view You
in the agony of Gethsemane, enduring the bloody sweat, the sore
amazement. And then to follow You to the pavement, Gabbatha, and thence
up the steep side of Calvary, bearing the Cross, braving the shame when
Your soul was made an offering for my sins, when You did die the
reconciling death 'midst horrors, still to all but God, unknown!
Verily, here is a meditation for my soul which must be "sweet" forever!
I might, like the Psalmist, say, "My heart is composing a good matter."
The marginal reading is, "it boils, or bubbles up, while I speak of the
things which I have made touching the King: my tongue is the pen of a
ready writer."
Christ! "My meditation of Him shall be sweet." Consider Christ in any
way you please and your meditation of Him will be sweet. Jesus may be
compared to some of those lenses you have perhaps seen which you may
take up and hold in
one way and you see one light. You hold them in another way and you see
another light–whichever way you turn them, you will always see some
precious sparkling of light and some new colors starting up to your
view. Ah, take Jesus for the theme of your meditation! Sit down and
consider Him, think of His relation to your soul and you will never get
to the end of that one subject!
Think of His eternal relationship to you! Remember that the saints were
free from all condemnation, in union with the Lamb, before the world
was made. Think of your everlasting union with the Person of
Jehovah-Jesus before this planet was sent rolling through space, and
remember how your guilty soul was accounted spotless and clean even
before you fell! And after that dire lapse, before you were restored,
justification was imputed to you in the Person of Jesus Christ. Think
of your known and manifest relationship to Him since you have been
called by His Grace. Think how He has become your Brother, how His
heart has beaten in sympathy with yours, how He has kissed you with the
kisses of His mouth and His love has been to you sweeter than wine.
Look back upon some happy, sunny spots in your history, where Jesus has
whispered, "I am yours," and you have said, "My Beloved is mine. Think
of some choice moments when an angel has stooped from Heaven and taken
you up on his wings and carried you aloft to sit in heavenly places
where Jesus sits, that you might commune with Him.
Or think, if it shall better please you, of some pensive moments, when
you have had what Paul sets so much store by–fellowship with Christ in
His sufferings. Think of seasons when the sweat has rolled from your
brow, almost as it did from that of Jesus–yet not the sweat of
blood–when you have knelt down and felt that you could die with
Christ, even as you had risen with Him. And then, when you have
exhausted that portion of the subject, think of your relationship to
Christ which is to be developed in Heaven. Imagine the hour to have
come when you shall–
"Greet the blood-besprinkled band, On the eternal shore"
and forever range the–
"Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood, Arrayed in living green."
Picture to your mind that moment when Jesus Christ shall salute you as
"more than a conqueror," and put a golden crown upon your head, more
glittering than the stars. And think of that transporting hour when you
will take that crown from off your brow and, climbing the steps of
Jesus' Throne, you shall put it on His head, and crown Him once more
Lord of your soul, as well as "Lord of All." Ah, if you come and tell
me you have no subjects for meditation, I will answer–Surely you have
not tried to meditate, or you would say with the Psalmist, "My
meditation of Him shall be sweet."
Suppose you have finished thinking of your Savior as He is especially
related to you. Consider Him, next, as He is related to the world.
Remember what Jesus said to Nicodemus, "God sent not His Son into the
world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be
saved," and, undoubtedly, He will one day save the world, for He who
redeemed it by price and by power, will restore it and renew it from
the effects of the Fall. Oh, think of Jesus in this relationship as the
Repairer of the breach, the Restorer of paths to dwell in! He will come
again to our earth one day and when He comes, He will find this world
still defaced with the old curse upon it–the primeval curse of Eden.
He will find plague, pestilence and war still here–but when He comes,
He will bid men beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into
pruning-hooks–war shall be obliterated from among the sciences. He
shall give the Word and there shall be a great company that will
publish it and, "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord,
as the waters cover the sea." Jesus Christ shall come! Christians, be
always watching and waiting for the Second Coming of your Lord Jesus
Christ! And while you wait, meditate upon that coming.
Think, O my Soul, of that august day when you shall see Him with all
His glorious train, coming to call the world to judgment and to avenge
Himself upon His enemies! Think of all His triumphs when Satan shall be
bound, death shall be crushed and Hell shall be conquered–and when He
shall be saluted as the universal Monarch, "God over all, blessed
forever. Amen." "My meditation of Him shall be sweet."
I believe that even when we get to Heaven, we shall need no subject for
meditation there, except Jesus Christ. There will be little else we
shall want of Heaven besides Jesus Christ. He will be our bread, our
food, our beauty, and our glorious dress. The atmosphere of Heaven will
be Christ! Everything in Heaven will be Christ-like. Yes, Christ is the
Heaven of His people. To be in Christ and to be with Christ, is the
essence of Heaven–
"Not all the harps above Can make a heavenly place, Should Christ His
residence remove, Or but conceal His face."
III. Let me proceed to point out A VERY BLESSED RESULT. "My meditation
of Him shall be sweet." This depends very much upon the character of
the one who meditates. I know some persons who come into chapel and who
are very glad when they hear the minister pronounce the benediction and
dismiss the assembly. They are very glad when all is over and they
would far rather hear the parting doxology than the text. As for a
meditation on Christ, instead of saying it is sweet, they would say it
is very dry. If they happen to hear an anecdote or a tale, they do not
mind remembering that–but a meditation which would be entirely on
Christ would be dry to them–and they would be glad to hear it brought
to a close. Ah, that is because of the taste you have in your mouth!
There is something wrong about your palate. You have your mouth out of
taste through eating some of the world's poor dainties! You have some
of the powder of the apples of Sodom hanging on your lips and that
spoils the glorious flavor of your meditation on Jesus! In fact, it
prevents your meditating on Christ at all. It is only a hearing of the
meditation with your ears, not a receiving it with your hearts. But
here the Psalmist says, "My meditation of Him shall be sweet."
What a mercy, dear Friends, that there is something sweet in this world
for us! We need it, I am sure, for, as for most other things in the
world, they are very, very bitter. Go through the great laboratory of
this world and how many will be the cases that you will see marked
bitter! There are perhaps more aloes put in our cup than any other
ingredient. We have to take a great quantity of bitters in the course
of our lives. What a mercy it is, then, that there is one thing that is
sweet! "My meditation of Him shall be sweet." So sweet, Beloved, that
all the other bitters are quite swallowed up in its sweetness! Have I
not seen the widow, when her husband has been called away, and he who
was her strength, the stay and sustenance of her life, has been laid in
the grave–have I not seen her hold up her hands and say, "Ah, though
he is gone, still my Maker is my Husband. 'The Lord gave, and the Lord
has taken away,' blessed be His holy name"?
What was the reason of her patient submission to the will of God?
Because she had a sweet meditation to neutralize the bitterness of her
reflections. And do I not remember, even now, seeing a man whose
property had been washed away by the tide, and whose lands had been
swallowed up and become quicksand, instead of being any longer
profitable to him? Beggared and bankrupt, with streaming eyes, he held
up his hands and repeated Habakkuk's words, "Although the fig tree
shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labor of
the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock
shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the
stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my
salvation!" Was it not because his meditation on Christ was so sweet
that it absorbed the bitterness of his trouble? And oh, how many, when
they have come to the dark waters of death, have found that surely
their bitterness was past, for they perceived that death was swallowed
up in victory through their meditation upon Jesus Christ!
Now, if any of you have come here with your mouths out of taste through
affliction and trouble. If you have been saying with Jeremiah, "He has
filled me with bitterness, He has made me drunken with wormwood. He has
also broken my teeth with gravel, He has covered me with ashes," take a
little of this choice cordial–I can assure you that it is sweet!
Lacrymae Christi, i t is called. If you will take these tears of Jesus
and put them in your mouth, they will take away all the unpleasant
flavor that is already there! Or, again, I bid you take this meditation
upon Christ as a piece of scented stuff that was perfumed in Heaven. It
matters not what you have in your house–this shall make it redolent of
Paradise– shall make it smell like those breezes that once blew
through Eden's garden, wafting the odor of flowers. Ah, there is
nothing that can so console your spirits and relieve all your
distresses and troubles as the feeling that now you can meditate on the
Person of Jesus Christ. "My meditation of Him shall be sweet."
But, my dear Hearers, shall I dismiss you without asking you whether
you have ever had a true meditation upon our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ? I do not like to preach a sermon without pressing it home to
the consciences of my hearers. I never like to bring you out a sword
and show it to you, and say, "Here is a sword, and it is sharp." I
always like to make you feel that it is sharp by cutting you with it!
Would to God that the sword of the Spirit might penetrate many of your
hearts! When I see so many gathered together on a weeknight, I am
astonished. When I came to London, I did not fancy there would be half
such a company on the Sabbath, much less on a weekday. But why have you
come, my Brothers and Sisters? "What did you go out to see? A reed
shaken with the wind?" What have you come out to see? A Prophet? No,
but I say that you have come to see something more than a Prophet–you
have come to see and hear something of Jesus Christ, our Savior and our
Lord! How many of you meditate on Christ?
Christian men and women, do not many of you live below your privileges?
Are you not living without having choice moments of communion with your
Savior? I think if you had a free pass to Heaven's palace, you would
use it very often. If you might go there whenever you liked and hold
communion with some person whom you dearly loved, you would often be
found there. But here is your blessed Lord Jesus, the King of Heaven,
and He gives you that which can admit you to intimate communion with
Him! And yet you live without meditating upon His work, meditating upon
His Person, meditating upon His offices, and meditating upon His Glory.
Christian men and women! I ask myself, and I ask you, is it not time we
should begin to live nearer to God? What is to become of our churches?
I do not know what to think of Christendom at large. As I travel
through the country and go here and there, I see the churches in a most
deplorable state. True, the Gospel is preached in most places of
worship, but it is preached as it might be by bumble-bees in
pitch-ers–always with the same monotonous sound–and little or no good
is done. I fear that the fault lies in the pews as well as in the
pulpits. If hearers are meditative, preachers must be meditative. It is
very true that water does not run uphill, but when you hearers begin to
meditate and pray over the Word, your ministers will realize that you
have gone beyond them–and they will themselves meditate and give you
the Gospel just as it comes fresh from their hearts–and it will be
food for your souls.
And for the rest of you–you who have never meditated on Jesus
Christ–what do you think will become of you when the bitterness of
death's agony shall be in your mouth? When you taste death, how do you
hope to destroy its ill flavor? Yet "that last, that most bitter cup
which mortal man can taste" is but a dire foretaste of what is to
follow! The first drops are bad enough, when you sip herethe beginning
of remorse on account of sin, but that future cup in Hell– that
terrible mixture which God deals out to the lost in the Pit–what will
you do when you have to drink that? What will you do when it will be
your sad meditation that you rejected Jesus, that you despised His
Gospel, that you scoffed at His Word? What will you do in that dread
extremity?
You worldly business men, will your ledgers afford you a sweet
meditation in Hell? Ungodly lawyer, will it be sweet for you to
meditate on your deeds and documents when you go there? Laboring man,
will it be a sweet meditation to you to think that your wages were
spent in drunkenness, or your Sabbaths profaned and your soul
neglected? And you, mere professor, will it be a sweet meditation to
you to sit down and think of your hypocrisy? And, ah, you
carnally-minded men who are indulging the flesh, pampering the appetite
and not serving the Lord–whose god is your belly and whose glory is in
your shame–will your career furnish a sweet meditation to you at the
last? Be assured of this, my Hearers, your sins must be your
meditation, then, if Christ is not your meditation now!
O wicked men! Wicked women! Let me say my closing word to you and to
all who know not God. I will give you a subject for your meditation
tonight–it shall be a parable. A certain tyrant sent for one of his
subjects and said to him, "What is your employment?" He answered, "I am
a blacksmith." "Then go home," he said, "and make me a chain of such a
length." He went home. It occupied him several months and he had no
wages all the while he was making the chain, only the trouble and pains
of making it. Then he brought it to the monarch, who said, "Go back,
and make it twice as long." He gave him nothing to do it with, but sent
him away. Again he worked on and made it twice as long. He brought it
up again, and the monarch said, "Go and make it still longer." Each
time he brought it, there was nothing but the command to make it
longer. And when he brought it up at last, the monarch said to his
servants, "Take it and bind him hand and foot with it, and cast him
into a furnace of fire." There were his wages for making the chain!
Here is a lesson which will afford you a subject for meditation
tonight, you who are servants of the devil. Your master is telling you
to make a chain. Some of you have been 50 years welding the links of
that chain and he says, "Go and make it still longer." Next Sunday
morning you will open that shop of yours and put another link on. Next
Sunday night you will be drunk and put another link on. Next Monday you
will do a dishonest action, and so you will keep on adding fresh links
to the chain. And when you have lived 20 more years, the devil will
say, "Add still more links!" And then, at last, his command will be,
"Take him and bind him hand and foot, and cast him into a furnace of
fire." "For the wages of sin is death."
There is a subject for your meditation! I do not think it will be
sweet, but if God makes it profitable, it will do you good. You must
have strong medicines, sometimes, when your disease is bad. God apply
this message to your hearts! Amen.