Instability

Instability

A Sermon

(No. 158)

Delivered on Sabbath Morning, October 11, 1857, by the

REV. C.H. SPURGEON

at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.

"Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel."–Genesis 49:4.

PERFECT STABILITY has ceased from the world since the day when Adam
fell. He was stable enough when in the garden he was obedient to his
Master's will, but when he ate of the forbidden fruit he did not only
slide himself, but he shook the standing places of all his posterity.
Perfect stability belongs alone to God he alone, of all beings, is
without variableness or shadow of a turning. He is immutable, he will
not change. He is all-wise, he need not change. He is perfect; he
cannot change. But men, the best of them are mutable, and therefore to
a degree, they are unstable, and do not excel. Yet it is remarkable
that, although man has lost perfect stability, he has not lost the
admiration of it. Perhaps there is no virtue, or, rather, no compound
of virtues, which the world more esteems than stability of mind. You
will find that, although men have often misplaced their praise, and
have called those great who were not great, morally, but were far below
the level of morality, yet they have scarcely ever called a man great
who has not been consistent, who has not had strength of mind enough to
be stable in his principles. I know not how it is, but so it is,
whenever a man is firm and consistent, we always admire him for it.
Though we feel certain that he is wrong, yet his consistency in his
wrong still excites our admiration. We have known men whom we have
thought to be insane, they have conceived a design so ridiculous that
we could only laugh at them, and despise their idea; but they have
stuck to it, and we have said, "Well, there is nothing like a man
standing to a thing," and we have admired even the senseless, brainless
idiot, as we have thought him, when we have seen him pertinaciously
insisting that his idea would at last triumph, and persevering in
futile endeavors to realize his wish. The weathercock man is never
admired, as a politician or as anything else he will never succeed; he
must be one thing or another, or the world will never respect him.

Now, my brethren, if it be so in earthly things, it is so also in
spiritual. Instability in religion is a thing which every man despises,
although every man has, to a degree, the evil in himself, but stability
in the firm profession and practice of godliness, will always win
respect, even from the worldly, and certainly will not be forgotten by
him whose smile is honor and whose praise is glory, even the great Lord
and Master, before whom we stand or fall. I have many characters here
to-day whom I desire to address in the words of my text. "Unstable as
water, thou shalt not excel." I propose, first, briefly to notice, the
common and unavoidable instabilities which necessarily attach
themselves to the best of Christians. I shall then note the character
of a Christian who is noted for glaring instability, but who,
notwithstanding, has sufficient of godliness to bid us hope that he is
a child of God, I shall then have to do with the mere professor, who is
"unstable as water," and cannot excel in any way whatever; and then I
must deal with the unstable sinner who, in any pretensions he may ever
make to better feelings, is always like the early cloud and the morning
dew.

I. First, then, to ALL Christians, permit me to address myself. Our
father Adam, spoilt us all; and, although the second Adam has renewed
us, he has not yet removed from us the infirmities, which the first
Adam left us as a mournful legacy. We are none of us stable as we
should be. We had a notion when we were first converted, that we should
never know a change; our soul was so full of love that we could not
imagine it possible we should ever flag in our devotion; our faith was
so strong in our Incarnate Master, that we smiled at older Christians
who talked of doubts and fears; our faces were so stedfastly set
Zionward that we never imagined Bye-path Meadow would ever be trodden
by our feet. We felt sure that our course would certainly be "like the
shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day." But,
my brethren, have we found it so? Have we not this day to lament that
we have been very changeable and inconstant, even unstable as water?
How unstable have we been in our frames? To-day we have climbed the top
of Pisgah, and have viewed the heavenly landscape over by the eye of
faith; to-morrow we have been plunged in the dungeon of despair, and
could not call a grain of hope our own; to-day we have feasted at the
banquetting table of communion; to-morrow we have been exclaiming, "Oh!
that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even unto his
feet." At night I have said, "I will not let thee go except thou bless
me," to-morrow has beheld my grasp loosened, and prayer neglected until
God has said "I will return unto my rest, until thou hast acknowledged
thy transgressions, which thou hast committed against me." High frames
one day, low frames the next We have had more changes than even this
variable climate of ours. It is a great mercy for us that frames and
slings are not always the index of our security, for we are as safe
when we are mourning as we are when we are singing; but verily, if our
true state before God had changed as often as our experience of his
presence, we must have been cast into the bottomless pit years ago.

And how variable have we been in our faith! In the midst of one trouble
we have declared, "though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." We have
courted the jeer, we have laughed at the scorn of the world, and have
stood like rocks in the midst of foaming billows, when all men were
against us; another week has seen us flying away, after denying our
Master, because, like Peter, we were afraid of some little maid, or of
our own shadow. After coming out of a great trouble, we have resolutely
declared "I can never doubt God again," but the next cloud that has
swept the sky, has darkened all our faith. We have been variable in our
faith.

And have you not also, at times, my friends, felt variable in your
love? Sweet Master, King of heaven, fairest of a thousand fairs! my
heart is knit to thee–my soul melteth at the mention of thy name; my
heart bubbleth up with a good matter, when I speak of the things which
I have made touching the King.

The strings that bind around my heart,

Tortures and racks may tear them off;

But they can never, never part,

The hold I have of Christ, my love."

Sure, I could die for thee, and think it better than to live, if so I
might honor thee. This is the sweet manner of our spirit when our love
is burning and fervent: but anon we neglect the fire, it becomes dim,
and we have to rake among the ashes even for a spark, crying,

"Tis a point I long to know,

Oft it causes anxious thought,

Do I love the Lord or no?

Am I his, or am I not?"

How unstable we are! At one time we are quite certain we are the
Lord's. though an angel from heaven should deny our election, or our
adoption, we would reply that we have the witness of the Spirit that we
are born of God, but perhaps within two minutes we shall not be able to
say that we ever had one spiritual feeling. We shall perhaps think that
we never repented aright, never fled to Christ aright, and did never
believe to the saving of the soul. Oh! it is no wonder that we do not
excel, when we are such unstable creatures. Alas! my brethren I might
enlarge on the inconsistencies of the mass of Christians. How
unfaithful we have been to our dedication vows! how negligent of close
communion! How unlike we have been to holy Enoch! how much more like
Peter, when he followed afar off! I might tell how one day, like the
mariner, we mounted up to heaven, and how the next moment we have gone
to the lowest depths when the waves of God's grace have ceased to lift
us up. I wonder at David, at Jacob, and at every instance we have in
Scripture of excellent men. Marvel! O ye angels, that God should ever
make such bright stars out of such black blots as we are. How can it
ever be that man, so fickle, so inconstant, should nevertheless be a
pillar in the house of his God, and should be made to stand "steadfast,
immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord!" How is it, O our
God, that thou couldst have steered a vessel so safely to its port
which was so easily driven by every wind and carried away by every
wave! He is a good marksman who an shoot so crooked an arrow straight
to its target. Marvel not that we do not excel–marvel that we do excel
in anything unstable as we are.

II. And now leaving these general remarks I have to single out a
certain class of persons. I believe them to be TRUE CHRISTIANS but they
are Christians of a singular sort. I would not be so harsh as to
condemn them, though I must certainly condemn the error with which I am
about to find fault. I doubt not that they have been converted in a
genuine manner, but still they are often a mystery to me, and I should
think they are a mystery to themselves. How many Christians have we in
our churches that are unstable as water! I suppose they were born so.
They are just as unstable in business as they are in religion; they
open a grocer's shop, and shut it in three months, and turn drapers,
and when they have been drapers long enough to become almost bankrupts,
they leave that and try something else. When they were boys they could
never play a game through, they must always be having something fresh,
and now they are just as childish as when they were children. Look at
them in doctrine: you never know where to find them. You meet them one
day, and they are very full of some super-lapsarian doctrine, they have
been to some strong Calvinist place, and nothing will suit them except
the very highest doctrine and that must be spiced with a little of the
gall of bitterness, or they cannot think it is the genuine thing. Very
likely next week they will be Arminians; they will give up all idea of
a fixed fate, and talk of free-will, and man's responsibility like the
most earnest Primitive Methodist. Then they steer another way. "Nothing
is right but the Church of England. Is it not established by law? Ought
not every Christian to go to his parish church?" Ah! ah, Let them
alone, they will be at the most gross schismatical shop in the
metropolis before long. Or if they do not change their denomination
they are always changing their minister. A new minister starts up;
there is no one, since the apostles, like him; they take a seat and
join the church; he is everything to them. In three months they have
done with him, another minister rises up some distance off, and these
people are not particular how far they walk; so they go to hear him. He
is the great man of the age; he will see every man's candle out, and
his will burn on. But a little trouble comes on the church, and they
leave him. They have no attachment to anything; they are merely
feathers in the wind or corks on the wave. They hear a sermon preached,
and they say, "I think it did me good" but they do not venture to be
sure till they speak to some great man who is a member of the church,
and he says "Oh! there was nothing in it." "Ah! just so," they say, and
cannot make up their minds whether it was a good sermon or not. They
are unstable; they could easily be talked into anything or out of
anything, they never had any brains in their head, I suppose, or if
they ever had any they gave them to somebody else to muddle as he
liked. They believe the last man they hear, and are easily guided and
led by him.

Now, if the matter ended there it would not be so bad; but these poor
people are just the same with regard to any religious enterprise they
take in hand. There is a Sunday-school, they are enchanted with the
thought. What a lovely thing it must be to sit on a form and try to
teach half-a-dozen boys the way to heaven. They go to the Sunday-school
and are alarmed the very first day, when they hear all the boys talking
louder than the teachers. After about ten minutes they think it is not
quite so nice as they thought. Perhaps they think it is that particular
school they do not like, and they try another, and at last they give up
all Sunday-school teaching, and make up their minds that it is not a
good thing, at least not for them. Then there is a Ragged-school. What
a divine enterprise! They will be Ragged-school teachers, and off they
go with their hearts full of fire, and their eyes full of tears over
these poor ragged-school children they are going to teach. Ah! how soon
is their zeal withered and all their glory departed! Hear them talk
about Ragged-schools a month afterwards: they shake their heads and say
it is a very arduous enterprise. They do not think they had a call to
it, they will try something else, and so they keep on to the end of the
chapter, they are "everything by turns, and nothing long." There are
some brethren in the ministry very much of the same sort. They never
preach in one pulpit long, (though some say they preach there too long,
for they ought never to have preached there at all) but I sometimes
think that if they had had a little more courage, and bore a little
more of the brunt of the battle, they might have done good to some of
the villages where they were placed. But they are unstable as water,
and everybody sees that they cannot excel. The same instability men
will carry out in their friendships; they meet a person one day, and
are as friendly as possible with him; they meet him the next day, he
does not know what he has done to offend them, but they turn their head
another way. And some carry their instability a little farther, they
carry it into their moral character. I shall not deny their
Christianity, but they are a queer sort of Christians. For these people
will sometimes, at least, stretch the cords of godliness a little too
far, and though they certainly do act in the main conscientiously, yet
their conscience is a large one, and it admits a great many things
which tender-hearted people would think were wrong. We cannot find out
any crime for which we could excommunicate them, yet in our hearts we
often say, "Dear me! what a sad disgrace so-and-so is to the cause; we
could do far better without him than with him, for he casts such a slur
on the name of Christ."

Now, do not think I am drawing a fancy picture. I beg to inform you I
am not; there are persons here who are furnishing me with the model;
and if they choose to think me personal I shall be obliged to them, for
I intend to be. These persons are to be found in all churches and among
all denominations. You have met them everywhere. They are as unstable
as water; they do not excel.

Now, let me address these persons very earnestly. My brother, I would
be far from dealing in a censorious manner with thee, for I am inclined
to think that thine instability is a little owing to some latent
insanity. We are no doubt all of us insane to a degree; there is some
little thing in us, which if we saw in another we should regard as
being a little madness. I would therefore, my brother, deal very
leniently with you, but at the same time let me very solemnly address
you as a Christian minister speaking to a professedly Christian man. My
brother, how much moral weight you lose in the church, and in the world
by your perpetual instability. No one ever attaches any importance to
your opinion, because your opinion has no importance in it, seeing that
you yourself will contradict it in a very short time. You see many
persons growing up in the church who have an influence over their
neighbor for good; you sometimes wish that you too could strengthen the
young convert, or reclaim and guide the wanderer. My brother you cannot
do it, because of your inconsistency. Now is it not a fearful thing
that you should be throwing away the whole force and weight of your
character, simply because of this insane habit of yours of being always
unstable? I beseech thee, my brother, recollect that thou art
responsible to God for thine influence; and if thou canst have
influence and dost not get it thou art as sinful as if, having
influence, thou hadst misused it. Do not, I beseech thee, suffer this
instability to continue, lest thou shouldst become like the chaff which
the wind driveth away–of no account to the world at all. Remember, my
brother, how your instability ruins your usefulness. You never continue
long enough in an enterprise to do good. What would you think of the
farmer who should farm just long enough to plough his ground and sow
his wheat, but not long enough to get a harvest? You would think him
foolish; but just so foolish are you. You begin time enough to be
overworked before you have well commenced. My brother, review your
history, what have you done? You have made hundreds of futile attempts
to do something, but a list of failures must be the only record of your
labors. What do you think will be your distress of mind when you come
to die, when you look back upon your life, and see it all the way
through, a host of blunders? Do you not think it will stuff the pillow
of your dying bed with thorns, to think that you were so wayward in
disposition, so unstable in heart, that you were unable to accomplish
anything for your Master, so that when you lay your crown at his feet
you will have to say, "There is my crown, my Master but it has not a
solitary star in it for I never worked long enough for thee in any
enterprise to win a soul; I only did enough to fail and to be laughed
at by all." And I would have thee think also, my brother, how canst
thou be a growing Christian, and yet be so changeable as thou art? If a
gardener should plant a tree to day, and take it up in the course of a
month, and transfer it to another place, what crop would he have when
autumn came? He would not have much to repay his toil. The continual
changing of the tree would put it into such a weakly condition, that if
it did not actually die, it would certainly produce nothing. And how
can you expect to grow in knowledge when you have no steadfast
principle? The man who espouses one form of doctrine, and does it
honestly, will, though it be a mistaken form, at least understand it,
but you do not know enough of Calvinism to defend it from its
opponents, or enough of Arminianism to defend it from the Calvinists.
You are not wise in anything, you are a rolling stone, you gather no
moss. You stay in one school only long enough to read through the
curriculum, but you learn nothing. You are smiling I see. And yet some
of those who smiled are just the men we smile at. They are here. But
alas! I have noticed one sad thing respecting these people, they are
generally the most conceited in all the world; they are excellent men
they think; they are at home everywhere. If they are in error they know
they can get right to-morrow, and then if some one else will again
convince them they are in error, they know no difference between error
and truth, except the difference which other people like to point out
to them. O ye unstable Christians, hear ye the word of the Lord!
"Unstable as water thou shalt not excel." Your life shall have little
of the cream of happiness upon it: you shall not walk in the midst of
the king's highway, in which no lion shall be found, but you shall walk
on the edge of the way, where you shall encounter every danger, feel
every hardship and endure every ill. You shall have enough of God's
comfort to keep you alive, but not enough to give you joy in your
spirit and consolation in your heart. Oh, I beseech you ponder a
little. Study the Word more, know what is right, and defend what is
right. Study the Law more, know what is right, and do what is right.
Study God's will more, know what be would have you do, and then do it.
For an unstable Christian never can excel.

III. But now there is another class of persons whom we dare not, in the
spirit of the widest charity admit to be true Christians. They are
PROFESSORS they have been baptized, they receive the Lord's Supper,
they attend prayer meetings church meetings, and everything else that
belongs to the order of Christians with which they are connected. They
are never behindhand in religious performances; they are the most
devout hypocrites, they are the most pious formalists that could be
discovered, range the wide world o'er. Their religion on the Sabbath
day is of the most superfine order; their godliness when they are in
their pews cannot be exceeded. They sing with the most eloquent praise,
they pray the longest and most hypocritical prayer that man could
utter; they are just up to the mark in every religious point of view,
except on the point which looks to the heart As far as the externals of
godliness go there is nothing to be desired. They tithe the anise, the
mint, and the cummin; they fast twice in the week; or if they do not
fast, they are quite as religious in not fasting, and are just as godly
in not doing it, as if they did it.

But these people are unstable as water, in the worst sense; for whilst
they sing Watts's hymns on Sunday, they sing other songs on Monday, and
whilst they drink sacramental cups on Sabbath evenings, there are other
cups of which they drink too deep on other nights; and though they pray
most marvellously, there is a pun on that word pray, and they know how
to exercise it upon their customers in business. They have a great
affection for everything that is pious and devout; but alas! like
Balaam, they take the reward of wickedness, and they perish in the
gainsaying of Core. "These are spots in your feasts of charity, when
they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are
without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth,
without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots. Raging waves of the
sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved
the blackness of darkness for ever." They bring a disgrace upon the
cause which they profess: not the vilest profane swearer brings more
dishonor on God's holy name than they do. They can find fault with
everything in the church, whilst they commit all manner of wickedness,
and are, as the apostle said, even weeping "enemies of the cross of
Christ, for their God is their belly, and they glory in their shame." O
hypocrite, thou thinkest that thou shalt excel, because the minister
has been duped, and gives thee credit for a deep experience, because
the deacons have been entrapped and think thee to be eminently godly,
because the church members receive thee to their houses, and think thee
a dear child of God too! Poor soul! mayhap thou mayest go to thy grave
with the delusion in thy brain that all is right with thee; but
remember, though like a sheep thou art laid in thy grave, Death will
find thee out. He will say to thee, Off with thy mask, man! away with
all thy robes! Up with that whitewashed sepulcher! Take off that green
turf; let the worms be seen. Out with the body; let us see the reeking
corruption! and what wilt thou say when thine abominably corrupt and
filthy heart shall be opened before the sun, and men and angels hear
thy lies and hypocrisies laid bare before them? Wilt thou play the
hypocrite then? Soul, come and sing God's praises in the day of
judgment with false lip! Tell him now, while a widow's house is in your
throat, tell him that you love him! Come, now, thou that devourest the
fatherless, thou that robbest, thou that dost uncleanness! tell him now
that thou didst make thy boast in the Lord! tell him that thou didst
preach his word, tell him that thou didst walk in his streets! tell him
thou didst make it known that thou wert one of the excellent of the
earth! What! man, is thy babbling tongue silent for once? What is the
matter with thee? Thou wast never slow to talk of thy godliness. Speak
out, and say "I took the sacramental cup; I was a professor." Oh how
changed! The whitewashed sepulcher has become white in another sense,
he is white with horror. See now; the talkative has become dumb; the
boaster is silent; the formalist's garb is rent to rags, the moth has
devoured their beauty; their gold has become tarnished, and their
silver cankered. Ah! it must be so with every man who has thus belied
God and his own conscience. The stripping day of judgment will reveal
him to God and to himself. And how awful shall be the damnation of the
hypocrite! If I knew that I must be damned, one of my prayers should
be, "Lord, let me not be damned with hypocrites," for surely to be
damned with them is to be damned twice over. Conceive of a hypocrite
going into hell. You know how one of the prophets depicted the advent
of a great monarch into hell, when all the kings that had been his
slaves rose up and said, "Art thou become like one of us?" Do you not
think you see the godly Christian deacon, so godly that he was a liar
all his life? Do you not think you see the eminent Christian member
that kept a bank, took the chair at public meetings, swindled all he
could, and died in despair? Do you not think you see him coming into
the pit? There is one man there that was a drunkard all his life. Hear
his speech, "Ah! you were a sober man! you used to talk to me, and tell
me that drunkards could not inherit the kingdom of heaven. Aha! and art
thou become like one of us?" Says another, "About a month ago, when we
were on earth, you met me and rebuked me for profane swearing, and told
me that all swearers should have their portion in the lake. Ah! there
is not much to choose between thee and me now, is there?" And the
profane man laughs as well as he can laugh in misery at his desperately
religious adviser. "Oh!" says another–and they look round at one
another with demoniac mirth; as much mockery of joy as hell can
afford–"The parson here? Now preach us a sermon; now pray us a long
prayer! Plenty of time to do it in!" "No!" says another, "there is no
widow's house to eat, here, and he only prayed on the strength of the
widow's house."

This is a hard scene for me to describe; but I doubt not of its
truthfulness. It may be given to you in rough language, but it needs
far rougher to make you know the dread reality. And what a solemn
thought it is! there is not one man nor one woman in this place who has
not need to ask, "Is it so with me?" Many have been deceived–I may
be–you may be, my hearer. "I am not deceived," says one, "I am a
minister." My brethren, there are many of us who are preachers who are
like Noah's carpenters; we may help to build an ark, and never get in
it ourselves. Says another, "I shall not endure such language as that;
I am a deacon." You may be all that, and yet, after having ministered,
instead of earning to yourself a good degree, you may be cast from the
presence of God. "No," says another, "but I have been a Christian
professor these last forty years, and nobody has found fault with me."
Ah! I have known many A rotten bough to have stopped on a tree forty
years, and you may be rotten and yet stand all that time; but the winds
of judgment will crack you at last, and down you will fall. "Nay," says
another. "I know I am not insincere I am sure I am right." I am glad
that you think so, but I would not like you to say it. "Let him that
thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." There have been many
great bubbles that have burst ere this, and your piety may be one of
them. "Let not him that putteth on the harness boast as though he put
it off." It will be time enough for you to be quite sure when you are
quite safe. Yet blessed be God, we hope we can say, "O Lord, if not
awfully deceived we have given our hearts to thee! Lord thou knowest
all things; thou knowest that we love thee, and if we do not, Lord thou
knowest we pray this prayer from our hearts: Search me, O God, and try
my ways, prove me and know my heart, and see if there be any evil way
in me and lead me in the way everlasting.'" May God the Holy Spirit
strengthen and settle each of us.

IV. And now I have the last word to address to those who MAKE NO
PRETENSION TO RELIGION whatever. I have heard hundreds of persons in my
short life excuse their sin by saying, "Well, I make no profession,"
and I have always thought it one of the strangest excuses, one of the
most wild vagaries of apology to which the human mind could ever make
resort. Take an illustration, which I have used before. To-morrow
morning, when the Lord Mayor is sitting, there are two men brought up
before him for robbery. One of them says he is not guilty, he declares
that he is a good character, and he is an honest man in general though
he was guilty in this case. He is punished. The other one says, "Well,
your worship, I make no profession; I'm a down right thorough thief,
and I don't make any profession of being honest at all." Why you can
suppose how much more severe the sentence would be upon such a man.
Now, when you say I do not make any profession of being religious, what
does that mean? It means that you are a despiser of God and of God's
law; it means that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of
iniquity. You that boast of making no profession of religion, you are
boasting you know not what of. You would think it a strange thing for a
man to boast that he made no profession of being a gentleman, or no
profession of being honest, or no profession of being sober, or no
profession of being chaste. You would shun a man who did this, at once.
And you who make no pretensions to religion, just make your trial the
more easy for there will be no need for any dispute concerning you.
When the scales of justice are lifted up at last you will be found to
be light weight, and that upon your own confession. I cannot imagine
you urging such a plea as that when God shall judge you. "My Lord, I
made no profession." "What" saith the King, "did my subject make no
profession of obedience?" "O Lord, I made no profession." "What!" saith
the Creator, "make no profession of acknowledging my rights?" "I made
no profession of religion." "What!" saith the Judge, "did I send my Son
into the world to die, and did this man make no profession of casting
his soul upon him? What! did he make no profession of his need of
mercy? Then he shall have none. Does he dare tell me to my face that he
never made any profession of faith in Christ, and never had anything to
do with the Saviour? Then insomuch as he despised my Son, and despised
his cross, and rejected his salvation, let him die the death;" and what
that death is with its everlasting wailings and gnashing of teeth,
eternity alone can tell.

O sinner! thou hast some part and lot in my text Thou art "unstable as
water." Let me remind thee that though thou makest no profession of
religion now, there was a time when thou didst. Strong man! you are
laughing now: I repeat it, there was a time when you did talk about
religion; it is not quite gone from your memory yet. You lay sick with
fever for six weeks: do you recollect when the delirium came on, and
they all thought that you must die? Do you recollect when your poor
brain was right for a moment how you asked the physician whether there
was any hope for you, and he would not exactly say "NO," but he looked
so blank at you, that you understood what it meant? Do you recollect
the agony with which you looked forward to death? Do you recollect how
you groaned in your spirit, and said, "O God, have mercy upon me?" Do
you recollect that you got a little better, and you told your friends
that if you lived you would serve God? "Oh! it is all over now," you
say, you were a fool! Yes, you were a fool, that is true, you were a
fool, to have said what you did not mean and to have lied before God.
You do not profess religion! But you remember the last time the
terrific thunder and lightning came. You were out in the storm. A flash
came very near you. You are a bold man, but not so bold as you pretend
to be. You shook from head to foot, and when the thunder clap
succeeded, you were almost down on your knees, and before you knew it
you were in prayer. "Please God I get home to-night," you said, "I
shall not take his name in vain again!" But you have done it. You are
unstable as water. You went sometime ago to a church or a chapel–I
mind not which: the minister told you plainly where you were going. You
stood there and trembled; tears ran down your cheeks, you did not knock
your wife about that Sunday, you were a greet deal more sober that
week, and when your companion said you looked squeamish, you denied it,
and said you had no such thoughts as he imagined. "Unstable as water."
Oh! and there are some of you worse than that still: for not once, nor
twice, but scores of times you have been driven under a faithful
minister, to the very verge of what you thought repentance, and then,
just when something said in your heart, "This is a turning point," you
have started back, you have chosen the wages of unrighteousness, and
have again wandered into the world. Soul! my heart yearns for thee!
"Unstable as water thou shalt not excel." No, but I pray the Lord to
work in thee something that will be stable; for we all believe–and
what I say is not a matter of fiction, but a thing that you believe in
your own hearts to be true–we all believe that we must stand before
the judgment bar of God, and ere long give account of the things done
in the body, whether they be good or whether they be evil. Friend, what
account wilt thou give of thy broken vows, of thy perjured soul? What
wilt thou have to say why judgment should not be pronounced against
thee? Ah! sinner, you will want Christ then! What would you give then
for one drop of his blood? "Oh! for the hem of his garment! Oh, that I
might but look to him and be lightened. Oh, would to God that I might
hear the gospel once again!" I hear you wailing, when God has said,
"Depart ye cursed!" And this is the burden of your song "Fool that I
was, to have despised Jesus, who was my only hope, to have broken my
promise, and gone back to the poor vain world that deluded me, after
all!" And now I hear him say "I called, but ye refused, I stretched out
my hand, but no man regarded; now I will laugh at your calamity, and
mock when your fear cometh." I always think those two last sentences
the most awful in the Bible. "I will laugh at your calamity." The laugh
of the Almighty over men that have rebelled against him, that have
despised him, and trodden his gospel underfoot! "I also will laugh at
your calamity I will mock when your fear cometh." Rail at that if you
like, it is sure, sirs. Remember that all your kicking at God's
laughter will not make him leave it off; remember that all your
rebellious speeches against him shall be avenged in that day, unless ye
repent, and that speak as ye will against him your blasphemy cannot
quench the flames of hell, nor will your jeers slay the sword of
vengeance: fall it must, and it will fall on you all the more heavily
because you did despise it.

Hear the gospel, and then farewell. Jesus Christ the eternal Son of God
was born of the Virgin Mary and became a man, he lived on earth a life
of holiness and suffering; at last he was nailed to the cross, and in
deep woe he died. He was buried; he rose again from the deed, he
ascended into heaven. And now God "commandeth all men everywhere to
repent;" and he telleth them this–"Whosoever believeth on the Son of
God shall not perish, but have eternal life." And this is his gospel.
If you this day feel yourself to be a sinner, if that be a feeling
wrought in you by the Holy Spirit and not a casual thought flashing
across the soul, then Christ was punished for your sins; and you cannot
be punished; for God will not punish twice for one offense. Believe in
Christ; cast your soul on the atonement that he made; and although
black as hell in sin, you may this day find yourself, through the
efficacious blood of Christ, whiter than the snow. The Lord help thee,
poor soul, to believe that the Man who died on Calvary was God, and
that he took the sin of all believers upon himself–that thou, being a
sinner and a believer, he has taken thy sins, and that therefore thou
art free. Thus believe, and by faith thou wilt have peace with God
through Jesus Christ our Lord, by whom also we have received the
atonement.