The Tender Enquiry of a Friend

The Tender Enquiry of a Friend

DELIVERED BY

C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"How long will you cut yourself?" Jeremiah 47:5.

TRAVELERS in the East tell us that among the most melancholy scenes
they witness is the following: Men inflict upon themselves very
grievous voluntary wounds and then exhibit themselves in public. They
even disfigure themselves with gashes and cuts in the presence of
excited throngs. I am speaking of what has occurred even within the
last few years among the Muslims. When some great Prophet or emir is
coming that way, a certain number of fanatical Mahometans take swords,
spears and other sharp instruments and gash themselves terribly,
cutting their breasts, their faces, their heads and all parts of their
bodies.

Frequently they have taken care to dress themselves in white sheets so
that as the blood flows copiously from their bodies, it may be the more
clearly seen, that they may become the more ghastly spectacles of
misery, or more fully display the religious excitement under which they
labor. As everything in the East remains forever the same, this Muslim
superstition carries us back to the olden times whereof we read in the
Old Testament when the priests of Baal, having cried in vain to their
idol, cut themselves with lances and with knives. Our translators were
probably afraid to write the harsher words and so they translated the
passage "knives and lances," but they might have written swords and
spears–sharp instruments of a desperate character.

Thus they displayed their inward zeal and thus, perhaps, they hoped to
move the pity of their god. Eastern fanaticism surpasses belief–you
would suppose that the raving creatures were about to commit suicide
and yet there is a method in their madness. You could hardly think that
men possessed of reason would torture themselves and disfigure
themselves as they do. But they know what they are doing and are only
carrying out their plans. The Lord expressly forbade His people, the
Jews, to perpetrate such folly. They were not even to shave the corners
of their beards, or to hack their hair, as the Orientals do in the hour
of their grief.

And then they were further prohibited from injuring their bodies by the
command, "You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead,
nor print any marks upon you: I am the Lord" (Lev. 19:28.) Men in
Eastern lands, not only in connection with fanaticism but in reference
to domestic affairs, will cut themselves to express their grief and
anguish–or to make other people believe that they are feeling such
grief and anguish. We may congratulate ourselves that we are free from
at least one foolish custom.

The Prophet here speaks to the Philistines who were about to endure the
tremendous judgments of God and, indeed, to be crushed as a nation by
the Egyptians and the Chaldeans. And he says to Philistia, "How long
will you cut yourself?" Gaza was to be made bald by the smiting of
Pharaoh. Ashkelon was to be shorn away. And the whole nation was to
feel the sword of the Lord, which would not rest in its scabbard. How
long would they continue to bring upon themselves such terrible
judgments?

The expression is used, first, almost in despair. The question is asked
with little hope–as if the self-torturer would never have done but
would go on to mutilate himself without end. I intend to use it at this
time, in the second place, as a question asked instructively and
hopefully, in the hope that some, who have practically been cutting
themselves, will cease from this self-torture and find rest and peace
where it is to be had and to be had at once and forever. May the good
Spirit grant our desire!

I. First, dear Friends, I SHALL ASK THIS QUESTION VERY
DESPAIRINGLY–"How long will you cut your-self?"–for many are cutting
themselves very terribly and will have to feel their wounds for a long,
long time–neither can we induce them to cease.

I allude, first, to some professors of religion who have been Church
members for ten, twenty, or more years and yet have practically done
nothing at all for the Savior. If they were really to awaken to a sense
of their neglect, I do not know how long they would be in anguish, or
how deep would be their distress. For if Titus mourned that he had lost
a day when he had done no good action for twenty-four hours–and he but
a heathen–what would happen to a Christian if he were really to see
his responsibility before God and to feel that he has not only lost a
day but a year–perhaps many years?

Have not some of you well-near lost a whole lifetime? What hosts of
opportunities you have thrown away! What multiplied responsibilities
you have incurred! Favored as you have been and so ungrateful!
Comforted as you have been and yet keeping the comfort to yourself and
never seeking out other lonely hearts to share with them the heavenly
balm. Instructed as you have been and yet instructing none in return!
With Divine light shining upon you and yet never giving that light to
others!–

"Can we, whose souls are lighted With wisdom from on high, Can we, to
men benighted, The lamp of life deny?"

The good Bishop's hymn asks the question as if it were impossible. But,
Sirs, it is not impossible. It is sadly true. And alas, commonly true!
Our Churches are made up largely of barren members and of cumber-ground
trees that bring forth no fruit. Oh, if I am addressing such–and
honestly in the sight of God I fear I am–then how long will you
chasten yourselves for your neglect? It must be long before you can
forgive yourselves for such wicked indolence. How long will you afflict
yourselves to think that you should have suffered time which you can
never recall and opportunities which you will never enjoy again, to go
by you wasted?

The miller puts his wheel hard by the stream and uses its constant flow
to grind his corn. But you have a stream of opportunity and power
flowing by you which you have turned to no practical service. Your
tears might well be as plentiful as the drops of the wasted stream of
life. Some of you stand by and listen to the hum of the wheel and
admire the liquid music of the falling waters. But nothing practical
comes of it. Your taste is gratified and your conscience is eased by
attending religious services but there is nothing done for
Christ–nothing done for the souls of men.

Like little children with their toy windmills you are amused with that
which, if you were true men, you would turn to good account. Are you
not ashamed to have been playing, while God and Heaven and even Satan
and Hell are all so terribly in earnest? You have come to years of
discretion, when "life is real, life is earnest," and you have still
trifled. Can you ever be sorry enough for this? How long will you cut
yourself? Ah, me! I think I should eternally regret it if up till now I
had never preached the Gospel of the Grace of God. Ah, me! If it had
not been God's good pleasure to let me break out as a soul-winner while
yet a boy, I could lay me down upon my bed and wish that I had never
been born.

If I had reached the very center of life and yet had done nothing to
reclaim and restore the sons of men and glorify the Lord my Redeemer, I
should tear my hair. Do I address any who have come to the noon of life
and have not yet done a hand's turn in my Lord's vineyard? The dew of
the morning is gone and the best hours of the day have glided away–why
do you stand here all the day, idle? Do I make you feel uncomfortable?
I shall thank God if I do. And I shall be happy, indeed, if, instead of
cutting yourselves with vain regrets, you lacerate yourselves with my
sharp remarks as with spears and knives and then gird up your loins and
say, "God helping me, there shall never be another wasted year, no, nor
another wasted day!"

Then I shall be rejoiced, indeed. Oh, how I wish each one of you would
pray–

"Let every flying hour confess I bring Your Gospel fresh reno wn, And
when my life and labors cease May I possess the promised crown!" But,
lazy Professors, when will you have done with your regretting if your
conscience is once aroused? If you are once moved to see what cause you
have for shame, surely you will never leave off cutting yourselves with
regrets? But what will be the use of your lamentations unless they lead
you to amendments and from sluggards you become laborers? Let us hope
it will be so. But I am not very hopeful, for it is hard to make long
habits of indolence yield to diligence.

The same may be applied and applied very solemnly, too, to those who
backslide–who, in addition to being useless, are injurious because
their example tends to hinder others from coming to Christ. Oh, if any
of you that name the name of Jesus and have been happy in His service
and have enjoyed high days and holy days in His presence, turn aside, I
shall use this lamentation over you! You will do yourselves terrible
injury and I shall shudder as I see the edged tools of sin in your
reckless hands. Every sin is a gash in the soul. The Lord will bring
you back and save you, as I believe. But oh, how long will you cut
yourselves? You will feel in after life how grievously you have injured
your souls.

David's great sin was put away so that he did not die but he was never
the same David as before. The Lord's people seem to have shunned him
for a time while the adversary found occasion to blaspheme. He offers a
remarkable prayer in the one hundred and nineteenth Psalm when he says,
"Let those that fear You turn unto me" (v. 79). I think they had, in a
measure, turned away from him in horror at his great sin. They began to
stand in doubt of him. They had loved him as their champion

in his earlier days, when he led the van of the armies of the Lord of
Hosts and when as a youth he returned from the battle bringing the head
of Goliath.

They had looked up to him when he was in the wilderness because of his
integrity. Though hunted like a partridge by the ungodly party, yet he
was the hope of Israel and the joy of all the saints. With what delight
did they gather round him at Hebron and Jerusalem when he was crowned
their king! They felt that God had blessed His people in giving them
such a leader. But when it was whispered that he had defiled his
neighbor's wife, then the godly shuddered. They knew what blasphemy and
rebuke would come of it and they kept out of his way. They must have
been deeply grateful when they found him truly penitent. When he was
crying to God for mercy, probably some of them would know it and
perhaps step in to cheer him.

But still David was scarcely David again, either to the people of God
or to himself. The Lord, out of very love to him, chastened him sorely
and pursued him with plague upon plague. His family became his dishonor
and his sorrow. He went with broken bones to the grave–a man of
sorrows and acquainted with grief. How grievously he had injured
himself! How long he had to cut himself with anguish for that one sin!
His life, surely, from the time when he fell with Bathsheba, was
penitential sorrow rather than confident delight. And though the Lord
left him not but brought him to much maturity of Divine Grace out of
his brokenness of heart, still, as often as he went to his couch, the
memory of his great transgression would cut and wound his heart.

What is true of David applies also to others who have in any great
measure turned aside. Solomon, in a high degree, hurt himself by his
terrible follies. In the New Testament Peter is a conspicuous example.
It is a tradition that whenever Peter heard the cock crow he used to
weep. And I do not wonder at it. Alas, If you and I should ever be
suffered to fall into grievous sin, it may be all done in ten minutes
but it cannot be gotten rid of in fifty years. We shall bear the scars
of that ten minutes' sin until the Lord shall take us home and permit
us to wake up, "without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing," in the
full likeness of our perfect Lord.

Oh, my Brethren, watch anxiously lest you have to mourn for years over
the sin of an instant! God grant that all His servants may be kept both
from the sin of omission, of which I spoke at first, which leads to
neglect of duty–and also from the sin of commission which leads to
actual backsliding and practical departing from the living God.

There is one thing which comes after these and comes in connection with
them. If you and I should know that souls have been lost–lost as far
as we are concerned–through our neglect, how long shall we cut
ourselves on that account? A dear soul said to me yesterday, "My
husband died. He had been a sad drunkard but in his last illness,
through the blessing of God upon those who visited him, I trust he
found peace. He said that he believed in the Lord Jesus and there is my
comfort. But oh, if he had died without finding Christ, I should have
been indeed a widow! I know not what could have comforted me."

I am grateful that our Sister called in her Christian friends and that,
by their efforts and her prayers, she was spared the keenest edge of
sorrow. "Surely the bitterness of death is past." But suppose you were
to lose your son and that your son should die in sin which he learned
from you? Or in sin which you saw in him and never rebuked? Suppose, I
ask, your son should die in his iniquity? What if he should have been
your favorite child and you should have tolerated much evil in him
which you would not have suffered in another? What if you pampered and
indulged him and gave him liberty to make himself

vile?

Shall I tell you how you will behave yourself when the news comes to
you that he is dead? You will get by yourself alone and cry like David,
"O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for
you, O Absalom, my son, my son!" You can lay your children down upon
the bed all stark and cold and follow them to the tomb and even sing as
you commit their mortal remains to the grave, when you know that they
die in hope. But if they perish in their sin, guilty, red-handed,
unforgiven, what will you say to yourselves?

Fathers, if you have never sought to bring your children to repentance,
how will you excuse yourselves? If you have never prayed with them, or
wept with them–if you have never even instructed them in the things of
God, what flattering unction will you lay to your guilty consciences?
What will you say, Mother, if your daughter passes into eternity
unforgiven and you have never tried to lead her to Jesus? What shall I
say of you, my congregation, if I waste your Sabbaths with fine shows
of oratory but do not seek your souls? When next the knell is heard and
there is another gone who constantly listened to my voice, if I have
not been faithful with you and persuaded you to lay hold on Christ, how
long must I tear my hair and cut myself for very anguish because my
garments will be spotted crimson with your blood?

These are solemn things but there are deep Truth of Gods in them and
they ought to be considered by all of you who profess to be Christians.
I knew one who used to have a man calling upon him in the way of
business and bringing certain articles which he bought across the
counter. This tradesman said one day to himself, "I have dealt with
that man for nine or ten years

and we have scarcely passed the time of day. He has brought in his work
and I have paid him across the counter but I have never tried to do him
any good. Surely this cannot be right. Providence has put him in my way
and I ought at least to have asked him whether he is saved in Christ."

Well, the next time the man came, our good Brother's spirit failed him
and he did not like to begin a religious conversation. The man never
came again but a boy brought in the next lot of goods. "How is this?"
said the shopkeeper. "Father is dead," said the boy. My friend, the
shopkeeper, said to me, "I could never forgive myself. I could not stay
in the shop that day. I felt that I was guilty of that man's blood. But
I had not thought of it before. How can I ever clear myself from the
guilty fact that, when I did think of it, my ungracious timidity
prevented me from opening my mouth?"

My dear Friends, do not bring upon yourselves such cutting regrets!
Avoid them by daily watching to save men from the second death. Will
you let them die? Will you let them die? If so, when you wake up to the
sense that you have suffered them to perish, then this dreadful
question may well be put to you, "How long will you cut yourself?" How
long will you feel remorse and regret that your hopeful opportunity was
allowed to pass by unimproved?

One other most solemn use may be made of this question–God grant that
it may never be so but if anyone of you should die in his sins, how
long will you regret it? It looks dreadfully possible that some of you
will perish forever since you have so often been entreated to come to
Christ and have never come. For the moment, suppose that there is no
Hell but if you are only shut out of Heaven, how long will that be a
subject of grief? If you should only hear the King say, "Depart, you
cursed!" and should only have to depart and keep on departing, oh, the
wringing of hands and the anguish! O you who have lost eternal life,
how long will you cut yourself?

If you should miss Christ and miss mercy and miss Heaven and miss
eternal glory–if there were nothing else–how long will you bemoan
yourself? With what depth of anguish will you smart to have lost all
this–to have, in fact, lost all which makes up life and joy! What if,
after all, I come short of the kingdom, I that had my Sabbaths but
never found rest in Christ? I that heard the Gospel but never took
Christ to be my Savior? I that was almost persuaded and yet never
yielded my heart to Divine Grace? I that was almost in the ark and yet,
not being altogether in it, was left to drown? I that had so much about
me that was hopeful? I that would, as I said, in a short time, concern
myself about Divine things–I–I am cast out, left with the tares, not
gathered with the wheat?

What if I find myself on the left hand, condemned and cast away? What
regrets will such a calamity cost me if it is so! O souls, how
long–how long will you grieve and mourn when it shall come to this?
According to my reading of this Book– and I would gladly read it
otherwise if I did not feel that truth and honesty forbid me to do
so–your loss, your anguish will be forever. Forever you will cut
yourselves. Forever will you lament that when the opportunity was so
near you, you put it away from you and when Christ was ready to receive
you, you would not be received but chose your own delusions and
committed eternal suicide.

O Friends, do not trifle with that which is and must be eternal! Make
not a dreadful choice which can never be altered. Be solemn, be intense
when you are dealing with matters which for good or bad will be past
changing when death comes to you.

II. I leave this very painful use of the text now, to try and use it at
greater length in a happier sort, by way of consolation and hopeful
comfort, to those who will, we trust, be soon brought to receive the
Lord Jesus. "How long will you cut yourself?" I SHALL ASK THIS QUESTION
HOPEFULLY, trusting that in many their sorrow is nearing its end.

This text may be very profitably and prudently applied to those who
have been bereaved and who, being bereaved, sorrow and sorrow to
excess. I hope that I am not about to say a harsh word. But I would
deal faithfully with rebellious repining. "Jesus wept." And he that
does not weep when he loses a dear one must be something less than a
man and unworthy to be called a Christian. But there is such a thing as
carrying to an extreme our sorrow for those we lose till it becomes
rebellion against God.

You remember the Quaker saying to the lady who was wearing very deep
double mourning attire years after one of her children had died,
"Madam, have you not forgiven God yet?" And there is a truth about that
remark. Some do not forgive God for what He has done. Their sorrow
amounts to this–that they have a quarrel with God over His
dispensations. "How can He be good and have taken away my mother?" said
one to me. "How can God be good and have taken away my child?" cried
another. There is a want of faith, a want of reverence, a want of love,
a want of many sweet and placid graces in such mourning as that.

And, without dwelling long upon it, I beg to put that question to any
mourner here who is mourning with the ungodly sorrowing of the
heathen–as if there were no hope. "How long will you cut yourself?" Is
not your child in Jesus' bosom? Has not your friend gone among the
angels, to join the sweet singers of God? Is it not a gain to the
departed, though it is a loss to

you, that they are translated to the place of everlasting bliss? Would
you have them back again? Dare you wish such a thing even for a moment?
If they are supremely blessed, is there no blessedness to you in their
blessedness? Are you so selfish that you would tear a star from Heaven
that you might have the light of it all to yourself?

Come, be reconciled, not only to your grief but to your God who sent
it! It has come to be now like a fretting canker within you–will you
not end it? As the moth eats the garment, so does this grief eat you
up. Therefore arise and shake yourself from it. Know you not that their
Redeemer lives and your Redeemer, too? And will you not now yield up to
Christ what is infinitely more His than yours and cheerfully say, "Let
Him have those whom He has purchased with His blood and for whom He
prayed, 'Father, I will that they also, whom You have given Me, be with
Me where I am' "? "How long will you cut yourself?" Put away your
disputing and murmuring and either, like Aaron, hold your peace, or
better still, like Job, bless the name of the Lord and rejoice in your
God.

But now, turning to quite another character, I would use the same
expression for another purpose. There are some persons with whom God is
dealing in great love and yet they are very rebellious. They persevere
in known sin although the evil way has become exceedingly hard on them.
They seem as if they would walk over red-hot plowshares to Hell. I have
known some who have found the pleasures which once delighted them to
become a nuisance, a trouble, a pain, a disgust and a weariness. And
yet they continue in their unprofitable course.

You remember Saul of Tarsus, to whom the Lord said, "It is hard for you
to kick against the pricks"–he was acting as though with a naked foot
he kicked against iron nails, or like the bullock when it is struck
with the ox-goad and kicks back, driving the goad much deeper into
itself than otherwise it would have gone. Certain men are doing just
that–how I wish they could see that it is so! They are following a
wild course of life and they are losing money at it and they are likely
to lose much more. They are plunging down. What are they thinking of?
"How long will you cut yourself?" Already they have met with great
disasters and misfortunes–they will meet with many more. When the dogs
are out hunting, they run in packs. The plagues of Egypt are ten, at
least, and everyone who plays the Pharaoh may expect the full number.

you to whom the Lord is sternly kind–by terrible things in
righteousness He will chasten you to your right mind! If the Lord means
to have you at His feet, He will bring you there. By hook or by crook
He will bring you there, depend upon it. And if you will not come by
gentle means, you shall come by some other means. But He will break you
down in due time. I know that already certain of you have had stroke
upon stroke. From wealth you have descended to poverty, from health you
have come down to sickness, from honor you have fallen to obscurity. Is
not this enough to humble you before God?

You will come down lower yet. As surely as you live, you will be made
to feel that it is an evil and a bitter thing to sin against God. My
heart's desire is that it may be so–that by this painful method you
may be saved. I spoke some time ago with the son of a very godly man.
He seemed to be an infidel outright and had taken to horseracing and
the like. My inmost soul was grieved concerning him–I could have wept.
As he talked very largely, and mild words were lost on him, I said to
him, "Keep as many racehorses as you can and go in for gambling most
heartily, for thus the sooner you will lose all your money. Some
prodigals never come back to the Father's house until they sink as low
as the pig's trough and that is probably the way for you. When you get
a hungry belly, I trust you will come home."

He knows what my warning meant and I fear he intends to make it true.
The way of transgressors is hard. And it is a mercy when it becomes so
hard that they are resolved to quit it for another and a better way. Is
this happening to anybody here? Have you spent your money riotously?
Are you getting into trouble? I half congratulate you. I congratulate
the angels who watch your course–I hope that the probabilities are
that you will soon say, "How many hired servants of my Father's have
bread enough and to spare and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go
to my Father." But do not make the process too long, I charge you. "How
long will you cut yourself?"

Have you not had enough of the consequences of your folly? Will you not
turn at the Lord's rebuke? Will you not yield under the strokes you
have already felt? "Turn you; turn you; why will you die, O house of
Israel?" Why should you be stricken any more? Have you not played the
fool long enough? "How long will you cut yourself?"

1 might use this expression even to the Jewish nation itself. Ah, my
God, through what seas of trouble have they had to swim since the day
when they said, "His blood be on us and on our children"? Alas, the
story of Israel is enough to make one's blood turn to ice within his
veins! And will they not come back? Will they not come back? Must they
be hunted in Germany and hounded in Russia? Shame on the countries that
dare do such things! But must it be so? God grant that they may no
longer provoke their Holy One to indignation against them! How long
will they cut themselves? For still these great evils happen to them
according to the eternal counsels of the God of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob, because of their unbelief.

When they turn to the Messiah, their glory shall return, also, and the
crown God crowned His people shall again be set upon their head and
their ancient city shall again be "beautiful for situation, the joy of
the whole earth." Assuredly the Lord gave the land of Canaan to Abraham
and his seed forever–how long will they shut themselves out of it?

But, now, all this has rather kept me from my main design which is to
speak to those dear Friends of ours who are afflicting their souls with
needless fears. No good can possibly come by a continuance in their
unhappy moods–they are cutting themselves quite needlessly. They might
at once have peace and rest and joy if they were willing to accept the
Lord's gracious way of salvation. You who are burdened with sin and are
trying to get rid of it but will not come to Christ for deliverance–I
want to ask each one of you, "How long will you cut yourself?"

Why, there are some persons who think that before they can believe in
Christ they must undergo a world of torture! From where do they derive
the notion and what Scripture do they twist to support it? My
commission runs thus, "Go you into all the world and preach the Gospel
to every creature. He that believes and is baptized shall be saved." I
do not find that I am to look out for those who have undergone a long
probation and then tell them to believe in Christ. But every creature
is to hear the good news that whosoever believes in Christ Jesus has
everlasting life and shall never come into condemnation. So far the
Gospel message gives no hint of a sort of purgatory in this life. It
deals with every creature as it finds him.

Now, you think, "Well, I must not–I really must not lay hold upon this
salvation by faith in the Lord Jesus. I dare not be so greatly blessed.
I must first of all be tortured with conviction and afflicted with
despair." Alas, that you should thus choose to be miserable and refuse
to be made happy! I am forced, again, to put to you the question, "How
long will you cut yourself?" Find me, if you can, any place where the
Lord requires this at your hand–that you should be dragged about by
the devil–that you should be despairing, that you should be tempted to
blaspheme and all that. I know that some who have come to Christ have
endured such misery but I defy you to prove that it is any part of the
Gospel and that we are to preach such an experience as a necessary
preface to believing in Christ. The case is far otherwise.

Hear me, I beseech you, and be not obstinately wedded to your
wretchedness. You are a sinner–you cannot question that fact. Christ
Jesus came into the world to save sinners. If you trust Him you are
saved. This, in brief, is the glad tidings of salvation. This is the
Gospel way. Who has required at your hands that you should despond?
That you should despair? That you should deny the promises of God? That
you should put from you the invitation of mercy? That you should remain
outside the Gospel feast, and say, "I dare not enter, for I am not
hungry enough, nor poor enough, nor ragged enough, nor filthy enough"?
Oh, that you were wise and would cut yourself no more with these absurd
objections to infinite Grace!

How can this cutting of yourself, this tearing of yourself with
anguish, bring you any benefit? Do you think that God delights in it?
Is He a God who delights in the misery of His creatures? Will it not be
joy to Him that you should believe in His Son and find peace? He wills
not the death of any but that they should turn unto Him and live. "Oh,"
said one to me, "I cannot think that the way can be so plain, for my
grandfather was so miserable for years that they had to put him into a
lunatic asylum before he found the Savior." You smile but the good
woman who told me this was in terrible earnest. I cannot help quoting
what she said, for it was the natural and outspoken form of an error
which lurks in thousands of minds.

I believe that many think they must be driven near to madness or they
will not be able to come to Christ. But what benefit could this despair
possibly be to you? If the Gospel were, "Doubt and be saved," I would
bid you doubt. And if it were, "Despair and be saved," I would preach
despair to you with all my might, though it might go a little against
the grain. But it is not so written. The Scripture is,
"Believe–trust–confide–rely. Trust in Jesus–and you are saved."
Despairing and desponding are not commanded in the Gospel but they are
forbidden by it. Do not cultivate these gross follies, these deadly
sins. Do not multiply these poisonous weeds–this hemlock and this rye
grass–as if they were fair flowers of Paradise.

How long do you mean to continue in this wretched condition? Have you
set yourself a certain point of anguish up to which you will go and
then you will trust Christ? The sooner you reach that point the better.
But suppose that, in reaching that point, you should grow hardened in
sin and perish? Suppose that in striving to be more tender, the very
skin of your soul should turn hard, so that you no longer feel
anything? I have known that to occur. I have known persons attend
places of worship many years and always say, "I do not feel tender
enough and penitent enough," and all the time they have been growing
invulnerable to the shafts of God's Word till they have perished in an
unfeeling, indifferent, immovable condition.

They have hugged a sort of self-righteousness of feeling and would not
give it up to believe in Christ and that self-righteousness has been
their destruction. Beware lest you lose all feeling because you idolize
feeling. Beware lest your heart turn to an adamant stone because you
prefer your own feelings to the sufferings of the Lord Jesus.

Why, my Friends, if you are allowed to follow up this despairing policy
much further, some of you will go out of your senses! Those who love to
take up a reproach against the Lord Jesus frequently declare that
religion has deprived many people

of their reason. But the fact is that many lose their senses because
they refuse true religion and then take to sullenness and morbid
feeling. Why blame Jesus for the fact that men refuse Him and so find
no rest? I do fear that many have fought against believing in Christ
till their uneasiness has weighed them down and so they have lost their
reason. They have been indulging their pride. And, not yielding
themselves up to Jesus has cost them dearly. I am afraid that some of
you, who now feel God's hand heavy upon you, will come to utter
hopelessness unless you yield to the Lord Jesus very soon. Therefore, I
pray you, make haste about it and may the blessed Spirit lead you to
obey the Gospel–believe in Jesus and enter into rest!

Besides all this, remember that you may die while you are, as you
think, getting ready for the Savior. The Savior never told you to get
ready for Him. Have we not preached to you continually that you are to
come as you are? Alas, you will not come just as you are but will try
to mend and improve. And I have a dreadful fear upon me that you will
die in the process of mending and improving. If it should be so, where
will you be? Why, you will be guilty of having set up your mending and
improving in the place of Christ and that is a serious insult to the
great God and His dear Son! You will have taken more notice of your own
efforts to save yourself than of Christ's atoning death. Will not this
seal your condemnation?

Jesus will save you, if you will have Him, just as you are, whoever you
may be. But if you reply, "Not just as I am. I must be somewhat better
before I can trust Him." Then, if you perish while you are getting
somewhat better, who shall be to blame? A sick man is dying and the
physician says, "Here is medicine that will restore you. Will you take
it?" The dying man answers, "Sir, I believe in your medicine but I will
not take it till I feel better." If that man dies, who murders him?
Shall the physician be blamed? Surely not. On his own head his death
must lie. And recollect that it will be as certainly your ruin to
refuse Christ because you want to be better, as it will be to refuse
Him from any other reason. Any reason which leads you to reject the
Lord Jesus is a bad one.

One man refuses Christ because he hates Him and he blasphemes Him.
Another refuses Him because he thinks that he must be a little better.
There may be a difference in the motive but the result will amount to
the same thing. Take heed, I pray you, lest through your pride in
refusing to receive the Gospel just now and just as you are, you should
put it away from you till you get where there will be no Gospel
preaching and no invitations to Christ and you are cast away forever.

Now let me ask you this question–what good have you got by all this up
till now? O you, good Sir, who always mean to have Christ
by-and-by–how much farther have you got after all your good intentions
and painful waiting? You used to sit in that pew twelve, fifteen,
twenty years ago. And even then you had hopeful resolves. Are you any
nearer Christ now than you were then? Say, does the preaching affect
you any more than it did in those bygone days? "No," you say, "not half
so much."

This is a dangerous symptom–what does it mean? Has the preacher
changed? I will take my share of the blame. I grow older, I know.
Perhaps I get more stupid, too. But still, when I sat yesterday to see
the converts coming to join the Church, I saw them till I had not
physical power to see any more, for God had brought so many to come and
tell me that I had led them to the Savior. Therefore I think that there
cannot be much difference in my preaching. It must be I that is getting
hard! I fear you are getting chilled into indifference and I pray that
the deadly process may go no further.

Therefore I pray God that you may end this mischief, this death, this
ruin to your soul. And may you be driven or drawn–whichever God
pleases–to say at once, "I will immediately cast myself on Jesus. If I
perish, I will perish clinging to His Cross. If there is power in
trusting Christ to give a man peace, liberty, salvation, holiness, then
I will have it. And if there is not this power, I will at least know by
personal trial that it is not so and that Free Grace is not for me."

Would to God that you, my dear Hearers, would leave all else and just
come and cast yourselves on Jesus! If you will not, I must again
persecute each one of you with this enquiry, "How long will you cut
yourself?" How long must you go on with your piteous prayers and get no
answer? Must you have more tears, more groans, more cries, more
despairs, more regrets, more broken vows? How long will you cut
yourselves with these vain attempts to be your own Savior? How long
must you shut Heaven's door against yourself by a horrible resolve to
disbelieve? How long will you be so diligent to pull down an avalanche
of wrath upon your own head?

How long will you refuse the bread of Heaven, and determine to perish
with famine, while all the plenty of God's Grace is round about you?
How long? How long? God end it ere you cross the portal of this House
of Prayer and go down those stone steps, which will again conduct you
to the level of a careless world! Stop here till you have yielded
yourself to Jesus. I beseech you not to go home a stranger to eternal
life. The Lord grant that you may now throw yourself into the arms of
Jesus, for His dear name's sake!