Unsound Spiritual Trading
(No. 849)
Delivered on Lord's-Day, January 10th, 1869, by
C. H. SPURGEON,
At the [1]Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
"All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weigheth
the spirits." Proverbs 16:2.
DURING THE last two years some of the most notable commercial
reputations have been hopelessly destroyed. Men in the great world of
trade who were trusted for hundreds of thousands of pounds, around
whose characters there hovered no cloud of suspicion nor even the shade
of doubt, have proved themselves reckless of honesty and devoid of
principle. The fiery trial has been too much for the wood, hay, and
stubble of many a gigantic firm. Houses of business which seemed to be
founded upon a rock, and to stand as fast as the commonwealth of
England itself, have been shaken to their foundations and have caved in
with a tremendous crash: on all sides we see the wrecks of great
reputations and colossal fortunes. There is wailing in the palaces of
sham, and desolation in the halls of pretense. Bubbles are bursting,
windbags are collapsing, paint is cracking, gilt is peeling off.
Probably we have more of this to come, more revelations still to be
made of apparent wealth which covered insolvency, as a rich paper may
cover a mud wall; crafty schemes which duped the public with profits
never made, and tempted them to advance to deeper speculations, even as
the mirage of the desert mocks the traveler. We have seen in the public
prints month after month, fresh discoveries of the modes of financing
adopted by the villainy of this present age, to accomplish robbery
respectably, and achieve felony with credit. We have been astonished
and amazed at the vile tricks and shameless devices to which men of
eminence have condescended. And yet we have been compelled to hear
justifications of gigantic frauds, and have even been compelled to
believe that the perpetrators of them did not consider themselves to be
acting disreputably, their own previous successes, and the low state of
morality, together having lulled them into a state in which conscience,
if not dead, was thoroughly asleep. I say, we may probably have yet
more to see of this school of dishonesty; but it is a pity that we
shouldand altogether needlessfor the whole trade of financing is now
to be examined by the diligent student, with models and living
examples, more than enough to illustrate every single portion of the
art. Some ages may have been great in science, others in art, and
others in war, but our era overtops every other in the proficiency of
its rascals; this is the classic period of chicanery, the golden age of
fraud. Let a man have a base heart, and a seared conscience, and a
plausible mode of address, and let him resolve upon deluding the public
out of millions, he need not travel to learn the readiest method, he
can find examples near at home amongst high professors and the great
ones of the earth. My brethren, these noises of falling towers on the
right, these sounds of crumbling battlements on the left, these cries
of the shipwrecked everywhere along the coasts of trade, have not only
awakened within me many thoughts relative to themselves and the
rottenness of modern society, but they have made me muse upon similar
catastrophes evermore occurring in the spiritual world. Unrecorded in
the journals, and unmourned by unregenerate men, there are failures and
frauds and bankruptcies of soul most horrible to think upon. There is a
spiritual trading just as pretentious and apparently just as successful
as your vaunted limited liability juggle, but really just as rotten and
as sure to end in hopeless overthrow. Speculation is a spiritual vice
as well as a commercial onetrading without capital is common in the
religious world, and puffery and deception are every-day practices. The
outer world is always the representative of the inner; the life which
clusters round the Exchange illustrates that which gathers within the
church; and if our eyes were opened and our ears were able to hear, the
sights and the sounds of the spirit world would far more interest us
and sadden us than the doings which begin in the directors' board-room
and end we know not where. We should see at this moment colossal
religious fortunes melting into abject spiritual poverty. We should see
high professors, much reverenced and held in esteem, brought into shame
and everlasting contempt. We should see the wealthy in divine matters,
whom men have unwisely trusted as their guides and counsellors as to
their souls' best interests, unmasked and proved to be deceitful
through and through. I seem at this moment to be peering into the world
of spiritual things, and I see many a Babel tower tottering and ready
to fall; many a fair tree decaying at the heart; many a blooming cheek
undermined by disease. Yes, a sound comes to my ear of men in the
church, apparently rich and increased in goods, who are naked, and
poor, and miserable, and great men whose towering glories are but a
fading flower. There ever have been such, there are many now, and there
will be to the end.
The supply of deceivers is sure to be maintained since the text tells
us that all the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; there is a
propensity in human nature which leads men, even when they are most
wrong, to judge themselves most right. The text at the same time
suggests the terrible conclusion to which all self-deception will
certainly come, for the judgment of man concerning himself is not
final, and there comes a day when the Lord who weigheth the spirits
will reverse the verdict of a perjured conscience, and make the man to
stand no longer in the false light which his conceit has thrown around
him, but in the true light, in which all his fancied glory shall vanish
as a dream.
Travelling some time ago in an iron steamboat to the Continent, the
captain told me that the compass was far from trustworthy where so much
iron was on every side, and that sometimes, when so far as he knew he
had steered correctly, he had found himself very considerably out of
his course. Though the compass was fixed aloft so as to be as much as
possible out of the region of the metallic attraction, yet the
deflection and aberrations in the case of his own compass had been
occasionally most remarkable. In like manner our conscience originally
as it came from God was no doubt an exceedingly correct standard of
right and wrong, and if we had sailed by it we must have reached the
haven safely enough; but conscience is now placed in connection with a
depraved nature which forbids its accurate working. Now, if the laws of
nature would vary to make up for its defects when the compass erred,
the aberrations would not matter; but if the man is misled by the
perverted needle he may unexpectedly be upon a rock, and will be as
surely wrecked as if the helmsman had neglected the compass altogether.
So, if God's law could be shaped to suit the errors of our judgment it
might not matter; but the laws of God stand sternly and inflexibly the
same, and if we deviate from the right way through this false judgment
of ours we shall be none the less guilty, and we shall find our fate to
be none the less terrible. Hence I do approach this matter with a
greater vehemence and earnestness this morning, on your account, and
with more brokenness and humility of spirit on my own, desiring to
speak with divers classes among you, urging you not to be so flattered
by your own conceptions of your position as to get out of the course in
which you ought to steer; beseeching you to remember that however well
you may cajole yourselves with the idea that your way is right and
clear, yet the inevitable judgment-day will come to end all delusions,
however pleasant. Spiritual traders, I speak to you this day, reminding
you of the great audit which hastens on, and warning you lest you make
a fair show for awhile, and then in the end come down with a crash. I
am sure there is much rotten spiritual trading abroad, and to save you
from it I pray the Holy Ghost to help me speak plainly and searchingly
this morning.
I intend, as God shall help me, to address the text to different
characters. We will endeavor to be practical throughout the sermon, and
to push home vital truth with great earnestness upon each one.
I. THE WAYS OF THE OPENLY WICKED are clean in their own eyes, but the
Lord will weigh their spirits.
At first sight this statement seems to be rash. The drunkard, the
blasphemer, the Sabbath-breaker, can it be that these people are right
in their own eyes? Solomon was a profound student of human nature, and
when he penned this sentence you may rest assured he knew what he
wrote. They who are best acquainted with mankind will tell you that
self-righteousness is not the peculiar sin of the virtuous, but that
most remarkably it flourishes best where there appears to be the least
soil for it. Those men who in the judgment of their fellows distinctly
and plainly have no righteousness in which they can glory, are the very
persons who, when you come to search into the depth of their nature,
are relying upon a fancied goodness which they dream about and rest
upon. Take the outwardly immoral for a moment and begin to talk with
them about their sins, and you will find that they are accustomed to
speak of their faults under very different names from those which
Scripture and right reason would use. They do not call drunkenness
"drunkenness," for instance, but it is "taking a glass." They would not
for a moment advocate downright blasphemy, but it is "strong language
which a fellow must use if he's to get on," or "letting slip an ugly
word or so, because you were plagued so." They disguise vice to
themselves as pleasure; they label their uncleanness as gaiety, their
filthiness as lightheartedness. They speak of their sins as though they
had no enormity about them, but were trifles light as airif wrong at
all, themes rather for the feather lash of ridicule than for the
scourge of reproof. Moreover, the most of them will claim that they are
not so bad as others. There is some one point in their character in
which they do not go so far as some of their fellows, and this is a
grand point and a vast comfort to them. They will confess that they are
sinners, not meaning it for a moment; and if you come to particulars
and details, if they are in an honest frame of mind they will recede
step by step, admitting fault after fault, till they come to a
particular point, and there they take their footing with virtuous
indignation. "Here I am right beyond all rebuke, and even deserving of
praise. So far my sin has come, but how thoroughly sound at heart must
I be that I have never permitted it to advance further!" This boasted
line is frequently so singular and mysterious in its direction, that no
one but the man himself can see any reason or consistency in it; and
the satirist who shoots at folly as it flies, finds abundant objects
for his arrows. Yet to that man himself, his pausing there is the
saving clause of his life; he looks to that as the sheet anchor of his
character. The woman whose character long since has gone, will yet
boast some limit to her licentiousness which is merit in her
esteemmerit sufficient to make all her ways clean in her own eyes.
Moreover, the worst of men conceive that they have some excellences and
virtues, which, if they do not quite atone for their faults, yet at any
rate greatly diminish the measure of blame which should be awarded
them. The man is a spendthrift, "But sir, he was always freehearted,
and nobody's enemy but his own." The man, it is true, would curse God,
but then, well, it was a mere habit, he always was a dashing blade, but
he meant no harm; and besides he never was such a liar as So-and-So;
and indeed, he scorned to tell a lie upon any business subject. Another
has cheated his creditors, but he was such a nice man; and although,
poor fellow, he never could keep accounts or manage money matters, yet
he always had a good word for everybody. The immoral man, if he sits
down to write his own character, and summons all the partiality he is
capable of, will say "I am a sad dog in some respects, sowing a great
many wild oats, but I have a fine character underlying it all which
will no doubt come up some day, so that my end shall be bright and
glorious notwithstanding all. That last point that I hinted at is very
often the righteousness of men who have no other, namely, their
intention one of these days much to amend and improve. To make up for
present poverty of righteousness they draw a bill upon the future.
Their promises and resolves are a sort of paper currency on which they
imagine they can trade for eternity. "Is it not often done in
business?" say they: "A man who has no present income may have a
reversionary interest in an estate; he gets advances thereonwhy should
not we?" Thus the open sinner, easing his all too ready conscience with
the imaginary picture of his future repentance and amendment, begins to
feel himself already meritorious and bids defiance to all the
threatenings of the word of God.
I may be speaking to some to whom these remarks are very applicable,
and if so I pray that they may lead to serious thought. My hearer, you
must know, or at any rate a few sober moments of reflection would make
you know, that there is no truth in the pleas, excuses, and promises
with which you now quiet your conscience; your peace is founded on a
lie, and is upheld by the father of lies. Whilst you are continuing
recklessly to break the laws of God in your ordinary life and to take
pleasure in sin, you most assuredly are under the anger of God and you
are heaping up wrath against the day of wrath, and when the measure of
your iniquity is full then shall you receive the terrible reward of
transgression. The Judge of all the earth will not pay regard to the
idle preterites which now stultify your conscience. He is not a man
that he should be flattered as you flatter and deceive yourself. You
would not have the impertinence to tell your excuses to him. Dare you
kneel down now and speak to the great God in heaven and tell him all
these fine things with which you are now smoothing your downward road?
I hope you have not come to such a brazen pitch of impertinence as
that, but if you have let me remind you of that second sentence of my
text, "The Lord weigheth the spirits." A just and true balance will be
used upon you ere long. When the Lord puts such as you are into the
scale, there will be no need for delay; the sentence will go forth at
once and from it there shall be no appeal: "Thou art weighed in the
balances and found wanting." Ah then my hearer, when that conscience of
yours wakes up, how it will torment you! It sleeps now, drugged by the
opiates of your ignorance and perverseness; but it will start up soon
like a giant refreshed with new wine, and then with strength and fury
unthought of before it will pull down the temple of your peace about
your ears, even as Samson smote the Philistines. An awakened conscience
in another world is the worm that dieth not and the fire which never
can be quenched. O sirs, it is a dreadful thing to be delivered up to
one's own conscience when that conscience is enlisted on the side of
right. Old tyrants had their terrible headsmen with grim masks across
their brows who carried the bright and gleaming axe; the old
inquisitors had their familiars arrayed in gowns of serge and cowls,
from the loopholes of which their fierce eyes gleamed like wolves; but
no tormentors, yea, no fiends of hell, can ever prove more terrible to
a man than his conscience when its lash is corded with truth and
weighted with honesty. Did you ever spell the burning letters of that
word remorse? Within the bowels of that single word there lieth hell
with all its torments. O sirs, if you be but a little aroused now by an
earnest sermon or a sudden death, how wretched you feel and how
desperately you plunge into fresh gaiety and wantonness to drown your
thoughts; but what will you do with thoughts which no dissipation can
drown, and remembrances which no mirth can banish? What will it be to
be haunted by your sins for ever and for ever? What to have it made
sure to you that from the guilt and punishment no way of escape can
ever be discovered?
O you who fondly dream that the broad road to destruction is the upward
path to celestial bliss, I beseech you, learn wisdom and hearken to the
voice of instruction; consider your ways and seek unto the precious
blood which alone can blot our your sins.
II. A second class I will now address. THE WAYS OF THE GODLESS MAN are
clean in his own eyes, but the Lord weigheth the spirits.
The godless man is often exceedingly upright and moral in his outward
behavior to his fellow men. He has no religion, but he glories in a
multitude of virtues of another kind. It is unhappily true that there
are many who have much that is amiable about them who nevertheless are
unamiable and unjust towards the one Being who ought to have the most
of their love, and who should have been respected in their conduct
first of all. How often have I met with the ungodly man who has said,
"You talk to me about fearing God! I know him not, neither do I regard
him, but I am much better than those who do." He will sometimes say,
"Your religion I look upon as a mere farce: I regard Christians as
being made up of two sorts, knaves and fools. They are either duped by
others, or else for purposes of their own they are deceiving others.
Their talk about God, sir, it is all cant; with some of them I grant
you it is not quite that, but then they have too few brains to be able
to discover that they are deceived. However, take the whole thing for
all in all, it is all a piece of nonsense, and if people just behave as
they ought towards their neighbors and do their duty in their station
in life, that is enough." Yes, and there are in this city of London
thousands, and hundreds of thousands, who think this to be good logic,
and indeed who open their eyes with astonishment if for a single moment
you are supposed to contradict their statement that such a style of
life is the best and most commendable; and yet if they would but think,
nothing can be more unsound than their life and its supposed
excellence. Here is a man created by his God, and he is put down
amongst his fellow creatures; surely the first duty that he owes is
towards his Creator. His life depends entirely upon that Creator's
willit must be his first duty to have respect to him in whose hands
his breath is; but this man not only refuses to be obedient to the law
of his Creator and have regard to him in his daily actions, but turns
round to his neighbours who are mere creatures like himself, and he
says "I will have respect to you, but not to God. Any laws of the state
which bind me in my relation to you I will obey; but any laws which
describe my relation to God I will not consider except it be to
ridicule and laugh at them. I will be obedient to any but to God; I
will do the right thing to any but to the Most High. I have a sense of
right and wrong but I will restrict its action to my fellow men, and
that sense of right and wrong when it comes in relation to God I will
utterly obliterate." Now if there were no God this man were wise
enough, but as there is a God who created us, and who shall surely come
in the clouds of heaven to call every one of us to account for the
things which we have done in the body, what think you will be the
judgment dealt out to this unfaithful servant? Will he dare to say unto
his King, "I knew that thou wast my Maker and Lord, but I considered
that if I served my fellow servants it would be enough. I knew what was
right to them, but I disregarded the doing of anything that was right
towards thee"? Shall not the answer be, "Thou wicked and faithless
servant, thou knewest what was right and wrong, and yet towards me,
having first claim upon thee, thou hast acted unjustly, and whilst thou
wouldst bow thy neck to others thou wouldst not yield to me. Depart
from me, I know thee not. Thou didst not know me, neither do I know
thee. I weigh thee in the balances, and I find thee utterly reprobate.
Thou art cast away for ever." O ungodly man, let this warning, if thou
be here this morning, sound in thy heart as well as thy ears: no longer
set thyself in defiance to thy Creator or live in negligence of him,
but say, "I will arise and go unto my Father; I will confess that I
have forgotten him and despised him, and I will seek peace through the
blood of Jesus Christ."
III. Further, I shall address myself to another class of persons. In
all ages of the church, and especially at this time, there are numbers
of persons who are OUTWARDLY RELIGIOUS, but whose religion ends there.
Now it seems to some of us amazingly strange that a man should be
acting viciously, should be living wickedly, and yet should think that
his ways are clean because he takes a sacrament or attends a certain
place of worship. I must confess to my mind this seems a very strange
phenomenon, that there should exist men of intelligence in this world
who know that their conduct is altogether blameworthy and yet feel
perfectly at ease because a chosen ritual has been diligently observed;
as if bowing and scraping, singing or groaning could be a substitute
for holiness of heart. Look at the Pharisee and tell me if he be not a
moral wonder! He devours widows' houses, he is ready to prey on
everything that comes to hand; he is a detestable hypocrite, but the
man is perfectly at ease because he has made broad the border of his
garments, because he fasts twice in the week, and strains out gnats
from the wine that he drinks; he is quite content with himself and all
his ways seem right, so right, indeed, that other men who are better
than he, he passes by with contempt, afraid lest they should come
between the wind and his nobility. He thanks God that he is not as
other men, when so far as you and I can judge he is ten thousand
fathoms deeper down in dark damnation in his horribly hypocritical
character. Yet brethren, some form or other of this is very common. All
the ways of a man are clean unto him when he once imbibes the idea that
ceremonial religion, or religious talk, or religious profession, can
make up for moral sin. Ah brethren, this evil may even creep in among
ourselves. Let us not be so swift in condemning the Pharisee when
perhaps the same sin may pollute our own souls. I have known the man
who was reckoned a sound Calvinist and believed in very high doctrine,
live a very unhallowed life. He despised "Arminians," as he chose to
call them, though some of these despised ones lived very near to God
and walked in holiness and integrity. The Arminian, forsooth, godly man
as he was, would be lost; but this self-righteous orthodox man who
could at the same time drink and cheat thought that he should be saved
because he had been able to see the truth of certain doctrines, which
also the devil sees as well as he. I have known another who thought he
had a deep and memorable experience who would talk by the yard of the
depravity of his heart. Some people thinking that he ought to be able
to talk about that very truly, for he proved it in his life; and yet
because he could repeat cant phrases and had picked up certain rich
expressions of experience from books, he verily thought within himself
that he was not only as good as others but a very pattern for others to
copy. Right and left such men as these will hurl curses and anathemas
upon the best and most earnest of saints. They are the menwisdom will
die with them. Holiness being dead already with them, it is no wonder
that wisdom should die too. Ah! take care lest you and I drink in the
same spirit in another shape. Ah! preacher, thy preaching may be all
well and good, it may be sound enough and right enough, and it may be
even edifying to the people of God and arousing to the unconverted. But
remember, God will not judge thee by thy sermons but by thy spirit, for
he weigheth not thy words but thy motive, thy desire, thine object in
preaching the gospel. Deacon of the church, you may have walked in all
honor for many years and may be universally respected, and thine office
may have been well maintained in all the outward duties of it, but if
thy heart be not right, if some secret sin be indulged, if there be a
canker upon thy profession which none know but thine own self, the Lord
who weighs the spirit will make nothing of thy deaconship and thy
carrying round the cups and bread at the communion, but thou shalt be
found wanting and cast away. Thou too, brother elder, thy labors and
thy prayers are nothing if the heart be evil. Thou mayst have visited
others and instructed them and been a judge of their state; still, if
thou hast not served God and his church out of a pure desire for his
glory, thou too, put into the scales, shall be rejected with
abhorrence. I often prayI wish however I prayed it morethat none of
us here may be preached into the idea that we are all right if we are
all wrong. It is not your coming to the Tabernacle, it is not your
joining the church, your being baptised, your attending
prayer-meetings, or your doing anything that will be the slightest
matter in this businessit is your giving up your hearts to God truly,
and your living in conformity with your profession; and unless the
grace of God be really given you, helping you to do this, your ways may
be clean unto you because of your outward profession; but the Lord who
weigheth the spirits will make short work of these bubbles, he will
break this confectionery, smash to pieces these shams, and leave the
man who ought to have a palace over his head throughout eternity to sit
down and shiver amongst the ruins of his Babylon, and cry out and weep
and wail amongst dragons and fiends.
IV. But to pass on, there is another character that must be addressed.
"All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes," so are THE WAYS OF
THE COVETOUS PROFESSOR.
It is marvellous to some of us that a man whose object in life is
merely to get money and who withholds what he has from the cause of God
should take up the profession of being a Christian man, because none of
all the vices is more contrary to true religion than covetousness.
Where will you find an instance of a single saint in Scripture that
ever fell into covetousness? Into all other sins have they fallen, but
into this one I do not remember that one child of God mentioned in
Scripture ever descended. Grace may exist where there are many
occasional sins, but never where there is abiding covetousness. Think
of Paul's words: "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit
the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither, fornicators, nor
idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves
with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers,
nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God." Luther used to
say, "I have been tempted to all sins but covetousness." This he so
detested that he distributed gifts made to him lest he should have his
portion in this world. Adams, in his book on Peter, well remarks, "Noah
was once drunk with wine but never with the world; Lot, twice
incestuous, never covetous; Peter denied his Master thrice, but it was
not the love but the fear of the world that brought him to it. Once
David was overcome by the flesh, never by covetousness. Why did not
these purge themselves from adultery, anger, and the like? Because into
these sins the infirmities of a saint may fall, but if once into
covetousness there is nothing of a saint leftnot even the name.
Covetousness hath the brand of God's hate full on its brow." "If any
man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him;" and when a
professor shows the love of the world in its grossest shape, when he
gives way to being the slave of "Mammon, the least erect of all the
fiends," he bears evidence to all who judge righteously according to
Scripture that the love of God is not in him, and cannot be in him; the
two things are inconsistent. Yet, strange to say we do know not a few
whose way seems very clean to them. They screw here and there, now
their servants, and now their customers: the widow and the fatherless
would not be safe from them if they could pick their bones. What they
scrape together is held with an iron grasp. Let souls be damned, they
shall have no missionary sent to them by their money. Let this London
fester with sin, let it be covered with the ulcers of the most fearful
depravity, they are never stirred to give any assistance towards the
healing of the city's wounds. And yet while their damnation awaits them
certainly, and their condemnation stares them in the face as plainly as
the sun in the heavens, yet their ways seem clean unto them. Strange it
should be so, but the Lord weigheth the spirits, and what a weighing
that shall be when men who escape church censure because theirs was a
sin of which the church could not deal with, shall be found guilty of
it, and God shall cast them away! Vain will be their pretensions that
they ate and they drank in God's house, for the answer shall come, "I
was an hungered and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me no
drink; naked, and ye clothed me not. I was sick and in prison, and ye
did not minister unto me. Verily I say unto you, I know ye not!" O let
this truth, for truth it is, pierce like a two-edged sword right
through the hearts of any of you who are beginning to yield to this
damning vice. Cry unto God that as he gives you substance you may use
it for his glory. Ask him that you may never perish with a millstone
about your neck; for even if that killing weight be made of gold it
will be no better perishing for all that.
V. Another character must have a word also: we will now note THE WAYS
OF THE WORLDLY PROFESSOR.
It is amazing how some people making a profession of religion, square
it with their conscience that they live as they do live. You could not
with a microscope detect any difference between them and common
worldlings, and yet they think there is a vast difference, and they
would be insulted if you did not allow it. Here they come up to the
house of God to-day, but to what amusements have they been during the
week? How are they dressed? How are their children educated? Is there
any family prayer? Is there anything in the household that is
Christian? Look at them in business. Do not they trade precisely like
those who make no pretensions to religion? Ask their workpeople, just
go yourselves and watch themsee if they cannot tell white lies as well
as others, whether they are not for all the world as alike as two peas
are to one another, like other unregenerate and unconverted people! and
yet their ways seem very clean unto them, very clean indeed, and their
conscience does not trouble them in any way whatever. I have but this
word to say in all affection to such, earnestly desiring that they may
be plucked out of this fire, "the Lord will weigh the spirits." The
whole of our life is known to him. He will not judge us without book.
When he comes to the account he will not be like a judge who has to
learn the facts; he will come to the last assize, having seen with
those eyes of fire the secret thoughts, the private feelings of our
life. God be merciful to us sinners, we may all of us say; but God
especially save us from being like the ungodly.
VI. Yet another word, and this is addressed to all professors here more
or less: it is a solemn word concerning THE WAYS OF SECURE BACKSLIDERS.
Do you not know brethren and sisters, that very often our ways seem
very clean to us when they are not. I have learned by experience most
painful to my own soul, that I am not in the least qualified to judge
of my own spiritual health: I have thought myself gradually advancing
in the ways of God when I have been going back, and I have had the
conceit crossing my mind that I had now overcome a certain besetting
sin, when to my surprise I had found it return with greater force than
before. Fellow professor, you may be at this moment walking as you
think very rightly, and going off very well and comfortably, but let me
ask you a few questions: are you not less in private prayer than you
used to be? Do you not now hurry over it, do you not sometimes omit it
altogether? Do you not frequently come from your closet without really
having spoken to God, having merely gone through the form for the sake
of quieting yourself? Your way may seem clean, but is it not foul when
the mercy-seat becomes neglected? How about your Bible, is that read as
it once was, and are the promises as sweet to you? Do they ever rise
from the page and talk with you? Oh, but if your Bible be neglected my
brother, you may be just as diligent in attending to the house of God
as you used to be, but is not yours a sad state of decay? Let me come
closer still. Is there the vitality about your profession that there
used to be? There are some in this house this morning who if they could
speak, would tell you that when to their great sorrow they fell into
sin, it was because by little and little their piety began to lose its
force and power of life. They have been restored, but their bones still
ache where they were once broken, and I am sure they would say to their
brethren "Take care of allowing a gracious spirit to evaporate, as it
were, by slow degrees. Watch carefully over it, lest settling upon your
lees and not being emptied from vessel to vessel you should by-and-by
become carnally secure, and afterwards fall into actual sin. I ask some
of my brethren here, and I ask the question because I have asked it of
my own soul and answered it very tearfully, may not some of us be
growing hardened in heart with regard to the salvation of our fellow
creatures? Do we not love less now than we used to do, those who are
crying to us, "Come over and help us"? Do we not think ourselves
getting to be experienced saints? We are not the poor sinners we once
used to be. We do not come broken-heartedly to the mercy-seat as we
did. We begin to judge our fellow Christians and we think far less of
them than we did years ago when we used almost to love the ground that
the Lord's saints did tread upon, thinking ourselves to be less than
nothing in their sight. Now if it were the case in others, that they
were growing proud, or becoming cold, or waxing hard of heart, we
should say of them, "they are in great danger," but what about
ourselves if that be the case with us? For my own self, I dread lest I
should come to this pulpit merely to preach to you because the time has
come and I must get through an hour or an hour-and-a-half of worship. I
dread getting to be a mere preaching machine without my heart and soul
being exercised in this solemn duty; and I dread for you, my dear
friends who hear me constantly, lest it should be a mere piece of
clock-work that you should be in the seats at certain times in the
week, and should sit there and patiently hear the din which my noise
makes in your ears. We must have vital godliness, and the vitality of
it must be maintained, and the force and energy of our religion must go
on to increase day by day, or else though our ways may seem to be very
clean the Lord will soon weigh our spirits to our eternal confusion. Do
you know that to his people the divine weighing in fatherly
chastisement is rough work, for he can put the soul into the scale to
our own consciousness, and when we think that it weighs pounds he can
reveal to us that it does not even reach to drachms! "There," saith he,
"see what you are!" and he begins to strip off the veil of
self-conceit, and we see the loathsomeness and falsehood of our nature,
and we are utterly dismayed. Or perhaps the Lord does worse than that.
He suffers a temptation to come when we do not expect it, and then the
evil bolls up within us, and we who thought we were next door to the
cherubs find ourselves near akin to the demons; wondering too that such
a wild beast should have slumbered in the den of our hearts, whereas we
ought to have known it was always there and to have walked humbly with
God, and watched and guarded ourselves. Rest assured beloved, great
falls and terrible mischief never come to a Christian man at once, they
are a work of slow degrees; and be assured too that you may glide down
the smooth waters of the river and never dream of the Niagara beyond,
and yet you may be speeding towards it. An awful crash may yet come to
the highest professor among us that shall make the world to ring with
blasphemy against God, and the church to resound with bitter
lamentations because the mighty have fallen. God will keep his own, but
how if I should turn out not to be his own! He will keep the feet of
his saints, but what if I leave off to watch and my feet should not be
kept, and I should turn out to be no saint of his, but a mere intruder
into his family, and a pretender to have what I never had! O God,
through Christ Jesus deliver each of us from this.
VII. Had time not failed me I meant to speak concerning the seventh and
last character, namely, THE WAYS OF THE DECEIVED MAN.
There are, no doubt, many in the world who will never find out that
their ways which they thought to be so clean are all foul till they
enter upon another world. There are some men who are Christians in all
but this, that they have not true faith in Jesus. There are others who
apparently are saved, but they have never been really born again. There
are many who have everything but the one thing needful, and who think
they have that, and persuade their fellows that they have that. How
near a man may come to being a Christian and yet miss salvation it were
difficult to tell; but certainly he may come so near that no man nor
yet the angels of God shall be able to tell the difference between him
and a saved soul, only God shall discern the difference when he comes
to weigh the spirits.
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. It is this: let us come
my brethren, all of us, to the place of confession of sin and
acknowledge that we have broken God's law, and deserve his just
displeasure. Let us go by the help of his Holy Spirit, who is the
Spirit of supplication, and let us confess the depravity of our nature
and the error of our hearts. Let us pray that instead of thinking our
ways clean, we may know them to be foul, may mourn over them, and may
learn to see them as God sees them, as crooked ways and wrong ways in
themselves not to be boasted of, but to be remembered with shame and
confusion of face. Blessed is he who is delivered from any rejoicing in
himself. Happy is that man who can see no speck of soundness in his own
flesh, but who feels that the leprosy of sin hath covered him without
and within from head to foot. And brethren, if we come to such deep
humiliation of spirit, the next word is this: let us go together to the
great salvation which God has provided in the person of Christ Jesus.
Come, linking hand in hand, saint and sinner, now all sinners
consciously, let us stand and see where sin has pierced the body of the
blessed Substitute with yonder bleeding wounds. Let us read the lines
of grief written upon that blessed face; let us gaze into the depth of
his soul filled with an ocean of anguish, lashed to a tempest of
suffering; let us believe that he suffered in our stead and so roll our
sin and our sinfulness on him. Jesus, accept a sinner, a poor sinner
still; though these twenty years I have known thy name, yet still a
sinner I come to thee, the chief of sinners! Ah, brethren and sisters,
we are never safer I am sure, never healthier, never in a better frame
than when we are right flat down on the ground before the cross. When
you feel yourself to be utterly unworthy you have hit the truth. When
you think you are doing something and are rich and flourishing, you are
poor, and naked, and miserable; but when you are consciously weak and
sinful, then you are rich. When you are weak you are strong; but O God,
save us from letting our ways seem clean in our own sight, but may we
weigh our spirits by the help of thy Spirit, and condemn ourselves that
we may not be condemned of the Lord.
The Lord bless you richly and freely for his name's sake. Amen.
PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMONPsalm 51.