The Soul’s Awakening

The Soul's Awakening

(No. 3389)

A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, JANUARY 15, 1914.

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE NEWINGTON.

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming when the dead shall
hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live." John
5:25.

I suppose that when a pearl-fisher is at the bottom of the sea and has
gathered his bag full of oysters, he will sometimes see other oysters
lying about which he would be very very glad to take up if he could.
And I can imagine that when he has been safely taken into his boat and
has put away what he gathered the first time, he will be rather anxious
to descend again somewhere near that same spot to bring up those which
he left behind. This, at least, is much like my own case. While reading
the Chapter and preparing the sermon for this morning, I thought there
were so many pearls in the text I could not say much about this
particular verse so I felt inclined to return to the same spot at once
to see if we might not fetch up some fresh gems!

Those of you who were present this morning will remember that we saw in
the Chapter a three-fold gradation of life-giving in the Person of
Christ. As here and there in the Old Testament dispensation, God had
raised up some persons from the dead, so Christ, also, in the days of
His flesh, had quickened whom He would–persons naturally dead He had
restored to natural life. This is the first and, indeed, a very
wonderful prerogative of live-giving for Christ to exercise to be able
to raise Lazarus from the grave or to raise the young daughter of the
ruler or to restore to the widow her departed son. The second form of
life-giving is that described in the verse before us. He was constantly
giving through His voice spiritual life to those who were spiritually
dead. The third kind of life-giving we spoke of is that of the
universal resurrection when all that are in the grave shall hear the
voice of the Son of God and shall rise to judgment. It is to the second
that we propose to direct our attention this evening–a form of
life-giving which is going on now–not a matter of the past as was the
raising of a few in Christ's day. Not a matter of the future as the
coming resurrection is, but a matter of the present–not so apparent to
the eye and to the ear as either of those mysteries, in so much that it
is to a great extent invisible except to the man who is a participator
in it, but just as real, just as miraculous and, in many senses, even
more marvelous and Divine! Christ is constantly raising the spiritually
dead and giving them life. Oh that we may be enabled by God's Spirit to
open up this Truth of God to your understanding and may it be applied
to your hearts! Our first endeavor shall be to describe–

I. WHAT IT IS TO BE SPIRITUALLY DEAD.

"The hour is coming," says the Savior, "and now is, when the dead shall
hear the voice of the Son of God and they that hear shall live." What
is it to be spiritually dead? You all know what it is for the body to
be physically dead. The soul has departed and has left the body
incapable, insensible, unable to preserve itself. The soul was like
salt to it–that being gone, it soon becomes putrid and obnoxious. Poor
dead body! A most terrible and humiliating spectacle to see–
especially to look upon it after it has been lying for a while in the
grave. We have, most of us, heard what it is to be morally dead. It
does not happen, I hope, to very many, but there are some who seem to
be dead to all moral feeling of right and wrong between their fellow
men–that is what I mean just now by morality. They have been so inured
to theft, un-cleanness, drunkenness and, some few even to murder, that
when they have been arrested, convicted, imprisoned– nothing seemed to
move them to repentance! Even the dread of the last terrible penalty of
the law has not sufficed to-bring from some of them any kind of
emotion. Those who have been most earnest to arouse their conscience
have felt the most painful conviction that their moral faculties were
totally defunct. They have become callous, seared as with a hot iron.
It is an awful spectacle to see a man morally dead–blind to reason,
deaf to warning, numb to shame–thus morally dead. His passions raging
without control, he becomes like some wild wolf of whom all the
district is afraid! Like a raging lion going about in quest of prey
whom every man dreads to encounter and whom some think it only right to
slay. May none of us ever fall into such infamy! Alas, it might be!
Step by step, little by little, men have become outcasts from society
and found their lodging in the very lairs of corruption though they
were born in better circumstances and trained with brighter prospects!
May God grant we may never come to it ourselves!

But to be spiritually dead–what is that? It is something like these
two, but I think it is somewhat different. I must describe spiritual
death not in its essence, for that I cannot do, but in its outward
signs. Now observe a spiritually dead man. He is not dead in any other
respect. He walks abroad and sees the fields full of abundant harvests.
At night-fall he looks up to the skies and marks the glorious scenery
of night. By day he climbs the mountains, beholds the valleys beneath
in all their smiling beauty and gazes upward at the golden sun above.
God is to be seen in all these–God manifestly the Creator, Preserver
and Benefactor of mankind–but this man does not perceive Him. He sees
no God. Perhaps he can stand like Byron under the shadow of Mont Blanc
and write himself, "Atheos" without God where God is everywhere! Where
God is in every breath of air, where God is in every flower beneath his
feet, he sees not the footprints of the Almighty! He believes not in
His secret Presence. Is the Great Eternal First Cause defunct, then, or
is there no God? No, Sirs, the man's perception of God is all gone and
that is all that is gone! His power to realize spiritual things has
failed or else his ears would hear the voice of God in the sounding
tops of the pines! His eyes would see the name of God written in golden
letters in the midnight sky! His every sense would perceive God and his
inmost soul drink deep of God–but he is dead and, therefore, he
cannot! Watch that man in the common events of Providence. Many mercies
have come to his store–there are happy children climbing his knee, his
wife is in strong health and full of happiness–they have no need to
look from where the next meal shall come. The stream of mercy flows
hard by their door and this has been continued many years! They have
long enjoyed uninterrupted prosperity! Now, all this comes from God,
and health and strength are peculiarly His gifts. The power to get and
the power to enjoy our earthly goods must both proceed from Him. But
this man never sees God in it at all! He sometimes talks of luck and
thinks himself a fortunate fellow. Luck, chance and fortune–these seem
to be his deity! Though the hand of God, wide open and full of bounty,
is so spread out that one might think a bat or an owl might see it, yet
this man perceives it not! The man is dead to the perception of
spiritual things that the great Master-Spirit, Himself, is not
perceived when He comes near loaded with favors!

As it is in Nature and as it is with the gifts of Providence, so
especially it is in anything like outward religion. The man attends a
place of worship–it may be he repeats his creed, joins in a form of
prayer, or possibly he drops in where simpler worship is adopted and
what does he do? He sings as others sing! He bows his head as others do
in prayer. He listens as others do to the preaching of the Word, but it
is a heavy dull monotonous service to him! He wishes it were over. He
sees nothing in it. If he had his way and custom did not bind him at
all, he would never he found wasting his time in such unprofitable
proceedings as he thinks them to be! He is like the mouse in Church
that thinks the Bibles and Prayer Books dry nibbling! He would rather
be in the common ale-house, or at home reading novels, or walking out
in the fields, or anywhere than in the place of worship! Yet others
sitting by his side have found the most profound pleasure in those
sacred engagements which have only brought weariness to him! Unlike
him, they have been carried as on eagles' wings up to Heaven! Their
souls have been filled with joy and peace and they have said as they
have retired, "Surely God was in this place and it was good to be
here." Why is this? The things ministered and the man who ministered
them were the same. Ah, the one was dead while the others lived! How
shall the dead derive comfort? How shall the dead be charmed? How shall
the dead be fed and instructed? God was in the sermon but the
carnally-minded man, being dead, perceived Him not!

Nor, my dear Friends, is this spiritual death merely a failure to
recognize the Being of God–it is equally seen in reference to the
moral obligations it involves. Man, by nature, is dead to the right and
to the true, to the commandments of the Lord which enlighten the eyes
and to the testimony of the Lord which makes wise the simple. He is
probably alive to his obligations to his fellow men because he has a
clear understanding of their obligations to him. He generally keeps
himself within the bounds of law and decency, but his greater
obligations to his Creator–these cross not his mind–yet it is the
very essence of rectitude and truth that He who made all things should
be served by those He made and that He who sustains life in all His
creatures should have honor from those creatures who owe their
continued existence to Him! Why does the ungodly man not think of this?
How is it he can live for 30 or 40 years sustained by God and yet never
giveto God the service of his heart–scarcely thinking about his God at
all? How is it? Why, because the man is dead to spiritual obligations!
It must be so or else he would lament that he had not met those
obligations and begin to repent that he had transgressed the bounds
that his Maker set. The man is dead, Sirs–dead!

Further the natural man is dead to eternal things. How quick-eared he
is to the things of time–how swift to perceive their value and in what
haste to grasp them if he can! But ah, the eternal realities which God
has revealed in Scripture the man neither cares to hear about them nor,
hearing them, do they excite any desires within his spirit! Alas, my
Hearers, we have sometimes had to warn you of the judgment to come. We
have had to take down the shrill-sounding trumpet and blow an alarm! We
have had to tell you that there is a dreadful Hell into which the
wicked, dying impenitent, must be cast! How is it that men are not
stirred by a theme so truthful and so dreadful? Because they are dead!
They would be awake enough if they were afraid that their house should
be on fire and that they, themselves, might be burned with the natural
element! Yet the spiritual danger far more to be apprehended arouses
them not–because they are dead to it. At other times it has been our
delight to speak of Heaven, to picture the pearly-gated city with all
its azure brightness, with its bejeweled foundations and to talk of its
inhabitants, all blessed forever, who walk in the light of their
glorious King! And surely it were enough to make the cold marble heart
glow with warmth! But no, the thing moved not men. Some little joy of
earth would whet their appetite far more quickly! It is because to the
spiritual Heaven revealed in Scripture men are altogether dead and care
not for it! Oh Sirs, 'tis sad, 'tis sad, 'tis very sad that to the
fleeting shadows we should be wide awake but to that substantial Truth
of God we should be sound asleep–that after the poor gewgaws and
child's bubbles of this mortal state, we should be all agog–but as to
the solid joys and lasting pleasures of an eternal world, we show no
desire! This again is a mark of spiritual death!

I must hurry on to mark a few more indications of this spiritual death.
Prayer is one of the most blessed engagements and occupations of men
while they are out of Heaven–to ask of the All-Bountiful One the
mercies which they need. But there are some here tonight who never
pray–who never really ask of God what they require. They take the
attitude of supplicants, perhaps as a matter of habit, but there they
are like kneeling corpses! They do not pray–they are dead to prayer.
Open this Book, this holy Bible, before them. There was never such
another–no angel ever gazed upon a page more rich with glory than
this! This Book it is that opens to us immortality and gives us the
news of eternal love! Set the natural man down before it. It is to him
a mere history or a dry book of dogmatic matters! He sees nothing in it
that can charm him, nothing that can interest his spirit. The man is
dead, Sir! To the sightless eyeballs, the brightest jewels flash back
no radiance. He is dead! Yes, to Christ, Himself, the man is dead for
when He is preached–Christ, the Father's Son, the virgin's Child, the
condescending Savior, the ascending Conqueror, the exalted King crowned
with Glory– why the people of God delight to hear of Him! To them the
savor of Jesus' name is like ointment poured forth! But exhibit this
Savior to the natural man and he perceives nothing! How could he? He is
dead–dead in trespasses and sins! All the outward phenomena that you
will discern in the best natural man indicate that whatever kind of
light there may be in him, the Light of God that deals with God, with
the spirit-world, the world to come, is not there! He is unconscious of
these! He has no fellowship with them. He is dead and a prey to
corruption! When we have paused a minute we shall endeavor to
describe–

II. THE WORD WHICH JESUS BRINGS TO THE DEAD.

"The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of
the Son of God." Our Lord Jesus Christ is, in Scripture, especially in
the Gospel of John, called, "the Word." Here His voice is spoken of but
what is a voice apart from the person that utters it? What is the Word
which Jesus speaks by which dead men are quickened? Is not Jesus
Christ, Himself, the Word of God to man? The distinct articulate
manifestation of Deity is Jesus Christ! Now, let me show you this.
Jesus Christ came, once upon a time, from Heaven. He condescended to
become a Baby, to be nursed in a manger, to hang on a woman's breast.
He was God! What did that say–that Child, that Baby–Human, yet
Divine? Why, it said this, "God has pity upon man and has not left him.
He is about to establish an intimate relationship between Himself, the
great and the glorious, and man, the weak and the pitiable–a union not
at first between God and fully developed man, but between God and the
Baby, as if it should be said the weakest and feeblest of all that bear
the name of manhood may take comfort, for God has come down and taken a
Baby's form into union with Himself!" That meant pity! It meant mercy!
It meant fellowship and it meant hope to the race of man! To this end
Jesus passed a life in the midst of all our sorrows, infirmities and
took upon Himself our sickness!

And what did that mean? Why it meant compassion. A beautiful word,
that–compassion–a united passion, a fellow-feeling, a kindred
suffering! It seemed to say, "God is not indifferent to your woes. Oh,
sons of men! You have fallen through your sins, but God pities you! God
feels for you! He is no flinty-hearted Jupiter who sits serenely on his
throne amidst the pains and agonies and eternal death of his creatures!
No, but He has come down to you! He has taken upon Himself, Manhood,
that He may suffer with man and let man see that He has not left him,
but that He feels for him! And after He had lived a life of holiness
which was, indeed, comparatively but a small part of His work, our Lord
Jesus Christ gave Himself up to die!Into the Garden He went and there
the wrath of God was laid upon Him till that precious cluster was so
crushed in the awful press of the Divine Wrath that great red drops of
bloody sweat were distilled from every pore like the red juice from the
cluster! He went to Pilate's Hall, to Herod's tribunal, to be mocked
and scourged and spat upon and, at last, in extreme agony He offered up
His life on the accursed tree! What did He say to us then? He said
this–"God is just. I come down to you poor mortal men and, taking upon
Myself your nature and taking also your sins as your Substitute, I have
to suffer." Christ Jesus' suffering is a loud word from God to this
effect, "I pity you men, but your sins I must punish. I cannot pass
them by. If they are laid upon My Son, I must prostrate My Son beneath
their load. I cannot wink at sin though it is laid upon the perfect
Substitute, for even there I must hunt it to the death! It is an
accursed thing and must not be tolerated. I must stamp it out of My
universe."

This is God's Word. He says, "Justice as well as compassion. Pity but
pity consistent with severity." Moreover Jesus rose again from the dead
and now He ever lives at the right hand of God and His Holy Spirit has
come and animates, at this time, the preaching of the Word with Divine
energy! Christ now declares to us God's Word after this fashion,
"Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God. Whoever
will trust in the Incarnate Son of God and fully rely upon the merits
of His wondrous suffering shall be saved. God wills not the death of
the sinner, but had rather that he should turn unto Him and live! And
everyone that will turn unto the living God and trust His Son to make
propitiation, shall be saved from the damning power of sin and have
everlasting life." Christ, the Living One, is God's Word to us that we
shall be delivered from the wrath to come if we trust in Him, even as
He, Himself, was delivered when He rose again from the dead and
ascended into Glory!

My dear Friends, the Gospel which I preach again, tonight, is that
which I have always preached and always will preach until I have a fear
lest I should preach till you are almost nauseated with the repetition!
Yet if it were so, I could not help it, for no other name do I dare to
preach, nor is there any other foundation that I dare to lay and bid
you build on it but this! Jesus Christ, the Son of God has come! Here
on earth He lived and died and suffered for the sake of mankind. God is
a God of Love, but He is also a God of Justice. There is a way in which
He can be just and yet tender to you. If you trust His dear Son, your
sins shall not destroy you! Christ's sufferings shall stand instead of
yours and you shall live! If you will now accept Christ. If you now
will lean fully on Jesus. If you now will fling away both your love of
sin and your love of your own righteousness and come and rest where God
would have you rest, God shall be reconciled to you and you shall be
His child and you shall live forever and ever! I must now close with
third point–

III. THE MODE BY WHICH THIS WORD IS APPLIED.

"The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear." I have told
you what they will hear. They will hear the Word of God! But who will
speak it? Who is it that alone can speak it to purpose? Why–"When the
dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, they that hear shall
live." Whenever any dead soul lives, it is through the Word, but it is
not through the voice of the preacher. That is but an instrument and
nothing more! The real voice that makes dead souls live is the voice of
Christ Jesus! What, is it so? Does He actually speak to every soul that
is saved? He does! I do not mean in fancy as though you heard voices in
the air, but I mean that this Word which I have just now preached to
you must come home to your heart and your conscience and be applied by
the Holy Spirit so that you prove its power and feel its energy.
Through the Holy Spirit, it is that the voice of Christ is heard in the
soul! But while I speak to you thus, some will say, "What, then, can we
do with sinners as we have not the voice that can raise them?" Why you
can pluck your Master by the skirt and say to Him, "Good Lord, speak
the Word! Speak the Word!" When I come into this pulpit, the prayer
that rises to my heart always–I hope I can always say without
guile–is this, "Lord be here to speak, Yourself, through me." I am
persuaded that though I preach to dead sinners ten thousand years,
never will one be saved by my voice. Why, then, do I preach to sinners
knowing them to be dead? Because I am simply the instrument of Christ
and He speaks through His voice with His own Spirit, which is as His
voice, and the dead do hear and they are made to live–not without the
instrumentality, not through the instrumentality, alone, but by the
voice of Jesus Christ! I ask you, then, dear Brothers and Sisters who
are alive to God, to pray that Jesus would speak while the preacher
speaks. Be lifting up your hearts and silently crying–

"Oh, let the dead now hear Your voice! Bid, Lord Your banished ones
rejoice! Their beauty this their glorious dress Jesus the Lord our
righteousness.!'

What encouragement there is in this for you, my Brothers and Sisters!
However feeble you may be in yourselves, yet if it is the voice of
Christ you have to rely upon, what power there is in that! You may go
to your class and say, "I cannot teach these troublesome boys and these
inattentive girls! How can I hope to see them saved?" Ah but your
Master can speak through you and He can do what you cannot! Though it
is true that old Adam is too strong for young Melancthon, he is not too
strong for the mighty Savior whose voice does not merely speak to the
living, but to the dead–and all who hear that voice shall live! Bend
your ear, then, and bow down your heart! Attend to the voice of Christ
seeing that thereby, alone, the dormant faculties can be quickened and
a lively interest excited!

Yet while Christ speaks to the dead, power is communicated to them that
they may have it and use it, call it their own and exercise it. "The
dead shall hear," and do notice, " They that hear shall live." You must
not imagine that man is passive in the matter. What does it say, "Draw
us, " and we will be drawn? No, but, "Draw us and we will run after
You'" There comes an activity. I have heard some speak of faith and
repentance as the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Most truly so they are, but
why speak of these gifts as though the sinner had nothing to do to
repent and to believe? Always remember that it is youwho must repent
and believe. The Holy Spirit will not repent for you! What would He
repent about? He never did wrong. And the Holy Spirit will not believe
for you. What would He believe for? He is God, Himself! The fact is
that the Apostle has expressed it exactly when he says, "Work out your
own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that works in you
to will and to do of His own good pleasure." Christ gives the voice but
the man hears. There is something done–there is a something to be
received. It is no great act to hear a sound when it is made. It is no
great act to receive mercy when it is presented. Yet the hearing is a
miracle, for the dead hear! And the receiving by faith is a miracle,
for none do this but those to whom it is given–yet it is done by man.
Faith and repentance are gifts of God–the voice that saves is the
voice of Christ but the point of personal salvation is reached when the
man actively hears and receives the Truth of God!

I pray you, then, my dear Hearers, if you would be saved, be diligent
in hearing the Gospel! I would urge you to frequent those places of
worship most where there is most of Christ preached. Do not seek after
eloquence, oratory, gaudy periods or grotesque observations that might
amuse you. You have something else to do on the Lord's Day besides
being amused and having your ears tickled! There is a soul in you that
will either be saved or lost–and this day is given you peculiarly that
you may listen to the Gospel which saves you! Hunt out the Gospel in
your locality! Follow it wherever you may hear it preached. I entreat
you to hear it, but do not think that the mere hearing it with your
outward ears will be enough! Alas, such a hearing may involve
responsibility and bring you no blessing. I pray you ask the Lord as
you go up to the House of Prayer to open your inward ears to quicken
you from your spiritual death and give you to derive profit. I do
believe, my dear Friends, that few will miss a blessing who hear a
Gospel minister anxiously desiring to get a blessing. In these waters,
men shall catch what they fish for! And if you seek earnestly after
God's blessing, you shall find it! Thirst for it! Pant for it! Long for
it! You already have the beginning of it, for to desire Grace is an
evidence that you have Grace in a measure! And to earnestly seek Christ
is already to have something from Christ–a foretaste of the feast they
enjoy who find Him!

Ah, my dear Friends, we keep on preaching and you keep on coming and
going, Sunday after Sunday, but how is it with you? Are you saved or
not? A man opens a shop for the sale of medicines and I will suppose
them to have great medicinal virtue. There is a plague in the district
and he asks himself, "Are these drugs, after all, what they profess to
be?" If men keep on dying, he will, as an honest man, begin to get
anxious and to enquire. And if he meets with persons who are talking of
other things, he will say, "Nonsense! Put them aside a bit. I want to
ask you about something of more importance. Are these drugs of mine
true shots with which to do battle with the plague? Are these the
weapons with which to chase away this horrible disease and avert the
threat? Is the plague increasing in your street or is it dying out?" Oh
I wantto push these questions home to you tonight! I know I preach the
Word of Christ. I am sure I have told you the Gospel of His salvation.
The voice of Christ I cannot imitate nor would I if I could. 'Tis His
to use His own voice. His tongue and His tongue, only, is like a
two-edged sword which can cut and cure, kill and heal at the same time!
How is it with you? Are you saved? Are you awakened? Are you seeking?
Are you finding? Or are you, after all, just hearing and hearing and
hearing again and again to no purpose? Ah, I would to God that I were
not the preacher to such as you and that you were not my hearers, for I
cannot bear that I should be adding to your condemnation! That I should
be hardening you– for so it must be–hardening your hearts with the
very Truth of God that ought to soften them! I pray the Master bring
you into a different state and give you to lay hold on these things,
for if they are not true, it is time I had done preaching them! But if
they are true, it is time you had received them! If they are not true,
it is time that these services were given over, for they are awful
farces! But if this Book is true and Christ's Gospel is true, it is
time that you did not make farces of them but that you turned unto God
with full purpose of heart! The Lord save you for Jesus' sake. Amen.

EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: EPHESIANS2; MATTHEW 11:1-6.

Verse 1. And you has He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins.
What a great change, then, has taken place in the people of God! It is
described as being similar to the resurrection of the dead. And do you
suppose that this took place without a man's knowing it? Do you think
that we are wrong in stating a wide difference between the quickened
ones and the dead? I think not. In fact, those addresses made to
congregations in which there is no distinction made between the living
and the dead in Zion are deceptive. And prayers that are meant to suit
congregations of mingled character–where some are dead in sin and
others alive unto God–are, on the very face of them, an attempt at an
impossibility! As great as is the distinction between the dead in their
graves and living men that walk the streets, so great is the difference
between the regenerate and unregenerate! Do you think that in reading
this verse, dear Friends, you could apply it to yourself, "and you, and
you, and you, has He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins"?

2. Wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this
world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that
now works in the children of disobedience. Those who are not saved have
a life of evil. They are dead towards God, but they are alive towards
Satan. An unregenerate man's heart is Satan's workshop in which he
forges divers devices of evil–the spirit that works in the children of
disobedience!

3. Among whom also we all had our conversation in timespast in the
lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the
mind; and were by nature the children of wrath even as others. No
difference by nature between the brightest saint in the Church of God
and the blackest sinner of the camp of Satan–all fallen, all
desperately depraved at our very original! What wonders of Grace are
those who are saved! Let them taken care that they never fail in
praising that Grace of God!

4-7. But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He
loved us, even when we were dead in sins, has quickened us together
with Christ (by Grace you are saved). And has raised us up together and
made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. That in the
ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His Grace in His
kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. God's great objective is to
display His Grace–to let all the universe know what a gracious God He
is–therefore did He pitch upon us who were dead in sin even as others!
Therefore does He quicken us and, therefore, having quickened us, does
He go on to raise us up from one point to another until He makes us sit
with Christ upon His Throne! Oh Beloved, if all the ages are to learn
the Grace of God from His dealings towards us, let us learn it and let
us talk much of it and exult much in it! Who is a gracious God like
unto our God?

8. For by Grace are you savedNot by your own merits! Not by
priestcraft! Not by your own free will. "By Grace are you saved." This
is the great summary of the Gospel! Let this Doctrine be preached and
we shall soon see the errors of Rome fly before it! "By Grace are you
saved."

8. Through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.
Neither the faith nor the salvation are of ourselves. They are both the
gifts of Divine Love–both worked in us by the Divine Spirit. It is the
gift of God!

9, 10. Not of works lest any man should boast. For we are His
workmanship. No good man can boast of his works because those works are
the work of God. Without Him, we could not perform good works! So that
even when we possess them, we are His workmanship. Shall the vessel on
the wheel exalt itself as if it made itself? No, the potter must have
the credit for all the skill of the making of the vessel. And if,
therefore, there shall be in our character marks and lines of Grace and
Truth–unto God be the glory for them, for we are His workmanship!

10-12. Created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God has before
ordained that we should walk in them. Therefore remember that you,
being in time past, Gentiles in the flesh who are called Uncircumcision
by those who are called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands.
That at the time you were without Christ, being aliens from the
commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants ofpromise
having no hope and without God in the world This is where our fathers
were. This is where we are by nature! We have not got even as far as
the Jew who had a Covenant according to the flesh to plead and had
received the sign of it while yet a child! But we–we were altogether
foreigners and aliens from the Most High!

13. But now in Christ Jesus you who sometimes were far off are made
near by the blood of Christ. Oh, rejoice in this! You far-off ones made
near, lift up your hearts in thankfulness for what the Lord Jesus has
done for you by His blood– made near by the blood of Christ!

14. For He is our peace who has made both one and has broken down the
middle wall of partition between us. Christ is peace between Jew and
Gentile–peace between both of them and their God. I have heard of a
poor bricklayer who when at work on a scaffold, fell from a great
height and was taken up and was dying. They sent for a minister of the
Gospel who began addressing him in such terms as this, "My dear man,
you are evidently near to die and therefore I exhort you to make your
peace with God." He knew but very little of it compared with what the
poor bricklayer knew, for opening his eyes, he said, "Make my peace
with God, Sir? That I could not do, but I thank God it was made for me
in the Everlasting Covenant of Grace in the Person of the Lord Jesus
Christ 1,800 years ago! I have no peace to make!" It is peace already
made! And we have but to accept it, for He is our peace who has made
both one and broken down the middle wall of partition between us!

15. 16. Having abolished in His flesh the enmity, even the law of
commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in Himself of two,
one new man so making peace. And that He might reconcile both unto God
in one body by the Cross having slain the enmity thereby. No enmity now
should exist between Jew and Gentile. None does exist between the
Believer and his God. The enmity is dead forever, for Christ has died.

17, 18. And came and preached peace to you which were afar of and to
them that were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit
unto the Fathe. In this verse you have the whole Trinity and all the
Trinity in unity are necessary for prayer. "Through Him we both have
access by one Spirit unto the Father."

19. Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners but fellow
citizens with the saints and of the household of God. How blessedly
Grace annihilates all national distinction! Cowper spoke of nations
which, like kindred drops, would have melted into one if they had not
been divided by a range of mountains or intersected by a narrower
faith. But in the Gospel of Grace we do melt into one! Whoever loves
the Lord is a co-patriot with all who love Him! Distinctions of
nationality sweetly sink when we come to know the Savior. We are fellow
citizens with the saints and of the householdof God!

MATTHEW 11:1-6.

Verses 1-5. And it came to pass when Jesus had made an end of
commanding His twelve disciples, He departed thence to teach and preach
in their cities. Now when John had heard in the prison, the works of
Christ, he sent two of hisdisciples. And they said unto Him, Are You He
that should come or do we look for another? Jesus answered and said
unto them, Go and show John again those things which you do hear and
see: The blind receive their sight and the lame walk. The lepers are
cleansed and the deaf hear. The dead are raised up and the poor have
the Gospel preached to them. These were Christ's seals and proofs–John
needed not to seek others. These were the very works of which prophecy
had said would be the marks of the Messiah! If, then these marks were
found in Him, He left John and his disciples to draw the inference that
He was, indeed, the One who was to come! Christ is always best known by
His works and, especially in His people, He is seen in their lives.
There are two great precepts for the conquest of the world for
Christ–the first is preach the Gospel–but the second is live the
Gospel and if we do not live the Gospel, we shall not succeed in
preaching the Gospel! In fact, those members of our churches who do not
live the Gospel, undo through all the week what the preacher of the
Gospel endeavors to do on the Lord's Day! It is a fine thing to preach
with your mouth, but the best thing in the world is to preach with your
feet and with your hands–in your walk and in your work! And if you are
enabled to do this, the people will be able to say very little against
the preaching of the Gospel when they see the result of it in those who
accept it! God grant that we may be all preachers in some way or
another! 6. And blessed is he who is not offended because of Mt.