A Simple Remedy

A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 1, 1872,

BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"With His stripes we are healed." Isaiah 53:5.

EVER since the Fall, healing has been the chief necessity of manhood.
There was no physician in Paradise, but outside that blissful enclosure
professors of the healing art have been precious as the gold of Ophir.
Even in Eden itself there grew herbs which should, in after days, yield
medicine for the body of man. Before sin came into the world, and
disease which is the consequence of it, God had created plants of
potent efficacy to soothe pain and wrestle with disease. Blessed be His
name, while thus mindful of the body, He had not forgotten the direr
sicknesses of the soul–for He has raised up for us a Plant of renown,
yielding a balm far more effectual than that of Gilead! This He had
done before the plague of sin had yet infected us. Christ Jesus, the
true Medicine of the sons of men, was ordained of old to heal the
sicknesses of His people.

Everywhere, at this present hour, we meet with some form or other of
sickness. No place, however healthful, is free from disease. As for
moral disease, it is all around us and we are thankful to add that the
remedy is everywhere within reach. The Beloved Physician has prepared a
healing medicine which can be reached by all classes which is available
in every climate, at every hour, under every circumstance and is
effectual in every case wherever it is received. Of that Medicine we
shall speak this morning, praying that we may have God's help in so
doing. It is a great mercy for us who have to preach, as well as for
you who have to hear, that the Gospel healing is so very simple–our
text describes it– "With His stripes we are healed."

These six words contain the marrow of the Gospel and yet scarcely one
of them contains a second syllable. They are words for plain people and
in them there is no affectation of mystery or straining after the
profound. I looked, the other day, into old Culpepper's Herbal. It
contains a marvelous collection of wonderful remedies. Had this old
herbalist's prescriptions been universally followed there would not
long have been any left to prescribe for–the astrological herbalist
would soon have extirpated both sickness and mankind! Many of his
recipes contain from 12 to 20 different drugs, each one needing to be
prepared in a peculiar manner. I think I once counted 40 different
ingredients in one single draught!

Very different are these recipes, with their elaboration of
preparation, from the Biblical prescriptions which effectually healed
the sick–such as these–"Take a lump of figs, and lay it for a plaster
upon the boil." Or that other one–"Go and wash in Jordan seven times."
Or that other–"Take up your bed and walk." One cannot but admire the
simplicity of truth, while falsehood conceals her deformities with a
thousand tricks! If you want to see Culpepper's Herbal carried out in
spiritual things, go and buy a Directory for the carrying on of the
Ritualistic services of the Church of England, or the Church of Rome.

You shall find, there, innumerable rules as to when you shall bow and
to what quarter of the heavens you shall look–when you shall stand up,
and when you shall kneel–when you shall dress in black, in white, in
blue, or in violet. There are instructions on how you shall pray and
what you shall pray–a collect being appointed for today–and another
for tomorrow. On the other hand, if you would know the true way of
having your souls healed, go to the Word of God and study such a text
as this: "With His stripes we are healed." In the one case all is
mysterious–in the other all is simple and clear. Quackery cannot live
without mystery, show, ceremony and pretence. But the Truth of God is
as plain as a pikestaff, legible as though it were written on the broad
heavens and so simple that a babe may comprehend it. "With His stripes
we are healed."

I saw in Paris, years ago, a public vendor of quack medicines and an
extraordinary personage he was. He came riding into the market place
with a fine chariot drawn by horses richly adorned, while a trumpet was
sounded before him. This

mighty healer of all diseases made his appearance clothed in a coat of
as many colors as that of Joseph! And on his head was a helmet adorned
with variegated plumes. He delivered himself of a jargon which might be
French, which might also be Latin, or might be nonsense–for no one in
the crowd could understand it. With a little persuasion the natives
bought his medicines, persuaded that so great and wise a man could
surely cure them. Truly, this is one reason why there is an adoption in
the Romish Church of the Latin tongue and why in many other Churches
there is an affectation of a theological jargon which nobody can
comprehend–and which would not be of any use to them if they did
comprehend

it!

The whole is designed to delude the multitude. To what purpose are fine
speeches in the Gospel ministry? Sicknesses are not healed by
eloquence! It was an ill day in which rhetoric crept into the Church of
God and men attempted to make the Gospel a subject for oratory. The
Gospel needs no human eloquence to recommend it! It stands most
securely when without a buttress! Like beauty, it is most adorned when
unadorned the most. The native charms of the Gospel suffice to commend
it to those who hate spiritual eyes and those who are blind will not
admire it, deck it as we may.

I shall, therefore, content myself this morning with declaring the
Gospel to you in the plainest possible language, forfeiting any
attempts at excellency of speech. I know it to be the Gospel of God. I
know it will save you if you receive it–it has saved me–it has saved
thousands more! I shall put it before you in plain, unvarnished
language. I beseech you to receive it and I pray that God's Holy Spirit
may lead you to do so. Coming at once to our text, we observe, first,
that these are sad words–"With His stripes we are healed." We remark,
secondly, that these are glad words! And, then, we shall notice,
thirdly, that these are very suggestive words.

I. THESE ARE SAD WORDS. They are part of a mournful piece of music
which might be called "the Requiem of the Messiah." Hear its solemn
notes–"Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows: yet we
did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. But He was
wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the
chastisement of our peace was upon Him and with His stripes we are
healed." Do you not feel that the song so softly stated has touched
your heart to pity and moistened your eyes with tears? "With His
stripes we are healed."

This is not the brine of woe, but yet it is salt with sorrow. The sun
is not eclipsed but it shines through a cloud. No one reads the inner
sense of these words without feeling grief of soul. This is caused by
the fact that the words imply the existence of disease and speak of
great suffering connected with the remedy. I say these are sad words
because they imply disease. "With His stripes we are healed. This,
"we," comprehends within itself all the saints and hence it is clear
that all the saints needed healing. Those who are today before the
Throne of God without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, were once as
defiled as the lepers who were shut out of the camp of Israel!

Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, David, Elijah, Hezekiah, Daniel–all these
were once sick of the accursed malady of sin. All the excellent of the
earth among us now who have been saved by Sovereign Grace were once
heirs of wrath even as others–as surely shaped in iniquity and
conceived in sin as the rest of mankind! There is a confession here, by
implication, of all who are washed in the blood of Jesus that they
needed washing–of all who are healed by His stripes–that they were
sorely sick with sin.

This confession is true. Every child of God will join in it and he that
knows himself best will make it with greatest emphasis. We were so
diseased that nothing could have restored us but the precious blood of
our dear Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is a dread fact that sin has
infected the entire family of man. We are all sinful–sinful through
and through–we are all corrupt with evil passions and depraved
desires. Our fathers were fallen men and so are we, and so will our
children be. The putting of bitter for sweet and of sweet for bitter,
of darkness for light and light for darkness is engendered in us all.
"Every one of them is gone back; they are altogether become filthy,
there is none that does good, no not one."

Oh, mournful, miserable fact–in a fair world, "where every prospect
pleases"–beneath a glorious sky where stars peer down upon us like the
eyes of God, man lives a rebel to his God, a traitor to the Truth of
God, an enemy of good, a slave of evil! He who was made to rule the
world rules not himself! Fashioned for wisdom, he drivels like a fool!
Ordained immortality, he labors for the wages of sin which is death!
Sin has dimmed his eyes, hardened his heart, uncrowned his head,
weakened his strength, filled him with putrefying sores and left him
naked to his shame! The disease of sin is of the most loathsome
character. Supposing it possible for every man to have had the leprosy
and yet for no man to have had sin, that would have been no calamity at
all compared with that of our becoming sinful!

If it could so have happened that we could have been deprived of our
most useful faculties and yet had remained innocent, that would have
been a small catastrophe compared with this depraving of our nature by
sin. To inoculate the parent stock with evil was the great design of
Satan, for he knew that this would work the worst conceivable ill to
God's creatures. Hell itself is not more horrible than sin. No vision,
ghastly and grim, can ever be so terrible to the spiritual eye as the
hideous, loathsome thing called sin. Remember that this dread evil is
in us all! We are, at this day, every one of us, by nature only fit to
be burned up with the abominations of the universe!

If we think we are better than that, we do not know ourselves. It is a
part of the infatuation of evil that its victims pride themselves upon
their excellence. Our infernal pride makes us cover our leprous
foreheads with the silver veil of self-deception. Like a foul bog
covered over with green moss, our Nature hides its rottenness beneath a
film of suppositious righteousness. And, Brothers and Sisters, while
sin is loathsome before God at the present time, it will lead to the
most deadly result in due season. There is not a man or woman among us
that can escape the damnation of Hell apart from the healing virtue of
the Savior's atoning sacrifice. No, not one!

Your lovely little girl is defiled in heart, albeit that as yet nothing
worse than childish folly is discoverable. Just leave that little mind
to its own devices and the fair child will become an arch-transgressor!
Yonder most amiable youth, although no blasphemous word has ever
blackened his lips and no lustful thought has yet inflamed his eyes,
must yet be born-again or he may wander into foulest ways! And yonder
most moral tradesman, though he has as yet done justice to his fellow
men, will perish if he is not saved by the Grace of God through Christ
Jesus! Sin dwells in us and will be deadly in the case of everyone
among us, without a solitary exception, unless we accept the remedy
which God has provided.

Ah, dear Friends, this disease is none the better because we do not
feel it. It is all the worse. It is one of the worst symptoms in some
diseases, when men become incapable of feeling. It is dreadful when the
delirious sick man cries out, "I am well enough! I will leave this bed!
I will go to my business!" Hear how he raves–must we not put him under
restraint? The louder his boasts of health the more sad the delirious
patient's condition. When ignorance is known and felt it is not dense,
but he who knows nothing and yet fancies that he knows everything, is
ignorant, indeed.

Sin is also a very painful disease when it is known and felt. When the
Spirit of God leads a man to see the sin which is really in himself,
then how he changes his note! Oh, children of God, have you forgotten
how acutely sin made you smart? Those black days of conviction! My soul
still has them in remembrance–remembering the wormwood and the gall!
The period of my conviction of sin is burnt into my memory as with a
red-hot iron–its wounds are cured, but the scars remain. As Habakkuk
has well put it, "When I heard, my belly trembled, my lips quivered at
the voice, rottenness entered into my bones and I trembled in myself."
Oh, 'tis a burden, this load of sin–a burden which might crush an
angel down to Hell!

There I stood and seemed like another staggering Atlas, bearing up a
world of sin upon these shoulders and fearing every moment lest I
should be crushed into the abyss and justly lost forever. Only let a
man once feel sin for half-an-hour–really feel its tortures–and I
guarantee you he could prefer to dwell in a pit of snakes than to live
with his sins! Remember that cry of David, "My sin is ever before me"?
He speaks as though it haunted him! He shut his eyes but he still saw
its hideous shape! He sought his bed, but like a nightmare it weighed
upon his breast. He rose and it rose with him. He tried to shake it off
among the haunts of men–in business and in pleasure–but like a
blood-sucking vampire it clung to him! Sin was ever before him, as
though it were painted on his eyeballs–the glass of his soul's window
was stained with it!

He sought his closet but could not shut it out. He sat alone but it sat
with him. He slept, but it cursed his dreams. His memory was burdened
by it. His imagination it lit up with lurid flames–his judgment it
armed with a ten-thronged whip–his expectations it shrouded in
midnight gloom. A man needs no worse Hell than his own sin and an
awakened conscience. Let this be instead of racks and whips of burning
wire. Conscience once aroused will find in sin the worm undying, the
unquenchable fire and the bottomless pit. Though God Himself will
punish sin, yet it is a wolf which tears its own flesh, a viper which
turns its envenomed fang upon itself!

Perhaps many of you may reply, "But we do not feel this!" True, because
you have contrived, for the present, to give sedatives to conscience. I
pity you because you are not aware of the truth. I see how it is with
you. You think your money making, or spending your days pleasantly, or
your performance of your daily labor is all you need consider. But if
you were not deceived by sin you would know better! You would
understand that you are God's creatures and that God did

not make you to live for yourselves. Which among you builds a house and
does not intend either to live in it or gain something by the letting
of it? And do you think God made you without designing to glorify
Himself in you?

Oh, men and women, did your Creator make you that you might live only
for yourselves and make your bellies your gods? Do you dream that you
may miss the end of your being and not have it required at your hands?
Will He suffer you to rob Him of your service and wink at your
rebellion, and treat it as if it were nothing? It shall not be so, as
you will find to your regret! Oh, may you be taught, now, the evil of
sin! Spirit of God, it is Your office to convict the world of sin, of
righteousness and of judgment–do Your office now, for none will apply
for healing till they feel the smart– none will look to the stripes of
Jesus till they feel the wounds of sin! When sin is bitter, Christ is
sweet, but only then. When death threatens, then do men fly to Christ
for life. No man ever loves Christ till he loathes himself! No man ever
cares for Jesus till he comes to see that out of Jesus he is a lost,
ruined and undone soul! Oh, may God grant that the sorrowful part of
these words may ring in your ears till you mourn your grievous sin!

But there is a second sorrow in the verse, and that is sorrow for the
suffering by which we are healed. "With His stripes we are healed." I
find that the word here used is in the singular and not as the
translation would lead you to suppose. I hardly know how to fully
translate the word. It is read by some as "weal," "bruise," or "wound,"
meaning the mark or print of blows on the skin. But Alexander says the
word denotes the tumor raised in flesh by scourging. It is elsewhere
translated, "blueness," "hurt," and "spots," and evidently refers to
the black and blue marks of the scourge. The use of a singular noun may
have been intended to set forth that our Lord was, as it were, reduced
to a mass of bruising and was made one great bruise. By the suffering
which that condition indicated we are saved.

Our text alludes partly to the sufferings of His body, but much more to
the agonies of His soul. The body of our Lord and Savior was bruised.
Scourging under the Jewish law was always moderate–there was a pause
made at a point which mercy had appointed. Thirty-nine stripes were all
that could be given. But our Lord was not beaten according to the
Jewish law–He was scourged by Pilate and the scourging of the Romans
was peculiarly brutal. They stopped not at the 40 stripes save
one–they struck at random, according to their own will. The Savior
endured a scourging which was intended to be a substitute for death–"I
will scourge Him and release Him," said Pilate–but instead of its
being a substitute for death it became a prelude to it.

Probably most men would prefer to die rather than to be scourged after
the Roman fashion and might be wise in making such a choice. Sinews of
oxen were intertwisted with knuckle bones of sheep and these were armed
with small slivers of bone so that every stroke gashed the flesh deeply
and caused fearful wounds and tears–as says the Prophet, "the plowers
made deep furrows." Our Savior's back was plowed and furrowed deeply in
the day of His scourging. Now you may look at the Person of Jesus, your
Substitute and Sacrifice, covered with livid bruises by human cruelty
and say, "With His stripes we are healed."

But you must not stop there and think that flesh wounds were all His
stripes, for our Lord bore more terrible stripes in His soul. He was
struck in His heart each day of His life. He had to suffer the ills of
Providence. Being a Man He had sympathy with us in all those stripes
which are the inheritance of Adam's sons. He felt the stripes of
poverty, stripes of weariness, stripes of sickness, stripes of
heaviness, stripes of bereavement–above all others, He was a "Man of
sorrows and acquainted with grief." Moreover, He had to run the
gauntlet of all mankind. Stripes fell upon our Savior from all sorts of
men–for every man's sin laid a stroke upon His shoulders.

When He was here on earth, if He saw men sin, that smote Him. If He
heard them speak a wrong word, that smote Him. Having sinned, we have
been hardened by sin–but He was pure and perfect–and it was a bruise
to Him to come into contact with sin. You remember how His adversaries
called Him a drunk and a wine-bibber–how they said He had a devil and
was mad? Thus they were all striking Him. Each man laying on his blow
with all his might. Worse than all, He was wounded in the house of His
friends. Was any blow equal to that which Judas lay upon those
shoulders? And next to that, could anything surpass in pain the blows
which Peter gave when he said, "I know not the Man"?

There was a cruel process in the English navy in which men were made to
run the gauntlet all along the ship, with sailors on each side, each
man being bound to give a stroke to the poor victim as he ran along.
Our Savior's life was a running of the gauntlet between His enemies and
His friends who all struck Him, one here and another there. By those
sorrowful and shameful stripes we this day are healed! Satan, too,
struck at Him. I think I see the Arch-fiend ascend from

the pit with haste and, lifting himself upon his dragon wings, come
forward to strike the Savior, daring to inflict upon His soul the
accursed temptations of Hell!

He struck Him in the desert and in the garden, till beneath that
smiting great drops of blood crimsoned His face. But this was nothing
compared with the fact that He was smitten of God! Oh, what a word is
that! If God were to lay His finger on any one of us this morning, only
His finger, we should be struck with sickness, paralysis, yes, and
death! Then think of God smiting! God must strike sin wherever He sees
it–it is just that He should do so–it is as much an essential part of
God's Nature that He should crush sin as that He should love, for,
indeed, it is only love in another form that makes Him hate that which
is evil!

So when He saw our sin laid upon His Son, He struck Him with the blows
of a cruel One till beneath that smiting His Son cried out, "My God, My
God, why have You forsaken Me?" He was bearing, in that moment, all the
crushing blows of that great sword of vengeance of which we read in the
Prophets–"Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd, and against the Man
that is My Fellow, says the Lord." Put these things all together as
best you can, for I lack words with which to fitly describe these
bruises from the ills of life–bruises from friends and foes, stripes
from Satan, and blows from God–and surely it is the most sorrowful
story that ever was told–

"O King of Grief! (A title strange, yet true.

To You, of all kings, only due). O King of Wounds!

How shall I grieve for You Who in all grief outruns me?

Shall I weep blood?

Why, You have wept such store,

That all Your body was one sore.

Shall I be scourged, flouted, boxed, sold?

'Tis but to tell the tale is told;

My God, my God, if You do part from me,

Is such a grief as cannot be."

One needs to be a Niobe, a dripping well of tears, to mourn the Chief
of among 10,000 made the Chief of sufferers! That the Ever-Blessed One
should suffer! That the Lord of Life should bleed! The angels worship
Him and yet Jehovah struck Him! He is so fair that nothing else is
beautiful to any eye that has once gazed upon Him, and yet they spit in
His face and marred His lovely countenance with cruel blows of brutal
fists! He is all tenderness, but they are all cruelty! He is harmless
as a lamb! He never thought nor spoke a thing of wrong to mortal man,
but yet they strike Him as though He were a fierce beast of prey, fit
only to be bruised to death.

He is all love and, when they strike Him worst, He does but pray for
them, yet strike they still! No curses drop from those dear lips, but
words of pity only, and of sweet intercession follow each blow, yet
still they wound and buffet and blaspheme! Oh, grief far deeper than
the sea! Oh, woe immeasurable! They strike Him for whom they ought to
have gladly died–Him for whom the noble army of martyrs counted it all
joy to render up their lives–they despitefully entreat Him who came on
errands of pure mercy and disinterested Grace. Oh, cruel whips and
cruel hands and yet more–cruel hearts of wicked men! Surely we should
never read such words as these without feeling that they call for
sorrow–sorrow which if mingled with spiritual repentance, will be a
fit anointing for His burial, or, at least, a bath in which to wash
away the blood stains from His dear and most pure flesh.

II. Next–and may the Spirit of God help us with fresh power–THESE ARE
GLAD WORDS. "With His stripes we are healed." They are glad words,
first, because they speak of healing. "We are healed." Understand these
words, oh Beloved, of that virtual healing which was given you in the
day when Jesus Christ died upon the Cross. In the moment when Christ
yielded up the ghost, all His elect might have said, and said with
truth, "We are healed!" For, from that moment their sins were put
away–a full atonement was made for all the chosen! Christ had laid
down His life for His sheep!

He had redeemed His saints from among men–the ransom price was fully
paid–a complete expiation for sin was made and the redeemed were
clear. Let us, this morning, walk up and down with perfect peace and
confidence, for from the day when Jesus died we were perfectly clear
before the judgment seat of God! "With His stripes we are healed," or
rather, "we were healed," for the words are in the past in the original
Hebrew. "With His stripes we were healed." My

sins, they ceased to be centuries ago! My debts, my Savior paid them
before I was born and nailed up the receipted bill to His Cross and I
can see it there! The handwriting of ordinances that was contrary to
us, He took away and nailed it to His Cross.

I can see it and while I read the long list of my sins–oh, how long,
what a roll it needed to contain them–yet I see at the bottom, "The
blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin." It matters not
how long that roll was–the debt is all discharged. I am acquitted
before God and so is every Believer in Jesus! Every soul that rests in
Jesus was at the time when Jesus died, then and there absolved before
the sacred Judgment Seat! "Who shall lay anything to the charge of
God's elect?" is a fit challenge to ring forth from the Cross where
atonement was finished.

But, dear Friends, there is an actual application of the great
expiation to us when, by faith, we receive it individually and it is
that, also which is intended here. To as many as have believed in
Jesus, His stripes have given the healing of forgiveness of sin and,
moreover, it has conquered the deadly power of sin. Sin no longer has
dominion over them, for they are not under the Law but under Grace.
Nothing ever delivers a man from the power of sin like a sight of the
suffering Savior. I have heard of a man who had lived a dissolute life,
who could never be reclaimed from it by any means, but at last, when he
saw his mother sick and die from grief at his ways, the thought that
she had died because of his sins touched his heart and made him repent
of his ungodliness.

If there was such efficacy to cause repentance in that form of
suffering, much more is there when we come to see Jesus die in our
place! Then our heart melts with love to Him! Then hatred of sin takes
possession of the soul and the reigning power of evil is destroyed!
Christ's stripes have healed us of all love of sin! Faith in the
Crucified One has healed our eyes–once they were blind–for "when we
saw Him, there was no beauty that we should desire Him." Now, since we
have seen His stripes, we see all beauties unite in His adorable
Person! I know, Beloved, if you have put your trust in the sufferings
of Jesus, you think Him to be the most precious of beings–you see a
loveliness in Him which all Heaven's angels could not rival.

The stripes of Immanuel have also healed our hearts. "We hid, as it
were, our faces from Him. He was despised and we esteemed Him not," but
now our hearts delight in Him and we turn our faces towards Him as the
flowers look to the sun. We only wish that we could see Him face to
face! And He has healed our feet, too, for they were prone to
evil–note the verse that follows our text–"All we, like sheep, have
gone astray. We have turned, everyone, to his own way." A sight of His
stripes has brought us back and charmed by the disinterested love which
suffered in our place, we follow the great Bishop and Shepherd of our
souls and desire never again to wander from His commands. From head to
foot His stripes have bound up our wounds and mollified them with
ointment.

He forgives all our iniquities, He heals all our diseases. Beloved, if
you would be cured of any sin, however spreading its infection, fly to
Jesus' wounds! This is the only way to be rid of the palsy of fear, the
lever of lust, the sore blisters of remorse, or the leprosy of
iniquity! His stripes are the only medicine for transgression. Men have
tried to overcome their passions by the contemplation of death, but
they have failed to bury sin in the grave. They have strived to subdue
the rage of lust within their Nature by meditating upon Hell, but that
has only rendered the heart hard and callous to love's appeals. He who
once believingly beholds the mystery of Christ suffering for him shakes
off the viper of sin into the fire which consumed the great Sacrifice.
Where the blood of the Atonement falls, sin's hand is palsied, its
grasp is relaxed, its scepter falls, it vacates the throne of the heart
and the Spirit of Grace, and truth, and love, and righteousness
occupies the royal seat.

I may be addressing some this morning who despair of being saved.
Behold Christ smarting in your place and you will never despair again.
If Jesus bore the transgressors' punishment there is every room for
hope. Perhaps your disease is love of the world and a fear of man. You
dare not become a Christian because men would laugh at you. If you
could hear the scourges fall upon the Savior's back, you would
henceforth say, "Did He suffer thus for me? I will never be ashamed of
Him again." And instead of shunning the fight you would seek out the
thick of the fray. "With His stripes we are healed." It is a universal
medicine. There is no disease by which your soul can be afflicted but
an application of the blue bruises of your Lord will take out the
deadly virus from your soul.

Are you ambitious? This will bring you down. Are you desponding? This
will lift you up. Are you hot with passion? This will cool you. Are you
chill with indolence? This will stimulate you. The Cross! The Cross!
The Cross of Christ! What power dwells in it! Full sure, if even for
Satan that Cross had been set up on earth, it would have lifted him
from

Hell to Heaven! But it is not for him–it is, however, for the vilest
of the sons of men–and there are no sons of men so corrupt that the
Cross of Christ cannot purge them of all evil!

Bear this Gospel into Africa, where superstitious sorcery holds men's
minds in thralldom–it will uplift before all eyes the charter of
Africa's liberty! Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands, liberated from
her chains, when she shall see a Crucified Savior! Bear the Cross among
the Brahmins or among the Hindus–preach the Cross among a race of men
who boast their wisdom and they shall become ignorant in their own
esteem but truly wise before the Lord–when they shall see the light
that streams from Immanuel's wounds! Even Oriental cunning and
lasciviousness are thus healed! Do not tell me that we ought mainly to
preach Christ exalted–I will preach my Lord upon the throne and
delight therein–but the great remedy for ruined manhood is not Christ
in glory, but Christ in shame and death!

We know some who select Christ's Second Advent as their one great theme
and we would not silence them yet they err. The Second Coming is a
glorious hope for saints, but there is no cure in it for sinners! To
them the coming of the Lord is darkness and not light! But Christ
smitten for our sins–there is the star which breaks the sinner's
midnight! I know if I preached Christ on the Throne, many proud hearts
would have Him. But, oh, Sirs, you must have Christ on the Cross before
you can know Him on the Throne! You must bow before the Crucified! You
must trust a dying Savior or else if you pretend to honor Him by the
glories which are to come, you do but belie Him and you know Him not.
To the Cross, to the Cross, to the Cross! Write that upon the signposts
of the road to the City of Refuge! Fly there, you guilty ones, as to
the only sanctuary for the sinful for, "with His stripes we are
healed." There is joy in this!

There is another joy in the text–joy in the honor which it brings to
Christ. The stripes, let us lament them. The healing, let us rejoice in
it! And then, the Physician, let us honor Him. "With His stripes we are
healed." Jesus Christ works real cures. We are healed, effectually
healed. We were healed when we first believed; we are still healed.
Abiding cure we have, for still to His wounds we fly. An eternal cure
we have, for never man was healed by Christ and then relapsed and died.
"With His stripes we are healed"–by nothing else–by no mixture of
something else with those stripes. Not by priestcraft, not by
sacraments, not by our own prayers, not by our own good works. "With
His stripes we are healed"–healed of all sin of every kind–of sins
past, of sins present and sins to come! We are healed, completely
healed of all, and that in a moment–not through long years of waiting
and of gradually growing better but–"With His stripes we are healed,"
completely healed, even now. Blessed be His name!

Now, child of God, if you would give glory to God, declare that you are
healed this morning! Be not always saying, "I hope I am saved." The man
who he says hopes he is cured does not greatly recommend the physician.
But the man who knows he is, he is the man who brings him honor. Let us
speak positively–we can do so. Let us speak out in the face of all
mankind and not be ashamed. Let us say, "As surely as we were diseased,
so surely are we healed through the stripes of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Let us give Jesus all glory! Let us magnify Him to the utmost.

I see now in vision a company of men gathering herbs along the slopes
of the Seven Hills of Rome. With mystic rites they cull those ancient
plants whose noxious influence once drugged our fathers into deadly
slumbers. They are compounding again the cup of Rome's ancient sorcery
and saying–"Here is the universal medicine! The great Catholic
remedy." I see them pouring their Belladonna, Monkshood and deadly
Henbane into the great pot forever simmering on the Papal hearth. Do
you think the nations are to be healed by this accursed amalgam? Will
not the end be as in the days of the Prophets, when one gathered wild
gourds and they cried out, "there is death in the pot"?

Yes, indeed, so it will be, even though Oxford and Canterbury set their
seal upon the patent medicine! Come, you brave sons of protesting
fathers! Come and overturn this witches' caldron and spill it back into
the Hell for which alone it is fit! Pity that even old Tiber's tawny
flood should be poisoned with it, or bear its deadly mixture to that
sea across which once sailed the Apostolic boat. The wine of Rome's
abominations is now imported into this island and distributed in a
thousand towns and villages by your own national clergy! And all
classes and conditions of men are being made drunk with its filth! You
lovers of your race and of your God, stop the traffic and proclaim
around the Popish caldron, "There is no healing here."

No healing plants ever grew upon the Seven Hills of Rome, nor are the
roots improved in virtue if transplanted to Canterbury, or the city on
the Isis. There is one Divine remedy and only one. It is no mixture.
Receive it and live–"With His stripes we are healed." No sprinkling
can wash out sin! No confirmation can confer Divine Grace! No masses
can propitiate God! Your hope must be in Jesus! Jesus smitten! Jesus
bruised! Jesus slain! Jesus the Substitute for sinners!

Whoever believes in Him is healed, but all other hopes are a lie from
top to bottom. Of Sacramentarianism I will say that its Alpha is a lie
and its Omega is a lie! It is as false as the devil who devised it! But
Christ and only Christ is the true Physician of souls, and His stripes
the only remedy.

Oh, for a trumpet to sound this through every town of England! Through
every city of Europe! Oh, to preach this in the Coliseum! Or better,
still, from the pulpit of St. Peter's!–"With His stripes we are
healed." Away, away you deceivers with your mixtures and compounds!
Away you proud sons of men with your boasts of what you feel and think
and do and what you intend and vow! "With HIS stripes we are healed." A
crucified Savior is the sole and only hope of a sinful world.

III. Now, I said this is a VERY SUGGESTIVE text, but I shall not give
you the suggestions for time has failed me, except to say that whenever
a man is healed through the stripes of Jesus, the instincts of his
nature should make him say, "I will spend the strength I have, as a
healed man, for Him who healed me." Every stripe on the back of Christ
cries to me, "You are not your own! You are bought with a price." What
do you say to this–you who profess to be healed? Will you live to Him?
Will you not say, "For me to live is Christ. I desire now, having been
healed through His precious blood, to spend and be spent in His
service"?

Oh, if you all were brought to this it would be a grand day for
London–if we had a thousand men who would preach nothing but Christ
and live nothing but Christ, what would the world see? A thousand? No,
give us but a dozen men on fire with the love of Jesus and if they
would preach Christ out and out, and through and through and nothing
else, the world would know a change before long! We should hear again
the cry, "The men that turn the world upside down have come here,
also." Nothing beneath the sun is so mighty as the Gospel! Believe me,
there is nothing so wise as Christ and nothing so potent over human
hearts as the Cross! Vain are the dreams of intellect and the boasts of
culture! Give me the Cross and keep your fineries!

You will know this when you come to die, Beloved. You will find nothing
able to cheer your departing moments but the Savior on the bloody tree.
When the man is panting for existence and the breath is hard to fetch,
and the spirit faces eternity, you need no priest–no dead creed, no
gaudy oratory, no sacraments, no dreams–you will demand certainties,
verities, Divine realities! And where will you find them but in the
Divine Substitute? Here is a rock to put your foot on! Here are the rod
and the staff of God Himself to comfort you! Then nothing will seem
more admirable than the simple Truth of God that God became Man and
suffered in man's place and that God has promised that whoever believes
in His Son shall not perish but have everlasting life!

Beloved, if you know that Jesus has healed you, serve Him by telling
others about the healing medicine. Whisper it in the ear of one. Tell
it in your houses to the twos. Preach it, if you can, to the hundreds
of thousands. Print it in the papers. Write it with your pen. Spread it
through every nook and corner of the land. Tell it to your children.
Tell it to your servants. Leave none around you ignorant of it. Hang it
up everywhere in letters of boldest type. "WITH HIS

STRIPES WE ARE HEALED!"

Oh, sound it! Sound it! Sound it loud as the trumpet of doom! And make
men's ears to hear it, whether they will or not! The Lord bless you
with this healing. Amen.
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Laboring And Not Fainting