A Weighty Charge

A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MARCH 26 1876,

BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"Keep yourselves in the love of God." Jude 1:21.

JUDE gives a very terrible picture of what will happen in the last
days. He describes apostates and paints them in the blackest colors.
And he then informs us that there will come, in the last time, mockers
and with them separatists and sensualists, all of whom will assail the
Church of the living God. It feels very natural, that after foretelling
our adversaries and describing them, and so bidding us view the hosts
assembled for the war, he should next instruct us how to prepare our
defenses and set our forces in battle array. In the 20th and 21st
verses of his epistle, Jude mentions the great Christian Quadrilateral,
the four forts which must be well manned and carefully maintained if we
would battle the advancing foe.

I shall call your attention to the four important points, though I must
do so with the utmost brevity. The Apostle says, "You beloved, building
up yourselves on your most holy faith." Edification is a grand defense
against the assaults of skeptics and heretics. These prey upon the
ignorant and unestablished, but fail to overthrow those who are rooted
and grounded in the Truth of God. We need to be continually built
up–learning more, loving more–and living more the grand Truths of the
Gospel. We must see to it that the foundation is right, for it will be
useless, or worse than useless, to be built up upon false
principles–it is "on our most holy faith" that the building must be
based.

We should be so established in the Doctrines of Grace as to recognize
their holiness and to imitate them in our own lives. Only a "most holy"
faith is safe for the soul and woe unto the man who rests content with
any other. See, then, Brothers and Sisters, that to ward off the ills
of these last times we must labor to know the Truth ourselves, and must
endeavor to instruct our Brethren in them. Personal and mutual
edification in the Church should be zealously maintained as one of the
most valuable defenses against the invasion of error.

The second most necessary defensive principle in the Church is
devotion. "Praying in the Holy Spirit" is the weapon with which the
hosts of the Lord will put to rout the armies of the alien. The prayers
of saints are the mighty artillery with which the walls of our
Jerusalem are protected. Supplication is a cannon which throws
tremendous bolts against the advancing foe, as Sennacherib knew when
Hezekiah pleaded with God. The prayers, however, must be deeply
spiritual, written on the heart by the Holy Spirit and presented with
energy of His creating. Formal, lifeless petitions are but a Chinese
painted fortress–while praying in the Holy Spirit is an impregnable
castle!

Those "groans which cannot be uttered" are pieces of ordinance which
make the gates of Hell tremble. But we must put our hearts under the
influence of the blessed Spirit of God, to have this, and then lift
them up in continued intercession before God. Then there can be no fear
about the preservation of our minds from the error of the wicked. A
praying Church soon tries the spirits of false Prophets and casts them
forth as evil. I have far more faith in prayer than in controversy.
Keep the Prayer Meetings going! Maintain private prayer with
earnestness and we may laugh to scorn all the sophisms of unbelievers
and deceivers!

Jude next mentions as a third important matter the affections of the
Church. If the hearts of the members of the Church are right, mockers
and scoffers can do very little against them. "Keep yourselves in the
love of God," for a warmhearted company of Christians who love the Lord
with all their hearts and with all their souls, are not likely to be
overcome by mockers and sensualists. Love to God will be as a wall of
fire round about them. In dull, decaying Churches, errors spread like
ivy on the crumbling walls of an old abbey. But life, zeal,
earnestness, warm-heartedness throw off these evils even as a red-hot
iron plate evaporates the drops which fall upon it. Love God and you
will not love false doctrine. Keep the heart of the Church right and
her head will not go far wrong. Let her abide in the love of Jesus and
she will abide in the Truth.

The fourth point to which he calls attention is the brightness of our
expectancy. "Looking," says he, "for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ
unto eternal life." Expect that Christ will come and come with
blessings undeserved, which shall display the mercy of God to us!
Expect that when He comes it will be to end our conflicts, to tread
Satan under our feet and to reveal and perfect that eternal life which
He has already implanted in us! Looking forward to the sure coming of
Christ, the Church will not be afraid of the great swelling words of
men, nor dread their murmurings. She will have an answer to the
tyrant's question, "Where is the promise of His coming?" She will
reply, "Behold the Lord comes with 10,000 of His saints to execute
judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of
all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all
their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against

Him."

First, "building," and then, "looking" from her watchtower, the Church
will defy the powers of evil, confident of victory at the appearing of
her Lord. Brethren, if the darkest times should come, if these four
points are diligently maintained we shall be perfectly safe against the
cunning assaults of the arch enemy! O servants of the living God, seek
with all your hearts the edification of the saints! Keep your devotions
warm, keep your affections pure and keep bright your expectancy, for so
shall you stand fast in the tempest! In prospect thereof we may sing
with Jude, "Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to
present you faultless before the Presence of His Glory with exceeding
joy, to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion
and power, both now and ever. Amen."

At this time we take the third of the four exhortations as our
text–"keep yourselves in the love of God." This may refer, and I have
no doubt it does, to mutual oversight. Christians are to labor to keep
each other in communion with God. If they see a Brother grow cold in
his attachment to the Lord, it is their duty to endeavor, by gentle
rebukes, consolations and admonitions, to restore the heart of the
backsliding one to a proper warmth. "Keep yourselves in the love of
God," that is to say–exercise a mutual oversight and practice
watchfulness over each other, lest any of you should, by little and
little, lose your sense of the love of God. Let not the wolf steal here
a lamb and there a sheep, and so diminish your numbers as a Church, but
ask for the Spirit's aid that you may keep yourselves and your Brethren
near to the great Shepherd, for so shall you be safe.

Mutual oversight will not, however, be the theme of this morning's
discourse. I must narrow the text down to a personal duty–let each man
keep himself in the love of God. To many minds, this exhortation will
appear to be somewhat unguarded. I am quite certain that if I were the
author of the sentence, my very sound Brothers and Sisters would
seriously object to it and would say, "We are kept by the power of God
through faith unto salvation–to exhort us to keep ourselves is
useless, carnal, and legal." To whom I reply–dear Brethren, I am not
the author of the phrase and, therefore, if you have any quarrel with
it, will you be so kind as to remember that your dispute is with the
Holy Spirit and not with me? I find it in the Inspired Volume and I
have no power or wish to blot it out!

Moreover, I find in the Word of God many other exhortations against
which the same objection may be brought and I do not intend, either to
twist them to mean something else, or to avoid expounding them from
fear of being thought unsound. With half an eye, one can see that while
in Holy Scripture we are taught that we can do nothing without Christ,
we are, at the same time, exhorted to do all sorts of things and are
even bid to be perfect, even as our Father in Heaven is perfect! If
this is inconsistent it is the inconsistency of Scripture and I bow
before it and leave others to quibble if they choose. All power to do
good comes from the Holy Spirit and all will towards good is from the
same source, yet are we bid to perform right things as freely as if we
could and would do them of ourselves.

Nor are the exhortations of the Word of God couched in guarded language
and hedged round with limiting phrases. Holy Scripture seldom guards
its own utterances, but speaks freely, and whereas men are so fearful
lest they should be mistaken that they frequently interject parentheses
and explanations and so spoil the effect of what they are saying, we
find the Holy Spirit speaking out what He has to say and leaving it to
the instructed minds of Believers, themselves, to remember those other
Truths of God which balance the doctrine in hand. We are too fearful
about Truth–she needs no armor–her naked beauty is better protection
than a coat of mail.

As no one thinks of wrapping the sun in a blanket on a winter's day, so
we need not anxiously guard and protect the Truth of God–let it shine
forth and it will be its own interpreter! Yet look at the connection
and you will see that it lends no sanction to the proud idea that a man
can keep himself apart from the Grace of God, for the sentence which
precedes the text is, "praying in the Holy Spirit." Remember to keep
yourselves, but do so by praying in the Holy Spirit,

and so confessing that you are dependent upon His Divine power. The
following sentence also lifts my text out of a legal atmosphere by
saying, "Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal
life"–showing that your eyes are to be on Jesus and to the mercy of
God and not to yourself–and by no means to any merit or power of your
own.

My Brothers, we must never be afraid to exhort one another because of
the Scriptural doctrine of the work of the Holy Spirit! This should
urge us forward and by no means hold us back. We are not to feel
ourselves muzzled and gagged when we preach practical precepts because
we believe comforting doctrines. Let us speak the whole Truth with a
gracious liberty, resting quite assured that the Lord can reconcile His
own Truth in the hearts and experiences of His people and does not need
us to be perpetually agitated with the fear of damaging His Truth, as
if it were some delicate eggshell china which we might break with a
touch, or a cobweb which would be swept away by the movement of our
hand. Let us speak the Truth with all boldness as we ought to speak and
say as the text does, "keep yourselves in the love of God."

This implies, however, beloved Friends, that you are in the love of
God. It is not an exhortation directed to every man, for some men are
not in the love of God. It is directed to those of you who are in that
love to keep yourselves in it. Let me, then, begin by enquiring, are
you in the love of God? Not, are you an object of Divine benevolence,
for that He exercises towards all His creatures–but do you know His
love in Christ Jesus? Have you believed in Jesus Christ unto eternal
life and seen the Father's love beaming in the face of Jesus? If you
have believed it, you have also enjoyed it, for the love of God has
been shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Spirit which is given unto
you–and you have been conscious of a joy superior to anything which
this world can create.

Well, then, continue to believe in that love so deep, so strong, so
true! Abide, also, in the enjoyment of that love and pray for more. Do
not lose the sense of it by careless living. If you have ever known
that love, it is quite certain that you love God in return. Therefore
continue to love the Lord. This is, probably, the particular meaning of
the exhortation before us. The love of God in you is made manifest by
the love which you have towards God–and the consequent affection which
you feel to all His people. Endeavor, then, to always love God and to
love Him more and more. Feed the sacred flame of Divine affection till
it becomes an all-consuming fire. "Oh, love the Lord all you His
saints." With all your heart, with all your soul and all your strength,
love the Lord and love your neighbor as yourselves!

Especially cultivate love unto all the saints, for this, also, is the
love of God. "Let brotherly love continue." "Walk in love as Christ,
also, has loved you." Keep yourselves in the love of God. You are in
that love–you believe it, you enjoy it, you reflect it, you manifest
it to others–then continue, both to believe and enjoy it and persevere
in displaying and manifesting it in your love to God and your love to
men. Two things this morning, and only two. The first will be motives
for keeping ourselves in the love of God. And the second will be means
to assist us in so doing.

I. First, MOTIVES for "keeping yourselves in the love of God." It is as
though a courtier, having gained the favor of his sovereign, should
receive, upon his entrance into court, this good advice from a
friend–"You are now, yourself, in your sovereign's favor, so act as to
retain your position, that you may never be sent away from his presence
and made to occupy a lower place. He is not capricious, but he is
jealous, therefore be careful, so you may dwell in the light of his
countenance."

Believers are always God's servants, but they are not always smiled
upon. Let them so live as never to lose that smile. When we go to the
sunny south in the winter for our health, we are advised by the
physician to keep ourselves as much as possible in the sun. We are told
to let our rooms look towards the rising sun and to keep clear of
sunless streets and courts. This is the advice of wisdom, for if you
lodge in rooms upon which the sun never shines, you might as well be at
home in our own chilly land. The sun is the great physician and, by
basking in his beams, we find healing beneath his wings.

It is even thus with the love of God, "Keep yourselves in it," sun
yourselves in it all day long. The flowers teach us this, for when the
sun shines upon them, they open themselves and turn their faces towards
its light. They love him and they delight to be kissed by his beams
and, therefore, they keep themselves as much as they can in his
brightness. When trees are planted in a spot where the sun only reaches
them in one direction, they put forth their boughs towards the sun's
quarter and seek his beams. Do you the same! You are in God's love,
continue in it, grow towards it, keep yourselves in it! Your Father
loves you. Do not, like the Prodigal, go away from that love, or forget
it, or slight it, or grieve it. Enjoy it, be warmed by it and be
sanctified by it evermore.

What is to be the motive for this? It is clear that all the motives
which led you to desire God's love at first should lead you to keep in
it. If it is to me–a poor broken-hearted sinner–of the utmost
importance to find the love which heals my wounds, then, being healed,
it is equally important that I should keep in that love lest I should
be wounded again. If being my father's prodigal child, it was a great
thing to get back and once more receive the kiss of love, and hear him
acknowledge me as his son, it must be equally good for me to stay at
home and never play the prodigal again. The true son abides in the
house forever and dreads the very idea of going forth from it. You
know, Beloved, with what earnestness you were formerly pleaded with
that you should not rest without the love of God in Christ.

Now, I have but a few minutes, this morning, to spend on any one
argument and, therefore, I shall leave it to you to remember what those
arguments were and to enforce them upon yourselves. That which is worth
getting is worth keeping. If Divine love was worth seeking, even if you
had been called to lay down your lives in the search, it must be
equally worth retaining, cost what it may. I have heard that many who
have been shrewd at making money, have not been able to keep a fortune
after they have gained it. And I fear there are many Christians who,
with much zeal, obtain a high degree of enjoyment of the love of
God–and become very warm and earnest in the ways of God–but they
cannot retain their fervor and, after a while, relapse into
lukewarmness.

Many get into the sunlight of full assurance, but they soon leave it
and are darkened with doubts and fears. They are chilled with
insensibility and indifference and so they do not keep themselves in
the love of God as they should do. Let it not be so with you, but hear
your Master's words, wherein He says, "Abide in Me." If love within the
soul is worth the getting, it is worth the keeping–continue in it.

Next, we should continue in God's love because it is His due. Brethren,
that I should know that God loves me and should rejoice in it–and then
should love Him in return–is His due under the Law. This is the
substance of His Law to Israel, "You shall love the Lord your God with
all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength." And
that because He had revealed His love to Israel–for the preamble of
the Commandments runs thus–"I am the Lord your God that brought you
out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of bondage." He claims
their love because of His love to them.

Much more is it so under the Gospel. That matchless display of Divine
mercy should exercise upon us a Divine influence. It should be
permitted to melt, renew, restrain, constrain and govern us. Receiving
its blessings and meditating upon its glories, we ought to be as much
affected by it as wax by the flame. Touched with its flames of love,
our hearts ought to burn with loving gratitude, as with coals of
juniper. See God in the Gospel and not love Him? It is monstrous!

Brothers and Sisters, if you have a part and lot in the Covenant of
Grace, the love of God with all subduing power must and will hold you
beneath its sway. That God's love should be felt and returned is a
duty, but at the same time a privilege unbounded. Remember that God's
Nature makes love to be His due. Such a Character as His engrosses the
love of every intelligent and right-minded creature. Not to love such
an one as God is, would be impossible to renewed hearts! He reveals
himself as Father, Son and Spirit, and in each Divine Person displays a
sacred form of matchless goodness, so that not to love Him is baseness
and profanity.

God's Nature claims it and our nature, also, cannot rest without it–I
mean, of course, our regenerate nature. Grace has made us the children
of God and true children must love their Father. It cannot be that the
life of God is in your soul if there is no sense of the Divine love and
no return of that love to Him from where it came. As the sparks seek
the sun, who is the father of flame, so in warm affections and
communing, the love of God in the soul seeks the God who gave it. You
cannot be God's children and yet not love Him! Well, then, since Law
and Gospel, since His Nature and your renewed nature, since Father, Son
and Spirit all have claims upon your hearts, oh, if you love the Lord
Jesus, "keep yourselves in the love of God."

Remember, too, dear Brethren (and this is a strong argument) that love
is the evidence of faith and the Grace by which faith operates. The
faith which saves the soul is always attended by love. It is written,
"Faith works by love." "Faith without works is dead," but faith without
love is faith without works, therefore faith without love is a dead
thing and cannot possibly save a soul. If you say, "I believe in Jesus
Christ," my dear Brother, if that is true, you have proved it already
by loving God. Therefore prove it, still, by loving on, even to the
end! May the ever blessed Spirit help you to do so.

Another argument lies here–the love of God is the spring of all our
Graces. I include in the term, "the love of God," both God's love to us
and our love to Him, for they are very much the same. Let me use one
illustration–You have a burning-glass and hold it up before the sun
till you focus the rays upon a piece of dry wood and set it on fire.
Now, while you see the wood burning to ashes, will you tell me what it
is that burns? Does the heat of the sun burn the wood or does the wood
burn? The heat which you feel while the wood is burning, is it due to
the sun or to the wood? Of course, at first, the fire is purely and
simply the flame of the sun. But afterwards the wood, itself, begins to
burn. The sun burns the wood and then the wood, itself, burns. Even so,
the love of God comes into our heart and then our heart loves, too, and
in both cases, "love is of God."

No man is a Christian unless he, himself, loves God with his own heart,
but yet our love to God is nothing more nor less than the refection of
God's love to us–so that it comes to the same thing. The love of God,
whether from Him to us or from us to Him, is, practically, one and the
same thing. This, I say, we must retain in our souls, because it is the
source of every virtue. No man can do anything aright if he does not
love God. Without love to God, where is zeal for His Glory? Where is
patient endurance for His sake? Where is cheerful obedience to His
will? Without love to God where is true knowledge of God? Can any man
know a God whom he does not love? Without love to God can any action be
acceptable in His sight?

Brothers and Sisters, if you have more love you will have more of every
Grace–your love will be the test of the healthiness of your condition.
When love burns, the whole of our nature blazes with holy fire, but
when love smolders, every Grace is like a smoking flax. Love must be
maintained as a primary necessity of the Divine life if we are, indeed,
to glorify God. Keep yourself in the love of God, because though your
love is all you can give, it is very little. Suppose you loved Christ
more than any saint that ever lived, more than any Apostle or martyr?
Yet I put it to you–What is the highest supposable love compared with
the love of Christ to you?

If you regard the excellency of the Character of God, does He not
deserve a vastly more intense admiration and affection than we have, as
yet, been capable of? Our whole heart is all too little, let it not be
divided! Daily increasing in love, give Him all your affections.
Consider that if you do not give Him all your love, you have given Him
nothing. If you give your body to be burned and have not love to God,
it profits you nothing. Though I should speak with the tongues of men
and of angels, though I should traverse the whole world to preach the
Gospel of Christ, though with dauntless courage I should brave the
gates of Hell, yet if I loved not God what would it all be but a dead
sacrifice which could not be accepted upon His altar? Keep yourselves,
then, dear Friends, in the love of God, for it is the least you can do.

Remember, too, that we must give the Lord our love, or else that love
will go somewhere else. We are so created that we must love something
or other. If the Ever-Blessed One does not win our love, the world, the
flesh, or the devil will gain it. The worst witch in all the world is
the world herself–and she soon casts her spell over the man who grows
chill in his love to Jesus. You are hankering after some idol or other,
my Brethren, if God is not all in all to you! If His love is not very
sweet within you and if it does not cause you to love Him intensely,
you will fall under the dominion, either of some lust or passion or
corruption, or else your heart will be cankered and consumed with the
rust of care, covetousness and worldliness. Your heart cannot be kept
from loving–its only safety lies in keeping it in the love of God.

As a motive for loving God, I should remind you that here lies
happiness. Without an exception, this is the rule, that he who loves
God most, is happiest. "But there must be exceptions," says one. "If a
man is in prison, if he is on the eve of a cruel death, will love to
God fill him with delight?" It has done so many a time! "But if a man
rolls in riches, if he is blessed with good health and every comfort of
life, surely he can be happy without the love of God in his soul."
There is abundant evidence to show that it is not so, for the most
favored children of this world become, before long, heart-sick of its
joys. And the more honest among them have declared that they could find
no satisfaction in all their possessions.

It scarcely needs a Solomon to tell us that all the world, apart from
the love of God, is "vanity of vanities." A Christian at his worst is
really more to be envied than a worldling at his best! I would sooner
have a dram of the love of God than be loaded down with the wealth of
nations. When the soul is filled with the love of Christ, it seems
lifted beyond ordinary manhood. It burns with holy fire and, as it
glows, it mounts on wings of flames and soars towards Heaven! Love's
feet are like hinds' feet, so that it treads upon the high places of
the earth and leaves care and doubt below it, even as the hinds of the
mountains leaves the marshes of the plains for those who cannot climb.

The love of God breeds an enthusiasm and a sacred fervor within the
soul which lifts men out of themselves and bestows on them a sort of
celestial other-life, a Divine furore, by which the soul is borne up as
on eagle's wings and triumphs in unspeakable joy! This makes them 10
times stronger, braver, grander, happier than they were before. I
suppose to make us equal to the angels, we have but to love God more.
And to make us superior to the angels, as we shall be in Heaven, there
will be nothing more needed than to fill us with a superior love to
that which angels feel.

Brothers and Sisters, this shall be my last argument. Get love to God
and keep it, because it will make you like Jesus. Jesus Christ, your
Lord and Master, dwelt in the love of God and was full of love to God.
And, consequently, of love to men. This made it His meat and His drink
to do His Father's will. The secret of the life of Christ lies in the
supremacy of love within Him. He was, indeed, embodied Love–into His
heart no selfishness, ambition, anger, wrath, or any gross or sinister
motive had ever entered. The Prince of this world found nothing in Him,
because God had everything in Him. Love shone in His eyes and spoke
from His mouth.

The Father's love upheld Him and His own love to the Father covered Him
with zeal as with a cloak. Get love, much love, healthy love,
sacrificing love and you will be like Jesus–and so you will be fit to
dwell with Him in Heaven. Love is the very atmosphere of Paradise, it
is the odor of the flowers of the new Eden. Put on your beautiful
garments, O bride of Jesus, the garments of glory and beauty which
become your rank–the garments which the Bridegroom's love has worked
out for you! Gird on the sandals of love, which are fairer than the
lily and more precious than the gold of Ophir. Robed in the love of
Jesus, you shall shine as if you were clothed with the sun, while your
love to Him shall make you fair as the moon in His sight!

Wear love to Jesus as your jewels and your adornments and, when you put
them on, take care you never lay them aside, but wear them evermore,
for so shall the King greatly desire your beauty. These are some of the
motives out of a mass, but having no time to mention them all, we must
leave to your own instructed minds the easy task of arguing for love.

II. Secondly, THE MEANS for calming out the exhortation of the text
shall now be considered. "Keep yourselves in the love of God." I am not
going to dwell upon prayer because that is in the sentence before my
text. Nor will I, at this moment, insist upon the necessity for the
Holy Spirit's aid in this work, for that Truth you all know and
believe, and we have frequently dwelt upon it of late. The text does
not make that doctrine prominent and, therefore, I forbear to enlarge
upon it. Not because I undervalue it, but because, just now, it is not
our theme.

"Keep yourselves in the love of God"–how are you to do that? Well,
first I should say, Brethren, endeavor to be full of that love at this
present moment. If I were told that a city was about to be besieged and
if I were commanded to keep the people supplied with provisions during
the siege, I should lay in a plentiful store, at once, to provide for
the famine. So, if you desire to continue in the love of God, have much
of the love of God, now, and pray for more of it. Oh, to know the love
of God as much as ever it can be known! Be greedy, be hungry, be
covetous after it! Store it up, fill your soul full of it as a man
would fill his storehouses and granary if he knew that a dearth would
be in the land.

Notice that just before my text these words occur–"You, Beloved,
building," which means increasing and growing up. The way to keep
yourselves in the love of God is to obtain more and more of it. Love is
like a fire which, if it does not consume more fuel, burns low. You
cannot stop where you are–to retain you must annex. Napoleon used to
say, "Conquest has made me what I am and conquest must maintain me." O
Christians, remember that you must advance or backslide! You must build
higher and higher! Love must become more and more supreme in your
souls, or you will decline. If you would remain warm, be warm now!

Alas, what a little stock of love some Christians have! You may look
into their hearts long before you can spy it out. They are true
Believers and, therefore, there must be some love in their bosoms, but
their cruse of oil is almost run out. There is just a little at the
bottom, hardly enough to cover the wood of the barrel. We ought not to
be in so evil a case, for if we have so little Grace in prosperous
seasons, what shall we do in times of temptation and trial? If the
heart is full to overflowing, there is a likelihood that its stores
will hold out. But scant affection makes us fear that it is a transient
emotion and not the love which is born from above.

If you desire to keep yourself in the love of God, avoid everything
that would dampen your love. Avoid sin, especially, for sin is the
poison of love to God. Love of sin is the death of love to God! I mean
by sin, not merely the grosser forms of vice, but everything which has
a tendency to tarnish the virgin purity of your soul. I know some
Christians who complain

a good deal about their need of love to Jesus and the smallness of
their faith, and so on. When I track them to their haunts, I find that
they keep ill company and frequent amusements and assemblies where love
to Christ is sorely wounded and almost slain. I put it to their own
consciences whether they are ever likely to increase their love to
Christ by going where His name is not adored and His cause is not
befriended.

I heard of one who professed to be a Christian, that he claimed to be
able to attend the theater and yet to live very near to God. And I
remembered the remark of a minister who said, "When I see great Grace
in those who frequent the theater, I shall at once grow prize roses in
my coal cellar." Just so! I shall cultivate not only roses, but palms
and oranges in the vault under my house when that is the case! He who
says that gay amusements help him to grow in the love of God utters a
lie! Conscience condemns the worldly professor–he cannot come home
from a place of amusement, where the ungodly congregate, without
feeling, "I have been where I had no right to be."

I am not now judging the outside world, but I am dealing with the
members of our Churches who profess to be separated from the world. If
a worldling loves worldly amusement, I do not wonder at it, nor wish to
deny him his enjoyments. Just as one feels about the swine, that they
ought to have their pig wash, for it suits them, but none of us want to
share it, so say we of the unconverted and their frivolities! But the
case is otherwise with the children of God! O man of God, run not with
the multitude! Wantonness, chambering, lewdness and unclean mirth are
not for you. No, "let them not be mentioned among you as becomes
saints."

I would also have you avoid, as much as possible, the company of those
who deaden your spirituality. I like to drop into the house of the
poorest Christian man whose conversation will edify me. But though a
man may be richer than I am, and his company may be desirable to me in
many ways, if I find, on coming out of his house, that he has
insinuated doubts into my mind, or that his language has tainted the
purity of my conscience, I am bound to avoid him. If business calls me
into connection with him, I must go, or else I must go out of the
world, but I will not seek, as my companion, any man who in any measure
takes me off from keeping myself in the love of God.

Neither should we read books which have an injurious effect upon the
mind. I wish some of our younger friends would take good heed to this
remark. You have little enough of the love of God in your souls–you do
not need to pour cold water on it by emptying trashy novels upon it. Go
not into the chill, cold air of irreligion and vanity! Brothers and
Sisters, put everything aside that would hinder your loving God and
knowing that He loves you. And if you have erred and you find out, this
morning, that you have done so, do not be angry at my rebuke, nor yet
be led to despair of your-self–for the times of your ignorance God
winks at and forgives!

Go to your heavenly Father and say, "O Lord, help me to make this the
rule of my conduct–that whatever prevents my feeling that You love me,
and prevents my loving You, I may withdraw from at once and have
nothing more to do with it, for You have bid me keep myself in Your
love." If you would love the Lord, meditate much upon what He is and
what He has done for you. Your debts to Him are overwhelming–try to
feel them and you will love Him because He first loved you. See your
daily dependence, your hourly indebtedness and the patience, constancy,
faithfulness and tenderness with which He cares for you! Here I need
not enlarge, for you will not fail to do this if you are, indeed, the
subjects of Divine Grace.

Next, dear Friends, if you want to be kept in the love of God, follow
earnestly the means of Grace. Do not neglect the hearing of the Word,
nor the reading of it in private, nor secret prayer, nor the assembling
of yourselves together. Come often to the Lord's Table–you will find
it a very blessed means of quickening the pulse of your soul. There are
God's appointed ordinances for stirring up your love–do not be so
proud as to think you can do without them. I fear there are some
Christians who are so busy in doing good that they do not allow
themselves opportunities of getting good. Incessantly do I urge
Christian people here to be engaged in some work for Christ and I would
urge it again and again. But some of you young people ought not to
absent yourselves from public worship in order to go and teach in
ragged schools or elsewhere–you have not yet enough knowledge, nor
enough strength to be able to bear the frequent loss of the instructive
ordinances.

And even those of you who can bear to go upon half rations will be wise
not to do so, for a man who works so long every day that he does not
sleep enough, or eat enough, will, in the long run, be less capable of
labor than if he had attempted less and had taken more time for the
feeding and resting of his body. Do remember that Martha, though she
was very busy, was not so much commended as Mary, who sat at Jesus'
feet. Be busy as Martha, but be devout as Mary and so

will you keep your heart in the love of God! You will do this very
much, too, by communing with the Lord. Never spend a day without
hearing your Master's voice! Do not come down from your chamber to see
the face of man till you have seen the face of God. Do not let week
after week roll by without communion with Heaven.

There is no trading like it–send the ships of prayer to the gold coast
of communion with the Lord and they will come back to you with
priceless treasures! Hold high communion with the supreme Invisible and
your soul will be sure to love Him, for never man drew near to God
without the love of God flowing into his soul. Then I would say next,
if you would love God, be sure to work for Him. If I wanted a man to
love me and I had my choice of two things, either to do something for
the man or to let that man do something for me–if my sole object were
to secure his love, I know which I would do–I would let him serve me.

If you do a kindness for a man, he may be ungrateful and forget you,
but if you let him do something for you, the more he does for you the
more he will stick to you through life. For this reason, therefore, you
will not only love God because of what He has done for you, but you
will love Him because you have been allowed to do something for Him.
Read the song of Deborah when she and Barak had chased away the
adversaries. You do not read much in Judges about love to God, but at
the end of her song you find it appearing–"So let all Your enemies
perish, O Lord: but let them that love You be as the sun when he goes
forth in his might."

She felt that she loved God because she had bravely led, with Barak,
the host of God, and love to God had been kindled while she was
battling for Him. Go and teach the ignorant, visit the sick, help the
poor and guide those that are out of the way–and though you thought
you did not love Christ, you will soon discover that you do. Laziness
is a bolster with which to suffocate love, but honest service of Jesus
Christ is a platform upon which love shows herself in all her beauty
and there, also, she gathers her strength. O love the Lord, all you His
saints!

And if you need yet another means of keeping in His love, then live in
expectation of seeing Him. Nothing inflames a Christian's love more
than feeling how much he owes in the past and how much he expects in
the future. Jesus is coming! You are soon to be with Him! Perhaps
before another week is over you will behold His face! Surely you feel,
even now, the kindling of warm desire–a passion for Him springs up
within your spirit and you long for the lagging days to fly– that you
may be in His arms! Keep yourselves thus in His love. May God help you
so to do, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON–John 15. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
HYMN BOOK"–766, 804, 811.
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Strengthening Words from the Savior's Lips