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REVIVAL
ADDRESSES
BY
R. A. TORREY
AUTHOR OF
"What the Bible Teaches," "How to Work for Christ,"
"How to Pray," etc. etc.
CHICAGO NEW YORK TORONTO
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
LONDON AND EDINBURGH
CONTENT PAGE
INTRODUCTION. .. i
1. GOD............ 5
II. "GOD IS LOVE"......................... ......... 17
III. "FOUND WANTING"............................... 30
IV. THE JUDGMENT DAY......................... 49
V. EVERY MAN'S NEED OF A REFUGE.............. 62
VI. THE DRAMA OF LIFE IN THREE ACTS........... 76
VII. A QUESTION THAT SHOULD STARTLE EVERY MAN
WHO IS NOT A CHRISTIAN................... 89
VIII. A SOLEMN QUESTION FOR THOSE WHO ARE REJECTING CHRIST
THAT THEY MAY OBTAIN THE WORLD..................... 102
IX. REFUGES OF LIES............................ 112
X. THE WAY OF SALVATION MADE AS PLAIN AS
DAY....................................... 130
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XI. WHAT IT COSTS NOT TO BE A CHRISTIAN....... 145
XII. THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION THAT ANY
MAN EVER ASKED OR ANSWERED............ 161
XIII. ONE OF THE SADDEST UTTERANCES THAT EVER
FELL FROM THE LIPS OF THE SON OF GOD.... 183
XIV. "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING?" 196
XV. EXCUSES..................................... 218
XVI. HEROES AND COWARDS......................... 236
XVII. THREE FIRES.............................. 253
***************************************************************
INTRODUCTION
REQUESTS have come from many quarters for the publication of some of the sermons
which God has been pleased to so greatly use in Japan, China, Australia, Tasmania, New
Zealand, India, England, and Scotland. This volume is published in response to this
request. The author hopes that the sermons may be used as greatly in their printed form
as they have been when spoken. The sermons when delivered, as here published, were
taken down in shorthand, but have been carefully revised by the author. Each one of
them has many sacred memories connected with it. When one of these sermons was
delivered through an interpreter in a Japanese city, eighty-seven Japanese came forward
and declared publicly their acceptance of Christ. After the delivery of another in Shanghai,
a large number of Chinese men and women walked out from their places among their
heathen companions and publicly professed their acceptance of Christ. On some
occasions in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, hundreds of men and women came
forward and with their own lips publicly confessed their acceptance of Christ as their
Saviour and their Lord. Reports of some of these sermons have been given in religious
and secular papers, but these reports have been necessarily fragmentary and inaccurate,
as they have never been revised by the author. I have abundant proof that even these
unsatisfactory reports have done good, but it seems d
esirable that a full and accurate report of what I have said be given to the public.
***************************************************************
REVIVAL ADDRESSES
I
GOD
"The fool hath said in his hearts there is no God"-Psalm xiv. 1.
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I have taken, or rather God has given me, for my text tonight a very short one. I do not
think you ever heard a sermon from a shorter text. I will not tell you where to find the text.
It occurs several hundred times in the Bible. Indeed, open your Bible at random almost
anywhere and you will find my text somewhere on the page. It consists of but one word;
but it would take all eternity to exhaust its meaning, and then it will not be exhausted. It is
"God" - a word the height and depth and length and breadth of whose meaning no
philosopher has ever fully apprehended.
I. GOD Is
The first thing the Bible teaches us about God is that God is. "God is"-two short words.
Tremendous significance! "God is." If that simple truth gets hold of your mind and heart it
will move and mold your entire life. It will determine your science, it will determine your
philosophy, it will determine your daily life, it will determine your eternity. "God is." The
psalmist tells us in Psalm xiv.-"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." Please
note where he says it - "in his heart." That is, he says there is no God simply because he
does not wish to believe that there is a God. Now, there is a God, and a man that denies
a fact simply because he does not wish to believe it is a fool.
There is abundant proof of the existence of God, so abundant that no man can sit down
and consider the proof thoroughly and candidly without acknowledging the existence of
God. Nature proves the existence of God. All through Nature there are marks of creative
intelligence. Everywhere in Nature you find order, symmetry, law. You can study Nature
in the minute, or you can study Nature in the vast, it makes no difference; everywhere you
find the marks of intelligence and creative design. You may take your microscope and
turn it down upon the minutest forms of life; everywhere there is adaptation to end, to
purpose, to design. The man of science will tell you that in the minutest structure
discernible by the most powerful microscope he finds perfect beauty, and most perfect
adaptation of means to end. Or take your telescope and turn it towards the vaster Nature.
Everywhere you see order, symmetry, law, intelligence, design, all proving an intelligent
Creator of the material universe in which we live. Suppose I show you my watch, and ask,
"Do you believe it had a maker?" you would say, "Certainly." "But why? Did you see it
made?" "No." "Did you ever
see a watch made?" "No!" "Why, then, do you believe it had a maker?" "Because
everything about it indicates an intelligent maker- hands, figures upon the face, case,
winding apparatus, everything about the watch proclaims that it had an intelligent maker.
Suppose I replied, "You are mistaken; the watch had no intelligent maker; the watch came
to be by accident; by a fortuitous concurrence of atoms dancing around through endless
ages, until at last, in the age in which you find it, they danced into the present form; thus
the watch came to be." Your remark would be, "That man may think he is highly educated,
but he talks like a fool;" and you would be right. Yet there are no such marks of intelligent
design in that watch as in this material universe. One very small part of Nature, your own
eye, is a far more wonderful structure than any watch. But if some man should stand up
and say that this wonderful universe in which we live came into being by a fortuitous
concurrence of atoms which danced around through the endless ages until they danced
into their present form any would call him a philosopher. In the ordinary affairs of life he
would be called a foolosopher.
But, Some one may say, "The doctrine of evolution does away with the whole force of the
argument from design." Not at all. I formerly believed that the doctrine of evolution was
true, but gave up the belief, not from theological but from scientific reasons, because it
was absolutely unproven; there is not a single proof of the hypothesis of evolution. People
talk about the missing link; they are all missing; there is not a single link. There is not a
single place where one species passes over into another species. There is not one single
observed instance of the evolution of a higher species from a lower. Development of
varieties there has been, but of evolution of a higher species from a lower not one single
case. The hypothesis of the evolution of species, and especially of the highest forms of
life from the lowest, is a guess pure and simple, without one scientifically observed fact to
build upon. But suppose the doctrine of evolution were true, it would not for a moment
militate against the argument from design. If there were originally some unorganized
protoplasm that developed into all the forms of life and beauty as we see them today, it
would be a still more remarkable illustration, in one way, of the wisdom and power of the
Creator, for the question would arise, Who put into the primordial protoplasm the power of
developing into the universe as we see it today? It would take a more wonderful man to
make a watch-hand which would develop into a watch than it would to make a watch
outright. And, in one way, it would be a more marvelous illustration of the creative wisdom
and power of God, if God had created some primordial protoplasm that developed into the
world we now see than if God had made the world at once as we now see it. Nature
proves that there is a God.
History proves that there is a God. You take one little patch of history, the history of a
single nation or of a few nations, for a few years, and it sometimes seems like a jangle
without meaning, only portraying the conflicting ambitions and greeds of men. Might, right,
and the weakest going to the wall. But take history in a large way, the history of centuries,
take all history, and you will see that back of the jarring and conflicting passions,
ambitions, combats and struggles of men, there is an all-governing, all-superintending, all-
shaping Providence. You see that throughout all history "one increasing purpose runs," "a
power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness." History proves that there is a God.
But there is one special history that proves that there is a God, that is the history of Jesus
of Nazareth as recorded in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Great efforts
have been put forth to disprove the authenticity of that history; men of the most
remarkable genius, of the profoundest scholarship, of untiring activity, have struggled to
pull to pieces the history of Jesus Christ, as recorded in the four gospels, and every effort
of that kind has met with utter failure. The strongest, the ablest, the most remarkable and
scholarly effort ever made was that of David Strauss, in the Loben Jesu. It seemed to
some for awhile, as if David Strauss had succeeded in taking out of the life of Jesus of
Nazareth many things commonly believed. But when the life of Jesus Christ by the great
German rationalist was itself subjected to criticism, it went to pieces, until there was
nothing left. It was utterly discredited. It would not bear careful and candid examination.
Renan, with rare subtlety and literary deftness, endeavored to succeed where Strauss had
failed. But his own attempt to eliminate the supernatural from the life of Jens was less
able in almost every way than that of his German predecessor and failed completely. And
every other similar effort to pull to pieces and discredit the life of Jesus Christ, as recorded
in the four gospels, has failed absolutely. And today it stands established beyond the
possibility of candid question that Jesus lived and acted, at least substantially -I believe far
more than that- as recorded in the four gospels. It is absolutely impossible for a man to sit
down before the four gospels with an unbrassed and bonest mind, determined to find out
the truth, and come to any other conclusion than that this four gospel record of the life and
words and works of Jesus is substantially accurate history.
If Jesus lived as this Gospel says He did, if He wrought as this Gospel says He wrought,
healed the sick, cleansed the leper, raised the dead, fed the five thousand with five loaves
and two small fishes, and if, above all, having been put to death, He was raised from the
dead, it proves to a demonstration that back of the works He performed, back of the
resurrection of Jesus Christ, is God. There is a God.
The history of the individual Christian proves the existence of God. I do not depend upon
the argument from design or from history- I once did; I do not depend even upon the
argument from the life of Jesus Christ-I once did. I know there is a God because I have
personal dealings with Him every day of my life. Some subtle philosopher might construct
a very specious argument to prove to me that there is no such person as Charles
Alexander; but after all is said I still know that there is, for I have the most intimate
relations with him everyday of my life. But I have had more intimate dealings with God
than with Mr. Charles Alexander. I know that there is a God before I know that there is
such a person as Mr. Charles Alexander. I started out years ago on the hypothesis, that
there was a God, and that God acted as the Bible records that He acts. I determined to
put this hypothesis to the most rigid test to see if it worked. I have put that hypothesis to
the test during a quarter of a century, and it has never failed. If there had not been a God,
or if there had been a God different from the one of whom the Bible tells us, I should have
made shipwreck of everything years ago. But the hypothesis has never failed; I have
risked my life, reputation, work, everything upon the fact that the God of the Bible is. And,
friends, I risked and won. THERE IS A GOD. Therefore the man who says that there is
no God is a fool; for any man who denies a fact is a fool. He who denies the supreme fact
is a supreme fool. Not only is there a God; but He is the supreme fact of nature, of
history, of science, of philosophy, of personal life. Look at the first four words of the Bible,
and you will read the profoundest philosophy. "In the beginning, God." In the beginning of
nature, God; in the beginning of science, God; in the beginning of human history, God; in
the beginning of individual experience, God; in the beginning of everything, God. That is
the supreme fact; and he who denies it merely because he does not want to believe it is
the supreme fool.
***************************************************************
II. GOD IS GREAT
GOD IS GREAT That thought comes out in the Bible, from the first verse to the last. Oh,
the majesty of God, the infinite greatness of God! This whole universe, about which we
are learning such wonderful things every day, is His creative work. The supreme
difference between the teaching of the Bible and the teaching of modern thought is this-
the teaching of the Bible is an infinite God and an infinitesimal man, except as God's
goodness makes him great. The teaching Of modern literature and modern thought is- an
infinite man and an infinitesimal god. We live in a day that bas a very great man and a
very small god. Stop and think. There are one billion four hundred million people like you
on this earth to-day. You are just one out of that vast number. Not very big- are you? But
wait. Take the whole earth on which these one billion four hundred millions live; it is a
very small part of the universe. If the sun were hollow and a hole bored into it, one million
four hundred thousand earths could be poured into the sun, and still leave room for them
to rattle around. But the son is only one sun out of suns. Our whole solar system is but
one out of many. I was reading an article the other day, on my way from India, in which
an eminent man of science said that there are probably at least a million suns as large as
ours. Wait a moment! You are only one out of one thousand four hundred million persons
on this earth. Of earths such as this upon which we live it would take more than one
million four hundred thousand poured into the sun to fill it. Yet the sun is only one out of a
million suns;. And there may be a million universes such as ours. And God made them
all. That God whose name you dared take upon your lips in vain last night; that God
whom you dare philosophies about and say how He ought to act. Take one and divide it
by fourteen hundred million multiplied by one million four hundred thousand multiplied by
one million multiplied by many millions and that is you. Multiply fourteen hundred million by
one million four hundred thousand, and that by one million, and that by many millions, and
that by infinity, and that is God. And yet you venture to say how God ought to act. If ever
a man appears like a consummate idiot, it is when he tries to tell you how God ought to
act. God is infinite, and no number of finites will ever equal the infinite, and the Infinite
God is of immeasurably more importance than the whole race of infinitesimal men who
inhabit this little globe. Yet you venture to say how God ought to act. Thou fool!
III. GOD IS HOLY.
GOD IS HOLY. How the Bible in every page brings that out! How it labors with all its
types, sacrifices, ceremonies, explicit teaching, to impress upon men and women that God
is holy. Take the supreme expression of it in I John i. 5, "God is light and in Him is no
darkness at all." In the Scripture lesson tonight I read a passage from Isaiah in which he
gives us a bit of his own biography. He was, perhaps, the best man of his time, but when
he got one glimpse of God in His holiness, when he saw even the seraphim (the burning
ones, glowing in their own holiness) covering their faces and their feet in the presence of
the infinitely Holy Jehovah, he was overwhelmed, and cried, "Woe is me, for I am undone,
because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips,
for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts." Men and women of London, if there
should burst upon this audience to-night a real vision of God in His holiness, this whole
great gathering would fall on their faces and cry, "Woe is me, for I am undone." Not one of
you could keep your seats.
IV. WE MUST ALL MEET GOD.
Last thought. You and I some day must meet this holy God. The prophet Amos cries,
"Prepare to meet thy God!' (Amos iv. 12). Every man and woman here must some day
meet God. The rich man must meet God! The beggar must meet God! The scholar must
meet God! The illiterate man must meet God! The nobleman must meet God! The king
must meet God! The emperor must meet God! Every one must meet God! The supreme
question of life, then, is this: Are you ready to meet God? None of us can tell how soon it
may be that we shall meet God. The king of Spain, as the bulletins flashed across the
wires to-night, has been very near meeting his God to-day. Some of us may meet Him
within the next twenty-four hours; more within the year; many more within five years; and
within forty years almost every man and woman in this audience will have met God. Are
you ready? If not, I implore you to get ready before leaving this hall tonight.
How can we meet God with joy and not with dismay? There is only one ground upon
which man may meet God with joy and not with despair. That ground is the atoning blood
of Jesus Christ. God is infinitely holy, and the best of us is but a sinner. The only ground
upon which a sinner can meet the holy God is on the is on the ground of the shed blood,
the blood of Christ. Any of us, no matter how outcast or vile, can go boldly to the Holy of
Holies on the ground of the shed blood, and the best man or woman that ever walked
this earth can meet God on no other ground than the shed blood. There is only one
adequate preparation for the sinner to meet God, that is the acceptance of Jesus Christ as
our personal Saviour, who bore all our sins on the Cross of Calvary, and as our risen
Saviour who is able to set us free from the power of sin.
Men and women, are you ready to meet God? If it be the will of God, I am ready to go up
into His presence, and meet Him face to face to-night. Do you say, Have you never
sinned? Alas, I have. Sinned so deeply as none of you will ever know, thank God. But,
thank God still more, when Jesus Christ was nailed to yonder Cross of Calvary, all my sins
were settled. I like a sheep had gone astray. I had turned to my own way, but God laid on
Him my sin (Isaiah liii, 6), and the sacrifice God provided I have accepted. I am ready to
meet God face to face to-night and look into those eyes of infinite holiness, for all my sins
are covered by the atoning blood.
Are you ready to meet God? Let me sum it up. There is a God. God is great. God is
holy. You and I must meet Him. There is only one adequate preparation -the acceptance
of Christ as our Sin-bearer, our Saviour, Deliverer from the power of sin. Will you accept
Christ tonight?
THE GREATEST SENTENCE THAT WAS EVER WRITTEN
"God is Love."- I John iv. 8.
My subject is the greatest sentence that was ever written. Of course, that sentence is in
the Bible. All the greatest sentences are in the one Book. The Bible has a way of putting
more in a single sentence than other writers can put in a whole book. Yet there are some
who would tell us that the Bible is no more God's Book than other books. Either they have
not read the Bible, or they have resa it with their eyes closed.
This sentence has in it but three words. Each word is a monosyllable. One word has four
letters, one three, and one only two; yet these nine letters, forming three monosyllables,
contain so much of truth that the world bas been pondering it for eighteen centuries, and
has not got to the bottom of it yet. Whole volumes are dedicated to the exposition of this
wonderful sentence- thousands of volumes.
1 John iv. 8., "'God is love." That is the greatest sentence that was ever written. That
sentence is the key-note of the mission that begins to-day. Everything that you will hear
in song or in word for the next four weeks in this mission revolves round that one central
truth, "God is love." That sums up the whole contents of the Bible. If I were asked for a
sentence to print in letters of gold on the outside of our Bible, a sentence that summed up
the whole contents of the Book, it would be this one, "God is love." That is the subject of
the first chapter of Genesis, it is the subject of the last chapter of Revelation, ana it is the
subject of every chapter that lies in between.
The Bible is simply God's love story, the story of the love of a holy God to a sinful world.
That is the most amazing thing in the Bible. People tell us the Bible is full of things that it
is impossible to believe. I know of nothing else so impossible to believe as that a holy
God should love a sinful world, and should love such individuals as you and me, as the
Bible says He does. But impossible as it is to believe, it is true. There is mighty power in
that one short sentence, power to break the hardest heart, power to reach individual men
and women who are sunk down in sin, and to lift them up until they are fit for a place
beside the Lord Jesus Christ upon the Throne.
When Mr. Moody organized the church in Chicago, of which I am pastor, he was so
anxious that everybody should always hear this one truth, and was so afraid that some
preacher might come and forget to tell it, that he had it put on the gas jets right above the
pulpit, to that the first thing you would see when you went in there on an evening was that
text shining out in letters of fire.
One stormy night, before the time of the meeting, the door stood ajar. A man partly
intoxicated saw it open, and thought he might go in and get warm. He did not know what
sort of a place it was, but when he pushed the door open he saw the text blazing out,
"God is love." He pulled the door to, and walked away muttering to himself He said, "God
is not love. If God is love, He would love me. God does not love a wretch like me." But it
kept on burning down into his soul, "God is love! God is love! God is love" After a while be
retraced his steps, and took a seat in a corner. When Mr. Moody walked down after the
meeting, he found the man weeping like a child. "What is the trouble?" he asked. "What
was it in the sermon that touched you?" "I didn't hear a word of your sermon." "Well, what
is the trouble?" "That text up there." Mr. Moody sat down and from his Bible showed him
the way of life, and he was saved.
I hope it will break some of your hearts. I am not going to tell you what I think of the love
of God. I am going to give you the Bible's plain statements about it. There are people
who start out with this text as a foundation, and build a superstrncture of speculation that
contradicts the plain teaching of the very Book from which they have taken their
foundation-stone. Now, nothing can be more illogical than that. One of two things is
certainly true. Either the Bible is true, or it is not true. If the Bible is not true, we have no
proof that God is love, so that all these universalist schemes, built on the foundation that
"God is love," crumble away. If the Bible is true, these schemes which contradict its plain
teaching are false. You can take whichever horn of the dilemma you please. Whichever
you take, the shallow universalism of the present day crumbles away.
What does the Bible tell us as to how God shows His love?
1. That God shows His love, by pardoning Sin. -Isaiah Iv. 7: "Let the wicked foroake
his; way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord and He
will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon." God tells us
plainly in His Word that He is willing to forgive any sinner that lives, no matter how deep
down he has gone, if he will only turn from sin and turn to Him; and He will forgive him the
very moment he does so. Of course, God cannot forgive a man while he holds on to his
sin, and retain His own moral character.
I have a boy. I love that boy, and I would give a great deal to see him now. I believe there
is nothing that boy could do but, if he repented and turned from it, I would forgive him. But
I could not forgive him if he held on to his evil way. I could continue to love him and seek
to save him, but I could not forgive him. And God cannot forgive us, and remain what He
is- a holy God-until we are ready to quit our sin. But the moment we are, He will have
mercy upon us, and He will abundantly pardon. If the wickedest man or woman in
Edinburgh should have come in tonight-and I hope they have-and should here and now
turn from sin, the moment they did so, God would blot out every sin they ever committed.
I knew a millionaire in New York City who turned his back on all his business and money-
making to save the perishing. When he was going down one of the streets one night, a
poor woman came out of an underground den of infamy and groaned as he passed. My
friend stepped up to her and told her of the love of God. At first she would not believe, but
he persuaded her that God loved her. He gave her a shelter. She did not live long- only
about two yean- but before she died, Nellie Conroy stood up before a great audience in
Cooper State, and told them how God had saved her. - Tears were streaming down the
faces of all. A little while after she lay dying, and as my friend came into the room, she
said: "Uncle Charlie-he was not her uncle, but she called him so for the love she bore "I
will soon see, in a few hours, little Florence, and I will see Jesus." And Nellie Conroy, The
pardoned and blood-washed sinner, went up to belhold the King. There is not a man or
woman in Edinburgh that God will not save the moment they turn from their sin.
2. God shows His Love by taking account of Sin, and punishing it.-Hebrews xii. 6: "For
whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom, He recieveth."
People think God win allow sin to go on unchecked, unrebuked, unpunished. "God is love
" and therefore He takes account of and punishes sin. There are fathers who are so
selfish that they will not punish their children when it is necessary for their good. It hurts
their feelings, as it does to all true fathers; and they are so selfish that they sacrifice the
welfare of the children in order to spare their own feelings. That is not love but consumate
selfishness.
One of my children disobeyed me. I said to myself, "That child must be punished." Oh,
how I studied it find some way out, but I could not do it. I knew that for the child's highest
welfare, punishment must be administered, and the child was punished. I suffered a great
deal more than the child, but I loved the child enough to sacrifice my feelings for the
child's welfare. God suffers when you and I are punished; but He loves us so much, that
when we need to suffer He atiministers the suffering Himself.
A gentleman with whom I was staying said to me one day, "Would you like to take a
drive?" We went out to a cemetery, and came to a place where there were three graves.
One was long; it was an adult one, and in it his wife was buried. In the two short graves
were the bodies of his two daughters, all he had except a baby boy. We knelt and prayed
by the side of the graves. As we were driving back to town the gentleman said, "I pity the
man that God has not chastened." What did he mean? He meant that he had been a man
of the world, an upright man, but not a Christian. One night when he came home his wife
said, "Porter, one of the children is sick." In a few days she was cold and dead; and, as
she lay in the casket, he knelt down and promised God to take Christ as his Lord and
Master. But he lied to God, and forgot all about his resolution. Some time after he came
home again, and his wife said, "Porter, the other child is sick." In a few days she also lay
cold and dead. Once more he knelt down and promised God that he would become a
Christian, and accept his word. All the holiest, deepest, purest joys of life had come from
his great sorrow.
Are you in sorrow? It is because God loves you. Are there some here resisting the
entreaties of God's mercy and grace? I beseech you to repent. I tremble for some men
and women, for those who know the way of life, with whom God is striving by His Holy
Spirit, but who will not come to Him. I tremble for them, because I know that God loves
them. You think that is a very strange reason for trembling for a man. No, I know God
loves you, and so loves you that, if He cannot bring you in any other way, He will bring you
by sorrow and heart-ache.
A friend of mine in Chicago, Colonel Clark, spent his fortune in saving the lost. He went
down every night to preach the Gospel in a mission. There was one man who had been
attending and resisting God's entreaties of mercy for a long time; and one night as he
came along Col. Clark said, "George, if you do not turn from sin pretty quick, I believe God
will take away your wife and child from you, and will lock you up." The man was very
angry, and said, "Colonel Clark, you mind your own business; I will mind mine." One
month from that night George woke up on the floor of Rochester Jail. His wife was dead,
his child had been taken away from him to be put into better hands than his. Right there
he took Christ as his Sariour, and now he is a preacher of the Gospel. Remember, God
loves you, and "whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth."
3. God shows His love for us by sympathizing with us.-Isaiah Ixiii. 9: "In all their
affliction He was afflicted." That is one of the wonderful sentences of this book. The
prophet is speaking about the children of Israel. Their afflictions were appalling, and the
direct consequence of their own sin, a judgment sent by the hand of God, and yet the
prophet said God suffered with them in their sorrow. It is true. There is not a man or
woman here who is in trouble but God sympathizes with you. It may have come in any
way, but if you have any trouble God sympathizes with you in it.
Some of you may know what it is to have a child sick for a long time. At first friends came
and sympathized with you, but their sympathy has grown cold; and, as you have watched
day and night by that fading life you have said: "There is no one who sympathizes with
me." Yes there is. God sympathizes with you. There are men and women who have a
sorrow of such a character that they cannot confide it to any human ear; and they say:
"Nobody knows it. Nobody sypathizes with me." Yes, there is One who knows, and He
sympathizes with you-God.
4. God shows His Love by His Gifts.-I cannot dwell upon that. I just want to speak of
one gift 1 John iii. 1, 2: "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us,
that we should be called the sons of God." Oh, that wondrous gift that God bestowed upon
you and me, that men and women like us should be called children of God! Oh, what love!
Suppose on his coronation day King Edward, after all the the ceremonies were over, had
taken his carriage of state, and had ridden down to the East End of London, and had seen
some ragged, wretched, profane boy, utterly uneducated and morally corrupt. Suppose
his great heart of love had gone out to that boy, and, stepping up to that poor wanderer,
he had said: "I love you I am going to take you in my carriage to the palace. I am going to
dress you fit to be a king's son, and. you shall be known as the son of King Edward the
Seventh." Would it not have been wonderful? But it would not have been so wonderful as
that the infinitely holy God should have looked down upon you and me in our filthiness and
rags and depravity, and that He should have so loved us that He should have bestowed
upon us to be called the sons of God.
5. God shows His Love by the Sacrifice He has made for us.-Sacrifice; after all that is
the great test of love. People tell you that they love you, but you cannot tell whether they
really love you til the opportunity comes for them to make a sacrifice for you. I have a
friend in the university- We thought a good deal of each other; but i did not know how
much he loved me. Years after, one night when I was away preaching, this friend turned
up at my house and got to talking with my wife. He asked a good many leading questions,
and finally got out of her that I was in a position in which I needed fifteen hundred dollars.
He did not say any more at the time, but next day he came to me and said: "You think of
doing so and so." "Yes." "That costs money!' "I have a scheme to get it?" "What is it?" "I
have plans." "Well, what are they?" i did not think it was his business, but finally I told him.
He said: "It will not work at all. See here. Just let me give you that fifteen hun&g dollars!"
"Well," I said, "I am not going to let any man give me fifteen hundred dollars." "Oh, you
can pay it back" "I don't know about that." "I will take my chances." He insisted, and would
not take "No" for an answer; he gave me that fifteen hundred dollars, and I have paid it
back, but he did not know I would. I knew then that man loved me. God has proved His
love. "God so loved the world that gave" -gave what?- His only begotten Son" -the best
He had, the object of his eternal love- gave Him to suffer and die upon the cruel cross for
you and me.
God looked down upon this lost world, upon you and me. He saw that there was only one
price that would save us; and He did not stop at that sacrifice. He "so loved the world that
He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but
have everlasting life.?" That is the most amazing thing in the Bible. You and I sometimes
dwell upon the love of Christ, to give up Heaven for us. We look at Him in the courtyard of
Pilate, fastened to the whippingpost, with His bare back exposed to the lash of the Roman
soldier. We look at Him as the lash cuts into His back again and again, and again, till it is
all torn and bleeding. Oh, how He loves us! But looking down from yon throne in heaven
was God; and every lash that cut the back of Christ cut the heart of God. We see the
soldiers with the crown of thorns, pressing it on His brow, and we see the blood flowing
down. Oh, how he loved us! But every thorn that pierces His brow pierced also the heart
of God.
Through the durk of that awful day we see Him on the cross. We hear the last cry, "My
God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me?" We see how He loved us. But yonder, looking
down from the throne of light and glory, was God; and every nail that pierced His hands
and feet pierced the heart of God, because He loved you, and you, and you, every one of
you. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." 0h, it was wonderful!
What are you going to do about this love?
I once heard a story which brought me such a glimpse of God's love as I never had
before. I do not know whether it is true or not. A man was set to watch a railway
drawbridge over a river. He threw it open and let vessels through. He heara the whistle of
a train up the track, and sprang to the lever to bring the bridge back into place, and as he
was doing so he accidentally pushed his boy into the river. He heard tbe cry, "Father,
save me; I am drowning." What should he do? The man stood at the post of duty, brought
the bridge back so that the train could pass over in safety. Then he jumped into the river to
save his boy, but it was too late. He sacrificed his boy to do His duty. When I heard that
story I wondered, if it had been my boy, what I would have done. That man owed it to
those on the train to do what he did. God owed you and me nothing. We were guilty
rebels against him, but "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in Him sbould not perish, but have everlasting life."
What are you going to do with His love? Accept it, or trample it under foot? Accept Christ,
and you accept that love; reject Christ, and you trample that love under foot. I cannot
understand how any man or woman in their right senses can harden their hearts against
the love of God.
I remember one night at the close of our service we had an after-meeting. The choir were
still sitting, and the leading soprano was unconverted-a thoroughly worldly girl. Her
mother rose in the meeting, and said, "I wish you would pray for my daughter." I did not
look around, but I knew intuitively how that girl looked at that momcnt. I made it my
business to meet her as e was passing out and said, "Good evening, Cora." Her eyes
flashed and cheeks burned; she was very angry. She said, "My mother ought to have
known better. She knows it will only make me worse." I said, "Sit down"; and turned to
Isaiah lii!. 5: "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." I did
not say another word. It was not necessary. The anger faded out of those eyes, and
burning tears of penitence ran down her cheeks- I went from home next day, and when I
came back some one said, "Cora is sick." I found her very sick, but rejoicing in Jesus. A
few days after her brother came and said, "We think Cora is dying." I went at once, and
looked on the whitest face I ever saw. She had not opened her eyes all the morning; but,
after I had finished praying, there came from those lips-still without opening her eyes-the
most wonderful prayer I ever heard. She thanked God for giving His son to die for her.
She told Him how she longed to live to sing to His glory, as she had sung in the past for
herself; but "if it be not Thy will that I live and sing for Christ, I shall be glad to depart and
to be with Christ." And depart she did, with a heart conquered, tralasformed, by the love of
God. What are you going to do with the love of God?
I have here a story cut from a paper to-day. Mrs. Bottome, of New York City, says that she
had a friend in her girlhood of whom she lost sight completely for eighteen years. Going
back to New York she was passing along a street, and up in a second story window she
saw her friend's face, surrounded by prematurely grey hair. She ran up to the door of the
house and said to the maid, "Take that card to your mistress." "She is not at home," was
the answer. "Oh yes, she is: I saw her at the window"; and Mrs. Bottome rushed past the
maid up into the room, and they fell into one another's arms. "What has become of you for
all these years?" asked Mrs. Bottome. The answer was, "Come into the other room, and I
will show you." In a room magnificently fitted up there sat an idiot boy of seventeen years
of age, saucely able to talk a driveling idiot. His mother said "My duty lies here, with my
darling boy." Mrs. Bottome says that in a moment of thoghtlessness she asked, "How can
you endure
it? I do not wonder you are prematurely grey." I knew you would not understand my love
for my sweet boy," said her indignant friend. "It is no burden, no care, to live and serve my
boy; and if, some day, he will only give one sign that he recognizes me as his mother, I will
feel re-paid for all the years of love I have lavished on him."
That was but a faint image of the love of God. What are you going to do with this love of
God? That boy did not repay his mother's love; for, as Mrs. Bottome says, he was an idiot
and did not know any better. You are not idiots. You know God's love: how are you going
to repay it?
***************************************************************
III
"FOUND WANTING"'
"TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting." DANIEL v. 25.
Any one who loves the drama should read the Bible, for the Bible is the most dramatic
book that was ever written. There is nothing to compare with it in Eschylus or Sophocles
or Euripides among the ancients, or in Shakespeare among the moderns, in striking
situations, in graphic delineation, and in startling denouement.
One of the most intensely interesting and at the same time suggestive scenes in the Bible
is that described in Daniel v. -Belshazzar's feast. Belshazzar was not the supreme King of
Babylon. Nabonidus, his father, was king, and had associated him with himself on the
throne; Belshazzar was second ruler in the kingdom. The critics used to tell us there
never was such a king as Belshazzar; but Sir William Rawlinson dug up a tablet from
Nabonidus himself, on which he speaks of his son Belsharuzzar; and again the critics, as
so often before, were brought to grief by the discoveries of modern archeology.
But now Belshazzar was in supreme command in the city. His father Nabonidus had been
shut outside the city walls by the forces of Cyrus. Puffed up by the pride of his newly-
gotten power, Belshazzar makes a great banquet. The palace is a blaze of light. The
long tables are set for more than a thousand guests. They are brilliant and dazzling with
plates and cups and tankards of silver and gold, many-jeweled, reflecting back the light
from countless candelabra. Reclining at the tables are the guests, with fingers and arms
ringed and jeweled. The air is heavy with perfume and tremulous with the music of harp
and dulcimer and sackbut. Between the tables the oriental women weave through the
contortions and distortions of the Asiatic dance. Back and forth across the tables fly jest
and repartee.
In the midst of this hilarity a strange and daring conceit enters the mind of the royal
entertainer. Belshazzar whispers to his chief steward a secret command. The guests are
all agog with curiosity to know what the mysterious mandate may be. Their curiosity is
soon gratified; for the chief steward, followed by a host of retainers, comes in bearing in
their arms the cups of gold and silver which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from the
temple of Jehovah after the sack of the city of Jerusalem. Belshazzar commands that the
cups be filled with Babylonian wine, and passed from lip to lip -while he and his guests
sing the praises of the gods of gold and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.
The hilarity becomes more boisterous. Louder and louder thrum the instruments, faster
and faster spin the feet of the dancers, swifter and swifter fly jest and repartee. Suddenly
a hush like death fans upon the banqueting hall. One of the revelers, lifting his eyes to the
wall, sees the fingers of a man's hand writing. As he gazes in wonder he becomes the
centre of observation, and all eyes turn in the same direction. Now the king turns and
looks also. There, writing in characters of fire, are the mysterious angers of an armless
hand. Terror freezes Belshazzar to the very soul in the graphic language of the prophet
Daniel, "the king's countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the
joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another." In a few
moments pulls himself together and hoarsely cries, "Bring hither the astrologers the
Chaldeans, and the soothsayers."
In come the magi of Babylon, splendidly appareled, with proud and stately tread.
Expectation rises high in their hearts. They think that by their cunning arts they can
deceive the King and gain new emoluments; but only for a moment. The look of
confidence fades from their faces. The writing is beyond their art.
Again terror lays hold on Belshazzar Again his countenance was changed in him. The
queen-mother hears the confusion. She walks in with stately tread, and tries to reassure
her royal son. "O king, live for ever: let not thy thoughts trouble thee, nor let thy
countenance be changed: there is a man in thy kingdom in whom is the spirit of the holy
gods" And she proceeds to sing the praises of Daniel. "Let Daniel be called, and he will
show the interpretation." Daniel is summoned. Behhazzar turns to him, and says, "O
Daniel, I have heard of thee, that the spirit of the gods is in thee, and that light and
understanding and excellent wisdom is found in thee. And I have heard of thee, that thou
canst make interpretations., and dissolve doubts: now if thou canst read the writing, and
make known to me the interpretation thereof, thou shalt be clothed with scarlet., and have
a chain of gold about thy and shalt be the third ruler in the kingdom."
Daniel with noble pride, scorns the proffered gifts. "Let thy gifts be to thyself, and give thy
rewards to another. I will have none of them; but I will read writing, and make known to
thee the interpretation." But first Daniel proceeds to rebuke the blasphemous daring of
Bebhazzar. He recalls the history of Nebuchadnezzar, his grandfather, and how God had
humbled his stout-hearted pride. Then he says "The God in whose hand thy breath is,
and whose are all thy ways hast thou not glorified though thou knewest all this: then was
the part of the hand sent from Him; and this writing was written. And this is the writing
That vas written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of the
thing:
"MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.
"TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art
found wanting.
"PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the
Medes and Persiam."
Belshazzar calls for the royal robe, and it is placed on Daniel. A chain of gold is cast
about his neck, and he is proclaimed next to Belshazzar, third ruler in the kingdom. The
royal banquet goes on. The hilarity increases; but, hark! the tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp
Of soldiers' feet in the streets of Babylon. The armies of Cyrus have turned the waters of
the Euphrates, and have come in by the river-bed and the two-leaved gates of Babylon.
There is a crashing sound at the gate. The guests look round for a place to flee. But it is
too late. Tramp, tramp, tramp, up the palace stairs, with a crash and a rash, the Persian
and Median soldiers come in. Swords flash in air for a moment. Belshazzar looks up, and
sees the sword over his head. It fans. Belshazzar is a corpse. "That night was
Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain" I call your attention to one word on the wall:
"TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and found wanting!"
In whose balance was Belshazzar weighed? The balances of God. Not in the balances of
his own estimation of himself: he would never have been found wanting there. Not in the
balances of public opinion: the men of Babylon would have said, "Belshazzar is the
greatest of our statesmen, and the coming man." Not the balances of human philosophy.
In the balances of God.
Every man and woman here tonight is to be weighed the same balances, the balances of
God. How much you suppose that you weigh in the balances of God? do not ask you how
much you weigh in your own opinion of yourself. That is of no consequence, for a man
who thinks most of himself is of least in the mind of God. I do not ask how much weigh in
the balances of public opinion. You may a leading citizen and a chief magistrate, whom
all to honour; but oftentimes that which is highly esteemed in the sight of God.
How much do you think you weigh in the balances of God? There are
some of us who set much store by moralitv, our culture, and our refinement; but if knew
how little we weighed in the balances of the eternal and all holy God we would fall on our
knees and pray, "God be merciful to me a sinner."
Is there any way in which we can tell how much we weigh in the balances of God? There
is. God has given to us the weights wherewith He weighs us.
Turn to Exodus xx. and you will get the weights by which God weighs men -the well-known
Ten Commandments. Let me read them.
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me!" What is a man's god? A man's god is the
thing he thinks moat of. If a man thinks more of money than anything else, then money is
his god; and many a citizen of Edinburgh worships Plutus, the god of wealth. Many a man
is sacrificing conscience, sacrificing honour, and obedience to God to gain money. You
do things in business that you know are not according to the teachings of the Bible, that
you know are not pleasing to a holy God, because there is money in them. Gold is your
god, and you are found wanting by the first of God's commandments. There are men who
worship gold just as really as if they had a sovereign hung up in their bedchamber, and
said their prayer to it.
Many worship social position. How many are doing things in matters of dress and in
matters of social life that are disapproved by conscience! But it is what society does; and
they think that if they do not do the same they will lose their position in society. You are
putting society before God. Society is your god. You are weighed and found wanting by
the first of God's laws.
Major Whittle once went, in Washington, to call upon a man who had been prominent in
public and social life. He was showing Major Whittle over his beautiful new house. They
came to a large and beautiful room, and Major Whittle asked, "What is this for?" The man
was silent at first. "What is this for?" asked Major Whittle again. The man hung his head,
and said, "Well, Major, if you must know, this is a ball-room." "What! a ball-room. Do you
mean to tell me that you have sunk so low that you have a ball-room in your house?"
"Well, Major, I never thought I would come to this; but my wife and daughter said we were
in society now, that this was the thing in Washington, and that we must have it to keep our
position in Washington society?" Social position was their god; and that man paid for it
dearly in the wreck and ruin of his home.
Many a man worships whisky. How many a man is sacrificing his brain-power, his
business capacity, the respect of his fellow-citizens, the reverence of his wife and
children, in devotion to the cursed whisky. I saw many a hideous god when I was traveling
in India, all sorts of beastly images which men bow down before and worship, but I know
no god more beastly, no god more disgusting than this god of whisky, upon the altar of
which men are offering as a sacrifice their children and their interests.
How many a young man and young woman worships the god of pleasure. They are doing
things for pleasure that their conscience disapproves of, things that hinder communion
with God. They are sacrificing everything that they may have amusement and pleasure.
Amusement is their god. Weighed, and found wanting by the first weight of the ten
commandments.
I have no time to dwell upon the second command: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any
graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth
beneath or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down thyself to them or
worship them, for I the Lord thy God am a jealous Go, visiting the iniquity of the fathers
upon the children until the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me, and showing
mercy unto thousands of them that love Me, and keep My commandments"
The Third Commandment- "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for
the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." How much do you weigh
when you are weighed by that law! Oh, how many a man on your streets brakes that law!
And men not only break it, but they think it a light matter. They think that law is of no
consequence. When you approach men and speak to them about Christ, they will say,
"Well, but I do not know that I need Christ. I am not a very bad man. I have never stolen
anything. I have never killed anybody. I have never committed adultery. Oh, I do sware
occasionally." They think it a light matter, but God does not regard it so. "Thou shalt not
take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that
taketh His name in vain.
If them is any sin which shows that the very foundation of a man's character are honey-
combed and rotten, it is the sin of profanity. You can not trust a profane swearer
anywhere. A profane swearer is ripe for any crime. What is the only foundation for a
sound character? Reverence for God; and when that is gone the foundation of character
is gone. Character may not crumble away at once, as a building does not always fall the
moment its foundation is rotten, in a measure, but it win fall. The foundation is gone. No
man can swear profanely until he has gotten very, very low in the moral scale. A man has
to go down pretty low (has he not?) to speak disrespectfully of his mother. We have seen
men go pretty far into sin and yet have so much manhood left that, when others spoke
insultingly about their mother, they would resent it. A man has fallen very low who will
speak lightly of his mother; but a man has got immeasurably lower before he will speak
profanely of God. The purest mother is nothing to the all holy One. No mother ever loved
a child, no mother ever-sacrificed for a child, as God has loved you and made sacrifices
for you; and if you can take God's name upon your lips in profanity you are a vile wretch. I
beseech of you get on your face before the eternal God before you sleep and cry to Him
for mercy.
But there are other ways of taking Gods name in vain besides profane swearing. Much
that we call praying is taking God's name in vain. Every time you have knelt down to pray
and have had no thought of God in your heart while you take His name upon your lips, you
have taken God's name in vain. In the Church of England you go through those
marvelously beautiful prayers in the ritual, but when you do it as a mere matter of form,
with no thought of God in your mind, you have taken God's name in vain. You repeat that
wonderful prayer that the Master Himself taught us: "Our Father which art in heaven,
hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is done in
heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive
those that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever." All the time you
recite it you have not one thought what you are saying. It is downright appalling profanity.
The Fourth Command- "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou
labour, and do all thy work, but the seventh day" -not the seventh day of the week, as
some men say, daring to put into God's Word what He did not put in, but the seventh day
for rest after six days of work, without specific which day of the week it should come. Of
course it was the seventh day of the week with the Jew, in commemoration of the old
creation; but with the Christian it is the first day of the week, in commemoration of the new
creation through a Risen Lord. "The seventh day it is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it
thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter. nor thy manservant nor thy
maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the
Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day;
wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it!" There was a day when
Scotchmen kept
that law. It may be you do now; but, alas, in India I saw a thing that stirred my blood and
sickened my heart. I saw Scotchmen- not merely Englishmen and Irishmen_-I saw
Scotchmen, from the land of the Covenanters, on holy day, not in the house of God, but
off playing gold, riding on their wheels, engaging in all manner of amusement. I do not
know whether you do it at home or not, but the land, the city, the individual who forgets the
Sabbath day has undermined the foundations of God's favour and its own prosperity.
The Fifth Command-"Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon
the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. I wish I had time to dwell upon that; for we
are getting into a day when the young think they know more than their parents, speaking
lightly about "the old man" and "the old woman." They think father and mother are old
fogies, and that the young people know it all. They disobey their parents. The child who
disobeys a parent will bring upon his own head the curse of God. There is only one law
superior to the law of father and mother; and that is the law of God. Even those who are
grown up, and do not treat the father and mother with the respect and consideration which
they should, will reap what they sow. God have mercy upon the one, young or old, who
breaks that commandment.
The Sixth Command-"Thou shalt not kill. "How much do you weigh by that law? You say
"I'll am all right by that law. We have no murder here." Are you absolutely sure? "Why,
certainly. Where do you think you are talking? Down in the Grassmarket?" No, I am
talking in the Synod Hall; but there are other ways of killing people besides driving a
dagger into their heart or firing a bullet into their brain. A husband can kill his wife by
neglect, and cruelty, and unfaithfulness. How many a woman is hastening to an early
grave, with a broken heart, because she has learned that the man who swore to be true to
her is unfaithful.
One day I was talking with a very brilliant man, who was under the influence of liquor. I
said to him, "John, you ought to take Jesus Christ." "Oh," was his reply, "you know I do not
believe as you do. I am one of these new theologians. I have a broader theology than you
have. I am one of those believers in the eternal hope. You do not believe that old-
fashioned theology, do you? Now, honestly, suppose I should drop right down here now,
what would become of me?" I said, "John you would go straight to hell, and you would
deserve to go!" "What have I done?" "I will tell you. You have got your wife's heart under
your heel, and you are grinding the life out of it. What is worse, you are trampling under
foot the Christ of God, who died on the Cross of Calvary to save you."
How many a son is killing his mother by his wild, dissolute life. I remember staying in a
beautiful home, where there was everything that wealth, could buy. - One would have
thought that the of that home must be a perfectly happy woman. But she would rise in the
riddle of the night, and walk up and down the halls of the beautiful home with a breaking
heart. A few mouths after she died. Why? She had a wandering boy. She did not even
know where he was; and as I was by her grave, with that wandering boy, who had come to
her dying bed, I thought in my heart, "Murdered by her wayward son!"
Some of you are hastening your mother's footsteps to the grave. You have not written
your mother for six months. In Melbourne a man came rushing down the hall and said,
"Oh, I have killed my mother." He rushed into the inquiry room, and was led to Christ. Is
there a man here who is killing his mother? Repent, take Christ; write to your mother
tonight that you are saved.
There are other ways of murdering people. I do not know whether it is common in
Scotland. I think and I certainly hope not. But it is common where Scotch men have
gone. How shall I describe it? The most appalling kind of murder in the world. Mothers
murdering their own helpless babes, to escape the responsibility of what is one of the
greatest privileges in the world, a large family. If there is any hand in the world that is
scarlet with the blood of murder, it is that of the woman who murders her own unborn
babe; and there are men who call themselves physicians who will act as helpers in this
hellish business. Such a one ought not to put "M.D." after his name, but "D.M." damnable
murderer. In our country they hang them, which is just. Alas, they do not always catch
them. I said this in an Australian city, and the wife of a physician was very indignant about
it. But her indignation did not alter the truth of what I said. It only exposed a guilty party.
The Seventh Command-"Thou shalt not commit adultery."- I cannot dwell on that. It
needs to be dwelt upon, but not here. Simply let me say that there is no class of sins
upon which God has set the stamp of his disapproval in a plainer way, by the fearful
consequences that immediately follow the sins covered by this commandment. The
woman untrue to her husband, the husband untrue to his wife: the curse of God always
follows them. It may be done by legal means, under the cover of divorce laws that
controvert God's laws, but it does not lessen the sin. The meanest scoundrel that walks
the earth, the meanest man alive, is the man who steps in, under any circumstances,
between a man and his wife; and the meanest woman on earth is the one who steps in
between and woman and her husband. Remember, furthermore, that our Saviour
interpreted this law as applying not only to the overt act but to the secret thought of the
heart, when He said, "Whoso looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed
adultery with her in his heart."
The Eighth Command- "Thou shalt not steal." -How, much do you weigh, weighed by that
law? Wait a moment. What is it to steal ? To steal is to take property from another without
giving an adequate equivalent in either property or money. For example., every man who
sells goods under false pretenses is a thief. The man who sells a piece of cloth as being
"all wool" when it is part cotton, is a thief. The man who employs labour, and takes
advantage of the poor man's necessity, and does not give him in pay a full equivalent for
his labour, is a thief. Every labouring man who does not give to his employer, in good
honest work, a fair equivalent for the wages paid to him, is a thief. The gambler who
gambles and wins is a thief. Every time you bet on cards, on a horse race, on a boat race,
every time you invest in pools or in a lottery, whether it be a public lottery or a church
lottery, and win. You are a thief. The man who gambles and wins is a thief, the man who
gambles and loses is a fool. So every gambler is either a thief or a fool.
The Ninth Command-"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. "I know
you do not like what I am saying, but that does not alter it; and you will not escape God by
trying to forget what I say. But if you do not pay attention to my words, as far as they are
true, they will rise up against you in the day of judgment.
How much do you weigh, weighed by that commandment? "Well," you say, "I am all right
by that, because I was never in court." Does it say anything about court? Every time you
tell anything about another that is derogatory to them, and is not true, you have broken
this law of God. You hear a story, and do not take pains to find out whether it is true or
not. Perhaps you add a bit to it, and go on and tell it, and it is not true. You have broken
the law of God. You say, "I thought it was true." It is not what you think: it is the fact.
Whenever you hear anything against a neighbor, do not believe it until it is proven
absolutely to be true; and even when it is, keep it to yourself, unless duty
dearly demands the of it, which is very seldom.
Some of you say, "Did you hear that awful story about Mrs. ----? I was awfully sorry." You
lie. You were glad to hear it. or you would have kept it to yourself. The gossip, the
slanderer, is viler than the vilest thief that walks your streets. The thief only steals money:
the slanderer steals what money cannot buy -reputation.
The Tenth Command-"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet
thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor
anything that is thy neighbour's." God's law covers not only the overt act, but the covert
thought of the heart as well. Many of you would not steal your neighbour's horse, but you
wish it was yours. You would not run off with your neighbour's wife, but you wish she were
yours. You would not rob your neighbour of his money, but you wish it was your money.
You have broken the law of God.
How much do you weigh, weighed by the law of God?
There are two other weights heavier than these. Matthew vii. 12: "All things whatsooever
ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." The so-called Golden Rule.
How many talk about it, and how few keep it.
One day I was talking to a sea-captain. I asked "Captain, why are you not a Christian?"
"The Golden Rule is a good enough religion for me," he replied. "Do you keep it?" He
dropped his head. He talked about it, but he did not keep it. Talking about it will not save
you. Do you do it? Mind it does not merely put it negatively, "Do not do to others
whatsoever ye would not that they should do to you. That is Confucianism. The Christian
rule is positive. "Do these things to them." Sell goods to other people just the way you
want other people to sell goods to you. Talk about other people behind their back just as
you want them to talk about you behind your back. Do you do it? Always? Then you are
weighed and found wanting.
The heaviest weight of all is in Matthew xxii. 37, 38. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and greatest
commandment." How much do you weigh by that law? Put God first in everything-in
business, in politics, in social life, in study, in everything. Do you do it? Have you always
done it? No, you say, I have not. Then you are weighed and found wanting, not only by
breaking a law of God, but this is "the first and great command'" you have broken the first
and greatest of God's laws.
A minister asked me to talk to a young man who wanted to go into the ministry. He was a
splendid looking fellow. When he came to me, I said, "You want to go into the Ministry.
Are you a Christian?" "Why, of course I am. I was brought up a Christian and I am not
going back on the training of my parents." "Have you been born again?" "What?" "Jesus
says, 'Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God'" "Well," he said,
"I have never heard of that before." "Did you know that you had committed the greatest sin
a man can commit?" "No, I never did." "What do you think it is?" "Murder" "You are
greatly mistaken. Let us see what God's Word says." I turned to Matthew xxii. 37, 38, and
read: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with
all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment." "Which command is it?" I asked.
"The first and greatest" "Have you kept it? Have you loved God with all your heart, and
all your soul, and all your mind? Have you put God first in everything- in business, in
pleasure, in social life, in politics?" "No sir, I have not." "What have you done then?" "I
have broken this commandment." "Which commandment is it?" "The first and greatest"
"What have you done then?" "I have broken the first and greatest of God's
commandments. I have committed the greatest sin a man can commit. But I never saw it
before."
How much do we weigh, every one of us including the preacher? Every one of us is
weighed and found wanting. What shall we do then? This is where the Gospel comes in.
I have preached up to this point nothing but law. God has weighed the whole world in the
balances and found it wanting, and in Christ He provided salvation for a wanting world.
God sent His Son, who kept that law, and then died for you and me and me who have
broken it; and all you and I have to do is to take Christ into the balances with us. Christ
can weigh up all the weights. When we take Christ into the balance with us, then we are
weighed, and found not wanting.
Will You take Jesus Christ into the balances with you to-night?. Woe to the man who is
weighed in the balances of God for the last time without having Jesus Christ with him.
This may be the last opportunity for some; it may at all events be the last opportunity
which some will ever take. The time will come when you will be weighed and found
wanting; and you will look back and say, "Oh, why did I not listen to the preacher?" You
will remember this sermon and the text; and you will say "Oh, if I only had improved the
opportunity."
Mr. Moody told a story I shall never forget. A man was set to watch a drawbridge. He had
orders not to open the draw until a special train passed. Boat after boat came up and
urged him to open the bridge and let them through. "No, I have my orders to wait until the
special passes." At last a friend came and he encouraged him and allowed himself to be
persuaded. He drew the draw open. No sooner was the bridge well open and the vessels
beginning to enter. than he heard the whistle of the special. He sprang to the lever but he
was too late. The train came on with lightning speed. He looked on as it dashed into the
open chasm, he heard the shrieks of the injured and saw the corpses of the dead, and
went mad. He never recovered his senses, but walked up and down the padded cell of
the asylum, crying, "Oh! if I only had! oh! if I only had." Had what? Obeyed orders. Men
and women reject Christ for the last time, and you will walk up and down the eternal
madhouse wringing your hands, and saying,, "Oh! if I only had; oh! if I only had!" Had
what? Obeyed God, and accepted His son as your Saviour. Will you do it now?
***************************************************************
IV
THE JUDGMENT DAY
"God now commandeth all men everywhere to repent; because He hath appointed a day,
in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He hath ordained;
whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised him from the dead.
Acts xvii. 30, 31.
There are two events in the future which are absolutely certain. First of all, it is absolutely
certain that Jesus Christ is coming again to receive His people unto himself, and to reward
them according to their works; and in the second place, it is absolutely certain that Jesus
Christ is coming again to judge the world. When I was on the ocean some months ago a
man asked me one night, as we were walking the deck of the great steamer together,
"What will be the outcome of this tendency towards great trusts and monopolies in
business?" And I replied, "I do not know.," Men often come to me with the question, "What
will be the outcome of these great combinations of laboring men to resist the
encroachments of capital?" And again I reply, "I don't know."
But I will tell you what I do know, and it is infinitely more important. I know that some day
the Lord Jesus Christ will come back again, and receive His waiting and faithful people
unto himself, and I know that there is going to be a judgment day for the world, and that
judgment day is the subject of our thought tonight.
There are five things about the judgment day that are set forth in our text: first, the
certainty of it; secondly, the universality of it; thirdly, the basis of it; fourthly, the
administrator of it; and, lastly, the issues of it.
1. First, the Certainty of it.-It is absolutely certain that there is to be a judgment day.
"God hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness." Men who
are living in sin may laugh at it; they cannot laugh it away. In the days of Noah men
laughed at Noah's predictions that there was to be a flood, but the flood came and swept
them all away. In the days of Lot the men of Sodom laughed at the idea that God would
rain fire and brimstone out of heaven, and destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and the other
cities of the plain; but the fire and brimstone fell, and these cities were blotted out. In the
days of Jeremiah the people of Jerusalem laughed at Jeremiah's predictions that
Nebuchabezzar would come and lay Jerusalem in the dust and destroy their temple. But
it all came to pass just as God said, and just as Jeremiah believed and predicted. In the
days of Jesus Christ men laughed at Christ's prediction that the armies of Rome under
Titus and Vespasian would lay Jerusalem's walls even with the ground, and that calamity
would overtake that city such as the world had never seen; but historians outside the Bible
tell us that it all came to pass just as Christ predicted, and that Jerusalem was overtaken
with the most appalling siege in the world's history. All of God's predictions about
judgment on individuals and nations in the past have come true to the very letter in spite of
all the false hopes that were held out by false prophets.
If we are to judge the future by the past -and there is no other way to judge it- Gods
predictions about the future with regard to judgment upon individuals and nations will
come true to the very letter, in spite of false hopes held out by the false prophets; that is
by the "liberal preachers" of the day. It is absolutely certain that there is to be a
judgment day for the world.
God has given us a special guarantee of the judgment day, and that special guarantee is
the resurrection of Christ from the dead. As we rest in the text, God will judge the world in
righteousness by that man He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all
men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead." The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the
dead is an absolutely certain fact of history- It is not a theological fiction; it is not a poet's
dream: it is an established fact of history. If I had time tonight to go into the evidence, I
could prove to every fair-minded, thinking, man that, beyond question, Jesus Christ rose
from the dead. When we were in the city of Sydney I was talking to the business men of
Sydney and Members of both Houses of Parliament there for four hours, to prove to them
that Christ did rise from the dead, and many an Agnostic, Deist, Unitarian, and Higher
Critic had his views utterly shattered, and turned to the risen Christ. There is no time,
however, to-night to go into the evidence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I simply want
to say to you that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that
it is impossible for any honest man to sit down and thoroughly sift the evidence, and come
to any other conclusion than that Christ did rise from the dead.
Year's ago there were two eminent lawyers, one named Lyttleton and the other West.
These two men were Deists; that is, they had faith in a supreme being, but did-not believe
in revelation, or in inspiration, or in the miraculous. One day they got to a talking about
their views, and finally one said to the other, "Well we cannot maintain our position until
we disprove two things; first, the reputed conversion of Saul of Tarsus, and secondly, the
reputed resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." Said Lyttleton to West, "I will write a
book to prove that Saul of Tarsus was never converted in the way which the Acts of the
Apostles record." And said West to Lyttleton, "I will write a book to prove that Jesus.
Christ did not rise from the dead as the evangelists say." Well, they wrote their books, and
when they met afterwards, West said to Lyttleton, "How have you got on?" "I have written
my book," said Lyttleton, "but as I have studied the evidence from a legal standpoint, I
have become convinced that Saul of Tarsus was converted in just the way the Acts of the
Apostles say he was, and I have become a Christian. How have you got on?" "Well," said
West, "I have sifted the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the legal
standpoint, and I am satisfied that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead just as
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John record, and I have written my book in defense of
Christianity." And these two books can be seen in our libraries today. It is absolutely
impossible for any man with a legal mind, and accustomed to sift evidence, to sit down
and thoroughly investigate the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and come to
any other conclusion than that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead. Well, that
resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is a guarantee that a judgment day is coming. When
Jesus Christ came upon the earth, He claimed in John v. 22, 23, "The Father judgeth no
man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son; that all men should honor the Son,
even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not son honoreth not the Father which
hath sent Him." He claimed that there was a judgment day coming and that He was to be
the Judge. Men hated him for making the claim, and the other claims involved in it, the
claim of Deity. They put Him to death for making this claim, but before they put Him to
death He said, "My Father will set His seal to the claim for which you put Me to death."
And when the third day came, the breath of God swept through the sleeping clay, and
God, by the resurrection of Christ, set his seal to Christ's claims and said in accents that
cannot be mistaken and that are a message to all ages, "There is a judgment day
coming." The indisputable action of Jesus C
hrist in the past points with unerring finger to a certain judgment in the future. If there is
any man here tonight that flatters self that there is to be no judgment day; if there is any
man here that fancies that he can go on in sin, and never be called to account for it; if
there is any man here that believes he can go on trampling under foot the Son of God,
and not have to suffer for it, oh, man, throw that hope away to-night, for it is baseless. It is
absolutely certain that there will be a day in which Jesus Christ will judge the world in
righteousness.
II. The Universality of the Judgment- In the second place please note the universality
of the judgment day. "God hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world.- It will
be no class judgment; every man and woman on the face of this earth will have to face the
Judge in that day. Of course all who are Christians, all who have accepted Christ as their
Saviour, and surrendered to Him as their Lord, will have been caught up to meet Him in
the air. But all the rest will have to face the Judge in that day. There will be no escaping
that day. men often escape human courts. There is many a thief that has never been
arrested, there is many a murderer that remains unhung; but when God sends forth His
officers to gather the people for that judgment day, they win have to come, and they wig
have to stay right there until their case is settled. Men have often escaped me when I am
preaching. When the preaching becomes too pointed, they get up and go out, and thus
they escape me. You can't escape God that way. You will have to come there, and you
will have to stay there until your case is decided. He is going to judge the world in
righteousness. How you would rejoice if every, infidel in London were at this meeting to-
night. But most infidels would not dare to come to this meeting. But there will be a
meeting that every infidel will be at. There will be one meeting that every hypocritical
church member will be at. There will be a meeting where ever
y unpenitent sinner will be present-the meeting with Jesus Christ at the judgment bar of
God. That man who is sitting in this meeting to-night trying to make light of everything I
am saying-you will be at that meeting, and you will not make light of it; you will be there
face to face with Jesus Christ. That woman who has come to this meeting to-night for any
purpose but a good one, you will meet Christ there at the judgment bar of God.
III. The Basis of the Judgment-In the third place note the basis of judgment.
1. The deeds done in the body." In 2 Corinthians, chapter v, verse 10, are the words, "For
we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the
things done in his body according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad." The
deeds in the body are the basis of that judgment. There are preachers who tell us that a
man can die in sin, and after he is dead can have another probation, a her chance to
repent, that he may repent after his death and turn to God and be saved. The Old Book
does not hold out any such hope. That kind of teaching contradicts the plain teaching of
the Word of God, which says distinctly that "the deeds done in the body," in the life that
now is, are to determine the issues of Eternity.
If a man to-night who is living in drunkenness, who is squandering his time, squandering
his money, squandering his manhood in a life of dissipation; you will have to answer for in
that day. That woman to-night who is living a life of frivolity and pleasure instead of living
for the God who made her, and the Christ who died for her; you will have to answer for it
in that day. That man here who professes to be a Christian but lives like the world; you
will have to answer for it in that day. That man who has made gold his god, overreaching
his neighbour in business, oppressing his employee, turning a deaf ear to the crys of the
widow and orphan: you will have to answer for it in that day. That man who knows the
truth, but will not heed it because it will hurt him in business or politics; you will have to
answer for it in that day. That man who is a libertine, living in lust, living like a beast,
scattering ruin wherever he goes; you will have to answer for it in that day. The deeds
done in the body-they will all come up, things that have been forgotten for years. There is
a man here who years ago did a base, nefarious deed, and to-night he is very comfortable
in the thought that no one on earth knows of it. Man, the whole world will know about it in
that day unless you repent, and Jesus Christ will know about it and will pass judgment
upon it. There is a woman here to-night who has a very black page in her past history, but
of late years she has been very comfortable over that black page. No one now knows
anything about it; it is all forgotten; there is no one to bring it up. The whole world will
know about it in that day. unless you repent and turn to Christ.
2. "The secret things" will be judged. In Romans ii. 16, we read: "In the day when God
shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ." The secret things, the things done in the
dark, the things done under the cover of night, the things that nobody saw but God; all will
be brought to light on that day.
I remember hearing years ago of an incident that happened here, in your own country. A
woman had killed her husband by driving a nail into his skull, and so successfully had she
covered up the wound that he was buried without any suspicion being cast upon her.
After several years the woman flattered herself that she would never be found out. One
day, however, the grave-digger was at work in the cemetery, and threw up this man's skull,
and there he saw the nail I do not know that he suspected the woman, but he took it to her
and said, "Look there." She threw up her hands and cried, "My God! Found out at last." It
will all be found out at last, the secret things, the thoughts and imaginations of the heart.
Oh, you men who are boasting of your morality, how would YOU like to have the thoughts
and fancies and desires and the last twenty-four hours photographed and thrown upon a
screen before this audience tonight? The whole world will see those secret things in that
day, not those of twenty-four hours only, but those of a lifetime, unless you repent; You,
madam, who bare boasted of your purity and your nobility of character above others, and
fancied that you ought to be saved because of your goodness; how would you like to have
the hidden things of the chambers of imagery and imagination and desire photographed
and thrown on a screen before all this audience? But the whole world will see it in that
day, unless you repent. The secret things will all come to light.
3. The Lord tells us again that the basis of judgment will be our words. In Matthew xii.
36 I read, "But I say unto you that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give
account thereof in the day of judgment." Our careless, thoughtless, unstudied words
reveal what we are at heart. Our studied speeches do not reveal what we are but what we
would like to be; but our idle words, that we drop accidentally, they are the best revelation
of what there is in our hearts. Your impure words, your unkind words, your harsh words,
your words of gossip and slander; you will give account thereof.
On one occasion, at a service in Minneapolis, one of my workers came to me and said,
"Here is an infidel; will you come and speak to him?" I went to him, and in reply to my
question, he said, "Yes, I am an infidel!" I said, "Why are you an infidel?" He replied,
'Because the Bible is full of contradictions." "Full of contradictions?" I said. "Yes," he said.
"Will you please show me one?" I asked. "Oh" said he, "it is full of them" "Well," I said, "if
there are so many you ought to be able to show me one." "Oh, it is just full of them," he
said. "Well" I insisted, "please show me one.", Then he replied, "Well, I don't pretend to
know as much, about the Bible as you do." I said, "Then what are you talking about it for in
this way?" Then I looked him right square in the eye and I told him what Jesus said of the
idle words that men speak "Now," I said, "this is God's Word. God is the author of this
book, and you lightly and thoughtlessly have been slandering the Word of God, and thus
you have been slandering God, the author of it. I want to say to you, sir, that you will have
to give account of your words in the day of judgment." The man turned pale, and well he
might. I want to say to you men to-night that are pulling the Word of God to pieces
because you have been told that some German scholar says so and so; you men that
dare to criticise the book you don't know anything about; you men that are taking up the
idle talk of newspapers and reviews and retailing it, slandering God's Word and God, the
author of it; you will have to give an account thereof in the day of judgment. Well may you
tremble. I want to say to you men who have taken the name of the glorious Son of God, in
whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead, lightly on your lips, and have been saying
flippantly, "I don't believe that Jesus is divine, I don't believe that Jesus is the Son of God;"
you men who have been robbing the glorious Son of God of what is His due, you will have
to give an account of this in the day of judgment.
4. But the great basis of the judgment day will be what we do with Jesus Christ. We
are told in John iii 18, 19, "He that believeth in him is not condemned; but he that believeth
not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten
Son of God." God has sent one down into this world to be our Saviour. He has sent His
only Son. The rejection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, whom God has appointed to be
our Saviour, our King and our Lord, is the most daring and damning of all sins. Light has
been sent into the world and men have loved darkness rather than light because their
deeds are evil. There is nothing that reveals what is in the human heart so clearly as what
a man does with Christ. Christ is God incarnate, the light of God come into the world, and
the rejection of Jesus Christ proves a wicked heart.
The great question in the judgment day will be, "What did you do with Jesus Christ?" Oh, I
can imagine some people in that day. That man who sits in yonder gallery trying to make
light of what I am saying tonight, he will be there; I see him standing before the judgment
bar, and the throng falls back, there is profound silence. Then comes rolling forth, like the
sound of many waters, the majestic voice of the Judge, "What did you do with Jesus
Christ?"
IV. The Judge.-We now come to the fourth point. Who is to be the judge in that day?
Jesus Christ himself- "God hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in
righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance
unto all men in that He hath raised Him from the dead."
Christ is to be the Judge. That same Christ whom you are rejecting is to be the Judge.
That same Christ whom you are robbing of the honor which is His due is to be the Judge.
That same Christ whose divinity you are denying, not that you have any reason for
denying it, but simply you don't want to have to believe it and want comfort in your sin-that
same Christ whom you are trampling under foot will sit as Judge in that day. That will be a
very dark day for some people. It will be a dark day for Annas and Caiaphas, who robbed
Jesus of every form of justice. Now they stand before the bar, and Christ sits upon the
throne. I can imagine Pontius Pilate in that day, who knew that Jesus Christ was innocent,
and yet condemned Him to appease the Jewish mob. Pilate will stand at the bar, and the
Christ he so basely wronged will be on the throne. I cam imagine - the soldiers who spat
upon Him, and mocked Him, and crowned Him with thorns. The Christ they spat upon,,
buffeted and crowned with thorns, sits upon the throne and they stand at the judgment
bar. I can imagine Judas Iscariat, who for thirty pieces of silver sold his Master after three
years of close a
ssociation with Him; now he stands before the bar, and the Christ he betrayed sits upon
the throne. I can imagine that man and woman in this audience to-night who have been
telling their friends that they do not believe that Jesus is divine, who have been trampling
the Son of God under foot, who have been resisting the invitations of mercy it may be for
years; you stand before the throne, and the Christ whom you have defamed, slandered,
rejected and trampled under foot, sits as Judge.
V. The Issues of the Judgment Day.-Once more, please notice the issues of the
judgment day. They will be eternal. They will be either eternal joy and life and glory, or
eternal death, eternal darkness, eternal despair and eternal shame. Oh! men and women,
I would that I had it in my power to-night so to picture to you that great judgment day that
every man and woman in this audience, would go out from here with the judgment day of
Christ before them as a great reality; but it surpasses my power. There is the judgment,
throne; its blazing glory, its overwhelming splendor. I cannot describe. There is the Christ
upon the throne. His face shining with a glory above the glory of the Noonday sun, His
eyes like flames of fire piercing men through and through. And there you stand before
that awful judgment bar, the eyes of Christ upon you like a flame of fire, piercing you
through and through, your whole life laid bare and your secret thoughts revealed.
Oh, men and women, repent, REPENT, REPENT! "God now commandeth all men
everywhere to repent, because He hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the
world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given
assurance unto all men in that He hath raised him from the dead."
Repent, REPENT, REPENT!
***************************************************************
V
EVERY MAN'S NEED OF A REFUGE
"And a man shall be as an hiding-place from the wind and a covert from the tempest; as
rivers of water in a dry place; as the shadow of a great rock in a way land. Isaiah xxxii. 2.
I have a very precious old testament text to-night. I love the Old Testament, it is full of
Christ-Isaiah xxxii. 2: "And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind and a covert
from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place; as the shadow of a great rock in a
weary land."
A good many years ago I was traveling on the continent visiting some of the art galleries of
Germany, and I saw a picture in the new art gallery in Munich that made a very deep
impression on my mind. It represented the approach of a storm; the thunder clouds were
rolling up thick and ominous; the trees were bending before the first approach of the
oncoming tempest. Horses and cattle were scurrying across the fields in fright, and a little
company of men, women and children, with bowed forms, blanched faces, and terror
depicted in every look and action, were running before the storm in search of a hiding-
place. I do not suppose it was the artist's intention, but it has always seemed to me that
this piece was an accurate representation of every human life. Every man and woman
needs a hiding-place. You may say a hiding-place from what? A hiding-place from four
things.
1. A Hiding-Place, needed from an accusing Conscience.-First of all, every one of us
needs a hiding place from the accusations of our own conscience. Every man and woman
here to-night has a conscience, and every man and woman here to-night has sinned
against their own conscience. There is no torment like the torment of an accusing
conscience. We do not have to go to the Word of God to find that out. We find it in
heathen literature as well. It was not a Christian poet, but a heathen of about the time of
Christ, the Latin poet Juvenal, who said:
"Trust me, no torture that the poets feign
Can match the fierce, unutterable pain
He feels, who, night and day, devoid of rest,
Carries his own account in his breast."
It was another heathen poet, though he lived in a Christian land, the poet Lord Byron, who
wrote:
"Thus the dark in soul expire
Or live like scorpion, girt with fire,
Thus writhes the soul remorse hath riven,
Unfit for earth, undoomed for heaven;
Darkness above, despair beneath,
Around him gloom, within him death."
But we do not need to go to the poets to find out the torments of an accusing conscience.
We find them round about us every day in actual life and experience. One night at the
close of a service, at the church of which I am now pastor in Chicago, there came to me a
woman with a haunted face and said, "I would like to see you in private." I replied, "If you
will come to my office tomorrow at 2 p.m., I will have the pastor there; and if you have
anything to say we shall be glad to listen."
The next day at 2 o'clock the woman came to my office, and Mr. Hyde, the pastor, was
present, and I said to the woman, "Now what is the trouble?" She made an effort to speak,
and failed. Again I said, "What is the trouble?" Now she made an effort, and again failed.
For the third time I said, "What is the trouble? We cannot help you unless you tell us your
trouble." Then she gasped out, "I have killed a man. It was fourteen years ago, across the
Atlantic Ocean, in the Old Country, in the darkness of a forest, I drove a dagger into a
man's throat, and dropped the dagger and ran away. He was found in the forest with the
dagger by his side. Nobody suspected me, but everybody thought he had committed
suicide. I stayed there two years, and nobody ever suspected me; but I knew I had done
it, and was wretched and at last I came to America to see if I could find peace here. First I
went to New York and then came to Chicago, and I have been here twelve years, but have
not found peace. I often go to the lake, and stand on the pier and look into the dark
waters beneath, and I would jump in if I were not afraid of what may lie beyond death."
Haunted and hunted by her own conscience for fourteen years! Hell on earth! Well, some
one says, I can very readily see how a person who has committed so awful a deed as
that, staining her hands with human blood, should be haunted by her conscience. But I
have never done a thing like that. That may be, but you have sinned; and when
conscience points at us the finger of accusation, we do not so much balance up the
greatness or the smallness of our sin. But you say, "My conscience doesn't not trouble
me." That may be, for it is a well-known psychological fact that conscience sometimes
sleeps; but conscience never dies. The day is coming when that sleeping conscience of
yours will awaken, and your conscience will point at you the finger of accusation, and woe
be to the man whose conscience wakes up, who has no hiding place from his own
conscience. In the city of Toronto years ago there was a young girl who had drifted there
from the country. She had heard of the gaieties of the place, and had left her home and
come there for a life of pleasure, going to theatres and dances and amusements of that
sort and like many another that goes to the great
city with the same object, she was caught in the maelstrom of the cities sins and had
gone down, down, down into a life of shame. Her conscience did not trouble her; but one
night the Fiske Jubilee Singers were singing in Toronto, and some friends asked the girl to
go and hear them, and she did. At last they came to that hymn with the weird refrain:
"My mother once, my mother twice,
My mother she'll rejoice;
in heaven once in heaven twice,
my mother she'll rejoice."
The poor girl was sitting up in the gallery, and as she heard the strains of that chorus
floating up to her, all the memory of her childhood came back; she was a child, and at
home again, in the old home. It was evening; the lamp stood upon the table, another
sweet-faced mother glad there with open Bible on her lap, and she a little girl of four, with
golden hair, was kneeling at her mother's knee, learning to pray.
It all came back again to her. Again the Jubilee Singers came to that refrain:
"My mother once, my mother twice,
My mother she'll rejoice;
in heaven once in heaven twice,
my mother she'll rejoice."
And as those words came floating up again, the hot blood came to the girl's cheeks, she
sprang to her feet, and rushed down the stairs out into the streets of the great city. On,
on, on, as fast as her feet, now growing weary, could take her, out beyond the gaslights
into the country; and next morning, when a certain farmer came to his farm-house door,
there was the poor girl, clutching the threshold, dead! Hunted to death by her own
conscience.
Oh, there are men and women here to-night whose consciences are asleep, but whose
consciences will some day awaken, and woe be to the man or woman whose conscience
wakes up and who has no hiding place from it.
II. A Hiding-Place needed from the Power of Sin within Ourselves.-In the second
place, we need a hiding-place from the power of sin within ourselves. Now every man and
woman here to-night who know themselves at all well know that there are powers of evil
resident within themselves which are more than they can master in their own strength. If
there is any man or woman who thinks they have a complete mastery over themselves, if
there is any man who thinks he has power to break away in his own strength from the sin
that is within, he is a sadly deceived man. There are some people here to-night with the
overmastering appetite for strong drink. There are others who do not care for it at all, but
are enslaved by other sins. Others have a passion for gambling. Others care for neither of
these, but have a love for other things. With another it is an ungovernable temper; with
others it is a sharp, unkind, censorious tongue. With some it is one thing and with some
another. But with every man and woman of us within these four walls there is the power of
sin within ourselves, which is more than we can master in our own strength. We need a
hiding-place from the power of sin within.
I remember one night a young man came to me at the close of a meeting like this, in
Minneapolis, in America, and he said, "I heard you speaking in the street to-night, and I
said to myself, 'that man can help me,' and I have come here and stayed through the
service. Will you now help me?" I said I would be very glad to do so if I could. He said:
"listen; I was employed down in Pennsylvania, and I got to leading a fast life. Now," he
said, "you know that a fast life costs money. It cost more than I earned, and I put my hand
into my employer's money-till and took his money. Of course I was caught, but my
employer was a good man. He might have sent me to prison; instead of that, he said,
'You must go to the Northwest. It is a new country; begin life anew up there.' They sent
me here, and I have now got a good position, as you see by my uniform," and he pointed
to it. "But," he said, "I am going just the same way in Minneapolis that I went in
Pennsylvania. I am afraid to leave this hall to-night. Before I get a block from this hall, I
shall meet some one who knows me, and just as sure as do I am lost."
You may have no weakness in the direction that this young man had, and again you may
have; but every man and woman here has the power of sin within that is more than they
can master in their own strength. We need a hiding place from the power of sin within.
III. A Hiding-Place needed from the Power of the Devil.-In the third place, we need a
hiding-place from the power of the devil. Over in our country there are a great many
people who are too wise to believe in the existence of a personal devil. I believe in the
existence of a personal devil. I will tell you why. In the first place, because the Old Book
says so, and I have found that the man who believes in the Bible always comes out ahead
in the long run, and that the man who is too wise and too advanced to believe the Word of
God comes out behind in the long run, every time. Now, there was a time when I was so
wise that I believed so much of the Bible as was wise enough to agree with me. Thank
God, that time has passed. Thank God, he has opened my eyes and ears until I have
come to the place where I know-I wish I had time to tell you how I know- that that Book,
from the first chapter to the last, is the very Word of God. Now this Book teaches us that
there is a personal devil. Turn to 1 St. Peter v. 8: "Because your adversary, the devil, as a
roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." Ephesians vi. 11,12: "Put on
the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For
we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against
the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." But,
friends, there is another reason why I believe in a personal devil, and that is, because of
the teaching of my own experience and my common sense. Years ago a great French
man of science was crossing the Arabian desert under the leadership of an Arab guide.
When the sun was setting in the west, the guide spread his praying-rag down upon the
ground and began to pray. When he had finished the man of science stood looking at him
with scorn, and asked him what he was doing. He said, "I am praying." "Praying! praying
to whom?" "To Allah, to God." The man of science said, "Did you ever see God?" "No."
"Did you ever hear God?" "No." "Did you ever put out your hands and touch God and feel
Him?" "No." "Then you are a great fool to believe in a God you never saw, a God you
never heard, a God you never put out your hand and touched." The Arab guide said
nothing. They retired for the night, rose early the next morning, and a little before sunrise
they went out from the tent. The man of science said to the Arab guide, "There was a
camel round this tent last night." With a peculiar look in his eye, the Arab said, "Did you
see the camel?" "No." "Did you hear the camel?" "No." "Did you put out your hand and
touch the camel?" "No." "Well, you are a strange man of science to believe in a camel you
never saw, a camel you never heard, a camel you never put out your hands and touched."
"Oh, but," said the other, "here are his footprints all around the-tent." Just then the sun
was rising in all its oriental splendour, and with a graceful wave of his barbaric hand, the
guide said, "Behold the footprints of the Creator, and know that there is a God." I think the
untutored savage had the best of the argument. Friends, we see everywhere in the
magnificent universe the footprints of the Creator. But, alas! we see everywhere in human
society the footprints of the enemy. Why, you have only to walk the streets of Jordan and
you see the footprints of Satan; you see them in your dens of infamy, in the faces of the
men and women on the streets, and, alas! alas! you see the footprints of Satan in the
homes of culture and refinement. What means it that men and women of education, men
and women of refinement, fall under the power of all these strange delusions, of Christian
Science, Theosophy and all that sort of nonsense? It means that there is a devil-cunning,
subtle, masterly, marvelous-more than a match for you and me in cunning and power. We
need a hiding-place from the subtlety, the cunning, the power, of the devil
IV. A Hiding-Place needed from the Wrath to Come. -In the fourth place, we need a
hiding-place from the wrath to come. There are a great many people who do not believe
that there is "a wrath to come." I do. Why? Again, because the Old Book says so. The
Old Book says, as I showed you last night, that "God has appointed a day in the which He
will judge the World in righteousness," and God has given assurance of this by raising
Jesus Christ from the dead. The Old Book says: "There is to be a day of wrath and
revelation of the righteous judgment of a holy and outraged God!" I believe this because
the Bible says so.
Another reason why I believe that there is "a wrath to come" is that my common-sense
says so. Look here, here is a man who grows rich by overreaching his neighbours, grows
rich by robbing the widow and the orphan. He does it by legal means. Oh, yes, he is too
cunning to come within reach of the law. But he grows rich by making other people poor.
He increases in wealth and is honoured and respected. When he goes down the streets in
his magnificent equipage, the gentleman on the street turns and says to his son: "There
goes Mr. So-and-so, a man of rare business ability, a man who is now one of our leading
men of capital. I hope, my boy, when you grow up, you will be as successful as he." He
lives in honour, dies in honour, dies respected by everybody-almost. And the victims of
his rapacity, the victims of his oppression, the victims of his dishonesty lie yonder,
bleaching in the potter's field, where they have gone prematurely because of his robbery.
Do you mean to tell me that there will not be a day when these men who have lived on
wealth wrung from the poor widow and orphan will not have to go before a righteous God
and answer for it, and receive what they never received in this world, the meet reward of
their dishonesty? Of course there is a judgment day; of course there is a hell. If there is
not, then there ought to be. Look here, here is a man who goes through life, never giving
God one thought from one year to another. He leaves God out of his business, leaves
God out of his social life, leaves God out of his study leaves God out of his pleasures, and
makes God's day a day of pleasure, God's book never opened, God's son trampled under
foot. And thus the man lived, and thus he dies, going through the world ignoring the God
that made him and gave His Son to die upon the cross to save him. Do you mean to tell
me that there will not be a day when that man will have to go up before a righteous God
and answer these questions: "What did you do with My day?" "What did you do with My
laws?" "What did you do with My Word?" "What did you do, above all, with My Son?" Of
course there is a judgment day. And you and I need a hiding place from it, every one of
us, for every one of Us has sinned and come short of the glory of God. There are then
these four things from whi
ch we need a hiding place our own conscience, the power of sin within, the power and
subtlety of the devil and the wrath to come.
Is there a hiding place? I read my text again: "A man shall be as a hiding-place from the
wind and a covert from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a
great rock in a weary land." A man shall be-who is that man? There is just one man that is
a hiding-place -the God-man, Jesus Christ. He is a hiding-place from conscience. I have
told you part of a story, and I win now tell you the rest. When that woman came and told
me how she had been haunted by her conscience for fourteen years, I took the Bible and
said to her, "Do you believe what is written in this book?" She said, "Yes, sir, I believe it
all. I was brought up in the Lutheran Church!" "All right," I said, "listen!" (Isaiah liii. 6) "'All
we like sheep have gone astray?'" I told, "Is that true of you?" "Oh, sir," she said, "it is."
"'We have turned every one to his own way. '" "Is that true of you?" "Oh, yes, that is the
trouble. It is true." I said, "What are you?" She said, "I am lost." "Very well, listen to the
rest of it: 'And the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.' Now," I said, "who is the
Him?" She said, "It is Jesus Christ." "Well, listen: 'And the Lord hath laid on Jesus Christ
the iniquity of us all.' Now," I said, "let my Bible represent your sin, let my right hand
represent you, and my left hand Jesus Christ." I closed the Bible and repeated the text:
"All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one his own way." And I laid
my Bible over on my other hand and said, "Where is your sin now?" She said, "It is on
me." "Well, listen: 'The Lord hath laid on Him, the iniquity of us all.'" And I laid the Bible
over on the other hand. "Where is your sin now?" She hesitated and then said, "It is on
Jesus Christ." "Right!", I said. "Is it on you any longer, then?" It was a few moments before
she spoke, and then she burst out with a cry of joy: "No, it is on Jesus Christ!
" That woman, who had been haunted by her conscience for fourteen years went from my
office that day with the peace of God in her heart. If there a man or woman here haunted
with the memory of the past? Christ is a hiding-place and there is peace to-night for you in
Him.
Christ is a hiding-place from sin within. I knew a young man belonging to a good family,
highly educated, with noble aspirations, but completely overmastered by sin in one of its
most loathesome forms. He tried to break away, tried to be a man, but failed, and he went
down, deeper and deeper and deeper, unto at last he was in despair and on the verge of
a suicide's grave, and one awful night when despair had settled on his soul, he cried to
God for Christ's sake, and Christ set him free. And never once did he fall into that sin
again.
Thirdly, is a hiding-place from the power of sin. I know a man in our home country- I think
I never knew a man in my life more completely in the power of Satan than he was-a man
of brilliant intellectual gifts, the most remarkable orator I ever heard and yet he had gone
down, and had fallen into the power of Satan, gone down until his friends had all left him,
unto his wife and children were wanderers, and he was a tramp on the streets. The man
had gone down so low that on one occasion I was told he threw his poor wife down on the
floor (one of the noblest women who ever stood by a fallen husband), and stamped on her
with his heel. I said to him., "John, you ought to be repentant." He said, "Well, I do not
believe as you do. I do not believe in God or in your Bible." "But," I said, "John, that does
not make any difference; if you will take Jesus Christ as your Saviour, He will save you,
and if you do not take Him, you are lost." A few months afterwards, in another city, he
went to his wretched garret, and threw himself upon Christ, and Jesus Christ met him and
saved him and transformed him, and to-day he is one of the most honoured men in our
land. There is no mere speculation about the religion of Jesus Christ. It is a present-day
demonstrable reality. It is not merely that Christ saved people nineteen hundred years
ago; he is saving them to-day in London.
Once more, Christ is a hiding-place from the wrath to come. Now, of course, I cannot
prove that from experience, for it lies in the future; but I can prove it by an argument that is
unanswerable. That argument is this: the Christ that has power to save men from the
power of sin now -certainly has power to save them from the consequences of sin
hereafter. Is not that a good argument? Let me add, that any religion that is not saving
you from the power of sin to-day will not save you from the consequences of sin in
eternity. There is a lot of religion in this world that is absolutely, worthless. People tell you
that they are Christians and that they are religious. They are saying their prayers, and
doing all sorts of things. I will ask you a question: "Have you got that kind of faith in Jesus
Christ that is saving you from the power of sin today?" If you have, you have that kind of
faith in Jesus Christ that will save you from the consequences of sin hereafter. But if you
have that kind of faith in Jesus Christ which after all is not faith, which it not saving you
now, you have that kind of faith in Jesus Christ that wont save you from the penalty of sin
hereafter.
Friends, Jesus Christ is a refuge, a hiding-place from experience and its accusations,
from the power of sin within, from the power of Satan, from the wrath to come, from all
that man needs a hiding-place from. Who will come to this hiding-place tonight?
***************************************************************
VI
THE DRAMA OF LIFE IN THREE ACTS
"A certain man had two sons." Luke xv. II.
My subject to-night is the Drama of Life in Three Acts. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
author of the Drama, and it surpasses anything that was ever put on the stage in
conciseness, in point, in height and depth, and full-ness; and beauty of meaning, in pathos
and in power. The Dramatic Personas of the drama are four-God, two men and the Devil.
There are three acts in the drama: the First Act, Wandering; the second Act, Desolation;
and the Third Act, The Wanderer's Return. There is a Fourth Act, but with that we have
nothing to do to-night.
ACT I.-WANDERING; OR THE NATURE OF SIN
In the first act there are two scenes:
Scene 1.-A beautiful home, a spacious mansion, with everything to meet every desire of
the hearts of its occupants. An aged father, whose countenance is full of nobility, and
wisdom, and kindness, a remarkable, blending of strength and tenderness. He is in
earnest conversation with the younger of his two sons. This younger son is tired of the
restraints of home. He has heard of the gaiety in a distant country, and he longs to break
the trammels of his father's guardian care, and to see the sights and enjoy the pleasures
of this new land. And he cries impatiently, "Father, give me the portion of thy goods that,
falleth to me." A look of inexpressible pain passes over the gentle face of the aged father,
but he grants the sons request.
Scene 2.-A leave-taking, a home-leaving. The younger son has gathered all his property
together, got it into as portable a form as possible, and is taking his journey to the far
country. It is a beautiful spring morning, the birds are singing sweetly, the air is fragrant
with the perfume of spring flowers, the young man's voice is full of gladness and good
cheer and with light and tripping step he trends his way down the
avenue from the old home, little thinking of the father who watches him with moist eyes
and lonely heart as he leaves the front gate and goes out into a false and evil world.
In these two scenes we have a picture of the nature, beginnings and growth of sin. The
father in the drama is God; the son, man wandering from God. The son wished to have
his own way; he was tired of the restraints of his father's control. He desired to get away
from his father that he might do as he pleased. That is where sin begins-in a desire to be
independent of God, in a desire to have our own way, in a desire to do as we please. The
essence of sin is in a desire to do what we please, rather than be constantly looking to
God and asking Him what pleases Him. Is there any man or woman here to-night who
wishes to do as they please? They have the beginnings of sin in their heart. Now, what
you please to do may be upright, may be moral, may be very refined, but the desire to do
your own will is the heart and essence and substance of sin. There are different classes of
sinners and different forms of sin. There is sin that is coarse, and there is
sin that is refined. There is sin that is low and vulgar, and there is sin that is genteel and
elegant. But all sin is alike in essence. It is man seeking to be independent of God, man
seeking to have his own way, that is where sin begins, that is the very essence of sin.
The second scene represents to us the growth of sin. The son did not leave home at
once. His heart was in the far country already, but he still stayed at home. But not very
long. Not many days after his feet followed where his heart had already gone. That is the
story of sin in every instance. When a man starts out in the path of sin, starts out to have
his own way, he does not give up all communion with God at once. He still goes to church
occasionally, reads his Bible occasionally, prays now and then, but less and less as the
days go by, until at last he begins to wonder whether there is any God, begins to listen to
voices that say there is no God, and last of all, blatantly cries, "No God, no divine Christ,
no inspired Bible, no God!"
How far have you got on that path of sin? Are you just starting out? Are you seeking your
own pleasure, but still keeping up some form of communion with God, still attending the
House of God now and then, opening the Bible now and then, praying now and then, but
less and less; or have you got farther down that road, down where you are never found in
the House of God, never read your Bible, never go to God in prayer? Or have you got
away off into the far country, where you say, "There is no God, the Bible is not the Word of
God, Jesus Christ is not the Son of God?" How far have you got down the path of sin?
Will you notice before we leave this Act that the father granted the younger son's
request? He knew how the boy would use the money, but he also knew that the only way
for him to learn wisdom was in the bitter school of experience. That is precisely the way
that God deals with us. If a man desires to live independently of God, God lets him do it.
God does not force a man into a life of communion with Himself, and conscious
dependence on Himself; He gives us our choice and gives us our powers to make a living,
and if we wish to live without communion with Him, He allows us to do it. If we can only
learn the folly of living away from God by bitter experience, God lets us have the
experience.
ACT II.-DESOLATION; OR, THE FRUITS OF SIN.
Scene 1. _ It is a gay one. The young man has reached the far country, and life is one
constant round of pleasure balls, wine suppers, races, card parties, theatres, operas, all
kinds of amusements, innocent and sinful, are the order of the day. Every day is a day of
parties and every night a night of dissipation, and the young fellow is having a right royal
time. Oftentimes he looks back on the quiet home life. Ah! how humdrum it was; how he
pities his elder brother staying home there in all that dull life!
Scene 2.-The scene shifts. He is still in the city, but the boom has burst; hard times have
come, men are out of work, famine stalks the street. On every corner there are little
groups of men in ragged clothes, with pinched faces, with starvation looking out of their
eyes, standing around trying to earn a chance penny by, odd jobs, and our friend is
among the company. "There arose a mighty famine in that land, and he began to be in
want.".
Scene 3.-A rural scene, but not a pleasant one. A great pasture, but not a blade of grass.
In the prolonged drought every spear of grass has withered. In the midst of the field
stands a lonely carob tree, from which hang the long pods covered with dust; a herd of
gaunt, hungry swine are nosing about in the sand, looking for stray carob beans. Our
friend stands underneath the tree looking eagerly up at the carob beans, for "he would fain
have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat." At last, driven by hunger, but at
the same time weakened by it, he wearily climbs the tree, and shakes it until the pods fall
from its branches, but the hogs have devoured them before he can reach the ground.
Again and again he climbs the tree, but with the same result, and at last he falls upon the
ground in despair, starving, "and no man gave unto him." In these scenes of the parable,
we gave a picture of the fruits of sin. The first fruit of sin is pleasure; the young man has a
good time at first. There are those who tell us that there is no pleasure in sin, but I will not
tell you that; first, because you would not believe me if I did. You have tried sin and found
pleasure in it. I will not tell you that there is no pleasure in sin, because I know it is not
true. I tried sin and found pleasure in it. I will not tell you there is no pleasure in sin,
because the Bible does not say so. It is true that the Bible says "there is no peace for the
wicked," and you know that is true, or, if you don't know it now, you will before very long.
But the Bible does not say that there is no pleasure in sin. On the contrary, the Bible
speaks in Hebrews xi. of "the pleasures of sin." Of course it adds that they are only "for a
season," very short lived. There is pleasure in sin. Some one has said, I think it was Mark
Guy Pearse, that the devil is not such a fool as to go fishing without bait. The pleasures of
sin are the devil's bait. But mind you, the devil's bait always has a hook in it. He is
dangling his bait before some of you here tonight. "Oh," he says, "don't become a
Christian; you will have to give up this; the ball-room, look at this; the theatre, look at this;
the card-party and its pleasures, look at this." And to-night, if you will snatch the devil's
bait, the first you know you will have the devil's hook in your gills, and you will be on the
bottom of the devil's boat, beneath a pitiless sun, floating out over the sea of a hopeless
eternity.
The second fruit of sin is want. "He began to be in want." That is always the second result
of sin-want, famine, starvation. Oftentimes they come in a very literal form. How many
men there are in London to-night without a decent coat to their backs, without a meal in
their stomachs, without a place to lay their heads, who once had plenty. A friend of mine
pointed out to me a man one night in Chicago. He said, "Do you see that poor fellow
there all curled up near the store, with his uncombed hair and ragged clothes? That man
used to be a Congressman of this district." Fast times followed by hard times. But it does
not always come that way. There is many a man living in sin who has plenty of money,
plenty to eat, plenty to drink, plenty to put on, plenty of all material things; nevertheless,
want comes. There is other famine besides temporal famine. There is other starvation
besides physical starvation. A man has a soul as well as a belly, though a good many
men in London live as if they did not believe it; bat it is a fact. The human soul is so large,
so vast, so glorious that God only can fill it, and away from God there is starvation.
Augustine was right when he said, "Thou, O Lord, hast made us for thyself, and our soul is
never satisfied until it resteth in thyself." Away from God there is barrenness, away from
God is an aching void, away from God is the bottomless abyss of insatiable desire; away
from God is woe, woe, woe! Look at that young fellow as he sits there in his tatters and
with uncombed hair, the hunger of his stomach looking out of his half-crazy eyes, and see
in that wretched prodigal a picture of your soul, a picture of every soul in this hall to-night
that is away from God.
How well I remember a day and a night in my own life. I had started out one afternoon to
have an afternoon and night of pleasure. With a little company of chosen companions I
was in a hall that had been fitted up at great cost for pleasure. For a few moments I had
left my gay companions, and I stood in the distance leaning against a pillar and looking at
them yonder. And oh, there was such a cry, such an aching void, such a mysterious
despair in my heart, that I leaned up against the pillar of that magnificent hall and I
groaned in the agony of my spirit. I was starving. What do you think I did? I shook it all off
and went right back to spend the afternoon and night as I had started out to spend it.
What a fool I was I
The third fruit of sin is degradation and slavery. "He went and joined himself to a citizen of
that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine; and he would fain have filled his
belly with the husks that the swine did eat, and no man gave unto him." Jesus was to
Jews, and if 'there is any position low and degrading in the sight of a Jew it is that of a
swine-herd. Christ meant this, that you and I have our choice between being God's sons
and hog-tenders to the devil. That is the choice open to every man here to-night. That
young man might have been a son in his father's home, in glad, ennobling and well-
requited service, but instead of that he is hog-tender to a stranger. It is open to you to be
a child of God in full and joyous surrender to His will, in glad and ennobling and well-
requited service, or to be hog-tender to the devil. Men say, "I will not be a Christian. I
want my own way." You cannot have it; no man has his own way- It is either God's way or
the devil's. You cannot have your own way-unless you make God's way your own. Young
man, which will you choose to-night? To be a child of God., or to be a swine-herd for
Satan?
Act III.-THE WANDERER'S RETURN; OR, THE REMEDY FOR SIN.
We come now to the third and last act of the drama. There are two scenes. The first
scene is the same lonely field. The young man sits beneath the carob tree with his face in
his hands and in despair. He begins to think. Visions of the old home come before him.
He sees his noble father; he sees the well-laden table; he sees the well-fed servants, and
bitterly he cries, "How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to
spare, and I (his son) perish with hunger!" and his face sinks deeper into his hands. Then
he lifts his head with the light of a new hope in his eyes, and he cries, "I will arise and go
to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before thee,
and am no more worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants." And
he arose and came to his Father. This is God's picture of the remedy for sin. Notice
what it is. In the first place he began to think-that is where salvation begins in thinking.
People say that Christianity is blind faith; not a bit of it. Christianity is a rational faith that
comes from honest, candid, close thought. He began to think. Men often say to me, "I am
not a Christian, because I think for myself." My dear friend, you are not a Christian
because you don't think for yourself. You don't think, and you know you don't. For every
man who is not a Christian because he thinks for himself, I will show you a hundred who
are not Christians because they don't and won't think for themselves. What is the trouble
with you who are out of Christ? The simple, trouble is that you won't think. You are bound
not to think. You deliberately refuse to read every book that would make you think. You
go down to hear some infidel lectures because you think that will prevent you thinking,
because they stuff you with irrational nonsense. At a meeting like this you will go out
when the preaching becomes too pointed and you are compelled to think; some of you
would do it now if you dared. If I could get you men and women who are out of Christ to
think for thirty consecutive minutes, I would get you saved. The trouble is you are bound
not to think. A stubborn refusal to think is sending tens of thousands of the men of Great
Britain down to perdition.
He thought about the comparative lots of his father's servants and of himself in this far
country. The comparative position of a child, or even a servant, of God and a servant of
the devil; that is the thing to think about. I wish I could get a good and faithful servant of
Christ and a faithful servant of the devil to stand together on this platform to-night and just
let you look at the two. Pick out the best servant of the devil you know in London, and
then pick out the most faithful and devoted servant of Jesus Christ that you know; then
make a call on them the same day, and study their faces. If this does not make a
Christian of you, it is because you are not willing to give up sin. Compare the lot of the
child of God and that of the servant of the devil.
But, friends, he did not to stop with thinking; his thought brightened into resolution. He
said, "I will arise and go." It is not enough to think, you must resolve; there are people here
to-night who have thought of this question often and who know just as well as I do that
they ought to be Christians, but they never come to the point of resolution. In my first
pastorate there was one of our leading men in business and politics whom I know very
well. I said to him, "John, you ought to be a Christian." "'I know it"' he replied. "I would
give everything in the world if I were a Christian. I know you have got the right of it, and
the best of it, and I would like to be a Christian!" "Then," I said, "John, give me your hand
on it, and take Jesus Christ right now." But he never would come to the point of resolution.
Don't only think; resolve! What are you to resolve? "I will arise and go to the Father." That
is the thing; come to God, to your Father. Come right to Him.
But notice how to come; come with a confession, and say, "I have sinned." That is the only
way a sinner
can come to God-with a confession. God is willing to receive the vilest sinner on earth
that will come with a confession on his lips.
The last step is "He arose and came to his Father." He turned his back on husks and
hogs and hunger and turned his face towards home. Now we come to the last scene.
The boy is nearing home. I don't know what his thoughts may have been by the way. He
may have had doubts and fears., he may have wondered how he would be received, he
may even have thought, "I wish I could fix myself up better before going home." But he
had sense enough to come just as he was, and he kept trudging right along on his
journey, and now he is within a few miles of home. Away off - yonder on the hilltop, as the
sun was setting, stands a man, an old man, in the last rays of the setting sun, peering off
into the west. He has often been there before; it is the father looking out into the west, for
the home-coming of the boy that never came. The loving father is there again, for love
never wearies, looking out into the west Away down yonder towards the horizon he sees a
speck. Can it be the boy? It grows larger and larger; it assumes the proportions and form
of a man, but not at all the boy who left his home; no longer is it that rotund form, no
longer is there the bright glow of youth in his face, no longer is there the light, tripping
step. It is the figure of a man prematurely old, with sunken cheeks and emaciated form,
clothed in rags and sore-footed limping slowly along the road. But those old eyes, though
dim with age, are sharp with love. Hear that cry, "My son, my son!" The aged feet forget
their feebleness- The old man runs and falls on the neck of him and kisses him. The son
begins to stammer out his confession: "Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before
thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son." But the father won't hear another
word. He cries: "Bring forth the best robe and put it on him, a ring on his hand and robes
on his feet; and bring hither the fatted calf and kill it; and let us eat and be merry for this
my son was dead and is alive again: he was lost and is found." Of what is this a picture?
God-God's attitude towards the sinner. Although the son had forgotten the father, the
father had not forgotten the son. For many years you have forgotten God, but God has
never forgotten you. You have not thought of God for many a long day, but there has not
been a day in which God has not thought of you, waiting to see some sign of your home-
coming. If you turn your back on your sin to-night, if you turn back on husks, hogs and
hunger, turn you face towards God; while you are still a great way off, God will run to meet
you; and there will be the best robe of God's own righteousness in Christ to put on you, a
ring for your finger, a pledge of your sonship; a kiss of reconciliation for your cheek, shoes
of the preparation of the Gospel of Peace for your feet, and the fatted calf, typical of the
great feast of joy and gladness in Jesus Christ. Men and women, come home to-night.
I heard years ago a story which I have never forgotten. A girl had gone astray and had
left her home the great city. For some time she had continued to write to her mother, but
after a while her letters became less frequent and at last they ceased altogether. The
mother suspected the worst, and came up to the city to search for the lost girl. She went
to a gentleman who worked in the lower parts of the city and asked him, "Can you get my
daughter for me?" "Well.," he replied, "I think I can, but you will have to do just what I tell
you." "I will do anything to get my daughter," she replied. "Then," said the missionary, "go
to a photographer and have your picture taken; have it taken large size, and have a
hundred of them, and bring them to me." After a while the mother came, bringing the
hundred photographs. "Now," be said, 'sit down and write underneath each photograph
just these two words, 'Come home,' " and the mother sat down and wrote. "Now," said the
missionary, "may I take these photographs down into the low parts of the city and put
them up in the saloons and places of infamy?" It was a hard thing to ask of a pure woman,
that her picture should be put up to the gaze of the outcast and the vile. But the mother's
lore said "Yes"- anything to win the girl. The man took them and put them up in a hundred
dens of infamy. Then he said to the mother, "Now go right home and wait." A few nights
after, a group of revelers came into one of the places where the mother's picture hung
among the group was the lost daughter; who, looking across the saloon, saw that picture
on the wall. It looked familiar. Stepping over to it, she saw in her mother's handwriting the
two words, "Come home." She knew what it meant; it broke her heart; she fled from the
saloon and took the first train for home, and in a few hours she was wrapped in her
mother's arms.
That is what God has done in this fifteenth chapter of Luke. He has sent down a picture
of Himself, picture of His heart of love, of His love for you and me, and underneath it God
has written, as it were in His own handwriting, these two words, "Come home."
Will you come to-night?
***************************************************************
VII
QUESTION THAT SHOULD STARTLE EVERY MAN WHO IS NOT A CHRISTIAN
"How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?" Hebrews, ii, 3.
I have a text to-night which I believe God has given me for this hour, a text that ought to
startle every man and woman in this building who has not accepted the Gospel of Christ.
You will find it in Hebrews ii. 3: "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?" I
wish that that text would burn itself into he heart of every man and woman in this house
who is out of Christ, "How shall I escape if I neglect so great salvation?" I wish that every
man and woman that may go away from this place to-night without definitely having
received Christ as their Saviour and Lord and Master would hear it ringing in their ears as
they go down the street, "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?" I wish
that every one that may lie down to sleep to-night without a definite assurance of being
forgiven through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ and of acceptance before God in Him,
would hear it all through the night, "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?"
Our text sets forth the folly and guilt of neglecting the salvation that God has sent to us in
and through His Son Jesus Christ, and that is my object to-night. My sermon is all in the
text-the folly and guilt of neglecting the salvation that God the Father has sent through His
Son and in His son Jesus Christ.
You notice I say not merely the folly but the guilt. There is many a man who thinks that
perhaps it may be a foolish thing not to accept Christ, and admit the folly of it, but he has
never realized the guilt of it. But I shall endeavour to show you to-night in the unfolding of
this text that it is not merely an egregiously foolish thing, but that it is an appalling wicked
thing to neglect this salvation.
1. THE GREATNESS OF THE SALVATION.
We see the folly and guilt of neglecting this Salvation, in the first place, by a consideration
of the greatness of the salvation. "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?"
1. We see the greatness of the salvation first of all in the way in which the salvation
was given. God sent His Son, His only Son, down into the world to proclaim this salvation.
As we read in the preceding chapter, "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners,
spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto
us by His Son whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the
worlds; who, being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and
upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins,
sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." Have you ever thought of it in the light
of the context, that when God in infinite condescension, the great and infinitely holy God,
sent down His own Son to proclaim pardon to the vilest sinner, if you and I neglect this
salvation we are pouring contempt upon the Son of God, and upon the Father that sent
Him? If God had spoken this salvation by the lips only of inspired prophets, it would have
a right to demand our attention. If God had gone above prophets, and had spoken this
salvation by the lips of angels sent down from Heaven, it would have a still greater right to
demand our attention. But when God, in His infinite condescension, sent not merely
prophets or angels, but sent His own son, the only begotten one, the express image of His
person, God manifest in the flesh, to proclaim this salvation, and you and I do not heed it,
we are guilty of the most appalling presumption and defiance of God. "He that despised
Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses," but how much sorer
punishment you and I shall receive if we neglect this greater salvation.
2. In the second place, the greatness of this salvation is seen in the way in which it was
purchased- This is a costly salvation. It was purchased by the shed blood, by the
outpoured life of the incarnate Son of God. Ah, friends, when God in wondrous love went
to that extent that He sacrificed His very best, when God went to that extent that He gave
His own and only Son to die on the cross at Calvary, that He might purchase your
salvation and mine, if you and I neglect so great salvation we are pouring contempt on the
precious blood of the Son of God. "He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under
two or three witnesses," but how much greater punishment shall he merit who under foot
the Son of God, and counts the blood of the covenant wherewith He was sanctified an
unholy thing, and insults the Spirit of Grace (Hebrews x. 29,29).
3. Again, the greatness of this salvation is seen in the third place by a consideration of
what it brings. It brings pardon for all our sins, it brings deliverance from sin, it brings
union with the Son of God in His resurrection life, it brings adoption into the family of God,
it brings an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and, that fadeth not away, laid up in
store in Heaven for us, who are kept by the power of God, through faith, unto a salvation
ready to be revealed in the last time. When you think that God has put at our disposal in
Jesus Christ all His wealth, and is ready to make us heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus
Christ, who can measure the guilt of neglecting and of turning a deaf ear to this wonderful
salvation? Suppose that on his coronation day King Edward had ridden down to the East
End of London, and seeing some wretched little boy on the street, clad in rags, with filthy
face and hands, his great heart of love had gone out to that wretched boy, and he had
stopped the royal carriage and said, "Bring that boy here," and they had brought the boy,
and he had said, "I want to take you out of your poverty, out of your squalor and rags and
wretched home; I am going to take you to the royal palace and adopt you, as my son."
Then suppose the boy had turned said, "Go along, I don't want to he adopted as your son;
I would rather have my wretched crust of bread, I would rather have my rags and filthy
home than live in your old palace; I don't want to go to be your son."
But when the great King of Glory, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the great Eternal
Son of God comes to you and me, in our filth and rags and sin, and wants to take us out
of our filth and sin and rags of unrighteousness, and says, "I want to adopt you into my
family and make you an heir of God and a joint-heir with Me," there are some of you men
and women in this building to-night who, by your actions, are saying, "Go away with your
salvation, go away with your adoption into the family of God; I would rather have the crust
of the world's pleasure and the rags of my sin than all the royal apparel of righteousness
and glory which you offer me." Oh, the daring, damning guilt, of any man or woman who
neglects so great salvation!
II. ONLY SALVATION.
A second thought which the text suggests is that our folly is great in neglecting this great
salvation because it is the only salvation that is open to us. As Peter puts it in Acts iv. 12:
"There is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved."
It is salvation in Christ, or it is no salvation at all. A man is in a burning building. If there
were one way of escape by a fire-escape, and another by a great broad stairway, he
would have a perfect right to neglect the fire-escape for the easier escape by the stairway.
But there was no way of escape but the fire-escape, how great would be his folly in
neglecting it. Men and women, you are in a burning building, in a doomed world. There is
just one way of escape; that is by Christ. In Christ any one can be saved. out of Christ; no
one shall be saved. By Christ, or not at all. There is a class of men to-day who say, "Give
up your Bible, give up your Christ of the Bible." and we turn to them and say, "What have
you got to give us in place of our Bible; what have you got to give us in place of the
Christ of our Bible?" Now we know by personal experience that the Bible and Christ bring
forgiveness of sins and peace of heart, for they have brought them to us. We know that
they bring deliverance from sin's power, for they have brought it to us. We know that they
bring joy unspeakable and full of glory, for they have brought it to us. We know that they
bring pardon and a firm assurance of eternal life, for they have brought them to us. We
know that Christ makes us sons of God, and if sons, then heirs of God, and joint heirs with
Himself. What have you got that will bring us the same, that will bring us pardon and
peace and set us free from the power of sin? What have you got that will bring us joy
unspeakable and full of glory? What have you got that will bring us the assurance of
eternal life? Have you anything? No, you have not. Well,
then, please, we are not quite so great fools as to give up a book and a Saviour that bring
us all these for nothing. Salvation in Christ, or salvation not at all. Point me to one saved
man in London that was not saved by Christ. I have been away round this round earth. I
have been in every latitude and almost every longitude, north and south; I have talked with
all kinds of people, of all races and all classes, but I have never yet found a saved man,
who had a glad assurance of salvation and practical deliverance from sin's power, that
was not saved by Jesus Christ; neither has anybody else.
III. TO MISS SALVATION ALL THAT IS NECESSARY IS MERELY TO
NEGLECT IT.
In the third place, this text teaches us that to miss this salvation, and to bring upon
ourselves the just and awful displeasure of a holy God for our light and contemptuous
treatment of a salvation so wonderful, given and purchased at so great a cost, all that is
necessary is simply to neglect it. "How shall we escape if we neglect, so great salvation?"
In order to bring upon your head the awful displeasure of God, and to be lost forever, it is
not necessary that you go into any outrageous immoralities; it is not necessary that you
should be an arrant and blatant blasphemer; it is not necessary that you should abuse
churches and preachers of the Gospel; it is not necessary that you should even positively
refuse to accept Jesus Christ; all that is necessary is that you simply neglect. More
people are lost in Christian lands by neglecting than in any other way. There are millions
in England to-day who are going through life neglecting, drifting into their graves
neglecting, drifting into eternity neglecting, drifting into hell neglecting. That is all that is
necessary to be lost. Here is a dying man, there stands a table by the dying man's
bedside, within easy reach, and standing on that table there is a tumbler in which is a
medicine that has power to save the dying Christian's life. The man has strength enough
to put out his hand and take
the tumbler and drink the medicine. Now what is all that is necessary for that man to be
saved? All that is necessary is simply for him to put out his hand and take the tumbler and
drink the medicine. Now what is all that is necessary for that man to be lost and die? It is
not necessary that he should cut his throat or blow out his brains; it is not necessary that
he should throw the medicine out of the window; it is not necessary that he should assault
or insult the doctor or the nurse; it is not necessary that he should positively refuse to take
the medicine; all that is necessary for that man to die is to neglect to take the medicine.
Men and women out of Christ, you are dying. Eternal death is at work in your souls to-
night, but on that table, in that Book, in the Christ of that Book, there is a medicine that will
save you, and save you to-night if you will take it. The medicine is within the reach of
anybody in this building. Christ is nearer to you than the man or woman that sits next to
you in that pew. All you have to do to-night to be saved is to put out your hand and take
Christ. "To as many as received Him to them gave He power to become the sons of
God." What is all that is necessary to you to perish eternally? Not to commit moral suicide;
not to commit to-night some awful act of immorality; not to get up and curse Christ and the
Bible; not loudly to proclaim that you are an infidel; not to refuse blatantly to take Christ; all
that is necessary for you to be lost is simply to neglect. Here is a boat on the Niagara
River, away above the Falls, towards Lake Erie, where there is scarcely any current. A
man sits in the boat, being carried on very, slowly by the gentle current. There is a good
pair of oars in the boat, and the man could take them and pull up the river towards the
lake, or to either bank, if he liked; but the man sits there and is carried on, almost
imperceptibly at first, and then faster and faster, until, before he knows it, he is in the swift
current just upon the rapids, an
d he is being carried on towards the Falls. The oars are no good to him now, the current
is too swift; he could not save himself if he would-but on the shore there are men who
have seen his peril; they have run along the bank and have thrown a line good and strong.
It falls right into the boat, at the man's very feet. What is all that the man has to do to be
saved? All he has to do is to lay hold of the rope and they will pull him ashore, as has
been done more than once on that river. What is all that he has to do to be lost? It is not
necessary that he should take up the oars and pull with the current; it is not necessary that
he should throw the oars overboard; it is not necessary that he himself should jump into
the river; all that is necessary is simply for him to neglect to lay hold of that rope that lies
before him, and the swift current of the river will carry him on to absolutely certain death
over the cataract.
Men and women, that is a picture of every man and woman in this building out of Christ.
You are in a boat in a perilous stream, being carried towards the cataract of eternal
perdition. There is no man who has the power to take the oars in his own strength and
pull against that awful current; there is no man on earth who can save himself; but God
has seen your peril, and, in the Gospel of His Son, has thrown out a rope. It has fallen at
your feet to-night; all you have to do is to lay hold, and He will pull you safely on to the
glorious shore. But what is all that you have to do to be lost? It is not necessary that you
should jump into the current or pull with the stream, or refuse to accept Christ. All that is
necessary is that you simply neglect, and that awful current that you are already in will
sweep you over the cataract to eternal death and ruin.
Some one put a little card into my hand one day, a short, narrow card, and on the one side
were these words, "What must I do to be saved?" Underneath was written God's answer
in Acts xvi. 31: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Then it said
"Over," and I turned it over. On the other side of the card was this question, "What must I
do to be lost?" and there was the answer in just one word "Nothing!" "Nothing!" You don't
have to do anything to be lost. You are lost already; if you do not do something, and do it
quickly, you will be lost forever. "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?"
To sum it all up, friends, all that is necessary to be lost to-night, all that is necessary to
bring upon our heads the awful wrath of God for our light and contemptuous treatment of
a Gospel proclaimed by the lips of His own Son and purchased by the atoning death of
His own Son, all that is necessary is simply to neglect.
Years ago in Minneapolis, the leading paper was the Minneapolis Tribune, published in a
magnificent six or seven-story building, the finest newspaper building at that time in the
Northwest. I had occasion very frequently to go into the upper stories of that building to
see editorial friends. There was one great defect in that great building which I had never
noticed. The defect was this, that the stairway went right round the elevator shaft, so that
if a fire broke out in the elevator shaft escape by the stairway was cut off as well. There
was, however, a fire-escape outside. That very thing happened. There broke out a fire in
the elevator shaft, and it commenced to sweep up the shaft, story by story, cutting off
escape by the elevator and cutting off escape by the stairway as well. But they had a
brave elevator boy who went up a number of times until he got a large number of men
down from the upper stories, and almost all the rest escaped by the fire-escape outside
the building. But away up in the sixth story there was a man, a dispatcher for the
Associated Press, which is the largest news gathering agency in the United States. He
was urged to escape, but he refused to move. There he sat by his instrument,
telegraphing to all parts of the country that the building was on fire. He could have gone
out of the building by the fire-escape, and across the road to an instrument there, and
could have done just as well; but, like a typical newspaper man, he wanted do something
sensational, and so there he sat telegraphing the news. There had been a similar case
above Johnstown in the time of the Johnstown flood, when the dam of the river was
breaking. A woman out in a telegraph office at the bottom of the dam telegraphing down
to the people at Johnstown that the dam was breaking and that they had better flee for
their lives. But she sat there, because duty required her, until the dam burst, and she was
swept down in the flood. This man, however, sat there quite unnecessarily, merely
because of his desire for notoriety. "I am in the Tribune building," he telegraphed, "in the
sixth story, and the building is on fire. The fire has now reached the second story; I am in
the sixth." In a little while he sent another message: "The fire has now reached the third
story." Soon he telegraphed: "The fire has reached the fourth story; I am in the sixth."
Soon the message went over the wires: "The fire has reached the fifth story; I am in the
sixth." Then he thought it was about time to leave; but, in order to do this, he had to cross
the hallway to a window to reach the fire-escape. He went to his door and opened it, and,
to his dismay, found that the fire had not only reached the fifth story,, but the sixth story,
and that the hallway was full of smoke and flame, which, the moment he opened the door
swept into the room. He shut the door quickly. What was he to do? The stairway, the
elevator and the fire-escape were all cut off; but he was a brave man., and he went to the
window and threw it up. Down below stood a great crowd, six stories down. There was no
means of catching him if he jumped, and he stood there on the window sill, not knowing
what to do. But presently he looked up. Above his head was a long wire guy-rope that
passed from the Tribune building to the roof of a building across an opening. Below him
was a chasm six stories deep, but he caught hold of the guy-rope and began to go hand-
over-hand across that chasm. The people down in the street looked on in breathless
suspense. On and on he went, and then he stopped. The people below could hardly
breathe. would he let go? No. On and on he went, and again he stopped, and again the
crowd below gasped, but only for a moment. His strength was gone; he was now obliged
to let go, and down he came tumbling through those six stories of space, crushed into a
shapeless mass below. All through mere unnecessary neglect!
Men and women, you are in a burning building tonight, you are in a doomed world; but,
thank God, there is a way of escape, and one way only, in Christ Jesus. No one knows
how long that way will be left open. But I beg of you, do not neglect it, and then when it is
too late lay hold on some poor guy-rope of lame philosophy, and go a little way, and then
let go and plunge, not six stories down, but on and on and on the awful unfathomable
depths of the gulf of despair. Men and women, turn to Christ to-night! "How shall we
escape if we neglect so great salvation?"
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VIII
A SOLEMN QUESTION FOR THOSE WHO ARE REJECTING CHRIST THAT THEY
MAY OBTAIN THE WORLD.
"What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the world, and lose his own soul?" Mark, viii, 36.
That question ought to set thinking every man and woman here tonight, who, because of
love of the world is refusing Jesus Christ.
1. Will you please notice in the first place the two things that are contrasted in the
verse? The two things contrasted are not the present and the future. The question is not
what shall it profit a man if he gain the present and lose the future. That would be an
important question. If a man were to gain the fleeting present and thereby lose the eternal
future, it would be a very foolish bargain; but that is not the question of the text. The man
who loses his soul does not gain the present. It is true he loses the future, the eternal
future; but he does not gain the present. The man living in sin, the man living away from
Christ, does not get the most out of the life that now is. He gets the least out of it. On the
other hand, the man that saves his soul does not lose the present. It is true that be gains
the future, the eternal future; but he does not lose the present. The man whose soul is
saved gets the most out of the life that now is. The two things put in contrast are these,
the world and the soul, or life- the world, that is, the tangible world and all it contains,
wealth, honour, power, pleasure, everything that appeals to the senses, the lust of the
flesh and lust of the eye and the vainglory of life (cf. 1 John ii, 16). That is the world. That
which is put into contrast with it is the soul or life, the inner, real man. To gain the world is
to get all the wealth there is, and all the honor there is, and all the social position there is,
and all the power there is, and all the worldly pleasure there is. To lose the soul is to lose
your real manhood, to fall short of that for which God created you, to miss the divine
image, to have the divine image blotted out and the image of the devil stamped in its
place.
To lose the soul is to come short of the knowledge of God, to lose communion with God
and likeness to God, to "fall short of the glory of God." Now the question is this, What shall
it profit you to gain all that this world has, all its wealth, all its honor, all its pleasures, all its
power and lose your true selves, lose that for which God created you, lose communion
with God and likeness to God, and the glory of God?
II. For any man to gain the whole world at the cost of forfeiting his soul would be a bad
bargain. If one could get the whole world by forfeiting his soul, it would be an idiotic
exchange. Why?
1. First of all, because the world does not satisfy. The world never satisfied a human soul.
Take wealth. Was ever any man satisfied with wealth? Did any amount of money ever
bring satisfaction and lasting joy to any man or woman on earth? You had a man here in
England a few years ago who was very successful in making money. He made
millions of pounds sterling, but so little did it satisfy him that he jumped overboard from the
deck of an ocean steamer and drowned himself. I remember one day that the heir to one
of the largest fortunes in the world invited me to dinner, and I went to dinner with him.
After the dinner was over he opened his heart to me, and confessed his dissatisfaction
with life. All the million - and there were a great many millions that that young man was
heir to- did not give him satisfaction and joy.
Did honour ever satisfy any man? I have known men and women in the highest positions
of honour is politics and social life, in culture and in all spheres of life, but I never knew a
man or woman yet that was satisfied with honour. Does power satisfy any man? Was any
king or emperor or czar, no matter how large his power, satisfied with the possession of
power? Do the pleasures of life satisfy any man? Does the ball room satisfy? Does the
card party satisfy? Does the theatre satisfy? Does the race-course satisfy? Does gambling
satisfy? Is there any form of the world's pleasure that satisfies the human soul? How mad
then to forfeit your soul to gain money, houour, power, position, glory, pleasure, or
anything that this world contains, when we know that they never satisfied anybody.
2. But in the second place it is a mad bargain to forfeit your soul to gain the world,
because the world does not last. As the Apostle John says in I John ii. 17, "The world
passeth away." How well we know it. Take wealth. How long does wealth last? With
many a man it does not last even a few years. A man is a millionaire to-day, and by a turn
of the wheel of fortune he is practically penniless to-morrow. I was talking about a man of
your city only to-day to a friend of his, and he told me how wealthy this man used to be.
But there was a little change in the line of production in which this man was interested,
and your country ceased to be the country that supplied that market, and that man's
fortune dwindled from millions to practically nothing. I remember when I was a boy, one
night we five children were in the sitting room at home, and we asked our father to tell us
what his properties were. We were going to figure them up and see how much we were
going to be worth when
he was gone. He was rather amused at the idea, and he began to tell us what he thought
he was worth; and when he told us of all the possessions he could think of, we all of us
added them up, and divided them by five to see how much each of us would be worth
when my father saw to hand things over to us. This looked splendid on paper, and I felt
quite rich that night; but a financial crash in America in 1873 which affected my father's
properties, and little by little, by the year '77, when my father was called away, practically
the last vestige of all that he possessed was taken from his hands and he left only a few
thousand dollars. And that was mismanaged, and in a few months not a penny was left.
All I had was a matchbox and a pair of sleeve-buttons, one of which I have lost, and I
don't know what became of the other. "The world passeth away." I thank God that that
money did pass away. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
Take honors, how long do they last? I remember a man in our country who stood
preeminent among the statesmen of America I think beyond all question he was the first
statesman of America of his day. He might have become President, but he was a little too
much of a statesman to become President. England had an unpleasant experience once
with this man's statesmanship, when he represented the United States government at the
Geneva Commission on the Alabama claim and carried the day. He was the most highly
honoured I think of any man of his day in America, but after a while this man dropped out,
and we almost forgot there had been such a man. I remember I was thinking of this man
one day, and I said to myself, "I guess so-and-so's dead." I have not seen his name in the
pages at all lately," and a day or two afterwards I saw in the papers that the Hon. So-and-
so was living in such a street of New York, that he never went out in but sat by his open
window looking out upon the passing crowds and thinking of his old-time successes. That
man was utterly forgotten, yet at one time he was almost the unquestioned leader of
political life in America. In a few months more I took up the paper and read that he was
dead, and when he died there was nothing said. He had dropped out of sight. Honour
does not last. Take your most honoured statesmen, whose names are in every mouth, no
one will be speaking of them or thinking of them a few years hence. "The World passeth
away." Suppose honour and money do last until a man dies. How long will they last?
Twenty years, thirty years, forty years, possibly fifty or sixty years, and then-gone! One of
our wealthiest men in America, the wealthiest man of his day, died. Two men on 'Change
in this city, New York, met the next day, and one of them said to the other, "How much did
so-and-so leave?" and the other one replied, "He left it all." So he did. Of his one hundred
and ninety-six millions of dollars which he was worth, he didn't take one penny with him.
Pleasure, how long does it last? Take the ball; how long does the pleasure of the ballroom
last? Somewhere from two to seven hours; then you go home with weary feet and
throbbing brain, blaming yourself for having been such a fool. The card party; how long
does it last? Oh, two or three hours, four or five hours; and then you will go home with a
lighter purse and a heavier heart. The champagne party; how long does it last? A few
hours, and you go home with an aching head, a nauseated stomach, thinking what a fool
you have been and saying, "I win never be such a fool again." Ah, friends, "the world
passeth away."
The joys of friendship; how long do they last, if it is worldly friendship? A few brief years,
and then we look into the casket on the beloved form and face and the coffin lid is locked
down, and all is over. "The world passeth away." But the soul lasts. "He that doeth the
will of the Lord abideth for ever." So I say that to forfeit your soul to gain the world is a
mad bargain, for the world does not satisfy while you have it, and it does not last at all.
II Now, then, if any one here to-night could get the whole world as the price of selling his
soul it would be a foolish bargain.; but who ever got the whole world? Who ever had the
world's wealth? No one. The richest man has but small portion of all the world's wealth.
Who possesses all the world's honor? The most honored man on earth to-day has but a
portion of all the world's honour? Who possesses all the world's pleasure? The greatest
devotee Of Pleasure has but a very small portion of all the world's pleasure. Who
possesses all the worlds power? The mightiest man on earth has but a small portion of all
the world's power. But even if you could get it all, it would be a bad bargain; and what a
mad bargain to sell your soul to get so small a portion of the world as any of you are
getting!
I asked a man one night at a meeting like this- he looked a bright,, intelligent fellow for a
man of his class: "Why are you not a Christian?" He replied, "I am deeply moved and I
would like to become a Christian. You have made me perfectly wretched. Yes, I would
like to become a Christian." "Then why not become one to-night?"' He said, "My business
forbids it I would have to give up my position to-night if I became a Christian." I asked what
was his business and he replied, "A bartender!" He didn't look it; he looked more
respectable. I said, "Will you please tell me how much you get a week for tending the
bar?" If I remember correctly it was six dollars, that is 24s.; and that ma was selling his
soul for 24s. a week. Some of you are selling your souls at almost a cheap a price. I
asked another young fellow why he did not become a Christian. He said, "I believe in it,
and I hope I may one day. But I am in a business of my own and I have my
best business on
the Sabbath; I cannot be a Christian and do Sabbath work." Then I said, "You had better
give up your Sabbath work." "No" he said, "I can not do that. It is the biggest day's profit I
have in the week." And that man was selling his soul for the profit of one day's business a
week.
Why, there are some of you here to-night selling your immortal souls, for which Jesus
Christ died, and which shall live for ever, in Heaven and glory, or in hell and flame, for
some single form of pleasure. It may be the dance, it may be the @ card party, it may be
the horse race, it may be the theatre, it may be some other form of pleasure to which you
are a slave, and for one single form of worldly pleasure you are forfeiting your souls. Why,
man, you are mad! "What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own
soul?"
Friends, while I am talking here to-night, and offering Christ to you, and salvation in Him,
all unseen but none the less present there is another preacher here tonight and that is
Satan. He stands right by some of you as you sit in yonder pews, and while I offer you
Christ and salvation and life eternal in Him, Satan offers you money, a little larger income
in your business, or the social position that he tells you you will have to forfeit if you come
out and out for Christ, or some form of worldly pleasure. He says, "Take this. Give me
your souls and I will give you money. Give me your souls and I win give you these
pleasures that you will have to give up if you become real Christians. Give me your souls
and I will give you social position. Give me your souls and I will give you the world." Why,
men and women, if he should offer you the whole world, you would be mad to accept his
offer; but when he offers to you such a little trifle-the consummate folly of it- that for the
little piece of the world you forfeit your soul; you forfeit life eternal for a world that never
satisfies and does not last!
I have known many men and women that gave up the world for Christ, that gave up
money for Christ, men that gave up much money for Christ, gave up high honour for
Christ, gave up social position, high social position for Christ,, gave up pleasures that had
been the passion of a lifetime for Christ, but I have yet to find the first man or woman who
regretted it, and I have known people who gave up Christ for the world, and when the hour
came in which the eternal realities were opening upon them, they bitterly regretted it.
One day in New York City one of the wealthiest men that America ever produced, the first
man that established a family name now famous, lay dying, with all his millions in the
bank, and with all his railway stock of no use to him. 'And as he lay there, he said, "Bring
in the gardener." The gardener was a godly man, and when he came in to see his dying
master, the rich man said to the gardener, "Get down, and pray for me." The gardener did
so, and when he had finished his prayer, the rich man said, "Sing,
'Come, ye sinners, poor and needy, Weak and wounded sick and sore.'"
Ah, men and women, a time is coming when we shall no longer see through eyes that are
blinded by the glamour of this world; the time is coming when every man and woman here
to-night will have the scales taken from their eyes, and face to face with death, face to
face with God, face to face with eternity, you will see as God sees. You will say, "What a
fool I was to forfeit my never-dying soul to get the world that has not satisfied, and is now
slipping out of my grip." " What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose
his own soul?"
The story is told of Rowland Hill, the great preacher. Lady Ann Erskine was passing by in
her carriage, and she asked her coachman who that was that was drawing such a large
assembly. He replied that it was Rowland Hill. "I have heard a good deal about him she
said; draw up near the crowd!" Mr. Hill soon saw her, and saw that she belonged to the
aristocracy. He suddenly stopped in the midst of his preaching, and said: "My friends, I
have something for sale." His hearers were amazed. "Yes, I have something for sale; it is
the soul Lady Ann Erskine. Is there any one here that will bid for her soul? Ah, do I hear a
bid? Who bids? Satan bids. Satan, what will you give for her soul? I will give riches,
honour, and pleasure.' But stop! do I hear another bid? Yes, Jesus Christ bids. Jesus,
what will you give for her soul? 'I will give eternal life.' Lady Ann Erskine, you have
heard the two bids -which will you have?" And Lady Ann Erskine fell down on her knees
and cried out, "
I will have Jesus."
Man and woman, two are bidding for your soul to-night, Satan and Jesus. Satan offers you
the world, the world that does not satisfy, and that does not last. Jesus offers you life, real
life, eternal life. To which will you have? "What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole
world and lose his own soul?"
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IX
REFUGES OF LIES
"The hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies"- Isaiah xxviii. 17.
We have seen in a former address that every man needs a refuge from four things-from
the accusations of his own conscience, from the power of sin within, from the power of
Satan, and from the wrath to come. Almost every man has a refuge, that is, he has
something in which he has put his trust to comfort him. The difficulty with most men is not
so much that they have not a refuge, as that they have a false refuge, a refuge that will fail
them in the hour of crisis and need; what our text characterizes as a "refuge of lies." It was
just so in Isaiah's time; the men of Israel knew there was a coming day of judgment, and
that they needed a hiding place from that coming judgment of God, and they made lies
their refuge, and Isaiah -God's messenger- proclaimed, "the hail shall sweep away your
false refuge, the refuge of lies," and I come to you with the same message, you men and
women that have a refuge, but a false one. "The hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies."
I. HOW TO DETECT A REFUGE OF LIES.
Is there any way in which we can tell a true refuge from a false one, a refuge that will
stand the test of the coming day of God from a refuge that the hail shall sweep away?
There are four tests that will commend themselves to the reason and common-sense of
every intelligent and candid man here to-night, whereby he tell a true refuge from a false
one, a refuge that will save from a refuge that will ruin; a refuge of truth from a refuge of
lies. The first test is this:-
1. A true Refuge is one that meets the highest Demands of your own Conscience.-If that
in which you are trusting does not meet the highest demands of your own conscience, it
certainly is not a hiding place from accusations of conscience. Furthermore, it is not a
hiding-place from the wrath of God, for if our own hearts condemn us, God is greater than
our hearts, and knoweth all things.
2. The second test is this: Every true refuge is one, trust in which is making you a better
man or woman today.- IF you are trusting in something which is in something which is not
making you a better man or woman to-day, it is not a hiding-place from the power of sin
within, it is not a hiding-place from the power of Satan, it is not a hiding-place from the
wrath to come; for a refuge that does not save you from the power of sin here on earth,
very certainly will never save you from the consequences of sin hereafter.
3. In the third place: A true Refuge is one that will stand the test of the Dying Hour.- If
you are trusting in something that simply brings you comfort when you are well and
strong, but will fail you in that great hour that we have all got to face, when we lie face to
face with death and eternity, it is absolutely worthless.
4. In the fourth place: A true Refuge is one that will stand the Test of the Judgment Day.-If
you an trusting in something that will not stand the test of that great Judgment Day, when
we have to pass up before the judgment bar of God to give an account of the deeds done
in the body, it is absolutely worth-less. There are men here in London indicted for
murders and about to be tried. Now suppose you went down to see one of these men,
and you found him in a very peaceful frame of mind, without a fear, and you said to him,
"Well, you seem very cheerful for a man charged with murder." "Oh, yes," he said, "I am; I
have no anxiety whatever about that trial." And you say, "What, no anxiety about it?" "No,
nods whatever." he replies. "Why not?" you say. "Because," says he, "I have an answer
to make." "Well, is your answer one that will satisfy the judge and jury?" you ask. "No," he
replies, "I do not think it will satisfy the judge and jury, but it satisfies me." "Why," you
would say, "what good is it if your answer satisfies you, if it will not satisfy the judge and
jury before whom the case is to be tried." The question is not whether your hope satisfies
you; will it satisfy God? I might add a fifth test: will it stand the test of the Word of God?
Here then are the four tests: first, Is it meeting the highest demands of your own
conscience? second, Is it making you a better man or woman? third, Will it stand the test
of the dying hour? fourth, Will it stand the test of the judgment day?
II. REFUGES OF LIES EXAMINED AND EXPOSED.
Now we are going to apply these four tests to the things in which men are trusting.
1. The first is their own morality. How many men in London there are, who, if you go up
and speak with them and ask them to come to Christ, say, "No, I will not come; I do not
need Him." You ask, "My not?" And they reply, "Because I am a good man; my life and
character are such that I do not feel the need of a Saviour and I am trusting in my life and
character to gain acceptance before God." Let us apply the tests. You are trusting in your
own goodness. Does your own goodness meet the highest demands of your own
conscience? is there a man here to-night that will say, "My life and character are such that
they meet the highest demands of my own conscience"? Is there a man out of Christ here
to-night who will say that? I have never met but two men who have said it. You will say,
"They must have been remarkably good men." No, they had remarkably poor
consciences. The first one was a man I once met while crossing the Atlantic Ocean. I
approached him on the subject of becoming a Christian. He said, "I do not need any
Saviour." I said, "Do you mean to me your life has been such, and your character from
childhood up to this moment, as to satisfy the highest demands of your own conscience?"
He said, "Yes, they have." But so far from being an exceptionally good man, he was the
most unpopular man on the boat before we reached New York City.
Second. Is trust in your goodness making you a better man? As you go on from month to
month and from year to year, do you find that you are growing more kind, more gentle,
more self-sacrificing, more thoughtful of others, more considerate, more tender, more
humble, more prayerful? Now I have known a great many men who trusted in their own
goodness but I have yet to meet the first one who, while trusting to his own goodness,
grew better. As far as my experience goes, these men grow hard, grow censorious, grow
harsh, grow selfish, grow more and more inconsiderate of others, grow more proud, and
more bitter.
Third: Will it stand the test of the dying hour? Oh, how many a man has gone through life
boasting of his morality, and trusting in his morality to save him in the life to come; but
when that dread hour comes, when he lies upon his dying bed face to face with God and
eternity, all his trust in his morality leaves him, in the illumination that comes to the soul as
eternity draws nigh. I remember a man in one of my pastorates who was very, very self-
confident. He had no use for the church, no use for the Bible, no use for Jesus Christ He
was very well satisfied that he was about the most exemplary man there was in the
community, and he needed no Saviour. But the time came when there was a cancer
eating into that man's brain. It was eating through the skin, eating through the flesh, it was
eating into the skull, and eating so far into the skull that there was only a thin film left, and
you could see the throbbing of the brain underneath. And when that man saw that he had
but a few days, and possibly but a few hours, to live, his trust in his morality fled, and he
said, "I wish you would go and call Mr. Torrey to come here and see me." I came to the
bedside, and as he lay there in agony he said to me, "Tell me what to do to be saved?" I
sat down by that bed, and tried to show him from the Word of God what he must do to be
saved. And as night came on I said to his family, "Do not sit up through the long hours of
the night; I will up stay up with him, and perform all that is necessary." And all sat through
the hours of the night I sat beside that dying man's bed. Sometimes I had to go out of the
room to get something for him, and whenever I came back there was always one groan
from the bed over in the corner. It was this: "Oh, I wish I was a Christian! I wish I was a
Christian! I wish I was a Christian!" And so he died. His morality did not stand the test of
the dying hour.
Will it stand the test of the Judgment Day, when you stand face to face with an infinitely
holy God who knows you through and through? Will you look up into His face and say, "O
God, I stand here on my merits, on my character and life! Thou knowest my life; Thou
knowest me through and through; Thou knowest my every secret thought and act; Thou
knowest my life is pure, and I stand here before an infinitely holy God, and am proud of
my morality."
Will it stand the test of God! God's word? Turn to Romans iii. 20: "Therefore by the deeds
of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight." Turn to Galatians iii. 10: "For as
many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every
one that continueth not in all things are written in the Book of the Law to do them.
2. There is a second refuge of lies, and that is, trust is other people's badness. Some
men trust in their own goodness; other men trust in other folk's badness. You go to them
and talk about Christ, and they say, "Well, I am just as good as other folks. I am just as
good as a lot of your professing Christians." Oh, I know so many hypocrites in the church.
Instead of making their boast of, and putting their trust in, their own goodness, they make
a boast of, and put their trust in, other people's badness. Let us apply the tests. Does
that mean the highest demands of your conscience? When your conscience comes to you
with its lofty demands, does it satisfy your conscience to say, "Well, I am just as good as a
great many professing Christians"? If it does, you have a conscience of a very low order.
Is trust in other people's badness making you a better man? Now, I have known a good
many people, just as you have known them, who were all the time talking about the
badness of other people. I have yet to meet the first one that grew better by the process.
Show me the man or woman that is all the time dwelling upon the badness of other
people, and I will show you a man or woman that is bad them-selves, every time. Show
me the man that is always talking about another man's adultery, and you show me a man
that is an adulterer himself. Show me the woman that is always having a suspicion about
other women, and I will show you a woman you cannot trust. Show me a man that say;
every other man is dishonest, and I will show you a man who is a knave himself. I once
had a Bible-class, and in that class there was a woman who was in business, one of those
women who was always talking about the faults of others; and one day this woman
propounded this question to me; she said: "Mr. Torrey, is it not true that every person in
business is dishonest?" I looked at her and said, "When any person in business comes to
me and asks i
f every one in business is not dishonest, they convict at least one person." She was angry,
but I was only telling her the truth. Show me the man or woman who is always dwelling
upon the faults of Christians, or the faults of anybody else, and I will show you a man or
woman that is rotten to the core"- I made that remark in my church when I was pastor in
an American city, and at the close of the meeting a lady came and said to me, "I do not
like what you said; you said, "If you show me any man or woman that is always talking
about the faults of others, you would show me some one that was bad." "Yes," I said, "and
I mean it." "Well, there is Miss So-and-so. Now, you must admit that she is always talking
about the faults of others." I had to admit that this was a well known fact. "You do not
mean to say that she is bad herself?" I did not answer, for I did not care to be personal;
but if I had told her all the truth, I would have told her that that very week I had forbidden
that
very woman to sing in the choir any more because of certain revelations of her character
which had been made to me, and to which she had confessed.
Will it stand the test of the dying hour? When you come to lie on your dying bed, will it give
all the comfort you need to be thinking about the faults of others?
This very woman who accused every person in of being dishonest, who was always
dwelling the faults of others-the time came for her to die; and as she lay dying, the doctor
came in and said: "Mrs. So-and-so, it is my duty to tell you that you must die.:" The
woman shrieked, "I cannot die; I won't die; I am not ready to die"; but she did die.
Will it stand the test of the Judgment Day? When you go into the presence of God to
answer to Him, will you look up into His face with the same confidence as you look up into
mine, and say, "O God, I do not pretend to have been very good, but I was just as good as
a great many in the churches"? Will you do it, man? Will you do it, woman? Ah, the
blessed Book tells you, in Romans xiv. 12: "So then every one of us shall give an account
of himself to God." Not an account of somebody else. In the judgment day you will forget
everybody but yourself. In that judgment day all other sin will vanish but your sin.
3. The third refuge of lies is Universalism. There are a great many men in every city,
who, if you approach them on the subject of becoming Christians and giving up sin, say,
"Oh, no, I will not do that; I believe in a God of Love; I believe God is too good to damn
any-body. A man does not need to forsake sin in order to take Christ. God is good, and
there is not any hell. Do you mean to tell me God would permit a hell; that a good God
would damn any one? No, I do not need to forsake sin. I am trusting in the goodness of
God, and I believe all men will at some time or other be saved" Now, let us just try this.
Does that meet the highest demands of conscience? When your conscience comes to you
and points out your sin and demands your renunciation, does it satisfy your conscience to
say, "Yes, I am doing wrong, but God is so good I can just as well go on sinning, I can just
as well go on trampling God's laws underfoot. He is so good He will not punish me. He
gave His Son to die for me; I can go on sinning as I please"? Does that satisfy your
conscience? Well, then, you have a mighty mean conscience. What would you think of a
boy and girl, brother and sister, whose mother lies sick in the house. The boy was sick a
little time before, and the mother had watched over him so faithfully and tenderly that she
had caught his sickness; she had brought him back to health, but she was lying very sick
and almost at the point of death. She had told the children that they could go out into the
garden, and said, "There are some flowers out there about which I am very careful. I do
not want you to pick them." So Johnny and Mary go out, and Johnny goes to work to do
just what he was asked not to do. His sister expostulates, and says, "Johnny, did you not
hear mother tell us not to pick those flow
ers, that they were very precious and that she did not want them picked?" "Oh, yes," says
Johnny. "Then why pick them?" asks the sister. "Because," says Johnny, "she loves me
so, Mary. Don't you know how she loves me, how when I was sick mother gave up sleep
and everything, and watched over me through the nights? Don't you know that she is sick
there now because she loves me so? And so I am now going to do the very thing she
told me not to do." What would you think of a boy like that, and what do you think of the
man or woman that makes their boast of the love of God, and because God loves them,
with such a wonderful love, make His love an excuse for sin, make God's love an excuse
for rebellion against him, make God's love a reason for a worldly life? I should think you
men and women would despise yourselves. Oh, the baseness of it; oh, the contemptible
ingratitude of it; oh, the blackheartedness of it, making God's wondrous love, that gave
Jesus to die on the Cross of
Calvary, an excuse for sinning against Him!
Is your universalism making you a better man or woman? Oh, how many men grow
careless, grow worldly, grow sinful, grow indifferent, because somebody has inoculated
them with the pernicious error of eternal hope. How many men there are alive now, once
earnest in the service of God, who are indifferent about the condition of the lost, the
worldly, and the careless, because they have read some books undermining, or trying to
undermine, the doctrines of Jesus and the Apostles. With what honeyed words the
Professing Church to-day it promulgating the doctrine of eternal hope, which is an infernal
lie. Will it stand the test of the dying hour? Oftentimes it does not. Dr. Ichabod Spencer,
one of the most able and faithful pastors America ever had, tells how, when pastor of a
Presbyterian church in Brooklyn,, he was called to see a Young man who was dying- His
wife and mother were members of the church, but this young man was not. The doctor
went to see him, and tried to lead him to Christ; but he turned and said, "It is no use; I
have had many chances, but I have put them all away and I am dying, and shall soon
have to go; it is no use talking to me now." And he was in great agony and distress of soul.
Then the father came in and heard him talking said groaning, and he said, "My boy, there
is no reason for you to take on so. There is no reason for you to feel so bad. You have
not been a bad man; you have nothing to fear." The dying young man turned round and
said to his father, "You are to blame for me being here. It I had listened to mother when
she tried to lead me to a good life, instead of listening to you, I should not be in this strait.
Mother tried to get me to go to Sunday school and to church, but you said God was so
good it did not matter; and when mother tried to take me to church you took me fishing
and hunting and pleasuring; you told me there was not a hell, and I believed you; you
have deceived me up to this moment, father, but you can't deceive me any longer. I am
dying and I am going to hell, and my blood is on your soul." Then he turned his face to the
wall and died. Men, you turn people into sin by preaching a doctrine that contradicts the
teaching of the Son of God. It means that you are deceiving the men you are rocking to
sleep in sin, and they will live to curse you some day. And you men who are in health and
strength are building upon a false hope. Death will tear away the veil that blinds your eyes
to-night.
Will it stand the test of the judgment day? When you go up into the presence of God will
you look up, and when He asks about your sin, will you answer, "Yes, Father, I did sin; I
did trample Thy laws under foot; I did neglect prayer, neglect the Bible, neglect the house
of God, neglect obedience to Thee; I was worldly and careless, but I have a good answer.
Father, my answer is this: I knew Thou wert a God of love, and gave thy Son to die for me
on the Cross of Calvary, and as I knew Thou wert so loving, I just went on trampling Thy
laws under foot"? Will you do that? It won't stand the test.
4. A fourth refuge is infidelity. How many men there are, who, when asked to become
Christians, turn and say, "I do not believe that the Bible is the Word of God. That is an old
superstition that is worn out. I do not believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God.
In fact, I am not quite sure that there is a God. I am not a Christian, and you can call me
what you like. Call me an infidel, an agnostic, what you please; but I do not need any
Christ, and do not believe in Him." He tries to comfort himself with infidelity. Hundreds of
thousands are doing this in London tonight. Apply the tests. Does that meet the highest
demands of your own conscience? When conscience asserts itself, and comes to you with
its majestic demands, does it satisfy your conscience, to say, "I do not believe in the Bible
or in Jesus Christ; I do not believe in God"? Is your infidelity making you a better man? I
have yet to find the first man or woman made better by infidelity. I have known men to be
made adulterers by infidelity; I have known men and women to be made suicides by
infidelity; I have known men to be robbed of business integrity by infidelity; I have known
men who were made deceivers by infidelity and ran away from their wives and went with
other women. I could stand here by the hour and tell you of the characters I have known
to be shipwrecked by infidelity. I have yet to find the first man that was made upright or
moral or clean by infidelity. I stood up one night in my church in Chicago. The church was
full, and a great many infidels were there. I had invited them to be there, as I was talking
about "Infidelity: Its Causes, Consequences and Cure." I stopped in my sermon and said,
"I want every man in this audience to-night that can honestly testify before God and this
audience that be bas been saved from drunkenness by the Gospel of Jesus Christ to
stand up"; and two or three hundred men stood up as having been saved from
drunkenness by the Gospel of Christ. I said, "Th
at will do. Now we am going to be fair and give the other side a chance, and I want to ask
any infidel in this audience to-night that has been saved from drunkenness by infidelity in
any form to stand up." I looked round; at first I thought there wasn't any one standing up.
At last, away under the gallery, I saw one, a very ragged looking sort of a Senegambian,
and he was drunk at the time; that is an actual fact. Thank God, he went down into the
inquiry-room afterwards, and thought it over. Men and women, infidelity undermines
character, infidelity robs men and women of purity, infidelity makes your clerks and
cashiers unsafe. You know it.
Will your infidelity stand the test of the dying hour? A great deal of infidelity does not. A
friend of mine who took part in the American Civil War, and fought for the North, told me a
story about a man in his regiment who had been boasting in camp of his unbelief. 0n the
second day of the battle of Pittsburg Landing this man said to his comrades of his
company, while waiting for the word of command to go forward, "I fear I am going to be
shot this day; I have an awful feeling." "Oh, that's nonsense," they said, "it's just a
premonition, a superstition, and there's nothing in it." Soon the command came,
"Forward!" and that company marched up the hill, and just as it went over the crest there
was a volley from the enemy's guns. The first one sent a bullet through his chest near his
heart, and he fell back, and as they carried him to the rear, he cried, "O God, give me time
to repent!" It took only one bullet to take the infidelity out of him. It would take less than
that to take the infidelity out of most of you here to-night. Will it stand the test of the
judgment day? Will you go up into God's presence, and when asked to answer for your
sin, will you say: "Well oh God, Thou knowest I did not quite believe You existed; I did not
believe the Bible was Thy Word, and that Jesus Christ was Thy Son. I was an infidel; that
is my answer"? Will you do this? I will tell y
ou how to try it. Go home to-night, and go down on your knees, and look up into God's
face, and tell Him you are an infidel, and that you do not believe in Him, or in His Son, or
in the Bible, and that you are willing to stand the judgment test. I went down in a meeting
like this one night to the last row of seats at the back of the hall, and I said to a man there,
"Are you a Christian?" "I should think not," he said; "I am an infidel." I said, "Do you mean
to tell me you do not believe Jesus Christ is divine?" He said, "No, I do not." I said, "Just
kneel down here and tell God that." He turned pale. And I say to you to-night who profess
to be infidels, "Go and tell that to God alone, not when you are trying to brave it out in the
presence of others, but alone; meet God alone. Get down before Him, and tell Him what
you tell me."
5. There is one more refuge of lies-religion. Religion is a refuge of lies. Religion
never saved anybody. You say, "What do you mean?" I mean just what I say-religion
never saved anybody. Trust in religion is one thing; trust in the personal Christ is another
thing. There is many a man who trusts in his religion and yet he is not saved. You go to
men, and they say, "Yes, I am religious; I go to church every Sunday; I read my prayer-
book, and say prayers regularly every day; I read my Bible; I have been baptized; I have
been confirmed or united to the Church; I have taken the Sacrament regularly, and that is
what I am trusting in." Is it?, Then you are lost. Let us apply the tests. Does your religion
satisfy the highest demands of your conscience? Does it satisfy your conscience, when it
points out your sin, to say, "I go to church; I read the Bible; I have been baptized and
confirmed"? Does it really give your conscience peace? Is your religion making you a
better man or woman? There is a great deal that is called religion that does not make men
and women better. There is many a man who is very religious, and goes to mass or to
church every Sunday in the year; he goes to C
onfession very frequently, says his prayers regularly, reads his Bible, and partakes of the
Communion; he has been baptized, he has been confirmed, and yet he is just as
dishonest as any other man in the community. There is many a man who is very religious,
and yet oppresses his employees in the matter of wages, or robs his servants in his home.
Many a most religious man is a perfect knave. Such religion will not save him, but damn
him with a deeper damnation.
Thirdly, will it stand the test of the dying hour? There is a great a great deal of religion that
does not. How many people have been very religious, and yet when they come to die
they tremble with fear.
Will it stand the test of the judgment day? Jesus Christ says it will not. In Matthew vii. 22,
we read: "Many shall say unto Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy
name? and in Thy name cast out devils? and in Thy name done many wonderful works?"
-that is, they have been very religious; and Jesus says, "I will say unto them, I never knew
you; depart from Me, ye that work iniquity." Friends, if you have nothing to trust in but
religion you are lost; it is a refuge of lies.
Well, then, is there any refuge? There is. The verse before my text gives it, Isaiah xxviii.
16: "Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a
tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation." That foundation stone is Jesus
Christ. "Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus."
As I said before, it is one thing to trust in religion, and it is an entirely different thing to trust
in Christ. Oh. friends, if your trust is in Christ it will stand the test, it will meet the highest
demands of your conscience. When my conscience accuses me of sin, I say-
Jesus paid my debt,
All the debt I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.
"He who had no sin was made sin for me, that I might be made the righteousness of God
in Him. He Himself bore my sin in His own body on the Cross"; and that satisfies the
conscience. The blood of Jesus Christ gives the guilty conscience peace. Trust in Jesus
Christ makes me a better man. It has completely transformed my life, my outward life and
my inward life. It will stand the test of the dying hour. Oh, how often I have gone to the
room of the dying man who was trusting in Jesus, and he has looked up into my face with
radiant confidence, without a tremor of fear, trusting in Jesus.
I remember one day I was told that one of the former members of my Bible class was
dying, and I went to his house. I walked in and he sat there propped up in bed. He was
dying very fast. I said, "Mr. Pomeroy, they tell me you probably cannot live through the
night." "No' he said; "I suppose this day is my last." I said, "Are you afraid?" He said, with
a smile of perfect peace, "Not at all." I said, "Mr. Pomeroy, Are you ready to go?" He said,
"I shall be glad to depart, and be with Jesus Christ." When Mr. Moody was facing the other
world there was no fear. At six o'clock in the morning his son was by his bedside and
heard him whisper, "Earth is receding; Heaven is opening; God is calling." Then later, "Is
this death? This is not bad, this is bliss, this is glorious." Still later, some one began to cry
to God to raise him from his bed of sickness, and he said, "No, do not ask that. This is my
coronation day; I have long been looking forward to it. Don't call me back; God is calling
me." Oh, friends, a living faith in Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Saviour, will stand
the test of the dying hour. It will stand the test of the judgment day. If it is the will of God, I
am ready to go and meet Him at the judgment bar to-night, and, when He asks me to
answer, I have but one answer, the all-sufficient answer, "Jesus." That will satisfy God.
Throw away your refuges of lies to-night. The hail will soon come and sweep them away;
"the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies." Throw them away to-night. Take the only
sure and true refuge, Jesus Christ.
***************************************************************
X
THE WAY OF SALVATION MADE AS PLAIN AS DAY
"Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul
and Silas, and brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they
said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. and thy house."-ACTS xvi.
29-31.
The Philippian goaler, by a train of circumstances, which I have read in the Scripture
lesson to-night, had been brought to a realization of the fact that he was a lost sinner, and
had a deep yearning for salvation, and he put to Paul and Silas this direct question, "What
must I do to be saved?" and Paul answered him in the words of the text, "Believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." Nothing could be plainer, nothing could be
more direct, nothing could be more positive than that. The way of salvation is to believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ, and the moment any man or woman or child really believes on
the Lord Jesus Christ they are saved. If the most utterly lost man or woman in London
should come into this hall to-night, and should here, or in the after-meeting, or after they
hare gone out, believe on the Lord Jesus, the moment they did it they would be saved.
Some one may say, "But this was a word simply spoken to one man; what right have you
to say that any man will be sav
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