The New Park Street pulpit, thoughts on the
last battle, a sermon delivered on Sabbath evening
May 13th, 1855 by the Reverend C.H.
Spurgeon at Exeter Hall Strand.
The sting of death is sin and the
strength of sin is the law.
Thanks be to God which giveth us the
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1st Corinthians 15 verses 56 and 57.
While the Bible is one of the most
poetical of books, though its language is unutterably
sublime, yet we must remark how constantly it
is true to nature.
There is no straining of a fact, no
glossing over a truth.
However dark may be the subject, while it
lights it up with brilliance, yet it does
not deny the gloom connected with it.
If you will read this chapter of Paul's
epistle, so justly celebrated as a masterpiece of
language, you will find him speaking of that
which is to come after death with such
exaltation and glory that you feel if this
be to die, then it were well to
depart at once.
Who has not rejoiced and whose heart has
not been lifted up or filled with a
holy fire while he has read such sentences
as these?
In a moment, in the twinkling of an
eye at the last trump, for the trumpet
shall sound and the dead shall be raised
incorruptible and we shall be changed.
For this corruptible must put on incorruption and
this mortal must put on immortality.
So when this corruptible shall have put on
incorruption and this mortal shall have put on
immortality, then shall be brought to pass the
saying that is written, death is swallowed up
in victory.
O death, where is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory?
Yet with all that majestic language, with all
that bold flight of eloquence, he does not
deny that death is a gloomy thing.
Even his very figures imply it.
He does not laugh at it.
He does not say, O, it is nothing
to die.
He describes death as a monster.
He speaks of it as having a sting.
He tells us wherein the strength of that
sting lies and even in the exclamation of
triumph, he imputes that victory not to unaided
flesh, but he says, thanks be to God
which giveth us the victory through our Lord
Jesus Christ.
When I select such a text as this,
I feel that I cannot preach from it.
The thought overmasters me.
My words do stagger.
There are no utterances that are great enough
to convey the mighty meaning of this wondrous
text.
If I had the eloquence of all men
united in one, if I could speak as
never man spake, with the exception of that
one godlike man of Nazareth, I could not
compass so vast a subject as this.
I will not therefore pretend to do so,
but offer you such thoughts as my mind
is capable of producing.
Tonight we shall speak of three things.
First, the sting of death.
Secondly, the strength of sin.
And thirdly, the victory of faith.
First, the sting of death.
The apostle pictures death as a terrible dragon
or monster which, coming upon all men, must
be fought with by each one for himself.
He gives us no hopes whatever that any
of us can avoid it.
He tells us of no bridge across the
river death.
He does not give us the faintest hope
that it is possible to emerge from this
state of existence into another without dying.
He describes the monster as being exactly in
our path, and with it we must fight,
each man personally, separately, and alone.
Each man must die.
We all must cross the black stream.
Each one of us must go through the
iron gate.
There is no passage from this world into
another without death.
Having told us then that there is no
hope of our escape, he braces up our
nerves for the combat, but he gives us
no hope that we shall be able to
slay the monster.
He does not tell us that we can
strike our sword into his heart and so
overturn and overwhelm death.
But, pointing to the dragon, he seemed to
say, Thou canst not slay it, man.
There is no hope that thou shouldst ever
put thy foot upon its neck and crush
its head, but one thing can be done.
It has a sting which thou mayest extract.
Thou canst not crush death underfoot, but thou
mayest pull out the sting which is deadly.
And then thou needst not fear the monster,
for monster it shall be no longer, but
rather it shall be a swift-winged angel
to waft thee aloft to heaven.
Where then is the sting of this dragon?
Where must I strike?
What is the sting?
The apostle tells us that the sting of
death is sin.
Once let me cut off that, and then,
though death may be dreary and solemn, I
shall not dread it, but holding up the
monster's sting, I shall exclaim, O death, where
is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory?
Let us now dwell upon that fact that
the sting of death is sin.
First, sin puts a sting into death from
the fact that sin brought death into the
world.
Men could be more content to die if
they did not know it was a punishment.
I suppose if we had never sinned, there
would have been some means for us to
go from this world to another.
It cannot be supposed that so huge a
population would have existed that all the myriads
who have lived from Adam down till now
could ever have inhabited so small a globe
as this.
There would not have been space enough for
them.
But there might have been provided some means
for taking us off when the proper time
should come and bearing us safely to heaven.
God might have furnished horses and chariots of
fire for each of his Elijahs, or, as
it was said of Enoch, so it might
have been declared of each of us.
He is not, for God hath taken him.
Thus, to die, if we may call it
death, to depart from this body and to
be with God would have been no disgrace.
In fact, it would have been the highest
honor, fitting the loftiest aspiration of the soul,
to live quickly its little time in this
world and to mount and be with its
God.
In the prayers of the most pious and
devout man, one of his sublimest petitions would
be, O God, hasten the time of my
departure when I shall be with Thee.
When such sinless beings thought of their departure,
they would not tremble, for the gate would
be of ivory and pearl, not, as now,
of iron.
The stream would be as nectar, far different
from the present bitterness of death.
But, alas, how different!
Death is now the punishment of sin.
In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt
surely die.
In Adam all die.
By his sin every one of us becomes
subject to the penalty of death, and thus,
being a punishment, death has its sting.
To the best man, the holiest Christian, the
most sanctified intellect, the soul that has the
nearest and dearest intercourse with God, death must
appear to have a sting, because sin was
its mother.
O fatal offspring of sin, I only dread
Thee because of Thy parentage.
If Thou didst come to me as an
honour, I would wade through Jordan even now,
and when its chilling billows were round me,
I would smile amidst its surges.
And in the swellings of Jordan my song
should swell too, and the liquid music of
my voice should join with the liquid swellings
of the floods.
Hallelujah!
It is blessed to cross to land of
the glorified.
This is one reason why the sting of
death is sin.
But I must take it in another sense.
The sting of death is sin.
That is to say, that which shall make
death most terrible to man will be sin
if it is not forgiven.
If that be not the exact meaning of
the Apostle, still it is great truth, and
I may find it here.
If sin lay heavy on me and were
not forgiven, if my transgressions were unpardoned, if
such were the fact, though I rejoice to
know it is not so, it would be
the very sting of death to me.
Let us consider a man dying, and looking
back on his life, he will find in
death a sting, and that sting will be
his past sin.
Imagine a conqueror's deathbed.
He has been a man of blood from
his youth up.
Bred in the camp, his lips were early
set to the bugle, and his hand even
in infancy struck the drum.
He had a martial spirit.
He delighted in the fame and applause of
men.
He loved the dust of battle and the
garment rolled in blood.
He has lived a life of what men
call glory.
He has stormed cities, conquered countries, ravaged continents,
overrun the world.
See his banners hanging in the hall and
the marks of glory on his eschaton.
He is one of us proudest warriors, but
now he comes to die, and when he
lies down to expire, what shall invest his
death with horror?
It shall be his sin.
Methinks I see the monarch dying.
He lies in state.
Around him are his nobles and his counsellors.
But there is someone else there.
Hard by his side there stands a spirit
from Hades.
It is the soul of a departed woman.
She looks on him and says, Monster, my
husband was slain in battle through thy ambition.
I was made a widow, and my helpless
orphan and myself were starved, and she passes
by.
Her husband comes, and opening wide his bloody
wounds, he cries, Once I called thee monarch,
but by thy vile covetousness thou didst provoke
an unjust war.
See here these wounds, I gained them in
the siege.
For thy sake I mounted first the scaling
ladder.
This foot stood upon the top of the
wall, and I waved my sword in triumph,
but in hell I lifted up my eyes
in torment.
Base wretch, thine ambition hurried me thither, turning
his horrid eyes upon him.
He passes by.
Then up comes another, and another, and another
yet waking from their tombs.
They stalk around his bed and haunt him.
The dreary procession still marches on, looking at
the dying tyrants.
He shuts his eyes, but he feels the
cold and bony hand upon his forehead.
He quivers, for the sting of death is
in his heart.
O death, says he, to leave this large
estate, this mighty realm, this pomp and power,
this were somewhat, but to meet those men,
those women, and those orphaned children face to
face, to hear them saying, Art thou become
like one of us?
While kings whom I have dethroned, and monarchs
whom I have cast down, shall rattle their
chains in my ears, and say, Thou wast
our destroyer, but how art thou fallen from
heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning?
How art thou brought down, as in a
moment, from thy glory and thy pride?
And there, you see, the sting of death
would be the man's sin.
It would not sting him that he had
to die, but that he had sinned, and
that he had been a bloody man, that
his hands were red with wholesale murder.
This would plague him indeed, for the sting
of death is sin.
Or suppose another character, a minister.
He has stood before the world, proclaiming something
which he called the gospel.
He has been a noted preacher.
The multitude have been hanging on his lips.
They have listened to his words.
Before his eloquence, a nation stood amazed, and
thousands trembled at his voice.
But his preaching is over.
The time when he can mount the pulpit
is gone.
Another standing place awaits him, another congregation, and
he must hear another and a better preacher
than himself.
There he lies.
He has been unfaithful to his charge.
He preached philosophy to charm his people instead
of preaching truth and aiming at their hearts.
And as he pants upon his bed, that
worst and most accursed of men, for sure
none can be worse than he.
There comes up one, a soul from the
pits, and looking him in the face says,
I came to thee once trembling on account
of sin.
I asked thee the road to heaven, and
thou didst say, Do such and such good
works, and I did them and am damned.
Thou didst tell me an untruth.
Thou didst not declare plainly the word of
God.
He vanishes, only to be followed by another.
He has been an irreligious character, and as
he sees the minister upon his deathbed, he
says, Ah, and art thou here?
Once I strolled into thy house of prayer,
but thou hadst such a sermon that I
could not understand.
I listened.
I wanted to hear something from thy lips,
some truth that might burn my soul and
make me repent, but I knew not what
thou saidst, and here I am.
The ghost stamps his foot, and the man
quivers like an aspen leaf, because he knows
it is all true.
Then the whole congregation arise before him as
he lies upon his bed.
He looks upon the motley group.
He beholds the snowy heads of the old
and the glittering eyes of the young, and
lying there upon his pillow, he pictures all
the sins of his past life, and he
hears it said, Go thou unfaithful to thy
charge.
Thou didst not divest thyself of thy love
of pomp and dignity.
Thou didst not speak as though thou ne
'er might speak again a dying man to
dying men.
Oh, it may be something for that minister
to leave his charge, somewhat for him to
die, but worst of all the sting of
death will be his sin.
To hear his parish come howling after him
to hell, to see his congregation following behind
him in one mingled herd, he, having led
them astray, having been a false prophet instead
of a true one, speaking peace, peace where
there was no peace, deluding them with lies,
charming them with music when he ought rather
to have told them in rough and rugged
accents the word of God.
Verily it is true, it is true, the
sting of death to such a man shall
be his great, his enormous, his heinous sin
of having deluded others.
Thus, then, having painted two full-length pictures,
I might give each one of you miniatures
of yourselves.
I might picture, O drunkard, when thy cups
are drained and when thy liquor shall no
longer be sweet to thy taste, when worse
than gall shall be the dainties that thou
drinkest, when within an hour the worm shall
make a carnival upon my flesh, I might
picture thee as thou lookest back upon thy
misspent life.
And thou, O swearer, he thinks I see
thee there with thine oaths echoed back by
memory to thine own dismay, and thou man
of lust and wickedness, thou who hast debauched
and seduced others, I see thee there, and
the sting of death to thee, how horrible,
how dreadful!
It shall not be that thou art groaning
with pain, it shall not be that thou
art racked with agony, it shall not be
that thy heart and flesh faileth, but the
sting, the sting shall be thy sin.
How many in this place can spell that
word remorse?
I pray you may never know its awful
meaning.
Remorse, remorse, you know its derivation.
It signifies to bite.
Ah, now we dance with our sins.
It is a merry life with us.
We take their hand, and sporting in the
noontide sun, we dance, we dance and live
in joy.
But then those sins shall bite us.
The young lions we have stroked and played
with shall bite.
The young adder, the serpent whose azure hues
have well delighted us, shall bite, shall sting,
when remorse shall occupy our souls.
I might, but I will not tell you
a few stories of the awful power of
remorse.
It is the first pang of hell.
It is the antechamber of the pit.
To have remorse is to feel the sparks
that blaze upwards from the fire of the
bottomless cajana.
To feel remorse is to have eternal torment
commenced within the soul.
The sting of death shall be unforgiven, unrepented
sin.
But if sin in the retrospect be the
sting of death, what must sin in the
prospect be?
My friends, we do not often enough look
at what sin is to be.
We see what it is, first the seed,
then the blade, then the ear, and then
the full corn in the ear.
It is the wish, the imagination, the desire,
the sight, the taste, the deed.
But what is sin in its next development?
We have observed sin as it grows.
We have seen it at first a very
little thing, but expanding itself until it has
swelled into a mountain.
We have seen it like a little cloud
the size of a man's hand.
But we have beheld it gather until it
covered the skies with blackness and sent down
drops of bitter rain.
But what is sin to be in the
next state?
We have gone so far, but sin is
a thing that cannot stop.
We have seen whereunto it has grown, but
whereunto will it grow?
For it is not ripe when we die.
It has to go on still.
It is set going, but it has to
unfold itself forever.
The moment we die, the voice of justice
cries, seal up the fountain of blood, stop
the stream of forgiveness.
He that is holy, let him be holy
still.
He that is filthy, let him be filthy
still.
And after that, the man goes on growing
filthier and filthier still.
His lust develops itself.
His vice increases.
All those evil passions blaze with tenfold more
fury, and amidst the companionship of others like
himself, without the restraints of grace, without the
preached word, the man becomes worse and worse,
and who can tell whereunto his sin may
grow?
I have sometimes likened the hour of our
death to that celebrated picture which I think
you have seen in the National Gallery of
Perseus holding up the head of Medusa.
That head turned all persons into stone who
looked upon it.
There is a warrior there with a dart
in his hand.
He stands stiffened, turned into stone, with the
javelin even in his fist.
There is another with a poignard beneath his
robe about to stab.
He is now the statue of an assassin,
motionless and cold.
Another is creeping along stealthily like a man
in ambuscade, and there he stands, a consolidated
rock.
He has looked only upon that head, and
he is frozen into stone.
Well, such is death.
What I am when death is held before
me, that I must be forever.
When my spirit goes, if God finds me
hymning His praise, I shall hymn it in
heaven.
Doth He find me breathing out oaths, I
shall follow up those oaths in hell.
Where death leaves me, judgment finds me.
As I die, so shall I live eternally.
There are no acts of pardoned past in
the cold grave to which we haste.
It is forever, forever, forever.
Ah, there are a set of heretics in
these days who talk of short punishments and
preach about God's transporting souls for a term
of years and then letting them die.
Where did such men learn their doctrine, I
wonder?
I read in God's word that the angel
shall plant one foot upon the earth and
the other upon the sea and shall swear
by him that liveth and was dead that
time shall be no longer.
But if a soul could die in a
thousand years, it would die in time.
If a million of years could elapse and
then the soul could be extinguished, there would
be such a thing as time.
For talk to me of years and there
is time.
But, sirs, when that angel has spoken the
word, time shall be no longer.
Things will then be eternal.
The spirit shall proceed in its ceaseless revolution
of weal or woe, never to be stayed,
for there is no time to stop it.
The fact of it stopping would imply time,
but everything shall be eternal, for time shall
cease to be.
It well becomes you, then, to consider where
ye are and what ye are.
Oh, stand and tremble on the narrow neck
of land twixt the two unbounded seas, for
God in heaven alone can tell how soon
thou mayest be launched upon the eternal future.
May God grant that when that last hour
may come, we may be prepared for it.
Like the thief, unheard, unseen, it steals through
night's dark shade.
Perhaps as here I stand and rudely speak
of these dark hidden things, soon may the
hand be stretched and dumb the mouth that
lisps the faltering strain.
Oh, thou that dwellest in heaven, thou power
supreme, thou everlasting king, let not that hour
intrude upon me in an ill-spent season,
but may it find me wrapped in meditation
high, hymning my great creator.
So, in the last moment of my life,
I will hasten beyond the azure to bathe
the wings of this my spirit in their
native element, and then to dwell with thee
forever, far from a world of grief and
sin, with God eternally shut in.
The strength of sin is the law.
I have attempted to show how to fight
this monster.
It is by extracting and destroying its sting.
I prepare myself for the battle.
It is true I have sinned, and therefore
I have put a sting into death, but
I will endeavor to take it away.
I attempt it, but the monster laughs me
in the face and cries, The strength of
sin is the law.
Before thou canst destroy sin, thou must in
some way satisfy the law.
Sin cannot be removed by thy tears or
by thy deeds, for the law is its
strength, and until thou hast satisfied the vengeance
of the law, until thou hast paid the
uttermost farthing of its demands, my sting cannot
be taken away, for the very strength of
sin is the law.
Now, I must try and explain this doctrine,
that the strength of sin is the law.
Most men think that sin has no strength
at all.
Oh, say many, we may have sinned very
much, but we will repent, and we will
be better for the And we hear many
divines often speak of sin as if it
were a very venial thing.
Inquire of them, what is a man to
do?
There is no deep repentance required, no real
inward workings of divine grace, no casting himself
upon the blood of Christ.
They never tell us about a complete atonement
having been made.
They have indeed some shadowy idea of atonement,
that Christ died just as a matter of
form to satisfy justice, but as to any
liberal taking away of our sins and suffering
the actual penalty for us, they do not
consider that God's law requires any such thing.
I suppose they do not, for I never
hear them assert the positive satisfaction and substitution
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But without that, how can we take away
the strength of sin?
The strength of sin is the law first
in this respect, that the law being spiritual,
it is quite impossible for us to live
without sin.
If the law were merely carnal and referred
to the flesh, if it simply related to
open and overt actions, I question even then
whether we could live without sin.
But when I turn over the Ten Commandments
and read, Thou shalt not covet, I know
it refers even to the wish of my
heart.
It is said, Thou shalt not commit adultery,
but it is said also that whosoever looketh
on a woman to lust after her has
already committed that sin, so that it is
not merely the act, it is the thought,
it is not the deed simply, it is
the very imagination that is a sin.
O now, sinner, how canst thou get rid
of sin?
Thy very thoughts, the inward workings of thy
mind, these are crimes, this is guilt and
desperate wickedness.
Is there not now strength in sin?
Hath not the law put a potency in
it?
Has it not nerved sin with such a
power that all thy strength cannot hope to
wipe away the black enormity of thy transgression?
Then again, the law puts strength into sin
in this respect, that it will not abate
one tittle of its stern demands.
It says to every man who breaks it,
I will not forgive you.
You hear persons talk about God's mercy.
Now, if they do not believe in the
gospel, they must be under the law.
But where in the law do we read
of mercy?
If you will read the commandments through, there
is a curse after them, but there is
no provision made for pardon.
The law itself speaks not of that.
It thunders out without the slightest mitigation.
The soul that sinneth, it shall die.
If any of you desire to be saved
by works, remember, one sin will spoil your
righteousness.
One speck of this earth's dross will spoil
the beauty of that perfect righteousness which God
requires at your hands.
If ye would be saved by works, men
and brethren, ye must be as holy as
the angels.
Ye must be as pure and as immaculate
as Jesus.
For the law requires perfection and nothing short
of it.
And God with unflinching vengeance will smite every
man low who cannot bring him a perfect
obedience.
If I cannot, when I come before his
throne, plead a perfect righteousness as being mine,
God will say, You have not fulfilled the
demands of my law.
Depart, accursed one.
You have sinned and you must die.
Ah, says one, can we ever have a
perfect righteousness, then?
Yes, I will tell you of that in
the third point.
Thanks be unto Christ who giveth us the
victory through his blood and through his righteousness,
who adorns us as a bride in her
jewels as a husband arrays his with ornaments.
Yet again, the law gives strength to sin
from the fact that for every transgression, it
will exact a punishment.
The law never remits a farthing of debt.
It says sin, punishment.
They are linked together with adamantine chains.
They are tied and cannot be severed.
The law speaks not of sin and mercy.
Mercy comes in the gospel.
The law says sin, die.
Transgress, be chastised.
Sin, hell.
Thus are they linked together.
Once let me sin and I may go
to stand justice.
And as with blind eyes she holds the
scales, I may say, O justice, remember I
was holy once.
Remember that on such and such an occasion
I did keep the law.
Yes, saith justice, all I owe thee thou
shalt have.
I will not punish thee for what thou
hast not done.
But remember you this crime, O sinner.
And she puts in the heavy weight.
The sinner trembles and he cries, but canst
thou not forget that?
Wilt thou not cast it away?
Nay, saith justice.
And she puts in another weight.
Sinner, dost thou recollect this crime?
O says the sinner, wilt thou not for
mercy's sake?
I will not have mercy, says justice.
Mercy has its own palace, but I have
not to do with forgiveness here.
Mercy belongs to Christ.
If you will be saved by justice, you
shall have your full of it.
If you come to me for salvation, I
will not have mercy brought in to help
me.
She is not my vicegerent.
I stand here alone without her.
And again, as she holds the scales, she
puts in another iniquity, another crime, another enormous
transgression.
And each time the man begs and prays
that he may have that passed by, says
justice.
Nay, I must exact the penalty.
I have sworn I will, and I will.
Canst thou find a substitute for thyself?
If thou canst, there is the only room
I have for mercy.
I will exact it of that substitute, but
even at his hands I will have the
utmost jot and tittle.
I will abate nothing.
I am God's justice, stern and unflinching.
I will not alter, I will not mitigate
the penalty.
She still holds the scales.
The plea is in vain.
Never will I change, she cries.
Bring me the blood.
Bring me the price to its utmost.
Count it down, or else, sinner, thou shalt
die.
Now, my friends, I ask you, if ye
consider the spirituality of the law, the perfection
it requires, and its unflinching severity, are you
prepared to take away the sting of death
in your own persons?
Can you hope to overcome sin yourselves?
Can you trust that by some righteous works
you may yet cancel your guilt?
If you think so, go, foolish one, go.
O madman, go.
Work out thine own salvation with fear and
trembling.
Without the God that worketh in thee, go,
twist thy rope of sand, go, build a
pyramid of air, go, prepare a house with
bubbles, and think it is to last forever.
But know, it will be a dream with
an awful awakening.
For as a dream, when one awaketh, will
he despise alike your image and your righteousness.
The strength of sin is the law.
But now, in the last place, we have
before us the victory of faith.
The Christian is the only champion who can
smite the dragon of death, and even he
cannot do it of himself.
But when he has done it, he shall
cry, Thanks be to God, who giveth us
the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
One moment, and I will show you how
the Christian can look upon death with complacency
through the merits of Jesus Christ.
First, Christ has taken away the strength of
sin in this respect, that he has removed
the law.
We are not under bondage, but under grace.
Law is not our directing principle.
Grace is.
Do not misunderstand me.
The principle that I must do a thing,
that is to say, the principle of law,
do or be punished, do or be rewarded,
is not the motive of the Christian's life.
His principle is grace.
God has done so much for me, what
ought I to do for him?
We are not under the law in that
sense, but under grace.
Then Christ has removed the law in this
sense, that he has completely satisfied it.
The law demands a perfect righteousness.
Christ says, Law, thou hast it, find fault
with me.
I am the sinner's substitute.
Have I not kept thy commandments?
Wherein have I violated thy statutes?
Come here, my beloved, he says.
And then he cries to justice.
Find a fault in this man.
I have put my robe upon him.
I have washed him in my blood.
I have cleansed him from his sin.
All the past is gone, and as for
the future, I have secured it by sanctification.
As for the penalty, I have borne it
myself.
At one tremendous draught of love, I have
drunk that man's destruction dry.
I have borne what he should have suffered.
I have endured the agonies he ought to
have endured.
Justice, have I not satisfied thee?
Did I not say upon the tree, and
didst thou not coincide with it, it is
finished?
It is finished.
Have I not made so complete an atonement
that there is now no need for that
man to die and expiate his guilt?
Did I not complete the perfect righteousness of
this poor once condemned but now justified spirit?
Yes, saith justice, I am well satisfied, and
even more content, if possible, than if the
sinner had brought a spotless righteousness of his
own.
And now what saith the Christian after this?
Boldly he comes to the realms of death,
and entering the gates there he cries, Who
shall lay anything to the charge of God's
elect?
And when he has said it, the dragon
drops his sting, he descends into the grave,
he passes by the place where fiends lie
down in festers of iron, he sees their
chains and looks into the dungeon where they
dwell, and as he passes by the prison
door he shouts, Who shall lay anything to
the charge of God's elect?
They growl and bite their iron bonds and
hiss in secret, but they cannot lay ought
to his charge.
Now see him mount aloft, he approaches God's
heaven, he comes against the gates, and faith
still triumphantly shouts, Who shall lay anything to
the charge of God's elect?
And a voice comes from within, Not Christ,
for he hath died, not God, for he
hath justified.
Received by Jesus, faith enters heaven, and again
she cries, Who, even here among the spotless
and ransomed, shall lay anything to the charge
of God's elect?
Now the law is satisfied, sin is gone,
and now surely we need not fear the
sting of the dragon, but we may say
as Paul did when he rose into the
majesty of poetry, such beautiful poetry that Pope
himself borrowed his words, only transposing the sentences,
O grave, where is thy victory?
O death, where is thy sting?
If it were necessary tonight, I might speak
to you concerning the resurrection, and I might
tell you how much that takes away the
sting of death, but I will confine myself
to the simple fact that the sting of
death is sin, that the strength of sin
is the law, and that Christ gives us
the victory by taking the sting away and
removing the strength of sin by his perfect
obedience.
And now, sirs, how many are there here
who have any hope that for them Christ
Jesus died?
Am I coming too close home when most
solemnly I put the question to each one
of you, as I stand in God's presence
this night to free my head of your
blood, as I stand and appeal with all
the earnestness this heart is capable of?
Are you prepared to die?
Is sin pardoned?
Is the law satisfied?
Can you view the flowing of Christ's soul
-redeeming blood with divine assurance, knowing that he
made your peace with God?
O can ye now put one hand upon
your heart and the other upon the Bible
and say, God's word and I agree.
The witness of the Spirit here and the
witness there are one.
I have renounced my sins.
I have given up my evil practices.
I have abhorred my own righteousness.
I trust in naught but Jesus' doings.
Simply do I depend on him.
Nothing in my hands I bring.
Simply to thy cross I cling.
If so, should you die where you are,
sudden death or sudden glory.
But, my heirs, shall I be faithful with
you, or shall I belie my soul?
What shall it be?
Are there not many here who, each time
the bell tolls, the departure of a soul
might well ask the question, am I prepared?
And they must say, no.
I shall not turn prophet tonight.
But were it right for me to say
so, I fear not one half of you
are prepared to die.
Is that true?
Yea, let the speaker ask himself the question.
Am I prepared to meet my Maker face
to face?
O sit in your seats and catechize your
souls with that solemn question.
Let each one ask himself, am I prepared?
Should I be called to die?
Methinks I hear one say with confidence, I
know that my Redeemer liveth.
Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed
lest he fall.
I hear another say with trembling accents, a
guilty, weak, and helpless worm.
On Christ's kind arms I fall.
He is my strength and righteousness, my Jesus
and my all.
Yes, sweet words.
I would rather have written that one verse
than Milton's Paradise Lost.
It is such a matchless picture of the
true condition of the believing soul.
But I hear another say, I shall not
answer such a question as that.
I am not going to be dull today.
It may be gloomy weather outside today, but
I do not want to be melancholy.
Young man, young man, go thy way.
Let thine heart cheer thee in the days
of thy youth, but for all this the
Lord shall bring thee to judgment.
What wilt thou do, careless spirit, when thy
friends have forsaken thee, when thou art alone
with God?
Thou dost not like to be alone, young
man.
Now dost thou.
A falling leaf will startle thee.
To be alone an hour will bring on
an insufferable feeling of melancholy.
But thou wilt be alone, and a dreary
alone it will be with God an enemy.
How wilt thou do in the beginning
of thy days?
How didst thou spend thy life?
When he asks thee, where are the years
of thy manhood?
When he questions thee about thy wasted Sabbath
and inquires how thy latter years were spent?
What wilt thou say then, speechless?
Without an answer thou wilt stand.
O, I beseech you, as ye love yourselves,
take care.
Even now begin to weigh the solemn matters
of eternal life.
O, say not, why so earnest?
Why in such haste?
Say, as if I saw you lying in
your bed and your house was on fire,
the fire might be at the bottom of
the house, and you might slumber safely for
the next five minutes.
But with all my might I would pull
you from your bed, or I would shout,
Awake, awake, the flame is under thee.
So with some of you who are sleeping
over hell's mouth, slumbering over the pit of
perdition, may I not awake you?
May I not depart a little from clerical
rules and speak to you, as one speaketh
to his fellow whom he loves?
Ah, if I loved you not, I need
not be here.
It is because I wish to win your
souls, and if it be possible to win
for my master some honor, that I would
thus pour out my heart before you.
As the Lord liveth sinner, thou standest on
a single plank over the mouth of hell,
and that plank is rotten.
Thou hangest over a pit by a solitary
rope, and the strands of that rope are
breaking.
Thou art like that man of old whom
Dionysius placed at the head of the table.
Before him was a dainty feast, but the
man ate not, for directly over his head
was a sword suspended by a hair.
And so art thou, sinner.
Let thy cup be full, let thy pleasures
be high, let thy soul be elevated.
Seest thou that sword?
The next time thou sittest in the theater,
look up and see that sword.
The next time thou art in a tavern,
look at that sword.
When next in thy business thou scornest the
rules of God's gospel, look at that sword.
Though thou seest it not, it is there.
Even now ye may hear God saying to
Gabriel, Gabriel, that man is sitting in his
seat in the hall.
He is hearing, but as though he heard
not.
Unsheath thy blade.
Let the glittering sword cut through that hair.
Let the weapon fall upon him and divide
his soul and body.
Stop thou, Gabriel, stop.
Save the man a little while.
Give him yet an hour that he may
repent.
Oh, let him not die.
True, he has been here these ten or
a dozen nights, and he has listened without
a tear.
But stop, for adventure he may repent yet.
Jesus backs up my entreaty, and he cries,
spare him yet another year till I dig
about him and dung him, and though he
now cumbers the ground, he may yet bring
forth fruit that he may not be hewn
down and cast into the fire.
I thank thee, O God, thou wilt not
cut him down tonight, but tomorrow may be
his last day.
Ye may never see the sun rise, though
you have seen it set.
Take heed.
Hear the word of God's gospel, and depart
with God's blessing.
Whosoever believeth on the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ shall be saved.
He that believeth and is baptized shall be
saved.
He is able to save to the uttermost
all that come unto him.
Whosoever cometh unto him, he will in no
wise cast out.
Let every one that heareth say, Come.
Whosoever is athirst, let him come, and take
of the water of life freely.