The New Park Street Pulpit Mercy, Omnipotence, and
Justice A sermon delivered on Sabbath morning, June
21st, 1857, by the Reverend C.
H.
Spurgeon at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.
Nahum chapter 1, verse 3.
The Lord is slow to anger, and great
in power, and will not at all acquit
the wicked.
Works of art require some education in the
beholder before they can be thoroughly appreciated.
We do not expect that the uninstructed should
at once perceive the varied excellencies of a
painting from some master hand.
We do not imagine that the superlative glories
of the harmonies of the princes of song
will enrapture the ears of clownish listeners.
There must be something in the man himself
before he can understand the wonders either of
nature or of art.
Certainly this is true of character.
By reason of failures in our character and
faults in our life, we are not capable
of understanding all the separate beauties and the
united perfection of the character of Christ or
of God his Father.
Were we ourselves as pure as the angels
in heaven, were we what our race once
was in the garden of Eden, immaculate and
perfect, it is quite certain that we should
have a far better and nobler idea of
the character of God than we can by
possibility attain unto in our fallen state.
But you cannot fail to notice that men,
through the alienation of their natures, are continually
misrepresenting God because they cannot appreciate his perfection.
Does God at one time withhold his hand
from wrath?
Lo, they say that God hath ceased to
judge the world and looks upon it with
listless phlegmatic indifference.
Does he at another time punish the world
for sin?
They say he is severe and cruel.
Men will misunderstand him because they are imperfect
themselves and are not capable of admiring the
character of God.
Now this is especially true with regard to
certain lights and shadows in the character of
God which he has so marvelously blended in
the perfection of his nature that although we
cannot see the exact point of meeting, yet
if we have been at all enlightened by
the Spirit, we are struck with wonder at
the sacred harmony.
In reading Holy Scripture you can say of
Paul that he was noted for his zeal,
of Peter that he will ever be memorable
for his courage, of John that he was
noted for his lovingness.
But did you ever notice when you read
the history of our Master Jesus Christ that
you never could say he was noble for
any one virtue at all?
Why was that?
It was because the boldness of Peter did
so outgrow itself as to throw other virtues
into the shade or else the other virtues
were so deficient that they set forth his
boldness.
The very feat of a man being noted
for something is a sure sign that he
is not so notable in other things.
It is because of the complete perfection of
Jesus Christ that we are not accustomed to
say of him that he was eminent for
his zeal or for his love or for
his courage.
We say of him that he was a
perfect character, but we are not able very
easily to perceive where the shadows and the
lights blended, where the meekness of Christ blended
into his courage and where his loveliness blended
into his boldness in denouncing sin.
We are not able to detect where they
meet, and I believe the more thoroughly we
are sanctified the more it will be a
subject of wonder to us how it could
be that virtues which seemed so diverse were
in so majestic a manner united into one
character.
It is just the same of God, and
I have been led to make the remarks
I have made on my text because of
the two clauses thereof which seem to describe
contrary attributes.
You will notice that there are two things
in my text.
He is slow to anger, and yet he
will not at all acquit the wicked.
Our character is so imperfect that we cannot
see the congruity of these two attributes.
We are wondering perhaps and saying, how is
it he is slow to anger and yet
will not acquit the wicked?
It is because his character is perfect that
we do not see where these two things
melt into each other.
The infallible righteousness and severity of the ruler
of the world, and his loving kindness, his
long-suffering, and his tender mercies.
The absence of any one of these things
from the character of God would have rendered
it imperfect.
The presence of them both, though we may
not see how they can be congruous with
each other, stamps the character of God with
a perfection elsewhere unknown.
And now I shall endeavor this morning to
set forth these two attributes of God, and
the connecting link, the Lord is slow to
anger.
Then comes the connecting link, great in power.
I shall have to show you how that
great in power refers to the sentence foregoing
and the sentence succeeding.
And then we shall consider the next attribute.
He will not at all acquit the wicked,
an attribute of justice.
Let us begin with the first characteristic of
God.
He is said to be slow to anger.
Let me declare the attribute and then trace
it to its source.
God is slow to anger.
When mercy cometh into the world, she driveth
winged steeds.
The axles of her chariot wheels are glowing
hot with speed.
But when wrath cometh, it walketh with tardy
footsteps.
It is not in haste to slay.
It is not swift to condemn.
God's rod of mercy is ever in his
hand outstretched.
God's sword of justice is in its scabbard.
Not rusted in it, it can be easily
withdrawn, but held there by that hand that
presses it back into its sheath, crying, sleep,
O sword, sleep.
For I will have mercy upon sinners and
will forgive their transgressions.
God hath many orators in heaven.
Some of them speak with swift words.
Gabriel, when he cometh down to tell glad
tidings, speaketh swiftly.
Angelic hosts, when they descend from glory, fly
with wings of lightning when they proclaim peace
on earth, goodwill towards men.
But the dark angel of wrath is a
slow orator, with many a pause between.
Where melting pity joins her languid notes, he
speaks, and when but half his oration is
completed, he often stays and withdraws himself from
his rostrum, giving way to pardon and to
mercy.
He having but addressed the people that they
might be driven to repentance and so might
receive peace from the scepter of God's love.
Brethren, I shall just try to show you
now how God is slow to anger.
First, I will prove that he is slow
to anger because he never smites without first
threatening.
Men who are passionate and swift in anger
give a word and a blow, sometimes the
blow first and the word afterwards.
Oftentimes kings, when subjects have rebelled against them,
have crushed them first and then reasoned with
them afterwards.
They have given no time of threatening, no
period of repentance.
They have allowed no space for turning to
their allegiance.
They have at once crushed them in their
hot displeasure, making a full end of them.
Not so, God.
He will not cut down the tree that
doth much cumber the ground until he hath
digged about it and dunged it.
He will not at once slay the man
whose character is the most vile.
Until he has first hewn him by the
prophets, he will not hew him by judgments.
He will warn the sinner ere he condemn
him.
He will send his prophets, rising up early
and late, giving him line upon line and
precept upon precept, here a little and there
a little.
He will not smite the city without warning.
Sodom shall not perish until Lot hath been
within her.
The world shall not be drowned until eight
prophets have been preaching in it, and Noah
the eighth cometh to prophesy the coming of
the Lord.
He will not smite Nineveh until he hath
sent a Jonah.
He will not crush Babylon until his prophets
have cried through its streets.
He will not slay a man until he
hath given many warnings by sicknesses, by the
pulpit, by providence and by consequences.
He smites not with a heavy blow at
once.
He threateneth first.
He doth not in grace as in nature
send lightnings first and thunder afterwards, but he
sendeth the thunder of his law first, and
the lightning of execution follows it.
The lictor of divine justice carries his axe
bound up in a bundle of rods, for
he will not cut off men until he
has reproved them that they may repent.
He is slow to anger.
But again, God is also very slow to
threaten.
Although he will threaten before he condemns, yet
he is slow even in his threatening.
God's lips move swiftly when he promises, but
slowly when he threatens.
Long rolls of peeling thunder slowly roll the
drums of heaven when they sound the death
march of sinners.
Sweetly floweth the music of the rapid notes
which proclaim free grace and love and mercy.
God is slow to threaten.
He will not send a Jonah to Nineveh
until Nineveh has become foul with sin.
He will not even tell Sodom it shall
be burned with fire until Sodom has become
a reeking dunghill, obnoxious to earth as well
as heaven.
He will not drown the world with the
deluge or even threaten to do it until
the sons of God themselves make unholy alliances
and begin to depart from him.
He does not even threaten the sinner by
his conscience until the sinner hath oft times
sinned.
He will often tell the sinner of his
sins, often urge him to repent, but he
will not make hell stare him hard in
the face with all its dreadful terror until
much sin has stirred up the lion from
his lair and made God hot in wrath
against the iniquities of man.
He is slow even to threaten.
But best of all, when God threatens, how
slow he is to sentence the criminal.
When he has told them that he will
punish unless they repent, how long a space
he gives them in which to turn unto
himself.
He doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the
children of men for naught.
He stayeth his hand.
He will not be in hot haste when
he hath threatened them to execute the sentence
upon them.
Have you ever observed that scene in the
Garden of Eden at the time of the
fall?
God had threatened Adam that if he sinned
he should surely die.
Adam sinned.
Did God make haste to sentence him?
Tis sweetly said, the Lord God walked in
the garden in the cool of the day.
Perhaps that fruit was plucked at early morn.
Mayhap it was plucked at noontide.
But God was in no haste to condemn.
He waited till the sun was well nigh
set.
Then the cool of the day came.
And as an old expositor has put it
very beautifully, when he did come, he did
not come on wings of wrath.
But he walked in the garden in the
cool of the day.
He was in no haste to slay.
I think I see him as he was
represented then to Adam in those glorious days
when God walked with him.
Methinks I see the wonderful similitude in which
the unseen did veil himself.
I see it walking among the trees so
slowly, eh?
If it were right to give such a
picture, beating its breast and shedding tears that
it should have to condemn man.
At last I hear its doleful voice.
Adam, where art thou?
Where hast thou cast thyself, poor Adam?
Thou hast cast thyself from my favor.
Thou hast cast thyself into nakedness, into fear,
for thou art hiding thyself.
Adam, where art thou?
I pity thee.
Thou thought'st to be God.
Before I condemn thee, I will give thee
one note of pity.
Adam, where art thou?
Yes, the Lord was slow to anger, slow
to write the sentence, even though the command
had been broken.
And the threatening was therefore of necessity brought
into force.
It was so with the flood.
He threatened the earth, but he would not
fully seal the sentence and stamp it with
the seal of heaven until he had given
space for repentance.
Noah must come, and through his hundred and
twenty years must preach the word.
He must come and testify to an unthinking
and an ungodly generation.
The ark must be builded to be a
perpetual sermon.
And there it must be upon its mountaintop,
waiting for the floods to float it, that
it might be an everyday warning to the
ungodly.
O heavens, why did ye not at once
open your floods?
Ye fountains of the great deep, why did
ye not burst up in a moment?
God said, I will sweep away the world
with a flood.
Why, why did ye not rise?
Because, I hear them saying with gurgling notes,
because although God had threatened, he was slow
to sentence.
And he said in himself happily, they may
repent, peradventure they may turn from their sin.
And therefore did he bid us rest and
be quiet, for he is slow to anger.
And yet once more, even when the sentence
against a sinner is signed and sealed by
heaven's broad seal of condemnation, even then God
is slow to carry us out.
The door of Sodom is sealed.
God hath declared it shall be burned with
fire.
But God is tardy.
He stops.
He will himself go down to Sodom, that
he may see the iniquity of it.
And when he gets there, guilt is rife
in the streets.
Tis night, and a crew of worse than
beasts besiege the door.
Does he then lift his hands?
Does he then say, rain hell out of
heaven, ye skies?
No, he lets them pursue their riot all
night, spares them to the last moment.
And though when the sun was risen, the
burning hell began to fall, yet was the
reprieve as long as possible.
God was not in haste to condemn.
God had threatened to root out the Canaanites.
He declared that all the children of Amon
should be cut off.
He had promised Abraham that he would give
their land unto his seed forever, and they
were to be utterly slain.
But he made the children of Israel wait
four hundred years in Egypt, and he let
these Canaanites live all through the days of
the patriarchs.
And ever then when he had led his
avenging ones out of Egypt, he stayed them
forty years in the wilderness, because he was
loath to slay poor Canaan.
Yet, said he, I will give them space.
Though I have stamped their condemnation, though their
death warrant has come forth from the court
of king's bench, and must be executed, yet
will I reprieve them as long as I
can.
And he stops until at last mercy had
had enough, and Jericho's melting ashes and the
destruction of Ai betoken that the sword was
out of its scabbard, and God had awaked
like a mighty man and like a strong
man full of wrath.
God is slow to execute the sentence, even
when he has declared it.
And ah, my friends, there is a sorrowful
thought that has just crossed my mind.
There are some men yet alive who are
sentenced now.
I believe that scripture bears me out in
a dreadful thought which I just wish to
hint at.
There are some men that are condemned before
they are finally damned.
There are some men whose sins go before
them unto judgment, who are given over to
a seared conscience, concerning whom it may be
said that repentance and salvation are impossible.
There are some few men in the world
who are like John Bunyan's man in the
iron cage, can never get out.
They are like Esau.
They find no place of repentance.
Though like him they do not seek it,
for if they sought it, they would find
it.
Many there are who have sinned, the sin
unto death, concerning whom we cannot pray.
For we are told, I do not say
that ye shall pray for it.
But why?
Why?
Why are they not already in the flame?
If they be condemned, if mercy has shut
its eye forever upon them, if it never
will stretch out its hand to give them
pardon, why?
Why?
Why are they not cut down and swept
away?
Because God saith, I will not have mercy
upon them, but I will let them live
a little while longer.
Though I have condemned them, I am loath
to carry the sentence out, and I will
spare them as long it is right that
man should live.
I will let them have a long life
here, for they will have a fearful eternity
of wrath forever.
Yes, let them have their little whirl of
pleasure.
Their end shall be most fearful.
Let them beware, for although God is slow
to anger, He is sure in it.
If God were not slow to anger, would
He not have smitten this huge city of
ours, this behemoth city?
Would He not have smitten it into a
thousand pieces and blotted out the remembrance of
it from the earth?
The iniquities of this city are so great
that if God should dig up her very
foundations and cast her into the sea, she
well deserves it.
Our streets at night present spectacles of vice
that cannot be equaled.
Surely there can be no nation in no
country that can show a city so utterly
debauched as this great city of London.
If our midnight streets are indications of our
immorality, you allow in your public places of
resort, I mean you, my lords and ladies,
you allow things to be said in your
hearing of which your modesty ought to be
ashamed.
You can sit in theatres to hear plays
at which modesty should blush, I say not
of piety.
That the ruder sex should have listened to
the obscenities of La Traviata is surely bad
enough, but that ladies of the highest refinement
and the most approved taste should dishonour themselves
by such a patronage of vice is indeed
intolerable.
Let the sins of the lower theatres escape
without your censure, ye gentlemen of England.
The lowest bestiality of the nethermost hell of
a playhouse can look to your opera houses
for their excuse.
I thought that with the pretensions this city
makes to piety for sure would not have
so far gone and that after such a
warning as they have had from the press
itself, a press which is certainly not too
religious, they would not so indulge their evil
passions.
But because the pill is gilded, ye suck
down the poison.
Because the thing is popular, ye patronize it.
It is lustful, it is abominable, it is
deceitful.
Ye take your children to hear what yourselves
never ought to listen to.
You yourselves will sit in gay and grand
company to listen to things from which your
modesty ought to revolt.
And I would fain hope it does, although
the tide may for a while deceive you.
Ah!
God only knoweth the secret wickedness of this
great city.
It demandeth a loud and a trumpet voice.
It needs a prophet to cry aloud, In
this city, for verily the enemy groweth upon
us, the power of the evil one is
mighty, and we are fast going to perdition
unless God shall put forth his hand and
roll back the black torrent of iniquity that
streameth down our streets.
But God is slow to anger and doth
still stay his sword.
Wrath said yesterday, Unsheath thyself, O sword!
And the sword struggled to get free.
Mercy put her hand upon the hilt and
said, Be still!
Unsheath thyself, O sword!
Again it struggled from its scabbard.
Mercy put her hand on it and said,
Back!
And it rattled back again.
Wrath stamped his foot and said, Awake, O
sword, awake!
It struggled yet again till half its blade
was outdrawn.
Back!
said Mercy.
And with manly push he sent it back,
rattling into its sheath.
And there it sleeps still, for the Lord
is slow to anger and prentious in mercy.
Now I am to trace this attribute of
God to its source.
Why is he slow to anger?
He is slow to anger because he is
infinitely good.
Good is his name, good God, good in
his nature, because he is slow to anger.
He is slow to anger again because he
is great.
Little things are always swift in anger.
Great things are not so.
The silly curb barks at every passer-by
and bears no insult.
The lion would bear a thousand times as
much, and the bull sleeps in his pasture
and will bear much before he lifteth up
his might.
The leviathan in the sea, though, he makes
the deep to be hoary when he is
enraged, yet he is slow to be stirred
up whilst the little and puny are always
swift in anger.
God's greatness is one reason of the slowness
of his wrath.
But to proceed at once to the link,
a great reason why he is slow to
anger is because he is great in power.
This is to be the connecting link between
this part of the subject and the last,
and therefore I must beg your attention.
I say that this word, great in power,
connects the first sentence to the last, and
it does so in this way.
The Lord is slow to anger, and he
is slow to anger because he is great
in power.
How say you so?
says one.
I answer.
He that is great in power has power
over himself, and he that can keep his
own temper down and subdue himself is greater
than he who rules a city or can
conquer nations.
We heard but yesterday or the day before
mighty displays of God's power in the rolling
thunder which alarmed us.
And when we saw the splendor of his
might in the glistening lightning, when he lifted
up the gates of heaven and we saw
the brightness thereof, and then he closed them
again upon the dusty earth in a moment,
even then we did not see anything but
the hidings of his power compared with the
power which he has over himself.
When God's power doth restrain himself, then it
is power indeed.
The power to curb power, the power that
binds omnipotence is omnipotent surpassed.
God is great in power, and therefore doth
he keep in his anger.
A man who has a strong mind can
bear to be insulted, can bear offenses because
he is strong.
The weak mind snaps and snarls at the
little.
The strong mind bears it like a rock.
It moveth not, though a thousand breakers dash
upon it and cast their pitiful malice in
the spray upon its summit.
God mocketh his enemies, and yet he moveth
not.
He standeth still and letteth them curse him,
yet is he not wrathful.
If he were less of a God than
he is, if he were less mighty than
we know him to be, he would long
ere this have sent forth the whole of
his thunders and emptied the magazines of heaven.
He would long ere this have blasted the
earth with the wondrous mines he hath prepared
in its lower surface.
The flame that burneth there would have consumed
us, and we should have been utterly destroyed.
We bless God that the greatness of his
power is just our protection.
He is slow to anger because he is
great in power.
And now, there is no difficulty in showing
how this link unites itself with the next
part of the text.
He is great in power and will not
at all acquit the wicked.
This needs no demonstration in words.
I have but to touch the feelings, and
you will see it.
The greatness of his power is an assurance
and an insurance that he will not acquit
the wicked.
Who among you could witness the storm on
Friday night without having thoughts concerning your own
sinfulness stirred in your bosoms?
Men do not think of God the Punisher
or Jehovah the Avenger when the sun is
shining and the weather calm.
But in times of tempest, whose cheek is
not blanched.
The Christian oftentimes rejoiceth in it.
He can say, My soul is well at
ease amidst this revelry of earth.
I do rejoice at it.
It is a day of feasting in my
Father's hall, a day of high feast and
carnival in heaven, and I am glad.
The God that reigns on high and thunders
when he pleas, that rides upon the stormy
sky and manages the seas, this awful God
is ours, our Father and our love.
He shall send down his heavenly powers to
carry us above.
But the man who is not of an
easy conscience will be ill at ease when
the timbers of the house are creaking and
the foundations of the solid earth seem to
groan.
Ah, who is he then that doth not
tremble?
Yon lofty tree is ribbon in half.
That lightning flash has smitten its trunk and
there it lies, forever blasted, a monument of
what God can do.
Who stood there and saw it?
Was he a swearer?
Did he swear then?
Was he a Sabbath-breaker?
Did he love his Sabbath-breaking then?
Was he haughty?
Did he then despise God?
Ah, how he shook then!
Saw you not his hair stand on end?
Did not his cheek blanch in an instant?
Did he not close his eyes and start
back in horror when he saw that dreadful
spectacle and thought God would smite him too?
Yes, the power of God when seen in
the tempest, on sea or on land, in
the earthquake or in the hurricane, is instinctively
a proof that he will not acquit the
wicked.
I know not how to explain the feeling,
but it is nevertheless the truth.
Majestic displays of omnipotence have an effect upon
the mind of convincing even the hardened that
God who is so powerful will not at
all acquit the wicked.
Thus have I just tried to explain and
make bare the link of the chain.
The last attribute, and the most terrible one
is, he will not at all acquit the
wicked.
Let me unfold this first of all, and
then let me after that endeavor to trace
it also to its source, as I did
the first attribute.
God will not acquit the wicked.
How prove I this?
I prove it thus.
Never once has he pardoned an unpunished sin.
Not in all the years of the Most
High, not in all the days of his
right hand has he once blotted out sin
without punishment.
What say you?
Were not those in heaven pardoned?
Are there not many transgressors pardoned, and do
they not escape without punishment?
Has he not said, I have blotted out
thy transgressions like a cloud and like a
thick cloud thine iniquities?
Yes, true.
Most true.
And yet my assertion is true also.
Not one of all those sins that have
been pardoned were pardoned without punishment.
Do you ask me why and how such
a thing as that can be the truth?
I point you to yon dreadful sight on
Calvary.
The punishment which fell not on the forgiven
sinner fell there.
The cloud of justice was charged with fiery
hell.
The sinner deserved it.
It fell on him.
But for all that, it fell and spent
its fury.
It fell there in that great reservoir of
misery.
It fell into the Savior's heart.
The plagues which need should light in our
ingratitude did not fall on us, but they
fell somewhere.
And who was it that was plagued?
Tell me, Gethsemane!
Tell me, O Calvary summit!
Who was plagued?
The doleful answer comes.
Eli!
Eli, lama sabachthani!
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?
It is Jesus suffering all the plagues of
sin.
Sin is still punished, though the sinner is
delivered.
But you say, this has scarcely proved that
he will not acquit the wicked.
I hold it has proved it and proved
it clearly.
But do ye want any further proof that
God will not acquit the wicked?
Need I lead you through a long list
of terrible wonders that God has wrought the
wonders of his vengeance?
Shall I show you blighted Eden?
Shall I let you see a world all
drowned, sea monsters whelping and stabling in the
palaces of kings?
Shall I let you hear the last shriek
of the last drowning man as he falls
into the flood and dies, washed by that
huge wave from the hilltop?
Shall I let you see death riding upon
the summit of a crested billow, upon a
sea that knows no shore, and triumphing because
his work is done, his quiver empty?
For all men are slain, save where life
flows in the midst of death, in yonder
ark.
Need I let you see Sodom with its
terrified inhabitants when the volcano of almighty wrath
spouted fiery hell upon it?
Shall I show you the earth opening its
mouth to swallow up Korah, Dathan and Abiram?
Need I take you to the plagues of
Egypt?
Shall I again repeat the death shriek of
Pharaoh and the drowning of its host?
Surely we need not to be told of
cities that are in ruins or of nations
that have been cut off in a day.
Ye need not to be told how God
has smitten the earth from one side to
the other when he has been wrath and
how he has melted mountains in his hot
displeasure.
Nay, we have proofs enough in history, proofs
enough in Scripture, that he will not at
all acquit the wicked.
If ye wanted the best proof, however, ye
should borrow the black wings of a miserable
imagination and fly beyond the world through the
dark realm of chaos on, far on where
those battlements of fire are gleaming with a
horrid light.
If through them with a spirit's safety ye
would fly and would behold the worm that
never dies, the pit that knows no bottom,
and could you there see the fire unquenchable
and listen to the shrieks and wails of
men that are banished forever from God.
If, sirs, it were possible for you to
hear the sullen groans and the hollow moans
and shrieks of tortured ghosts, then you would
come back to this world amazed and petrified
with horror, and you would say, indeed, he
will not acquit the wicked.
You know, hell is the argument of the
text.
May you never have to prove the text
by feeling in yourselves the argument fully carried
out.
He will not at all acquit the wicked.
And now we trace this terrible attribute to
its source.
Why is this?
We reply, God will not acquit the wicked
because he is good.
What?
Doth goodness demand that sinners shall be punished?
It doth.
The judge must condemn the murderer because he
loved his nation.
I cannot let you go free.
I cannot and must not.
You would slay others who belong to this
fair commonwealth if I were to let you
go free.
No, I must condemn you from the very
loveliness of my nature.
The kindness of a king demands the punishment
of those who are guilty.
It is not wrathful in the legislature to
make severe laws against great sinners.
It is but love towards the rest that
sin should be restrained.
Yon great floodgates which keep back the torrent
of sin are painted black and look right
horrible, like horrid dungeon gates.
They affright my spirit, but are they proof
that God is not good?
No, sirs.
If ye could open wide those gates and
let the deluge of sin flow on us,
then would you cry, O God, O God,
shut to the gates of punishment again.
Let law again be established.
Set up the pillars and swing the gates
upon their hinges.
Shut again the gates of punishment that this
world may not again be utterly destroyed by
men who have become worse than brutes.
It needs, for very goodness sake, that sin
should be punished.
Mercy with her weeping eyes, for she hath
wept for sinners.
When she finds they will not repent, she
looks more terribly stern in her loveliness than
justice in all his majesty.
She drops the white flag from her hand
and saith, No, I called and they refused.
I stretched out my hand and no man
regarded.
Let them die.
And that terrible word from the lip of
mercy's self is harsher thunder than the very
damnation of justice.
O yes, the goodness of God demands that
men should perish if they will sin.
And again, the justice of God demands it.
God is infinitely just and His justice demands
that men should be punished unless they turn
to Him with full purpose of heart.
Need I pass through all the attributes of
God to prove it?
Methinks I need not.
We must all of us believe that the
God who is slow to anger and great
in power is also sure not to acquit
the wicked.
And now just a home thrust or two
with you.
What is your state this morning?
My friend, man, woman, what is thy state?
Canst thou look up to heaven and say,
Though I have sinned greatly, I believe Christ
was punished in my stead.
My faith looks back to see the burden
He did bear when hanging on the cursed
tree and knows her guilt was there.
Can you by humble faith look to Jesus
and say, My substitute, my refuge, my shield,
thou art my rock, my trust in thee
do I confide.
Then, beloved, to you I have nothing to
say except this.
Never be afraid when you see God's power.
For now that you are forgiven and accepted,
now that by faith you have fled to
Christ for refuge, the power of God need
no more terrify you than the shield and
sword of the warrior need terrify his wife
or his child.
Nay, saith the woman, is he strong?
He is strong for me.
Is his arm brawny and are all his
sinews fast and strong?
Then are they fast and strong for me.
Whilst he lives and wears a shield, he
will stretch it over my head.
And whilst his good sword can cleave foes,
it will cleave my foes too and ransom
me.
Be of good cheer.
Fear not his power.
But hast thou never fled to Christ for
refuge?
Dost thou not believe in the Redeemer?
Hast thou never confided thy soul to his
hands?
Then, my friends, hear me.
In God's name, hear me just a moment.
My friend, I would not stand in thy
position for an hour for all the stars
twice spelt in gold.
For what is thy position?
Thou hast sinned.
And God will not acquit thee.
He will punish thee.
He is letting thee live.
Thou art reprieved.
Poor is the life of one that is
reprieved without a pardon.
Thy reprieve will soon run out.
Thine hourglass is emptying every day.
I see on some of you death has
put his cold hand and frozen your hair
to whiteness.
Ye need your staff.
It is the only barrier between you and
the grave now.
And you are, all of you, old and
young, standing on a narrow neck of land
between two boundless seas, the neck of land
that isthmus of life narrowing every moment.
And you, and you, and you are yet
unpardoned.
There is a city to be sacked.
And you are in it.
Soldiers are at the gates.
The command is given that every man in
the city is to be slaughtered, save he
who can give the password.
Sleep on.
The attack is not to-day.
Sleep on.
But it is to-morrow, sir.
Eh!
Sleep on.
It is not till to-morrow.
Sleep on.
Procrastinate.
Hark!
I hear a rumbling at the gates.
The battering ram is at them.
The gates are tottering.
Sleep on.
The soldiers are not yet at our doors.
Sleep on.
Ask for no mercy yet.
Sleep on.
Eh!
But I hear the shrill clarion sound.
They are in the streets.
Hark to the shrieks of men and women.
They are slaughtering them.
They fall.
Sleep on.
They are not yet at your door.
But hark!
They are at the gate.
With heavy tramp I hear the soldiers marching
up the stairs.
Eh!
Sleep on.
They are not yet in your room.
Why, they are there.
They have burst open the door that parted
you from them, and there they stand.
No.
Sleep on.
The sword is not yet at your throat.
Sleep on.
It is at your throat.
You start with horror.
Sleep on.
But you are gone.
Demon, why toldest thou me to slumber?
It would have been wise in me to
have escaped the city when first the gates
were shaken.
Why did I not ask for the password
before the troops came?
Why, by all that is wise, why did
I not rush into the streets and cry
the password when the soldiers were there?
Why stood I till the knife was at
my throat?
Eh!
Demon, doth thou art, be cursed.
But I am cursed with thee forever.
You know the application.
It is a parable.
Ye can all expound.
Ye need not that I should tell you
that death is after you, that justice must
devour you, that Christ crucified is the only
password that can save you, and yet you
have not learnt it.
That with some of you death is nearing,
nearing, nearing, and that with all of you
he is close at hand.
I need not expound how Satan is the
demon, how in hell you shall curse him
and curse yourselves because you procrastinated, how that
seeing God was slow to anger, you were
slow to repentance, how because he was great
in power and kept back his anger, therefore
you kept back your steps from seeking him,
and here you are what you are.
Spirit of God, bless these words to some
souls that they may be saved.
May some sinners be brought to the Saviour's
feet and cry for mercy.
We ask it for Jesus' sake.
Amen.