The Prince of Preachers Charles Haddon
Spurgeon has been called England's greatest contribution to
the spread of the Gospel in the 19th
century.
One of his contemporaries said that the chief
secret of Spurgeon's attractiveness was the fact that
in every sermon, no matter what the text
or the occasion, he explained the way of
salvation in simple terms.
Spurgeon's messages remain one of the great treasure
houses of Christian literature, still bringing the light
of the Gospel and the comfort of the
Scriptures to hungry souls long after the preacher
has passed into glory.
This is Charles Kelsch inviting you to listen
to a message from the Prince of Preachers.
C.H. Spurgeon preached this message on November
9th, 1856 in the New Park Street Chapel.
It is entitled, One Antidote for Many Ills.
The text is found in Psalm 80 and
verse 19.
Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts.
Cause thy face to shine, and we shall
be saved.
This seems to be the only prayer the
psalmist puts up in this psalm, as being
of itself sufficient for the removal of all
the ills over which he mourned.
Though he sighs over the strife of neighbors
and the ridicule of foes, and lamenting the
ill condition of the goodly vine, he deplores
its broken hedges and complains of the wild
beasts that waste and devour it.
Yet he does not petition the Most High
against these evils in detail.
But gathering up all his wishes into this
one prayer, he reiterates it o'er and
o'er.
Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts.
Cause thy face to shine, and we shall
be saved.
The reason is obvious.
He had traced all the calamities to one
source.
O Lord God, how long wilt thou be
angry?
And now he seeks refreshing from one fountain.
Let thy face no longer frown, but let
it beam upon us with a smile, and
all shall then be well.
This is a sweet lesson for the Church
of Christ.
In your troubles, trials, and adversities, seek first,
chiefly, and above everything else, to have a
revival of religion in your own breast, the
presence of God in your own heart.
Having that, you have scarcely anything beside to
pray for.
Whatever else may befall you shall work for
your good, and all that seems to impede
your course shall really prove to be a
prosperous gale to waft you to your desired
haven.
Only take care that you seek of God,
that you yourselves are turned again unto Him,
and that He would give you the light
of His countenance.
So shall you be saved.
This morning's sermon, then, will be especially addressed
to my own church on the absolute necessity
of true religion in our midst, and of
revival from all apathy and indifference.
We may ask of God multitudes of other
things, but amongst them all let this be
our chief prayer.
Lord, revive us!
We have uttered it in song.
Let me stir up your pure minds by
way of remembrance to utter it in your
secret prayers, and make it the daily aspiration
of your souls.
I feel, beloved, that notwithstanding all opposition, God
will help us to be more than conquerors
through Him that loved us, if we are
true to ourselves and true to Him.
But though all things should go smoothly, and
the sun should always shine upon our heads,
we should have no prosperity if our own
godliness failed.
If we only maintain the form of religion
instead of having the very power of the
Holy Spirit manifested in our midst.
I shall endeavor to urge upon you this
morning, first of all, the benefits of revival,
as we shall find some of them suggested
in this psalm, and, secondly, the means of
revival.
Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts.
Then, thirdly, I shall exhort you to use
these means that you may acquire the benefits.
The benefits of revival to any church in
the world will be a lasting blessing.
I do not mean that false and spurious
kind of revival which was so common a
few years ago.
I do not mean all that excitement attendant
upon religion which has brought men into a
kind of spasmodic godliness and translated them from
sensible beings into such as could only rave
about a religion they did not understand.
I do not think that that is real
and true revival.
God's revivals, whilst they are attended with a
great heat and warmth of piety, yet have
with them knowledge as well as life, understanding
as well as power.
The revivals that we may consider to have
been genuine were such as those wrought by
the instrumentality of such men as Jonathan Edwards
in America and Whitefield in this country who
preached a free grace gospel in all its
fullness.
Such revivals I consider to be genuine, and
such revivals I repeat again, would be a
benefit to any church under heaven.
There is no church, however good it is,
which might not be better.
And there are many churches sunken so low
that they have abundant need, if they would
prevent spiritual death, to cry aloud, Lord, revive
us!
Among the blessings of the revival of Christians
we commence by noting the salvation of sinners.
When God is pleased to pour out His
Spirit upon a church in a larger measure
than usual, it is always accompanied by the
salvation of souls.
And, oh, this is a weighty matter, to
have souls saved!
Some laugh and think the salvation of the
soul is nothing.
But I trust, beloved, you know so much
of the value of souls that you will
ever think it to be worth the laying
down of your lives if you might but
be the means of saving one single soul
from death.
The saving of souls, if a man has
once gained love to perishing sinners and love
to his blessed Master, will be an all
-absorbing passion to him.
It will so carry him away that he
will almost forget himself in the saving of
others.
He will be like the stout, brave fireman
who careth not for the scorch or for
the heat, so that he may rescue the
poor creature on whom true humanity hath set
his heart.
He must, he will, pluck such an one
from the burning at any cost and expense
to himself.
Oh, the zeal of such a man as
that Whitfield to whom I have alluded!
He says in one of his sermons, My
God, I groan day by day over the
salvation of souls.
Sometimes, he said, I think I could stand
upon the top of every hackney coach in
the streets of London to preach God's word.
It is not enough that I can do
it night and day, laboring incessantly by writing
and by preaching.
I would that I were multiplied a thousandfold,
that I might have a thousand tongues to
preach this gospel of my blessed Redeemer.
Ah, you find too many Christians who do
not care about sinners being saved.
The minister may preach, but what he they
the results, so long as he has a
respectable congregation and a quiet people, it is
enough.
I trust, my friends, we shall never sink
to so low a state as to carry
on our services without the salvation of souls.
I have prayed my God many a time,
and I hope to repeat the prayer that
when I have no more souls to save
for Him, no more of His elect to
be gathered home, He may allow me to
be taken to Himself, that I may not
stand as a cumber ground in His vineyard,
useless, seeing there is no more fruit to
be brought forth.
I know you long for souls to be
converted.
I have seen your glad eyes when at
the church meetings, night after night, sinners have
told us what the Lord has done for
them.
I have marked your great joy when drunkards,
blasphemers, and all kinds of careless persons have
turned with full purpose of heart unto God
and led a new life.
Now mark you, if these things are to
be continued, and above all, if they are
to be multiplied, we must have again a
revival in our midst.
For this we must and will cry, O
Lord our God, visit Thy plantation and pour
out again upon us Thy mighty Spirit.
Another effect of a revival in a church
is generally the promotion of true love and
unanimity in its midst.
I will tell you the most quarrelsome churches
in England if you will tell me the
most lazy churches.
It has actually become a proverb nowadays.
People say when persons are sound asleep, he
is as sound asleep as a church, as
if they really thought the church was the
soundest asleep of anything that exists.
Alas that there should be so much truth
in the proverb!
Where a firm established for business would have
all its eyes open, where a company that
had for its object the accumulation of wealth
would ever be on the watch, churches for
the most part seem to neglect the means
of doing good and fitter away holy opportunities
of advancing their master's cause.
And for this reason many of us are
split in sunder.
There are heart burnings, achings, ranklings of soul,
quarrelings amongst each other.
An active church will be a united church.
A slumbering church will be sure to be
a quarrelsome one.
If any minister desires to heal the wounds
of a church and bring the members into
unanimity, let him ask God to give them
all enough to fill their hands.
And when their hands are full of their
master's work and their mouths are full of
his praise, they will have no time for
devouring one another or filling their mouths with
slander and reproach.
Oh, if God gives us revival, we shall
have perfect unanimity.
Blessed be God, we have much of it.
But oh, for more of it, that our
hearts may be knit together as the heart
of one man.
That we, being one army of the living
God, may none of us have any anger
or ill will towards each other.
But being, as I trust we all are,
brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, we may
live as becometh such.
Oh, that Christ would give us that spirit
that loveth all, hopeth for all, and will
bear burdens for all, passing by little things
and differences of judgment and opinion, that so
we may be united as a threefold cord
that cannot be broken.
A revival, I think, is necessary for the
unanimity of the church.
A revival is also necessary in order that
the mouths of the enemies of the truth
may be stopped.
Do they not open wide their mouths against
us?
Have they not spoken hard things against us?
Aye, and not only against us, but against
the truth we preach and against the God
we honor.
How shall their mouths be stopped?
By our replying to them?
No.
Foul-scorned we think it to utter one
single word in our own defense.
If our conduct be not sufficiently upright to
commend itself, we will not utter words in
order to commend it.
But the way we can shut our adversaries'
mouths is this.
By seeking a revival in our midst.
What?
Do they rail against our ministry?
If more souls are saved, can they rail
against that?
Aye, let them if they will.
Do they speak against the doctrines?
Let them.
But let our lives be so holy that
they must lie against us when they dare
to say that our doctrines lead any into
sin.
Let us seek of God that we may
be so earnest, so eminently holy, so God
-like and so Christ-like that to all
they say their own consciences may tell them.
Thou utterest a falsehood whilst Thou speakest against
Him.
This was the glory of the Puritans.
They preached doctrines which laid them open to
reproach.
I am bold to say I have preached
the doctrine of the Puritans, and I am
bold to say, moreover, that those parts which
have been most objected to in my discourses
have frequently been quotations from ancient fathers or
from some of the Puritans.
I have often smiled when I have seen
them condemned and have said, There now, sir,
thou hast condemned Sharnack, or Bunyan, or Howe,
or Doddridge, or some other saint of God
whom it so happened I quoted at the
time.
The word condemn was theirs, and therefore it
did not so much affect me.
They were held up to reproach when they
were alive, and how did they answer their
calumniators?
By a blameless and holy life.
They, like Enoch, walked with God and let
the world say what they would of them.
They only sought to keep their families the
most rigidly pious and themselves the most strictly
upright in the world, so that while it
was said of their enemies, they talk of
good works, it was said of the Puritans
that they did them.
And while the Arminians, for such they were
in those days, were living in sin, he
who was called Calvinist and laughed at was
living in righteousness, and the doctrine that was
said to be the promoter of sin was
found afterwards to be the promoter of holiness.
We defy the world to find a holier
people than those who have espoused the doctrines
of free grace from the first moment until
now.
They have been distinguished in every history, even
by their enemies, as having been the most
devotedly pious and as having given themselves especially
to the reading of God's word and the
practice of His law.
And whilst they said they were justified by
faith alone through the blood of Christ, none
were found so much as they, seeking to
honor God in all the exercises of godliness,
being a peculiar people, zealous of good works.
Their faith let us follow, and their charity
let us emulate.
Let us seek a revival here.
And so our enemies' mouths, if not entirely
shut, shall be so far stopped that their
consciences shall speak against them whilst they rail
against us.
We want no eminent reply to silence their
calumny, no learned articles brought out in our
vindication, no voice lifted up in our favor.
I thank my friends for all they do,
but I thank them little for the true
effect it produces.
Let us live straight on.
Let us work straight on.
Let us preach straight on and serve our
God better than heretofore.
Then let hell roar and earth resound with
tumult.
The conscious integrity of our own spirit shall
preserve us from alarm.
And the Most High Himself shall protect us
from their fury.
We need a revival then for these three
reasons, each of which is great in itself.
Yet, above all, we want a revival if
we would promote the glory of God.
The proper object of a Christian's life is
God's glory.
The church was made on purpose to glorify
God.
But it is only a revived church that
brings glory to His name.
Think you that all the churches honor God?
I tell you nay.
There are some that dishonor Him, not because
of their erroneous doctrines, nor perhaps because of
any defect in their formalities, but because of
the want of life in their religion.
There is a meeting for prayer.
Six people assemble beside the minister.
Does that proclaim your homage to God?
Does that do honor to Christianity?
Go ye to the homes of these people.
See what is their conversation when they are
alone.
Mark how they walk before God.
Go to their sanctuaries and hear their hymns.
There is the beauty of music.
But where is the life of the people?
Listen to the sermon.
It is elaborate, polished, complete, a masterpiece of
oratory.
But ask yourselves, could a soul be saved
under it except by a miracle?
Was there anything in it adapted to stir
men up to goodness?
It pleased their ears.
It instructed them in some degree, perhaps.
But what was there in it to teach
their hearts?
O God knows there are many such preachers.
Notwithstanding their learning and their opulence, they do
not preach the gospel in its simplicity, and
they draw not near to God our Father.
If we would honor God by the church,
we must have a warm church, a burning
church, loving the truths it holds and carrying
them out in life.
O that God would give us life from
on high, lest we should be like that
church of old of whom it was said,
Thou hast a name to live and are
dead.
These are some of the benefits of revivals.
What are the means of revival?
They are twofold.
One is, Turn us again, O Lord God
of hosts.
And the other is, Cause thy face to
shine.
There can be no revival without both of
these.
Allow me, my dear hearers, to address you
one by one in different classes in order
that I may apply the former of these
means to you.
Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts.
Your minister feels that he needs to be
turned more thoroughly to the Lord his God.
His prayer shall be, God helping him, that
he may be more fearless and faithful than
ever, that he may never for one moment
think what any of you will say with
regard to what he utters, but that he
may only think what God his Master would
say concerning him, that he may come into
the pulpit with this resolve, that he cares
no more for your opinion with regard to
the truth than if you were all stones,
only resolving this much, come loss or come
gain by it.
Whatsoever the Lord God saith unto him, that
must he speak.
And he desires to ask his Master that
he may come here with more prayer himself
than heretofore, that whatever he preaches may so
be burnt into his own soul, that you
may all know, even if you do not
think it true yourselves, that at any rate
he believes it and believes it with his
inmost soul.
And I will ask of God that I
may so preach to you that my words
may be attended with a mighty and a
divine power.
I do forswear all pretense to ability in
this work.
I forswear the least idea that I have
ought about me that can save souls, or
anything which could draw men by the attractions
of my speech.
I feel that if you have been profited
by my preaching, it must have been the
work of God and God alone.
And I pray to him that I may
be taught to know more my own weakness.
Wherein my enemies say ought against me, may
I believe what they say, but yet exclaim,
weak though I am, yet through his might
I all things can perform.
Will you ask such things for me that
I may be more and more turned to
God and that so your spiritual health may
be promoted?
But there are some of you who are
workers in the church.
Large numbers are actively engaged for Christ.
In the Sabbath school, in the distribution of
tracts, in preaching the word in the villages
and in some parts of this great city,
many of you are striving to serve God.
Now what I ask and exhort you to
is this.
Cry unto God.
Turn us again, O God.
You want, my dear working friends, more of
the Spirit of God in all your labors.
I am afraid we forget him too much.
We want to have a greater remembrance of
him.
Sunday school teachers, cry unto God that you
may attend your classes with a sincere desire
to promote God's glory, leaning wholly on his
strength.
Do not be content with the ordinary routine,
gathering your children there and sending them home
again.
But cry, Lord, give us the agony which
a teacher ought to feel for his child's
soul.
Ask that you may go to the school
with deep feelings, with throes of love over
the children's hearts, that you may teach them
with tearful eyes, groaning before heaven, that you
may be the means of their salvation and
deliverance from death.
And you who in other ways serve God,
I beseech you, do not be content with
doing it as you have done.
You may have done it well enough to
gain some approval of your fellows.
Do it better, as in the sight of
the Lord.
I do not mean better as to outward
form, but better as to the inward grace
that goeth with it.
O, seek from God that your works may
be done from pure motives, with more simple
faith in Christ, more firm reliance on Him,
and with greater prayer for your success.
Turn us again, is the cry of all,
I hope, who are doing anything for Jesus.
Others of you are intercessors, and here I
hope I have taken in all who love
the Lord in this place.
O, how much the strength of a church
depends upon these intercessors!
I had almost said we could do better
without the workers than the intercessors.
We want in every church, if it is
to be successful, intercessors with God, men who
know how to plead with Him and to
prevail.
Beloved, I must stir you up again on
this point.
If you would see great things done in
this place or in any other place in
the salvation of souls, you must intercede more
earnestly than you have done.
I thank God our prayer meetings are always
full.
But there are some of you whom I
do not see so often as I would
desire.
There are some of you businessmen who are
accustomed to come in for the last half
hour, and I have seen you and called
on you to pray.
For six months I have not seen some
of you at all.
There are others whom I know to be
as much engaged as you are, who somehow
or other manage to be always here.
Why is it not so with you?
If you do not love prayer, then I
wish you not to come until you do.
But I do ask of God to bring
you into such a state of mind that
your soul may be more thoroughly with the
Lord's church, and you may be more thoroughly
devoted to His service.
Our prayer meeting is well attended and is
full, but it shall be better attended yet,
and we shall have the men among us
coming up to the help of the Lord
against the mighty.
We do want more prayer.
Your prayers, I am sure, have been more
in earnest at home than ever they were
during the last three weeks.
Let them be more earnest still.
It is by prayer we must lean upon
God, it is by prayer that God strengthens
us.
I beseech you, wrestle with God, my dear
friends.
I know your love to one another and
to His truth.
Wrestle with God, in secret and in public,
that He would yet open the windows of
heaven and pour out a blessing upon us
such as we shall not have room enough
to receive.
There must be a turning again to God
of the intercessors in prayer.
Again, we want a turning again to God
of all of you who have been accustomed
to hold communion with Jesus, but who have
in the least degree broken off that holy
and heavenly habit.
Beloved, are there not some of you who
were accustomed to walk with God each day?
Your morning was sanctified with prayer, and your
evening tide was closed in with the voice
of praise.
You walked with Jesus in your daily business.
You were real Enochs.
You were Johns.
You did lay your head on the bosom
of your Lord.
But, ah, have not some of you known
suspended communion of late?
Let us speak of ourselves personally instead of
addressing you.
Have we not ourselves held less communion with
Jesus?
Have not our prayers been fewer to Him
and His revelations less bright to us?
Have we not been content to live without
Emmanuel in our hearts?
How long is it with some of us
since our morsel was dipped in the honey
of fellowship?
With some of you, it is weeks and
months since you had your love visit from
Jesus.
O beloved, let me beseech you, cry unto
God, turn us again.
It will never do for us to live
without communion.
We cannot.
We must not.
We dare not live without constant hourly fellowship
with Jesus.
I would stir you up in this matter.
Seek of God that you may return and
experience the loveliness of Jesus in your eyes,
that you may know more and more of
your loveliness in His eyes.
And once more, beloved, turn us again.
Must be the prayer of all you, not
only in your religious labors, but in your
daily lives.
O how I do groan over each one
of you, especially those of you who are
my children in Christ, whom God has granted
me to be the means of bringing from
nature's darkness into marvelous light, that your lives
may be an honor to your profession.
O my dear hearers, may none of you
who make a profession be found liars to
God and man.
There are many who have been baptized, who
have been baptized into the waters of deception.
There are some who put the sacramental wine
between their lips, who are a dishonor and
a disgrace to the church in which they
assemble.
Some who sing praises with us here can
go and sing the songs of Satan elsewhere.
Ay, are there not some among you whom
I cannot detect, whom the deacons cannot, nor
your fellow members either, but whose consciences tell
you you are not fit to be members
of a church, you have crept into our
number, you have deceived us, and there you
are like a cancer in our midst.
God forgive you and change your hearts.
God turn you to Himself.
And O my brethren, one and all of
us, though we hope we have the root
of the matter in us, yet how much
room there is for improvement and amendment.
How are your families conducted?
Is there as much of that true and
earnest prayerfulness for your children as we could
desire?
How is your business conducted?
Are you above the tricks of trade?
Do you know how to stand aloof from
the common customs of other men and say,
If all do wrong, it is no reason
why I should, I must, I will do
right?
Do you know how to talk?
Have you caught the brogue of heaven?
Can you eschew all foolishness, all filthy conversation,
and seek to bear the image of Jesus
Christ in the world?
I do not ask you whether you use
the thee and thou and the outward formalities
of ostentatious humility, but I ask you whether
you know how to regulate your speech by
the word of God.
I trust in some degree that you all
do, but not as we could desire.
Cry out then, ye Christians, turn us again,
O God!
If others sin, I beseech you, do not
you sin.
Remember how God is dishonored by it.
What?
Will you bring shame on Christ and on
the doctrines we profess?
There is enough said against them without our
giving cause of offense.
Lies enough are made up without our giving
any cause that men should truthfully speak ill
of us.
Oh, if I thought it would avail!
Methinks I would go down upon my knees,
my brethren and sisters in Christ Jesus, to
beg of you as for my very life
that you would live close to Jesus.
I do pray the Holy Spirit that He
may so rest on you in every place
that your conversation may be such as becometh
the gospel of Christ, and that in every
act, great or small, and in every word
of every sort, there may be the influence
from on high molding you to the right,
keeping you to the right, and in everything
bidding you to become more and more patterns
of godliness and reflections of the image of
Jesus Christ.
Dear friends, to be personal with each other
again, are we where we want to be
just now, many of us?
Can we put our hands to our hearts
and say, O Lord, I am in spiritual
things just where I desire to be?
No, I don't think there is one of
us that could say that.
Are we now what we should desire to
be if we were to die in our
pews?
Come now, have we so lived during the
past week that we could wish this week
to be a specimen week of our whole
lives?
I fear not.
Brethren, how are your evidences?
Are they bright for heaven?
How is your heart?
Is it wholly set on Jesus?
How is your faith?
Does it dwell on God alone?
Is your soul sick, or is it healthy?
Are you sending forth blossoms and bearing fruit,
or do you feel dry and barren?
Remember, blessed is the man who is planted
by the rivers of water that bringeth forth
his fruit in his season.
But how about yourselves?
Are not some of you so cold and
languid in prayer that prayer is a burden
to you?
How about your trials?
Do they not break your heart more almost
than ever they did?
That is because you have forgotten how to
cast your burden on the Lord.
How about your daily life?
Have you not cause to grieve over it
as not being all you could desire it?
Ah, beloved, do not reckon it a light
matter to be going backwards.
Do not consider it a small thing to
be less zealous than you used to be.
Ah, it is a sad thing to begin
to decline.
But how many of you have done so?
Let our prayer be now.
Lord, revive us!
All our help must come from Thee!
Do I beseech you, I entreat you, in
the name of God our Father and Jesus
Christ our brother, search into your own hearts,
examine yourselves, and put up this prayer.
Lord, wherein I am right, keep me so
against all opposition and conflict.
But wherein I am wrong, Lord, make me
right for Jesus' sake.
We must have this turning again to God
if we would have a revival in our
breast.
Every unholy liver, every cold heart, everyone who
is not entirely devoted to God keeps us
back from having a revival.
When once we have all our souls fully
turned unto the Lord, then I say, but
not till then, He will give us to
see of the travail of the Redeemer's soul.
And God, even our own God, shall bless
us, and all the ends of the world
shall fear Him.
The other means of revival is a precious
one.
Cause Thy face to shine, ah, beloved!
We might ask of God that we might
all be devoted, all His servants, all prayerful,
and all what we want to be.
But it would never come without this second
prayer being answered.
And even if it did come without this,
where would be the blessing?
It is the causing of His face to
shine on His church that makes a church
flourish.
Do you suppose that if to our number
there were added a thousand of the most
wealthy and wise of the land, we should
really prosper any the more without the light
of God's countenance?
Ah, no, beloved!
Give us our God, and we could do
without them.
But they would be a curse to us
without Him.
Do you imagine that the increase of our
numbers is a blessing, unless we have an
increase of grace?
No, it is not.
It is the crowding of a boat until
it sinks without putting in any more provision
for the food of those who are in
it.
The more we have in numbers, the more
we have need of grace.
It is just this we want every day.
Cause Thy face to shine.
Oh, there have been times in this house
of prayer when God's face has shone upon
us.
I can remember seasons when every one of
us wept from the minister down almost to
the child.
There have been times when we have reckoned
the converts under one sermon by scores.
Where is the blessedness we once spoke of?
Where is the joy we once had in
this house?
Brethren, it is not all gone.
There are still many brought to know the
Lord.
But, oh, I want to see those times
again when first the refreshing showers came down
from heaven.
Have you never heard that under one of
Whitefield's sermons there have been as many as
two thousand saved?
He was a great man.
But God can use the little as well
as the great to produce the same effect.
And why should there not be souls saved
here beyond all our dreams?
Ay, why not?
We answer, there is no reason why not.
If God does but cause His face to
shine, give us the shining of God's face.
Man's face may be covered with frowns, and
his heart may be black with malice.
But if the Lord our God doth shine,
it is enough.
If He makes bare His arm, who can
His cause withstand?
When He His people's cause defends, who, who
can stay His hand?
It is His good hand with us we
want.
I do think there is an opportunity for
the display of God's hand at this particular
era such as has not been for many
years before.
Certainly if He doeth anything, the crown must
be put on His head, and on His
head alone.
We are a feeble people.
What shall we do?
But if He doeth anything, He shall have
the crown and the diadem entirely to Himself.
Oh, that He would do it!
Oh, that He would honor Himself!
Oh, that He would turn unto us, that
we might turn unto Him, and that His
face may shine!
Children of God, I need not enlarge on
the meaning of this.
You know what the shining of God's face
means.
You know it means a clear light of
knowledge, a warming light of comfort, a living
light poured into the darkness of your soul,
an honorable light, which shall make you appear
like Moses when he came from the mountain,
so bright that men will scarce dare to
look upon you.
Cause thy face to shine!
Shall we not make this our prayer, dearly
beloved?
Have I one of my brethren in the
faith who will not this day go home
to cry out aloud unto his God, Cause
thy face to shine!
A black cloud has swept over us.
All we want is that the sun should
come, and it shall sweep that cloud away.
There have been direful things, but what of
them if God, our God, shall appear?
Let this be our cry, Cause thy face
to shine!
Beloved, let us give no rest unto our
God until he hears this our prayer.
Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts,
Cause thy face to shine, and we shall
be saved.
Come now, let me stir you all up,
all of you who love the Savior, to
seek after this revival.
Some of you, perhaps, are now resolving in
your hearts that you will at once, when
you reach your homes, prostrate yourselves before your
God, and cry out to him that he
would bless his church.
And, O, do so, I beseech you.
It is common with us under a sermon
to resolve, though after the sermon we are
slow to perform.
You have often said, when you have left
the house of God, I will carry out
that injunction of my pastor, and will be
much in prayer.
You thought to do it so soon as
you arrived at home, but you did not.
And so there was an untimely end of
the matter.
It accomplished not what was designed.
But this time I beseech you, while you
resolve, be resolute.
Instead of saying within yourselves, Now I will
devote myself more to God, and seek to
honor him more, anticipate the resolution by the
result.
You can do more in the strength of
God than you can think or propose to
yourselves in the utmost might of man.
Resolves may pacify the conscience very frequently for
a while, without really benefiting it.
You say you will do it.
Conscience, therefore, does not reproach you with a
disobedience to the command.
But ye do it not, after all.
And so the effect has passed away.
Let any holy and pious resolution you now
form be this instant turned into prayer.
Instead of saying, I will do it, put
up the prayer, Lord, enable me to do
it.
Lord, grant me grace to do it.
One prayer is worth ten thousand resolutions.
Pray to God that you, as a soldier
of the cross, may never disgrace the banner
under which you fight.
Ask of him that you may not be
like the children of Ephraim, who turned back
in the day of battle, but that you
may stand fast in all weathers, even as
good old Jacob, when in the day the
drought consumed him and the frost by night.
So may you serve that God who has
called you with so high a calling.
Perhaps others of you think there is no
need of a revival, that your hearts are
quite good enough.
I hope but few of you think so.
But if thou dost think so, my hearer,
I warn thee, thou fanciest thou art right,
and therein thou dost prove that thou art
wrong.
He who says within himself, I am rich
and increased with goods, let him know that
he is poor and naked and miserable.
He who says he needs no revival knoweth
not what he says.
Beloved, you shall find that those who are
noted as best among God's people need to
write themselves the worst.
Those who fancy all goes well in their
hearts, oft times little know that an undercurrent
of evil is really bearing them away as
with a tide where they would not wish
to go, whilst they fancy they are going
on to peace and prosperity.
O beloved, carry into effect the advice I
have just given.
I know I have spoken feebly.
It is the best I can do just
now.
I have only stirred you up by way
of remembrance.
Think not my desires are as feeble as
my words.
Imagine not that my anxiety for you is
or can be represented by my speech.
Ask, I beseech you, ask of God that
to every one of you, brethren and sisters,
the simple exhortation of one who loves you
as his own soul may be blessed.
God is my witness, beloved, that for him
I seek to live.
No other motive have I in this world,
God knoweth, but his glory.
Therefore do I bid and exhort you, knowing
that you love the same God and seek
to serve the same Christ, do not now
in this hour of peril give the least
cause to the enemy to blaspheme.
O, in the bowels of Christ, I entreat
you for his sake who hung upon the
tree and who is now exalted in heaven,
by his bloody sacrifices offered for your redemption,
by the everlasting love of God whereby you
are kept, I exhort, I beseech, I entreat
you as your brother in Christ Jesus and
such in one as your pastor, be in
nothing moved by your adversaries.
Rejoice and be exceeding glad when they shall
say all manner of evil against you falsely
for our Saviour's sake.
But do ask that your life and conversation
may be an honor to the Lord and
Master.
In nothing give occasion for the enemy to
malign our sacred cause.
In everything may your course be like the
shining light which shineth more and more unto
the perfect day.
But, O ye who come here and approve
the truth with your judgment but yet have
never felt its power in your hearts or
its influence in your lives, for you we
sigh and groan.
For your sake I have stirred up the
saints among us to pray.
O, how many of you there are that
have been pricked in your consciences and hearts
many a time.
You have wept, aye, and it is so
wept that you have thought with yourselves, Never
souls wept as we have done.
But ye have gone back again.
After all the solemn warnings ye have heard
and after all the wooings of Calvary, ye
have gone back again to your sins.
Sinner, thou who heedest little for thyself, just
hear how much we think of thee.
Little dost thou know how much we groan
over thy soul.
Man, thou thinkest thy soul nothing.
Yet morning, noon, and night we are groaning
over that precious, immortal thing which thou despisest.
Thou thinkest it little to lose thy soul,
to perish, or may have to be damned.
Dost thou account us, fools, that we should
cry over thee?
Dost thou suppose we are bereft of reason
that we should think thy soul of so
much concern while thou hast so little concern
for it?
Here are God's people.
They are crying after thy soul.
They are laboring with God to save thee.
Dost thou think so little of it thyself
that thou wouldst fool away thy soul for
a paltry pleasure, or wouldst procrastinate thy soul's
welfare beyond the limited domain of hope?
O sinner, sinner, if thou lovest thyself, I
beseech thee, pause, and think that what God's
people love must be worth something, that what
we labor for and strive for must be
worth something, that what was reckoned worth a
ransom so priceless as Jesus paid must have
its sterling value in the sight of heaven.
Do I beseech thee, pause, think of the
value of thy soul, think how dreadful it
will be if it is lost, think of
the extent of eternity, think of thine own
frailty, bethink thee of thine own sin and
of thy deserving.
May God give thee grace to forsake thy
wicked ways, turn unto Him and live, for
He hath no pleasure in the death of
him that dieth, but rather that he should
turn unto Him and live.
Therefore saith He, Turn thee, turn thee, why
wilt thou die?
And now, O Lord God of hosts, hear
our ardent appeal to thy throne.
Turn us again, lighten our path with the
guidance of thine eye, cheer our hearts with
the smiles of thy face.
O God of armies, let every regiment and
rank of thy militant church be of perfect
heart, undivided in thy service.
Let great grace rest upon all thy children.
Let great fear come upon all the people.
Let many reluctant hearts be turned to the
Lord.
Let there now be times of refreshing from
thy presence.
To thine own name shall be all the
glory.
O thou that art more glorious and excellent
than the mountains of prey.
This message, One Antidote for Many Ills, was
preached by Charles Haddon Spurgeon on November 9th,
1856.
This is Charles Kelsch inviting you to join
me again for another message from the Prince
of Preachers.