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 Kelch inviting you to listen
to a message from the Prince of Preachers.
C.
H.
Spurgeon preached this message on September 5th, 1858,
in the music hall of the Royal Surrey
Gardens.
It is entitled, The New Heart.
The text is found in Ezekiel chapter 36
and verse 26.
A new heart also will I give you,
and a new spirit will I put within
you, and I will take away the stony
heart out of your flesh, and I will
give you an heart of flesh.
Behold a wonder of divine love!
When God maketh his creatures, one creation he
regardeth as sufficient, and should they lapse from
the condition in which he has created them,
he suffers them as a rule to endure
the penalty of their transgression, and to abide
in the place into which they are fallen.
But here he makes an exception.
Man, fallen man, created by his Maker pure
and holy, hath willfully and wickedly rebelled against
the Most High and lost his first estate.
But behold, he is to be the subject
of a new creation through the power of
God's Holy Spirit.
Behold this and wonder, what is man compared
with an angel?
Is he not little and insignificant?
And the angels which kept not their first
estate, but left their own habitation, he hath
reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the
judgment of the great day.
God hath no mercy upon them.
He made them pure and holy, and they
ought to have remained so.
But inasmuch as they willfully rebelled, he cast
them down from their shining seats forever, and
without a single promise of mercy he hath
bound them fast in the fetters of destiny
to abide in eternal torment.
But wonder, ye heavens, the God who destroyed
the angels, stooped from his highest throne in
glory and speaks to his creature man, and
thus saith unto him, Now thou hast fallen
from me, even as the angels did.
Thou hast grossly erred and gone astray from
my ways.
Not for thy sake do I this, but
for mine own name's sake.
Behold, I will undo the mischief which thine
own hand hath done.
I will take away that heart which has
rebelled against me.
Having made thee once, thou hast unmade thyself.
I will make thee over again.
I will put my hand a second time
to the work.
Once more shalt thou revolve upon the potter's
wheel, and I will make thee a vessel
of honor, fit for my gracious use.
I will take away thy stony heart and
give thee a heart of flesh.
A new heart will I give thee, and
a new spirit will I put within thee.
Is not this a wonder of divine sovereignty
and of infinite grace, that mighty angels should
be cast into the fire forever, and yet
God hath made a covenant with man that
he will renew and restore him?
And now, my dear friends, I shall attempt
this morning, first of all, to show the
necessity for the great promise contained in my
text, that God will give us a new
heart and a new spirit.
And after that I shall endeavor to show
the nature of the great work which God
works in the soul when He accomplishes this
promise.
Afterwards, a few personal remarks to all my
hearers.
In the first place, it is my business
to endeavor to show the necessity for the
great promise.
Not that it needs any showing to the
quickened and enlightened Christian, but this is for
the conviction of the ungodly and for the
humbling of our carnal pride.
Oh, that this morning the gracious Spirit may
teach us our depravity, that we may thereby
be driven to seek the fulfillment of this
mercy, which is most assuredly and abundantly necessary
if we would be saved.
You will notice that in my text God
does not promise to us that He will
improve our nature, that He will mend our
broken hearts.
No, the promise is that He will give
us new hearts and right spirits.
Human nature is too far gone ever to
be mended.
It is not a house that is a
little out of repair, with here and there
a slate blown from the roof and here
and there a piece of plaster broken down
from the ceiling.
No, it is rotten throughout.
The very foundations have been sapped.
There is not a single timber in it
which has not been eaten by the worm,
from its uppermost roof to its lowest foundation.
There is no soundness in it.
It is all rottenness and ready to fall.
God does not attempt to mend.
He does not shore up the walls and
repaint the door.
He does not garnish and beautify, but He
determines that the old house shall be entirely
swept away and that He will build a
new one.
It is too far gone, I say, to
be mended.
If it were only a little out of
repair, it might be mended.
If only a wheel or two of that
great thing called manhood were out of repair,
then He who made man might put the
whole to rights.
He might put a new cog where it
had been broken off and another wheel where
it had gone to ruin, and the machine
might work anew.
But no, the whole of it is out
of repair.
There is not one lever which is not
broken, not one axle which is not disturbed,
not one of the wheels which act upon
the others.
The whole head is sick and the whole
heart is faint.
From the sole of the foot to the
crown of the head, it is all wounds
and bruises and putrefying sores.
The Lord, therefore, does not attempt the repairing
of this thing.
But He says, I will give you a
new heart, and a right spirit will I
put within you.
I will take away the heart of stone.
I will not try to soften it.
I will let it be as stony as
ever it was.
But I will take it away, and I
will give you a new heart, and it
shall be a heart of flesh.
Now I shall endeavor to show that God
is justified in this, and that there was
an abundant necessity for His resolution so to
do.
For in the first place, if you consider
what human nature has been and what it
is, you will not be very long before
you will say of it, Ah, it is
a hopeless case indeed.
Consider then for a moment how bad human
nature must be if we think how ill
it has treated its God.
I remember William Huntington says in his autobiography
that one of the sharpest sensations of pain
that he felt after he had been quickened
by divine grace was this.
He felt such pity for God.
I do not know that I ever met
with the expression elsewhere, but it is a
very expressive one.
Although I might prefer to say sympathy with
God and grief that He should be so
evil and treated.
Ah, my friends, there are many men that
are forgotten, that are despised, and that are
trampled on by their fellows, but there never
was a man who was so despised as
the everlasting God has been.
Many a man has been slandered and abused,
but never was man abused as God has
been.
Many have been treated cruelly and ungratefully, but
never was treated as our God has been.
Let us look back upon our past lives.
How ungrateful have we been to Him!
It was He who gave us being, and
the first utterance of our lips should have
been in His praise.
So long as we were here, it was
our duty to have perpetually sung His glory.
But instead of that, from our birth, we
spoke that which was false and untrue and
unholy, and since then we have continued to
do the same.
We have never returned His mercies into His
bosom with gratitude and thankfulness, but we have
let them lie forgotten without a single hallelujah
from our carelessness concerning the Most High, that
He had entirely forgotten us, and that therefore
we were trying to forget Him.
It is so very seldom that we think
of Him that one would imagine that surely
He never gave us occasion to think of
Him.
Addison said, When all Thy mercies, O my
God, My rising soul surveys, Transported with the
view, I'm lost in wonder, love, and praise.
But I think if we look back with
the eye of penitence, We shall be lost
in wonder, shame, and grief, For our cry
will be, What, could I treat so good
a friend so ill?
Have I had so gracious a benefactor, And
have I been so unmindful of Him, And
so devoted a father, And yet have I
never embraced Him?
Have I never given Him the kiss of
my affectionate gratitude?
Have I never studied to do something Whereby
I might let Him know That I was
conscious of His kindness, And that I felt
a grateful return in my bosom for His
love?
But worse than this, We have not only
been forgetful of Him, But we have rebelled
against Him, We have assailed the Most High,
If we knew that anything was godlike, We
hated it at once.
We have despised His people, We have called
them cants and hypocrites and Methodists, We have
despised His day, He set it apart on
purpose for our good, And that day we
take for our own pleasure and our own
labor Instead of consecrating it to Him.
He gave us a book as a love
token, And He desired us to read it,
For it was full of love to us,
And we have kept it fast closed Till
the very spiders have spun their cobwebs over
the leaves.
He opened a house of prayer and let
us go there, And there would He meet
with us And speak to us from off
the mercy seat.
But we have often preferred the theater to
God's house, And have been found listening to
any sound Rather than the voice which speaketh
from heaven.
Ah, my friends, I say again there never
was a man Treated by his fellow creatures,
Even by the worst of men, So bad
as God has been.
And yet, while men have been ill-treating
him, He has still continued to bless them.
He has put breath into the nostrils of
man, Even while he has been cursing him,
Has given him food to eat, Even while
he has been spending the strength of his
body In warfare against the Most High.
And on the very Sabbath, When you have
been breaking His commandment And spending the day
on your own lusts, It is He who
has given light to your eyes, Breath to
your lungs, And strength to your nerves and
sinews, Blessing you, even while you have been
cursing Him.
Oh, it is a mercy that He is
God and changeth not, Or else we sons
of Jacob Would have been long ago consumed,
And justly too.
You may picture to yourselves, if you like,
A poor creature dying in a ditch.
I trust that such a thing never happens
in this land, But such a thing might
happen As a man who had been rich,
On a sudden becoming poor, And all his
friends deserting and leaving him.
He begs for bread, and no man will
help him, Until at last, without a rag
to cover him, His poor body yields up
life in a ditch.
This, I think, is the very extreme Of
human negligence to mankind.
But Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Was
treated even worse than this.
It would have been a thousand mercies to
Him If they had permitted Him to die
unregarded in a ditch.
But that would have been too good for
human nature.
He must know the very worst, And therefore
God allowed human nature To take Christ and
nail Him to the tree.
He allowed it to stand and mock His
thirst, And offer Him vinegar, And taunt and
jeer Him in the extreme of His agonies.
It allowed human nature to make Him Its
jest and scorn, And stand staring with lascivious
and cruel eyes Upon His stripped and naked
body.
Oh, shame on manhood!
Never could there have been a creature worse
than man.
The very beasts are better than man, For
man has all the worst attributes of the
beasts And none of their best.
He has the fierceness of the lion without
its nobility.
He has the stubbornness of an ass without
its patience.
He has all the devouring gluttony of the
wolf Without the wisdom which bids it avoid
the trap.
He is a carrion vulture, but He is
never satisfied.
He is a very serpent with the poison
of asps beneath His tongue.
But He spits His venom afar off as
well as nigh.
Ah, if you think of human nature as
it acts toward God, You will say, indeed,
it is too bad to be mended.
It must be made anew.
Again, there is another aspect in which we
may regard the sinfulness of human nature.
That is, its pride.
It is the very worst face of man
that He is so proud.
Beloved, pride is woven into the very warp
and woof of our nature, And we shall
never get rid of it until we are
wrapped in our winding sheet.
It is astonishing that when we are at
our prayers, when we try to make use
of humble expressions, we are betrayed into pride.
It was but the other day I found
myself on my knees making such use of
an expression as this.
O Lord, I grieve before Thee that ever
I should have been such a sinner as
I have been, O that I should ever
have revolted and rebelled as I have done.
There was pride in that, for who am
I?
Was there any wonder in it?
I ought to have known that I was
myself so sinful that there was no wonder
that I should have gone astray.
The wonder was that I had not been
even worse, and there the credit was due
to God, not to myself.
So that when we are trying to be
humble, we may be foolishly rushing into pride.
What a strange thing it is to see
a sinful, guilty wretch proud of his morality,
and yet that is a thing you may
see every day.
A man who is an enemy to God,
proud of his honesty, and yet he is
robbing God.
A man proud of his chastity, and yet
if he knew his own thoughts, they are
full of lasciviousness and uncleanness.
A man proud of the praise of his
fellows, while he knows himself that he has
the blame of his own conscience and the
blame of God Almighty.
It is a wild, strange thing to think
that man should be proud when he has
nothing to be proud of.
A living, animated lump of clay, defiled and
filthy, a living hell, and yet proud.
I, a base-born son of one that
robbed his master's garden of old, and went
astray and would not be obedient, of one
that sunk his whole estate for the paltry
bribe of a single apple, and yet proud
of my ancestry.
I, who am living on God's daily charity,
to be proud of my wealth, when I
have not a single farthing with which to
bless myself unless God chooses to give it
to me.
I, that came naked into this world and
must go naked out of it, I, proud
of my riches.
What a strange thing.
I, a wild ass's colt, a fool that
knoweth nothing, proud of my learning.
Oh, what a strange thing that the fool
called man should call himself doctor and make
himself a master of all arts when he
is master of none, and is most a
fool when he thinks his wisdom culminates to
its highest point.
And, oh, strangest of all, that man who
has a deceitful heart, full of all manner
of evil concupiscence and adultery, idolatry and lust,
should yet talk about being a good-hearted
fellow and should pride himself on having at
least some good points about him, which may
deserve the veneration of his fellows, if not
some consideration from the Most High.
Ah, human nature, this is then thine own
condemnation that thou art insanely proud while thou
hast nothing to be proud of.
Write Ichabod upon it.
The glory has departed forever from human nature.
Let it be put away, and let God
give us something new, for the old can
never be made better.
It is helplessly insane, decrepit and defiled.
Furthermore, it is quite certain that human nature
cannot be made better, for many have tried
it, but they have always failed.
A man trying to improve human nature is
like trying to change the position of a
weathercock by turning it round to the east
when the wind is blowing west.
He has but to take his hand off,
and it will be back again in its
place.
So have I seen a man trying to
restrain nature.
He is an angry, bad-tempered man, and
he is trying to cure himself a bit,
and he does, but it comes out.
And if it does not burn right out,
and the sparks do not fly abroad, yet
it burns within his bone till they grow
white with the heat of malice, and there
remains within his heart a residuum of the
ashes of revenge.
I have seen a man trying to make
himself religious, and what a monstrosity he makes
himself in trying to do it, for his
legs are not equal, and he goes limping
along in the service of God.
He is a deformed and ungainly creature, and
all who look at him can very soon
discover the inconsistencies of his profession.
Oh, we say it is vain for such
a man to try to appear white, as
well might the Ethiopian think he could make
his skin appear white by applying cosmetics to
it, or as well might the leopard think
that his spots might be brushed away.
As for this man to imagine that he
can conceal the baseness of his nature by
any attempts at religion.
Ah, I know I tried a long time
to improve myself, but I never did make
much of it.
I found I had a devil within me
when I began, and I had ten devils
when I left off.
Instead of becoming better, I became worse.
I had now got the devil of self
-righteousness, of self-trust and self-conceit, and
many others had come and taken up their
lodging place.
While I was busy sweeping my house and
garnishing it, behold, the one that I sought
to get rid of, and which had only
gone for a little season, returned and brought
with him seven other spirits more wicked than
himself, and they entered in and dwelt there.
Ah, you may try and reform, dear friends,
but you will find that you cannot do
it.
And remember, even if you could, still it
would not be the work which God requires.
He will not have reformation.
He will have renovation.
He will have a new heart, and not
a heart changed a little for the better.
But once again, you will easily perceive we
must have a new heart when you consider
what are the employments and the enjoyments of
the Christian religion.
The nature that can feed on the garbage
of sin and devour the carrion of iniquity
is not the nature that ever can sing
the praises of God and rejoice in His
holy name.
The raven yonder has been feeding on the
most loathsome food.
Do you expect that she shall have all
the kindliness of the dove and toy with
the maiden in her bower?
Not unless you could change the raven into
a dove, for as long as it is
a raven, its old propensities will cling to
it, and it will be incapable of anything
above the raven's nature.
You have seen the vulture, gorged to his
very full with the very filthiest of flesh.
And do you expect to see that vulture
sitting on the spray, singing God's praises with
its hoarse screaming and croaking throat?
And do you imagine you will see it
feeding like the barn-door fowl on the
clean grain, unless its character and disposition be
entirely changed?
Impossible!
Can you imagine that the lion will lie
down with the ox and eat straw like
the bullock, so long as it is a
lion?
No.
There must be a change.
You may put on it the sheep's clothing,
but you cannot make it a sheep unless
the lion-like nature be taken away.
Try and improve the lion as long as
you like.
You may try to improve the raven or
the vulture as long as you please, but
you cannot improve them into a dove.
There must be a total change of character.
And you ask me, then, whether it can
be possible for a man that has sung
the lascivious song of the drunkard and has
defiled his body with uncleanness and has cursed
God to sing the high praises of God
in heaven as well as he who has
long loved the ways of purity and communion
with Christ?
I answer, no, never, unless his nature be
entirely changed.
For if his nature remain what it is,
improve it as you may, you can make
nothing better of it.
So long as his heart is what it
is, you can never bring it to be
capable of the high delights of the spiritual
nature of the child of God.
Therefore, beloved, there must assuredly be a new
nature put into us.
And yet once again, and I will have
concluded upon this point, God hates a depraved
nature, and therefore it must be taken away
before we can be accepted in Him.
God does not hate our sin so much
as He does our sinfulness.
It is not the overflowing of the spring.
It is the well itself.
It is not the arrow that doth shoot
from the bow of our depravity.
It is the arm itself that doth hold
the bow of sin and the motive that
wings the arrow against God.
The Lord is angry not only against our
overt acts, but against the nature which dictates
the acts.
God is not so short-sighted as merely
to look at the surface.
He looks at the source and fountain.
He saith, In vain shall it be, though
thou shouldst make the fruit good, if the
tree remain corrupt.
In vain shall thou attempt to sweeten the
waters so long as the fountain itself is
defiled.
God is angry with man's heart.
He has a hatred against man's depraved nature,
and He will have it taken away.
He will have it totally cleansed before He
will admit that man into any communion with
Himself and, above all, into the sweet communion
of paradise.
There is, therefore, a demand for a new
nature, and that we must have, or otherwise
we can never see His face with acceptance.
And now it shall be my joyful business
to endeavor, in the second place, to set
before you very briefly the nature of this
great change which the Holy Spirit works in
us.
And I may begin by observing that it
is a divine work from first to last.
To give a man a new heart and
a new spirit is God's work, and the
work of God alone.
Arminianism falls to the ground when we come
to this point.
Nothing will do here but that old-fashioned
truth men call Calvinism.
Salvation is of the Lord alone.
This truth will stand the test of ages
and can never be moved because it is
the immutable truth of the living God.
And all the way in salvation we have
to learn this truth, but especially when we
come here to this particular and indispensable part
of salvation, the making of a new heart
within us.
That must be God's work.
Man may reform himself, but how can man
give himself a new heart?
I need not enlarge upon the thought it
will strike you in a moment that the
very nature of the change and the terms
in which it is mentioned here put it
beyond all power of man.
How can man put into himself a new
heart, for the heart being the motive power
of all life, must exert itself before anything
can be done.
But how could the exertions of an old
heart bring forth a new heart?
Can you imagine for a moment a tree
with a rotten heart by its own vital
energy giving to itself a new young heart?
You cannot suppose such a thing.
If the heart were originally right and the
defects were only in some branch of the
tree, you can conceive that the tree, through
the vital power of its sap within its
heart, might rectify the wrong.
We have heard of some kind of insects
that have lost their limbs, and by their
vital power have been able to recover them
again.
But take away the seat of the vital
power, the heart.
Lay the disease there.
And what power is there that can by
any possibility rectify it, unless it be a
power from without, in fact, a power from
above?
O beloved, there never was a man yet
that did so much as the turn of
a hair towards making himself a new heart.
He must lie passive there.
He shall become active afterwards.
But in the moment when God puts a
new life into the soul, the man is
passive.
And if there be ought of activity, it
is an active resistance against it, until God,
by overcoming victorious grace, gets the mastery over
man's will.
Once again, this is a gracious change.
When God puts a new heart into man,
it is not because man deserves a new
heart, because there was anything good in his
nature that could have prompted God to give
him a new spirit.
The Lord simply gives man a new heart
because he wishes to do it.
That is his only reason.
What, you say, suppose a man cries for
a new heart?
I answer, no man ever did cry for
a new heart until he had got one.
For the cry for a new heart proves
that there is a new heart there already.
But, says one, are we not to seek
for a right spirit?
Yes, I know it is your duty.
But I equally know it is a duty
you will never fulfill.
You are commanded to make yourselves new hearts.
But I know you will never attempt to
do it until God, first of all, moves
you thereunto.
As soon as you begin to seek a
new heart, it is presumptive evidence that the
new heart is there already in its germ.
For there would not be this germinating in
prayer unless the seeds were there before it.
But, says one, suppose the man has not
a new heart and were earnestly to seek
one, would he have it?
You must not make impossible suppositions.
So long as the man's heart is depraved
and vile, he will never do such a
thing.
I cannot, therefore, tell you what might happen
if he did what he never will do.
I cannot answer your suppositions.
If you suppose yourself into a difficulty, you
must suppose yourself out of it.
But the fact is that no man ever
did or ever will seek a new heart
or a right spirit until, first of all,
the grace of God begins with him.
If there be a Christian here who began
with God, let him publish it to the
world.
Let us hear for once that there was
a man who was beforehand with his Maker.
But I have never met such a case.
All Christian people declare that God was first
with them, and they will all sing, "'Twas
the same love that spread the feast "'that
sweetly forced me in, "'else I had still
refused to taste "'and perished in my sin.'"
It is a gracious change, freely given without
any merit of the creature, without any desire
or goodwill coming beforehand.
God doeth it of His own pleasure, not
according to man's will.
Once more, it is a victorious effort of
divine grace when God first begins the work
of changing the heart.
He finds the man totally averse to any
such thing.
Man by nature kicks and struggles against God.
He will not be saved.
I must confess I never would have been
saved if I could have helped it.
As long as ever I could, I rebelled
and revolted and struggled against God.
When He would have me pray, I would
not pray.
When He would have me listen to the
sound of the ministry, I would not.
And when I heard and the tear rolled
down my cheek, I wiped it away and
defied Him to melt my heart.
When my heart was a little touched, I
tried to divert it with sinful pleasures.
And when that would not do, I tried
self-righteousness and would not then have been
saved until I was hemmed in.
And then He gave me the effectual blow
of grace, and there was no resisting that
irresistible effort of His grace.
It conquered my depraved will and made me
bow myself before the scepter of His grace.
And so it is in every case.
Man revolts against his Maker and his Savior,
but where God determines to save, save He
will.
God will have the sinner if He designs
to have him.
God never was thwarted yet in any one
of His purposes.
Man does resist with all his might.
But all the might of man, tremendous though
it be for sin, is not equal to
the majestic might of the Most High when
He rideth forth in the chariot of His
salvation.
He doth irresistibly save and victoriously conquer man's
heart.
And furthermore, this change is instantaneous.
To sanctify a man is the work of
a whole life, but to give a man
a new heart is the work of an
instant.
In one solitary second, swifter than the lightning
flash, God can put a new heart into
a man and make him a new creature
in Christ Jesus.
You may be sitting where you are today,
an enemy to God, with a wicked heart
within, hard as a stone and dead and
cold.
But if the Lord wills it, the living
spark shall drop into your soul, and in
that moment you will begin to tremble, begin
to feel.
You will confess your sin and fly to
Christ for mercy.
Other parts of salvation are done gradually, but
regeneration is the instantaneous work of God's sovereign,
effectual and irresistible grace.
Now we have in this subject a grand
field of hope and encouragement to the very
vilest of sinners.
My hearers, let me very affectionately address you,
pouring out my heart before you for a
moment or two.
There are some of you here present who
are seeking after mercy.
For many a day you have been in
prayer in secret till your very knees seemed
sore with the oftenness of your intercession.
Your cry to God has been, Create in
me a clean heart and renew a right
spirit within me.
Let me comfort you by this reflection that
your prayer is already heard.
You have a new heart and a right
spirit.
Perhaps you will not be able to perceive
the truth of this utterance for months to
come.
Therefore continue in prayer till God shall open
your eyes so that you may see that
the prayer is answered.
But rest assured, it is answered already.
If thou hatest sin, that is not human
nature.
If thou longest to be a friend of
God, that is not human nature.
If thou desirest to be saved by Christ,
it is not human nature.
If thou desirest that without any stipulations of
thine own, thou art this day willing that
Christ should take thee to be His own,
to have and to hold, through life and
through death.
If thou art willing to live in His
service and, if needful, to die for His
honor, that is not of human nature.
That is the work of divine grace.
There is something good in thee already.
The Lord hath begun a good work in
thy heart, and He will carry it on,
even unto the end.
All these feelings of thine are more than
thou ever couldst have attained of thyself.
God has helped thee up this ladder of
divine grace and assures He has brought thee
up so many staves of it.
He will carry thee to the very summit
till He grasps thee in the arms of
His love in glory everlasting.
There are others of you here, however, who
have not proceeded so far, but you are
driven to despair.
The devil hath told you that you cannot
be saved.
You have been too guilty, too vile.
Any other people in the world might find
mercy, but not you, for you do not
deserve to be saved.
Hear me then, dear friend.
Have I not tried to make it as
plain as the sunbeam all through this service
that God never saves a man for the
sake of what he is, that He does
not either begin or carry on the work
in us because there is anything good in
us?
The greatest sinner is just as eligible for
divine mercy as the very least of sinners.
He who has been a ringleader in crime,
I repeat, is just as eligible for God's
sovereign grace as he that has been a
very paragon of morality, for God wants nothing
of us.
It is not as it is with the
plowman.
He does not desire to plow all day
upon the rocks and send his horses upon
the sand.
He wants the fertile soil to begin with,
but God does not.
He will begin with the rocky soil, and
He will pound that rocky heart of yours
until it turns into the rich black mold
of penitential grief, and then He will scatter
the living seed in that mold till it
brings forth a hundredfold.
But He wants nothing of you to begin
with.
He can take you, a thief, a drunkard,
a harlot, or whoever you may be.
He can bring you on your knees, make
you cry for mercy, and then make you
lead a holy life and keep you unto
the end.
Oh, says one, I wish He would do
that to me then.
Well, soul, if that be a true wish,
He will.
If thou desirest this day that thou shouldst
be saved, there never was an unwilling God
where there was a willing sinner.
Sinner, if thou willest to be saved, God
willeth not the death of any, but rather
that they should come to repentance.
And thou art freely invited this morning to
turn thine eye to the cross of Christ.
Jesus Christ has borne the sins of men
and carried their sorrows.
Thou art bidden to look there and trust
there simply and implicitly.
Then thou art saved.
That very wish, if it be a sincere
one, shows that God has just now been
begetting thee again to a lively hope.
If that sincere wish shall endure, it will
be abundant evidence that the Lord hath brought
thee to Himself and that thou art and
shall be His.
And now reflect, every one of you, you
that are not converted, that we are all
this morning in the hands of God.
We deserve to be damned.
If God dammeth us, there is not a
single word that will be heard against His
doing it.
We cannot save ourselves.
We lie entirely in His hands, like a
moth that lies under the finger.
He can crush us now if He pleases,
or He can let us go and save
us.
What reflections ought to cross our mind if
we believe that?
Why, we ought to cast ourselves on our
faces as soon as we reach our homes
and cry, Great God, save me, a sinner,
save me!
I renounce all merit, for I have none.
I deserve to be lost.
Lord, save me, for Christ's sake.
And as the Lord my God liveth before
whom I stand, there is not one of
you who shall do this, who shall find
my God shut the gates of mercy against
you.
Go and try Him, sinner, go and try
Him.
Fall upon thy knees in thy chamber this
day and try my Master.
See if He will not forgive you.
You think too harshly of Him.
He is a great deal kinder than you
think He is.
You think He is a hard Master, but
He is not.
I thought He was severe and angry, and
when I sought Him, surely I said, if
He accepteth all the world beside, He will
reject me.
But I know He took me to His
bosom.
And when I thought He would spurn me
forever, He said, I have blotted out as
a thick cloud thy transgressions and as a
cloud thy sins.
And I wondered how it was.
And I do wonder now that it shall
be so in your case.
Only try Him, I beseech thee.
The Lord help thee to try Him, and
to Him shall be the glory, and to
thee shall be happiness and bliss for ever
and ever.