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Gift of the
Rev. Heber H. Beadle

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ADDRESSES

BY

D. L. MOODY.

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REVISED BY HIMSELF.

"I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; for it is the
power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth." —
Romans i. 16

CHICAGO.
FLEMING FI. KEVELL,
91, WASHINGTON STREET.

PEEFACE. — o —
In compliance with the wish of many friends I have con
sented to the publication of the following Addresses.
I deeply feel how partially and insufficiently the
Glorious Gospel of the blessed God is represented in
them, but I lay them at the Master's leet, praying, and
asking all my Christian friends to pray, that they may
be the means in their printed form of winning more
souls to Christ than they have been when spoken.

I.
"WHERE ART THOU?!
GENESIS III. 9.

The very first thing that happened after the news reached heaven
of the fall of man, was that God came straight down to seek out
the lost one. As He walks through the garden in the cool of the
day, you can hear Him calling " Adam ! Adam ! Where art
thou ? " It was the voice of grace, of mercy, and of love. Adam
ought to have taken the seeker's place, for he was the transgressor.
He had fallen, and he ought to have gone up and down Eden
crying, " My God ! my God ! where art Thou ? " But God
left heaven to grope through the dark world for the rebel who
had fallen — not to hurl him from the face of the earth, but to plan
him an escape from the misery of his sin. And He finds him —
where ? Hiding from his Creator among the bushes of the garden.
The moment a man is out of communion with God, even the
professed child of God, he wants to hide away from Him. When
God left Adam in the garden, he was in communion with his
Creator, and God talked with him ; but now that he has fallen, he
has no desire to see his Creator, he has lost communion with his
God. He cannot bear to see Him, even to think of Him, and he
runs to hide from God. But to his hiding-place his Maker follows
him. " Where art thou, Adam ? Where art thou ? "
Six thousand years have passed away, and this text has come
rolling down the ages. I doubt whether there has been any one of
Adam's sons who has not heard it at some period or other of his
life — sometimes in the midnight hour stealing over him — " Where
am I f Who am I ? Where am I going ? and what is going to
1

2 " WHERE ART THOU?"
be the end of this ? " I think it is well for a man ta pause and ask
himself that question. I would have you ask it, little boy ; and
you, little girl ; and you, old man with locks turning grey, and eyes
growing dim, and natural force abating, you who will soon be in
another world. I do not ask you where you are in the sight of your
neighbours; I do not ask you where you are in the sight of
your friends ; I do not ask you where you are in the sight of the
community in which you live. It is of very little account where
we are in the sight of one another, it is of very little account what
men think of us ; but it is of vast importance what God thinks of
us — it is of vast importance to know where men are in the sight of
God ; and that is the question now. Am I in communion with
my Creator, or out of communion ? If I am out of communion,
there is no peace, no joy, no happiness. No man on the face of
the earth, who was out of communion with his Creator, ever knew
what peace, and joy, and happiness, and true comfort are. He is
a foreigner to it. But when we are in communion with God,
there is light all around our path. So ask yourselves this
question. Do not think I am preaching to your neighbours, but
remember I am trying to speak to you, to every one of you as
if you were alone. It was the first question put to man after his
fall, and it was a very small audience that God had — Adam and
his wife. But God was the preacher ; and although they tried to
hide, the words came home to them. Let them come home to
you now. You may think that your life is hid, that God does not
know anything about you. But He knows our lives a great deal
better than we do ; and his eye has been bent upon us from our
earliest childhood until now.
" Where art tho-a ? " I should like to divide my audience into
three classes — the professed Christians, the Backsliders, and the
Ungodly. First, I would like to ask the professors this question, or
rather let God ask it — Where art thou ? What is my position in
the church, and among my circle of acquaintance ? Do my friends
know me to be, out and out, on the Lord's side ? You may have
been a professing Christian for twenty years, perhaps thirty, perhaps
forty years. Well, where are you to-night? Are you making

"WHERE ART THOU?" 3
progress towards heaven ? And can you give a reason for the hope
that is within you ? Suppose I were to ask those who are really
Christians here to rise, would you be ashamed to stand up ? Sup
pose I should ask every professed child of God here, " If you should
be cut down by the hand of death, have you good reason to believe
you would be saved ? " Would you be willing to stand up before
God and man, and say that you have good reascn to believe you
are passed from death unto life ? Or would you be ashamed ?
Run your mind back over the past years: would it be consistent
for you to say, " I am a Christian ;" and would your life correspond
with your profession ? It is not what we say so much as how we
live. Actions speak louder than words. Do your shopmates know
that you are a Christian ? Do your family know ? Do they know
you to be out and out on the Lord's side ? Let every professed
Christian ask, Where am I in the sight of God ? Is my heart
loyal to the King of heaven ? Is my life here as it should be in the
community I live in ? Am I a light in this dark world ? Christ
says, " Ye are My witnesses." Christ was the Light of the world,
and the world would not have the true Light ; the world rose up
and put out the Light, and now Christ says, " I leave you down
here to testify of Me ; I leave you down here as My witnesses."
That is what fixe apostle meant when he said that Christians are to
be living epistles, known and read of all men. Then, am I
standing up for Jesus as I should in this dark world ? If a man is
for God, let him say so. If a man is for God, let him come out
and be on God's side : and if he is for the world, let him be in the
world. This serving God and the world at the same time — this
being on both sides at the same time — is just the curse of
Christianity at the present time. It retards the progress of
Christianity more than any other thing. " If any man will come
after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and
follow Me."
I have heard of a great many people who think if they are
united to the church, and have made one profession, that will
do for all the rest of their days. But there is a cross for every
one of us daily. Oh, child of God, where are you ? If God should
appear to you to-night in your bedroom and put the question, what
would be your answer ? Could you say, " Lord, I am serving Thee

4 " WHERE ART THOU?"
with my whole heart and strength ; I am improving my talents
and preparing for the kingdom to come" ? When I was in England
in 1867, there was a merchant who came over from Dublin, and
was talking with a business man in London ; and as I happened to
look in, he introduced me to the man from Dublin. Alluding to
me, the latter said to the former, " Is this young man all O O ? "
Said the London man, " What do you mean by O O ? " Replied
the Dublin man, " Is he Oat -and- Out for Christ?" I tell you it
burned down into my soul. It means a good deal to be O O for
Christ ; but that is what all Christians ought to be, and their influ
ence would be felt on the world very soon, if men who are on the
Lord's side would come out and take their stand, and lift up their
voices in season and out of season. As I have said, there are a
great many in the church who make one profession, and that is
abovit all you hear of them ; and when they come to die you have
to go and hunt up some musty old church Tecords, to know whether
they were Christians or not. God won't do that. I have an idea
that when Daniel died, all the men in Babylon knew whom he
served. There was no need for them to hunt up old books. His
life told his story. What we want is men with a little courage to
stand up for Christ. When Christianity wakes up, and every child
that belongs to the Lord is willing to speak for Him, is willing to
work for Him, and, if need be, willing to die for Him, then
Christianity will advance, and we shall see the work of the Lord
prosper. There is one thing which I fear more than anything else,
and that is the dead cold formalism of the Church of God. Talk
about the isms! Put them all together, and I do not fear them so
much as dead, cold formalism. Talk about the false isms ! There
is none so dangerous as this dead, cold formalism, which has come
right into the heart of the Church. There are so many of us just
sleeping and slumbering while souls all around are perishing. I
believe honestly that we professed Christians are all half-asleep.
Some of us are beginning to rub our e-es and to get them half-
opened, but as a whole we are asleep.
There was a little story going the round of the American press
that made a great impression upon me as a father. A father took
his little child out into the field one Sabbath, and, it being a hot
day, he lay down under a beautiful shady tree. The little child

" WHERE ART THOU?" 5
ran about gathering wild flowers and little blades of grass, and
coming to its father and saying, "Pretty! pretty!" At last the
father fell asleep, and while he was sleeping the little child wan
dered away. When he awoke, his first thought was, " Where is
my child ? " He looked all around, but he could not see him. He
shouted at the top of his voice, but all he heard was the echo of
his own voice. Running to a little hill, he looked around and
shouted again. No response ! Then going to a precipice at some
distance, he looked down, and there, upon the rocks and briars, he
saw the mangled form of his loved child. He rushed to the spot,
took up the lifeless corpse and hugged it to his bosom, and accused
himself of being the murderer of his child. While he was sleeping
his child had wandered over the precipice. ' I thought as I heard
that, what a picture of the church of God !
How many fathers and mothers, how many Christian men, are
sleeping now while their children wander over the terrible precipice
right into the bottomless pit of hell. Father, where is your boy to
night ? It may be just out there in some public-house ; it may be
reeling through the streets, it may be pressing onwards to a
drunkard's grave. Mother, where is your son ? Is he in the house
of the publican drinking away his soul — everything that is dear and
sacred to him ? Do you know where your boy is ? Father, you have
been a professed Christian for forty years ; where are your children
to-night? Have you lived so godly, and so Christ- like, that you
can say, Follow me as I followed Christ ? Are those children
walking in wisdom ; are they on their way to glory ; have they
been gathered into the fold of Christ ; are their names written in
the Lamb's Book of Life J How many fathers and mothers to-day
would be able to answer ? Did you ever stop to think that you
were to blame ; that you had not been faithful to your children ?
Depend upon it, as long as the church is living so much like the
world, we cannot expect our children to be brought into the fold.
Come, O Lord, and wake up every mother, and may everyone of
us who are parents feel the worth of the souls of the children that
God has given us. May they never bring our grey hairs with.
sorrow to the grave, but may they become a blessing to the church.
and to the world. Not long ago the only daughter of a wealthy
friend of mine sickened and died. The father and mother stood bv

6 " WHERE ART THOU?"
her dying bed. He had spent all his time in accumulating wealth
for her ; she had been introduced into gay and fashionable society ;
but she had been taught nothing of Christ. As she came to the
brink of the river of death, she said, " Won't you help me ; it is
very dark, and the stream is bitter cold." They wrung their hands
in grief, but could do nothing for her ; and the poor girl died in
darkness and despair. What was their wealth to them then ? And
yet, you mothers and fathers are doing the same thing in London
to-day, by ignoring the work God has given you to do. I beseech
you, then, each one of you, begin to labour now for the souls of
your children !
A young man, some time ago, lay dying, and his mother thought
he was a Christian. One day, passing his room door, she heard
him say, " Lost ! lost ! lost ! " The mother ran into the room and
cried, " My boy, is it possible you have lost your hope in Christ,
now you are dying?" "No, mother, it is not that; I have a
hope beyond the grave, but I have lost my life. I have lived
twenty-four years, and done nothing for the Son of God, and now
I am dying. My life has been spent for myself; I have lived for
this world, and now, while I am dying, I have given myself to
Christ ; but my life is lost." Would it not be said of many of us,
if we should be cut down, that our lives have been almost a failure
— perhaps entirely a failure as far as leading any one else to Christ
is concerned? Young lady! are you working for the Son of God?
Are you trying to win some soul to Christ ? Have you tried to
get some friend or companion to have her name written in the
book of life ? Or would you say, " Lost, lost ! long years have
rolled away since I became a child of God, and I have never had
the privilege of leading one soul to Christ ? " If there is one pro
fessed child of God who never had the joy of leading even one
soul into the kingdom of God, oh ! let him begin at once. There
is no greater privilege on earth. And I believe, my friends, there
has never been a time, in our day, at least, when work for Christ
was more needed than at present. I do not believe there ever was
in your day or mine a time when the Spirit of God was more
poured out upon the world. There is not a part of Christendom
where the work is not being carried on ; and it looks very much as
if the glad tidings were just going to take, as it were, a fresh start,

" WHERE ART THO Uf" 7
and go round the globe. Is it not time that, the Church of God
should wake up and come to the help of the Lord as one man, and
strive to beat back those dark waves of death that roll through our
streets, bearing upon their bosom the noblest and the best we
have ? Oh, may God wake up the Church ! And let us trim our
lights, and go forth and work for the kingdom of His Son.
Now, Secondly, let me talk a little while to those who have
gone back into the world — to the Backslider. It may be you came
to some great city a few years ago a professed Christian. You were
member of a church once, and a teacher in the Sabbath-school,
perhaps ; but when you came among strangers you thought you
would just wait a little - perhaps take a class by and by. So you
gave up teaching in the Sunday-school; you gave up all work
for Christ. Then in your new church you did not receive the
attention or the warm welcome that you expected, and you got into
the habit of staying away. You have gone so far now, that you
are found in the theatre, perhaps, and the companion of blas
phemers and drunkards. Perhaps I am speaking now to some one
who has been away from his father's house for many years. Con-.e,
now, backslider, tell me, are you happy? Have you had one
happy hour since you left Christ ? Does the world satisfy you, or
those husks that you have got in the far country ? I have travelled
a good deal, but I never found a happy backslider in my life. I
never knew a man who was really born of God that ever could
find the world satisfy him afterwards. Do you think the Prodigal
Son was satisfied in that foreign country ? Ask the prodigals in
this city if they are truly happy. You kuow they are not. " There
is no peace, saith my God to the wicked." There is no joy for
the man in rebellion against his Creator. Supposing he has tasted
the heavenly gift, and been in communion with God, and had
sweet fellowship with the King of Heaven, and had pleasant hours
of service for the Master, but has backslidden, is it possible that he
can be happy ? If he is, it is good evidence he was never really
converted. If a man has been born again, and has received the
heavenly nature, this world can never satisfy the cravings of his
nature. Oh, backslider, I pity you ! But I want to tell you that
the Lord Jesus pities you a good deal more than any one else can.

B " WHERE ART THOU?"
He knows how bitter your life is ; He knows how dark your life
is ; He wants you to come home. Oh, backslider, come home
to-night ! I have a loving message from your Father. The Lord
wants you, and calls you back to-night, " Come home, oh wan
derer, this night : return from the dark mountains of sin." Return,
and your Father will give you a warm welcome. I know that the
devil has told you that God won't have anything to do with you,
because you have wandered away. If that is true, there would be
very few men in heaven. David backslid ; Abraham and Jacob
turned away from God ; I do not believe there is a saint in heaven
but at some time of his life with his heart has backslidden from
God. Perhaps not in his life, but in his heart. The prodigal's
heart got into the far country before his body got there. Back
slider ! to-night come home. Your Father does not want you to
stay away. Think you the prodigal's father was not anxious for
him to come home all those long years he was there ? Every year
the father was looking and longing for him to return home. So
God wants you to come home. I do not care how far you have
wandered away ; the great Shepherd will receive you back into the
fold to-night. Did you ever hear of *& backslider coming home,
and God not willing to receive him ? I have heard of earthly
fathers and mothers not being willing to receive back their sons ;
but I defy any man to say he ever knew a really honest backslider
want to get home, but God was willing to take him in.
A number of years ago, before any railway came into Chicago,
they used to bring in the grain from the Western prairies in
waggons for hundreds of miles, so as to have it shipped off by the
Lakes. There was a father who had a large farm out there, and
who used to preach the gospel as well as attend to his farm. One
day, when church business engaged him, he sent his son to Chicago
with grain. He waited and waited for his boy to return, but he did
not come home. At last he could wait no longer, so he saddled
his horse and rode to the place where his son had sold the grain.
He found that he had been there and got the money for the grain ;
then he began to fear that his boy had been murdered and robbed.
At last, with the aid of a detective, they tracked him to a gambling
den, where they found that he had gambled away the whole of his
money. In hopes of winning it back again, he then had sold the

" WHERE ART THOU?" 9
team, and lost that money too. He had fallen among thieves, and
like the man who was going to Jericho, they stripped him, and
then they cared no more about him. What could he do ? He was
ashamed to go home to meet his father, and he fled. The father
knew what it all meant. He knew the boy thought he would be
very angry with him. He was grieved to think that his boy should
have such feelings towards him. That is just exactly like the
sinner. He thinks because he has sinned, God will have nothing
to do with him. But what did that father do ? Did he say, " Let
the boy go " ? No ; he went after him. He arranged his busi
ness and started after the boy. That man went from town to town,
from city to city. He would get the ministers to let him preach,
and at the close he would tell his story. " I have got a boy who
is a wanderer on the face of the earth somewhere." He would
describe his boy and say, " If you ever hear of him or see him, will
you not write to me ?" At last he found that he had gone to Cali
fornia, thousands of miles away. Did that father say, " Let him go ?"
No ; off he went to the Pacific coast, seeking the boy. He went to
San Francisco, and advertised in the newspapers that he would
preach at such a church on such a day. When he had preached
he told his story, in hopes that the boy might have seen the adver
tisement and come to the church. When he had done, away under
the gallery there was a young man who waited until the audience
had gone out ; then he came towards the pulpit. The father
looked, and saw it was that boy, and he ran to him, and pressed
him to his bosom. The boy wanted to confess what he had done,
but not a word would the father hear. He forgave him freely, and
took him to his home once more.
Oh, prodigal, you may be wandering on the dark mountains of
sin, but God wants you to come home. The devil has been telling
you lies about God ; you think He will not receive you back. I
tell you, He will welcome you this minute if you will come. Say,
" I will arise and go to my Father." May God incline you to take
this step. There is not one whom Jesus has not sought far longer
than that father. There has not been a day since you left Him
but He has followed you. I do not care what the past has been,
or how black your life, He will receive you back. Arise then, O
backslider, and come home once more to your Father's house.

io " WHERE ART THOU?"
Not long ago, in Edinburgh, a lady who was an earnest
Christian worker, found a young woman whose feet had taken
hold of hell, and who was pressing onwards to a harlot's grave.
The lady begged her to go back to her home, but she said no, her
parents would never receive her. This Christian woman knew
what a mother's heart was ; so she sat down aud wrote a letter to
the mother, telling her how she had met her daughter, who was
sorry, and wanted to return. The next post brought an answer
back, and on the envelope was written, " Immediately — imme
diately ! " That was a mother's heart. They opened the letter.
Yes, she was forgiven. They wanted her back, and they sent
money for her to come immediately. Sinner, that is the proclama
tion, "Come immediately.'" That is what the great and loving
God is saying to every wandering sinner — immediately. Yes, back
slider, come home to-night. He will give you a warm welcome,
and there will be joy in heaven over your return. Come now, for
everything is ready.
A friend of mine said to me some time ago, Did you ever notice
what the prodigal lost by going into that country ? He lost his
food. That is what every poor backslider loses. They get no
manna from heaven. The Bible is a closed book to them ; they
see no beauty in the Word of God.
Then the prodigal lost his work. He was a Jew, and they
made him take care of swine ; that was all loss for a Jew. So
every backslider loses his work. He cannot do anything for God ;
he cannot work for eternity. He is a stumbling-block to the
world. My friend, do not let the world stumble over you into hell.
The prodigal also lost his testimony. Who believed him ? I
can imagine some of these men came along, natives of that country,
and they saw this poor prodigal in his rags, barefooted and bare
headed. There he stands among the swine, and some one says to
another, " Look at that poor wretch." " What," he says, " do you
call me a poor wretch ? My father is a wealthy man ; he has got
more clothes in his wardrobe than you ever saw in your life. My
father is a man of great wealth and position." Do you suppose
these men would believe him ? " That poor wretch the son of a
wealthy man! " Not one of them would believe him. "If he
had got such a wealthy father he would go to him." So with the

" WHERE ART THOU?" ir
backsliders ; the world does not believe that they are the sons of a
King. They say, " Why don't they go to Him, if there is bread
enough and to spare? Why don't they go home ?"
Then, another thing the prodigal lost was his home. He had
no home in that foreign country. As long as his money lasted, he
was quite popular in the public-house and among his acquaint
ances ; he bad professed friends, but as soon as his money was
gone, where were his friends ? That is the condition of every poor
backslider in London.
But now I can imagine some one saying, " There would be
little use of me attempting to come back. In a few days I should
just be where I was again. I should like very much to go to my
Father's home again, but I'm afraid I wouldn't stay there." Well,
just picture this scene. The poor prodigal has got home, and the
father has killed the fatted calf ; and there they are, sitting at the
table eating. I can imagine that was about the sweetest morsel he
ever got — perhaps the nicest dinner he ever had in his life. His
father sits opposite • he is full of joy, and his heart is leaping
within him. All at once he sees his boy weeping. " My son,
what are you weeping for? Are you not glad to have got
home ? " " Oh, yes, father;- 1 never was so glad as I am to-day :
but I am so afraid I will go back into that foreign country ! "
Why, you cannot imagine such a thing ! When you have got one
meal in your Father's house, you will never be inclined to wander
away again.
Now let me speak to the Third class. "If the righteous-
scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?"
Sinner, what is to become of you ? How shall you escape ?
" Where art thou?" Is it true that you are living without God
and without hope in the world ? Did you ever stop to think what
would become of your soul if you should be taken away by a sudden
stroke of illness — where you would stand in eternity ? I read that
the sinner is without God, without hope, and without excuse. If
you are not saved, what excuse will you have to give ? You cannot
say that it is God's fault. He is only too anxious to save you. I
want to tell you to-night that you can be saved if you will. If you
really want to pass from death to life, if you want to become an

12 " WHERE ART THOU?"
heir of eternal life, if you want to become a child of God, make up
your mind this night that you will seek the kingdom of God. I
tell you, upon the authority of this Word, that if you seek the
kingdom of God you will find it. No man ever sought Christ
with a heart to find Him who did not find Him. I never knew a
man make up his mind to have the question settled, but it was
settled soon. This last year there has been a solemn feeling
stealing over me. I am what they call in the middle of life, in the
prime of life. I look upon life as a man who has reached the top
of a hill, and just begins to go down the other side. I have got to
the top of the hill, if I should live the full term of life — threescore
years and ten — and am just on the other side. I am speaking to
many now who are also on the top of the hill, and I ask you, if
you are not Christians, just to pause a few minutes, and ask your
selves where you are. Let us look back on the hill that we have
been climbing. What do you see? Yonder is the cradle. It
is not far away. How short life is ! It all seems but as yes
terday. Look along up the hill, and yonder is a tombstone ; it
marks the resting-place of a loved mother. When that mother
died, did you not promise God that you would serve Him ? Did
you not say that your mother's God should become your God?
And did you not take her hand in the stillness of the dying hour,
and say, "Yes, mother, I will meet you in heaven!" And have
you kept that promise? Are you trying to keep it? Ten years
have rolled away - fifteen years — but are you any nearer God ? Did
the promise work any improvement in you ? No, your heart is
getting harder ; the night is getting darker ; by and by death will
be throwing its shadows round you. My friend, Where art thou ?
Look again. A little further up the hill there is another tombstone.
It marks the resting-place of a little child. It may have been a
little lovely girl — perhaps her name was Mary ; or it may have been
a boy — Charley ; and when that child was taken from you, did you
not promise God, and did you not promise the child, that you would
meet it in heaven ? Is the promise kept ? Think ! Are you still
fighting against God ? Are you still hardening your heart ? Ser
mons that would have moved vou five years ago — do they touch
you now ?
Once more look down the hill. Yonder there is a grave j you

" WHERE ART THOU?" 13
cannot tell how many days, or weeks, or years it is away ; you are-
bastening towards that grave. Even should you live the life allotted
to man, many of you are near the end, you are getting very feeble,
and your locks are turning grey. It may be the coffin is already
made that this body shall be laid in ; it may be that the shroud
is already waiting. My friend, is it not the height of madness to
put off salvation so long ? Undoubtedly I am speaking to some
who will be in eternity a week from now. In a large audience like
this, during the next week death will surely come and snatch some
away ; it may be the speaker, or it may be some one who is listen
ing. Why put off the question another day ? Why say to the
Lord Jesus again to-night, " Go thy way for this time ; when I
have a convenient season, I will call for Thee ? " Why not let
Him come in to-night ? Why not open your heart, and say,
" King of Glory, come in ? '
Will there ever be a better opportunity ? Did not you promise
ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty years ago that you would serve God ?
Some of you said you would do it when you got married and
settled down ; some of you said you would serve Him when you
were your own master. Have you attended to it ?
You know there are three steps to the lost world ; let me give
you their names. The first is Neglect. All a man has to do is to
neglect salvation, and that will take him to the lost world. Some
people say, " What have I done!" Why, if you merely neglect
salvation, you will be lost. I am on a swift river, and lying in the
bottom of my little boat. Down yonder, ten miles below, is the
great cataract. Every one that goes over it perishes. I need not
row the boat down ; I have only to pull in the oars, and fold my
arms, and neglect. So all that a man has to do is to fold his arms
in the current of life, and he will drift onwards and be lost.
The second step is Refusal. If I met you at the door and
pressed this question on "you, you would say, " Not to-night, Mr.
Moody, not to-night;" and if I repeated, " I want you to press into
the kingdom of God," you would politely refuse : " I will not
become a Christian to-night, thank you ; I know I ought, but I
won't to-night."
Then the last step is to Despise it. Some of you have already
got on the lower round of the ladder. You despise Christ. You

14 "WHERE ART THOU?"
hate Christ, you hate Christianity; you hate the best people on
earth and the best friends you have got ; and if I were to offer
you the Bible, you would tear it up and put your foot upon it. Oh,
despisers ! you will soon be in another world. Make ha>te and
repent and turn to God. Now, on which step are you, my friend ;
neglecting, or refusing, or despising ? Bear in mind that a great
many are taken off from the first step : they die in neglect. And
a great many are taken away refusing. And a great many are on
the last step, despising salvation.
A few years ago they neglected, theii they got to refuse ; and
now they despise Christianity and Christ. They hate the sound of
the church bell ; they hate the Bible and the Christian ; they curse
the very ground that we walk on. But one more step and they
are gone. Oh ye despisers, I set before you life and death ; which
will you choose ? When Pilate had Christ on his hands, he said,
" What shall I do with Him ? " and the multitude cried out,
"Away with Him! crucify Him!" Young men, is that your
language to-night ? Do you say, " Away with this gospel !
Away with Christianity ! Away with your prayers, your sermons,
your gospel sounds! I do not want Christ? " Or will you be
wise and say, " Lord Jesus, I want Thee, I need Thee, I will
have Thee ? " Oh, may God bring you to that decision !

IL
"THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE."
ROMANS III. 22.

That is one of the hardest truths man has to learn. We are apt
to think that we are just a little better than our neighbours, and if
we find they are a little better than ourselves, we go to work and
try to pull them down to our level. If you want to find out who
and what man is, go to the third chapter of Romans, and there the
whole story is told. "There is none righteous, no, not one."
" All have sinned and come short." All. Some men like to have
their lives written before they die ; if any of you would like to
read your biography, turn to this chapter, and you will find it
already written.
I can imagine some one saying, " I wonder if he really pretends
to say that ' there is no difference.' " The teetotaller says, " Am
I no better than the drunkard ? '' Well, I want to say right here,
that it is a good deal better to be temperate than intemperate ; a
good deal better to be honest than dishonest ; it is better for a man
to be upright in all his transactions than to cheat right and left,
even in this life. But when it comes to the great question of sal
vation, that does not touch the question at all, because " all have
sinned and come short of the glory of God." Men are all bad by
nature ; the old Adam-stock is bad, and we cannot bring forth
good fruit until we are grafted into the one True Vine. If I have
an orchard, and two apple trees in it, which both bear some bitter
apples, perfectly worthless, does it make any difference to me that
the one tree has got perhaps five hundred apples, all bad, and the
other only two, both bad ? There is no difference ; only one tree

16 " THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE."
has more fruit than the other. But it is all bad. So it is with
man. One thinks he has got only one or two very little sins — God
won't notice that ; why, that other man has broken every one of
the ten commandments ! No matter, there is no difference ; they
are both guilty ; they have both broken the la\V. The law de
mands complete and perfect fulfilment, and if you cannot do that,
you are lost, as far as the law is concerned. " Whosoever shall keep
the whole law, and yet offend in one .point, he is guilty qf all."
Suppose you were to hang up a man to the roof with a chain of
ten links ; if one were to break, does it matter that the other nine
are all sound and whole ? Not the least. One link breaks, and
down comes the man. But is it not rather hard that he should fall
when the other nine are perfect, when only one is broken ? Why,
of course not ; if one is broken, it is just the same to the man as if
all had been broken : he falls. So the man who breaks one com
mandment is guilty of all. He is a criminal in God's sight. Look
at yonder prison, with its thousand victims. Some are. there for
murder, some for stealing, some for forgery, some for one thing
and some for another. You may classify them, but every man is a
criminal. They have all broken the law, and they are all paying
the penalty. So the law has brought every man in a criminal in
the sight of God.
If a man should advertise that he could take a correct photo
graph of people's hearts, do you believe he would find a customer ?
There is not a man among us whom you could hire to have his
photograph taken, if you could photograph the real man. We go
to have our faces taken, and carefully arrange our toilet, and if the
artist flatters us,' we say, "Oh, yes, that's a first-rate likeness," as
we pass it round among our friends. But let the real man be
brought out, the photograph of the heart, and see if a man will
pass that round among his neighbours. Why, you would not
want your own wife to see it ! You would be frightened even to
look at it yourself. Nobody knows what is in that heart but
* Christ. We are'told that " the heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked ; who can know it ? " We do not know
our own hearts ; none of us have any idea how bad they are. Some
bitter things are written against me, but I know a good many
more things about myself that are bad than any other man. There :

" THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE:0 - ny
is nothing good in the old Adam nature. We have got a hea/t in
rebellion against God by nature, and we do not even love God
unless we are born of the Spirit. I can understand why men do
not like this third chapter of Romans — it is too strong for them.
It speaks the truth too plainly. But just because we do not like it,
we shall be all the better for having a look at it ; very likely we
shall find that it is exactly what we want, after all. It's a truth
that men do not at all like, but I have noticed that the medicine we
do not like is the medicine that will do us most good. If we do
not think we are as bad as the description, we must just take a
closer look at ourselves. Here is a man who thinks he is not just
so bad as it makes him out to be. He is sure he is a little better
than his neighbour next door ; why, he goes to church regularly,
and his neighbour never goes to church at all ! " Of course," he
congratulates himself, " I'll Certainly get saved easier." But there
is no use trying to evade it. God has given us the law to measure
ourselves by, and by this most perfect rule " we have all sinned
and come short," and " there is no difference."
Paul brings in the law to show man that he is lost and ruined.
God, being a perfect God, had to give a perfect law, and the law
was given not to save men, but to measure them by. I want you
to understand this clearly; because I believe hundreds and thou
sands stumble there^ They try to save themselves by trying to
keep the law ; but it was never meant for men to save them
selves by. The law has never saved a single man since the world
began. Men have been trying to keep it, but they have never suc
ceeded, and never will. Ask Paul what it was given for. Here is
his answer, " That every mouth might be stopped, and the whole
world become guilty before God." In this third chapter of
Romans the world has been put on its trial, and found guilty. The
verdict has been brought in against us all — these ministers and
elders and church members, just as much as the prodigal and the
drunkard — " All have sinned and come short.
The law stops every man's mouth. God will have a man humble
himself down on his face bjfore Him, with not a word to say
for himself. Then God will speak to him, when he owns that he
is a sinner, and gets rid of all his own righteousness. I can always
tell a man who has got near the kingdom of God : his mouth is

1 8 «« THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE.'
stopped. If you will allow me the expression, God always shuts
up a man's lips before He saves him. Job was not saved until he
stopped talking about himself. Just see how God dealt with him.
First of all, He afflicts him, and Job begins to talk about his own
goodness. " I delivered the poor," he says, " and the fatherless,
and him who had none to help him. I was eyes to the blind, and
feet was I to the lame. I was a father to the poor ! " Why, they
would have made Job an elder, if there had been elders in those
days ! He had been a wonderfully good man ! But now God
says, " I'll put a few questions to you. Gird up now thy loins
like a man ; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou Me."
And Job is down directly ; he is ashamed of himself ; he cannot
speak of his works anymore. "Behold," he cries, "I am vile;
what shall I answer Thee ? I will lay mine hand upon my
mouth.'' But he is not low enough yet, perhaps, and God puts a
few more questions. " Ah ! " says Job, " I never understood
these things before — I never saw it in that light." He is tho
roughly humbjed now ; he can't help confessing it. '' I have
heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear : but now mine eye seeth
Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."
Now he has found his right position before God, and now God
can talk to him. And God helps him, and raises b,im up, and
gives him the double of all that he had before. The clouds, and
the mist, and the darkness round his path are driven away, and
light from eternity bursts into his soul when he sees his nothing
ness in the sight of a pure and holy God.
This, then, is what God gives us the law for — to show us our
selves in our true colours.
I said to my little family, one morning, a few weeks before the
Chicago fire, " I am coming home this afternoon to give you a
ride." My little boy clapped his hands. "Oh, papa, will you
take me to see the bears in Lincoln Park ? " "Yes." You know
boys are very fond of seeing bears. I had not been gone long when
my little boy said, " Mamma, I wish you would get me ready."
" Oh," she said, " it will be a long time before papa comes." " But
I want to get ready, mamma." At last he was ready to have the
ride, face washed, and clothes all nice and clean. "Now, you
must take good care and not get yourself dirty again," said mamma,

THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE." 19
Oh, of course he was going to take care ; he wasn't going to get
dirty. So off he ran to watch for me. However, it was a long
time yet until the afternoon, and after a little he began to play.
When I got home, I found him outside, with his face all covered
with dirt. "I can't take you to the Park that wt/; Willie." "Why,
papa ? you said you would take me." " Ah, but I can't ; you're
all over mud. I couldn't be seen with such a dirty litle boy."
" Why, I'se clean, papa ; mamma washed me." " Well, you've
got dirty since." But he began to cry, and I could not convince
him that he was dirty. '' I'se clean ; mamma washed me ! " he
cried. Do you think I argued with him ? No. I just took him
up in my arms, and carried him into the house, and showed him
his face in the looking-glass. He had not a word to say. He could
not take my word for it ; but one look at the glass was enough ;
he saw it for himself. He didn't say he wasn't dirty after that !
Now the looking-glass showed him that his face was dirty
— but I did not take the looking-glass to wash it; of course not.
Yet that is just what thousands of people do. The law is the
looking-glass to see ourselves in, to show us how vile and worth
less we are in the sight of God ; but they take the law, and try to
wash themselves with it! Man has been trying that for six
thousand years, and has miserably failed. By the deeds of the law
there shall no flesh be justified in his sight. Only one Man ever
lived on the earth who could say He had kept the law, and that
was the Lord Jesus Christ. If He had committed one sin, and
came short in the smallest degree, his offering Himself for us
would have been useless. But men have tried to do what He did,
and have failed. Instead of sheltering under his righteousness,
they have offered God their owri. And God knew what a miserable
failure it would be. " There is none that doeth righteous, no,
not one."
I don't care where you put man, everywhere he has been tried
he has proved a total failure. He was put in Eden on trial ; and
some men say they wish they had Adam's chance. If you had,
you would go down as quickly as he did. You put five hundred
children into this hall, and give them ten thousand toys ; tell them
they can run all over the hall, and they can have anything they
want except one thing, placed, let us say, in one of the corners of

20 " THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE."
Mr. Sankey's organ. You go out for a little, and do you think
that is not the very first place they will go to ? Why, nothing else
in the room would have any attraction for them but just the thing
they were told not to touch. And so let us not think Adam was
any worse than ourselves. Adam was put on trial, and Satan walks
into Eden. I do not know how long he was there, but I should
think he had not been there twenty minutes before he stripped
Adam of everything he had. There he is, fresh from the hands of
his Creator; Satan comes upon the scene, and presents a tempta
tion, and down he goes. He was a failure.
Then God took man into covenant with Him. He said to
Abraham, " Look yonder at the stars in the heavens and the sands
on the seashore ; I will make your seed like that. I will bless
thee and multiply thee upon the earth." But what a stupendous
failure man was under the covenant. Go back and read about it.
They are brought out of Egypt, see many signs and wonders,
and stand at last at the foot of Mount Sinai. Then God's holy
law is given them. Did they not promise to keep it ? " O yes,"
they cry, " we'll keep the law ; O dear, yes ! " To hear them talk
you might think it was going to be all right now. But just wait
till Joshua and Moses have turned their backs ! No sooner have
their leaders gone up the mountain to have an interview with
God than they begin saying, " Wonder what's become of this man
Moses ? we don't know where he's got to. Come, let us make
unto us another God. Aaron ! make us a golden calf ; here are the
golden ornaments we got from the Egyptians, come and make us
another god." So when it is made, the people raise a great shout,
and fall down and worship it. " Hark ! listen ; what shout is
that I hear? " says Moses, as he comes down the mountain side.
" Alas," says Joshua, "there's war in the camp, it is the shout of
the victor." "Ah, no,",says Moses, " it isn't the shout of victory
or of war, Joshua, it is the' cry of the idolaters. They have for
gotten the God who delivered them from the Egyptians, who led
them through the Red Sea, who fed them with bread from heaven
— angels' food. They have forgotten their promises to keep the
commandments. Already the first two of them are broken, ' no
other'gods,' 'no graven image.' They've made them another god—
a golden god ! " And that's what men have been doing ever since.

" THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE." 21
There are more men in England worshipping the golden calf
than the God of heaven. Look around you. They bring before
it health, and happiness, and peace. " Give me thirty pieces of
silver, and I will sell you Christ," is the world's cry to-day. " Give
me fashion, and I will sell you Christ ! " " I will sacrifice my wife,
my children, my life, my all, for a little drink. I will sell my soul
for drink ! " It is easy to blame these men for worshipping the
golden calf. But what are we doing ourselves ? Ah, man was
a failure then, and he has been a failure ever since.
Then God put him under the judges, and wonderful judges
they were ; but, once more, what a failure he was ! After that
came the prophets, and what a failure he was under them !
Then came the Son from heaven Himself, right out of the bosom
of the Father. He left the throne and came down here, to teach
us how to live. We took Him and murdered Him on Calvary !
Man was a failure in Christ's time.
And now we are living under the dispensation of grace — a
wonderful dispensation. God is showering down blessings from
above. But what is man under grace ! A stupendous failure.
Look at that man reeling on his way to a drunkard's grave, and
his soul to a drunkard's hell. Look at the wretched harlots on
your streets. Look at the profligacy, and the pauperism and the
loathsome sickness. Look at the vice and crime that festers every
where, and tell me is it not true that man is a failure under grace ?
Yes, man is a failure. I can see right down the other
side of the millennium ; Christ has swayed his sceptre over
the earth for a thousand years ; but man is a failure still.
For " when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed
out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations wdiich are
in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them
together to battle  and they compassed the camp of the saints
about, and the beloved city : and fire came down from God out ol
heaven, and devoured them." What man wants is another nature;
he must be born again. What a foolish saying, "Experience
teaches." Man has been a long time at that school, and has
never learned his lesson yet — his own weakness and inability. He
still thinks great things of his own strength. " I am going to
stand after this," he says, " I have hit upon the right plan this

22 " THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE."
time. I am able to keep the law now." But the first temptation
comes, and he is down. Man will not believe in God's strength.
Man will not acknowledge himself a failure, and surrender to
Christ to save him from his sins.
But is it not better to find out in this world that we are a
failure, and to go to Christ for deliverance, than to sleep on and go
down to hell without knowing we are sinners?
I know this doctrine that we have all failed, that we have all
sinned, and come short, is exceedingly objectionable to the natural
man. If I had tried to find out the most disagreeable verse in the
whole Bible, perhaps I could not have fastened upon one more
universally disliked than " There is no difference."
I can imagine — and I think I have a right to imagine it — Noah,
leaving his ark and going off preaching for once in a while. As the
passers-by stop to listen, there is no sound of the hammer or the
plane. Noah has stopped work. He has gone off on a preaching
tour, to warn his countrymen. Perhaps he was telling them that
there was a great deluge coming to sweep away all the workers of
iniquity ; perhaps he was warning them that every man who was
not in the ark must perish ; that there would be 720 difference. I
can imagine one man saying, " You had better go back and finish
your work, Noah, rather than come here preaching. You don't
think we are going to believe in such nonsense as that. You tell
us that all are going to perish alike ! Do you really expect
us to believe that the kings and governors, the sheriffs and the
princes, the rulers, the beggars and thieves and harlots, are all going
to be alike lost ? " " Yes," says Noah ; " the deluge that is coming
by and by will take you all away — every man that is not in the ark
must die. There will be no difference." Doubtless they thought
Noah had gone raving mad. But did not the flood come and take
them all away ? Princes and paupers, and knaves and kings— was
there any difference ? No difference.
When the destroying angel was about to pass through Egypt,
no doubt the haughty Egyptian laughed at the poor Israelite putting
the blood on his door-post and lintel. " What a foolish notion,"
he would say, derisively ; " the very idea of sprinkling blood on a
door-post ! If there were anything coming, that would never keep
it away. I don't believe there is any death coming at all ; and if

« THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE." ¦ 23
it did, it might touch these poor people, but it would certainly never
come near us." But when the night came, there was no difference.
The king in his palace, the captive in his prison, the beggar by the
wayside — they were all alike. Into every house the king of terrors
had come, and there was universal mourning in the land. In the
home of the poor and the lowly, in the home of the prince and the
noble, in the home of the governor and ruler, the eldest son lay
dead. Only the poor Israelite escaped who had the blood on the
door-post and lintel. And when God comes to us in judgment, if
we are not in Christ, all will be alike. Learned or unlearned, high
or low, priest or scribe — there will be no difference.
Once more, I can imagine Abraham- going down from the hills
to Sodom. He stands up, let us say, at the corners of the streets,
before Sodom was destroyed — " Ye men of Sodom, I have a mes
sage from my God to you." The people stand and look at the
old man — you can see his white locks as the wind sweeps through
them — " I have a warning for you," he cries. " God is going to
destroy the five cities of the plain, and every man who does not
escape to yonder mountain must perish. When He comes to
deal in judgment with you there will be no difference ; every man
must die. ' The Lord Mayor, the princes, the chief men, the mighty
men, the judges, the treasurers — all must perish. The thief and
the vagabond, and the drunkard — yes, all must perish alike. There
can be 'no difference.' " But these Sodomites answer, "You had
better go back to your tent on the hills, Abraham. We don't
believe a word of it. Sodom was never so prosperous ; business
was never so flourishing as now. The sun never shone any
brighter than it does to-day. The lambs are skipping on the hills,
and everything moving on as it has done for centuries. Don't
preach that stuff to us ; we don't believe it." A few hours pass,
and Sodom is in ashes ! Did God make any difference among
those who would not believe ? No, God never utters any opinion;
what He says is truth. " All have sinned and come short," He
cries ; " and there is no difference." , I read of a deluge of fire that
is going to roll over this earth, and when God comes to deal in
judgment, there will be no difference, and every man who is out of
Christ must perish.
It was my sad lot to be in the Chicago fire. As the flames

24 " THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE."
rolled down our streets, destroying everything in their onward
march, I saw the great and the honourable, the learned and the
wise, fleeing before the fire with the beggar, and the thief, and the
harlot. All were alike. As the flames' swept through the city it
was like the judgment day. The mayor, nor the mighty men,
nor wise men could stop these flames. They were all on a level
then, and many who were worth hundreds of thousands were left
paupers that night. When the day of judgment comes, there will
be no difference. When the deluge came there was no difference ;
Noah's ark was worth more than all the world. The day before, it
was the world's laughing-stock, and if it had been put up to auction, _
you could not have got anybody to buy it except for firewood. But
the deluge came, and then it was worth more than all the world
together. And when the day of judgment comes, Christ will be
worth more than all this world, more than ten thousand worlds.
And if it was a terrible thing in the days of Noah to die outside
the ark, it will be far more terrible for us to go down in our sins
to a Christless grave.
Now I hope that you have seen what I have been trying to
prove — that we are all sinners alike. If I ha\e failed to prove
that, then the meeting to-night has been a failure. I should like
to use another illustration or two. I should like to make this truth
so plain that a child might know it. In the olden times in England,
we are told, they used to have a game of firing arrows through a
ring on the top of a pole. The man that failed to get all his
arrows through the ring was called a "sinner." Now I should
like for a moment to take up that illustration. Suppose our pole
to be up in the gallery, and on the top of it the ring. I have got
ten arrows, let us say, and Mr. Sankey has got other ten. I take
up the first arrow, and take a good aim. Alas ! I miss the mark.
Therefore lama" sinner." " But," I say, " I will do the best I
can with the other nine ; I have only missed with one." Like
some men who try to keep all the commandments but one!,
I fire again, and miss the mark a second time. " Ah, but," I say,
" I have got eight arrows still," and away goes another arrow-
miss ! I fire all the ten arrows and do not get one through the
ring. Well, I was a "sinner" after the first miss, and I can only
be a "sinner" after the tenth. Now Mr. Sankey comes with his

" THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE." 25
ten arrows. He fires and gets his first arrow through. " Do you
see that ? " he says. "Well," I reply, "go on ; don't boast until
you get them all through." He takes the second arrow and gets
that through. " Ha ! do you see that ? " " Don't boast," I repeat,
" until all ten are through ; " if a man has not broken the law at
all then he has got something to boast of ! Away goes the third,
and it goes through. Then another and another all right, and
another until nine are through. " Now," he says, " one more
arrow, and I am not a sinner." He takes up the last arrow, and
his hand trembles a little; he just misses the mark. And he is a
" sinner " as much as I am. My friend, have you never missed the
mark ? Have you not come short ? I should like to see the man
who never missed the mark. He never lived.
Let me give you just one more illustration. When Chicago was
a small town, it was incorporated and made a city. When we got
our charter for the city, there was one clause in the constitution that
allowed the Mayor to appoint all the police. It worked very well
when it was a small city ; but when it had three or four hundred
thousand inhabitants, it put too much power in the hands of one
man. So our leading citizens got a new bill passed that took the
power out of the hands of the Mayor, and put it into the hands of
Commissioners appointed by Government. There was one clause
in the new law that no man should be a policeman who was not a
certain height — 5 feet 6 inches, let us say. When the Commis
sioners got into power, they advertised for men as candidates, and
in the advertisement they stated that no man need apply who
could not bring good credentials to recommend him. I remember
going past the office one day, and there was a crowd of them
waiting to get in. They quite blocked up the side of the street ;
and they were comparing notes as to their chances of success. One
says to another, " I have got a good letter of recommendation from
the Mayor, and one from the supreme judge." Another says,
"And I have got a good letter from Senator So-and-so. I'm sure
to get in." The two men come on together, and lay their letters
down on the Commissioners' desk. " Well," say the officials,
" you have certainly a good many letters, but we won't read them
till we measure you." Ah ! they forgot all about that. So the
first man is measured, and he is only five feet. " No chance for

26 " THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE.'*
you, sir ; the law says the men must be 5 feet 6 inches, and yon
don't come up to the standard." The other says, " Well, my
chance is a good deal better than his. I'm a good bit taller than
he is " — he begins to measure himself by the other man. That is
what people are always doing, measuring themselves by others.
Measure yourselves by the law of God, or by the Son of God Him
self ; and if you do that, you will find you have come short. He
goes up to the officers, and they measure him ; he is 5 feet 5 inches
and nine-tenths of an inch. " No good," they tell him ; " you're
not up to the standard." " But I'm only one-tenth of an inch
short," he remonstrates. " It's no matter," they say; "there's no
difference." He goes with the man who was five feet. One
comes short six«nches, and the other only one-tenth of an inch,
but the law cannot be changed. And the law of God is that no
man shall go into the kingdom of heaven with one sin on him. He
that has broken the least law is guilty of all.
" Then, is there any hope for me ?'' you say. "What star is there
to relieve the midnight darkness and gloom ? What is to become
of me ? If all this is true, I am a poor lost soul. I have com
mitted sin from my earliest childhood." Thank God, my friends,
this is just where the gospel comes in. " He was made sin for us
who knew no sin." " He was wounded for our transgressions ;
He was bruised for our iniquities ; the chastisement of our peace
was upon Him, and with his stripes we are healed." " We all
like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own
way, and the Lord hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all."
You ask me what my hope is ; it is, that Christ died for my
sins, in my stead, in my place, and therefore I can enter into life
eternal. You ask Paul what his hope was. " Christ died for our
sins according to the Scripture." This is the hope in which died
all the glorious martyrs of old, in which all who have entered
heaven's gate have found their only comfort. Take that doctrine
of substitution out of the Bible, and my hope is lost. With the
law, without Christ, we are all undone. The law we have broken,
and it can only hang over our head the sharp sword of justice.
Even if we could keep it from this moment, there remains the
unforgiven past. "Without shedding of blood there is no re
mission."

" THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE?' 2,7
He only is safe for eternity who is sheltered behind the finished
work of Christ. What the law cannot do for us, He can do. He
obeyed it to the very letter, and under His obedience we can take
our stand. For us He has suffered all its penalties, and paid all
that the law demands. " His own self bare our sins in His own
body on the tree." He saw the awful end from the beginning j
He knew what death, what ruin, what misery lay before us if we
were left to ourselves. And He came from heaven to teach us the
new and living way by which " all that believe are justified from
all things from which they could not be justified by the law of
Moses." There is a well-known story told of Napoleon the First's time.
In one of the conscriptions, during one of his many wars, a man
was balloted as a conscript who did not want to go, but he had a
friend who offered to go in his place. His friend joined the regi
ment in his name, and was sent off to the war. By and by a
battle came on, in which he was killed, and they buried him on the
battle-field. Some time after the Emperor wanted more men, and
by some mistake the first man was balloted a second time. They
went to take him, but he remonstrated. " You cannot take me."
" Why not ! " "I am dead," was the reply. " You are not dead ;
you are alive and well." "But lam dead," he said. "Why, man,
you must bemad. Where did you die ?" "At such a battle, and!
you left me buried on such a battle-field." " You talk like a mad
man," they cried ; but the man stuck to his point that he had been
dead and buried some months. " You look up your books," he
said, " and see if it is not so." They looked, and found that he
was right. They found the man's name entered as drafted, sent
to the war, and marked off as killed. " Look here," they said,
" you didn't die ; you must have got some one to go for you ; it
must have been your substitute." " I know that," he said ; " he
died in my stead. You cannot touch me : I died in that man, and
I go free. The law has no claim against me." They would not
recognize the doctrine of substitution, and the case was carried to>
the Emperor. But he said that the man was right, that he was
dead and buried in the eyes of the law, and that France had no
claim against him.
The story may be true, or it may not, but one thing I know to

¦28 " THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE"
be true, that the Emperor of heaven recognizes the doctrine of sub
stitution. Christ died for me ; that is my hope of eternal life.
"There is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus."
If you ask me what you must do to share this blessing, I answer,
go and deal personally with Christ about it. Take the sinner's
place at the foot of the cross. Strip yourself of all your own
righteousness, and put on Christ's. Wrap yourself up in his per
fect robe, and receive Him by simple trust as your own Saviour.
Thus you inherit the priceless treasures that Christ hath purchased
with his blood. " As many as received Him, to them gave He
power to become the sons of God." Yes, sons of God ; power to
overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil ; power to crucify
•every besetting sin, passion, lust ; power to shout in triumph over
•every trouble and temptation of your life, " I can do all things
through Christ which strengtheneth me."
I have been trying to tell you the old, old tale that men are
¦sinners. I may be speaking to some one, perhaps, who thinks it a
waste of time. '¦' God knows I'm a sinner," he cries ; " you don't need
to prove it. Since I could speak, I've done nothing but break every
law of earth and heaven." Well, my friend, I have good news for
you. It is just as easy for God to save you, who have broken the
whole decalogue, as the man who has only broken one of the com
mandments. Both are dead — dead in sins. It is no matter how
dead you are, or how long you have been dead ; Christ can bring
you to life just the same. There is no difference. When Christ
met that poor widow coming out of Nain, following the body of
her darling boy to the grave — he was just newly dead — His loving
heart could not pass her ; He stopped the funeral, and bade the
dead arise. He was obeyed at once, and the mother was clasped
once more in the living embrace of her son. And when Jesus
stood by the grave of Lazarus, who had been dead Jour days, was
it not just as easy for Him to say, " Lazarus, come forth " ? Was
it not as easy for Him to bring Lazarus from his tomb, who had
been dead four days, as the son of the widow, who had been dead
but one? Yes, it was just as easy; there was no difference. They
were both alike dead, and Christ saved the one just as easily, and
as willingly, and as lovingly as the other. And therefore, my
friend, you need not complain that Christ cannot save you. Why,

" THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE." 29
Christ died for the ungodly. And if you turn to Him at this
moment with an honest heart, and receive Him simply as your
Saviour and your God, I have the authority of his Word for telling
you that He will in no wise cast out.
And you who have never felt the burden of your sin — you who
think there is a great deal of difference — you who thank God that
you are not as other men — beware. God has nothing to say to
the self-righteous. And unless you humble yourself before Him
in the dust, and confess before Him your iniquities and sins, the
gate of heaven, which is open only for sinners, saved by grace, must
be shut against you for ever.

III.
GOOD NEWS.

"The Gospel." — i Cor. xv. i.
I bo not think there is a word in the English language so little
understood as the word "gospel." We hear it every day, and we
have heard it from our earliest childhood, yet there are many people,
and even many Christians, who do not really know what it means.
I believe I was a child of God along time before I really knew.
The word "gospel" means "God's spell," or good spell, or, in
other words, "good news." The gospel is good tidings of great
joy. No better news ever came out of heaven than the gospel-
No better news ever fell upon the ears of the family of man than
the gospel. When the angels came down to proclaim the tidings,
what did they say to those shepherds on the plains of Bethlehem ?
" Behold, I bring you sad tidings ? " No ! " Behold, I bring you
bad news}'' No! " Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy,
which shall be to all people ; for unto you is born this day, in the
city of David, a Saviour." If those shepherds had been like a
good many people at the present time, they would have said,
" We do not believe it is good news. It is all excitement. These
angels want to get up a revival. These angels are trying to
excite us. Don't you believe them." That is what Satan is
saying now. " Don't you believe the gospel is good news ; it will
only make you miserable." He knows the moment a man
believes good news, he just receives it. And no one who is under
the power of the devil really believes that the gospel is good news.
But these shepherds believed the message that the angels brought.

GOOD NEWS. ' 3r
and their hearts were filled with joy. If a boy came with a de
spatch to some one here, could you not tell by the receiver's looks
what kind of a message it was ? If it brought good news you
would see it in his face in a moment. If it told him that his boy,
away in some foreign land, a prodigal son, had come to himself,
like the one in the 15th of Luke, do you not think that father's
face would light up with joy ? And if his wife were here, he would
not wait till they got home, or till she asked for it, he would pass
it over to her, and her face would brighten too, as she shared his joy.
But the tidings that the gospel brings are more glorious than that.
We are dead in trespasses and sins, and the gospel offers life. We
are enemies to God, and the gospel offers reconciliation. The
world is in darkness, and the gospel offers light. Because man
will not believe the gospel that Christ is the light of the world,
the world is dark to-day. But the moment a man believes, the
light from Calvary crosses his path and he walks in an unclouded
sun. I want to tell you why I like the gospel. It is because it has
been the very best news I have ever heard. That is just why I
like to preach it, because it has done me so much good. No man
can ever tell what it has done for him, but I think 1 can tell what
it has undone. It has taken out of my path four of the bitterest
enemies I ever had.
There is that terrible enemy mentioned in 1 Cor. xv., the last
enemy, Death. The gospel has taken it out -of the way. My
mind very often rolls back twenty years ago, before I was con
verted, and I think how dark it used to seem, as I thought of the
future. I well remember how I used to look on death as a
terrible monster, how he used to throw his dark shadow across
my path ; how I trembled as I thought of the terrible hour when
he should come for me ; how I thought I should like to die of
some lingering disease, such as consumption, so that I might
know when he was coming. It was the custom in our village to
toll from the old church bell the age of any one who died. Death
never entered that village and tore away one of the inhabitants
but I counted the tolling of the bell. Sometimes it was seventy,
sometimes eighty ¦ sometimes it would be away down among the

33 ' GOOD NEWS.
teens, sometimes it would toll out the death of some one of my
own age. It made a solemn impression upon me. I felt a coward
than. I thought of the cold hand of death feeling for the cords of
life. I thought of being launched forth to spend my eternity in
an unknown land.
As I looked into the grave, and saw the sexton throw
the earth on the coffin-lid, " Earth to earth ; ashes to ashes ;
dust to dust," it seemed like the death knell to my soul. But
that is all changed now. The grave has lost its terror. As I go
on towards heaven I can shout, " O death ! where is thy sting? "
and I hear the answer rolling down from Calvary — " buried in
the bosom of the Son of God." He took the sting right out
of death for me, and received it into his( own bosom. Take a
hornet and pluck the sting out ; you are not afraid of it after that
any more than of a fly. So death has lost its sting. That
last enemy has been overcome, and I can look on death as a
crushed victim. All that death can get now is this cHd Adam, and
I do not care how quickly I get rid of it. I shall get a glorified
body, a resurrection body, a body much better than this. Suppose
death should come stealing up into this pulpit, and lay his icy hand
upon my heart, and it should cease to throb, I should rise to the
better world to be present with the King. The gospel
has made an enemy a friend. What a glorious thought,
that when you die "you but sink into the arms of Jesus, to
be borne to the land of everlasting rest ! "To die," the
apostle says, " is gain." I can imagine when they laid our Lord
in Joseph's tomb one might have seen death sitting over that
sepulchre, saying, " I have Him ; He is my victim. He said He
was the resurrection and the life. Now I hold Him in my cold
embrace. They thought He was never going to die ; but see Him
now. He has had to pay tribute to me." Never ! The glorious
morning comes, the Son of man bursts asunder the bands of death,
and rises, a Conqueror, from the grave. "Because I live," He
shouts, " ye shall live also." Yes, ye shall live also— is it not good
news ? Ah, my friends, there is no bad news about a gospel
which makes it so sweet to live, so sweet to die.
Another terrible enemy that troubled me was Sin. What a
terrible hour I thought it would be, when my sins from childhood,

GOOD NEWS. 33
every secret thought, every evil desire, everything done in the dark,
should be brought to the light, and spread out before an assembled
universe ! Thank God, these thoughts are gone. The gospel
tells me my sins are all put away in Christ. Out of love to me
He has taken all my sins and cast them behind his back. That
is a safe place for them. God never turns back ; He always
marches on. He will never see your sins if they are behind his
back — that is one of his own illustrations. Satan has to get behind
God to find them. How far away are they, and can they ever come
back again ? " As far as the east is from the west, so Jar hath He
removed our transgressions from us." Not some of them ; He takes
them all away. You may pile up your sins till -they rise like a
dark mountain, and then multiply them by ten thousand for those
you cannot think of ; and after you have tried to enumerate all the
sins you have ever committed, just let me bring one verse in, and
that mountain will melt away: "The blood of Jesus Christ, his
Son, cleanseth us from all sin." In Ireland, some time ago, a
teacher asked a little boy if there was anything God could not do ;
and the little fellow said, " Yes ; He cannot see my sins through
the blood of Christ." That is just what He cannot do. The blood
covers them. Is it not gooa news that you can get rid of sin ?
You come to Christ a sinner, and if you receive his gospel your
sins are taken away. You are invited to do this ; nay, He entreats
you to do it. You are invited to make an exchange ; to get rid of
all your sins, and to take Christ and his righteousness in the place
of them. Is not that good news ?
There is another enemy which used to trouble me a great deal
— Judgment. I used to look forward to the terrible day when I
should be summoned before God. I could not tell whether I
should hear the voice of Christ saying, " Depart from Me, ye
cursed," or whether it would be, " Enter thou into the joy of thy
Lord." And I thought that till he stood before the great white
throne no man could tell whether he was to be on the right hand
or the left. But the gospel tells me that is already settled : " There
is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus."
"Verily, verily "—and when you see that word in Scripture, you
may know there is something very important coming — " Verily,
3

34 GOOD NEWS.
verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on
Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into
condemnation, but is passed from death unto life." Well, now, /
am not coming into judgment for sin. It is no open question.
God's word has settled it. Christ was judged for me, and died in
my stead, and I go free. He that believeth hath — h-a-t-h, hath.
Is not that good news ? A man prayed for me the other day that
I might obtain eternal life at last. I could not have said Amen to
that. If he meant it in this sense, I obtained eternal life nineteen
years ago, when I was converted. What is the gift of God, if it is
not eternal life ? And what makes the gospel such good news ?
Is it not that it offers eternal life to every poor sinner who will
take it ? If an angel came straight from the throne of God, and
proclaimed that God had sent him here to offer us any one thing
we might ask — that each one should have his own petition granted
— what would be. your cry? There would be but one response,
and the cry would make heaven ring • "Eternal life ! eternal life ! "
Everything else would float away into nothingness. It is life men
want, men value most. Let a man worth a million sterling be on
a wrecked vessel, and if he could just save his life for six months
by giving that million, he would give it in an instant. But the
gospel is not a six months' gift. " The gift of God is eternal life,"
And is it not one of the greatest marvels that men have to stand
and plead, and pray and beseech their fellow-men to take this pre
cious gift of God ?
My friends, there is one spot on earth where the fear of Death,
of Sin, and of Judgment, need never trouble us, the only safe
spot on earth where the sinner can stand— Calvary. Out in our
western country, in the autumn, when men go hunting, and there
has not been any rain for months, sometimes the prairie grass
catches fire. Sometimes, when the wind is strong, the flames
may be seen rolling along, twenty feet high, destroying man and
beast in their onward rush. When the frontiersmen see what
is coming, what do they do to escape? They know they can
not run as fast as that fire can run. Not the fleetest horse can
escape it. They just take a match and light the grass around
them. The flames sweep onwards ; they take their stand in the
burnt district, and are safe. They hear the flames roar as thev

GOOD NEWS. 35
come along ; they see death bearing down upon them with resist
less fury, but they do not fear. They do not even tremble as the
ocean of flame surges around them, for over the place where they
stand the fire has already passed, and there is no danger. There is
nothing for the fire to burn. And there is one spot on earth that
God has swept over. Eighteen hundred years ago the storm burst
on Calvary, and the Son of God took it into his own bosom, and
now, if we take our stand by the Cross, we are safe for time and
for eternity. Sinner, would you be safe to-night ? Would you be free from
the condemnation of the sins that are past, from the power of the
temptations that are to come ? Then take your stand on the Rock
of Ages. Let death, let the g" rave, let the judgment come, the
victory is Christ's, and yours through Him. Oh, will you not
receive this gospel to-night — this wonderful message of his sacrifice
for you ?
Some people, when the gospel is preached, put on a long
face, as if they had to attend a funeral or witness an execution,
or hear some dry, stupid lecture or sermon. It was my pri
vilege to go into Richmond with General Grant's army. I
had not been long there before it was announced that the
negroes were going to have a jubilee meeting. These coloured
people were just coming into liberty ; their chains were falling off,
and they were just awakening to the fact that they were free. I
thought it would be a great event, and I went down to the African
Church, one of the largest in the South, and found it crowded.
One of the coloured chaplains of a northern regiment had offered to
speak. I have heard many eloquent men in Europe and in America
but I do not think I ever heard eloquence such as I heard that day
He said, " Mothers ! you rejoice to-day ; you are for ever free ! That
little child has been torn from your embrace, and sold off to some
distant state for the last time. Your hearts are never to be broken
again in that way ; you are free." The women clapped their hands
and shouted at the top of their voices, " Glory, glory to God ! "
It was good news to them, and they believed it. It filled them full
of joy. Then he turned to the young men, and said, "Young
men ! you rejoice to-day ; you have heard the crack of the slave-
driver's whip for the last time ; your posterity shall be free ; young

36 GOOD NEWS.
men rejoice to-day, you are for ever free I" And they clapped their
hands, and shouted, " Glory to God! " They believed the good
tidings. " Young maidens !" he said, " you rejoice to-day. You
have been put on the auction-block and sold for the last time ; you
are free — for ever free!" They believed it, and lifting up their
voices, shouted, "Glory be to God!" I never was in such a
meeting. They believed that it was good news to them.
My friends, I bring you better tidings than that. No coloured
man or woman ever had such a mean, wicked, cruel master as
those that are serving Satan. Do I speak to a man who is a slave
to strong drink ? Christ can give you strength to hurl the cup
from you, and make you a sober man, a loving husband, a kind
father. Yes, poor wife of the drunkard, He gives you good
news ; your husband may become a sober man again. And you,
poor sinner, you who have been so rebellious and wayward, the
gospel brings a message of forgiveness to you. God wants you to
be reconciled to Him. " Be ye reconciled unto God." It is his
message to you — a message of friendship. Here is a little story
of reconciliation which I was told lately ; perhaps it may help you
a little :—
There was an Englishman who had an only son ; and only sons
are often petted, and humoured, and ruined. This boy became
very headstrong, and very often he and his father had trouble.
One day they had a quarrel, and the father was very angry, and so
was the son ; and the father said he wished the boy would leave
home and never come back. The boy said he would go, and
would not come into his father's house again till he sent for him.
The father said he would never send for him. Well, away went
the boy. But when a father gives up a boy, a mother does not.
You mothers will understand that, but the fathers may not. You
know there is no love on earth so strong as a mother's love. A
great many things may separate a man and his wife ; a great many
things may separate a father from a son ; but there is nothing in
the wide world that can ever separate a true mother from her child.
To be sure, there are some mothers that have drunk so much
liquor, that they have drunk up all their affection. But I am
talking about a true mother ; and she would never cast off her boy.
Well, the mother began to write, and plead with the boy to

GOOD NEWS. 37
write to his father first, and he would forgive hirn ; but the boy
said, "I will never go home till father asks me." Then she
pled with the father, but the father said, " No, I will never ask
him." At last the mother came down to her sick-bed, broken
hearted, and when she was given up by the physicians to die, the
husband, anxious to gratify her last wish, wanted to know if there
was nothing he could do for her before she died. The mother
gave him a look ; he well knew what it meant.. Then she said,
" Yes, there is one thing you can do. You can send for my boy.
That is the only wish on earth you can gratify. If you do not
pity him and love him when I am dead and gone, who will ? "
"Well," said the father, " I will send word to him that you want
to see him." "No," she says, "you know he will not come for
me. If ever I see him you must send for him." At last the
father went to his office and wrote a despatch in his own name,
asking the boy to come home. As soon as he got the invitation
from his father he started off to see his dying mother. When he
opened the door to go in he found his mother dying, and his father
by the bedside. The father heard the door open, and saw the boy,
but instead of going to meet him he went to another part of the
room, and refused to speak to him. His mother seized his hand —
how she had longed to press it ! She kissed him, and then said,
" Now, my son, just speak to your father. You speak first, and it
will all be over." But the boy said, " No, mother, I will not
speak to him until he speaks to me." She took her husband's
hand in one hand and the boy's in the other, and spent her dying
moments in trying to bring about a reconciliation. Then just as
she was expiring — she could not speak — so she put the hand of
the wayward boy into the hand of the father, and passed away !
The boy looked at the mother, and the father at the wife, and at
last the father's heart broke, and he opened his arms, and took
that boy to his bosom, and by that body they were reconciled.
Sinner, that is only a faint type, a poor illustration, because God is
not angry with you. I bring you to-night to the dead body of
Christ. I ask you to look at the wounds in his hands and feet,
and the wound in his side. And I ask you, " Will you not be
reconciled ? " When He left heaven, He went down into the
manger that He might get hold of the vilest sinner, and put th&

38 GOOD NEWS.
hand of the wayward prodigal into that of the Father, and He died
that you and I might be reconciled. If you take my advice you
will not sleep to-night until you are reconciled. " Be ye recon
ciled." Oh, this gospel of reconciliation ! My friends, is it not a
glad gospel ?
And then it is a free gospel ; any one may have it. You need
not ask, " For whom is this good news." It is for yourself. If
you would like Christ's own word for it, come with me to that
scene in Jerusalem where the disciples are bidding' Him farewell.
Calvary with all its horrors is behind Him ; Gethsemane is over,
and Pilate's judgment hall. He has passed the grave, and is
about to take his place at the right hand of the Father. Around
Him stands his little band of disciples, the little church He was
to leave behind Him to be his witnesses. The hour of parting has
come, and He has some " last words " for them. Is He thinking
about Himself in these closing moments ? Is He thinking about
the throne that is waiting Him, and the Father's smile that will
welcome Him to heaven ? Is He going over in memory the scenes
of the past ; or is He thinking of the friends who have followed
Him so far, who will miss Him so much when He is gone ? No,
He is thinking about you. You imagined He would think of
those who loved Him ? No, sinner, He thought of you then. He
thought of his enemies, those who shunned Him, those who de
spised Him, those who killed Him — He thought what more He
could do for them. He thought of those who would hate Him, of
those who would have none of his gospel, o f those who would say
it was too good to be true, of those who would make excuse that
He never died for them. And then turning to his disciples, his
heart just bursting with compassion, He gives them his farewell
charge, " Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to
every creature." They are almost his last words, "to every
creature." I can imagine Peter saying, " Lord, do you really mean that we
shall preach the gospel to every creature?" "Yes, Peter."
" Shall we go back to Jerusalem and preach the gospel to those
Jerusalem sinners who murdered you ? " "Yes, Peter, go back
and tarry there until you are endued with power from on high.

GOOD NEWS. 39
Offer the gospel to them first. Go search out that man who spat
in my face ; tell him I forgive him ; there is nothing in my heart
but love for him. Go, search out the man who put that cruel
crown of thorns on my brow ; tell him I will have a crown ready
for him in my kingdom, if he will accept salvation ; there shall not
be a thorn in it, and he shall wear it for ever and ever in the
kingdom of his Redeemer. Find out that man who took the reed
from my hand, and smote my head, driving the thorns deeper into
my brow. If he will accept salvation as a gift, I will give him a
sceptre, and he shall sway it over the nations of the earth. Yes,
I will give him to sit with Me upon my throne. Go, seek that
man who struck Me with the palm of his hand ; find him, and
preach the gospel to him ; tell him that the blood of Jesus Christ
cleanseth from all sin, and my blood was shed for him freely."
Yes, I can imagine Him saying, " Go, seek out that poor soldier
who drove the spear into my side ; tell him that there is a nearer
way to my heart than that. Tell him that I forgive him freely ;
and tell him I will make him a soldier of the cross, and my banner
over him shall be love."
I thank God that the gospel is to be preached to every creature.
I thank God the commission is so free. There is no man so far
gone, but the grace of God can reach him ; no man so desperate or
so black, but He can forgive him. Yes, I thank God I can preach
the gospel to the man or the woman who is as black as hell itself.
I thank God for the " whosoevers " of the invitations of Christ.
" God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting
life," and " Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely."
I heard of a woman once who thought there was no promise in
the Bible for her, they were all for other people. One day she got
a letter, and when she opened it, found it was not for her at all,
but for some other woman of the same name. It led her to ask
herself, " If T should find some promise in the Bible directed to
me, how should I know that it meant me, and not some other
woman ? " And she found out that she must just take God at his
word, and include herself among the " whosoevers " and the " every
creatures " to whom the gospel is freely preached. I know that
word "whosoever"' means every man, every woman, every child

40 GOOD NEWS.
in this wide world. It means that boy down there, that grey-
haired man, that maiden is the blush of youth, that young man
breaking a mother's heart, that drunkard steeped in misery and sin.
Oh, my friends, will you not believe this good news ? Will you
not receive this wonderful gospel of Christ ? Will you not believe,
poor sinner, that it means you ? Will you say it is too good to be
true? I was in Ohio a few years ago, and was invited to preach in the
State prison. Eleven hundred convicts were brought into the
chapel, and all sat in front of me. After I had got through the
preaching, the chaplain said to me : " Mr. Moody, I want to tell
you of a scene which occurred in this room. A few years ago, our
commissioners went to the governor of the State, and got him to
promise that he would pardon five men for good behaviour. The
governor consented, with this understanding — that the record was
to be kept secret, and that at the end of six months the five men
highest on the roll should receive a pardon, regardless of who or
what they were. At the end of six months the prisoners were all
brought into the chapel ; the commissioners came up, and the
President stood up on the platform, and putting his hand in his
pocket, brought out some papers, and said, ' I hold in my hand
pardons for five men.' " The chaplain told me he never witnessed
anything on earth like it. Every man was as still as death ; many
were deadly pale, and the suspense was awful ; it seemed as if
every heart had ceased to beat. The commissioner went on to tell
them how they had got the pardon ; but the chaplain interrupted
him. " Before you make your speech, read out the names. This
suspense is awful." So he read out the first name, "Reuben
Johnson will come and get his pardon ;" and he held it out, but
none came forward. He said to the governor, "Are all the
prisoners here?" The governor told him they were all there.
Then he said again, " Reuben Johnson will come and get his
pardon. It is signed and sealed by the governor. He is a free
man." Not one moved. The chaplain told me he looked right
down where Reuben was ; he was well known ; he had been nine
teen years there, and many were looking round to see him spring
to his feet. But he himself waslooking round to see the fortunate
man who had got his pardon. Finally the chaplain caught his eye

GOOD NEWS. 41
and said, "Reuben, you are the man." Reuben turned round and
looked behind him to see where Reuben was. The chaplain said
the second time, " Reuben, you are the man ;" and the second
time he looked round, thinking it must be some other Reuben. So
men do not believe the gospel is for them. They think it is too
good, and pass it over their shoulders to the next man. But you
are the man to-night. Well, the chaplain could see where Reuben
was, and he had to say three times, " Reuben, come and get your
pardon." At last the truth began to steal over the old man ; he
got up and came along down the hall, trembling from head to foot,
and when he got the pardon he looked at it, and went back to his
seat, and buried his face in his hands, and wept. When the
prisoners got into the ranks to go back to the cells, Reuben got
into the ranks too, and the chaplain had to call to him, " Reuben,
get out of the ranks ; you are a free man, you are no longer a
prisoner." And Reuben stepped out of the ranks. He was free !
That is the way men make out pardons. They make them out for
good character or good behaviour. But God makes out pardons
for men who have not got any character, who have been very, very
bad. He offers a pardon to every sinner in England if he will
take it. I do not care who he is or what he is like. He may be
the greatest libertine that ever walked the streets, or the greatest
blackguard who ever lived, or the greatest drunkard, or thief, or
vagabond ; but I come to-night with glad tidings, and preach the
gospel to every creature.

IV.
CHRIST SEEKING SINNERS.
" The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which
was lost." — Luke xix. io.

To me this is on*.of the sweetest verses in the whole Bible. In
this one little short sentence we are told what Christ came into
this world for. He came for a purpose ; He came to do a work,
and in this little verse the whole story is told. He came not to
condemn the world, but that the world, through Him, might be
saved. A few years ago, the Prince of Wales went to America, and
there was great excitement about your Crown Prince coming
to our country. The papers took it up, and began to discuss
it, and a great many were wondering what he came for. Was
it to look into the republican government ? Was it for his
health ? Was it to see our institutions ? or for this, or for that ?
He came, and went, but he never told us what he came for. But
when the Prince of Heaven came down into this world, He told
us what He came for. God sent Him, and He came to do the
will of His Father. What was that? "To seek and to save that
which was lost." And you cannot find any place in Scripture
where a man was ever sent by God to do a work in which he
failed. God sent Moses to Egypt to bring three millions of bond
men up out of the house of bondage into the promised land. Did
he fail ? It looked, at first, as if he were going to. If we had been
in the Court when Pharaoh said to Moses, " Who is God, that I
should obey Him ? " and ordered him out of his presence, we
might have thought it meant failure. But did it? God sent
Elijah to stand before Ahab, and it was a bold thing when he told

CHRIST SEEKING SINNERS. 43
him there should be neither dew nor rain ; but didn't he lock up
the heavens for three years and six months ? Now here is God
sending his own beloved Son from his bosom, from the throne,
down into this world. Do you think He is going to fail ? Thanks
be to God, He can save to the uttermost, and there is not a man in
this city who may not find it so, if he is willing to be saved.
I find a great blessing to myself in taking up a passage like
this, and looking all round it, to see what brought it out. If you
look back to the close of the eighteenth chapter, you will find Christ
coming near the city of Jericho. And, sitting by the wayside,
was a poor, blind beggar. Perhaps he has been there for years,
led out, it may be, by one of his children, or perhaps, as we some
times see, he had got a dog to lead him out. There he had sat
for years, and his cry had been, "Please give a poor, blind man a
.•arming." One day, as he was sitting there, a man came down
from Jerusalem, and seeing the poor blind man, took his seat by
his side, and said, " Bartimeus, I have good news for yon."
"What is it? " said the blind beggar. "There is a man in Israel
who is able to give you sight." " Oh no, ".said the blind beggar,,
"there is no chance of my ever receiving sight. I was born blind,
and nobody born blind ever got sight. I shall never see in this
world ; I may in the world to come, but I must go through this
world blind." "But," said the man, "let me tell you, I was at
Jerusalem the other day, and the great Galilean prophet was there,,
and I saw a man who was born blind that had received his sight ;.
and I never saw a man with better sight. He does not need to
use glasses; he can see quite clear." Then for the first time, hope
rises in the poor man's heart, and he asks " How was it done ? "
" Why, Jesus spat on the ground and made some clay, and
anointed his eyes," (why, that is enough to put a man's sight out,
even if he can see !) " and sent him to wash in the pool of Siloam,
and while he was doing so, he got two good eyes. Yes, it is so.
I talked with him, and I didn't see a man in all Jerusalem who
had better sight." "What did He charge?" says Bartimeus.
" Nothing. There was no fee or doctor's bill ; he got his sight
for nothing. You just tell Him what you want; you don't need
to have an influential committee to call on Him, or any important
deputation. The poor have as much influence with Him as the

44 CHRIST SEEKING SINNERS.
rich; all are alike." "What is his name?" asks Bartimeus.
¦" Jesus of Nazareth. And if He ever comes this way, don't you
let Him by, without getting your case laid before Him." And the
blind man says " That you may be sure of ; He shall never pass
this way without my seeking Him."
A day or two after, he is led out, and takes his seat at the usual
place, still crying out for money. All at once, he hears the foot
steps of a coming multitude, and begins to cry, " Who is it ? "
¦"Tell me, who is it? " Some one said it was Jesus ot Nazareth
that was passing by. The moment he hears that, he says to him
self, "Why, that is the man who gives sight to the blind," and he
lifted up his cry, " Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy upon
me!" I don't know who it was — perhaps it was Peter — who
said to the man, " Hush ! keep still." He thought the Lord was
going up to Jerusalem to be crowned King, and He would not like
to be disturbed by a poor blind beggar. Oh they did not know
the Son of God when He was here ! He would hush every harp
in heaven to hear a sinner pray ; no music delights Him so
much. But Bartimeus lifted up his voice louder, " Thou Son of
David, have mercy on me." His prayer reached the ear of the
.Son of God, as prayer always will, and His footsteps were arrested.
He told them to bring the man. " Bartimeus," they said, " be of
good cheer, arise, He calleth thee ; " and He never called any one,
but He had something good in store for him. Oh, sinner ! remem
ber that to-night. They led the blind man to Jesus. The Lord
says, "What shall I do for you ? " " Lord, that I may receive my
sight." " You shall have it," the Lord said; and straightway his
•eyes were opened.
I should have liked to have been there, to see that wonderful scene.
The first object that met his gaze was the Son of God Himself,
and now among the shouting multitude, no one shouts louder than
-the poor blind man that has got his sight. He glorifies God, and
I fancy I can hear him shouting " Hosanna to the Son of David,"
more sweetly than Mr. Sankey can sing.
Pardon me, if I now draw a little on my imagination.
Bartimeus gets into Jericho, and he says, " I will go and see
jny wife, and tell her about it." A young convert always
-wants to talk to his friends about salvation. Away he goes

CHRIST SEEKING SINNERS. 45;
down the street, and he meets a man who passes him, goes-
on a few yards, and then turns round and says, " Bartimeusj-
is that you ? " " Yes." " Well, I thought it was, but I could
not believe my eyes. How have you got your sight?" " Ohr
I just met Jesus of Nazareth outside the city, and asked Him
to have mercy on me." "Jesus of Nazareth! What, is He in
this part of the country ? " " Yes. He is right here in Jericho.
He is now going down to the western gate." "I should like to
see Him," says the man, and away he runs down the street; but
he cannot catch a glimpse of Him, even though he stands on tip
toe, being little of stature, and on account of the 'great throng
around Him. "Well," he says, "I am not going to be dis
appointed ; " so he runs on, and climbs up into a sycamore tree-
" If I can get on to that branch, hanging right over the highway,
He cannot pass without my getting a good look at Him-" That
must have been a very strange sight to see the rich man climbing
up a tree like a boy, and hiding among the leaves, where he thought
nobody would see him, to get a glimpse of the passing stranger !
There is the crowd bursting out, and he looks for Jesus. He looks at
Peter ; " That's not Him." He looks at John ; " That's not Him."
At last his eye rested on One fairer than the sons of men ; " That's
Him!" And Zaccheus, just peeping out from among the
branches, looks down upon the wonderful God-man in amaze
ment. At last the crowd comes to the tree ; it looks as if
Christ were going by ;"but He stops right under the tree, looks up,
and says, "Zaccheus, make haste and come down." I can
imagine, the first thought in his mind was, " Who told Him my
name? I was never introduced to Him." Ah! He knew him.
Sinner, Christ knows all about you. He knows your name and
your house. You need not try to hide from Him. He knows
where you are, and all about you.
Some people do not believe in sudden conversion. I should
like them to answer me when was Zaccheus converted ? He was
certainly in his sins when he went up into that tree ; he certainly
was converted when he came down. He must have been con
verted somewhere between the branch and the ground. It didn't
take a long while to convert that publican ! " Make haste and
come down. I shall never pass this way again ; this is my last

46 CHRIST SEEKING SINNERS.
visit." Zaccheus made haste, and came down and received Him
joyfully. Did you ever hear of any one receiving Christ in any
other way ? He received Him joyfully. Christ brings joy with
Him. Sin, gloom, and darkness flee away ; light, peace, and joy
burst into the soul. May there be many that shall come down
from their high places, and receive Christ to-night !
Some one may ask, " How do you know that he was converted ? "
I think he gave very good evidence. I would like to see as fruit
ful evidence of conversion here to-night. Let some of you rich
men be converted, and give half your goods to feed the poor, and
people will believe pretty quickly that it is genuine work ! But
there is better evidence even than that. " If I have taken any
thing from any man falsely, I restore him fourfold." Very good
evidence that. You say if people are converted suddenly, they
won't hold out. Zaccheus held out long enough to restore four
fold. We should like to have a work that reaches men's pockets.
I can imagine one of his servants going to a neighbour next morn
ing, with a cheque for £100, and handing it over. " What is this
for ? " " Oh, my master defrauded you of £25 a few years ago,
and this is restitution money." That would give confidence in
Zaccheus' conversion ! I wish a few cases like that would happen
here, and then Deople would stop talking against sudden conver
sions. The Lord goes to be the publican's guest, and while He is thei?
the Pharisees began to murmur and complain. It would have been
a good thing if Pharisees had died off with that generation ; but,
unfortunately, they have left a good many grandchildren, living
down here in the afternoon of this nineteenth century, who are
ever complaining, " This man receiveth sinners." But while the
Pharisees were complaining, the Lord uttered the text I have to
night* "I did not come to Zaccheus to make him wretched, to
condemn him, to torment him ; I came to bless and save him.
The Son of Man is come to seek and lo save that which was lost."
If there is a man or woman in this audience to-night who believes
that he or she is lost, I have good news to tell you — Christ is come
after you. I was at the Fulton Street prayer-meeting, a good many
years ago, one Saturday night, and when the meeting was over, a man
came to me, and said, " I would like to have you go down to the

CHRIST SEEKING SINNERS. 4.7
city prison to-morrow, and preach to the prisoners. I said I would
be very glad to go. There was no chapel in connection with that
prison, and I was to preach to them in their cells. I had to stand at a
little iron railing and talk down a great, long narrow passage way, to
some three or four hundred of them, I suppose, all out of sight. It
was pretty difficult work ; I never preached to the bare walls before.
When it was over I thought I would like to see to whom I had
been preaching, and how they had received the gospel. I went to
the first door, where the inmates could have heard me best, and
looked in at a little window, and there were some men playing cards.
I suppose they had been playing all the while. " How is it with
you here ? " I said. " Well, stranger, we don't want you to get a
bad idea of us. False witnesses swore a lie, and that is how we
are here." "Oh," I said, "Christ cannot save anybody here;
there is nobody lost." I went to the next cell. " Well, friend, how
is it with you ? " " Oh," said the prisoner, " the man that did the
deed looked very much like me, so they caught me and I am here.'1
He was innocent too ! I passed along to the next cell. " How is
it with you ? " " Well, we got into bad company, and the man that
did it got clear, and we got taken up, but we never did anything."
I went along to the next cell. " How is it with you ? " " Our trial
comes on next week, but they have nothing against us, and we'll get
free." I went round nearly every cell, but the answer was always the
same — they had never done anything. Why, I never saw so many
innocent men together in my life ! There was nobody to blame
but the magistrates, according to their way of it. These men were
wrapping their filthy rags of self-righteousness about them. And
that has been the story for six thousand years. I got discouraged
as I went through the prison, on, and on, and on, cell after cell, and
every man had an excuse. If he hadn't one, the devil helped him
to make one. I had got almost through the prison, when I came
to a cell and found a man with his elbows on his knees, and his
head in his hands. Two little streams of tears were running down
his cheeks ; they did not come by drops that time.
" What's the trouble ? " I said. He looked up the picture of
remorse and despair. " Oh; my sins are more than I can bear."
" Thank God for that," I replied. " What," said he, " you are the
man that has been preaching to us, ain't you ? " " Yes." " I

48 CHRIST SEEKING SINNERS.
think you said you were a friend?" "I am." "Ani yet you
are glad that my sins are more than I can bear ! " "I will
explain," I said; "if your sins are more than you can bear,
won't you cast them on One who will bear them for you ? "
" Who's that ? " " The Lord Jesus." " He won't bear my sins."
"Why not?" "I have sinned against Him all my life." '_' I
don't care if you have; the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son,
cleanses from all sin." Then I told him how Christ had come to
seek and save that which was lost ; to open the prison doors and
set the captives free. It was like a cup of refreshment to find a
man who believed he was lost, so I stood there, and held up a
crucified Saviour to him. " Christ was delivered for our offences,
died for our sins, rose again for our justification." For a long time the
man could not believe that such a miserable wretch could be saved.
He went on to enumerate his sins, and I told him that the blood
of Christ could cover them all. After I had talked with him I said,
" Now let us pray." He got down on his knees inside the cell,
and I got down outside, and I said, " You pray." " Why," he said,
" it would be blasphemy for me to call on God." " Yon call on
God," I said. He knelt down, and, like the poor publican, he
lifted up his voice and said, " God be merciful to me, a vile
wretch ! " I put my hand through the window, and as I shook
hands with him a tear fell on my hand that burned down into my
soul. It was a tear of repentance. He believed he was lost.
Then I tried to get him to believe that Christ had come to save
him. I left him still in darkness. " I will be at the hotel," I
said, " between nine and ten o'clock, and I will pray for you."
Next morning, I felt so much interested in him, that I thought
I must see him before I went back to Chicago. No sooner had
my eye lighted on his face, than I saw that remorse and despair
had fled away, and his countenance was beaming with celestial light ;
the tears of joy had come into his eyes, and the tears of despair were
gone. The Sun of Righteousness had broken out across his path;
his soul was leaping within him for joy ; he had received Christ
as Zaccheus did, joyfully. " Tell me about it," I said. " Well, I
do not know what time it was ; I think it was about midnight. I
had been in distress a long time, when all at once my great burden
fell off, and now, I believe I am the happiest man in New York."

CHRIST SEEKING SINNERS. 49
I think he was the happiest man I saw, from the time I left
Chicago till I got back again. His face was lighted up with the
light that comes from the celestial hills. I bade him good-bve,
and I expect to meet him in another world.
Can you tell me why the Son of God came down to that prison
that night, and, passing cell after cell, went to that one, and set the
captive free ? It was because the man believed he was lost.
But you say, " / do not feel that." Well, never mind your
feelings ; believe it. Just ask yourself, " Am 1 saved, or am I lost ? "
It must be one or the other. There is no neutrality about the matter.
A man cannot be saved and lost at the same time ; it is impossible.
Every man and woman in this audience must either be saved or
lost, if the Bible be true ; and if I thought it was not true, I should
not be here preaching, and I would not advise you people to come ;
but if the Bible is true, every man and every woman in this room
must either be in the ark or out of it, either saved or lost.
I do not believe there would be a dry eye in this city to-night, if
we would but wake up to the thought of what it is to be lost.
The world has been rocked to sleep by Satan, who is going up and
down and telling people that it doesn't mean anything. I believe
in the old-fashioned heaven and hell. Christ came down to save us
from a terrible hell, and any man who is cast down to hell from
England must go in the full blaze of the gospel, and over the
mangled body of the Son of God.
We hear of a man who has lost his health, and we sympathize
with him, and we say it is very sad. Our hearts are drawn out in
sympathy. Here is another man who has lost his wealth, and we
say, "That is very sad." Here is another man who has lost his
reputation, his standing among men. " That is sadder still," you
say We know what it is to lose health and wealth, and repu
tation, but what is the loss of all these things compared with the
loss of the soul ?
I was in an eye- infirmary in Chicago some time ago, before the
great fire. A mother brought a beautiful little babe to the doctor —
a babe only a few months old — and wanted the doctor to look at
the child's eyes. He did so, and pronounced it blind — blind for
life — it will never see again. The moment he said that, the mother
seized it, pressed it to her bosom, and gave a terrible scream. It
4

50 CHRIST SEEKING SINNERS.
pierced my heart, and I could not but weep ; the doctor wept ; we
could not help it. " Oh, my darling," she cried, " are you never
to see the mother that gave you birth ? Oh, doctor, I cannot stand
it. My child, my child !" It was a sight to move any heart. But
what is the loss of eyesight to the loss of a soul ? I had a thousand
times rather have these eyes taken out of my head and go to the
grave blind, than lose my soul. I have a son, and no one but
God knows how I love him ; but I would see those eyes dug
out of his head to-night rather than see him grow up to manhood
and go down to the grave without Christ and without hope. The
loss uf a soul ! Christ knew what it meant. That is what brought
Him from the , bosom of the Father ; that is what brought Him
from the throne ; that is what brought Him to Calvary. The Son
of God was in earnest. When He died on Calvary it was to save
a lost world ; it was to save your soul and mine.
O the loss of the soul— how terrible it is! If you are lost to-night,
I beseech you do not rest until you have found peace in Christ.
Fathers and mothers, if you have children out of the Ark, do not
rest until they are brought into it. Do not discourage your children
from coming to Christ. I am glad to see those little boys and
girls here. Dear children, remember the sermon is for you. The
Son of Man came for you as much as for that old grey-haired man,
yonder. He came for all, rich and poor, young and old. Young
man, if you are lost may God show it to you, and may you press
into the kingdom. The Son of Man is come to seek and to save
you. There is a story told of Rowland Hill. He was once preaching
in the open air to a vast audience. Lady Anne Erskine .was riding
by, and she asked who it was that was addressing the vast assembly.
She was told it was the celebrated Rowland Hill Says she, " I
have heard of him ; drive me near the platform, that I may listen
to him." The eye of Rowland Hill rested on her ; he saw that
she belonged to royalty, and turning to some one, he inquired who
she was. He went on preaching, and all at once he stopped.
"My friends," he said, "I have got something here for sale."
Everybody was startled to think that a minister was going to sell
something in his sermon. " I am going to sell it by auction, and
it is worth more than the crown of all Europe : it is the soul of

CHRIST SEEKING SINNERS. 5r
Lady Anne Erskine. Will any one bid for her soul ? Hark !
methinks I hear a bid. Who bids ? Satan bids. What will you
give ? I will give riches, honour, and pleasure ; yea*, I will give
the whole world for her soul. Hark ! I hear another bid for this
soul. Who bids ? The Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus, what will you
give for this soul ? I will give peace, and joy, and comfort that
the world knows not of ; yea, I will give eternal life for her soul."
Turning to Lady Anne Erskine, he said, " You have heard the two
bidders for your soul — which shall have it ? " She ordered the
footman to open the door, and pushing her way through the crowd,
she says, "The Lord Jesus shall have my soul, if He will accept
it." That may be true, or it may not; but there is one thing I
know to be true — there are two bidders for your soul to-night. It
is for you to decide which shall have it. Satan offers you what he
cannot give; he is a liar, and has been from the foundation of the
world. I pity the man who is living on the devil's promises. He
lied to Adam, and deceived him, stripped him of all he had, and
then left him in his lost, ruined condition. And all the men since
Adam, living on the devil's lies, the devil's promises, have been
disappointed, and will be, down to the end of the chapter. But
the Lord Jesus Christ is able to give all He offers, and He offers
eternal life to every lost soul here. "The gift of God is eternal
life. Who will have it ? Will any one flash it over the wires,
and let it go up to the throne of God, that you want to be saved ?
As Mr. Sankey sang of that shout around the throne, my heart
went up to God, that there might be a great shout for lost ones
brought home to-night.
Last night a man yonaer told me he was anxious to be saved,
but Christ had never sought for him. I said, " What are you
waiting for ? "' " Why," he said, " I am waiting for Christ to call
me ; as soon as He calls me, I am coming." There may be others
here who have got the same notion. Now, I do not believe there
is a man in this city that the Spirit of God has not striven with at
some period of his life. I do not believe there is a person in this
audience but Christ has sought after him. Bear in mind, He takes
the place of the seeker. Every man who has ever been saved
through these six thousand years was first sought after by
God. No sooner did Adam fall, than God sought him. He,

52 CHRIST SEEKING SINNERS.
had gone away frightened, and hid himself away among the
bushes in the garden, but God took the place of the Seeker;
and from that day to this God has always had the place of the
Seeker. No man or woman in this audience has been saved but
that He sought them first.
What do we read in the fifteenth chapter of St. Luke ? There
is a shepherd bringing home his sheep into the fold. As they pass
in, he stands and numbers them. I can see him counting one,
two, three, up to ninety-nine. " But," says he, " I ought to have a
hundred ; I must have made a mistake ;'' and he counts them over
again. " There are only ninety-nine here ; I must have lost one."
He does not say, " I will let him find his' own way back." No!
He takes the place of the Seeker ; he goes out into the mountain, and
hunts until he finds the lost one, and then he lays it on his shoulder
and brings it home. Is it the sheep that finds the shepherd ? No,
it is the shepherd that finds and brings back the sheep. He re
joiced to find it. Undoubtedly the sheep was very glad to get back
to the fold, but it was the shepherd who rejoiced, and who called
his friends and said, " Rejoice with me."
Then there is that woman who lost the piece of money. Some
one perhaps had paid her a bill that day, giving her ten pieces of
silver. As she retires at night, she takes the money out of her
pocket and counts it. " Why," she says, " I have only got nine
pieces ; I ought to have ten." She counts it over again. " Only
nine pieces! Where have I been," she says, " since I got that
money ? I am sure I have not been out of the house." She turns
her pocket wrong side out, and there she finds a hole in it. Does
she wait until the money gets back into her pocket ? No. She takes
a broom, and lights a candle, and sweeps diligently. She moves the
sofa and the table and the chairs, and all the rest of the furniture,
and sweeps in every corner until she finds it. And when she has
found it, who rejoices ? The piece of money ? No ; the woman
who finds it. In these parables, Christ brings out the great truth
that God takes the place of Seeker. People talk of finding Christ,
but it is Christ who first finds them.
Another young man told me last night that he was too great a
sinner to be saved. Why, they are the very men Christ came after.
"This Man receiveth sinners and eateth with them." The only

CHRIST SEEKING SINNERS, 53
charge they could bring against Christ down here was, that He was
receiving bad men. They are the very kind of men He is willing
to receive. All you have got to do is, to prove that you are a
sinner, and I will prove that you have got a Saviour. And the
greater the sinner, the greater need you have of a Saviour. You
say your heart is hard ; well, then, of course, you want Christ to
soften it. You cannot do it yourself. The harder your heart, the
more need you have of Christ ; the blacker you are, the more need
you have of a Saviour. If your sins rise up before you like a dark
mountain, bear in mind that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses
from all sin. There is no sin so big, or so black, or so corrupt and
vile, but the blood of Christ can cover it. So I preach the old
gospel again, " The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that
which was lost."
It was Adam's fall, his loss, that brought out God's love.
God never told Adam when He put him into Eden, that He loved
him. It was his fall, his sin, that brought it out. A friend of mine
from Manchester was in Chicago a few years ago, and he was very
much interested in the city — a great city, with its 300,000 or 400,000
inhabitants, with its great railway centres, its lumber market, its pork
market, and its grain market. He said he went back to Manchester
and told his friends about Chicago. But he could not get anybody
very much interested in it. It was a great many hundreds of miles
away ; and the people did not seem to care for hearing about it.
But one day there came flashing along the wire the sad tidings that
it was on fire ; and, my friend said, the Manchester people became
suddenly interested in Chicago ! Every despatch that came they
read ; they bought up the papers, and devoured every particle of news.
And at last, when the despatch came that Chicago was burning up,
that 100,000 people were turned out of house and home, then every
one became so interested that they began to weep for us. They
came forward and laid down their money — some gave hundreds of
pounds — for the relief of the poor sufferers. It was the calamity of
Chicago that brought out the love of Manchester, and of London,
and of Liverpool. I was in that terrible fire^and I saw men that
were wealthy stripped of all they had. That Sunday night, when
they retired, they were the richest men in Chicago. Next morning
the)- were paupers. But I did not see a man weep. But when the

54 CHRIST SEEKING SINNERS.
news came flashing along the wire, " Liverpool is giving a thousand
pounds ; Manchester is giving a thousand pounds ; London is giving
money to aid the city ;" and as the news kept flashing that help
was coming, that city was broken-hearted. I saw men weep then.
The love that was showed us, that love broke our hearts. So the
love of God ought to break every heart in this city. It was love
that brought Christ down here to die for us. It was love that made
Him leave His place by the Father's throne and come down here
to seek and to save that which was lost.
But now for the sake of these men who believe Christ never
sought them, perhaps it would be well to say how He seeks. There
are a great many ways in which He does so. Last night I found
a man in the inquiry-room, and the Lord had been speaking to
him by the prayers of a godly sister who died a little while ago.
Her prayers were answered. He came into the inquiry-room
trembling from head to foot. I talked to him about the plan of
salvation, and the tears trickled down his cheeks, and at last he took
Christ as his Saviour. The Son of Man sought out that young
man through the prayers of his sister, and then through her death.
Some of you have godly, praying mothers, who have prayed whole
nights for your soul, and who have now gone to heaven. Did not
you take their hand and promise that you would meet them there ?
That was the Son of God seeking you by your mother's prayers
and your mother's death. Some of you have got faithful, godly
ministers who weep for you in the pulpit, and plead with you to
come to Christ. You have heard heart-searching sermons, and the
truth has gone down deep into your heart, and tears have come
down your cheeks. That was the Son of God seeking yon.
Some of you have had godly, praying Sabbath-school teachers and
superintendents, urging you to come to Christ. Some of yon,
perhaps, have got young men converted round you, and they have
talked with you and pleaded with you to come to Christ. That
was the Son of God seeking after your soul. Some of you have
had a tract put in your hand with a startling title, " Eternity ;
Where will You Spend It ? " and the arrow has gone home. That
was the Son of God seeking after you. Many of you have been
laid on a bed of sickness, when you had time to think and meditate.
And in the silent watches of the night, when everybody was asleep

CHRIST SEEKING SINNERS. 55
the Spirit of God has come into your chamber, has come to your
bedside, and the thought came stealing through your mind that you
ought to be a child of God and an heir of heaven. That was the
Son of God seeking after your lost soul. Some of you have had
little children, and you have laid them yonder in the cemetery.
When that little child was dying you promised to love and serve
God (ah, Have you kept your promise ?) That was the Son of God
seeking you. He took that little child yonder to draw your
affections heavenwards.
It would take me all night to tell the different ways in which
the Lord seeks. Can you rise in this hall to-night and say that the
Son of God never sought for you? I do not believe there is a man
or woman in this audience or in the whole city who could do it.
My friend, He has been calling for you from your earliest childhood,
and He has put it into the hearts of God's own people just to call
you together in this hall. Prayer is going up all over the Christian
world for you. Perhaps there never has been a time in the history of
your life when so many were praying for you as at the present time.
That is the Son of God seeking for your soul through the prayers
of the Church, through the prayers of ministers, through the
prayers of the saints not only in London but throughout the
world. I have received news to-day in a despatch sent across from
America, that all the churches nearly, in America, are praying for
London. What does it mean ? God has laid it upon the heart of
the Church throughout the world to pray for London. It must be
that God has something good in store for London ; the Son of
Man is coming to London to seek and to save that which was lost ;
and I pray that the Good Shepherd may enter this hall to-night
and may come to many a heart, and that you may hear the still
small voice : " Behold, I stand at the door and knock ; if any man
hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him and
will sup with him, and he with Me." O friends, open the door
to-night, and let the heavenly Visitor in. Do not turn Him away
any longer. Donot say with Felix, " Go thy way this time, and
when I have a convenient season I will call for thee." Make this
a convenient season ; make this the night of your salvation. Re
ceive the gift of God to-night, and open the door of your heart,
and say, " Welcome, thrice welcome into this heart of mine."

V.
SINNERS SEEKING CHRIST.
•"Seek the Lord while He may be found; call ye upon
Him while He is near." — Isai h lv. 6.

I have been speaking about the Son of Man seeking the lost;
to-night I want to take up the other side of the case — man's side.
I have learned this, that when any one becomes in earnest about his
soul's salvation he begins to seek God, and it does not take a great
while for them to meet ; it does not take long for an anxious sinner
to meet an anxious Saviour. What do we read in the 29th chapter
of Jeremiah, 13th verse? "Ye shall seek Me and find Me when
ye shall search for Me with all your heart." These are the men
who find Christ — those who seek for Him with all their heart. I
am tired and sick of half-heartedness. You don't like a half
hearted man ; you don't care for any one to love you with a half
heart, and the Lord won't have it. If we are going to seek for
Him and find Him, we must do it with all our heart. I believe
the reason why so few people find Christ is because they do not
search for Him with all their heart ; they are not terribly in earnest
about their soul's salvation. God is in earnest ; everything God
has done proves that He is in earnest about the salvation of men's
souls. He has proved it by giving his only Son to die for us. The
Son of God was in earnest when He died. What is Calvary but a
proof of that ? And the Lord wants us to be in earnest when it
comes to this great question of the soul's salvation. I never saw
men seeking Him with all their hearts but the}- soon found Him.
It was quite refreshing, last night, to find in the inquiry-room a
young man who thought he was not worth saving, he was so vile
and wicked. There was hope for him because he was so des-

SINNERS SEEKING CHRIST. 57
perately in earnest about his soul. He thought he was worthless.
He had got a sight of himself in God's looking-glass, and when a
man does that he has a very poor opinion of himself. You can
always tell when a man is a great way from God — he is always
talking about himself, and how good he is. But the moment he
sees God by the eye of faith he is down on his knees, and, like
Job, he cries, " Behold, I am vile." All his goodness flees away.
What men want is to be in earnest about their salvation, and they
will soon find Christ. You do not need to go up to the heights to
bring Him down, or down to the depths to bring Him up, or to go
off to some distant city to find Him. This day He is near to every
one of us. I heard some one in the inquiry-room telling a young
person to go home and seek Christ in his closet. I would not dare
to tell any one to do that. You might be dead before you got home.
If I read my Bible correctly, the man who preaches the gospel is not
the man who tells me to seek Christ to-morrow or an hour hence,
but now. He is near to every one of us this minute to save. If
the world would just come to God for salvation, and be in earnest
about it, they would find the Son of God right at the door of their
heart. Suppose I should say I lost a very valuable diamond here last
night — I have not, but suppose it — worth £20,000. I had it in my
pocket when I came into the hall, and when I had done
preaching 1 found it was not in my pocket, but was in the
hall somewhere. And suppose I was to say that any one who
found it could have it. How earnest you would all become ! You
would not get very much of my sermon ; you would all be thinking
of the diamond. I do not believe the police could get you out of
this hall. The idea of finding a diamond worth £20,000 ! If you
could only find it, it would lift you out of poverty at once, and you
would be independent for the rest of your days. Oh, how soon
everybody would become terribly in earnest then ! I would to God
I could get men to seek for Christ in the same way. I have got
something worth more than a diamond to offer you. Is not salva
tion — eternal life — worth more than all the diamonds in the world ?
Suppose Gabriel should wing his way from the throne of God and
come down here, and say he had been commissioned by Jehovah to
come and offer to this assembly any one gift you might choose.

58 SINNERS SEEKING CHRIST.
You could have just what you chose, but only one thing. What
would it be? The wealth of England or of the world? Would
that be your choice ? Ten thousand times, no ! Your one cry
would be, " Life ! eternal life ! '
There is nothing that men value as they do life. Let a man be
out on a wreck that is fast going down. He is worth a million
sterling, and his only chance is to give up that million sterling, just
to save the life of the body. He would give it up in a moment.
" Skin for skin ; all that a man hath will he give for his life." I
understand some people have been afraid to come to this hall be
cause there might be a cry of " Fire ! fire ! " and a panic, and they
might lose their life. Yet there are twenty doors to the building ;
I do not know that I ever saw a building that you could get
easier out of. Yet people seem to sleep, and to forget that there is
no door out of hell. If they enter there they must remain, age after
age. Millions on millions of years will roll on, but there will be no
door, no escape out of hell. May God wake up this slumbering
congregation and make you anxious about your souls. People talk
about our being earnest and fanatical — about our being on fire.
Would to God the Church was on fire ; this world would soon shake
to its foundation. May God wake up a slumbering Church ! What
we want men to do is not to shout " Amen," and clasp their hands.
The deepest and quietest waters very often run swiftest. We want
men to go right to work ; there will be a chance for you to shout
by-and-by. Go and speak to your neighbour, and tell him of Christ
and heaven. You need not go a few yards down these streets
before you find some one who is passing down to the darkness of
eternal death. Let us haste to the rescue !
What we want to see is men really wishing to become Christians,
men who are in dead earnest about it. The idea of hearing a man
say in answer to the questi on, " Do you want to become a Christian ? ' '
"Well, I would not mind." My friend, I do not think you will
ever get into the kingdom of God until you change your language.
We want men crying from the depths of their heart, " I want to be
saved." On the day of Pentecost the cry was, "Men and
brethren, what shall we do ? " These men were in earnest, and
they found Christ right there ; three thousand found Him, when
they sought with all their hearts. When men seek Christ as they

SINNERS SEEKING CHRIST. 59
do wealth, they will soon find Him. To be sure, the world will
raise a cry that they are excited. Let cotton go up ten or fifteen per
cent, before to-morrow morning, and you will see how quickly the
merchants will get excited ! And the papers don't cry it down
either. They say it is healthy excitement ; commerce is getting on.
But when you begin to get excited about your soul's salvation, and
are in earnest, then they raise the cry, " Oh, they are getting
excited; most unhealthy state of things." Yet they don't talk
about men hastening down to death by thousands. There is the
poor drunkard, look at him ! Hear the piercing cry going up to
heaven ! Yet the Church of God slumbers and sleeps. Here and
there there is an inquirer, and yet they go into the inquiry-room as
if they were half asleep. When will men seek for Christ as they
seek for wealth, or as they seek for honour ?
I am told that when the war broke out on the Gold' Coast,
though it was known that the climate was a very unhealthy one,
and a great many who went there would never return, yet hundreds
and thousands of men wanted to go. Why ? They wanted to get
wealth, and from wealth honour. And if there is a chance of going
to India, no end of men are willing to go. To get a little honour
they will sacrifice comfort, pleasure, health, and everything. What
we want, is to have men seeking the kingdom of God, as they
seek for honour and wealth.
As I said, if life is in danger, how terribly in earnest men
become. That is right ; there is no doubt about that. But why
should not men be as much in earnest about their soul's salvation ?
Why should not every man and woman here wake up and seek
the Lord with all their heart ? Then, the Lord says, you shall
find Him.
There is a story told of a vessel that was wrecked, and was
going down at sea. There were not enough lifeboats to take all
on board. When the vessel went down, some of the lifeboats
were near the vessel. A man swam from the wreck just as it was
going down, to one of the boats ; but they had no room to take
him, and they refused. When they refused, he seized hold of the
boat, with his right hand, but they took a sword and cut off his
fingers. When he had lost the fingers of his right hand, the man was
so earnest to save his life that he seized the boat with his left hand j

'to SINNERS SEEKING CHRIST.
they cut off the fingers of that hand too. Then the man swam
up and seized the boat with his teeth, and they had compassion on
him and relented. They could not cut off his head, so they took
him in, and the man saved his life. Why ? Because he was in
earnest. Why not seek your soul's salvation as that man sought
to save his life ? •
Will there ever be a better time ? Will there ever be a better
time for that old man whose locks are growing grey, whose eyes
are growing dim, and who is hastening to the grave ? Is not this
the very best time for him ? " Seek the Lord while He may be
found." There is a man in the middle of life. Is this not the
best time for him to seek the kingdom of God ! Will you ever
have a better opportunity ? Will Christ ever be more willing
to save than now ? He says, " Come, for all things are now
Teady." Not, going to be, but are now ready. There is a young
man. My friend, is it not the best time for you to seek the king
dom of God ? Seek the Lord, you can find Him here to-night.
Can you say that you will find Him here to-morrow ? Will anv
one rise up in this hall and say that ? Young man, you know
not what to-morrow may bring forth. Do you know that since
we met here last night 4.3,000 souls have passed from time to
eternity ? Do you know that every time the clock ticks a soul
passes away ? Is not this the best time for you to seek the king
dom of God ?
My boy, the Lord wants you. Seek ye first the kingdom ol
God, and seek Him while He may be found. About eighteen
years ago, a great revival swept over America. A great many
men stood and shook their heads ; they could not believe it was a
healthy state of things. The Church was not in its normal state !
The Church from Maine to Minnesota, and on to California, was
astir. And as you passed over the great republic, over its western
prairies and mountains, and through its valleys, as you went on by
train, and as you passed through its cities and villages, you could see
the churches lit up ; and men were flocking into the kingdom of
God by hundreds. And in a year and a half or two years there
were more than half a million souls brought in. Men said it was
false excitement, wildfire, and it would pass away. But, my
friends, it was grace preceding judgment. Little did we know that

SINNERS SEEKING CHRIST. 6*
our nation was soon to be baptized in blood, and that we would
soon hear the tramp of a million men, that hundreds and thousands.
of our young men, the flower of our nation, would soon be lying
in a soldier's grave. But, oh, my friends, it, was God calling his
people in. He was preparing our nation for a terrible struggle.
And now, it seems to me that there is another wave of blessing
passing over this earth. Tidings are coming from all parts of the
world, telling us of the great work God is doing. The last tidings
from India, told us of ablessed work going on there. The last tidings
from Japan and from other places — we have the same good news.
of God pouring out his Spirit. It was only the other day that two
men came up here from a town of 50,000 inhabitants, and wanted
us to go there ; but we could not, and we told them to go home
and get to work themselves. To-day one of them told us that they
had sixteen last night in the inquiry-room. God is pouring out his-
Spirit everywhere. Everywhere men are putting in the sickle and.
bringing their sheaves and laying them at the feet of the Master. I
believe we are living in the days that our fathers prayed for. The
heavens are opened, and the Spirit of God is descending upon the
sons of men.
Now, this time of revival is a good time to seek the Lord.
Will you ever have a better time ? The tidings from every
city is this — the people are praying. It is a question in my
mind if there was ever so much prayer going up to God" as
at the present. Not only here, but all round the world, we
have God's people making their hearts burdened for the salvation
of souls. And is it not God working ? Will there ever be a
better time for you to seek the kingdom of God than the present,
when there is such a great awakening, when there is such a spirit
of expectation ; when the Church of God is coming up as one
man, and the spirit of unity prevails ? Think of the praying ones
here. Do you believe there were ever so many men and women
praying for your soul as there are here to-night ? Look over this
audience — what are these Christians doing now ! They are silently
praying to God. I can see they are praying. There is a young
man with his mother sitting by his side. That mother is pleading,
" God save my boy tonight!" May it go down deep into his.
soul ! " Seek ye the Lord while He may be found."

62 SINNERS SEEKING CHRIST.
Now, let me ask you a question. Do you believe that the
Lord can be found here to-night ? I appeal to these ministers
present at my side ; do you believe He can ? They answer "Yes."
My friends, do you believe it ? Another Yes comes from the
audience. Well, if He can, is it not the height of madness for any
man or woman to go out of this hall without seeking Him ? If
He can be found, why not seek Him ? Young lady, why not
seek Him with all your heart ? Young man, why not seek
Christ to-night with all your heart ? Why not say, " I must be
saved " ? There is nothing so important as this great question of
salvation. Supposing you could win the world, what would you do with
it ? Would it be worth as much as Christ ? Let everything else
be laid aside, and make up your minds that you will not rest until
you have sought and found the Lord Jesus. I never knew any one
make up his mind to seek Him but he soon found Him. At'
Dublin a young man found Christ. He went home and lived so
godly and so Christ-like, that two of his brothers could not under
stand what had wrought the change in him. They left Dublin
and followed us to Sheffield, and found Christ there. They
were in earnest. But, thanks be to God, you have not gof
to go out of this hall. Christ can be found here to-night. I
firmly believe every one here can find Christ to-night if you will
seek for Him with all your heart. He says, " Call upon Me."
Did you ever hear of any one calling on Christ with the whole
heart, that Christ didn't answer ? Look at that thief on the cross !
It may have been that he had a praying mother, and that his
mother taught him the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. He had
heard Christ pray that wonderful prayer, " Father, forgive them.'
And as he was hanging on the cross that text of Scripture came to
his mind, " Seek the Lord while He may be found ; call ye upon
Him while He is near." The truth came flashing into his soul,
and he says, " He is near me now ; I will call on Him. Lord,
remember me when Thou comest into' thy kingdom." No sooner
had he called than the Lord said, " This day shalt thou be with Me
in paradise." That was his seeking opportunity, his day. My
friends, this is your day now. I believe that every man has his
day. You have it just now ; why not call upon Him just now ?

SINNERS SEEKING CHRIST. 63
Say, as the poor thief did, " Lord, remember me." That was his
golden opportunity, and the Lord heard and answered and saved
him. Did not Bartimeus call on Him while He was near? Christ
was passing by Jericho for the last time, and he cried out, " Thou
Son of David, have mercy on me." And did not the Lord hear
his prayer, and give him his sight ? It was a good thing Zaccheus
called — or rather the Lord called him, but when the Lord called
he came. May the Lord call many here, and may you respond,
" Lord, here am I ; you have called and I come." Do you believe
the Lord will call a poor sinner, and then cast him out ? No ! his
word stands for ever, " Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise
cast out."
I was glad when that man I told you of, said he felt as if he
was too bad. Men are pretty near the kingdom of God when they
do not see anything good in themselves. At the Fulton Street
prayer-meeting a man came in, and this was his story. He said
he had a mother who prayed for him ; he was a wild, reckless
prodigal. Some time after his mother's death he began to be
troubled. He thought he ought to get into new company, and
leave his old companions. So he said he would go and join a
secret society ; he thought he would join the Odd Fellows. They
went and made inquiry about him, and they found he was a
drunken sailor, so they black-balled him. They would not have
him. He went to the Freemasons ; he had nobody to recommend
him, so they inquired and found there was no good in his character,
and they too black-balled him. They didn't want him. One day,
some one handed him a little notice in the street about the prayer-
meeting, and he went in. He heard that Christ had come to save
sinners. He believed Him ; he took Him at his word ; and, in
reporting the matter, he said he " came to Christ without a
character, and Christ hadn't black-balled him."
My friends, that is Christ's way. Is there a man here with
out a character, with nobody to say a good word for him ? I bring
you good news. Call on the- Son of God, and He will hear you.
Call on Him to-night.
I was at a meeting for ministers the other day. Up in the
gallery there was one solitary woman ; she sat there alone. When
the meeting was over and I was passing out, she came and said,

64 SINNERS SEEKING CHRIST.
"Mr. Moody, do you remember me?" "Oh yes," I said, "I
remember you." Where had I met her ? Mr. Sankey and myself
were leaving Dundee for the north of Scotland. There was a lady
who had come from London and brought her two boys all the way to
get blessed ; they must have been about eighteen of nineteen — twins.
That mother's heart was burdened for their salvation. The last
night we had a meeting there, one of the sons yielded himself up
to Christ, and the mother went back next morning with her two
boys, rejoicing that they had asked and found peace in believing.
Some people may say that she was a great fanatic for going all the
way from London to Dundee with her boys to get a blessing.
But last Friday she says, "My boy, who found the Lord in
Dundee, died three weeks ago." And as she pressed my hand
as I left the meeting, I said to myself, "Was it not a good
thing that mother took her boy to Dundee ? " My friends, let
us be in earnest about the salvation of our children, and of our
friends. Warn that young lady. Yes, mother, speak to that
daughter of yours. Father, speak to that child of yours. Wife,
speak to your unconverted husband ; husband, speak to your un
converted wife. Do not let a man go out of this house saying,
" Nobody cared for my soul." I never saw a mother burdened for
her children but they soon became anxious. Oh may there be
many a sinner seeking the kingdom of God with all their heart !
Before I close, I want to ask you once more, " What are you
going to do ? If the Lord is near, won't you call upon Him ?
Don't let that scoffing man next you keep you out of the kingdom
of God. There is a scornful look upon that man's face ; perhaps
he is making light of what I am saying. Don't mind him ; don't
look to him ; but just look right up to God, and ask Him to save
you. Now, every true friend — and you all have friends — every
true friend, if you could get his advice to-night, would tell you to
be saved now. Ask that minister sitting next you, " Had I better
seek the kingdom of God to-night ?" What does he tell you ? " By
all means, don't put it off another minute." Ask that godly praying
mother by your side, " Is it best to seek the kingdom of God to
night?" Does she say, Put it off one week, or put it off one
month ? Do you think that mother would say that ? There is not
a Christian mother in this hall who would say it. I doubt if there

SINNERS SEEKING CHRIST. 65
is an unconverted mother even here whose advice would be to
put off becoming a Christian. Ask that praying sister of yours,
ask that praying brother, ask any friend you have here — if you are
sitting near one — whether it is not the very best thing you can do.
And then cry up to heaven and ask Him who is sitting at the right
hand of God, and who loves you more than your father br your
mother, or any one on earth — who loves you so much that He gave
Himself for you ; ask Him what he will have you do, and hear
his voice from the throne, " Seek ye first the kingdom of God."
And then shout down to the infernal regions, and ask those down
there, and what will they say ? " Send some one to my father's
house, for I have five brethren, that he may testify unto them, lest
they also come into this place." Heaven, earth, and hell unite in
this one thing, " Seek first the kingdom of God." Don't put it
off. Call upon Him while He is near. And if you call upon Him
in real earnest He will hear that call.
You may call too late. I have no doubt that those who would
not pray when the ark was building prayed when the flood came,
but their prayer was not answered. I have no doubt that when
Lot went out of Sodom, Sodom cried to God, but it was too late,
and God's judgment swept them from the earth. My friends, it is
not too late now, but it may be at twelve o'clock to-night. I
cannot find any place in this Bible where I can say you may call
to-morrow. I am not justified in saying that. " Behold, now is
the accepted time, now is the day of salvation." Those men of
Jerusalem, what a golden opportunity they had, with Christ in
their midst. We see the Son of God weeping over Jerusalem, his
heart bursting with grief for the city, as He cried, " O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem ! thou that stonest the prophets, how often would I
have gathered thee as a hen gathereth her brood, but ye would not."
He could look down forty years, and see Titus coming with his
army, and besieging that city. They called upon God then,
but it was too late, and eleven hundred thousand people perished.
To-night is a time of mercy. It may be I am talking to
some one to-night whose days of grace may be few, to some one
who may be snatched away very soon. There maybe some one
here to-night who may never hear another gospel sermon ; some
one who may be hearing the last call. My friend, be wise to
5

66 SINNERS SEEKING CHRIST.
night. Make up your mind that you will seek the kingdom
of God now. " Behold, now is the accepted time ; behold, now is
the day of salvation." Christ is inviting you to come — " Come untd'
Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
Oh, may we all find rest in Christ to-night ! Do not let anything
divert your minds, but this night, this hour, make up your mind
that you will not leave this hall until the great question of eternity
has been settled.

VI.
WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?
Matt. xxii. 42.

I suppose there is no one here who has not thought, more or less,
about Christ. You have heard about Him, and read about Him,
and heard men preach about Him. For eighteen hundred years
men have been talking about Him, and thinking about Him ; and
some have their minds made up about who He is, and doubtless
some have not. And although all these years have rolled away,
this question comes up, addressed to each of us, to-day, " What
think ye of Christ ? "
I do not know why it should not be thougnt a proper question
for one man to put to another. If I were to ask you what you
think of any of your prominent men, you would already have your
mind made up about him. If I were to ask you what you think
of your noble Queen, you would speak right out and tell me your
opinion in a minute. If I were to ask about your prime minister,
you would tell me freely what you had for or against him. And
why should not people make up their minds about the Lord Jesus
Christ, and take their stand for or against Him ? If you think
well of Him, why not speak well of Him, and range yourselves on
his side ? And if you think ill of Him, and believe Him to be an
impostor, and that He did not die to save the world, why not lift
up your voice, and say you are against Him? It would be a happy
day for Christianity if men would just take sides — if we .could
know positively who was really for Him, and who was against
Him. It is of very little importance what the world thinks of any one
else. The Queen and the statesman, the peers and the princes.

68 WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?
must soon be gone. Yes ; it matters little, comparatively, what
we think of them. Their lives can only interest a few ; but every
living soul on the face of the earth is concerned with this Man.
The question for the world is, "What think ye of Christ ? " I do
not ask you what you think of the Established Church, or of the
Presbyterians, or the Baptists, or the Roman Catholics ; I do not
ask you what you think of this minister or that, of this doctrine or
that ; but I want to ask you what you think of the living person
of Christ ?
I should like to ask, Was He really the Son of God — the great
God-man ? Did He leave heaven and come down to this world for
a purpose ? Was it really to seek and to save ? I should like to
begin with the manger, and follow Him up through the thirty-
three years He was here upon earth. I should ask you what you
think of his coming into this world, and being born in a manger
when it might have been a palace ; why He left the grandeur and
the glory of heaven, and the royal retinue of angels ; why He
passed by palaces and crowns and dominion, and came down here
alone ?
I should like to ask what you think of Him as a teacher. He
spake as never man spake. I should like to take Him up as a
preacher. I should like to bring you to that mountain side, that
we might listen to the words as they fall from his gentle lips.
Talk about the preachers of the present day ! I would rather a
thousand times be five minutes at the feet of Christ, than listen a
lifetime to all the wise men in the world. He used just to hang
truth upon anything. Yonder is a sower, a fox, a bird, and He
just gathers the truth round them, so that you cannot see a fox, a
sower, or a bird, without thinking what Jesus said. Yonder is a
lily of the valley, you cannot see it without thinking of his words,
" They toil not, neither do they spin." He makes the little
sparrow chirping in the air preach to us. How fresh those won
derful sermons are, how they live to-day ! How we love to tell
them to our children, how the children love to hear ! " Tell me a
story about Jesus," how often we hear it; how the little ones
love his sermons ! No story-book in the world will ever interest
them like the stories that He told. And yet how profound He
was ; how He puzzled the wise men ; how the scribes and the

WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 69
Pharisees could never fathom Him ! Oh, do you not think He
was a wonderful preacher ?
I should like to ask you what you think of Him as a physician.
A man would soon have a reputation as a doctor if he could cure
as Christ did. No case was ever brought to Him but what He
was a match for. He had but to speak the word, and disease fled
before Him. Here comes a man covered with leprosy. " Lord, if
Thou wilt Thou canst make me clean," he cries. " I will," says the
Great Physician, and in an instant the leprosy is gone. The world
has hospitals for incurable diseases ; but there were no incurable
diseases with Him.
Now see Him in the little home at Bethany, binding up the
wounded hearts of Martha and Mary, ahd tell me what you think
of Him as a comforter. He is a husband to the widow, and a
father to the fatherless. The weary may find a resting-place upon
that breast, and the friendless may reckon Him their friend. He
never varies, He never fails, He never dies. His sympathy is
ever fresh, His love is ever free. O widow and orphans, O
sorrowing and mourning, will you not thank God for Christ the
comforter ?
But these are not the points I wish to take up. Let us go to
those who knew Christ, and ask what they thought of Him. If
you want to find out what a man is now-a-days, you inquire about
him from those who know him best. I do not wish to be partial ;
we will go to his enemies, and to his friends. We will ask
them, What think ye of Christ? We will ask his friends and
his enemies. If we only went to those who liked Him, you
would say, " Oh, he is so blind ; he thinks so much of the man
that he can't see his faults. You can't get anything out of him,
unless it be in his favour ; it is a one-sided affair altogether." So
we shall go in the first place to his enemies, to those who hated
Him, persecuted Him, cursed and slew Him. I shall put you in the
jury-box, and call upon them to tell us what they think of Him.
First, among the witnesses, let us call upon the Pharisees.
We know how they hated him. Let us put a few questions to
them. Come, Pharisees, tell us what you have against the Son of
God. What do you think of Christ ? Hear what they say ! This

70 WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?
¦man receiveth sinners. What an argument to bring against Him !
Why,» it is the very thing that makes us love Him. It is the glory
of the gospel. He receives sinners. If He had not, what would
have become of us ? Have you nothing more to bring against
Him than this ? Why, it is one of the greatest compliments that
was ever paid Him. Once more ; when He was hanging on the
tree, you had this to say of Him, " He saved others, Himself He
cannot save." And so He did save others, but He could not
save Himself and save us too. So He laid down his own life for
yours and mine. Yes, Pharisees, you have told the truth for once
in your lives ! He saved others. He died for others. He was a
ransom for many ; so it is quite true what you think of Him — He
saved others, Himself He cannot save.
Now, let us call upon Caiaphas. Let him stand up here in his
flowing robes ; let' us ask him for his evidence. " Caiaphas, you
were chief priest when Christ was tried ; you were president of the
Sanhedrim ; you were in the council-chamber when they found
Him guilty ; you yourself condemned Him. Tell us ; what did
the witnesses say ? On what grounds did you judge Him ? What
testimony was brought against Him ?
" He hath spoken blasphemy," says Caiaphas. " He said,
' Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand
of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." When I heard
that, I found Him guilty of blasphemy ; I rent my mantle, and
condemned Him to death." Yes, all that they had against Him
was that He was the Son of God ; and they slew Him for the
promise of his coming for his bride.
Now, let us summon Pilate. Let him enter the witness-box.
Pilate, this man was brought before you ; you examined Him ; you
talked with Him face to face, what think ye of Christ ? " I find
no fault in Him," says Pilate. " He said He was the King of the
Jews " (just as he wrote it over the cross) ; " but I find no fault
in Him." Such is the testimony of the man who examined Him !
And, as he stands there, the centre of a Jewish mob, there comes
along a man, elbowing his way, in haste. He rushes up to Pilate
and, thrusting out his hand, gives him a message. He tears it
open ; his face turns pale as he reads — " Have thou nothing to do
with this just man, for I have suffered many things this day in a

WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? ,i
dream because of Him." It is from Pilate's wife — her testimony
to Christ. You want to know what his enemies thought of Him ?
You want to know what a heathen thought ? Well, here it is,
" no fault in Him ;" and the wife of a heathen, " this just

man

And now, look — in comes Judas. He ought to make a good
witness. Let us address him. " Come, tell us, Judas, what think
ye of Christ. You knew the Master well ; you sold Him for thirty
pieces of silver ; you betrayed Him with a kiss ; you saw Him
perform those miracles ; you were with Him in Jerusalem. In
Bethany, when He summoned up Lazarus, you were there. What
think ye of Him ? " I can see him as he comes into the presence
of the chief priests ; I can hear the money ring as he dashes it
upon the table — " I have letrayed innocent blood!" Here is the
man who betrayed Him, and this is what he thinks of Him ! Yes,
my friends, God has made every man who had anything to do with
the death of his Son put their testimony on record that He was
an innocent Man.
Let us take the Centurion, who was present at the execution.
He had charge of the Roman soldiers. He had told them to
make Him carry his cross ; he had given orders for the nails to be
driven into his feet and hands, for the spear to be thrust in his side.
Let the Centurion come forward. " Centurion, you had charge of
the executioners ; you saw that the order for his death was carried
out ; you saw Him die ; you heard Him speak upon the cross. Tell
us, what think ye of Christ ? " Hark ! Look at him ; he is
smiting his breast as he cries, " Truly, this was the Son qf God ! "
I might go to the thi^f upon the cross, and ask what he thought
of Him. At first he railed upon Him and reviled Him. But
then he thought better of it. " This man hath done nothing
amiss," he says. I might go further. I might summon the very
devils themselves and ask them for their testimony. Have they
anything to say of Him ? Why, the very devils called Him the
Son of God ! In Mark we have the unclean spirit crying, " Jesus,
Thou Son of the most High God." Men say, " Oh, I believe
Christ to be the Son of God, and because I believe it intellectually,
I shall be saved." I tell you the devils did that. And they did
more than that, they trembled.

72 WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?
Let us bring in his friends. We want you to hear theii
evidence. Let us call that prince of preachers. Let us hear
the forerunner, the wilderness preacher, John. Save the Master
Himself, none ever preached like this man — this man who drew
all Jerusalem and- all Judea into the wilderness to hear him;
this man who burst upon the nations like the flash of a
meteor. Let John the Baptist come with his leathern girdle
and his hairy coat, and let him tell us what he thinks of
Christ. His words, though they were echoed in the wilderness
of Palestine, are written in the Book for ever, " Behold the Lamb
of God which taketh away the sin of the world." This is what
John the Baptist thought of Him. " I bare record that He is the
Son of God." No wonder he drew all Jerusalem and Judea to
him, because he preached Christ. And whenever men preach
Christ, they are sure to have plenty of followers.
Let us bring in Peter, who was with Him on the mount of
transfiguration, who was with Him the night He was betrayed.
" Come, Peter, tell us what you think of Christ. Stand in
this witness-box and testify of Him. You denied Him once.
You said, with a curse, you did not know Him. Was it
true, Peter ? Don't you know Him ? " " Know Him ! " I can
imagine Peter saying ; " It was a lie I told them. I did know
Him." Afterwards I can hear him charging home their guilt
upon these Jerusalem sinners. He calls Him " both Lord and
Christ." Such was the testimony on the day of Pentecost.
" God hath made that same Jesus both Lord and Christ." And
tradition tells us that when they came to execute Peter, he felt
he was not worthy to die in the way his Master died, and he
requested to be crucified with his head downwards. So much did
Peter think of Him !
Now let us hear from the beloved disciple John. He knew
more about Christ than any other man. He had laid his head on
his Saviour's bosom. He had heard the throbbing of that loving
heart. Look into his gospel if you wish to know what he thought
of Him. Matthew writes of Him as the Royal King come from his
throne. Mark writes of Him as the servant, and Luke as the Son of
Man. John takes up his pen, and, with one stroke, for ever settles

WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 73
the question of Unitarianism. He goes right back before the
time of Adam. " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God." Look into Revelation.
He calls Him "the bright and the Morning Star." So John
thought well of Him — because he knew him well.
We might bring in Thomas, the doubting disciple. "You
doubted Him, Thomas ? You would not believe He had risen, and
you put your fingers into the wound in his side. What do you
think of Him ? " " My Lord and my God ! " says Thomas.
Then go over to Decapolis and you will find Christ has been
there casting out devils. Let us call the men of that country and
ask what they think of Him. " He hath done all things well " they
say. But we have other witnesses to bring in. Take the perse
cuting Saul, once one of the worst of his enemies. Breathing
out threatenings, he meets Him. " Saul, Saul, why persecutest
thou Me ? " says Christ ; and He might have added, " What
have I done to you ? Have I injured you in any way ? Did I
not come to bless you ? Why do you treat Me thus, Saul ? "
And then Saul asks, " Who art Thou, Lord ? " "I am Jesus of
Nazareth, whom thou persecutest." You see, He was not ashamed
of his name ; although He had been in heaven, " I am Jesus qf
Nazareth." What a change did that one interview make to Paul !
A few years after we hear him say, " I have suffered the loss of all
things, and do count them but dross that I may win Christ."
Such a testimony to the Saviour !
But I shall go still further. I shall go away from earth into
the other world. I shall summon the angels and ask what they
think of Christ. They saw Him in the bosom of the Father
before the world was. Before the dawn of creation ; before the
morning stars sang together, He was there. They saw Him
leave the throne and come down to the manger. What a scene
for them to witness! Ask these heavenly beings what they
thought of Him then. For once they are permitted to speak ; for
once the silence of heaven is broken. Listen to their song on the
plains of Bethlehem, " Behold, I bring you good tidings of great
joy which shall be to all people. For unto you is bom this day, in
the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." He leaves

74 WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?
the throne to save the world. Is it a wonder the angels thought
well of Him ?
Then there are the redeemed saints — they that see Him face to
face. Here on earth He was never known, no one seemed really
to be acquainted with Him ; but He was known in that world
where He had been from the foundation. What do they think of '
Him there ? If we could hear from heaven, we should hear a
shout which would glorify and magnify his name. We are told
that when John was in the Spirit on the Lord's-day, and being
caught up, he heard a shout around him, ten thousand times ten
thousand, and thousands and thousands of voices, " Worthy is the
Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom,
and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing ! " Yes, He is
worthy of all this. Heaven cannot speak too well of Him. Oh,
that earth would take up the echo, and join with heaven in sing
ing, "Worthy to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and
strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing ! '
But there is yet another witness, a higher still. Some think
that the God of the Old Testament is the Christ of the New.
But when Jesus came out of Jordan, baptized by John, there
came a voice from heaven. God the Father spoke. It was his
testimony to Christ : " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am
well pleased." Ah, yes ! God the Father thinks well of the Son.
And if God is well pleased with Him, so ought we. If the sinner
and God are well pleased with Christ, then the sinner and God
can meet. The moment you say as the Father said, " I am well
pleased with Him," and accept Him, you are wedded to God.
Will you not believe the testimony ? Will you not believe this
witness, this last of all, the Lord of hosts, the King of kings
Himself? Once more He repeats it, so that all may know it.
With Peter and James and John, on the mount of transfiguration,
He cries again, " This is my beloved Son ; hear Him." And that
voice went echoing and re-echoing through Palestine, through all
the earth from sea to sea ; yes, that voice is echoing still, Hear
Him ! Hear Him !
My friend, will you hear Him to-day ? Hark ! what is He
saying to you ? " Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and

WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 75
learn of Me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart ; and ye shall find
rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is
light." Will you not think well of such a Saviour ? Will you
not believe in Him ? Will you not trust in Him with all your
heart and mind ? Will you not live for Him ? If He laid down
his life for us, is it not the least we can do to lay down ours for
Him ? If He bore the Cross and died on it for me, ought I not
to be willing to take it up for Him ? Oh, have we not reason to
think well of Him. Do you think it is right and noble to lift up
your voice against such a Saviour ? Do you think it is just to cry,
" Crucify Him ! crucify Him ! " Oh, may God help all of us to
glorify the Father, by thinking well of his only-begotten Son

VII.
EXCUSES. Part I.

*l And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said
unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go
and see it : I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I
have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them : I pray
thee have me excused. And another said, I have married a wifij,
and therefore I cannot come." — Luke xiv. 18 — 20.
No sooner does any one begin to preach the Gospel than men and
women begin " to make excuse." It is the old story. There is
not an unsaved person here but has got some excuse. If I were
to go to each of you and ask why you do not accept God's invi
tation to the Gospel feast, you would have an excuse ready on the
end of your tongue ; and if you had not one ready, the devil
would be there to help you to make one. And if they could
be answered he is ready to make new ones. He has had six
thousand years' experience, and he is very good at it ; he can give
you as many as you want.
Do you know the origin of excuses ? You will find it away
back in Eden. When Adam had sinned, he tried to excuse him
self. " The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave
me of the tree, and I did eat." He tried to lay the blame on God,
Eve tried to lay it on the serpent ; and down to the present time,
men and women, with one consent, begin to make excuse.
Remember that these men Luke tells us about were not invited
to a funeral, or to hear some dry, stupid lecture or sermon ; they
were not invited to visit an hospital, or a prison, or a madhouse •
to witness some terrible scene or execution — something that would
have pained them. It was to go to a feast. The Gospel is

EXCUSES. 77
represented in the Bible as a feast. In the evening of this dispen
sation there is going to be the marriage supper of God's Son.
Blessed is he that shall be at the marriage supper of the Lamb. If
I know my own heart, I would rather be torn limb from limb, or
have my heart taken from my body this moment, and be present on
that glorious day, than have the wealth of the world rolled at my
feet, and miss that wonderful banquet at the marriage of the Lamb.
Not only was this a feast, but it was a royal feast. If you had
the honour of an invitation from Windsor Castle — if Her Majesty
the Queen invited you to some great banquet got up in honour
of her son, there is not a man or woman here but would accept the
invitation. You would all want it to be put into the papers, to
show how you had been honoured. But here is something worth
more than that. Here is an invitation from the King of kings,
the Lord of lords, God's only Son. By and by He will take his
bride into the bridal chamber. The marriage supper of the Lamb
is hastening on. He has gone to prepare new mansions for his
bride ; the old mansions1 are not good enough ; and He will come
by and by to take her to Himself. It is an invitation to this feast
that I bring you. The invitations are going out now to every
corner of the earth. There is not one here who is not invited.
For eighteen hundred years God's messengers have been crossing
over valley and mountain, over desert and sea, from end to end
of the earth, inviting men and women to the Gospel feast.
What an honour for worms of the dust ! When man prepares a
feast, there is a great rush to see who will get the best place.
But God prepares his feast, and the chairs would all be empty
if his disciples did not go out and compel them to come in.
Then, when man prepares a feast, he invites his friends, those
who love him ; but God invites his bitterest enemies, those who
are in rebellion against Him. And yet men make excuse! No
sooner is the invitation given by God than the excuses begin to
rain in.
Did you ever stop to think what would take place if God should
take, at his word, every one who makes excuse ? — if He were to
say, " Yes, if you want to be excused from this feast, I will
excuse you/' and with the next stroke should sweep them all from
the face of the earth ? Supposing every one in England should be

78 EXCUSES.
taken at their word, and laid in the arms of death, how many of your
shops would be closed to-morrow ; how many homes would be filled
with mourning and tears ? Not a publican would be left to carry
on his traffic ; every rum-seller wants to be excused. He knows that
if he accepts of this invitation, he would have to give up his hellish
trade. He could not go on making all those fatherless children, and
taking the bread out of the mouth of the orphan and the widow, and
be going on his way to the marriage supper of the Lamb at the same
time. Every publican and every drunkard wants to be excused. If
God did excuse them and take them away with a stroke, you would
have no drunkards reeling through your streets. There would be
no harlots then, for every harlot wants to be excused ; she knows
she has to give up her sins if she wants to be present at the
supper of the Lamb. And your princely merchants, many of
them, would be gone. They do not want to accept the invita
tion, because they think if they do they cannot make money so
fast. They are carrying on some business which would then have
to be stopped, and, with one consent, they begin to make excuse.
But oh, my friends, it would be a solemn time if God should take
men at their word. The grass would soon be growing in the
streets, and the living would be occupied in burying the dead.
Now, be honest with God to-day. God is honest ; He means
what He says. This is an honest invitation, and He wants us to
be honest. If you do not want to be at this supper, why not
say so ? Why make excuses ? They are nothing but lies. Is
there any one of you can rise up and give a reasonable excuse—
if so, tell us what it is — why you don't accept this invitation?
Think for a minute. What valid reason can you give ? You have
none. It is not often we get an invitation to attend a royal feast,
but here comes one to be present at the marriage supper of God's
only Son. Is it not downright folly for any one to refuse ? Just
think what you are asking to be excused from. From heaven ;
from the society of the pure ; from those who have washed their
robes in the blood of the Lamb. Man asks to be excused from
the mansions which Christ has prepared ; from the society of the
angels ; from God the Father, and Christ the Son, and the Holy
Ghost. All the really great men of the world are not down here,
they are in heaven. You talk of the great men in England, but I

EXCUSES. 79
tell you the best this earth has ever had are there, aud the best that
ever lived will be gathered at that feast. For six thousand years
they have been gathering there — all the pure of the earth — Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob. Yes, we shall sit down with the patriarchs
and prophets, and apostles and martyrs, and with the best that
have lived upon this earth. I would rather die to-night and be sure
of meeting the bliss of the purified in yon world of light, than
live for centuries with the wealth of this world at my feet, and
miss the marriage supper of the Lamb. I have missed many
appointments in my life, but, by the grace of God, I mean to make
sure of that one. Why, the blessed privilege of sitting down at the
marriage supper of the Lamb, to see the King in his beauty, to be
for ever with the Lord, who would miss it ?
Let us take up these three men who, " with one consent, began
to make excuse."
What did the first one say ? " I have bought a piece of ground,
and I must needs go and see it." Some one has said, Why did he
not look at the ground before he bought it ? If he had been a good
business man, he would have seen his grounders*, he couldn't make
the bargain any better by going to look at it now. And now that he
has got it, he can go and look at it at any time ; the land could not
run away ! It was not that he had made a partial bargain and might
withdraw, or that some one might step in ahead of him and get
the ground from him. He did not even have that excuse. He
had bought the land ; there was no fear that he should lose his
title to it. Yet he must needs go and see it. Strange time to go
and see ground just at supper-time ! On the face of it it was a
downright lie. He did not want to go to the feast, and so he manu
factured this excuse to ease his conscience. That is what people
make excuses for. The devil gets men into that cradle and rocks
them to sleep in it.
What did the second man say ? " I have bought five yoke of
oxen, and I go to prove them. I pray thee have me excused."
Why not prove them before he bought them ? It was no time to
prove oxen after they were bought. And now that the bargain
was closed he could prove them any time. Why not let them
stand in the stall till he had accepted this invitation ? Don't you
see that was another lie ?

80 EXCUSES.
The third man's excuse was the most ridiculous of them alL
" I have married a wife and therefore I cannot come." Why did he
not take his wife along with him ? Who likes to go to a feast
better than a young bride ? He might have asked her to go too ;
and if she were not willing, then let her stay at home. The fact
was, he did not want to go.
Eighteen hundred years have rolled away, and they tell us
the world has grown wiser; they say it has improved wonderfully
during these years ; but tell me, have men got any better excuses ?
Young lady ! can you give a better excuse ? Have you got an
excuse that will stand the light of eternity, have you got an excuse
that will even satisfy yourself ? Men try every kind of excuse, but
the man does not live who can give a good one. Let some terrible
disease lay hold of a man, let death come and look him in the face,
and his excuses are gone in a moment. My friends, your excuses
will look altogether different when you come to stand before the
great tribunal of your Judge,
I would just like to take up some of the popular excuses of the
present day. There is one very common one, " I do not like this
minister or that preacher." Well, what has that to do with it ?
What have you to do with the messenger ? Suppose a boy comes and
gives me a despatch, some good news from my wife. I don't turn
round to see who brings it. He may be black or white, that is
nothing to me. It is the message I care for. Is it not the fact
that God invites you to a feast ? What are you looking at the
messenger for ? I have heard this excuse till I am tired, " I don't
like this minister or that minister, this person or that one who calls
himself a Christian." Never mind about the messenger. The
question is, are you willing to receive the message from God ? Do
you believe the Word of God is true, and that God invites you to
this feast ? Do you believe that the invitation is to " every crea
ture " in the world ? You have nothing to do with the preacher
who brings the message.' If the message is from God, I ask you,
why not accept it? If you are going to wait until you find some
perfect man or woman to bring you the invitation, you will never
accept it. There was never but one perfect Man. You will find
a good many flaws in our character, a good many things you
may not like in the followers of Christ, but I challenge you to find

EXCUSES. • 81
a flaw in the character of our Master. He bids you come. And
any one who accepts the invitation He will receive.
Another excuse. Only the other night, a lady came to me
in the inquiry-room and said, " There are so many things in the
Bible I cannot understand." No doubt about that. God says,
the carnal man cannot understand spiritual things, and the Bible is
a spiritual book. How can the unregenerate heart understand the
Bible ? Well, you say, if it is a sealed book, how am I going to be
saved ? Well, when God put salvation before the world, He put
that very plain. The Word of God may be darkened to the natural
man, but the way of salvation is written so plain, that the little
child of six years old can understand it if she will. Take this
passage and see if you do not understand it : — " The Spirit and the
Bride say, Come. And let him thatheareth say, Come ; and let him
that is athirst come." Are not many of you thirsty? God says
come. " And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely."
Then you know what it is to take a gift ? God puts salvation
before you as a gift. " He came unto his own, and his own
received Him not; but as many as received Him, to them gave He
power to become the sons of God." You can understand that?
*' Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved."
You know what it is to believe ? At any rate, you know what it
is to trust, to commit your soul to the Lord Jesus Christ —
that is all. There are dark and mysterious things in the Bible
now, but when you begin to trust Christ your eyes will be opened,
and the Bible will be a new book to you. Many things that are
dark and mysterious to-day, to-morrow will have a new beauty.
It will become the Book of books to you. To-day Christ may be
a root out of a dry ground, without form or comeliness ; but He will
become to you the chiefest among ten thousand, the altogether
lovely, the bright, and the morning star, if you take Him as your
Saviour. Then you will understand the Bible.
No book in the world has been so misjudged as the Bible.
Men judge it without reading it. Or perhaps they read a bit
here and a bit there, and then close it saying, "It is so dark
and mysterious ! " You take a book, now-a-days, and read it.
Some one asks you what you think about it. " Well," you say, " I
have only read it through once, not very carefully, and I should not
6

82 EXCUSES.
like to give an opinion." Yet people take up God's book, read a
few pages, and condemn the whole of it. Of all the sceptics and
infidels I have ever met speaking against the Bible, I have never met
one who read it through. There may be such men, but I have never
met them. It is simply an excuse. There is no man living who will
stand up before God and say that kept him out of the kingdom.
It is the devil's work trying to make us believe it is not true, and
that it is dark and mysterious. The only way to overcome the great
enemy of souls is by the written Word of God. He knows that,
and so tries to make men disbelieve it. As soon as a man is a
true believer in the Word of God, he is a conqueror over Satan.
Young man ! the Bible is true. What have these infidels to give
you in its place ? What has made England but the open Bible ?
Every nation that exalteth the Word of God is exalted, and every
nation that casteth it down is cast down. Oh, let us cling close to
the Bible. Of course, we shall not understand it all at once.
But men are not to condemn it on that account. Suppose I should
send my little boy, five years old, to school to-morrow morning,
and when he came home in the afternoon I say to him, " Willie,
can you read ? can you write ? can you spell ? Do you understand
all about algebra, geometry, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek ? " " Why,
papa," the little fellow would say, " how funny you talk ; I have
been all day trying to learn the ABC!" Well, suppose I should
reply, " If you have not finished your education, you need not go
any more." What would you say ? Why, you would say, I had
gone mad. There would be just about as much reason in that, as
in the way that people talk about the Bible. My friends, the men
who have studied the Bible for fifty years — the wise men and the
scholars, the great theologians — have never got down to the depths
of it yet. There are truths there that the Church of God has been
searching out for the last eighteen hundred years but no man has
fathomed the depths of that ever-living stream.
There is another class here, who say, " That's not my diffi
culty. I believe the Word of God. But if I could speak alone
to you, I would tell you my excuse. The fact is, I love
the world very much, and if I become a Christian, I shall have to
give up all pleasure and go through the world with a long face
and never smile again. My joy will be for ever gone ! " Well,

EXCUSES. 83
I want to say here, that no greater lie was ever forged than that.
The devil started it away back in Eden ; but there is not one word
of truth in it ; it is a libel upon Christianity. It does not make a
man gloomy to become a child of God. See ! there is a man going
to execution. In a few moments he will be launched into eternity.
But, flashing over the wires, comes a message from the Queen.
She sends a reprieve. I run in haste to the man. I shout, " Good
news ! good news ! You are 720/ to die ! " Does that make him
gloomy ? No ! no ! no ! Young men, young women, old and
young, don't believe Satan's lies any longer. It is the want of
Christ that makes men gloomy. Take a man who is really thirsty,
dying for want of water, and you go and give him water. Is that
going to make him gloomy ? That is what Christ is — water to
the thirsty soul. If a man is dying for want of bread, and you
give him bread, is that to make him gloomy? That is what
Christ is to the soul — the bread of life. You will never have
true pleasure or peace or joy or comfort until you have found
Christ. The idea that a man cannot have peace and joy in this world,
if he is a Christian, is all folly. That used to be my difficulty.
But I want to tell you I had more joy and solid comfort and peace
the first year after I was converted, than I had all my previous life
put together, and I never heard of any young convert who would
not testify the same thing.
Another excuse — how thick they are ! The air is full of them.
I hear some one say, " Well, I should like to be a Christian, but it
is a very hard thing. I have tried it a good many times. I
would not like to speak right out, but that is just the honest truth.'*
I will tell you what you have been doing, you have been trying to
serve God with the old carnal mind. You might as well try to
walk to the moon ! It is utterly impossible. The Ethiopian
cannot change his skin ; the leopard cannot change its spots. It
is impossible to serve God with the old carnal heart ; but with the
new heart God will give you the power, and you will not then be
talking about its being hard to serve Him. That is just another
lie. Let us look at it. Do you mean to say that God is a hard
Master ? Do you say it is a hard thing to serve God, and do you
say that Satan is an easy master, and that it is easier to serve him.

84 EXCUSES.
than God ? Is it honest — is it true ? God a hard master ! If I
read my Bible right, I read that the way of the transgressor is hard.
Let me tell you it is the devil who is the hard master. Yes. " The
way of the transgressor is hard." The Word of God cannot be
changed. If you doubt it, young man, look at the convict in the
prison, right in the bloom of manhood, right in the prime of life.
He has been there for ten years, and must remain for ten years
more — twenty years taken out of his life, and when he comes out
of that miserable cell, he comes out a branded felon ! Do you
think that man will tell you " The way of the transgressor has been
easy? " Go ask the poor drunkard, the man who is bound hand
and foot, the slave of the infernal cup, who is hastening onwards to
a drunkard's hell. " Ask him if he has found the way of the trans
gressor easy. " Easy ? " he will cry — " Easy ? " The way oj
the transgressor is hard, and gets harder and harder every day ! "
Go, ask the libertine and the worldling ; go ask the gambler and
the blasphemer — with one voice they will tell you, that the service
has been hard. Take the most faithful follower of the devil and
put him upon this platform to-night, and let us put questions to
him. The best way to settle this question is to find out by the
testimony of those that have served both masters. I do not think
a man has any right to judge until he has served both. If I heard
a man condemn a master, I should be very apt to ask if he had
served him ; and if he had not, he could not very well testify.
Now, if you have served two masters then you are very good
judges. I want to stand here to-night as a witness for Christ.
I have been in this school for twenty years, and I want to testify
to-night that I have found him an easy master. I used to say,
as you do, " It is a hard thing to be a Christian," and I thought it
was ; but now I tell you that the yoke is easy and the burden
light. And I am speaking to many more to-night who have
served both masters. Many of you have served Christ ; and many
of you before you were brought into his fold, served the devil. I
would like to ask you, you that are Christ's, you who have served
Him — some five, some ten, some twenty years — is Jesus a hard
master ? (" No ! No ! ") I thought you would say No. I knew
you would. I never heard a man say, " I have served Christ
for five years, or for ten, and found him a hard master." And

EXCUSES. 85
now let me put you into the witness-box again. For many years
you served Satan, some of you are serving him still, " Do you not
find him a hard master." ("Yes! Yes i ") Oh yes ! my friends,
you cannot help admitting it, you know it is true, the way qf the
ransgressor is hard.
Suppose we could go beyond this life ; suppose we could go
down to the bottomless pit and summon up Judas, who has been
there for the last eighteen hundred years. Suppose we put the
question to him, " Judas, you betrayed the Son of God, sold Him
for thirty pieces of silver. You have served the devil faithfully ;
have you found his service an easy one ? " What a wail would
rise from these lips ! Do you think Judas found it easy ? Do
you think he found Satan a kind master ? See him throwing down
the thirty pieces of silver ! Why, he got so tired of the devil's
service that he hanged himself twenty-four hours after publicly
entering it.
Now let us call upon Paul who, you may say, took the place
that Judas once filled ; let him come down from the hill-tops of
glory. Do you think he would say it was a hard thing to serve
God, and an easy thing to serve the devil ? " I served the devil
well," he says, " I breathed out threatenings, I persecuted the
Church. But it was hard for me to kick against the pricks."
And now let us see what God says about it. I would like to
ask those who think Him a hard master, what they would do
with a passage like this, " Come unto Me, all ye that labour and
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon
you and learn of Me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye
shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden
is light ? " Yes, it is an easy thing to serve any one we love. If
you love a person how you delight to please them.
Oh, my friends, do not dishonour God by calling Him a hard
master. Speak to the young disciple of the Lord Jesus. Look at
his very face. See how his eye is lit up with a light from heaven ;
how the glow from Calvary is shed around his path. Let him tell
of the peace and the joy he has found in the service of Christ.
Let him tell, till language fails him, how the way grows lighter
and lighter as he journeys on, how his hopes grow brighter and
brighter as he nears his eternal home. Oh yes, there is a vast

86 EXCUSES.
difference in the yoke of Satan and the yoke of Christ. The yoke
of the Christian is easy and light ; the yoke of the devil is heavy
and hard. I beg of you do not listen to Satan's lies. He has
deceived the whole human race. Oh, will you not just change
masters to-night, and accept of the invitation to be present at the
marriage supper of the Lamb ?

EXCUSES. Part II.

The next excuse I want to take up is "election." I meet a great
many in the inquiry-room who tell me they are very anxious to be
saved, but they do not know if they are elected. " If I were only
sure that I were elected," they say, " I would soon be in earnest
about salvation. But then I- don't know that I'm one of the elect,
so I have a very good excuse." Now I want to give no uncertain
sound upon this point. I want to say that an unconverted person
has nothing whatever to do with the doctrine of election. After
you have become children of God, then we can talk about election
— then we can talk about how sweet and beautiful the doctrine
is. But those who are not God's children have nothing at all to
do with it. You do not like any one to read your private letters,
do you ? Well, the doctrine of election was written, in a private
letter, to the children of God. No wonder the world puzzles over
it. No wonder they cannot understand it. It was never meant
for them. What they have to do with is the " Whosoever "
and the " Him that cometh," of the free invitations of Christ.
Suppose I am taking a walk near this hall to-night, and
say to the policeman at the door, " Who is invited to this
meeting?" "Those who have tickets," he replies. I have no
ticket, so it is not for me. I walk on further, and come to another
meeting. " This is only for those belonging to the 
Society," I am told, so I know it is not for me. I go on further,
and come to a large public building — a club. " Only members
admitted," I read at the door. It is not for me either. I go

88 EXCUSES.
further still and come to another building, and over the door this
is written : " Whosoever will, let him come in." Ah ! it is for
me this time. Whosoever — that means me — and in I go. My
friends, God puts it just like that. All are invited to come to
Christ. What have you to do with Paul's epistle about election ?
Why, you have nothing to do with it — not till you become a
Christian. You have no business with the private letters of other '
people, and the " whosoever " comes before election. If you learn
to read, you commence with the alphabet, don't you ? You don't
learn to read all at once. And if you come to Christ you
must come in God's way ; and then you can talk about how you
came. Yes, but, you say, there is another side to that. Christ said,
" No man can come to Me except the Father, which hath sent Me,
draw him." Well, I say Christ is drawing men. "I, if I be lifted
?np, will draw all men unto Me." He is drawing men, but they will
not come. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Him
self, and drawing men unto Him. 'That drawing is going on now,
but many a heart is fighting against the strivings of the Spirit.
God is drawing men heavenward, and the devil is drawing them
hellward. Supposing a man, wishing to go to London, should say, " I
don't know if God has decreed it. If T am to be there, I will be •
there. Anyhow, it is no use my taking the train. What is the
use of my paying the fare and taking trouble about it ? If I am
elected to get there, I will get there somehow." Who would
use such language as that ? Or suppose a farmer were to
say, " I am not going to plant ; if God has decreed that I am to
have a crop, I shall have it. I am not going to trouble myself
tilling the ground or working hard ; if God has decreed that I
will have a good harvest, why, I shall have it without any tilling."
Or suppose you are sick, and do not send for the doctor. Suppose
you say, " If God has decreed it, I shall get well," so you refuse
to take the medicines. You say, " There is no use in it ; -if God
has decreed that I am to get well, I will get well without it."
Whoever talks in that way ? Yet a good many people carry out
that very doctrine with regard to spiritual things.
I have an idea that the Lord Jesus saw how men were going

EXCUSES. 89
to stumble over this doctrine, so after He had been thirty or forty
years in heaven, He came down and spoke to John. One Lord's
day in Patmos, He said to him, " Write these things to the
churches." John kept on writing. His pen flew very fast. And
then the Lord, when it was nearly finished, said, " John, before
you close the book, put this in t * The Spirit and the Bride say,
Come ; and let him that heareth say, Come.' But there will be
some that are deaf, and they cannot hear, so add, ' Let him that is
athirst, Come ; ' and in case there should be any that do not thirst,
put it still broader, ' Whosoever will, let him take of the water of
life freely.'" What more can you have than that? And the
Book is sealed, as it were, with that. It is the last invitation in
the Bible. " Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life
freely." You are thirsty. You want water. I hold out this glass
to you, and say, "Take it." You say, "If I am decreed to have
it, I am not going to put myself to the trouble of taking it." Well,
you will never get it. And if you are ever to have salvation, you
must reach out the hand and take it. " I will take the cup of
Salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord." Will you take it
to-night ? It is simple enough ; it is a gift. " The wages of sin
is death, but the gift of God is eternal life." My dear friends, do
not stumble over the doctrine of election any longer. You will
not be able to stand up before God and say, " I did not accept the
invitation because I was not one of the elect." That excuse will
fade away in his presence. God invites every man and woman to
the gospel feast when He writes, "Whosoever will, let him
take." I can imagine there is a man down there who says, " That is
not my difficulty. I know a man who belongs to the professing
Church of Christ, and he cheated me out of five pounds some years
ago. There are hypocrites in the Church, and I am not going to
have anything to do with it. No ! you don't catch me going into
company with hypocrites."
Well, I will find you two hypocrites in the world for every one
you will find in the Church. Besides, I am not asking you to
come to the Church — not but that I believe in churches — but I
am asking you to the marriage supper of the Lamb. Come to
Christ first, and then we can talk to you about the Church. There

90 EXCUSES.
always have been hypocrites in the Church and always will be.
One of the twelve apostles turned out to be a hypocrite, and there
will be hypocrites in the Church to the end of time. But there
will not be one hypocrite at this feast, and if you want to get out
of the company of hypocrites you had better make haste and come
to Christ. If you do not accept the invitation you will have to
spend eternity with them. Suppose every one here -were a black
hearted hypocrite, what has that to do with you ? " Follow thou
me," says Christ. You are not to be looking to John, or Peter, or
Paul, this man or that, but straight to Christ. You may find many
flaws in our characters, but you will find none in Christ's. We find a
good many in ourselves, and you may too. But we do not ask
you to follow us, but Christ. There will be no hypocrites at the
marriage supper of the Lamb ; they will all be in the lost world.
And if you do not accept the invitation you will have to spend
eternity with hypocrites. So if you really object to them, you had
better make sure of a place at the marriage supper of the Lamb.
But there is a self-righteous Pharisee here who says, "Well, I
don't understand all this talk about conversion ; I'm good enough
as I am. My excuse will stand, if the others won't. I am not
going into that inquiry-room to talk with these people, and beg
them to pray for me ; I don't need it." And he draws his filthy
rags of self-righteousness about him and thinks he is pure in the
sight of God and man. My friend, the Word of God says, " There
is none righteous, no not one." If you are found with your own
garment on, you will be cast out from this feast. He will furnish
you with a robe of spotless white if you will accept it, but you need
not think you can stand in the presence of the King with these
miserable rags of self-righteousness about you. Oh, may the Holy
Spirit show you how vile you are in the sight of a holy God. The
nearer a man gets to God, the more he abhors himself. You
know when a man is getting near to God ; he begins to loathe
himself. Like Job, he says, " I abhor myself." Like Isaiah,
when he saw the holy God, he cries out, " Woe is me, I am un
done." Like that holy man Daniel, his comeliness is turned to
corruption. May God strip you of your self-righteousness to
day !
But here, is another excuse. If the devil cannot make a man

EXCUSES. 91
believe he is good enough without being saved, then he will tell
him he is so bad the Lord will have nothing to do with him. A
great many in the inquiry-room have that excuse. " I would like
to be saved," they say, " but I am too bad." That is another lie.
Why, what does the Scripture say ? " Christ died for the un
godly." Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. What
did Christ say to his disciples ? " Go ye into all the world and
preach the gospel to every creature." " That repentance and
remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations,
beginning at Jerusalem." The very men whose hands were
dripping with the blood of the Son of God, had salvation offered
to them ! Paul said he was the chief of sinners, and if he was
saved, surely there is hope for every man on the face of the earth.
If you are so bad, you are the very one He wants to save. During
our war, I remember the doctor used to go after a battle to look at
the wounded men, and he would find out the most desperate cases
and attend to them first. That is the way the great Physician does
now. He saves the worst men He can get. I know a great many
people who are anxious to come, but they are waiting until they
grow a little better. They think God will not take them till
then. Now, notice, my friends, the Lord invites you to come just as
you are, and if you could make yourself better you would not be
any more acceptable to Him. Do not put these filthy rags of self-
righteousness about you. God will strip every rag from you when
you come to Him, and clothe you with glorious garments. When
our war was going on, we would sometimes go to the recruiting
office and see a man come in with a silk hat, broadcloth coat, calf
skin boots — his suit might be worth £100; and another man
would come in whose clothes were not worth a pound ; but they
both had to strip and put on the uniform of the country. And so
when we go into Christ's vineyard we must put on the livery of
heaven and be stripped of every rag. So, however bad you are,
come just as you are, and the Lord will receive you.
I have read of an artist who wanted to paint a picture of the
Prodigal Son. He searched through the madhouses, and the poor-
houses, and the prisons, to find a man wretched enough to repre
sent the prodigal, but he could not find one. One day he was walk-

92 EXCUSES.
ing down the streets and met a man whom he thought would do.
He told the poor beggar he would pay him well if he came to his
room and sat for his portrait. The beggar agreed, and the day
was appointed for him to come. The day came, and a man put in
his appearance at the artist's room. " You made an appoint
ment with me," he said, when'he was shown into the studio.
The artist looked at him, " I never saw you before," he said ;
"you caanot have an appointment with me." "Yes," he said, "I
agreed to meet you to-day at ten o'clock." " You must be mis
taken ; it must have been some other artist ; I was to see a beggar
here at this hour." " Well," says the beggar, " I am he."
"You?" "Yes." "Why, what have you been doing?"
"Well, I thought I would dress myself up a bit before I got
painted." " Then," said the artist, " I do not want you ; I wanted
you as you were ; now, you are no use to me." That is the way
Christ wants every poor sinner, just as he is. I think I can hear
some one say, "Oh, but my heart is so hard." Well, that is just
the very reason you ought to come. If you had not a hard heart you
would not need a Saviour. Do you think you can soften your heart ?
Can you break your heart ? Did not God invite the hard-hearted ?
Did not Christ come to seek and to save that which was lost ? It
is just because men's hearts are hard that they need' a Saviour.
So that is no excuse at all. God invites you, and you cannot
stand up and say to the Great King you did not accept the invita
tion because you had a hard heart. He invites "whosoever," and
you can come along with your hard heart just as it is.
In the North a minister was talking to a man in the inquiry.
room. " My heart is so hard, it seems as if it was chained, and I
cannot come," said the inquirer. The minister said to him, "Come
along, chain and all ; " and he just came to Christ, hard-hearted,
chain and all, and Christ snapped the fetters, and set him free just
there. If you are bound hands and feet by Satan, it is the work
of God to break the fetters ; you cannot break them. But, thank
God, He can snap the fetters of every sin-bound soul to-night, and
set each captive free.
Then comes another excuse. "I should like to come, but
somehow or other I do not know that I feel just right." That is
a very common excuse, — Feeling, feeling, feeling, feeling! I

EXCUSES 93
have heard that cry till I am sick of it. Suppose a friend invites
me to dinner to-day, and I say, " Well, I would like very much to
take dinner with you. There is no man I would rather dine with
than yourself; but I do not know that I feel just right." "Are
you sick ? " he might ask. " No, I never felt better in my life."
"Well, what do you mean?" "1 don't know that 1 feel just
right. I do not know that I will be in a right state of mind." " I
do not understand you," he would say. " What do you mean ? "
"Well, I would like to go very much, but I don't feel right."
And that is the way men are talking now. " I would like to go
to heaven, but I don't know that I have got the right kind of
feeling." But, my friends, if you really want to, God invites you,
and that is all about it. My friend urges me to come, but I keep
on saying, " I do not know that I am in the right state of mind."
" Why," he would say, " I think Mr. Moody must have gone out
of his mind. I invited him to dinner, and instead of giving me a
plain answer he kept talking about feeling all the time ! " You
may smile at it, but that is just the way people talk in the inquiry-
room — hundreds of them. My friends, does God invite you ? If
He does, why don't you accept the invitation ? If you want to
come, just come along, and don't be talking about feeling. Do
you think Lazarus had any feeling when Christ called him out of
the sepulchre ?
My friends, God is above feeling. Do you think you can
control your feelings ? I am sure if I could control my feelings
1 never would have any bad feelings, I would always have good
feelings. But bear in mind Satan may change our feelings fifty
times a day, but he cannot change the Word of God ; and what
we want is to build our hopes of heaven upon the Word of God.
When a poor sinner is coming up out of the pit, and just ready
to get his feet upon the Rock of Ages, the devil sticks out a
plank of feeling, and says, " Get on that," and when he puts his
feet on that, down he goes again. Take one of these texts —
" Verily I say unto you, he that heareth My word and believeth on
Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into
condemnation, but is passed from death unto life." My friend,
that is worth more than all the feelings that you can have in a
whole lifetime. I would a thousand times rather stand on that

94 EXCUSES.
verse than oh all the frames and feelings I ever had. I took my
stand there twenty years ago. Since then the dark waves of hell
have come dashing up against me ; the waves of persecution have
broken all around me ; doubts, fears, and unbelief in turn have
assailed me ; but I have been able to stand firm on this short
word of God. It is a sure footing for eternity. It was true 1800
years ago, and it is true to-night. That rock is higher than my
feeling. And what we need is to get our feet upon the rock, and
the Lord will put a new song in our mouths.
But I hear some one in the gallery say, " He has not
touched my case at all. None of these things ever trouble
me ; but the fact is, / cannot believe. I would like to come, but
I cannot believe." Not long ago a man said to me, " I cannot
believe." " Whom ? " I asked. He stammered and said again, " I
cannot believe." I said, " Whom?" "Well," he said, "I can't
believe." " Whom ? '" I asked again. At last he said, " I cannot
believe myself." " Well, you don't need to. You do not need
to put any confidence in yourself. The less you believe in your
self the better. But if you tell me you can't believe God, that is
another thing ; and I would like to ask you why ! " If a man
says to me, " I have a great respect for you ; I have a great
admiration for you ; but I do not believe a word you say," I say
to myself, " I certainly do not think much of your admiration."
But that is the way a good many people talk about God. They
say, " I have a profound reverence for God ; the very name of
God strikes awe to my heart; but I do not believe Him.'' Why
don't you be honest and say at once you won't believe ? There is
no real reason why men cannot believe God. I challenge any
infidel on the face of the earth to put his finger on one promise
God has ever made that He has not kept. The idea of a man
standing up in the afternoon of the nineteenth century and saying
he cannot believe God ! My friend, you have no reason for not
believing Him. If you say you cannot believe man there would
be some reason in that, because men very oiten say what is not
true. But God never makes any mistakes. " Has He said it and
shall He not make it good ? " Believe in God and say as Job
says : " Though He slay me, yet will 1 trust Him." Some men
talk as if it were a great misfortune that they do not believe.

EXCUSES. 95
They seem to look upon it as a kind of infirmity, and think they
oaght to be sympathized with and pitied. But bear in mind that
it is the most damning sin of the world. " When He, the Holy
Ghost is come, He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteous
ness, and of judgment ; of sin, because they believe not on Me."
That is the sin of the world — " because they believe not on Me."
That is the very root of sin.; and the fruit is bad, for the tree is
bad. May God open our eyes to see that He is true, and may we
all be led to put our fullest trust in Christ.
But you say, " / do not know what it is to believe." That is
another excuse. Well, let me put it differently. Suppose I say
trust Him — just take Him at his word. Believe that He really
invites you — that He wants you to come. If you do not know
what it is to believe, will you not just trust God ?
But here is another one who says, " I would like to come very
much, but / am afraid I would not hold out." Now, I have had
a rule for a number of years that has been a great help to me —
never to cross a mountain until you come to it. You trust
Christ to save you to-night. The devil throws a Uttle straw
across your path, and then tries to magnify it and makes you think
it is a great mountain. Never mind the mountains; trust Him
to-night to save you. If He can save you to-night, He can keep
you to-morrow. When you have sat down at the banquet and
had one good feast — when you have had one interview with
Christ, ypu will not want to leave Him. I accepted this invitation
twenty years ago, and I have never wanted to go back. I have
not had to keep myself all these years. I would have been
back in twenty-four hours if I had. But thank God, we do not
have to -keep ourselves. The Lord is my Keeper — my Shepherd,
I shall not want. He keeps us. It takes the same grace to keep
us that it does to save us. And God has told us that " My grace
is sufficient for you."
But some people are not at all afraid of falling away. They
are sure that God is quite able to save them, and quite strong
enough to keep them. . But when you ask them if they are
Christians, they say, " Well, you know, / would like to be, but 1
have ne time." If I were to go to the door to-night, and take
you by the hand and say, "My friend, why not accept of the

96 EXCUSES.
invitation to-night ? " some ot you would sa^., Please just excuse
me to-night. I have really no time. I have got some very
pressing business to attend to to-morrow morning, and I have to
go home as fast as possible to get my night's rest. You must
really excuse me." And the mothers would say, " We have to run
home and put the children to bed ; you must excuse us for this
time." So thousands and thousands say they have no time to be
religious. But, my friends, what have you done with all the time
that God has given you ? What have you been doing all these
months and years that have rolled away since He gave you birth ?
Is it true you have no time ? What did you do with the 365 days
of last year ? Had you no time during all these twelve months to
seek the Kingdom of God ? You spend twenty years getting an
education to enable you to earn a living for this poor frail body,
so soon to be eaten up of worms. You spend seven or eight years
in learning a trade, that you may earn your daily bread ; and yet
you have not Jive minutes to accept of this invitation of Christ's !
My friend, bear in mind you have yet to find time to die ; to stand
in the presence of the Judge. And when He calls you to stand
before that bar, will you dare to tell Him that you had no time
to prepare for the marriage supper of his Son ? You have no
time ? Take time ! Let everything else be laid aside until you
have accepted of this invitation. Do you not know that it is a lie?
If you have not time, take it. " Seek first the Kingdom of God."
Let the children sit up a little late to-night. Let your business
be suspended to-morrow. Suppose you do not get so much
money to-morrow. What matter it if you get Christ ? Better for
a man to be sure of salvation than to " gain the whole world and
lose his own soul."
But you say " I would like to become a Christian, but / have a
prejudice against these special meetings, and against Americans, and
against a layman too. If it was a regular ministry, and it was our
regular minister, I would accept the invitation." If that is your
difficulty, I can help you out of it. You can just get right up,
and go out of the hall, and walk straight over to your minister, and
have a talk with him. And if you say you do not want to be con
verted in a special meeting, there are regular meetings in all the
churches throughout the town, and your minister would be heartily

EXCUSES. 97
glad to talk with you about your soul. But if you say, " There
is a great awakening here in London, and I do not like to be con
verted in the time of a revival," you can step into a train, and go
to some town where there is no revival. We can find you
some place where there is no revival, and some church where
there is not much of the revival spirit, without very much difficulty.
If you really want to go, pray don't give that for an excuse. How
wise the devil is ! When the church is cold, and everything is
dead, men say, " Oh, well, if there was only some life in the
church I might become a Christian 5 if we could only just have a
vave of blessing from heaven, it would be so easy then." Then
vhen the wave does come they say, " Oh, no, we. are afraid of ex
citement, and afraid of these special meetings. We are afraid
something will be done that won't be just in accordance with
our ideas of propriety." Oh, my friends, do not listen to these
subtle lies. Just come as you are to Christ, and accept the offer
which He makes you now.
I wish I had time to go on with these excuses, but they are as
numerous as the hairs of my head. And if I could go on, and
tried to exhaust them all, the devil would just help you to make
more. The best thing you can do is to tie them all into one
bundle, and stamp them as a pack of lies ; not a single one of
them is true. And God will sweep them all away some day if
you do not do it now. It is a very solemn thought that God will
excuse you if you want to be excused. He does not wish to do it,
but He will do it. " As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure
in the death of the wicked ; but that the wicked turn from his
way and live. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways ; for why will
ye die, O house of Israel." Look at the Jewish nation. They
wanted to be excused from the feast. They despised the grace of
God and trampled it under foot, and look at them to-day ! Yes,
it is easy enough to say, " I pray Thee have me excused," but by-
and-by God may take you at your word, and say, " Yes, I will
excuse you." And in that lost world, while others who have
accepted the invitation sit down to the marriage supper of the
Lamb, amid shouts and hallelujahs in heaven, you will be crying
in the company of the lost, "The harvest is past; the summer is
ended, and we are not saved." 7

98 EXCUSES.
And remember, it is the King of kings, the Lord of
glory, who invites you to this feast. Come just as you are, and
accept the invitation. Let the plough stand in the furrow until
you have accepted it. Let the shop be closed till then ; let busi
ness be suspended until you have accepted it. Let the land rest ;
yes, let the ox stand in the stall, until you have accepted that invi
tation. Make sure, whatever you do, that you will not be missing
from the marriage supper of the Lamb. That sainted mother of
yours will be there. That little child who died a few months ago
will be there. Young lady ! do you want to be excused ? He will
excuse you. Do you want to be excused, young man ? He will
excuse you. You may make light of it to-night, if you choose. " Oh
no," you say, " I never do that ; whatever I have been guilty of,
I have never done that! " Have you not? Suppose I get an in
vitation to dinner to-morrow ; I take it and tear it up ; I do not
answer it ; I pay no attention to it. Is not that making light of it ?
How many of you will go away to-night paying no attention to
this invitation ? Every one who goes home in a careless spirit,
won't he be making light of it ? The Lord has invited you to the
gospel feast. Are you going to spend this evening in accepting
or in making light of the invitation ? God does not want you
to die ; He wants you to accept this invitation and live. If
you have a good excuse, one that will stand the light of eternity,
hold on to it. Do not give it up for anything. Take it down
with you into the grave. Hold it firm, take it to the bar
of God, and tell it out to Him. But if you have got one that
won't stand the test of eternity, give it up. If you have an excuse
that will not stand the piercing eye of God, I beg of you as a
friend, give it up to-night. Let it go to the four winds of heaven,
and accept the invitation to beat the marriage supper of the Lamb.
Do not let the laughing, scoffing, mocking world laugh your soul
into eternal death. Do as the pilgrim, whom John Bunyan
describes, who started out from the City of Destruction, crying,
" Life, life, eternal life! " Set your face like a flint towards that
blessed land and say, "By the grace of God, I will be at the
marriage supper of the Lamb.'
Supposing we should write out here to-night this excuse. How
would it sound ? " To the King qf Heavw. While sitting in the

EXCUSES. 99
 Hall, City of  , July — , 1875, ^ received a very
pressing invitation from one oj your servants to be present at the
marriage supper of your only-begotten Son. I pray Thee have
me excused." Would you sign that, young man ? Would you,
mother ? Would you come up to the reporters' table, take up a
pen and put your name down to such an excuse ? You would say,
" Let my right hand forget its cunning, and my tongue cleave to
the roof of my mouth if I sign that." I doubt if there is one here
who would sign it. Will you then pay no attention to God's
invitation ? I beg tjf you do not make light of it. It is a loving
God inviting you to a feast, and God is not to be mocked. Go
play with the forked lightning, go trifle with pestilence and disease,
but trifle not with God.
Just let me write out another answer. " To the King qf Heaven.
While sitting in the  Hall, July — , 1875, I received a
pressing invitation from one of your messengers to be present at the
marriage supper qf your only-begotten Son. I hasten to reply,
By the grace of God I will be present." Who will sign
that ? Is there one who will put his name to it ? Is there no one
who will say, " By the grace of God I will accept the invitation
now"? May God bring you to a decision just now. If you
would ever see the kingdom of God, you must decide this ques
tion one way or the other. What will you do with the invitation ?
I bring it to you in the name of my Master ; will you accept or
reject it ? Be wise to-night, and accept of the invitation. Make
up your mind you will not go away till the question of eternity
is settled. May God bring hundreds to a decision to-night is the
prayer of my heart.

THE BLOOD.
Part I. — The Old Testament

"It is the Blood that maketh an atonement for
the Soul." — Lev. xvii. ii.
Every man should be able to give a reason for the hope that is
in him ; and I do not believe the man lives who can give a reason
for his hope beyond the grave, who is a stranger to the Blood.
I am often told that I make the plan of salvation too easy, and
that it is folly to say that men can be saved by trusting simply
to the atoning blood of Christ. Now I do not wish any one to
believe what I say, if it is not according to Scripture ; and the
best way is just to turn up the Bible and see what the Word of
God says about it.
The first portion of Scripture I would call your attention to
is from the very first book of the Bible. If you turn to Genesis
iii. 21, you find, " Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord
God make coats of skins, and clothed them." In this verse we
get the first glimpse of the blood. Certainly God could not have
clothed Adam and Eve with the skins of beasts unless He had
shed blood. And to me it is a very sweet thought that sin was
covered before Adam was driven out of Eden — that God dealt in
grace with him before He dealt in judgment. It may be that this
was a type, away back in Eden, of Christ the coming One, of the
Sacrifice to be slain; and Adam might have said to his wife,
" Well, even though God has driven us out of Eden He loves us,
and this coat is a token of his love." Some one has said God put
a lamp of promise into his hand before He drove him out. " The
seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent." Did you
ever think what a terrible state of things it would be if man in his
lost and ruined state were allowed to live for ever ? It was from

THE BLOOD. 101
love to Adam that God drove him out of Eden, that he should not
live for ever. God put the cherubim there with the flaming
sword. But now Christ has come and taken the sword into his
own bosom, and opened wide the gates, so that man can come in
and eat. Adam might have been in Eden ten thousand years and
then be led astray by Satan ; but now " our life is hid with Christ
in God." Yes, man is safer with the second Adam out of Eden
than with the first Adam in Eden.
Then let us turn to Gen. iv. 4 : " And Abel, he also brought
of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof. And the Lord
had respect unto Abel and to his offering ; but unto Cain and to
his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth and his
countenance fell." Now here were two boys who were born and
brought up outside of Eden. They were children of the same
parents, and brought up under precisely similar circumstances
and under the same influences, and there is no account of any
difference between these two boys until they go to offer sacri
fice. Abel brings the blood, and is accepted ; Cain comes in his
own way, and is rejected. Undoubtedly, wh;n our first parents
fell, God marked out the way by which man might come to
Him ; Abel walked in God's way, but Cain in his own. You
may haye wondered why Cain's offering was not just as accept
able to Him as Abel's ; but one took God's way and the other
took his own Perhaps Cain said he could not bear the sight
of blood, and took that which God had cursed, and laid it on the
altar. Perhaps he said to himself, " I shall certainly not bring a
bleeding lamb. I don't like that doctrine at all. Here is the
grain and the beautiful fruit which I have raised by my industry,
and I'm sure it looks better than blood." And there are a great
many Cainites in the church to-day. They are trying to get into
heaven their own way. They bring their own good deeds to God.
They prefer what is agreeable to the eye, as Cain did his beautiful
corn and fruit ; but they do not like the doctrine of the Blood of
the Atonement. From the time Adam left Eden there have been
Abelites and Cainites. The Abelites come by way of the blood —
the Cainites come in a way of their own. They wish to get rid
of the doctrine of the blood. But be assured that any religion
which makes light of the blood is of the devil. No matter how

102 THE BLOOD
eloquent a man is, if he preaches against toe blood he is doing the
devil's work. Do not listen to him. Do not believe him. If an
angel from heaven should preach any other gospel I would not
believe it. " Christ died for our sins," — that is the gospel that
Paul preached, and Peter preached, and t'lat God has always
honoured in the salvation of men's souls.
The next glimpse we get of the blood is in Gen. viii. 20-
" And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord ; and took of every
clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt-offerings on
the altar." We have passed out of the first dispensation and now
have come to the second ; and the very first thing Noah does, is to
put blood between him and his sins. The second dispensation is
founded upon blood. ^Thus Noah walked by the highway of the
blood ; for this the animals were taken through the flood ; and all
God's people have been walking that way since, for it is the blood
that atones for sin.
Would you turn to Gen. xxii. 13. "And Abraham lifted up
his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in a
thicket by his horns. And Abraham, went and took the ram and
offered him up for a burnt-offering in the stead of his son." God
loved Abraham so much that He spared his son, but He so loved
the world that He did not spare his own Son, but delivered Him
up for us all. Now we are told that Abraham saw Christ's day
and was glad. I do not know when he saw it, but I have an idea
that it was from this very place that God drew back the curtain of
time and showed him Christ as the Bearer of sin. Just look at
that scene. There is the altar, built at the command of Jehovah.
God had told him to take his son, his only son whom he loved,
and bind and slay him. He has bound the boy ; everything is
ready, and now he takes the knife to slay his son. He does not
know what it means, but God said it and he obeys. I wish we
had men like Abraham, now-a-days, willing to obey God in the
dark, not asking the reason why. I can see him put his arms
round his boy as he takes him to his bosom and weeps over him.
I can hear him telling him the secret he had hidden from him so
long. What a scene! What a struggle it must have been!
Now he is ready to plunge the knife into the heart of his son. But
hark ! there comes a voice from heaven, " Abraham ! Abraham !

THE BLOOD. 103
spare thy son." Ah ! there was no voice at Calvary, no cry from
heaven then, " Spare thy Son." He gave Him up freely for us all,
the Innocent for the guilty, the Just for the unjust.
Turn now to Exodus xii. — one of the most important chapters
in the Old Testament. At the thirteenth verse we read, " And the
blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are ;
and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and the plague shall
not be upon you to destroy you." God did not say, " When I see
your good deeds — how you have prayed, and wept, and groaned,
I will pass over you," but " when I see the blood." It was not
their good resolutions, their tears, their prayers, their works, their
faith, that saved those men in Egypt ; it was the blood. What
were they to do to be saved ? They were to put the blood on the
door-posts and lintel. They were not to put it on the threshold.
God would not have them trample upon the blood. But that is
what the world is doing to-day. Men say it is not the death of
Christ ; it is his life. But God did not say, " Take a white, spot
less lamb, and put it there at the front of the door, and when I
see the lamb I will pass over you." Had an Israelite done that,
the angel of death would have passed by the lamb ; would have
'entered that house; would have laid his cold hand on the eldest
born. A live lamb could not have kept death out that night ; he
would have fallen a victim like the Egyptian. Very likely, when
some of the lords and dukes and great men rode through Goshen,
and saw the Israelites sprinkling their dwellings, they said they
never saw such foolishness. Very likely they thought they were
just spoiling their houses. Every house had blood on it. No
Egyptian could understand it. But on that memorable night when
Death entered every house from the palace of the king to the hovel
of the poor, when the wail of sorrow went up from that stricken
land, it was the blood that kept him from the homes of Goshen.
Yes, it is the blood that must cover our sins. I beg of you, do
not let the world move you on this point. Let it go on mocking,
and laughing, and making light of the precious blood of the Son
of God. It is our only refuge, our only hope. We cannot
cover sin by any good deeds of our own. It is a very common
saying, " If I were only as good as that man who has preached the
gospel for fifty years, or that mother in Israel who has visited the

104 THE BLOOD.
sick and been so kind to the poor, I would feel safe for heaven."
But I want to say that if you are sheltered behind the blood of the
Son of God, you are as safe as any saint that ever walked this earth.
It is not a long life of good deeds that is going to save us. It is not
our Christian usefulness that will ever commend us to God. Cer
tainly we must work for Christ ; certainly it will be better for you
in the future if you do. But that is not salvation. Certainly you
must follow Christ ; certainly you must imitate his pure and holy
life. I would go further, and say it is an absolute necessity you"
should do so ; but the life of Christ may be preached for ever,
and if his death be left out, it will never save a soul. People say
you must work, work, work, in order to get salvation. Ten thou
sand times no ! You get it as a gift ; " Whosoever will, let him
take." You can work as much as you like after you have taken
it. " Work out your own salvation." Yes, but that was spoken
to Christians, people who had taken it. So we must first take it,
and then we can work it out. We take salvation as a gift and
then begin to work because we cannot help it. All work done
before that must go for nothing. When the angel of death swept
through the land that night, the good and the bad were destroyed
together. Into every house where the blood was not sprinkled,
the destroying angel came. But wherever the blood was on door
post and lintel, whether they had worked much, or whether they
had worked none, God passed them over.
The little child in the humblest tent was just as safe as Moses
or Aaron, as Joshua or Caleb, as safe as any in the land. God did
not say, " When I see your gilded palace, or your beautiful home ;
when I see your goodness, your life of service, or your faith," but,
"when I see the blood, it shall be a token." Not for their own sakes,
but for Christ's, did He pass them by that night. Some one has
said, that the little fly in Noah's ark was just as safe as the great
elephant. It was the ark that saved them both. So Christ saves
the weak disciple just as well as the strong one.
When you go to a railway station you find all classes of people
wishing to travel. They have their tickets and take their places in
the carriages. When the guard comes to ask for the tickets, he
does not look to see what or who you are. You may be rich or
poor, learned or unlearned, this or that ; he looks for the tickets,

THE BLOOD. 105
and if you have your ticket you pass. The ticket is the token. So
if you are sheltered behind the blood of Christ, you may be very
ignorant or poor in this world, but you are as safe as the wisest or
wealthiest. A great many people are wondering why they are so weak ;
why they fall so often when temptation comes, why so little
spiritual power is given them. I think you will find a lesson
in that same chapter, in the 1 ith verse : " Thus shall ye eat it ;
with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in
your hand ; and ye shall eat it in haste : it is the Lord's Passover."
They were not only to kill the lamb and take the blood and
sprinkle it on the door-posts, but they were to eat of it. That is
the way to get spiritual strength. The reason why we are such
sickly Christians, is because we do not feed on the Lamb. We
have a wilderness journey before us as the children of Israel had,
and if we do not feed upon Christ we must starve by the way.
We have not only to look to the blood for safety, but we must feed
on Christ for strength. How much the soul needs to be fed !
Day by day our souls must be fed with the heavenly manna. The
Lord has given Him up for us ; He calls Himself the Bread of Life.
Feeding upon Christ is feeding on his Word. There is no book
that will feed the soul but the Bible. If I feed on the Word of
God, I get spiritual strength and power. Some people think if
they get one glimpse at Christ it is enough. We must live by
faith as well as be saved by faith. The just shall live by faith.
Each day we must gather the manna afresh. A good many people
seem to be living on stale manna — manna that they got months or
years ago when they were converted. We should no more think
of laying in spiritual food to last for ten years than we should of
bodily food.
In verse 2 we read, " This month shall be unto you the
beginning of months. If shall be the first month of the year to
you." For 400 years they had been serving the king of the
Egyptians, but God would not let them count those years.
They must make a fresh start, as it were. So all the years that
we spend in the service of the devil go for nought. Life never
really begins until we have been sprinkled with the blood of
Christ. Everything dates from the blood, and even the Jew

io6 THE BLOOD.
has to own that the death upon the cross was the beginning of
days. Turn now to Exodus xxix. 16 : "And thou shalt slay the ram,
and thou shalt take his blood and sprinkle it round about upon the
altar." I used to read these words and these books of the Old
Testament, wondering what they meant. They were to take the
blood and sprinkle it "roundabout upon the altar." Now I think
I understand it. It teaches that there is no way of approaching
God without coming by the blood. It has been so in all ages.
Even Aaron, the high priest, had to take blood and sprinkle it
round about upon the altar, before he could have an interview
with God — teaching us the great lesson that approach to God
never has been, never will be, never can be, except through the
blood of the Lamb.
We have the same thing brought before us again in the
thirtieth verse of the tenth chapter. " And Aaron shall make an
atonement upon the horns of the altar, once in a year, with the
blood of the sin-offering of atonements ; once in the year shall he
make atonement upon it throughout your generations : it is most
holy unto the Lord." Atonement means at-one-ment ; the blood
of Christ makes the sinner and God at one. Before Adam fell
God had bound him to the throne with a golden chain, which
was broken by the fall. But Christ came down and linked man
back to God again. At-one-ment — that is what the blood of
Christ does, makes atonement. We talk about sins being for
given ; they are forgiven, but no sin ever committed in this
world was forgiven without being punished. They were punished
in Christ ; . He made expiation — " Who his own self bare our sins
in his own body on the tree." Think what it cost Christ to make
expiation. Think what it cost God when He had to give up
his only-begotten Son, to give Him up to die !
Turn for a moment to Leviticus viii. 23 : " And he slew it,
and Moses took of the blood of it and put it upon the tip of
Aaron's right ear, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon
the great toe of his right foot." That is another verse I used to
stumble over. What did it mean ? blood on the ear, blood on the
hand, blood on the foot ? I think I understand it now. Blood
on the ear — without it man cannot hear the voice of God. No

THE BLOOD. 107
tmcircumcised ear can hear his voice. Men heard the voice of
God and they said it thundered ; they did not know the difference.
But when the blood is applied, men know the voice of God —
we know that it is the voice of our loving Father in heaven.
Blood on the hand — that a man may work for God. Those men
that think they are working for God, and yet ignore the blood,
are deceiving their own souls. One day they will wake up to find
that their labour is in vain. Salvation is " to him that worketh not
but believeth." No man can work his way into the kingdom of
God. They said to Christ, " What shall we do that we may work
the works of God ? " Perhaps these men had got their pockets
full of money, and were ready and willing to build churches.
" This is the work of God," said Christ, " that ye believe on Him
whom He hath sent." No man or woman can do anything to
rJease God until they have believed on his Son.
Suppose I say to my boy, " Willie, I want you to go out and
get me a glass of water." He says he doesn't want to go. " I
didn't ask you whether you wanted to go or not, Willie ; I told
you to go." " But I don't want to go," he says. " I tell you,
you must go and get me a glass of water." He does not like to
go. But be knows I am very fond of grapes, ahd he is very fond
of them himself, so he goes out, and some one gives him a beau
tiful cluster of grapes. He comes in and says, " Here, papa, here
is a beautiful cluster of grapes for you." " But what about the
water ? " " Won't the grapes be acceptable, papa ? " " No, my
boy, the grapes are not acceptable ; I won't take them ; I want
you to get me a glass of water." The little fellow doesn't want
to get the water, but he goes out, and this time some one gives
him an orange. He brings it in and places it before me. " Is
that acceptable?" he asks. "No, no, no!" I say; "I want
nothing but water ; you cannot do anything to please me until
you get the water." And so, my friends, to please God you must
first obey Him ; and the first thing He asks us to do is to believe
in the Lord Jesus Christ. " Without faith it is impossible to
please Him." He has given us an unspeakable Gift — the Son of
his bosom — and if we reject that Son, and refuse to follow Him,
do you think anything else we can do can please Him ?
Blood upon the foot — to walk with God. God never walked

io8 THE BLOOD.
with the Israelites until the blood was sprinkled in Goshen.
Then nothing could stand before them. When they came to the
Red Sea, it fled at their approach. In the wilderness He opened
his hand and gave them manna to eat. When they came to Jordan
they walked dryshod through the bed of the river, because the
Almighty God was walking beside them. Yes, it was a blood.
¦bought people that God brought into Canaan, the promised land.
And God will walk with every blood-washed sinner, and no man
shall stand before Him.
I can imagine some of you saying, " I do not understand yet
why God demands blood.'' A person said to me, " I hate your
God ; your God demands blood. I don't believe in such a God —
my God is merciful to all ; I do not know your God." But if you
will turn to Lev. xvii. ii, you will find why God demands blood.
" For the life of the flesh is in the blood ; and I have given it to
you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls ; for it is
¦the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul."
Now, suppose Queen Victoria did not like any man to be
deprived of his liberty, and threw all her prisons open, and
was so merciful that she could not bear any one to suffer for
guilt, how long would she hold the sceptre ? How long would she
rule this empire ? Not twenty-four hours. Those very men who
cry out about God being merciful would say, " We don't want
-such a Queen." Well, God is merciful, but He is not going to
¦take an unpardoned sinner into heaven.
God demands blood, because He said to Adam, " In the day that
¦thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Then sin came into the
world, and brought death in. God's word must be kept. How
•could God do this and spare the sinner ? How could God be just,
and justify the ungodly ? Man has sinned, and man must die. But
what if some one should die instead of him ? His own life has
been forfeited — the wages of sin is death — but what if some one
¦should buy it back for him, should redeem him ? What if one
•should come forward and lay down his own life a ransom for
¦many — one who had no sins of his own to condemn him to death?
<51ory to God in the highest ! " God so loved the world, that He
gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should
not perish, but have everlasting life." Glory to God in the

THE BLOOD. 109.
highest ! He sent his Son, born of a woman, to take our nature
and die in our stead, tasting death for every man. Glory to God
in the highest ! " the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us
from all sin." If you read your Bibles carefully, you will see
the scarlet thread running right through every page' of them;
The blood commences to flow in Genesis, and runs on to Reve'
lation. That is what God's book is written for. Take out the
scarlet thread, and it would not be worth carrying home.
Three times in this chapter it is repeated, that the life of the
flesh is in the blood. And when God demands blood, in other
words, He demands life. It has been forfeited. We have sinned,
and come short of the glory of God. I must die for my sins, or
find some substitute to die in my stead. I cannot get this man or
that man to die for me, because they have sinned themselves, and
have to die for their own sins. But Christ was without sin, and
therefore He could be my substitute. Here comes in the glorious
doctrine of substitution. Christ died for our sins, for mine ; and
because He died for me, I love Him. Because He died for me I
will serve Him. I will work for Him ; I will give Him my very-
life. He robbed death of its sting, and the grave of its victory..
Oh ! is it not the least we can do to give our poor lives to Him ?
When the Californian gold fever broke out, a man went there,.
leaving his wife in New England with his boy. As soon as he
got on and was successful he was to send for them. It was a
long time before he succeeded, but at last he got money enough to
send for them. The wife's heart leaped for joy. She took her
boy to New York, got on board a Pacific steamer, and sailed away
to San Francisco. They had not been long at sea before the cry
of " Fire ! fire ! " rang through the ship, and rapidly it gained on»
them. There was a powder magazine on board, and the captain
knew the moment the fire reached the powder, every man, woman,
and child must perish. They got out the life-boats, but they were
too small ! In a minute they were overcrowded. The last one was
just pushing away, when the mother pled with them to take her
and her boy. " No," they said, " we have got as many as we can
hold." She entreated them so earnestly, that at last they said
they would take one more. Do you think she leaped into that boat
and left her boy to die ? No ! She seized her boy, gave him one

no THE BLOOD.
last hug, kissed him, and dropped him over into the boat. " My
boy," she said, " if you live to see your father, tell him that I died in
your place." That is a faint type of what Christ has done for us.
He laid down his life for us, He died that we might live. Now
will you not love Him ? What would you say of that young man
if he should speak contemptuously of such a mother ? She went
down to a watery grave to save her son. Well, shall we speak
contemptuously of such a Saviour ? Oh, may God make us loyal
to Christ ! My friends, you will need Him one day. You will
need Him when you come to cross the swellings of Jordan. You
will need Him when you stand at the bar of God. May God
forbid tbat when death draws nigh it should find you making light
of the precious blood of Christ !

THE BLOOD.
Part II. — The New Testament.

"Without shedding of blood is no remission." — Heb. ix. 22.
We have seen what the Old Testament says about the blood ; now
let us turn to the New.
In 1 Pet. i. 18, we read : " Forasmuch as ye know that ye were
not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your
vain conversation, received by tradition from your fathers, but with
the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and
without spot." Silver and gold could not redeem our souls. As
I have tried to show, life had been forfeited. Death had come
into the world by sin, and nothing but blood could atone for the
soul. Therefore, says Peter, " you are not redeemed with silver
and gold." If gold and silver could have redeemed us, do you
not think that God would have created millions of worlds full of
gold? It would have been an easy matter for Him. But we ate
not redeemed by such corruptible things, but by the precious blood
of Christ. Redemption means "buying back;" we had sold
ourselves for nought, and Christ redeemed us and bought us back.
A friend in Ireland once met a little Irish boy who had caught
a sparrow. The poor little bird was trembling in his hand, and
seemed very anxious to escape. The gentleman begged the boy
to let it go, as the bird could not do him any good ; but the boy
said he would not, for he had chased it three hours before he could
catch it. He tried to reason it out with the boy, but in vain. At
last he offered to buy the bird ; the boy agreed to the price, and it
was paid. Then the gentleman took the poor little thing and held
it out on his hand. The boy had been holding ij; very fast, for

112 THE BLOOD.
the boy was stronger than the bird, just as Satan is stronger than
we, and there it sat for a time scarcely able to realize the fact that
it had got liberty ; but, in a little, it flew away chirping, as if to say
to the gentleman, " Thank you ! thank you ! you have redeemed
me." That is what redemption is — buying back and setting
free. So Christ came to break the fetters of sin, to open the
prison doors and set the sinner free. This is the good news, the
Gospel of Christ — " Ye are not redeemed with corruptible things,
as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ."
" How can I be saved to-night," do you ask ? Accept of the
Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, and rest on his finished work.
When Christ on Calvary said, " It is finished," it was the shout of
the Conqueror. He had come to redeem the world, and now He
had done it — done it without money ! And his cry to the world
comes ringing down the ages to-day — " Ho, every one that thirsteth,
come ye to the waters ; yea, come, buy wine and milk without
money and without price."
A few years ago, I was going away to preach one Sunday
morning, when a young man drove up in front of us. He had an
aged woman with him. " Who is that young man ? " I asked.
" Do you see that beautiful meadow ? " said my friend, " and that
land there with the house upon it ? " " Yes." " His father drank
that all up," he said. Then he went on to tell me all about him.
His father was a great drunkard, squandered his property, died,
and left his wife in the poor-house. " And that young man," he
said, " is one of the finest young men I ever knew. He has
toiled hard and earned money, and bought back the land ; he has
taken his mother out of the poor-house, and now he is taking her
to church." I thought, that is an illustration for me. The first
Adam, in Eden, sold us for nought, but the Messiah, the Second
Adam, came and bought us back again. The first Adam brought
us to the poor-house, as it were j the Second Adam makes us
kings and priests unto God. That is redemption. We get in
Christ all that Adam lost, and more. Men look on the blood of
Christ with scorn and contempt, but the time is coming when the
blood of Christ will be worth more than all the kingdoms of the
world. Suppose you were going down to death's gates to-night,
going down to the brink of the Jordan, without any hope in Christ.

THE BLOOD. 113
Suppose you were a millionnaire, what would your millions be worth
then ? Th? blood of Christ would be worth more to you than all
the silver and gold of the world.
The blood nas two cries : it cries either for my condemnation,
or if you will allow me to use a stronger word, for my damnation ;
or it cries for my salvation. If I reject the blood of Christ, it cries
out for my condemnation ; if I accept it, it cries out for pardon and
peace. The blood of Abel cried out against his brother Cain. So
it was in the days of Christ. When Pilate had Christ on his
hands, he said to the Jews, " What shall I do with Him ? " They
cried out, " Away with Him ! crucify Him !" And when he asked
which one he should release, Barabbas or Christ, they cried out,
"Barabbas ! " Then when he asked again, "What shall I then do
with Him ? " a universal shout went up from Jerusalem, " Let
Him be crucified ! Away with Him ! We do not want Him.''
Pilate turned and washed his hands, and said, " I am innocent of
this just Man's blood," and they cried, " His blood be on us and
on our children ; We shall take the responsibility of it ; we shall
endorse the act ; you crucify Him, and let his blood be on u.i and
on our children." Would to God that there might be a cry going
up, " Let his blood be on us to save, not to condemn."
Turn now to Col. i. 20 : " Having made peace through the
blood of his cross." I can tell you there is no peace in the world.
There are many rich men, many great men in the world, who have
got no peace. No ; I have never seen a man who knew what
peace was until he got it at Calvary.
" Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
Lord Jesus Christ " (Romans v. 1). Sin covered — that brings
peace. There is no peace for the wicked; they are like the
troubled sea that cannot rest. Calvary is the place to find peace —
peace for the past and grace for the present. But there is some
thing better still. " And rejoice in hope of the glory of God."
Some people think that when they get to Calvary they have got
the best, but there is something better in store — glory. I do not
know how near it may be to us ; it may be that some of us will
be ushered very soon into the presence of the King. One gaze
at Him will be enough to reward us for all we have had to bear.
Yes, there is peace for the past, grace for the present, and glory
8

1 14 THE BLOOD.
for the future. These are three things that every child of God
ought to have. When the angels came bringing the gospel, they
proclaimed, " Glory to God, peace on earth, and good-will towards
men." That is what the blood brings — sin covered and taken
away, peace for the past, grace for the present, and glory for the
future. Would you now turn to John xix. 34 : " But one of the
soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there
out blood and water." You know that in Zechariah it was foretold
that there should be opened in the house of David a fountain for
sin and for uncleanness. And now we have it opened. The Son
of God has been pierced by that Roman soldier's spear. It
seems to me that that was the crowning act of earth and hell — the
crowning act of sin. Look at that Roman soldier as he pushed
his spear into the very heart of the God-man. What a hellish
deed ! But what was the next thing that took place ? Blood
covered the spear ! Oh ! thank God, the blood covers sin.
There was the blood covering that spear — the very point of it.
The very crowning act of sin brought out the crowning act of
love; the crowning act of wickedness was the crowning act
of grace. A usurper has got this world now; but Christ will have it
soon. The time of your redemption draweth nigh. A little more
suffering, and He returns to set up his kingdom and reign upon
the earth. He will rend the heavens, and his voice will be heard
again. He shall descend from heaven with a shout. He will
sway his sceptre from the river to the ends of the earth. The
thorn and the brier shall be swept away and the wilderness shall
rejoice. Let us rejoice; we shall see better days; the dreary
darkness and sin that sweep along our earth shall be done away
with. These dark waves of death and hell shall be beaten back.
Oh, let us pray to the Lord to hasten his coming, that the Son of
God may not tarry.
Would you now turn to Rom. iii. 24 : " Being justified freely
by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."
What God does He does freely, because He loves to do it. Mark
these words, " Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."
Then in the fifth chapter, ninth verse, we read, " Much more then,

THE BLOOD. 115
being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath
through Him." The sinner is justified with God by his match
less grace through the blood of his Son. Justified, that means, as
just as if he had never committed sin. What a wonderful thing ;
not one sin against him ! It is as if he owed some one a debt, and
when he went to pay it, was told, " There is nothing against you ;
it is all settled." " Why," he would say, " how is that ? I got
some things from you not long, ago, and I want to pay the bill."
" There is nothing against you." " But I am sure I got something
here." " There is nothing against you in my ledger ; some one
else has come and paid it." That is substitution. Now I know
who paid my spiritual debts. It was the Lord Jesus Christ. And
God looks at his ledger and there is nothing against us. Christ
was raised up for our justification. It is a good deal better to be
justified than pardoned. Suppose I was arrested for stealing
£1000, tried and found guilty, but suppose the judge had mercy
on me and pardoned me. I would come out of prison, but it would
be with my head down. I had been found guilty, I could never
face the world again. But suppose I was accused of stealing it,
but it could not be proven, and when the case came on, it was
found I had not done anything of the kind ; then I would be
justified. It would make all the difference in the world. Now
God justifies us by the blood of his Son. That is what the blood
does — sin covered, put out of the way, and nothing against us. Is
not that good news ?
Rev. i. j : " Unto Him that loved us and washed us from
our sins in his own blood." There are a great many people
who wish to be saved, but who think they cannot be saved until
they get a little better. I met a young man in the inquiry -room
last night who was anxious to be saved, but he thought he could
not be, because he was not good enough. If you are going to
wait till you get rid of your sins, you will never be saved. You
cannot get rid of one sin. Instead of getting better you will get
worse. But thanks be to God, He loves us even in our sins,
even before He saves us from our sins. " He hath loved us and
washed us from our sins in his own blood." Loved us first, then
washed us. But if we attempt to wash ourselves we will make
wretched work of it. The blood will cover it all up if we only trust

116 THE BLOOD.
ourselves to Christ. Who shall lay anything to the charge of
God's elect? If He has justified me it is enough. Why do we
like to sing that old hymn —
" There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel's veins?"
Why will it live as long as the church lives on earth? Why
will it never die ? Why do you hear it sung all over Christendom ?
I remember how it used to thrill my soul even before I was con
verted. I could not tell why. Thank God, every sin is lost in
that fountain. You will find that all these hymns with the scarlet
thread in them will live. There is that grand old hymn : —
" Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee ;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy riven side that flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Cleanse me from its guilt and power."
That speaks of the crucified Christ; it will never get worn out.
_Then there is — " Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come."
That is another hymn that will live ; you never tire of it. It
will be sung on and on, as long as the church is on earth. I tell
you why these hymns are so precious ; it is because they tell us
about the blood.
Look at Matt. xxvi. 28, — it is Christ's own testimony — " For
this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for
the remission of sins." Look at this verse, " I declare unto you
the gospel, how that Christ died for our sins according to the
Scriptures." Look at Heb. ix. 22, "And without shedding of
blood is no remission." I would like to ask those men who do
not believe in the blood, " What are you going to do with your
sins ? " Would you insult the Almighty by offering Him the
fruit of your body to atone for them ? Can a man atone for sin ?
If there is a scoffer here*, a man who makes light of the blood, I

THE BLOOD. 117
want to know what he is going to do ? When I was m one of
your cities, a gentleman came to me and said, " If you are right, I
ara wrong; and if I am right, you are wrong." I saw he was
a minister, and I said, " Well, I never heard you preach ; if you
have heard me you can tell what the difference is. Where
do we differ? " "Well, you preach that it is the death of Christ ;
I preach his life. I tell people his death has nothing to do with
it ; you tell them his life has nothing to do with their salvation,
and that his death only will save them. I do not believe a word
of it." " Well," I said, " what do you do with this passage,
'Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree ' ? "
"Well, I never preached on that text." "What do you do with
this, then, ' Ye are not redeemed with corruptible things as
silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ '? " I never
preached on that text either," was the reply. "Well, what do you
do with this, ' Without shedding of blood there is no remis
sion'?" " I never spoke on that," he said. "What do you do
with this, ' He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised
for our iniquities, and the chastisement of our peace was upon
Him'?" "I never preached on that either." "What do you
preach, then ? " I asked. He hesitated for a little, and then said,
" I preach moral essays." " You leave out the atonement ? "
"Yes." "Well," I said, "it would all be a sham to me if I did
that; I could not understand it. I would be away home to
morrow. I would not know what to preach. Moral essays on
Christ without his death!" The young man said, "Well, it
does seem a sham sometimes." He was honest enough to con
fess that. Why, the whole thing is a myth without the at-one-
ment. The crucifixion of Christ is the foundation of the whole
matter. If a man is unsound on the blood, he is unsound in
everything. "Without shedding of blood is no remission."
Turn now to Heb. x. 1 1. Hebrews is full of the blood. " And
every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the
same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this man "
— what man ? — the man Christ Jesus, " after He had offered one
sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of God." One
sacrifice for sins for ever ! He has offered as a sacrifice Himself.
You need no lambs now, no bullocks now. The High Priest

118 THE BLOOD.
has offered Himself. The high priest of old could not take his
seat; his work was never done. But our great High Priest went
up on high, and took his seat on the right hand of the Father's
throne: the work was done. "It is finished," He said. All
those types and shadows are fulfilled in Him, and now they have
vanished away.
Look at Mark xiv. 24 : " This is my blood of the new testa
ment which is shed for many." These are Christ's own words.
Take that in connection with the passage I read from Hebrews,
" Without shedding of blood is no remission." I believe if a
man could get to heaven without the blood of Christ, he would
not be happy there. He could not join in the great song that is
sung around the throne; he could not sing the song of Moses
and the Lamb ; he could not say he was redeemed by the blood
of the Lamb. You would see him away in some corner; he
would be out of tune with the rest ; he would not be in harmony
with them, and he would not wish to stay there. But he could
not get there. The only way is by the new and living way that
Christ has opened.
Turn back again for a minute to Heb. x. 19 : " Having,
therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood
of Jesus, by a new and living way which He hath consecrated for
us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh." Those Jews, before
Christ died, had to have the high priest intercede for them. He
used to go in once a year into the holy of holies with blood to
make intercession ; but since Christ, our great High Priest, came,
we do not need any Aaron to intercede for us. When Christ died,
He opened a new and living way. He made us all kings and priests.
It is said that the veil that was rent was his flesh. When He cried
on the cross, " It is finished," the veil of the temple was rent in
twain. God seized it with his right hand and tore it away. No veil
between God and man now ! We need no bishop, no pope, no
priest to intercede for us now. Christ has died, yea, is risen again.
Yes, we are all kings and priests now ; we can go straight to the
holy of holies ourselves. We need no man to intercede for our
souls. The moment a man is saved by the blood, he becomes a
king and a priest. God calls him " My son." He is an heir of
heaven and of glory. He is redeemed by the blood ; he is made

THE BLOOD. 119
nigh by the blood. He gets victory over the world, the flesh, and
the devil, by the blood.
There is a very solemn verse in Heb. x. 28 : " He that despised
Moses' law died without mercy under' two or three witnesses ; of
how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought
worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath
counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an
unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the spirit of grace ? "
If a man despised Moses' law, they led him out and stoned him
to death. Sinner, let me ask you, what are you going to do with
the blood of God's only Son ? I tell you it is a terrible thing to
make light of the blood, to laugh and ridicule the doctrine of the
blood. I would rather fall dead on this platform than do such
a thing. It makes my heart shudder when I hear men speak
lightly of it. Some time ago a very solemn thought came stealing
over me, and made a deep impression on my mind. The only
thing that Christ left of his body on the earth was his blood. His
flesh and bones He took away. But when He went up on high,
He left his blood down here. What are you going to do with
the blood ? Are you going to make light of this blood, to trample
on it ? May God give us all a glimpse of Christ crucified to-night.
I wish I had time to go on and talk about the blood in Reve
lation ; it is full of it. " They overcame by the blood of the
Lamb and the word of their testimony." That is the only way to
overcome the devil, the lion of hell — by the blood of the Lamb.
He knows that the moment a poor sinner flees to the blood he is
beyond his reach.
As I have travelled up and down Christendom I have four, d
out that a minister who gives a clear sound upon this doctrine is
successful. A man who covers up the cross, though he may be
an intellectual man, and draw large crowds, will have no life there,
and his church will be but a gilded sepulchre. Those men who
preach the doctrine of the cross, and hold up Christ as the sinner's
only hope of heaven, and as the sinner's only substitute, who make
much of the blood, God honours, and souls are always saved in the
church where the blood of Christ is preached. May God help us
to make much of the blood of his Son. It cost God so much to
give us His Son, and shall we try to keep Him from the world

120 THE BLOOD.
which is perishing from the want of Him ? The world can get
along without us, but not without Christ. Let us preach Christ in
season and out of season. Let us go to the sick and dying, and
hold up the Saviour who came to seek and save them — who died
to redeem them. " They overcame by the blood of the Lamb
and the word of their testimony."
Once more, in Revelation vii. 14 : " These are they which
came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and
made them white in the blood of the Lamb." Sinner, how are
you going to get your robes clean if you do not get them washed
in the blood of the Lamb ? How are you going to wash them ?
Can you make them clean ? I pray that at last we may all get
back to the paradise above. There they are singing the sweet
song of redemption. May it be the happy lot of each of us to
join them.' It will be a few years at the longest before we
shall be there to sing the sweet song of Moses and the Lamb.
But if you die without Christ, without hope, and -without God,
where will you be ? • O sinner, be wise ; do not make light of the
blood. An aged minister of the gospel, on his dying bed, said,
" Bring me the Bible." Putting his finger upon the verse, "The
blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin,'' he said,
" I die in the hope of this verse." It was not his fifty years'
preaching, but the blood of Christ. May God grant that when
we come at last to stand before the great white throne, our robes
may be washed in the cleansing blood of Christ !

HEAVEN. Part I.

Some time ago, on my way to a meeting, a friend asked what was
to be my subject. I told him I thought I would preach about
Heaven. He seemed much disappointed, and replied that he was
in hopes I should talk about something practical, and that there
would be time enough to talk about heaven when we got there.
Now, I think if God did not want us to know anything about
heaven, He would not have written so much about it. And if
heaven is to be our future home, we should try to learn all we can
about it, so that we may be living more for it. If we were about
to emigrate to a distant land, we should never tire hearing about
it. We should wish to know all about its people, its climate and
resources, its schools and institutions, its advantages for chil
dren, and its prospects for business. There would be nothing re
lating to the country that would not interest us. And when we are
going to spend eternity in another world, can we know or hear
too much about it ?
Christians are often asked why they address their prayers
upwards, as if God's dwelling-place were any more above than
around them. But I think it is right to locate heaven, and to
locate it above. In the twenty -sixth chapter of Deuteronomy we
read, " Look down from thy holy habitation, from heaven, and
bless thy people Israel." Look down from heaven. Then in
Genesis we are told that God " went up " from talking with
Abraham — went up. And Christ himself, the only One who can
really tell us about heaven, for He has been there, what does He

122 HEAVEN.
say ? In the third chapter of John you find the words, " No
man hath ascended up to heaven but He that came down from
heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven." In the
seventh chapter of Mark, again we are told that, " looking up to
heaven, He sighed." And when his work was over here, and He
was just returning to the many mansions of his Father's house,
standing in the midst of the loved ones for whom He was going to
prepare a place, " Behold, He was taken up, and a cloud received
Him out of their sight."
Heaven is the dwelling-place of God. This, after all, is the
great point. It matters little how far away it is. God is there,
and that is enough. And we may be sure that it is not so far
away but that He can hear the humblest sigh of prayer or watch
the gathering tears of penitence trembling on the sinner's cheek.
And man, too, can look from earth to heaven. When God opens
his eyes, and draws aside the veil, like Stephen, He can see right
into it. " He being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly
into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the
right hand of God, and said, Behold, I see the heavens opened,
and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God." Stephen
found out the secret of the attractiveness of heaven. He saw
Christ at the right hand of God. The King in his beauty was
there, and that makes heaven heaven.
Some one being asked what he expected to do when he got to
heaven, replied that he thought he would take one good look at
Christ for about five hundred years, and then he might look round
and see the apostles, and saints, and martyrs. And it seems to me
that one glimpse of Him who loved us, and washed us in his
blood, will repay us for all we can suffer here in this dark world.
A little child, whose mother was dying, was taken away to live
with some friends because it was thought she did not understand
what death is. All the while the child wanted to go home and
see her mother. At last, when the funeral was over, and she was
taken home, she ran all over the house, searching the sitting-
room, the parlour, the library, and the bedrooms. She went from
one end of the house to the other, and when she could not find
her mother, she wished to be taken back to where they brought
her from. Home had lost its attractions for the child when her

HEAVEN. 123
mother was not there. My friends, the great attraction in heaven
will not be its pearly gates, its golden streets, nor its choir of
angels, but it will be Christ. Heaven would be no heaven if
Christ were not there. But we know that He is at the right hand
of the Father, and those eyes shall gaze on Him by-and-by ; and
we shall be satisfied when we awake with his likeness.
But the company of heaven is more varied still — our friends
are there. God the Father is there, Christ the Son is there, angels
are there, and in Rev. vii. we read of " a great multitude, which
no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and
tongues." We read of the redeemed who stand " before the throne,
and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their
hands." Yes, we have friends in heaven.
A bereaved father asked me the other day if I thought the little
one he had lost had gone to be with Jesus. I could only tell him
what David said when he lost his son, " I shall go to him, but he
shall not return to me." It is a very sweet thought to me, and it
must be to you also who have lost little ones, that the King can
take better care of them than we can. If we could look into the
eternal city we should see the Shepherd leading them by the green
pastures and the still waters. He will care for each little lost
lamb Himself far better than its own fond mother ; and is it not
sweeter for them to be for ever with the Lord than down in this
sad land of suffering and sin ? Our friends are not lost, just gone
before. They have had " the desire to depart and to be with
Christ, which is far better," and He has gratified it. Although to
live was to live for Christ, yet to be with Him, was, even with Paul,
"far better."
But there is more in heaven still. Once the disciples had been
out preaching and met with wonderful success. They had great
power, had cast out devils, and worked many miracles. They
came back greatly elated. Like workers in a great revival, they
say to one another, " Is*not this glorious ? " But Christ says, " Do
not rejoice at that. 1 will tell you what to rejoice about. In
this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice
that your names are written in heaven." What a glorious thought
is this ! Our names are written in heaven. We may be sure of
it. If the children of God are not to know that their names ara

124 HE A VEN.
written in heaven how are they to rejoice ? If there had been any
doubt about it, how could the disciples have rejoiced when Christ
told them to rejoice ? It is our privilege, if we are Christians, not
only to know it, to be quite sure of it, but to rejoice in it.
The grand question of life is, Is my name written in heaven ?
Is my name in the Book of Life ? Not, Is it in the Church record ?
That record may not be kept in the same way that the record in
heaven is kept. And there may be names in the Church record
which have never been written in heaven. But it is God's record
we are talking about. God keeps a record, a book of the lost and
a book of the saved, a book of the living and a book of the dead.
Which book is your name in ? Can you rejoice this moment that
your name is written in the Book of Life ? Weigh the question
well. It is very important. For "Whosoever was not found
written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire." " And
there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth it, neither
whatsoever worketh an abomination or maketh a lie ; but they
which are written in the Lamb's Book of Life."
Some friends, lately, in travelling, arrived at an English hotel,
but found that it had been full for days. They were turning
away to seek accommodation elsewhere, when a lady of the party
bade the others adieu, and expressed her intention to remain.
" How can that be," they asked, " when you hear the hotel is
full ? " "Oh," she replied, " I telegraphed on ahead a number of
days ago, and my room has been secured." My friend, send on
your name ahead, and the door of heaven can never be shut against
you. Be sure it is a wise precaution. Then everything will be
ready for you. And when the journey of life is over, you will
mount up as with angel wings, and inherit the kingdom prepared
from the foundation of the world. Many are spending their time
and strength for a home down here, with its shallow luxuries and
fleeting joys. But what will all the mansions of earth do for you,
c you have secured no title to a mansion irfthe sky ?
A soldier, wounded during our last war, lay dying in his cot.
Suddenly the deathlike stillness of the room was broken by the
cry, "Here! Here!" which burst from the lips of the dying
man. Friends rushed to the spot and asked what he wanted.
" Hark," he said, " they are calling the roll of heaven, and I am

HEAVEN. 125-
answering to my name." In a few moments once more he
whispered, " Here ! " and passed into the presence of the King.
If we have made sure that our own names are written in
heaven, the next most important thing is to be sure that our
children's names are there. The promise is not unto you only but
unto your children. Mother, is the name of that boy of yours
written in the Lamb's Book of life ? Is it not better that your
children's names should be written there, than that you should
secure for them great possessions on this dark earth ? Oh, I pity
the son who has never had an interest beyond the grave ; but more
the mother who has never told him of the rest that remaineth for
the people of God. May God make fathers and mothers more
faithful and true to their solemn charge, that their children may
grow up to be a blessing to the world, and that they meet at last,
an unbroken circle, in heaven !
Whenever I think about this subject, two fathers come before
me. One lived on the Mississippi River. He was a man of great
wealth. Yet he would have freely given it all could he have
brought back his eldest boy from his early grave. One day that
boy had been borne home unconscious. They did everything that
man could do to restore him, but in vain. " He must die," said
the doctor. " But, doctor," said the agonized father, " can you do
nothing to bring him to consciousness, even for a moment?"
"That may be," said the doctor; " but he can never live.'' Time
passed, and after a terrible suspense the father's wish was gratified.
"My son," he whispered, "the doctor tells me you are dying."
'Well," said the boy, "you never prayed for me, father; won't
you pray for my lost soul now ? '' The father wept. It was true
he had never prayed. He was a stranger to God. And in a little
while that soul, unprayed for, passed into its dark eternity. Oh.
father ! if your boy was dying, and called on you to pray, could you
lift your burdened heart to heaven ? Have you learned this sweetest
lesson of heaven or earth, to know and hold communion with your
God ? And before this evil world has marked your dearest trea
sures for its prey, have you learned to lead your little ones to a
children's Christ?
What a contrast is the other father ! He, too, had a lovely
boy, and one day he came home to find him at the gates of death.

126 HEAVEN.
" A great change has come over our boy," said the weeping mother ;
" he has only been a little ill before, but it seems now as if he were
dying fast." The father went into the room, and placed his hand on
the forehead of the little boy. He could see the boy was dying. He
could feel the cold damp of death. " My son, do you know you
are dying ? " "No; am I? " " Yes ; you are dying." " And
shall I die to-day?" "Yes, my boy, you cannot live till night."
"Well, then, I shall be with Jesus to-night, won't I, father?"
" Yes, my son, you will spend to-night with the Saviour." As he
turned away, the little fellow saw the tears trickling over his father's
cheeks. " Don't weep for me, father," he said ; " when I get to
heaven I will go right straight to Jesus, and tell Him that ever
since I can remember you have tried to lead me to Him." God
has given me one little boy, and if God should take him, I would
rather have him carry such a testimony as that to my Master, than
have all the wealth of the world rolled at his feet.
Mothers and fathers, the little ones may begin early; be in
earnest with them now. You know not how soon you may be
taken from them, or they may be taken from you. Therefore let
this impression be made upon their minds that you care for their
souls a million times more than for their worldly prospects. And
if you yourself have never thought how little it would profit you
to gain the whole world and lose your own soul, I beseech you
not to let another sun go down before you are able to say that your
name has been written in heaven.

HEAVEN. Part II.

We have seen how God is in heaven, for it is his dwelling-place ;
how Christ is there, for He is at the right hand of the Father ;
how the redeemed saints are there ; how our names are there ; and
now, if we are true Christians, we ought to have our treasure there.
We are commanded to " Lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven."
" Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and
rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal ; but
lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor
rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor
steal." If our treasure were in heaven we should not have to be urging
men to live for heaven, or pleading with them to lift their hearts
heavenward. Their hearts would be there already ; " where your
treasure is there will your heart be also."
It does not take long to find out where a man's treasure is, you
have only to watch where his heart is. The man who makes
politics his god, see how his face lights up the moment you talk '
about it ! Here is a man whose heart is set upon business ; put
him in the way of making a few thousands -even at the risk of
losing a few more, and you have done him the greatest favour
in the world. Here is another whose god is pleasure ; his eye
sparkles when you even mention it. One would think from such
men that there is nothing worth living for but politics, and business,
and pleasure. But talk to a child of God whose treasures are in
heaven ; the world scarce interests him. He will tell you how
he has here no continuing city, how he is but a stranger and

128 HEA VEN.
a pilgrim, how heaven is his home. And as he talks of Christ,
and the promises, and the hope beyond the grave, you see that he
enjoys the heavenly calm which the world knows not of.
When I was on the Pacific Coast I spent my first Sunday in
San Francisco. I went to the Sunday-school, but it was a very
wet, stormy day, and so few teachers or scholars made their appear
ance, that the superintendent was in doubt whether he should not
send them home again. However, as they had come through the
rain, it was decided to go on with the lesson, and I was asked to
undertake the task. The subject happened to be, " Our Treasures
in Heaven." The blackboard was got ready, and being a poor
writer myself, I handed the chalk to one of the teachers, and said to
the children, " Now, I want you to tell me some earthly treasures;
what do you suppose men think most of?" Some one cried,
" Money." " Put that down," I said. " Anything else ?" " Lands."
" Put that down." Many strange things were said ; one little boy
said " Rum," and perhaps he was nearer the truth than any of them,
for many a man will sell soul and body, and business and family, and
home and everything else for drink ; and when the catalogue was
finished, I asked them next to give me a list of heavenly treasures.
The first answer was " Jesus ; " and as we went on from one to
another, we found that the treasures of heaven were far more
numerous and very much more precious than all the treasures which
the earth could give. The young man who was writing down the
answers was an unconverted teacher. As he scanned the lists and
compared the earthly with the heavenly, he stood transfixed with
shame. " What a fool have I been ! " he says to himself ; " I have
come to this Pacific Coast, and spent my substance for such things
of earth!" And there at that blackboard he vowed to. God that
for the rest of his life his heart should be set alone upon the things
which are above.
Think with me for a moment what earthly treasures are.
Suppose we set our hearts on money ; misfortune darts across our
path ; there is the short-lived resistance, the brief struggle soon
over, which the world knows so well, and we are beggars ! Try
reputation. In an evil moment We may lose the little we have
ever gained ; or those who have never had any of their own may
steal ours away with the tongue of slander. If to our children we

HEAVEN. 129
are looking for our chiefest joys, alas for our hopes ! for death may
carry them away ; or, worse than death, disgrace may count them
with the living dead. Yes, and even grant us money, and our fill
of it, or reputation, and the best the world has, or children, the
loveliest and beloved of all ; — is it not true that we have but pro
vided for a few brief years, while the great eternity has been
uncared for or forgotten ?
" Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth." It looks a little
stern, perhaps, but it must be right. After all, all that a man is
really worth is what he has got in heaven. We bring nothing
into this world, and it is certain we shall carry nothing out.
Therefore God says, Lay not. The Christian who does, suffers.
There is no gain in it. It is done at a terrible expense, the
heart's desire in exchange for the soul's leanness. Here are two
ships coming up a river. The first, full sail, cuts bravely through
the water ; the second creeps along towed by another. She
appears to be on the point of sinking, but still she floats. Why ?
Because she has a cargo of timber, and has become waterlogged.
Lot was all right while he kept with his uncle Abraham, but when
he left him, and got down into Sodom, he got a good deal of this
world's goods, and grew waterlogged. So it is with many
Christians. They have got waterlogged. They have got so
much money that they cannot get into the harbour themselves,
and they require others to help them in. The religious life gets
sluggish. The spiritual pulse begins to beat slow. " Why is it ? "
they say, " that we do not have more spiritual power, and more
joy in the Lord ? " The secret is easily found out. People who
ask these questions have got their treasure here.
When men go up in balloons they take with them bags of sand
for ballast, and when they want to rise higher they throw out some
of the sand. Now there are some Christians who, before they
rise higher will have to throw out some ballast. It may be money,
or any other worldly consideration, but if they wish to rise, they
must get rid of it. If you have got overloaded, just throw out a
little money, and you will mount up as on eagle's wings. Any
minister will tell you what to do with it. I never saw any depart
ment of the Lord's work that did not want some money.
A friend of mine called on a wealthy Illinois farmer, to get him
9

i.3o HEA VEN.
interested in a soldiers' mission. He took him up on the cupola
of his house, and said, " Look yonder, over that beautiful rolling
prairie, that is all mine, as far as the eye can reach. He took him
to another view, and pointing over the rich farms of the Mississippi
Valley, showed him pasture land for thirty miles round, with large
herds of cattle, and horses, and sheep feeding. " They are all
mine," he said ; " I have made it all myself." Then he pointed
proudly towards the town, and showed him streets, and piles of
buildings, and a great ball named after himself, and said once
more, " They are all mine ; I came here a poor man, but my own
industry has done it all."
My friend said nothing ; but when he had seen all, raising his
finger, and pointing solemnly to the sky, " What," he said, " have
you got up there ?" The rich man's countenance fell. "Where?"
he asked. " In heaven." ' " I have got nothing there." Alas ! he
had lived his threescore years and ten, and must soon enter eternity,
yet he had no treasure there. " Is it not strange," said my friend,
" a man of your judgment and forethought, making such a wreck
of life, living for the moment, on borrowed time, to die a beggar,
and enter eternity a pauper ! " But a few months after that he
died as he had lived, and his property went to others.
Oh ! my friends, if there are any of you living for this world
alone, remember that death will , part you and your treasures for
ever. Ask yourself, I beseech you, what provision you have made
for the other life ? Is it on that little boy that your heart is set, is
he your god, the idol of your life ? Or is it your money, or a
name, or dress, or a position in society ? Then are you disobeying
the law of Him who will one day be your Judge. " Lay not up for
yourselves treasures on earth.'
There is another thought I would like you to look at. Our
rest is to be in heaven. In Heb. iv. 9, we read, " There remaineth
therefore a rest to the people of God." That is another treasure
we are to have in heaven. Let us not talk of rest down here, we
have all eternity to rest in. What we want is to be faithful in the
few months or years that we are here, and then we shall rest as
eternal ages roll on. This is the place for work. " Blessed are
the dead which die in the Lord, for they do rest from their labours,
and. their works do follow them." Our works shall follow us.

HEAVEN. I3i
We shall leave a record behind us, if we are only faithful, ere the
night comes. We can set streams running here in this dark world
that shall flow on after we have gone to heaven.
Twenty-five hundred years have passed since Daniel lived, but
he lives to-day. His light shines out, how brightly, all over Chris
tendom ! We love to read his life. How it fires and cheer us as
we read of him standing up for God in Babylon. His works do
follow him.
A good many people have made a sad mistake. They think
the church is a sort of resting-place. They unite with a church,
and that is about the last we hear of them. They think that a
good Christian has nothing more to do than get a good pew in a
respectable place of worship, and all the work after that is to hear
two sermons a week.
But, my friends, let us not think of rest and pleasure down
here. We shall rest when Christ comes, but not until then. The
time will come when the wicked shall cease from troubling, and
the weary be at rest.
I heard of a Christian who did not succeed in his work so well
as he used to, and he got Home-sick and wished himself dead.
One night he dreamed that he had died, and was carried by the
angels to the eternal city. As he went along the crystal pavement
of heaven, he met a man he used to know, and they went walking
down the golden streets together. All at once he noticed every
one looking in the same direction, and saw One coming up who
was fairer than the sons of men. It was his blessed Redeemer.
As the chariot came opposite, He came forth, and beckoning the
one friend, placed him in His own chariot-seat, but himself He led
aside, and pointing over the battlements of heaven, " Look over
yonder," He said, " what do you see ?," " It seems as if I see the
dark earth I have come from." " What else ? " "I see men as
if they were blindfolded, going over a terrible precipice into a
bottomless pit." " Well," said He, " will you remain up here,
and enjoy those mansions that I have prepared, or go back to yon
dark earth, and warn these men, and tell them about Me and my
kingdom, and the rest that remaineth for the people of God ? "
That man never wished himself dead again. He yearned to live.
as long as ever he could, to tell men of heaven and of Christ. And

i33 HEAVEN.
that is what God wants us to do. We shall rest by-and-by ; we
shall have all eternity to rest in. But the Church is the place for
work, and as soon as our work is done there will be the voice calling
Us, " Come up hither."
And then — for there is still something else in heaven — we shall
get our crown. In second Timothy fourth and eight, " Henceforth
there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord,
the righteous Judge shall give me at that day." There is a crown
laid up for every one of His children. God has promised it. " Be
thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life."
What did Paul run for ? Salvation ? Ten thousand times no ; he
got that at the cross. That was settled long ago. Paul ran for a
crown. There will be a great many who will get into heaven, but
they will have no crown — crownless Christians. I never touch
that life of Paul, and I never hear his name mentioned, but it
makes me feel ashamed of myself. If I may be allowed the
expression, Satan got hold of his match when he got hold of Paul.
He never got him off the right track. He kept his eye right on
Christ, and now he wears his crown. Paul ! what are you so
ambitious for — to make a name ? Why are you so desperately in
earnest ? " I am for my crown," says Paul. Do you hear what
they say about you, " A mere babbler attempting to turn the world
upside down ? " They have made up their minds to kill you. The
Jews say all manner of things against you. " I know it," says
Paul, " but none of these things move me."
Take your stand by his side again. He has received thirty-
nine stripes ; four times has he been beaten, and now he is to be
beaten again. " Now, if you get out of this difficulty, what will
you do, Paul?" "Do," says Paul, "I do but one thing — press
towards the mark for the prize of the high calling." What did he
care for stripes ? "You don't think," he says, "that these light
afflictions are going to stop me? " Why, if we received one stripe
on our backs, what a whining ! I do not know how many volumes
of books would be written about it. We would be called martyrs.
Yet Paul calls them " these light afflictions."
Take your stand there again. This time they have stoned him.
He is all bruised and bleeding. But the great warrior rises up and
buckles on his armour again. What is he going to do ? " You

HE A VEN I33
have got out of this, Paul, what are you going to do next ? "
"Do!" he cries once more; "I do but one thing — press
towards the mark for the prize. I do not want to lose my crown."
Therefore he never turns to the right hand or to the left. He
fixes his eye right on the crown. " Henceforth there is laid up for
me a crown which cannot fade."
Look at him again. He goes to Macedonia, and the first thing
he gets in Philippi is the jail. If that happened to any Christian
in the nineteenth century what an outcry there would be ! What
lamentation there would be inside the prison ! What scheming to
get out, what claims for damages ! But that is not the way this
old warrior looks at it. " Silas ! " he says at midnight ; " it is
time to have our evening worship." And there, in that prison
cell, with bleeding backs and feet fast in the stocks, they sing their
psalm of praise. It would be. about the last place we should
think of singing praises in, and if we did sing it would be some
melancholy hymn ! But not so Paul. " If God wants me to go
to heaven by way of the Philippian prison," he says, " it is all the
same to me; rejoice and be exceeding glad, Silas. I thank God
that I am accounted worthy to suffer for Jesus' sake." And as
they sang their praises to God, the other prisoners heard them ; but,
what was far more important, the Lord heard them, and the old
prison shook, their chains fell off, and they were free men ! Talk
about Alexander the Great making the world tremble with his
armies. Here is a little tent-maker who makes the world tremble
without any army !
And then look at the end of his glorious life. He was in
Rome and about to be executed. He takes up his pen and writes
to Timothy, " The time of my departure is at hand, I have fought
a good fight, I have kept the faith." Thank God he kept the
faith ! He did not break away and teach false doctrine. He
believed in the good old gospel that Christ died, and that men
must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ if they would be saved.
" Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown." I should like to
have been in Rome when Paul was there, there was something
there worth seeing then. I should like to have seen him walkmg
down those streets. Rome never saw such a conqueror as that
man. "Paul! you are going to execution; are you not sorry

134 HE A VEN
you gave your life to the Lord Jesus ? You have had to suffer so
much, stoned, persecuted, beaten with many stripes, in many
dangers in the wilderness, in perils by sea and land — are you not
sorry ? Would you give your life to Christ if you had it to live
over again?" "Yes," he replies, "if I had ten thousand lives
I would willingly give them all for His dear sake." He has
nothing to regret, nothing to be sorry for. " Sorry ! " he cries ;
" I thank God a thousand times a day that I ever gave myself to
Him!" Look at him as he marches along to execution like a conqueror.
If you had taken your stand by his side you might have heard him
whisper, " I shall be absent from the body and present with the
Lord to-night." He has no worldly wealth to trouble him — per
haps a few tools that he used in tent-making — but in heaven he
has treasures untold, and he makes ready to go for his crown.
You can see a smile on his face as he lays his head on the guil
lotine, and his soul leaps into the chariot of fire that stands by its
side. I can imagine them watching for him from the battlements
of heaven, and there is a cry " Hallelujah ! " as he sweeps away up
to the throne. And I can hear the shout of the Master as he
enters the pearly gates, " Well done, Paul ; you have fought a good
fight, you have kept the faith, you have finished the work that was
given you to do ; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord ! " And the
Master rises and plants the crown upon his brow, but he takes
it and casts it at the feet of his Lord.
Paul got his reward at last. Down here it was tribulation, but
I have an idea that he thanks God more to-day for his afflictions
than for his prosperity. John Bunyan thanked God more for
Bedford Jail than for anything that ever happened to him. And
Paul, in prison, takes out his pen and writes these epistles which
have come down as a blessing through the ages. The streams of
grace that Paul set running are running still. Eighteen hundred
years have passed since He wrote these epistles to the churches,
but their fruits are still going up from every clime and nation.
And so if things go against us, let us thank God. Our reward is
yonder. I do not believe a man will be much used of God until
he is above the thought of receiving reward from men. " Rejoice
and te exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven." If

HEAVEN. i3S
God calls it "great" it must be something worth having, therefore
let us not spoil it by seeking the world's honours.
Not long ago there lived an old bed-ridden saint, and a
Christian lady who visited her found her always very cheerful.
This visitor had a lady friend of wealth who constantly looked on
-he dark side of things, and was always cast down although she was
i professed Christian. She thought it would do this lady good to
see the bed-ridden saint, so she took her down to the house. She
lived up in the garret, five stories up, and when they had got to the
first story the lady drew up her dress and said, " How dark and
filthy it is ! " " It's better higher up," said her friend. They got
to the next story, and it was no better ; the lady complained again,
but her friend replied, " It's better higher up." At the third floor
it seemed still worse, and the lady kept complaining, but her
friend kept saying, "It's better higher up." At last they got to
the fifth story, and when they went into the sick-room, there was
a nice carpet on the floor, there were flowering plants in the
window, and little birds singing. And there they found this bed
ridden saint — one of those saints whom God is polishing for his
own temple — just beaming with joy. The lady said to her " It
must be very hard for you to lie here." She smiled, and said,
"It's better higher up." Yes! And if things go against us, my
friends, let us remember that " it's better higher up."
I was going to New Orleans from Chicago a few years ago,
and there were two ladies in the carriage with me. They got well
acquainted with one another by the time they reached Cairo, where
one lived, the other was going on to New Orleans. The one who
had to get out at Cairo said to the other, " I wish you would stay
here with me for a few days, I like your company so much." "I
should like to stay," replied the other, " but my things are all packed
up and have gone on before ; I have no clothes but those I am
wearing. They are good enough to travel in, but I would not like
to be seen in company with them." Now that is the way with
the Christian. He is away from home here, his treasure has gone
on before, and anything is good enough to travel in. If things don't go
on smoothly down here we need not be too particular, they're good
enough to travel in. If our treasures are in heaven our hearts will be
there, and we shall be living as pilgrims and strangers on the earth.

136 HEA VEN.
One thought more. What occasions joy in heaven ? If Queen
Victoria should leave her throne to-day, what intense excitement
there would be ! Queen Victoria leaving the throne ! It would
stir the nations of the earth. The whole world would know about
it. But I do not know that it would be noticed in heaven. But
if there was one little boy down here converted to-day, it would
be noticed in heaven. Jesus Christ said, " There is joy in heaven
over one sinner that repenteth."
My little boy, don't you want to become a lamb, for the
Shepherd to watch over and care for ? My little girl, don't you
want to become a daughter of heaven, a follower of Christ ?
It may be that at this moment every battlement of heaven is
alive with the redeemed. There is a sainted mother watching for
her daughter. Daughter ! can yoa not see her ? She is beckon
ing you now to the better land. Have you no response to that
long-hushed voice which has prayed for you so often ? And for
you, young man, are there no voices there which prayed for you ?
and are there none whom you promised once to meet again, if not
on earth, in heaven ? And which of you, fathers and mothers, but
can hear in the angels' chorus the music of the little ones you loved,
and who have winged their way to be in glory for ever with the
Lord ? Oh ! shall we not all just turn our backs upon the world,
and fall on our knees, and ask God for Christ's sake to write down
our name in the Lamb's Book of Life, so that we and those we love
may live for ever with the Lord !

THE END.

SECOND EDITION.

NOTES by "C. H. M."
GENESIS, EXODUS, LEVITICUS, NUMBERS.

The Notes on each book are complete in one volume.

BEAD WHAT IS SAID OP THEM.
About three years since I had my attention called to C. H. M.'s
notes, and was so much pleased, and at the same time profited by
the way they opened up Scripture truths, that I secured at once
all of the writings of the same author, and if they could not be
replaced would rather part with my entire library, excepting my
Bible, than with these writings. They have been to me a very key
to the scriptures. D. L. MOODY.

I take great pleasure in heartily endorsing to all Christians who
desire to be more thoroughly taught in the word of God, the notes
of C. H. M. Under God they have blessed me more than any
books, outside of the Bible itself, that I have ever read, and have
led me to a love of the Bible that is proving an unfailing source of
profit. D. W. WHITTLE.
I have enjoyed great pleasure and received much profit from
Notes on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, by C. 11. M.
B. F. JACOBS.
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