Bible Commentaries
Amos 3

Verse 3

Preparation for Revival

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Sermon

(No. 597)

Delivered on Sunday October 30th, 1864 by

C. H. SPURGEON,

At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" Amos 3:3 .

THE BELIEVER IS AGREED with God. The war between the most holy God and his offending creatures is over in the case of bloodwashed sinners; not suspended by a truce, but ended for ever by a peace which passeth all understanding. The believer is fully agreed with God concerning the divine law: he confesses that "the law is holy, and just, and good": he would not have it altered if he could. He rejoices in the way of God's testimonies more than in all riches; yea, in his precepts doth he take delight, praying evermore, "O let me not wander from thy commandments." He joyfully acknowledges that the Judge of all the earth rules mankind by a law in which there is no injustice, by statutes which subserve the best interests of the governed, while they secure the glory of the great Governor. The Christian "consents unto the law that it is good." He is agreed with God, moreover, that a breach of the law should be visited with penalty: he would be unwilling that sin should go unpunished. He feels that the sanctions of law, however terrible, are absolutely necessary, and required to be severe. Above all, he is agreed with God in that great atonement for sin which God himself has ordained and provided in the person of Jesus Christ. Gazing upon the matchless sacrifice of Calvary, while the Lord is content, the believer is satisfied; where God finds satisfaction for his injured honour, the believer finds the noblest object of admiration and adoration. Thou lovest Golgotha, O thou Judge of the earth; and thy people are perfectly agreed with thee in this. Henceforth the Christian is at one with God in his love of holiness: he delights in the law of God after the inward man. Sin, which is abhorrent to the Most High, is obnoxious to the Christian in that measure in which he is enlightened and conformed unto the image of Christ. Great God, thou hast unsheathed thy sword, and bathed it in heaven, for the destruction of all evil, and thy redeemed are on thy side, abhorring that which is evil, and resolving to fight under thy command till the last sin shall be cut off. Thou hast uplifted thy banner because of the truth, and around thy standard the soldiers of the cross are rallying; for thy battle, O Most High, is the battle of the Church; thy foes are our foes, and thy friends are the excellent of the earth, in whom is all our delight.

I trust that most of us who are here met in the name of Jesus, feel a deep, sincere, and constant agreement with God. We have been guilty of murmuring at his will; but yet our newborn nature evermore at its core and center knoweth that the will of the Lord is wise and good; and we therefore bow our heads with reverent agreement, and say, "Not as I will, but as thou wilt." "The will of the Lord be done." Our soul, when through infirmity she is tempted to rebellion, nevertheless struggles after complete resignation of her wishes and desires to the will of the Most High. We do not covet the life of self-will, but we sigh after the spirit of self-denial; yea, of self-annihilation, that Christ may live in us, and that the old Ego, the carnal I, may be altogether slain. I would be as obedient to my God as are those firstborn sons of light, his messengers of flaming fire. As the mercury feels the mysterious changes of the air, and sensitively moves in accordance with the atmosphere, so would I being surrounded by my God, evermore perceive his wish and will, and move at once in obedience thereto. Our strength shall be perfect when we have no independent will, but move and act only as we are moved and acted on by our gracious God. I hope that at this hour we can truly say, that notwithstanding our many sins, we do love the Lord our God; and if we could have our will this morning, we would follow his commands without the slightest departure from the narrow path. We are in heart agreed with God.

The text reminds us that this agreement gives us power to walk with God. May we be enabled to claim this privilege which divine grace has bestowed on us: power to walk with God in daily, habitual, friendly, intimate, joyous communion. Believer, you can walk with God this very day. He is as near to thee as he was to Abraham beneath the oak at Mamre, or Moses at the back of the desert. He is as willing to show thee his love as he was to reveal himself to Daniel on the banks of Ulai, or to Ezekiel by the streams of Chebar. Thou hast no greater distance this day between thee and thy God, than Jacob had when he laid hold upon the angel and prevailed. He is thy father, as truly as he was the father of the people whom he covered by day with a cloud, and cheered by night with a pillar of fire; and though no Shekinah lights up a golden mercy-seat, yet the throne of grace is quite as glorious and even more accessible than in the days of old. He shall hide thee in his pavilion, as he did his servant David; yea, in the secret of the tabernacle shall be thy hiding-place. Enoch's privilege was not peculiar to him; it is thy birthright: claim it. Noah's high honour of walking with God was not reserved for him alone; it belongs to thee also, shut in as thou art in the ark of the covenant, and saved from the deluge of divine wrath. It should be the Christian's delight to be always with his God; walking with him in unbroken fellowship. Enoch did not take a turn or two with God, as Matthew Henry observes, but he walked with him four hundred years. O that we might cease to be with our God as wayfaring men who tarry but for a night: may we dwell in God, and may he dwell in us. Walking implies action; and our actions should always be in the Lord. The Christian, whatsoever he eateth, or drinketh, or doeth, should do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks unto God and the Father by him. Walking has in it the thought of progress; but all our progress should be with God. As we are rooted and grounded in Christ, so we must ask to grow up in him; ever abiding in our highest moments with God, and never imagining or conceiving any progress which shall remove us from humble confidence in him. Beloved brother in the Lord, it may be that thy heart is agreed with God, and yet thou hast lost for a time thy walking with him; be not at ease in thy soul till thou hast regained it. Search thine own heart by the light of the Word and of the Holy Spirit; and when thou knowest thyself to be agreed with God, through Him who is our peace, hesitate not to draw near with holy confidence to thy Father and thy God, notwithstanding all thy past wanderings; for he welcomes thee to walk with him, seeing that thou art agreed.

At this season we, as a Church, have had our hearts set upon a revival of religion in our midst. Many of us will be greatly and grievously disappointed if such a revival shall not take place. We have felt moved to cry for it; I think I may say we have been almost unanimously thus moved. Already there are signs that God is visiting us in a very remarkable manner, but our souls are set upon a greater work than we have ever seen. Now, dear friends, we need as the first and most essential thing in this matter, that God should walk with us. In vain we shall struggle after revival unless we have his presence. If, then, we desire to have his presence with us, we must see to it that we are perfectly agreed with him both in the design of the work, and in the method of it; and I desire this morning to stir up your pure minds to heart-searching and vigilant self-examination, that every false way may be purged from us, since God will not walk with us as a Church, unless we be agreed with him.

The first remark, then, of this morning, is simply this, we desire in this matter to walk together with God; but, in the second place, if we would have him with us we must be agreed with him; and therefore, thirdly, we desire to purge ourselves of everything which would mar our perfect agreement with God, and so prevent his coming to our aid. I do ask the prayers of God's people that he may enable me to speak to profit this morning, for if ever I felt my own unfitness to edify the saints, I do so just now: I will even confess that if I could have had my own choice, I should have left it to some one else to address you this morning. My harp is out of tune, and the strings are all loosened, but the chief musician understands his instruments, and knows how to get music out of us, and in answer to prayer he will doubtless sustain us and give you a blessing.

I. Let us, first, AVOW OUR DESIRE THAT IN OUR PRESENT EFFORT WE MAY WALK WITH GOD; otherwise our strivings after revival will be very wearisome.

I know of nothing more saddening than to attend a prayer-meeting where the devotion is forced, and the fervour laborious; where brethren puff and strain like engines with a load behind them too heavy for them to drag. It is painful to detect an evident design to get up an excitement, and wind up the people to the proper pitch; when the addresses are adapted to foster hotheadedness, and the prayers to beget superstition. God's true saints cannot but feel that to gain the graces of the Spirit by fleshly vehemence is sad work. They retire from such a meeting, and they say, "How different is this from occasions when God's Spirit has been really at work with us!" Then, like a ship with her sails filled with a fair wind, floating majestically along without tugging and straining, the Church, borne onward with the breath of the divine Spirit, with a full tide of heaven's grace, speeds on her glorious way. "If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence," was the request of Moses; and I think we may rather deprecate than desire a revival if God's presence be not in it. Lord, let us stay as we are, crying and groaning to see better days, rather than permit us to be puffed up with the notion of revival without thine own power in it; let us have no special prayer-meetings merely for the sake of them; but let us, O let us receive special blessings as the result of prayer: if thou dost not intend to help us now let us weep in secret, but let us not rejoice in a mere name if the substance be lacking. During a course of meetings by which we desire to excite the hearts of believers to a deeper interest in spiritual things; if there be not a gracious power in them, you will soon perceive a dulness, a flagging, a heaviness, a weariness stealing over the assembly; the numbers will decline, the prayers will become less fervent, and the whole thing will degenerate into a hollow sham or a mournful monotony. To come up from the wilderness is hard climbing unless we lean on our beloved. O thou who art our beloved and adorable Lord, lest our souls grow weary in well-doing, and faint for heaviness, be pleased to let us enjoy communion with thyself.

Not only is there weariness in our own attempts, but they always end in disappointment, unless God walketh with us. Ye may pray, and pray, and pray, but there shall be no conversions, no sense of quickening, until the Spirit's working be distinctly recognized. The minister shall be just as much a preacher of the mere letter as ever he was; the Church officers shall be as formal and official as ever they were; the Church members shall be as inconsistent and as indifferent as they were wont to be; the congregation shall be as uninterested and as unmoved as they were in the worst times, except the Spirit of God work with us. In this thing we may quote the words of the psalmist, "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep." O friends, it is well to have a holy industry and a devout perseverance; it is well to strain every nerve, and put forth every effort; but all this must end in the most sorry, heart-sickening failure, unless the Lord rend the heavens and come down. I am telling you what you all do know, and what I trust you feel, but it is what we are constantly forgetting; for many are they that go a warfare at their own charges, and so become both bankrupt and defeated; and many be they who would build God's house simply by stress of human effort, but they fail, because God is not there to give them success.

Yet more; supposing that in this our attempt at revival, we should not be favoured with the presence of God; then prayer will be greatly dishonoured. I take it, that when a Church draws near to God in special prayer, asking any mercy, if she does not receive that mercy on account of some disagreement with God, then her belief in prayer is, for the future, greatly weakened; and this is a most serious evil, for it loosens the girdle of the loins of God's saints. Anything which makes men doubt the efficacy of prayer, is an injury to their spirituality; and thus upon the largest scale God's Church will suffer loss if her prayers shall remain unanswered. We must go on; it would be ruin to forbear or to turn our backs. As a Church, we must now conquer or die. How can I again stir you up to supplication, if on this occasion your prayers should be in vain? I shall come into this pulpit with but a faint heart to speak of my Master's faithfulness if he does not give you evidences of it. Ah! my brethren, when you are lifting up your voices in intercession, I cannot expect to mark your earnestness nor to behold your faith, unless that faith shall be confirmed just now by a shower of divine mercy. To the world at large the non-hearing of prayer would be a ready argument, either against the existence of God, or else against the reality of his promise. I hope such a thing as this will not occur. "Aha! aha!" saith the enemy, "see what has come of it all! The people cried, but they cried in vain. They met in large numbers; they approached the mercy-seat with tears and groans, but no result has come of it; there have been no more conversions than before, and God's strength has not been put forth." Would you desire that such a calamity as this should occur. The true soldiers of the cross in our Israel would almost as soon lay down their necks, as that God's honour should thus be attainted in the presence of his foes.

Moreover, every attempt at revival of religion which proves a failure, and fail it must without the presence of God, leaves the Church in a worse condition than it was before; because, if it should prove a failure, from the want of any stir at all; then God's people fall back into their former lethargy, with an excuse for continuing in it; or if a false stir be made, a reaction follows of a most injurious character. I suppose the worst time in the Christian Church is generally that which follows the excitement of a revival; and if that revival has had no reality in it, the mischief which is done is awful and incalulable. If no excitement shall come at all, the mischief is still as great; God's people, being disappointed, have little heart to listen to further exhortations to future zealous action, become contented with their Laodicean lukewarmness, and it becomes impossible to bestir them again. If a revival should apparently have success and yet God be not in it, perhaps this is even worse. The wild-fire and madness of some revivals have been a perfect disgrace to the common sense of the age, let alone the spirituality of the Church. I know, and speak not without book, when I declare that some churches have been seriously deteriorated and permanently injured by large admissions of excited but unconverted persons; so that the only thing a fresh pastor could do was to begin afresh, and purge the church book throughout, sweeping off scores of carnal persons; the beginning anew being almost hopeless, because, after the paroxysm of passion about religion has passed, there follows a season in which religion is treated with indifference, if not with disdain. I had rather see a Church asleep, than see it awake into the fever of fanaticism: better that she should lie still than do mischief. O dear friends, we have felt in our souls, not that we may have revival, but that we must have it; and when we think of the incalculable damage that shall be done to us all if the Lord does not visit us, I am sure we must again draw near to the angel and wrestle afresh, with this determination, that we will not let him go unless he bless us.

We may be confirmed in our anxious desire to have the Lord walking with us in this thing, when we consider the blessings which are sure to flow from his presence. Ah! what holy quickening shall come upon every one of us. The preacher will not have to lament that he has so little power in prayer; both alone and in your presence he shall be strengthened to intercede as an angel of God. You shall not have to mourn that the service lacks its former sweetness. You will feel the blessedness you knew when first you saw the Lord. You will not have to mourn that you are cold and dead, that your songs languish, and that your prayers expire; instead thereof, every action shall be fraught with vigour, every thought shall glow with earnestness, every word shall be clothed with divine power. Let God arise; and doubts and fears shall betake themselves to their hiding-places, as the bats conceal themselves at the rising of the dawn. Let the Lord visit you; and difficulties which frown like Alps, will sink to plains. Let him arise; and all your enemies shall flee before you, as the smoke before the wind; the heavens shall drop with showers of mercy; and even your sins and all the guilt thereof, shall shake as Sinai shook at the presence of the God of Israel. A Church with God's presence in it is holy, happy, united, earnest, laborious, successful; fair as the moon before the Lord, and clear as the sun in the eyes of men, she is terrible as an army with banners to her enemies.

If God shall be pleased to be with his Church, then direct good shall visit our congregation. We used to say at Park Street, that there were not many seat-holders unconverted. The like is to a great extent true here. The immense increase of our Church gives us the hope that the day will come when there will not be a single seat unoccupied by a believer: but it is not the case yet. I suppose the Church is about half the congregation now. There are some, however, that from the very first have listened; but so far as salvation is concerned, they have listened in vain: they have been moved to tears, they have made good resolutions; but after ten or eleven years of ministry, they are just where they were, except that they have accumulated fresh guilt. Some desire to be Christians, but they harbour some darling lust. We know some who used to feel under the Word, but do not feel now. The voice which once was like a trumpet, now lulls them to sleep. Some have made a compromise; and one day they will serve God and another day they will serve their sins; like the Samaritans who feared the Lord and served other gods. Now let our cries be heard for the Master's presence, and we shall soon see these brought in; hearts of stone shall be turned to flesh; the iron of the Word shall break the northern iron and steel; Jehovah Jesus shall ride victoriously through those gates which have been barred against him, and there shall be shouting in heaven because the Lord hath gotten him the victory.

Wider blessings will follow. A Church is never blessed alone. If any one Church shall stand in the vigour of piety, other Churches shall take example therefrom, and make an advance towards a better state. Here we have around us many Churches, hills which God has blessed; but they, like ourselves, have a tendency to slumber. Let God pour out his Spirit here, and the shower will not be confined to these fields, but will drop upon other pastures, and they shall rejoice on every side. Our testimony for God rings through this land; from one end of it to the other. Our ministry is not hidden under a bushel nor confined to a few. Tens of thousands listen every week to our word; and if the Lord shall be pleased to bless it, then shall it be as ointment poured forth, to load the moral atmosphere with a savour of Christ crucified. One nation cannot feel the power of God without communicating some of its blessing to another. The Atlantic cannot divide: no tongue or language can separate us. If God bless France or Switzerland, the influence shall be felt upon the Continent; if he should bless our island, all the whole earth must feel the power thereof. Therefore do we feel encouraged mightily to pray. O, my brethren, the world grows old; man's faith is getting weary of long waiting; the false prophets begin again to appear, and cry lo here, and lo there; but the Lord must come; of this are we confident: in such an hour as we think not, he may appear. How would we have him find us at his coming? Would we have him find his servants sleeping? his stewards wasting his goods? his vinedressers with neglected vines? his soldiers with swords rusted into their scabbards? No, we would have him find us watching, standing upon the watch-tower, feeding his sheep, tending his lambs, succouring the needy, comforting the weary, helping the oppressed. Gird up your loins then, I pray you, as men that watch for their Lord. If my words could have the power in them which I feel they lack, I would stir you up, dear brethren and sisters, to seek unto the mighty God of Jacob, that when the Son of Man cometh, if he find no faith upon the earth elsewhere, at least he may find it in you: if zeal shall be extinct in every other place, at least may he find one live coal yet glowing in your bosom. For this we want his presence, for without it we can do nothing.

II. This brings me, in the second place, to observe, that IF WE WOULD HAVE THE PRESENCE OF GOD, IT IS NECESSARY THAT WE SHOULD BE AGREED WITH HIM.

We must be agreed with God as to the end of our Christian existence. God hath formed us for himself, that we may show forth his praise. The main end of a Christian man is, that having been bought with precious blood, he may live unto Christ, and not unto himself. O brethren! I am afraid we are not agreed with God in this. I must say it, painful though it be, there are many professors, and there are some in this Church, who at least appear to believe that the main end of their Christian existence is to get to heaven, to get as much money as they can on earth, and to leave as much as they can to their children when they die; I say, "to get to heaven," for they selfishly include that as one of the designs of divine grace; but I question, if it were not for their happiness to go to heaven, whether they would care much about going, if it were only for God's glory; for their way of living upon earth is always thus: "What shall I eat? what shall I drink? wherewithal shall I be clothed?" Religion never calls out their thoughtfulness. They can judge, and weigh, and plot, and plan to get money, but they have no plans as to how they can serve God. The cause of God is scarcely in their thoughts. They will pinch and screw to see how little they can contribute in any way to the maintenance of the cause of truth, or to the spread of the Redeemer's kingdom; they will so far condescend to consider religion, as to think how they can profess it in the most economical manner, but nothing more. You will not hear me speak so foolishly and madly, as if I thought that it were not just and laudable in a man to seek to make money to supply the wants of his family, or even to provide for them on his own decease; such a thing is just and right: but whenever this gets to be the main thought; and I am persuaded it is the leading thought of too many professors, such men forget whose they are, and whom they serve; they are living to themselves; they have forgotten who it is that has said, "Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as with silver and gold." Oh! I pray God that I may feel that I am God's man, that I have not a hair on my head which is not consecrated, nor a drop of my blood which is not dedicated to his cause; and I pray, brethren and sisters, that you may feel the same; that selfishness may clean die out of you; that you may be able to say without any straining of the truth, "I have nothing to care for, nor to live for in this world, but that I may glorify God, and spread forth the savour of my Saviour's name." We cannot expect the Master's blessing till we are agreed about this. This is God's will: is it our will to-day? I know I have around me many faithful hearts, who will say, "My desire is, that whether I live or die, Christ may be glorified in me": if we be all of that mind, God will walk with us; but every one who is of another mind, and of a divided heart, is a hindrance and an injury to us in our progress. It would be no loss to lose such persons, but a spiritual benefit to the entire cause, if this dead lumber were cast out. When the body gets a piece of rotten bone into it, it never rests, till, with pain, it casts out the dead thing: and so with the Church; the Church may be increased by dead members, but when she begins to get vigorous and full of life, her first effort is with much pain, perhaps with much marring of her present beauty, to cause the dead substance to come forth; and if this should be the case, though we shall pity those who are cast forth, yet for our own health's sake, we may thank God and take courage.

If we would have God with us we must be agreed as to the real desirableness and necessity of the conversion of souls. God thinks souls to be very precious, and his own words are, "As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, but had rather that he should turn unto me and live." Are we agreed with God in that? Our God thinks souls to be so precious, that if a man could gain the whole world and lose his soul, he would be a loser. Are we agreed with him there? In the person of Christ, our God wept over Jerusalem; watered with tears that city which must be given up to the flames. Have we tears, too? have we compassion, too? When God thinks of sinners it is in this wise: "How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim?" Can we bemoan sinners in that way? Do we stir our souls to an agony of grief because men will turn from God and will wilfully perish in their sin? If, on the contrary, you and I selfishly say, "We are safe, it does not matter to us whether others are brought to know Christ," we are not agreed, God will not work with us; and such of you as feel this indifferentism, this cursed lethargy, are our bane, our burden, our hindrance. God forgive you, and stir you up to feel that your heart will not rest unless poor sinners are plucked as brands from the burning. Are we agreed here?

If we would have the Lord with us, in the next place, we must be agreed as to the means to be used in revival. We are agreed that the first means is the preaching of Christ. We do not want any other doctrine than that we have received Christ lifted up upon his cross, as the serpent was lifted up upon the pole. This is the remedy which we, in this house of prayer, believe in. Let others choose sweet music, or pictures, or vestments, or baptismal water, or confirmation, or human rites; we abhor them, and pour contempt upon them; as for us, our only hope lies in the doctrine of a substitute for sinners, the great fact of the atonement, the glorious truth that Christ Jesus came into the world to seek and to save sinners. I think we are agreed with God in this, that the preaching of Christ is the way by which believers shall be saved. God's great agency is the Holy Spirit. We are agreed, brethren, that we do not want sinners to be converted by our persuasion, we do not want them brought into the Church by excitement; we want the Spirit's work, and the Spirit's work alone. I would not bend my knee once in prayer, much less day by day, to win a mere excitement; we have done without it, and we shall do without it by the grace of God; but I would give mine eyes, if I might but know that the Holy Spirit himself would come forth, and show what divinity can do in turning hearts of stone to flesh. In this thing, I think, that we are agreed with God. But God's way of blessing the Church is by the instrumentality of all her members. The multitude must be fed, but it must not be by Christ's hand alone, "He gave the bread to the disciples, and the disciples, to the multitude." Are you all agreed here? I am afraid not. Many of you are engaged in works of usefulness, and I will make this my boast this day, that I had never thought that I should meet with a people so apostolic in their zeal as the most of you have been. I have marvelled, and my heart has rejoiced when I have seen what self-sacrifice some of the poorest among you have made for Christ; what zeal, what enthusiasm you have manifested in the spreading abroad of the Saviour's name. But still there are some of you who are doing nothing whatever, you have a name to live, but I fear that you are dead; you are very seldom at a prayer-meeting even some Church members and persons whom I know are not kept at home by business, but by sheer indifference to the cause of God. Some of you are never provoked to zeal and to good works. That you come and listen to us, is something; and for what you do we are grateful; but for what you do not do, over this we mourn, because we fear that we are restrained in our efforts for the spread of the Saviour's kingdom, because as a Church we are not agreed in God's plan; and we shall be restrained until every man in the Church can say, "I will consecrate myself this day unto the Lord of hosts; if there is anything to be done, be it to be a door-keeper in the house of God, here am I.

"There's not a lamb among his flock,

I would disdain to feed;

There's not a foe before whose face

I'd fear his cause to plead."

Yet again, dear friends, are we agreed this day as to our utter helplessness in this work? I caught a good sentence the other day. Speaking with a Wesleyan minister, I said to him, "Your denomination during the past year did not increase: you have usually had a large increase to your numbers. You were never so rich as now; your ministers were never so well educated; you never had such good chapels as now, and yet you never had so little success. What are you doing? knowing this to be the fact, what are you doing? How are the minds of your brethren exercised with regard to this?" He comforted me much by the reply. He said, "It has driven us to our knees: we thank God that we know our state and are not content with it. We have had a day of humiliation, and I hope," he said, "some of us have gone low enough to be blessed." There is a great truth in that last sentence, "low enough to be blessed," I do fear me that some of us never do go low enough to be blessed. When a man says, "Oh! yes, we are getting on very well, we do not want any revival that I know of," I fear me he is not low enough to be blessed; and when you and I pray to God with pride in us, with self-exaltation, with a confidence in our own zeal, or even in the prevalence of our own prayers of themselves, we have not come low enough to be blessed. An humble Church will be a blessed Church; a Church that is willing to confess its own errors and failures, and to lie at the foot of Christ's cross, is in a position to be favoured of the Lord. I hope we are agreed, then, with God, as to our utter unworthiness and helplessness, so that we look to him alone.

I charge you all to be agreed with God in this thing, that if any good shall be done, any conversions shall occur, all the glory must be given to him. Revivals have often been spoiled, either by persons boasting that such-and-such a minister was the means of them, or else, as in the case of the North of Ireland, by boasting that the work was done without ministers. That revival, mark you, was stopped in its very midst and seriously damaged by being made a kind of curiosity, and a thing to be gazed at and to be wondered at by persons both at home and abroad. God does not care to work for the honour of men, either of ministers or of laymen, or of Churches either; and if we should say, "Ah! well, I should like to see the presence of God with us that we may have many conversions, and put it in the Magazine, and say, that is how things are done at the Tabernacle," why we should not have a blessing that way. Crowns! crowns! crowns! but all for thy head Jesu! laurels and wreaths! but none for man, all for him whose own right hand and whose holy arm hath gotten him the victory. We must all be agreed on this point, and I hope we are.

3. And now to conclude. LET US PUT AWAY ALL THOSE THINGS WHICH OFFEND OUR GOD.

Before God appeared upon Mount Sinai, the children of Israel had to cleanse themselves for three days. Before Israel could take possession of the promised rest of Canaan, Joshua had to see to it that they were purified by the rite of circumcision. Whenever God would visit his people, he always demands of them some preparatory purging, that they may be fit to behold his presence; for two cannot walk together, unless that which would make them disagree be purged out. A few suggestions then, as to whether there is anything in us with which God cannot agree. Here I cannot preach to you indiscriminately, but put the task into the hand of each man to preach to himself. In the days of the great weeping, we read that every man wept apart and his wife apart, the son apart, and the daughter apart, all the families apart. So it must be here. Is there pride in me? Am I puffed up with my talent, my substance, my character, my success? Lord purge this out of me, or else thou canst not walk with me, for none shall ever say that God and the proud soul are friends: he giveth grace to the humble; as for the proud, he knoweth them afar off, and will not let them come near to him. Am I slothful? do I waste hours which I might usefully employ? Have I the levity of the butterfly, which flits from flower to flower, but drinks no honey from any of them? or have I the industry of the bee, which, wherever it lights, would find some sweet store for the hive? Lord, thou knowest my soul, thou understandest me. Am I doing little where I might do much? Hast thou had but little reaping for much sowing? Have I hid my talent in a napkin? Have I spent that talent for myself, instead of spending it for thee? Slothful souls cannot walk with God. "My Father worketh," saith Jesus, "and I work"; and you who stand in the market-place idle, may stand there with the devil, but you cannot stand there with God. Let every brother who is guilty of this, purge away his sloth.

Or am I guilty of worldliness. This is the crying sin of many in the Christian Church. Do I put myself into association with men who cannot by any possibility profit me? Am I seen where my Master would not go? Do I love amusements which cannot afford me comfort when I reflect upon them; and which I would never indulge in, if I thought that Christ would come while I was at them? Am I worldly in spirit as to fashion? Am I as showy, as volatile, as frivolous as men and women of the world? If so, if I love the world, the love of the Father is not in me; consequently he cannot walk with me, for we are not agreed.

Again, am I covetous? do I scrape and grind? is my first thought, not how I can honour God, but how I can accumulate wealth? When I gain wealth, do I forget to make use of it as a steward? If so, then God is not agreed with me; I am a thief with his substance; I have set myself up for a master instead of being a servant, and God will not walk with me till I begin to feel that this is not my own, but his; and that I must use it in his fear.

Again, am I of an angry spirit? Am I harsh towards my brethren? Do I cherish envy towards those who are better than myself, or contempt towards those who are worse off? If so, God cannot walk with me, for he hates envy, and all contempt of the poor is abhorrent to him. Is there any lust in me? Do I indulge the flesh? Am I fond of carnal indulgences by which my soul suffers? If so, God will not walk with me; for chambering, and wantonness, and gluttony, and drunkenness, separate between a believer and his God: these things are not convenient to a Christian. Before the great feast of unleavened bread, a Jewish parent would sweep out every piece of leaven from his house; and so anxious would he be, and so anxious is the Jew at the present day, that he take a candle and sweeps out every cupboard, no matter though there may have been no food put in there at any time, he is afraid lest by accident a crumb may be somewhere concealed in the house; and so, from the garret to the cellar, he clears the whole house through, to purge out the old leaven. Let us do so. I cannot think you will do so as the effect of such poor words as mine; but if my soul could speak to you, and God blessed the utterance, you would. For my own part, I cry unto my Master, that if there be anything that can make me more fit to be the messenger of God to you and to the sons of men, however painful might be the preparatory process, he would graciously be pleased not to spare me of it. If by sickness, if by serious calamities, if by slander and rebuke, more honour can be brought to him, then hail! and welcome! all these things; they shall be my joy; and to receive them shall be delight. I pray you, utter the same desire: "Lord, make me fit to be the means of glorifying thee."

"The dearest idol I have known,

Whate'er that idol be;

Help me to tear it from its throne,

And worship only thee."

What! do you demur? Do you want for ever to go on in the old dead-and-alive way in which the Churches are just now? Do you feel no sacred passion stirring your breast to anguish for the present, and to hope for the future? O ye cravens, who dread the battle, slink to your beds; but ye who have your Master's spirit in you, and would long to see brighter and better days, lift up your heads with confidence in him who will walk with us if we be agreed.

My text has a main bearing upon the unconverted: I think of preaching from it this evening to those who are not agreed with God, and who cannot walk with him. I pray that they may be reconciled unto God by the death of his Son; and the most likely means to accomplish this, will be by your earnest and fervent prayers. O Lord, hear and answer for Jesus' sake. Amen.

[Mr. Spurgeon's Sermon on "Baptismal Regeneration" has now reached the 180th thousand; it is felt to be important that it should be still more widely circulated, and friends are urged to make an earnest effort to scatter it far and wide.]

Verse 6

The Royal Death Bed

December 22nd, 1861 by C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892)

"Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it? Amos 3:6 .

We have nothing to do this morning with the question of moral evil, and indeed with the awful mystery of the origin of moral evil, we have nothing to do at any time. There may have been some few speculators upon this matter, who like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, could walk in the midst of the fire unharmed, but most men who have ventured near the mouth of this fiery question, have been like Nebuchadnezzar's guards they have fallen down, destroyed by the blasting influence of its heat. The problem we have to solve is not how was evil born, but how shall evil die not how it came into the world, but the mischief it has wrought since its coming, and how it is to be driven out. Those persons who fritter away their time in useless and curious enquiries about the origin of moral evil, and so forth, are generally persons who are too idle to attempt the practical casting out of the fiend, and therefore would kill their time, and quiet their consciences by abstruse controversies and vain janglings about subjects with which we have nothing to do. The evil in the text is that of calamity, and we might so read the verse "Shall there be a calamity in the city, and the Lord hath not done it? a question exceedingly appropriate at the present time. There has been evil in this city; a calamity of an unusual and disastrous nature has fallen upon this nation. We have lost one who will find today a thousand tongues to eulogize him; a prince whose praise is in the mouth of all; and who is in such repute among you that it is utterly needless for me to commend his memory to your hearts. We have lost a man whom it was our habit to suspect so long as he lived, he could do little without arousing our mistrusts; we were always alarmed by phantoms of intrusion, and unconstitutional influence, and now that he has departed, we may sincerely regret that we could not trust where confidence was so well deserved. Not of lack of homage to his rank, his talents, or his house, could he complain, but from his tomb there might well come the still small voice of memory, reminding us of many careless suspicions, a few harsh judgments, and one or two heartless calumnies. I was pleased by a remark made by the leading journal of the age, to the effect that the Prince Consort's removal might suggest deep regrets for our thrifty homage and measured respect. He has deserved nothing but good at our hands. Standing in the most perilous position, his foot has not skipped; standing where the slightest interference might have brought down a storm of animosity upon his head, he has prudently withheld himself, and let public affairs as much as possible alone. Looking upon the nature of our government, and the position of the throne in our constitution, I can but say, "Verily it is a heavy calamity to lose such a husband for such a Queen." So dire is this evil that our troubled hearts are shadowed with dark forebodings of other ills of which this may be the mournful herald. We were saying with David, "My mountain standeth firm, it shall never be moved;" an earthquake has commenced, the mountain trembles, one great rock hath fallen what may come next? We did reckon upon war, but we had no forewarnings of a Royal funeral; we looked forward with some apprehension to strifes abroad, but not to losses at home. And now we feel that a corner-stone in the Royal house has been taken away, and we look forward with sorrow and fear to what may come next, and next, and next. We have great faith in our Constitution, but had we not even greater faith in God, we might fear lest the removal of an eminent minister, lest the taking away of some great men who have stood prominent in our commonwealth, should leave us desolate, without earthly helpers. 'Tis not the fall of yonder stately column, which alone has caused us sadness; it is the prophetic finger pointing to other parts of the goodly pile, which has made us full of forebodings of the time when many a noble pillar must lie in the dust, Nor is this all, or the deepest sorrow. We feel this to be an evil upon the city, because of the taking away of a parent from his children, and such children too princes, princes whom no man may venture to instruct as could a father, princes into whose ears wise counsels will scarcely enter, save through a father's voice princes and princesses, who needed to have his prudent counsel to steer them through the various trials of their minority, and to cheer them when they should come into the battles of life. He is taken away, who, in concert with the Queen, hath so well trained them, and what his loss may be to their future characters time only shall reveal. More than this and here we touch the tenderest string and come nearest to the heart of the evil Her Majesty has lost her beloved husband, her only equal friend, her only confidant, her only councillor in her private cares. Save her children, she has lost all at a blow, and she is this day more widowed than the poorest widower in the land. The bereaved wife of the peasant is too often afflicted by the grasp of chill penury, but she has some equals and friends who prevent the colder hand of regal isolation from freezing the very soul. In our tenderly beloved Sovereign we see Majesty in misery, and what if I say, we behold the empress of sorrow. Just as the mountain-peaks, the first to catch the sunbeams of summer, are the most terribly exposed to the pitiless blasts of winter, so the elevation of sovereignty with all its advantages in prosperity, involves the maximum of sorrow in the hour of tribulation. What rational man among us would be willing to assume imperial cares in ordinary times, but what must they be now, when household bereavement wrings the heart, and there is no more an affectionate husband to bear his portion of the burden. Brethren, we can only sympathize, but we cannot console. Ordinary cases are often within reach of compassion, but the proper reverence due to the highest authority in the land, renders it impossible for the dearest friend to use that familiarity which is the very life of comfort. This is a calamity indeed! O Lord, the comforter of all those whose hearts are bowed down, sustain and console our weeping monarch? Would that Robert Hall, or Chalmers, could arise from the grave, to depict this sorrow? As for me, my lips are so unaccustomed to courtly phrases, and I understand so little of those depths of sorrow, that I am not tutored and prepared to speak on such a subject as this. I do but stammer and blunder, where there is room for golden utterance and eloquent discourse. Thou God of heaven thou knowest that there beats nowhere a heart that feels more tenderly than ours, or an eye that can weep more sincerely for the sorrow of that Royal Lady, who is thus left alone. Alas! for the Prince who has fallen upon the high places! From the council-chamber he is removed, from the abode of all the graces he is taken away, from the home of loveliness, from the throne of honor he is gone, and it is an evil such an evil as has never befallen this nation in the lifetime of any one of us such an evil, that there is but one death and may that be far removed which could cause greater sorrow in the land. But now, our text lifts up its voice, and demands to be heard, since it is a question from the lips of the Eternal God. "Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?" There are two things upon which we will speak this morning. First, God has done it; secondly, God has done it with a design. Let us endeavor to find, if we can, what that design is. I. First, then, there is an evil in the city; but God HAS DONE IT. There was considerable curiosity to enquire into the second cause of this evil. Whence came the fever? We could not suppose it to be bred, as the fever frequently is, in our courts and alleys in the plague-nest where filth provided it with all its food, until it was hatched to pestilence. What were its earliest symptoms, what its growth, and how it was that it baffled the physician's skill. We may lay aside these enquiries, to look apart and away from the second cause, to the first great cause who hath done all. "The Lord hath done it." He gave the breath, and he hath taken it away; he moulded the manly form, and he has laid it prostrate in the dust, he has sent the man and he has said, "Return! to the dust whence thou wast taken." I call to remembrance the notions which have spread throughout this world, and which are still living in our age the notions which seek to banish God, and make him a stranger in the midst of his own works. God must have done this thing, or else we are driven to some other alternative. How came this calamity about? Shall we suppose it to be by chance? There are still some found foolish enough to believe that events happen without divine predestination, and that different calamities transpire without the overruling hand, or the direct agency of God. Alas! for you and for me, if chance had done it. Ah! what were we, men and brethren, if we were left to chance! We should be like poor mariners, put out to sea in an unsafe vessel, without a chart and without a helm; we should know nothing of the port to which we might ultimately come; we should only feel that we were now the sport of the winds, the captives of the tempest, and might soon be the victims of the all-devouring deep. Alas! poor orphans were we all, if we were left to chance. No father's care to watch over us, but left to the fickleness and fallibility of mortal things! What were all that we see about us, but a great sand storm in the midst of a desert, blinding our eyes, preventing us from ever hoping to see the end through the darkness of the beginning. We should be travelers in a pathless waste, where there were no roads to direct us travelers who might be overturned and overwhelmed at any moment, and our bleached bones left the victims of the tempest, unknown, or forgotten of all. Thank God it is not so with us. Chance exists only in the heart of fools, we believe that everything which happens to us is ordered by the wise and tender will of him who is our Father and our Friend, and we see order in the midst of confusion, we see purposes accomplished where others discern fruitless wastes, we believe that, "He hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet." Some, on the other hand, run to another extreme, still forgetting their God. They deny the thought of chance, but they bend to the idea of fate. Some predestinarians without a God, are as far astray in their ideas as those who believe in chance without a God. For what is the "fate" of some men? It reminds me of one of those huge machines employed in the lead mines, where two wheels are always revolving, and breaking the stones quarried from the pit. The stones at first lie at a distance, but they are continually moving nearer and nearer to the all-devouring mouth of the great wheels, and at last they are crushed and ground. Such is fate in the minds of some men. Or to use another figure. It is like the great car of Juggernaut, dragged along by irresistible power. On it comes, crushing, mangling, flattening beneath in wheels the bleeding bodies lying in the way. From this horrid car of fate none can getaway, none even attempt to escape. They are bound hand and foot, and laid down in its pathway, and when the time comes the wheels will grind the poor wretches to powder. Well, I thank God that while I believe in predestination, I know the difference between that and fate. Fate is predestination blind, demented, brainless, wandering about, achieving wondrous things without a purpose, overturning mountains, plucking up cedars by the roots, scattering firebrands, hurling deaths about, but all without an end. Such is fate. It is because it must be, events occur, because they shall be. But predestination is a glorious thing. With many eyes it looketh to the interests of God and his creatures too, and although it saith the thing must be, yet it must be because it is wise, and right, and just, and kind, that it should be; and though we may think that it comes to the same in the end, yet to our hearts the differences are as wide as the poles asunder. Believe not in fate, but believe in God. Say not it was the man's destiny, but say it is God's will. Say not, a cruel and irresistible fate hath snatched him away; but say, a tender hand, finding that the due time was come, hath taken him from evil to come. These two suppositions being disposed of, there remains another. "Is there evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?" If neither a foolish chance nor an insensate fate hath done it; perhaps the spirit of evil may have inflicted it. Perhaps Satan may bring evils upon us; perhaps he may drag down men to their graves; perhaps he may cut the thread of life; perhaps he is the evil genius of the world, and the keeper of the gates of death. Brethren, we scout the thought at once from our minds. Begone far hence, foul King of Errors! thou art the prince of the air, but thou art not king of kings, nor art thou now the king of death, the keys swing not at the girdle, not from thy black lips can come the summons, "Prepare to meet thy doom," not with thy foul fingers are we plucked from our houses and from our thrones, not through thy cruelty are we given up to us in a black day. Thy despotic and tyrannic mind has no power to lord it over us. No, Jesus, thou hast vanquished Satan, thou hast delivered us from the very fear of death, because thou hast destroyed him that had the power of death, that is the devil. A thousand angels could not drag us to the grave; and thou , black spirit, thou shalt not be able to confine us there, when once the trump of the archangel shall awaken us from our sleep. Nay, Satan has not done it. Look not on your troubles and trials, my brethren in Christ, as coming from hell. Satan may sometimes be the instrument of your palms, but still they come from God. In the cup of our sorrows, there is not a dreg which the Father did not put there; bitter as the compound may be, the eternal hand of wisdom mixed the whole. The rod may fall, but Satan does not wield it. Like as a father "chasteneth his children," so the Lord doth chasten "them that fear him." But, once more: one more thought arises in our mind. Perhaps the greatest temptation of modern times, is to impute everything which happens to the laws of nature. Now, this may satisfy philosophy, but theology goes a little further, and while it admits all the laws of matter, yet it asserts that a law is in itself utterly powerless, apart from a power to carry it out. It may be a law that such-and-such things shall be done, but they never will be done unless there be some power to make the law effective. The notion of some in modern times seems to be, that this world is like a great clock, wound up many years ago, in fact, there are some who believe in perpetual motion and appear to teach that it wound itself up. In order to get rid of God, and send him as far away as possible, they go back to primeval times, and conceive that then all the wheels were set in motion, and a sufficient quantity of momentum put into the whole affair, so that it is now going on of itself. As to divine interpositions, these they will not believe, miracles, of course, are absurd, and everything is left to the ordinary laws of nature, there being sufficient vitality, according to some, in the world itself to carry on its own acts, according to certain laws and ruled. Blessed be God, we know that this is not true. We believe it is our duty to use every sanitary means to remove the seeds of disease; we believe that they err who would proclaim a fast over a plague, when it were better to sweep the street; we think that they are wrong who only go to the prayer-meeting when they had better go and put down a row of dilapidated cottages and build better ones; we think that they are impractical and do not understand the Scriptures well, who would be on their knees when they ought to be on their feet and doing earnest work for man; but at the same time, still we have it, that the Lord has done everything, and that these calamities come not except God putteth forth his hand that it is his will to remove men by death, and only by his will could they die. Why, that idea of leaving us all to machinery is an unhappy one to a man who can say, "My Father, my Father in heaven." It is as if a child should be left without nurse or parent, but then there is a cradle which works by machinery, and rocks the child so many hours a day; when it is time for the child to wake he is aroused by machinery; there is an engine ready to feed him; them is a contrivance prepared to take off his garments at night, and an invention to put them on in the morning; he grows up, and whatever is to be done, has to be done by a machine; no love, no father, no tender nurse, no kind and affectionate mother, he is the child of machines and wheels; and so, from year to year, he is passed on from one to another. When he comes up into life he is still fed by a machine; he sleeps, he goes on his journeys, in everything that he does he seen no living face, he feels no soft hand, he hears no loving tender voice; it is one clever piece of soulless, lifeless mechanism that accomplishes all. Now, I bless God that is not the case with us. I can see my Father's hand, I thank him I am fed, but I know he feeds me, I know the laws of nature contribute to preserve life, but I see the impress of his presence in my life, and I should feel like a sad and miserable orphan, with nothing that could find my heart's craving after a something to love, if I believed this world to be deserted of its God, and to have been going on with no Father near it to keep it in order, and to make it produce the insults which he designed. Blessed be God, we have no doubt about our answer to the question. Even if there be evil in a city the Lord hath done it! Let us pause a moment here, and think. If, then, the Lord hath done it, with what awe is every calamity invested? Standing by the royal death-bed, I thought I was in the presence of a prince, but lo, I see a man. It is thy work, O thou Most High; thou hast sealed those eyes in darkness; thou hast bidden that heart cease its beatings, thou, even thou, hast stretched the manly form in death. How near we are to God! Tread softly, as you go by that little room where your infant's dead body lies yet unburied; for God is there, plucking the flower-bud and appropriating it to himself. You have had some trial yesterday. "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet;" for God is in that burning bush. Men see nothing but the calamity; the eyes of faith see God. We sometimes count it matter of interest if we hear that such-and-such a departed worthy slept in such-and-such a room, or wrote in such a place. What shall we say, when we remember that God is there that God is here that while we wear these garments of sorrow, when we bowed our heads just now, and shed tears of sympathy, God was here himself, the All-worker, the King of kings, the Lord of lords. Speak with bated breath; hush, and be silent, you are in the presence of majesty. Let us think of national calamities or of private ills with that reverence which should be inspired by a consciousness of the presence of Deity. And then, again, if God hath done it, for ever be put away all questions about its being right. It must be right. If any would reply, we would answer them in the curt phrase of Paul, "Nay but O man, who art thou that repliest against God?" But to take him away, and to remove him just in the hour of the nation's perils can this be right. Brethren, it must be. He has died at the best hour; the affliction has come at the most fitting season. It would have been wrong that it should have been otherwise, it would neither have been wise nor kind that he should have been spared. And this I gather from the fact that God has taken him away; and therefore it must be wisest, best, kindest. Only say the same over all your losses. Though your dearest friend be removed, be hushed, be dumb with silence and answer not, because thou didst it, even thou, O God, therefore we say, "Thy will be done." And this, too, shall be our best comfort. God hath done it. What! shall we weep for what God hath done! Shall we sorrow when the Master hath taken away what was his own? "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord." The gardener had a choice flower in his beds. One morning he missed it. He had tended it so carefully that he looked upon it with the affection of a father to a child, and he hastily ran through the garden and sought out one of the servants, for he thought surely an enemy had plucked it, and he said to him, "Who plucked that rose?" And the servant said, "I saw the master walking through the garden early this morning, when the sun was rising, and I saw him bear it away in his hand." Then he that tended the rose said, "It is well; let him be blessed; it was his own; for him I held it; for him I nursed it and if he hath taken it, it is well: So be it with your hearts. Feel that it is for the best that you have lost your friend, or that your best relation his departed. God has done it. Be ye filled with comfort; for what God hath done can never be a proper argument for tears. Do ye weep, ye heavens, because God hath veiled the stars? Dost thou weep, O earth, because God hath hidden the sun? What God hath done is ever ground for sonnet and for hallelujah. And even here, o'er the dead as yet unburied, our faith begins to sing its song "'Tis well, 'tis well; 'tis for the best, and let the Lord's name be praised now as ever." II. I now only want your attention for a few minutes while I pass on to the second head. IF GOD HATH DONE IT, HE HATH DONE IT WITH SOME DESIGN. It is not always proper for us to ask reasons for divine acts, for if he gives no account of his matters we ought not to ask any account. That frivolous affectation of piety which leads even professedly Christian men to call every affliction a judgment, and to consider that every patron who is suddenly taken away, dies as a judgment either upon him or others, I detest from my very soul. The infidel press usually lays hold upon this as being our weakest point. It is not our weakest point; we have nothing to do with it. Those who talk thus know nought of their Bibles. They upon whom the tower of Siloam fell, dream ye that they were worse sinners than others? I am utterly sick of the cant of a portion of the religious world, when they raised a kind of miniature howl at me, when I said, and still repeat it, that an accident on a railway on the Sunday is not a judgment, but happens in the common course of Providence, and that we are not to look for an immediate reason close at hand for any of these events. God's judgments are a vast deep, they are not that little shadow pool, to the bottom of which every fool's plummet may reach. God has some greater mystery in what he does than these, which every babe might discover. But, we draw a line between private calamities and national calamities. Nations have no future, hence the Judge of Unctions must chastise them here. For individuals, the punishment of sin is not in this world, but in the world to come; but nations will not rise as nations they will rise as individuals, hence, when a death becomes a national calamity, it is fitting and proper to question, if we do not pry too deep, as to why God hath done it. Personally, the judgment is in the next world, and to each man the end of his career is to come there; but with nations I think there are judgments here, and that we should be wrong if we passed by the dealings of God, without hearing "the rod and him that hath appointed it." Now, why hath God been pleased to take away the Consort of our Queen? I think, in the first place, we may see a motive for it in his thus giving a most solemn monition to all the kings and princes of the earth. Thus saith Jehovah, King of kings and Lord of lords: "Emperors and princes! ye thou die like men. Let not your crowns seem to you eternal; there is but one King, immortal, invisible. Think not, when ye stretch your spectres over nations, that yours is an Almighty arm; your arm shall drop the rod, your head shall lose its crown; your purple shall give place to the shroud, and your palace shall be the narrow limits of the tomb." The dead from their graves are crying

"Princes? this clay muse be your bed In spite of all your towers; The tall, the mighty, and majestic head Must lie as low as ours."

You will say, "But why not remove a common and ordinary person?" Because it would not have that effect. Thou, God, hast spoken from the castle, where the flag, half elevated, hung out the sign of sorrow, and thou hast said to princes who must hear, and to Czars who must listen, "I am God and beside me there is none else. As for you, ye kings, your breath is in your nostrils; men of high degree are vanity; wherein are ye to be accounted of?" We, the multitude, can hear sermons every day, when we see our fellows and our equals removed from us by death; but these high and lofty ones sit up in their state like the gods in high Olympus, and if there were not death in their ranks, they might write themselves down as demigods, and demand worship at our bands, is thy pride, O empire! thy escutcheon marred and blotted; for Death, the herald, hath challenged the royalty of emperors and kings, and dashed down, once for all, his gauntlet in defiance of the princes of the earth. Ye shall sleep like your serfs and slaves; ye shall die like your subjects. Heroes has passed away, as well as the minions he led to slaughter. And so, ye mighty ones, must ye find that Death advances with equal foot to the palace of the king to the cottage of the poor. More than this: who can tell how many a heart that had been careless in our court, and thoughtless among our lords, may be made to consider? If anything can do it, this must. They who have been dazzled with the brightness of splendor, and have lost their thought amidst the noise of pomp, will hear for once a sermon by a preacher whom they dare not despise; for God will say to them, "Courtiers! noblemen! peers! I have taken away your head from you; prepare ye to meet your God! "And it may be that today there are knees bowed in prayer which never bowed before, and eyes may weep for sin as well as for death to-day, and hearts may be breaking with a consciousness of guilt, as well as with a sense of loss. 'Tis hard for the rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven, thus Providence attempts to make it easy. It is not easy to get the ear of those who are thus immersed in the ordinary gaieties and cares of Court life; but this detains them, death holds the wedding guests, while with his lean and skinny hand uplifted, he tells out the tale, and makes them hear, and checks and keeps them till the story is done. It may be that God intends to bring out for this our age, some who shall stand towards the Church of God to-day, as Lady Huntingdon and Ann Erskine did to the Church a hundred years ago. It may be he is tutoring to-day, some women who, like Anne of Bohemia, the friend of the Reformers, may become promoters of the gospel of Christ; and those who otherwise might have been strangers may come to lend their influence and their power to the promotion of real godliness, and the vital interests of men. I think these are not unreasonable things to say. We may see that God has his purpose here. Besides, methinks today God has spoken to us as a people. He has shown to us our entire dependence upon him. He can take away every Prince and every Noble, every Cabinet Minister, and every Privy Councillor; he can leave this nation like a ship dismasted; he can, if he so wills, take the hand from the helm, and let her be drifted out to sea, and there she may be encompassed with the clouds of war and the lightnings of judgment, and all our state may suffer wreck like Nineveh and Babylon of old. Britain! God hath blessed thee, but remember, it is thy God. England, God hath honored thee; but forget not the God who keeps thee. O nation, too apt to become proud of thine own strength, now that thou art today wrapped about with sackcloth, and the ashes are on thy head, bow thou and say, "God is God alone; the shields of the mighty belong unto him, and unto him, and unto him alone, be glory and honor, for ever and ever." Then, he has spoken to each of us as individuals. I hear a voice which says to me, "Preacher! be instant in season and out of season, be up and doing earnest and fervent, for thy day is short, and thy time shall soon be over." I hear a voice which says to you, officers of I he Church, "Be diligent in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; for soon shall the pallor of death overtake you, and he shall lay his chill hand upon your hoary heads, and stretch you in the cold grave." I hear a voice which speaks to the people of my charge, the members of this Christian Church "Work while it is called to-day, for the night cometh wherein no man can work." And I hear a solemn note, tinging as a funeral bed to you who are unconverted, and I translate its message thus, "Prepare to meet your God, ye careless ones, who are at ease, make ready, for he comes; ye thoughtless ones, who give yourselves no trouble about eternity, make ready, for he comes, drunkard, thou who art a lover of pleasure more than a lover of God, make ready for he comes, swearer, blasphemer, if there be such a one here, make ready, for he comes; he comes whom thou hast blasphemed; and each one of you, if ye be out of Christ, if your sins still lie upon you, if ye have never sought and found absolution from the lips of God your Father, seek it, seek it, for he comes "When at the battle of Balaklava, the troop of soldiers rode into the valley of death, it must have been a frightful thing to see your comrade reel in the saddle and fall back, to hear bullet after bullet whistling about one's ears; and shots finding their mark in one's companion; to see the road strewed with bodies, and the ranks so continually riddled and thinned. And what has been the life of many of us but such a charge as that? Companions of our boyhood! where are ye? Friends of our youth! how many of you have fallen? And the gray-haired sire, as he looks back can say, "How few survive of all I once new? How many have gone! What multitudes have fallen in the valley of decision!" And we stand miracles of long-suffering; we stand monuments of mercy! Must not our turn soon come? Must not our turn soon come, I say? Have we a lease of our lives? Can we postpone the dread moment? Can we hope to live long, when the whole of the longest life is short? Let us prepare, for to-morrow may see our coffin measured, to-morrow may behold us ready for our cerements; nay, to-night the setting sun may set upon our dead bodies. I do beseech you, remember, men, that ye are mortal. Call to recollection, by this solemn drapery of woe, and by the garment. Of your sorrow, that soon you must be wept over; soon mourners shall go about the streets for you , and you shall go to your long homes. I am addressing some of you this morning, who awake my tenderest anxieties. You have been to hear this voice before, some of you, and you have trembled; but your strong passions are too much for you. You have said, "Go thy way; when I have a more convenient season I will send for thee;" and that convenient season has not come yet. You would be saved; but you must be damned. You have longings after life at times, but the cravings of that old lust, that old habit of drunkenness, that old vice, those old corruptions, come, and you go back like dogs to your vomit, and like sows that were washed to your wallowing in the mire. I speak to some this morning, who have trembled in this house, when they heard the Word preached, and they have gone home, and they have felt for a little while solemnly impressed, but they have put the anger of mercy from them; they have despised their own salvation. Well, ye shall do it but a few times more, ye shall despise your own souls but a few more days, and then ye shall know, on your deathbeds, that we have not lied to you, but have spoke to you God's truth. May God convince you of that, before you discover it too late, when the judgment shall sit, and your body, together reunited, shall stand before the judgment seat. Feeble as my words may be, it will make a sad part of the account that you were warned to think on your latter end, and to turn to God. Oh! by death and all its terrors, if unaccompanied by faith by resurrection and the horrors it shall increase, if you shall perish unforgiven by the judgment and its tremendous pomp by the sentence and its eternal certainty by the punishment and its everlasting agony by time and eternity by death and the grave by heaven and by hell by God and by the wounds of the Savior awake, ye sleeping ones! Awake, ere ye sleep the sleep of death! The way of salvation is again proclaimed. "Whosoever believeth in the Lord Jesus Christ hath everlasting life." "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." On yonder tree he pours out his blood a sacrifice. Trust thy soul with him, and he will save you; put it in his hands, and he will keep it, and at the last he will be answerable for thy soul, and he will present it "without spot or wrinkle or any such thing," before the throne of God, even the Father. May the Lord follow with his blessing what has been said, and to him shall be glory.