Teaching Resources International

“Not as I will, but as thou wilt.”— Matthew 26:39

The apostle Paul, writing concerning our Lord Jesus Christ, says, “Through he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.”  He who, as God, knew all things, had to learn obedience, in the time of his humiliation.  He, who is in himself Wisdom Incarnate, did himself condescend to enter the school of suffering: there we learn that important lesson of the Christian life, obedience to the will of God; and here, in Gethsemane’s garden, you can see the Divine Scholar going forth to practice his lesson.  He had been all his lifetime learning it, and now he has to learn it for the last time in his agony and bloody sweat, and in his terrible death upon the cross.  Now is he to discover the utmost, depths of suffering, and to attain to the height of the knowledge of obedience.  See how well he has learned his lesson; note how complete and ripe a scholar he is.  He has attained to the very highest class in that school; and, in the immediate respect of death, can say to his Father, “Not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

The object of this discourse is to commend to you the blessed example of our Lord Jesus Christ, and, as God the Holy Spirit shall help me, to urge you to be made like unto, your glorious Head, and yourselves to learn, by all the daily providences with which God is pleased to surround you, this lesson of resignation to the will of God, and of making an entire surrender to him.

I have been struck lately, in reading works by some writers who belong to the Romish Church, with the marvelous love which they have towards the Lord Jesus Christ.  I did think, at one time, that it could not be possible for any to be saved in that church; but, often, after I have risen from reading the books of those holy men, and have felt myself to be quite a dwarf by their side, I have said, “Yes, despite their errors, these men must have been taught of the Holy Spirit.  Notwithstanding all the evils of which they have drunk so deeply, I am quite certain that they must have had fellowship with Jesus, or else they could not have written as they did.”  Such writers are few and far between; but, still, there is a remnant according to, the election of grace even in the midst of that apostate church.

Looking at a book by one of them, the other day, I met with this remarkable expression, “Shall that body, which has a thorn-crowned Head, have delicate, pain-fearing members?  God forbid!”  That remark went straight to my heart at once.  I thought how often the children of God shun pain, reproach, and rebuke, and think it to be a strange thing when some fiery trial happens to them.  If they would but recollect that their Head had to sweat as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground, and that their Head was crowned with thorns, it would not seem strange to them that the members of his mystical body also have to suffer.  If Christ had been some delicate person, if our glorious Head had been reposing upon the soft pillow of ease, then might we, who are the members of his Church, have expected to go through this world with joy and comfort; but if he must be bathed in his own blood, if the thorns must pierce his temples, if his lips must be parched, and if his mouth must be dried up like a furnace, shall we escape suffering and agony?  Is Christ to have a head of brass and hands of gold?  Is his head to be as if it glowed in the furnace, and are not we to glow in the furnace, too?  Must he pass through seas of suffering, and shall we—

“Be carried to the skies,

On flowery beds of ease”?

Ah!  No!  We must be conformed unto our Lord in his humiliation if we would be made like him also in his glory.

So, brethren and sisters, I have to discourse to you upon this lesson, which some of us have begun to learn, but of which as yet we know so little, — this lesson of saying, “Not as I will, but as thou wilt.”  First, let me explain the meaning of this prayer; then, urge you, by certain reasons, to make this your constant cry; next, show what will be the happy effect of its being the paramount desire of your spirits; and we will conclude with a practical enquiry, —what can bring us to this blessed condition?

I. First, then, WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS PRAYER? “Not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

I shall not address myself to those Christians who are but as dwarfs, who know little about the things of the kingdom.  I will speak rather to those who do business in the deep waters of communion, who know what it is to pillow their heads upon the bosom of Jesus, to walk with God as Enoch did, and to talk with him as Abraham did.  My dear brethren, only such as you can understand this prayer in all its length and breadth.  Your brother, who as yet scarcely knows the meaning of the word communion, may pray thus in some feeble measure; yet it is not to be expected that he should discern all the spiritual teaching that there is in these words of our Lord; but to you who are Christ-taught, you who have become ripe scholars in the school of Christ, to you I may speak as unto wise men, —judge ye what I say.

If you and I mean this prayer, and do not use it as a mere form of words, but mean it in all its fullness, we must, be prepared for this kind of experience.  Sometimes, when we are in the midst of the most active service, when we are diligently serving God both with our hands and our heart, and when success is crowning all our labors, the Lord will lay us aside, take us right away from the vineyard, stud thrust us into the furnace. Just, at the very time when the church seems to need us most, and when the world’s necessities are most of all appealing to us, and when our hearts are full of love towards Christ and towards our fellow-creatures, it will often happen that, just then, God will strike us down with sickness, or remove us from our sphere of activity.  But if we really mean this prayer, we must be prepared to say: “Not as I will, but as thou wilt.”  This is not easy, for does not the Holy Spirit himself teach us to long after active service for our Savior?  Does he not, when he gives us love towards our fellow-men, constrain us, as it were, to make their salvation our meat and our drink?  When he is actively at work within our hearts, do we not feel as if we could not live without serving God?  Do we not then feel that, to labor for the Lord is our highest rest, and that toil for Jesus is our sweetest pleasure?  Does it not then seem most trying to our ardent spirit to be compelled to drink the cup of sickness, and to be incapable of doing anything actively for God?  The preacher is seeing men converted and his ministry successful; but, on a sudden, he, is compelled to cease from preaching; or the Sunday-school teacher has, by the grace of God, been the means of bringing his class into an interesting and hopeful condition; yet, just when the class, needs his presence most, he is smitten down, so that he, cannot, go on with his work.  Ah!  Then it is that the spirit finds it hard to say, “Not as I will, but as thou wilt.”  But if we adopt this prayer, this is what it means; that we should be prepared to suffer instead of to serve, and should be as willing to lie in the trenches as to scale the walls, and as willing to be laid aside in the King’s hospital as to be fighting in the midst of the rank and the of the King’s army.  This is hard to flesh and blood, but we must do it if we present this petition.

If we really mean this prayer, there will be a second trial for us.  Sometimes, God will demand of us that we fallout in unpropitious fields; he will set his children to plough the rock and to cast their bread upon the waters.  He will send his Ezekiel to prophesy in a valley full of dry bones, and his Jonah to carry his message to Nineveh.  He will give his servants strange work to do, —work which seems as if it never could be successful, or bring honor either to God or to themselves.  I doubt not that there are some ministers, who toil and labor with all their might, yet who see but little fruit. Far away in the dark places of heathendom, there are men who have been telling for years with scarcely a convert to cheer them; and here, too, in England, there are men who are preaching, in all sincerity and faithfulness, the Word of the Lord, yet they do not see souls converted.  They know that they are unto God a sweet savor of Christ, both in them that perish, and in them that are saved.

Our hearts are, I trust, so full of the Spirit prompting us to cry, like Rachel, “Give me children, or I die;” that we cannot rest content without seeing the success of our labors.  Yet the Master, in effect, says to us, “No, I tell you to continue to toil for me, though I give you no fruit for your labor; you are to keep on ploughing this rock, simply because I tell you to do it.”  Ah! then, brethren, it is hard to say, “Not my will but thine be done.”  But we must say it; we must feel that we are ready to forego even the joy of harvest, and the glory of success, if God wills it.

At other times, God will remove his people, from positions of honorable service, to other offices that are far inferior in the minds of men.  I think that I should feel it hard if I had to be banished from my large congregation, and from my thousands of hearers, to a small village where I could only preach the gospel to a little company of people; yet I am sure that, if I entered fully into the spirit of our Lord’s words, —“Not as I will, but as thou wilt,”—I should be quite as ready to be there as to be, here.  I have heard that, among the Jesuits, such is the extraordinary obedience which they are compelled to pay to their superiors that, on one occasion, there was a president of one of their colleges, who had written some of the most learned books in any language, a man of the highest talents, and the superior of the order took a freak into his head, for some reason, to send him straight, away from the country where he was to Bath, to stand there in the street for a year, and sweep the crossing, and the man did it.  He was compelled to do it; his vow obliged him to do anything that he was told to do.  Now, in a spiritual sense, this is hard to perform; but, nevertheless, it is a Christian’s duty.

We remember the saying of a good man that the angels in heaven are so completely given up to obedience to God that, if there should be two works to do, ruling an empire and sweeping a crossing, neither of the two angels, who might be selected to go on these two errands, would have any choice in the matter, they would just leave it with their Lord to decide which part they were to fulfill.  You may perhaps, be called from the charge of the services in a place of worship, to become one of the humblest members in another church; you may be taken from a place of much honor, and put in the very lowest ranks of the army; are you willing to submit to that kind of treatment?  Your flesh and blood say, “Lord, if I may still serve, in thine army, let; me be a captain; or, at least, let me be a sergeant, or a corporal.  If I may help to draw thy chariot, let me be the leading horse, let me run first in the team, let me wear the gay ribbons.”  But, God may say to you, “I have put thee there in the thick of the battle, now I will place thee behind; I have given thee vigor and strength to fight with great success, now I will make thee tarry by the stuff; I have, done with thee in the prominent position, now I will use thee somewhere else.”  But if we can only pray this prayer, “Not as I will, but as thou wilt,” we shall be ready to serve, God anywhere and everywhere, so long as we know that we are doing his will.

But there is another trial which we shall all have to endure in our measure, which wilt prove whether we understand by this prayer what, Christ meant by it.  Sometimes, in the service of Christ, we must be prepared to endure the loss of reputation, of honor, and even, of character itself.  I remember, when I first, came to London to preach the Word, I thought that I could bear anything for Christ; but I found myself shamefully slandered, all manner of falsehoods were uttered concerning me, and in agony I fell on my time before God, and cried unto him. I felt as though that was a thing I could not bear; my character was very dear to me, and I could not endure to have such false things said about me.  Then this thought came to me, “You must give up all to Christ, you must, surrender everything for him, character, reputation, sad all that you have; and if it is the Lord’s will, you shall be reckoned the vilest, of the vile, so long as you can still continue to serve him, and yea’ character is really pure, you need not fear.  If it is your Master’s will that you shall be trampled and spit upon by all the wicked men in the world, you must simply bear it, and say, ‘Not as I will, but; as thou wilt.’”  And I remember then how I rose from my knees, and sang to myself that verse,—

“If on my face, for thy clear name,

Shame and reproaches be,

All hail reproach, and welcome shame.

If thou remember me.”

“But how hard it was,” you say, “for you to suffer the loss of character, and to have evil things spoken against you falsely for Christ’s name’s sake!”  And what was the reason why it was so hard?  Why, it was just because, I had not fully learnt how to pray this prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ, —and I am afraid that I have not completely learnt it yet.  It is a very delightful thing to have even our enemies speaking well of us, to go through this world with such holiness of Character that men who pour scorn upon all religion cannot find fault with us; but it is an equally glorious thing for us to be set in the pillory of shame, to be pelted by every passer-by, to be the song of the, drunkard, to be the by-word of the swearer, when we do not deserve it, and to endure all this for Christ’s sake.  This is trite heroism; this is the meaning of the prayer of our text.

Again, some of you have at times thought, “Oh, if the Master will only be pleased to open a door for me where I may be, the means of doing some good!  How glad I should be if I could have either more wealth, or more influence, or more knowledge, or more talents, with which I might serve him better.”  You have prayed about the matter, and thought about it, and you have said, “If I could only get into such-and-such a position, how excellently should I be able to serve God!”  You have seen your Master give to some of his servants ten talents, but he has giver you only one; you have gone on your knees, and asked him to be good enough to trust you with two, and he has refused it.  Or, you have had two and you have asked him to let you have ten; and he has said, “No, I will give you two talents and no more.”  But, you say, “Is it not a laudable desire, that I should seek to do more good?”  Certainly; trade with your talents, multiply them if you can.  But, suppose you have no power of utterance, suppose you have no opportunities of serving God, or even suppose the sphere of your influence is limited, what then?  Why, you are to say “Lord, I hoped it was thy will that I might have a wider sphere, but if it is not, although I long to serve thee on a larger some, I will be quite content to glorify thee in my present narrower sphere, for I feel that here is an opportunity for the trial of my faith and resignation, and again I say, ‘Not as I will, but as thou wilt.’”

Christian men, are you prepared heartily to pray this prayer?  I fear there is not a single individual amongst us who could pray it in all its fullness of meaning.  Perhaps you may go as far as I have already gone; but if God should take you at your word, and say, “My will is that your wife should be smitten with a fatal illness, and, like a fading lily, droop and die before your eyes; that your children should be caught up to my loving bosom in heaven; that your house should be burned with fire; that you should be left penniless, a pauper dependent on the charity of others; it is my will that you should cross the sea; that you should go to distant lands, and endure unheard-of hardships; it is my will that, at last, your bones should lie bleaching on the desert sand in some foreign clime.”  Are you willing to endure, all this for Christ?  Remember that you have not attained unto the full meaning of this prayer until you have said, “Yes” to all that it means; and, until you can go to the uttermost lengths to which God’s providence may go, you have not gone to the full extent of the resignation in this cry of our Lord.

Many of the early Christians, I think, did know this prayer by heart; it is wonderful how willing they were to do anything and be anything for Christ.  They had got this idea into their heads, that they were not to live, to themselves; and they had it also in their hearts; and they believed that, to be martyred, was the highest honor they could possibly wish for.  Consequently, if they were brought to the tribunals of the judges, they never ran away from their persecutors; they almost courted death, for they thought it was the highest privilege that they could possibly have if they might be torn in pieces by the lions in the arena, or be decapitated with the sword.  Now, if we also could but get that idea into our hearts, with what courage would it gird us, how fully might we then serve God, and how patiently might we endure persecution if we had but learn the meaning of this prayer, “Not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

II. In the second place, I AM TO TRY TO GIVE YOU SOME REASONS WHY IT WILL BE BEST FOR US ALL TO SEEK TO HAVE THE HOLY SPIRIT WITHIN US, SO THAT WE MAY BE BROUGHT INTO THIS FRAME OF MIND AND HEART.

And the first reason is because it is simply a matter of right.  God ought to have his way at all times, and I ought not to have mine whenever it is contrary to his.  If ever my will is at cross-purposes to the will of the Supreme, it is but right that mine should yield, to his.  If I could have my own way, —if such a poor, feeble creature as I am could thwart the Omnipotent Creator, it would be wrong for me to do it. What!  Hath he made me, and shall he not do as he wills, with me?  Is he like the potter, and am I but as the clay, and shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, “Why hast thou made me thus.”  No, my Lord, it is but right that thou shouldest do what thou pleasest with me, for I am thine; —thine, for thou hast made me; —thine, for thou hast bought me with thy blood.  If I am a jewel purchased with the precious blood of Jesus, then he, may cut me into what shape, he pleases, he may polish me as he chooses, he may let me lie in the darkness of the casket, or let me glitter in his hand or in his diadem; in fact, he may do with me just as he wills, for I am his; and so long as I know that he does it, I must say, “Whatever he does is right; my will shall not be in opposition to his will.”

But, again, this is not only a matter of right, it is a matter of wisdom with us.  Depend upon it, dear brethren, if we, could have our own will, it would often be the worst thing in the world for us.  But to let God have his way with us, even if it were in our power to thwart him, would be an act of wisdom on our part.  What do I desire when I wish to have my own will?  I desire my own happiness; well, when I shall get it far more easily if I let God have his will.  For the will of God is both for his own glory and my happiness.  So, however much I may think that my own will would tend to my comfort and happiness, I may rest assured that God’s will would be infinitely more profitable to me than my own; and that, although God’s will may seem to make it dark and dreary for me at the time, yet, from seeming evil he will bring forth good, such as never could have been produced from that supposed good after which my weak and feeble judgment, is so apt to run.

But, again, suppose it were possible for us to have our own will, would it not be an infringement of that loving reliance which Christ may well ask at our hands, that we should trust him?  Are we not saved by trusting our Lord Jesus Christ?  Has not faith in Christ been the means of saving me from sin and hell?  Then, surely I must not run away from this rule when I come into positions of trial and difficulty.  If faith has been superior to sin, through the blood of Christ, it will certainly be superior to trial, through the almighty arm of Christ.  Did I not tell him, when I first came to him that I would trust no one but him?  Did I not declare, that all my other confidence were burst and broken, and scattered to the winds; and did I not ask that he would permit me to put my trust in him alone; and shall I, after that, play the traitor?  Shall I now set up some other object in which to place my trust?  Oh, no!  My love to Jesus, my gratitude to him for his condescension in accepting my faith, binds me henceforth to trust, to him, and to him alone.

We often lose the force of a truth by not making it palpable to our own mind; let us try to make this one so.  Imagine the Lord Jesus to be visibly present in this pulpit; suppose that he looks down upon one of you, and says, “My child, thy will and mine do not, just now, agree; thou desirest such-and-such a thing, but I say, ‘Nay, thou must not have it;’ now, my child, which will is to prevail, mine or thine?”  Suppose you were to reply, “Lord, I must have my will.”  Do you not think he would look at you with eyes of infinite sadness and pity, and say to you, “What!  Did I give up my will for thee, and wilt thou not give up thy will for me?  Did I surrender all I had, even my life, for thy sake, and dost thou say, thou self-willed child, ‘I must have these things according to my will, and contrary to thy wish and purpose, O my Savior?”

Surely, you could not talk like that; rather, I think I see you instantly falling on your knees, and saying, “Lord, Jesus, forgive, me for ever harboring such evil thoughts; no, my Lord, even if thy will be hard, I will think it pleasant if it be bitter, I will believe that the bitterest draught is sweet.  Let me but see thee dying on the cross for me, let me only know that thou lovest me, and wherever thou shalt put me, I will be in heaven as long as I can feel that it is thy will that is being done with me.  I will be perfectly content to be just wherever thou choosest me to be, and to suffer whatever thou choosest, for me to endure.”  Yes, dear friends, it would show a sad want of that love which we owe to Christ, and of that gratitude which he deserves, if we were once to set our wills up in opposition to his.  Therefore, again, beloved, for love’s sake, for wisdom’s sake, for right’s sake, I beseech you ask the Holy Spirit to teach you this prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to impart to you its blessed meaning.

III. I notice, in the next place, THE EFFECT OF TRULY SAYING AND FEELING, “NOT AS I WILL, BUT AS THOU WILT.”

The first effect is constant happiness.  If you would find out the cause of most of your sorrows, dig at the root of your self- will; for that is where it lies.  When your heart is wholly sanctified unto God, and your will is entirely subdued to him, the bitter becomes sweet, pain is changed to pleasure, and suffering is turned into joy.  It is not possible for that man’s mind to be disturbed whose will is wholly resigned to the will of God.

“Well,” says one, “that is a very startling statement—” and another says,” I have really sought to have my will resigned to God’s will, yet; I am disturbed.”  Yes, and that is simply because, though you have sought, like all the rest of us, you have not yet attained to full resignation to the will of the Lord.  But when once you have attained to it, —I fear you never will in this life—then shall you be free from everything that shall cause you sorrow or discomposure of mind.

Another blessed effect of this prayer if it is truly presented, is, that, it will give a man holy courage and bravery.  If my mind is wholly resigned to God’s will what have I to fear in all the world?  It is with me then as it was with Polycarp; when the Roman emperor threatened that he would banish him he said, “Thou canst not, for the whole world is my Father’s, house, and thou canst not banish me from it.”  “But I will slay thee,” said the emperor.  “Nay, thou canst not, for my life is hid with Christ in God.”  “I will take away all thy treasures.”  “Nay, thou canst not; for I have nothing that thou knowest of my treasure is in heaven, and my heart, is there also.”  “But I will drive thee away from men, and thou shalt have no friend left.”  “Nay, that thou canst not do, for I have a Friend in heaven from whom thou canst not separate me; I defy thee, for there is nothing that thou canst do unto me.”  And so can the Christian always say, if once his will agrees with God’s will; he may defy all men, and defy hell itself, for he will be able to say, “Nothing can happen to me that is contrary to the will of God; and if it be his will, it is my will, too; if it pleases God, it pleases me.  God has been pleased to give me part of his will, so I am satisfied with whatever he sends.”

Man is after all, only the second cause of our sorrows.  A persecutor says, perhaps, to a child of God, “I can afflict thee.”  “Nay, thou canst not, for thou art dependent on the first Great Cause, and he and I are agreed.”  Ah! dear friends, there is nothing that makes men such cowards as having wills contrary to the will of God; but, when we resign ourselves wholly into the hands of God, what, have we to fear?  The thing that made Jacob a coward was, that he was not, resigned to God’s will when Esau came to meet him.

God had foretold that the elder of the two sons of Isaac should serve the younger; Jacob’s business was to believe that, and to go boldly forward with his wives and children, and not to bow down before Esau, but to say, “The promise is, the elder shall serve the younger; I am not going to bow down to you; it is your place to fall prostrate before me.”  But poor Jacob said, “Perhaps it is God’s will that Esau should conquer me and smite the mothers and their children; but my will is that it shall not be so.”  The contest is well pictured at the ford Jabbok; but if Jacob had not disbelieved God’s promise, he would newer have bowed himself to the earth seven times before his brother Esau.  In the holy majesty of his faith, then would have said, “Esau, my brother, thou canst do me no hurt; for thou canst do nothing contrary to the will of God.  Thou canst do nothing contrary to, his decree, and I will be pleased with whatsoever it is.”

So, this resignation to God’s will give, first, joy in the heart, and then it gives fearless courage; and yet another thing follows from it.  As some as anyone truly says, “Not as I will, but as thou wilt,” this resolve tends to make every duty light, every trial easy, every tribulation sweet.  We should never feel it to be a hard thing to serve God; yet there are many people, who, if they do a little thing for the Lord, think so much of it; and if there is ever a great thing to be done, you have, first, to plead very hard to get them to do it; and when they do it, very often it is done so badly that you are half sorry you ever asked them to do it.  A great many people make very much out of what is really very little.  They take one good action which they have performed, and they hammer it out till it becomes as thin as gold leaf, and then they think they may cover a whole week: with that one good deed.  The seven days shall all be glorified by an action which only takes five minutes to perform; it shall be quite enough, they even think, for all time to come.

But the Christian, whose will is conformed to God’s will, says, “My Lord, is there anything else for me to do?  Then, I will gladly do it.  Does it involve want of rest?  I will do it.  Does it involve loss of time in my business?  Does it involve me, sometimes, in toil and fatigue?  Lord, it shall be done, if it is thy will; for thy will and mine are in complete agreement.  If it is possible, I will do it; and I will count all things but loss that I may win Christ, and be found in him, rejoicing in his righteousness, and not in mine own.”

IV. There are many other sweet and blessed effects which this resignations would produce; but I must close by observing that THE ONLY WAY IN WHICH THIS SPIRIT CAN BE ATTAINED IS BY THE UNCTION OF THE HOLY ONE, the outpouring and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.

You may try to subdue your own self, but you will never do it alone.  You may labor, by self-denial, to keep down your ambition; but you will find that it takes another shape, and grows by that wherewith you thought to poison it.  You may seek to concentrate all the love of your soul on Christ, and in the very act, you will find self creeping in.  I am sometimes astonished, —and yet not astonished when I know the evil of my own heart, —when I look within myself, and find how impure my motive is at the very moment when I thought it was most pure; and I expect it is the some with you, dear friends.  You perform a good action, —some almsgiving to the poor, perhaps.  You say, “I will do it very quietly.”

Someone speaks of it, and you say at once, “I wish you had not spoken of that; I do not like to hear anyone talk of what I have done; it hurts me.”  Perhaps it is only your pride that makes you say that it hurts you; for some folk make their modesty to be their pride; it is, in fact, their secret pride that they are doing good, and that people do not know it.  They glory in that supposed secrecy; and by its coming out they feel that their modesty is spoilt, and they are afraid that people will say, “Ah, you see that it is known what they do; they do not really do their good deeds in secret.”  So that even our modesty may be our pride; and what some people think their pride may happen to be the will of God, and may be real modesty.  It is very hard work to give up our own will; but it is possible, and that is one of the lessons we should learn from this text, “Not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

Again, if there is anybody of whom you are a little envious, —perhaps a minister who takes a little of the gloss off you by preaching better than you do, or a Sunday-school teacher who is more successful in his work, —make that particular person the object of your most constant prayer, and endeavor as much as lies in you to increase that person’s popularity and success.  Someone asks, “But you cannot bring human nature up to that point, can you, —to try and exalt one’s own rival?”  My dear friends, you will never know the full meaning of this prayer till you have tried to do this, and actually sought to honor your rival more than yourself; that is the true spirit of the gospel, “in honor preferring one another.”  I have sometimes found it hard work, I must confess; but I have schooled myself down to it.

Can this be done? Yes, John the Baptist did it; he said of Jesus, “He must increase, but I must decrease.”  If you had asked John whether he wished to increase, he would have said, “Well, I should like to have more disciples; still, if it is the Lord’s will, I am quite content to go down, and that Christ should go up.”

How important, therefore, it is for us to learn how we may attain to this state of acquiescence with our heavenly Father’s will!  I have given you the reasons for it, but how can it be done?  Only by the operation of the Spirit of God.  As for flesh and blood, they will not help you in the least, they will go just the other way; and when you think that, surely, you have got flesh and blood under control, you will find that they have got the upper hand of you just when you thought you were conquering them.  Pray the Holy Spirit to abide with you, to dwell in you, to baptize you, to immerse you in his sacred influence, to cover you, to bury, you in his sublime power; and so, and only so, when you are completely immersed in the Spirit, and steeped, as it were, in the crimson sea of the Savior’s blood, shall you be made fully to realize the meaning of this great prayer, “Not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

“Lord, not self, but Christ; not my own glory, but thy glory; not my aggrandizement, but thine; nay, not even my success, but thy success; not the prosperity of my own church, or my own self, but the prosperity of thy church, the increase of thy glory, —let all that be done as thou wilt, not as I will.”

How different, this is from everything connected with the world!  I have tried to take, you up to a very high elevation; and if you have been abide to get up there, or even to pant to get up there, how striking has the contrast been between this spirit and the spirit of the worldling!  I shall not say anything to those of you who are unconverted, except this. Learn how contrary you are to what God would have you be, and what you must be, ere you can enter the kingdom, of heaven.  You know that you could not say, “Let God have his will,” and you know also that you could not humble yourself to become as a little child.  This shows your deep depravity; so, may the Holy Spirit renew you, for you have need of renewing, that you may be made a new creature, in Christ Jesus!  May he sanctify you wholly, spirit, soul, and body, and at last present you, faultless, before the throne of God, for his dear name’s sake! Amen.

Delivered at New Park Street Chapel, in 1859.

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“These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.” — 1 John 5:13

John wrote to believers — “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God.”  It is worthy of note that all the epistles are so written.  They are not letters to everybody, they are letters to those who are called to be saints.  It ought to strike some of you with awe when you open the Bible and think how large a part of it is not directed at you.  You may read it, and God’s Holy Spirit may graciously bless it to you, but it is not directed to you.  You are reading another man’s letter: thank God that you are permitted to read it, but long to be numbered with those to whom it is directed.  Thank God much more if any part of it should be used of the Holy Ghost for your salvation.  The fact that the Holy Spirit speaks to the churches and to believers in Christ should make you bow the knee and cry to God to put you among the children, that this Book may become your Book from beginning to end, that you may read its precious promises as made to you.  This solemn thought may not have struck some of you: let it impress you now.

We do not wonder that certain men do not receive the epistles, for they were not written to them.  Why should they cavil at words which are addressed to men of another sort from themselves?  Yet we do not marvel, for we knew it would be so.  Here is a will, and you begin to read it; but you do not find it interesting: it is full of words and terms which you do not take the trouble to understand, because they have no relation to yourself; but should you, in reading that will, come upon a clause in which an estate is left to you, I warrant you that the nature of the whole document will seem changed to you.  You will be anxious now to understand the terms, and to make sure of the clauses, and you will even wish to remember every word of the clause which refers to yourself.  O dear friends, may you read the Testament of our Lord Jesus Christ as a testament of love to yourselves, and then you will prize it beyond all the writings of the sages.

This leads me to make the second remark, that as these things are written to believers, believers ought especially to make themselves acquainted with them, and to search into their meaning and intent.  John says, “These things have I written to you that believe on the name of the Son of God.”  Do not, I beseech you, neglect to read what the Holy Ghost has taken care to write to you.  It is not merely John that writes.  John is inspired of the Lord, and these things are written to you by the Spirit of God.  Give earnest heed to every single word of what God has sent as his own epistle to your hearts.

Value the Scriptures.  Luther said that “he would not be in paradise, if he might, without the Word of the Lord; but with the Word he could live in hell itself.”  He said at another time that “he would not take all the world for one leaf of the Bible.”  The Scriptures are everything to the Christian — his meat and his drink.  The saint can say, “O how I love thy law!”  If we cannot say so, something is wrong with us.  If we have lost our relish for Holy Scripture, we are out of condition, and need to pray for spiritual health.

This much is the porch of my sermon, let us now enter more fully into our subject, noticing, first, that John wrote with a special purpose; and then going on to assert, secondly, that this purpose we ought to follow up.

I. First, John Wrote with a Special Purpose.

Men do not write well unless they have some end in writing.  To sit down with paper and ink before you, and so much space to fill up, will ensure very poor writing.  John knew what he was at.  His intent and aim were clear to his own mind, and he tells us what they were.  According to the text, the beloved apostle had one clear purpose which branched out into three.

To begin with, John wrote that we might enjoy the full assurance of our salvation.  “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life.”  Many who believe on the name of Jesus are not sure that they have eternal life; they only hope so.  Occasionally they have assurance, but the joy is not abiding.  They are like a minister I have heard of, who said he felt assured of his salvation, “except when the wind was in the east.”  It is a wretched thing to be so subject to circumstances as many are.  What is true when the wind is in the soft south or the reviving west is equally true when the wind is neither good for man nor beast.  John would not have our assurance vary with the weather-glass, nor turn with the vane.  He says, “These things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have eternal life.”  He would have us certain that we are partakers of the new life, and so know it as to reap the golden fruit of such knowledge, and be filled with joy and peace through believing.

I speak affectionately to the weaker ones, who cannot yet say that they know they have believed.  I speak not to your condemnation, but to your consolation.  Full assurance is not essential to salvation, but it is essential to satisfaction.  May you get — may you get it at once; at any rate may you never be satisfied to live without it.  You may have full assurance.  You may have it without personal revelations: it is wrought in us by the Word of God.  These things are written that you may have it; and we may be sure that the means used by the Spirit are equal to the effect which he desires.

Under the guidance of the Spirit of God, John so wrote as to attain his end in writing.  What, then, has he written with the design of making us know that we have eternal life?  Go through the whole Epistle, and you will see that it all presses in that direction; but we shall not at this present have time to do more than glance through this chapter.

He begins thus: “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.”  Do you believe that Jesus is the anointed of God?  Is he so to you? Is he anointed as your prophet, priest, and king?  Have you realized his anointing so as to put your trust in him?  Do you receive Jesus as appointed of God to be the Mediator, the Propitiation for sin, the Savior of men?  If so, you are born of God.  “How may I know this?”  Brethren, our evidence is the witness of God himself as here recorded.  We need no other witness. Suppose an angel were to tell you that you are born of God, would that be a more sure testimony than the infallible Scripture?  If you believe that Jesus is the Christ, you are born of God. John has thus positively declared the truth, that you may know that you have eternal life.  Can anything be more clear than this?

The loving spirit of John leads him to say, “Every one that loveth him that begat, loveth him also that is begotten of him.”  Do you love God?  Do you love his Only-begotten Son? You can answer those two questions surely.  I knew a dear Christian woman who would sometimes say, “I know that I love Jesus; but my fear is that he does not love me.”  Her doubt used to make me smile, for it never could have occurred to me.  If I love him, I know it is because he first loved me.  Love to God in us is always the work of God’s love towards us.  Jesus loved us, and gave himself for us, and therefore we love him in return.  Love to Jesus is an effect which proves the existence of its cause.  Do you love Jesus?  Do you feel a delight in him?  Is his name as music to your ear, and honey to your mouth?  Do you love to hear him extolled?  Ah, dear friends!  I know that to many of you a sermon full of his dear name is as a royal banquet; and if there is no Christ in a discourse, it is empty, and vain, and void to you.  Is it not so?  If you do indeed love him that begat and him that is begotten of him, then this is one of the things that is written “that ye may know that ye have eternal life.”

John goes on to give another evidence: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments.”  Do you love God?  And do you love his children? Listen to another word from the same apostle: “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.”  That may appear to be a very small evidence; but I can assure you it has often been a great comfort to my soul.  I know I love the brethren: I can say unto my Lord,

“Is there a lamb among thy flock

I would disdain to feed?”

I would gladly cheer and comfort the least of his people.  Well, then, if I love the brethren, I love the Elder Brother.  If I love the babes, I love the Father; and I know that I have passed from death unto life.  Brethren, take this evidence home in all its force. It is conclusive: John has said, “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren;” and he would not have spoken so positively if it had not been even so.  Brethren, never be content with sentimental comforts; set your feet firmly upon the rock of fact and truth.  True Christian assurance is not a matter of guesswork, but of mathematical precision.  It is capable of logical proof, and is no rhapsody or poetical fiction.  We are told by the Holy Ghost that, if we love the brethren, we have passed from death to life.  You can tell whether you love the brethren, as such, for their Master’s sake, and for the truth’s sake that is in them; and if you can truly say that you thus love them, then you may know that you have eternal life.

Our apostle gives us this further evidence: “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.”  Obedience is the grand test of love. If you are living after your own will, and pay no homage to God, you are none of his.  If you never think of the Lord Jesus as your Master, and never recognize the claims of God, and never wish to be obedient to his will, you are not in possession of eternal life.  If you desire to be obedient, and prove that desire by your actions, then you have the divine life within you.  Judge yourselves.  Is the tenor of your life obedience or disobedience?  By the fruit you can test the root and the sap.

But note, that this obedience must be cheerful and willing.  No doubt some for a while obey the commands of God unwillingly.  They do not like them, though they bow to them.  They fret and grizzle because of the restraints of piety; and this proves that they are hypocrites.  What you wish to do you practically are doing in the sight of God.  If there could be such a thing as holiness forced upon a man, it would be unholiness.  O my hearer, it may be that you cannot fall into a certain line of sin; but if you could, you would: your desires show what you really are. I have heard of Christian people, so called, going to sinful amusements, just, as they say, to enjoy a little pleasure.  Ah well, we see where you are!  Where your pleasure is, your heart is.  If you enjoy the pleasures of the world, you are of the world, and with the world you will be condemned.  If God’s commands are grievous to you, then you are a rebel at heart.  Loyal subjects delight in the royal law.

“His commandments are not grievous.”  I said to one who came to join the church the other day, “I suppose you are not perfect?” and the reply was, “No, sir, I wish I might be.”  I said, “And suppose you were?”  “Oh, then,” she said, “that would be heaven to me.”  So it would be to me.  We delight in the law of God after the inward man.  Oh, that we could perfectly obey in thought, and word, and deed!  This is our view of heaven.  Thus we sing of it:

“There shall we see his face,

And never, never sin;

There from the rivers of his grace

Drink endless pleasures in.”

We would scarce ask to be rid of sorrow, if we might be rid of sin.  We would bear any burden cheerfully if we could live without spot we shall also be without grief.  His commandments are not grievous, but they are ways of pleasantness and peace to us.  Do you feel that you love the ways of God, that you desire holiness, and follow after it joyfully?  Then, dear friends, you have eternal life, and these are the sure evidences of it.  Obedience, holiness, delight in God never came into a human heart except from a heavenly hand.  Wherever they are found, they prove that the Lord has implanted eternal life, for they are much too precious to be buried away in a dead soul.

John then proceeds to mention three witnesses. Now, dear hearers, do you know anything about these three witnesses?  “There are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.”  Do you know “the Spirit?”  Has the Spirit of God quickened you, changed you, illuminated you, sanctified you?  Does the Spirit of God dwell in you?  Do you feel his sacred impulses?  Is he the essence of the new life within you?  Do you know him as clothing you with his light and power?  If so, you are alive unto God.

Next, do you know “the water,” the purifying power of the death of Christ?  Does the crucified Lord crucify your sins?  Is the water applied to you to remove the power of sin?  Do you now long to perfect holiness in the fear of God?  This proves that you have eternal life.

Do you also know “the blood?”  This is a wretched age, in which men think little of the precious blood.  My heart has well-nigh been broken, and my very flesh has been enfeebled, as I have thought upon the horrible things which have been spoken of late about the precious blood by men called Christian ministers.  “O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honor, be not thou united.”  Beloved friends, do you know the power of the blood to take away sin, the power of the blood to speak peace to the conscience, the power of the blood to give access to the throne of grace?   Do you know the quickening, restoring, cheering power of the precious blood of Christ which is set forth in the Lord’s Supper by the fruit of the vine?

Then in the mouth of these three witnesses shall the fact of your having eternal life be fully established.  If the Spirit of God be in you, he is the earnest of your eternal inheritance.  If the water has washed you, then you are the Lord’s.  Jesus said to Peter, “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part in me.”  But ye are washed, and therefore the Lord’s.  If the precious blood has cleansed you from the guilt of sin, you know that it has also purchased you from death, and it is to you the guarantee of eternal life.  I pray that you may from this moment enjoy the combined light of these three lamps of God — “the spirit, and the water, and the blood,” and so have full assurance of faith.

One thing more I would notice. Read the ninth verse: the apostle puts our faith and assurance on the ground that we receive “the witness of God.” If I believe that I am saved because of this, that, and the other, I may be mistaken: the only sure ground is “the witness of God.”  The inmost heart of Christian faith is that we take God as his word; and we must accept that word, not because of the probabilities of its statements, nor because of the confirmatory evidence of science and philosophy, but simply and alone because the Lord has spoken it.  Many professing Christians fall sadly short of this point.  They dare to judge the Word instead of bowing before it.  They do not sit at the Master’s feet, but become doctors themselves. I thank God that I believe everything that God has spoken, whether I am able to see its reason or not.  To me the fact that the mouth of God hath spoken it stands in the place of all argument, either for or against.  If Jehovah says so, so it is.  Do you accept the witness of God?  If not, you have made him a liar, and the truth is not in you; but if you have received “the witnesses of God,” then this is his witness, that “He hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”  I say again, if your faith stands in the wisdom of men, and is based upon the cleverness of a preacher, it will fail you; but if it stands on the sure Word of the Lord it will stand for ever, and this may be to you a special token that you have eternal life.  I have said enough upon this subject; oh that God may bless it to you!  May we be enabled, from what John has written, to gather beyond doubt that we have the life of God within our souls.

Furthermore, John wrote that we might know our spiritual life to be eternal. Please notice this, for there are some of God’s children who have not yet learned this cheering lesson.  The life of God in the soul is not transient, but abiding; not temporary but eternal.  Some think that the life of God in the believer’s soul may die out; but how, then, could it be eternal?  If it die it is not eternal life.  If it be eternal life, it cannot die.  I know that modern deceivers deny that eternal means eternal, but you and I have not learned their way of pumping the meanings out of the words which the Holy Spirit uses.  We believe that “eternal” means endless, and that if I have eternal life, I shall live eternally.  Brethren, the Lord would have us know that we have eternal life.

Learn, then, the doctrine of the eternality of life given in the new birth.  It must be eternal life, because it is “the life of God.” We are born again of the Spirit of God by a living and incorruptible seed, which liveth and abideth forever.  We are said to be “made partakers of the divine nature.”

Surely, this means, among other things, that we receive an undying life; for immortality is of the essence of the Life of God.  His name is “I am that I am.”  He hath life in himself, and the Son hath life in himself, and of this life we are the receivers.  This was his purpose concerning his Son, that he might give eternal life to as many as the Father had given him.  If it be the life of God which is in a believer — and certainly it is, for he hath begotten us again — then that life must be eternal.  As children of God, we partake of his life, and as heirs of God, we inherit his eternity.  “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”

Beloved, our Lord Jesus Christ calls the life of his people eternal life. How often do I quote this text!  It seems to lie on the tip of my tongue: “I give unto my sheep eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.”  And again, “He that believeth in him hath everlasting life.”  It is not temporary life, not life which at a certain period must grow old and die, but everlasting life.  “It shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”  This is the life of Christ within the soul. “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”  “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”  “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.”  If our life is Christ’s life, we shall not die until Christ dies.  If our life is hidden in him, it will never be discovered and destroyed until Christ himself is destroyed.  Let us rest in this.

Mark again how our Lord has put it: “Because I live, ye shall live also.”  As long, then, as Jesus lives, his people must live, for the argument will always be the same, “Because I live, ye shall live also.”  We are so one with Christ that while the head lives the members cannot die.  We are so one Christ that the challenge is given, “Who shall separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord?”  A list is added of things which may be supposed to separate, but we are told that they cannot do so, for “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.”  Is it not clear, then, that we are quickened with a life so heavenly and divine that we can never die?  John tells us in this very chapter, “We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not.”  He does not go back to his old sin, he does not again come under the dominion of sin; but, “he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.”

Beloved, I entreat you to keep a hard and firm grip of this blessed doctrine of the perseverance of the saints.  How earnestly do I long “that ye may know that ye have eternal life!”  Away with your doctrine of being alive in Christ today and dead tomorrow.  Poor, miserable doctrine that!  Hold fast to eternal salvation through the eternal covenant carried out by eternal love unto eternal life; for the Spirit of God has written these things unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life.

Once more, John desired the increase and confirmation of their faith. He says, “That ye might believe on the name of the Son of God.”  John wrote to those who believed, that they might believe in a more emphatic sense.  As our Savior has come not only that we may have life, but that we may have it more abundantly, so does John write, that having faith we may have more of it.  Come beloved, listen for a moment to this!  You have the milk of faith, but God wills that you should have this cream of assurance!  He would increase your faith.  May you believe more extensively.  Perhaps you do not believe all the truth, because you have not yet perceived it.

There were members of the Corinthian church who had not believed in the resurrection of the dead, and there were Galatians who were very cloudy upon justification by faith.  Many a Christian man is narrow in the range of his faith from ignorance of the Lord’s mind.  Like certain tribes of Israel, they have conquered a scanty territory as yet, though all the land is theirs from Dan to Beersheba. John would have us push out our fences, and increase the enclosure of our faith.  Let us believe all that God has revealed, for every truth is precious and practically useful.  Perhaps your doctrinal belief has been poor and thin.  Oh that the Lord would turn the water into wine!  Many of you live upon milk, and yet your years qualify you to feed on meat.  Why keep the babes’ diet?  You that believe are exhorted to “go in and out, and find pasture;” range throughout the whole revelation of God.

It will be well for you if your faith also increases intensively.  Oh that you may more fully believe what you do believe!  We need deeper insight and firmer conviction.  Many of you only skim the pools of truth.  Blessed is the wing which brushes the surface of the river of life; but infinitely more blessed is it to plunge into the depths of it.  This is John’s desire for you, that you would believe with all you heart, and soul, and strength.  He would have you believe more constantly, so that you may say, “My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise.”  It is not always so with us.  We are at times chicken-hearted.  We play the man today, and the mouse tomorrow.  Lord have mercy upon us: we are an inconsistent people, fickle as the wind.  The Lord would have us abide always in him with strong and mighty confidence, being rooted and built up in him.

He would have us trust courageously. Some can believe in a small way about small things.  Oh for a boundless trust in the infinite God!  We need more of a venturesome faith: the faith to do and dare.  Often we see the way of power, but have not the faith which would be equal to it.  See Peter walking on the sea! I do not advise any of you to try it, neither did our Lord advise Peter to do so: we do well enough if we walk uprightly on land.  But when Peter had once taken a few steps on the sea, he ought to have known that his Lord could help him all the rest of the way; but alas!  His faith failed, and he began to sink.  He could have walked all the way to Jesus if he had believed right on.  So  is it with us: our faith is good enough for a spurt, but it lacks staying power.  Oh, may God give us to believe, so that we may not only trip over a wave or two, but walk on the water to the end!  If the Lord bids you, you may go through fire and not be burned, through the floods and not be drowned.  Such a fearless, careless, conquering faith may the Lord work in us!

We need to believe more joyfully. Oh what a blessed thing it is when you reach the rest and joy of faith!  If we would truly believe the promise of God, and rest in the Lord’s certain fulfillment of it, we might be as happy as the angels.  I notice how very early in the morning how the birds begin to sing: before the sun is up or even the first grey tints of morning light are visible, the little songsters are awake and singing.  Too often we refuse to sing until the sun is more than up, and noon is near.  Shame on us!  Will we never trust our God?  Will we never praise him for favors to come?  Oh for a faith that can sing through the night and through the winter!  Faith that can live on a promise is the faith of God’s elect.  You will never enjoy heaven below until you believe without wavering.  The Lord give you such faith.

II. THE PURPOSE WHICH JOHN HAD IN HIS MIND.

The Word of God was written for this purpose; let us use it for its proper end.  he whole of these Scriptures were written that “we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that believing we might have life through his name.”  This Book is written to you who believe, that you may know that you believe.  Will you suffer your Bibles to be a failure to you?  Will you live in perpetual questioning and doubt?  If so, the Book has missed its mark for you.  The Bible is sent that you may have full assurance of your possession of eternal life; do not, therefore, dream that it will be presumptuous on your part to aspire to it.

Our conscience tells us that we ought to seek full assurance of salvation. It cannot be right for us to be children of God, and not to know our own Father.  How can we kneel down and say, “Our Father which art in heaven,” when we do not know whether he is our Father or not?  Will not a life of doubt tend to be a life of falsehood?  May we not be using language which is not true to our consciousness?  Can you sing joyful hymns which you fear are not true to you?  Will you join in worship when your heart does not know that God is your God?  Until the spirit of adoption enables you to cry, “Abba, Father,” where is your love to God?  Can you rest?  Dare you rest, while it is a question whether you are saved or not?  Can you go home to your dinner today and enjoy your meal, while there is a question about your soul’s eternal life?  Oh, be not so foolhardy as to run risks on that matter!  I pray you, make sure work for eternity.  If you leave anything in uncertainty, let it concern your body or your estate, but not your soul.

Conscience bids you seek to know that you have eternal life, for without this knowledge many duties will be impossible of performance.  Many Scriptures which I cannot quote this morning stir you up to this duty.  Are you not bidden to make your calling and election sure?  Are you not a thousand times over exhorted to rejoice in the Lord, and to give thanks continually?  But how can you rejoice, if the dark suspicion haunts you, that perhaps, after all, you have not the life of God?  You must get this question settled, or you cannot rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him.  Come, brothers and sisters, I beseech you, as you would follow Scripture, and obey the Lord’s precepts, get the assurance without which you cannot obey them.

Listen, as I close, to this mass of reasons why each believer should seek to know that he has eternal life. Here they are.

Assurance of your salvation will bring you “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding.” If you know that you are saved, you can sit down in poverty, or in sickness, or under slander, and feel perfectly content.  Full assurance is the Kohinoor amongst the jewels wherewith the heavenly Bridegroom adorns his spouse.

Assurance is a mountain of spices, a land that floweth with milk and honey. To be the assured possessor of eternal life is to find a paradise beneath the stars, where the mountains and the hills break forth before you into singing.  Full assurance will sometimes overflow in cataracts of delight.  Peace flows like a river, and here and there it leaps in cascades of ecstatic joy.  There are seasons when the plant of peace is in flower, and then it sheds a perfume as of myrrh and cassia.  Oh, the blessedness of the man who knows that he has eternal life!  Sometimes in our room alone, when we have been enjoying this assurance, we have laughed outright, for we could not help it.  If anybody had wondered why a man was laughing by himself alone, we could have explained that it was nothing ridiculous which had touched us, but our mouth was filled with laughter because the Lord had done great things for us, whereof we were glad.  That religion which sets no sweatmeats on the table is a niggardly housekeeper.  I do not wonder that some people give up their starveling religion: it is hardly worth the keeping.  The child of God who knows that he has eternal life goes to school, be he has many a holiday; and he anticipates that day of homegoing when he shall see the face of his Beloved for ever.

Brethren, full assurance will give us the full result of the gospel. The gospel ought to make us holy; and so it will when we are in full possession of it.  The gospel ought to make us separate from the world, the gospel ought to make us lead a heavenly life here below; and so it will if we drink deep draughts of it; but it we take only a sip of it now and again, we give it no chance of working out its design in us.  Do not paddle about the margin of the water of life, but first wade in up to your knees, and then hasten to plunge into the waters to swim in.  Beware of contentment with shallow grace.  Prove what the grace of God can do for you by giving yourself up to its power.

Full assurance gives a man a grateful zeal for the God he loves. These are the people that will go to the Congo for Jesus, for they know they are his.  These are the people that will lay down their all for Christ, for Christ is theirs.  These are the people that will bear scorn and shame and misrepresentation for the truth’s sake, for they know that they have eternal life.  These are they that will keep on preaching and teaching, spending and working, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, and they know it.  Men will do little for what they doubt, and much for what they believe.  If you have lost your title deeds, and you do not know whether your house is your own or not, you are not going to spend much in repairs and enlargements.  When you know that heaven is yours, you are anxious to get ready for it.  Full assurance finds fuel for zeal to feed upon.

This also creates and sustains patience. When we know that we have eternal life, we do not fret about the trials of this passing life.  I could point to the brethren here this morning, and I could mention sisters at home, who amaze me by their endurance of pain and weakness.  This I know concerning them, that they never have a doubt about their interest in Christ; and for this cause they are able to surrender themselves into those dear hands which were pierced for them.  They know that they are the Lord’s, and so they say, “Let him do what seemeth him good.”  A blind child was in his father’s arms, and a stranger came into the room, and took him right away from his father.  Yet he did not cry or complain.  His father said to him, “Johnny, are you afraid?  You do not know the person who has got hold of you.”  “No, father,” he said, “I do not know who he is, but you do.”  When pain gives us an awkward nip, and we do not know whether we shall live or die, when we are called to undergo a dangerous operation, and pass into unconciousness, then we can say, “I do not know where I am, but my Father knows, and I leave all with him.”  Assurance makes us strong to suffer.

This, dear friends, will give you constant firmness in your confession of divine truth.  You who do not know whether you are saved or not, I hope the Lord will keep you from denying the faith; but those who have a firm grip of it, these are the men who will never forsake it.  A caviller in an omnibus said to a Christian man one day, “Why, you have nothing after all to rest upon.  I can prove to you that your Scriptures are not authentic.”

The humble Christian man replied, “Sir, I am not a learned man, and I cannot answer you questions; but I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and I have experienced such a change in character, and I feel such a joy and peace through believing, that I wish you knew my Savior, too.”  The answer he received was a very unexpected one: the unbeliever said, “You have got me there; I cannot answer that.”  Just so: we have got them there.  If we know what has been wrought in us by grace, they cannot overcome us.  The full-assurance man baffles the very devil.  Satan is cunning enough, but those who know and are persuaded, are birds which he cannot take in the snares of hell.  When you know that your Lord is able to keep that which you have committed to him until that day, then you are firm as a rock.  God make you so.

Dear brethren, this is the kind of thing that will enable you to bear a telling testimony for your Lord. It is of no use to stand up and preach things that may or may not be true.  I am charged with being a dreadful dogmatist, and I am not anxious to excuse myself.  When a man is not quite sure of a thing, he grows very liberal: anybody can be a liberal with money which he cannot claim to be his own.  The broad-school man says, “I am not sure, and I do not suppose that you are sure, for indeed nothing is sure.”  Does this sandy foundation suit you?  I prefer rock.  The things which I have spoken to you from my youth up have been such as I have tried and proved, and to me they wear an absolute certainty, confirmed by my personal experience.  I have tried these things: they have saved me, and I cannot doubt them.  I am a lost man if the gospel I have preached to you be not true; and I am content to bide the issue of the day of Judgment.  I do not preach doubtingly, for I do not live doubtingly.  I know what I have told you to be true; why should I speak as if I were not sure?  If you want to make your own testimony tell in such a day as this, you must have something to say that you are sure about; and until you are sure about it I would advise you to hold you tongue.  We do not require any more questionings; the market is overstocked.  We need no more doubt, honest or dishonest; the air is dark with these horrible blacks.

Brethren, if you know that you have eternal life, you are prepared to live, and equally prepared to die. How frequently do I stand at the bedside of our dying members!  I am every now and then saying to myself, “I shall certainly meet with some faint-hearted one.  Surely I shall come across some child of God who is dying in the dark.”  But I have not met with any such.  Brethren, a child of God may die in the dark.  One said to old Mr. Dodd, the quaint old Puritan — “How sad that our brother should have passed away in the darkness!  Do you doubt his safety?”  “No,” said old Mr. Dodd, “no more than I doubt the safety of him who said, when he was dying, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’”  Full assurance, as we have said before, is not of the essence of salvation.  Still, I beg of you to note this, that all along through these many years, in each case, when I have gone to visit any of our brethren and our sisters at death, I have always found them departing in sure and certain hope of seeing the face of their Lord in glory.  I have often marvelled that this should be without exception, and I glory in it.  Often have they said to me, “We have fed on such good food that we may well be strong in the Lord.”  God grant that you may have this assurance, all of you!  May sinners begin to believe in Jesus, and saints believe more firmly, for Christ’s sake!  Amen.

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“I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.” — 2 Timothy 1:12.

In the style of these apostolic words, there is a positiveness most refreshing in this age of doubt. In certain circles of society, it is rare nowadays to meet with anybody who believes anything.  It is the philosophical, the right, the fashionable thing nowadays to doubt everything which is generally received; indeed those who have any creed whatever are by the liberal school set down as old-fashioned dogmatists, persons of shallow minds, deficient in intellect, and far behind their age.  The great men, the men of thought, the men of high culture and refined taste, consider it wisdom to cast suspicion upon revelation, and sneer at all definiteness of belief.  “Ifs” and “buts,” “perhapses” and “peradventures,” are the supreme delight of this period.  What wonder if men find everything uncertain, when they refuse to bow their intellects to the declarations of the God of truth?  Note then, with admiration, the refreshing and even startling positiveness of the apostle — “I know,” says he.  And that is not enough — “I am persuaded.”

He speaks like one who cannot tolerate a doubt.  There is no question about whether he has believed or not.  “I know whom I have believed.”  There is no question as to whether he was right in so believing.  “I am persuaded that be is able to keep that which I have committed to him.”

There is no suspicion as to the future; he is as positive for years to come as he is for this present moment.  “He is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day.”  Now, there is a positiveness which is very disgusting, when it is nothing but the fruit of ignorance, and is unattended with anything like thoughtfulness.  But in the apostle’s case, his confidence is founded not on ignorance, but on knowledge; “I know,” saith he.  There are certain things which he has clearly ascertained, which he knows to be fact; and his confidence is grounded on these ascertained truths. His confidence, moreover, was not the fruit of thoughtlessness, for he adds, “I am persuaded;” as though he had reasoned the matter out, and had been persuaded into it — had meditated long upon it, and turned it over, and the force of truth had quite convinced him, so that he stood persuaded.

Where positiveness is the result of knowledge and of meditation, it becomes sublime, as it was in the apostle’s case; and being sublime it becomes influential; in this case, it certainly must have been influential over the heart of Timothy, and over the minds of the tens of thousands who have during these nineteen centuries perused this epistle.  It encourages the timid when they see others preserved; it confirms the wavering when they see others steadfast.  The great apostle’s words, ringing out with trumpet tone this morning, “I know, and I am persuaded,” cannot but help to cheer many of us in our difficulties and anxieties.  May the Holy Spirit cause us not only to admire the faith of Paul, but to imitate it, and to attain to the same confidence.

Some speak confidently because they are not confident.  How often have we observed that brag and bluster are only the outward manifestations of inward trembling — concealments adopted to cover cowardice!  As the schoolboy, passing through the churchyard, whistles to keep his courage up, so some people talk very positively because they are not positive, and make a pompous parade of faith because they desire to sustain the presumption which, as being their only comfort, is exceedingly dear to them.  Now, in the apostle’s case, every syllable he speaks has beneath it a most real weight of confidence which the strongest expressions could not exaggerate.  Sitting there in the dungeon, a prisoner for Christ, abhorred by his countrymen, despised by the learned, and ridiculed by the rude, Paul confronted the whole world with a holy boldness which knew no quailing; a boldness resulting from the deep conviction of his spirit.  You may take these words and put what emphasis you can upon every one of them, for they are the truthful utterance of a thoroughly earnest and brave spirit.  May we enjoy such a confidence ourselves, and then we need not hesitate to declare it, for our testimony will glorify God, and bring consolation to others.

This morning for our instruction, as the Holy Spirit may help us, we shall first consider the matter in question, that which Paul had committed to Christ; secondly, the fact beyond all question, namely, that Christ was able to keep him; thirdly, the assurance of that fact, or how the apostle was able to say, “I know and am persuaded;” and fourthly, the influence of that assurance when it rules in the heart.

I. First, then, dear friends, let us speak for a few minutes upon THE MATTER IN QUESTION.

1. That matter was, first of all, the apostle’s deposit of all his interests and concerns into the hand of God in Christ. Some have said that what Paul here speaks of was his ministry; but there are many reasons for concluding that this is a mistake.  A great array of expositors, at the head of whom we would mention Calvin, think that the sole treasure which Paul deposited in the hand of God was his eternal salvation.  We do not doubt that this was the grandest portion of the priceless deposit, but we also think that as the connection does not limit the sense, it cannot be restricted or confined to any one thing.  It seems to us that all the apostle’s temporal and eternal interests were, by an act of faith committed into the hand of God in Christ Jesus.

To the Lord’s gracious keeping the apostle committed his body.  He had suffered much in that frail tabernacle: shipwrecks, perils, hunger, cold, nakedness, imprisonments, beatings with rods, and stoning, had all spent their fury upon him.  He expected ere long that his mortal frame would become the prey of Nero’s cruelty.  None could tell what would then happen to him, whether he should be burned alive to light up Nero’s gardens, or be torn to pieces by wild beasts to make a Roman holiday, or become the victim of the headsman’s sword; but in whatever way he might be called to offer up himself a sacrifice to God, he committed his body to the keeping of him who is the resurrection and the life, being well persuaded that in the day of the Lord’s appearing he would rise again, his body having suffered no loss through torture or dismemberment.  He looked for a joyful resurrection, and asked no better embalming for his corpse than the power of Christ would ensure it.

He gave over to Christ at that hour his character and reputation.  A Christian minister must expect to lose his repute among men.  He must be willing to suffer every reproach for Christ’s sake.  But, then, he may rest assured that he will never lose his real honor if it be risked for the truth’s sake and placed in the Redeemer’s hand.  The day shall declare the excellence of the upright, for it will reveal all that was hidden, and bring to the light that which was concealed.  There will be a resurrection of characters as well as persons.  Every reputation that has been obscured by clouds of reproach for Christ’s sake, shall be rendered glorious when the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.  Let the wicked say what they will of me, said the apostle, I commit my character to the Judge of quick and dead.

So also his whole life-work he delivered into the hands of God.  Men said, no doubt, that Paul had made a great mistake.  In the eyes of the worldly wise, he must have seemed altogether mad.  What eminence awaited him had he become a rabbi!  He might have lived respected and honored among his countrymen as a Pharisee.  Or if he had preferred to follow the Grecian philosophies, a man with such strength of mind might have rivaled Socrates or Plato, but instead thereof, he chose to unite himself with a band of men commonly reputed to be ignorant fanatics who turned the world upside down.  Ah! well, saith Paul, I leave the reward and fruit of my life entirely with my Lord, for he will at last justify my choice of service beneath the banner of his Son, and the assembled universe shall know that I was no mistaken zealot for a senseless cause.

So did the apostle resign to the hands of God in Christ his soul, whatever its jeopardy from surrounding temptations.  However great the corruptions that were within it, and the dangers that were without, he felt safe in the great Surety’s hands.  He made over to the divine trustee all his mental powers, faculties, passions, instincts, desires, and ambitions. He gave his whole nature up to the Christ of God to preserve it in holiness through the whole of life; and right well did his life-course justify his faith.

He gave that soul up to be kept in the hour of death, then to be strengthened, sustained, consoled, upheld, and guided through the tracks unknown, up through the mysterious and unseen, to the throne of God even the Father.  He resigned his spirit to Christ, that it might be presented without spot or wrinkle or any such thing in the last great day.  He did, in fact, make a full deposit of all that he was, and all that he had, and all that concerned him, into the keeping of God in Christ, to find in his God a faithful guardian, a sure defender and a safe keeper.

This was the matter, then, about which the apostle was concerned.

2. But next to this, the matter in question concerned the Lord’s ability to make good this guardianship. The apostle did not doubt that Christ had accepted the office of keeper of that which he had committed to him.  The question was never about Christ’s faithfulness to that trust.  The apostle does not even say that he was confident that Jesus would be faithful; he felt that assertion to be superfluous.  There was no question about Christ’s willingness to keep the soul committed to him; such a statement he felt it to be unnecessary to make.  But the question with many was concerning the power of the once crucified Redeemer to keep that which was committed to him.  Oh, said the apostle, I know and am persuaded that he is able to do that.  Mark, my dear friends, that the question is not about the apostle’s power to keep himself; that question he does not raise.  Many of you have been troubled as to whether you are able to endure temptation; you need not debate the subject; it is clear that apart from Christ you are quite unable to persevere to the end.  Answer that question with a decided negative at once, and never raise it again.  The enquiry was not whether the apostle would be found meritorious in his own righteousness in the day of judgment, for he had long ago cast that righteousness aside.  He does not raise that point.  The grand question is this, “Is Jesus able to keep me?”

Stand to that, my brethren, and your doubts and fears will soon come to an end. Concerning your own power or merit, write “despair” straightway upon its forehead.  Let the creature be regarded as utterly dead and corrupt, and then lean on that arm, the sinews of which shall never shrink; and cast your full weight upon that omnipotence which bears up the pillars of the universe.  There is the point; keep to it, and you will not lose your joy.  You have committed yourself to Christ.  The great question now is, not about what you can do, but about what Jesus is able to do; and rest assured that he is able to keep that which you have committed to him.

3. The apostle further carries our thoughts on to a certain set period, the keeping of the soul unto what he calls “that day.”  I suppose he calls it “that day” because it was the day most ardently expected and commonly spoken of by Christians.  It was so usual a topic of conversation to speak of Christ’s coming and of the results of it, that the apostle does not say, “the advent,” he simply says, “that day.”  That day with which believers are more familiar than with any other day beside.  That day, the day of death if you will, when the soul appears before its God.  The day of judgment, if you please, that day when the books shall be opened and the record shall be read.  That day, the winding up of all, the sealing of destiny, the manifestation of the eternal fate of each one of us.  That day for which all other days were made. Christ Jesus is able to keep us against that day.  That is to say, he is able to place us then at the right hand of God, to set our feet upon the rock when others sink into the pit that is bottomless; to crown us when others shall be accursed; to  invite us to paradise when sinners shall be cast into hell.

Here was the matter of consideration — can the Great Shepherd of souls preserve his flock?  Ah! brethren, if you have never searched into that question, I should not wonder but what you may.  When you are very low and weak, and heart and flesh are failing, when sickness brings you to the borders of the grave, and you gaze into eternity, the enquiry will come to any thoughtful man, Is this confidence of mine in the Christ of God warranted?  Will he be able in this last article, when my spirit shivers in its unclothing, will he be able now to help me?  And in the more dreadful hour, when the trumpet peal shall awake the dead, shall I indeed find the Great Sinbearer able to stand for me?  Having no merit of my own, will his merit suffice?  From ten thousand sins will his blood alone cleanse me?  Nothing can ever equal this matter in importance; it is one of most pressing urgency of consideration.

II. THE FACT BEYOND ALL QUESTION, namely, that God in Christ is able to keep that which we have committed to him.

The apostle’s confidence was that Christ was an able guardian.  So be meant, first, that Jesus is able to keep the soul from falling into damning sin.  I suppose this is one of the greatest fears that has ever troubled the true believer.  Have you never prayed that you might rather die than turn aside from Christ?  I know I have, and I have sung bitterly in my soul that verse,

“Ah, Lord! with such a heart as mine,

Unless thou hold me fast,

I feel I must, I shall decline,

And turn from thee at last.”

Now, troubled Christian, remember that your Lord is able to keep you under every possible form of temptation.  Ah, say you, the apostle Paul had not the trials I have.  I think he had; but if he had not, Jesus had; and Christ has ability to keep you under them.  Do I hear one say, “I am the only one of my household that has been called by grace, and they all oppose me; I am a lonely one in my father’s house?”  Now, Paul was precisely in your condition.  He was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and he was regarded by his people with the most extreme hate because he had come out from among them to follow the Crucified.  Yet Paul felt that God was able to keep him, and you may depend upon it, though father and mother forsake, and brothers and sisters scoff, he whom you trust will keep you also firm in the faith.

“Ah,” saith another, “but you do not know what it is to strive with the prejudices of an education hostile to the faith of Jesus; when I seek to grow in grace, the things I learned in my childhood force themselves upon me and hinder me.”  And was not the apostle in this case?  As touching the law he had been a Pharisee, educated in the straitest sect, brought up in traditions that were opposed to the faith of Christ, and yet the Lord kept him faithful even to the end.  None of his old prejudices were able so much as to make him obscure the simplicity of the gospel of Christ.  God is able to keep you also, despite your previous prejudices.

“Ah,” saith one, “but I am the subject of many skeptical thoughts.  I often suffer from doubts of the most subtle order.”  Thinkest thou that the apostle never knew this trial?  He was no stranger to the Greek philosophy, which consisted of a bundle of questions and skepticisms.  He must have experienced those temptations which are common to thoughtful minds; and yet he said, “I know that he is able to keep me;” believe me, then, the Lord Jesus is equally able to keep you.

“Yes,” saith another, “but I have so many temptations in the world.  If I were not a Christian, I should prosper much better.  I have openings now before me, by which I might soon obtain a competence, and perhaps wealth, if I were not checked by conscience.”  Forget not that the apostle was in like case.  What might he not have had?  A man of his condition in life — his birth and parentage being altogether advantageous — a man of his powers of mind and of his great energy, he might have seized upon any attractive position; but those things which were gain for him, he counted loss for Christ’s sake; and he was willing to be less than nothing, because the power of divine grace kept him true to his profession.

But you tell me you are very poor, and that poverty is a severe trial.  Brother, you are not so poor as Paul.  I suppose a few needles for his tent-making, an old cloak, and a few parchments, made up all his wealth.  A man without a home, a man without a single foot of land to call his own, was this apostle; but poverty and want could not subdue him, Christ was able to keep him even then.

“Ah,” say you, “but he had not my strong passions and corruptions.”  Most surely he had them all, for we hear him cry, “I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.  For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.  O wretched man that I am!  Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”  He was tempted as you are, yet he knew that Christ was able to keep him.  O trembling Christian, never doubt this soul cheering fact, that your loving Savior is able to keep you.

Doubtless, the apostle meant, too, that Christ was able to keep him from the power of death.  Beloved, this is great comfort to us who so soon shall die.  To the apostle death was a very present thing.  “I die daily,” said he.  Yet was he well assured that death would be gain rather than loss to him, for he was certain that Christ would so order all things that death should be but like an angel to admit him into everlasting life.  Be certain of this too, for he who is the resurrection and the life will not desert you.  Do not, my brethren and sisters, fall under bondage through fear of death, for the living Savior is able to keep you, and he will.  Do not, I pray you, look too much at the pains and groans and dying strife; look rather to that kind friend, who, having endured the agonies of death before you, can sympathize with your sufferings, and who, as he ever liveth, can render you available assistance.  Cast this care on him, and fear no more to die than you fear to go to your bed when night comes on.

The apostle is also certain that Christ is able to preserve his soul in another world.  Little is revealed in Scripture by way of detailed description of that other world.  Imagination may be indulged, but little can be proved.  The spirit returns to God who gave it, this we know; and in the instant after death the righteous soul is in paradise with Christ; this too is clear.  Yet whether we know the, details or no, we are assured that the soul is safe with Christ.  Whatever of danger from evil spirits may await us on our journey from this planet up to the dwelling-place of God, whatever there may be of conflict in the last moment, Jesus is able to keep that which we have committed to him.  If I had to keep myself, I might, indeed, tremble with alarm at the prospect of the unknown region, but he that is the Lord of death and of hell, and hath the keys of heaven, can surely keep my soul on that dread voyage across a trackless sea.  It is all well; it must be well with the righteous, even in the land of death-shadow, for our Lord’s dominion reaches even there, and being in his dominions we are safe.

III. We shall, in the third place, pass on to notice THE ASSURANCE OF THAT FACT, or how the apostle Paul attained to it.

“I cannot talk like that,” saith one; “I cannot say, ‘I know, and I am persuaded,’ I am very thankful that I can say, I hope, I trust, I think.”  Dear friends, in order to help you to advance, we will notice how the apostle Paul attained to such assurance.

One main help to him was big habit, as seen in this text, of always making faith the most prominent point of consideration. Faith is twice mentioned in the few lines before us.  “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him.”  Paul knew what faith was, namely a committal of his precious things into the custody of Christ.  He does not say, “I have served Christ.”  No; he does not say, “I am growing like Christ, therefore I am persuaded I shall be kept.”  No; he makes most prominent in his thought the fact that he believed, and so had committed himself to Christ.  I would to God, dear friends, that you who are subject to doubts and fears, instead of raking about in your hearts to find out evidences and marks of growth in grace and likeness to Christ, and so on, would first make an investigation concerning a point which is far more vital; namely, this, have you believed?

Dear anxious heart, begin thy search on this point.  Dost thou commit thyself to Christ? If thou dost, what though marks should be few, and evidences for awhile should be obscure, he that believeth on him hath everlasting life; he that believeth and is baptised shall be saved.  The evidences will come, the marks will be cleared in due time, but all the marks and evidences between here and heaven are not worth a single farthing to a soul when it comes to actual conflict with death and hell.

Then, it must be simple faith that wins the day.  Those other things are good enough in brighter times; but if it be a question whether thou art safe or not, thou must come to this, “I have rested with all my heart on him that came into the world to gave sinners, and though I be the very chief of sinners, I believe he is able to save me.”  You will get to assurance if you keep clear about your faith.

The next help to assurance, as I gather from the text, is this; the apostle maintained most clearly his view of a personal Christ. Observe how three times he mentioned his Lord. “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him.”  He does not say, “I know the doctrines I believe.”  Surely he did, but this was not the main point.  He does not say, “I am certain about the form of sound words which I hold.”  He was certain enough about that, but this was not his foundation.  No mere doctrines can ever be the stay of the soul.  What can a dogma do?  What can a creed do?  Brethren, these are like medicines, but you need a hand to give you them; you want the physician to administer them to you; otherwise you may die with all these precious medicines close at hand.  We want a person to trust to.

There is no Christianity to my mind so vital, so influential, to true, so real, as the Christianity which deals with the person of the living Redeemer.  I know him, I know he is God, I know that he is mine; I trust not merely in his teaching but in himself; not on his laws, rules, or teachings am I depending so much as on himself, as a person.  Dear brother, is that what thou art doing now?  Art thou put thy soul into the keeping of that blessed man who is also God, and sitteth at the right hand of the Father?  Canst thou come in faith to his feet, and kiss the prints of the nails, and then look up into his dear face and say, “Ah, thou Son of God, I rely upon the power of thy arm, on the preciousness of thy blood, on the love of thy heart, on the prevalence of thy plea, on the certainty of thy promise, on the immutability of thy character, I rest on thee, and on thee alone.”  You will get assurance readily enough now.  But if you begin to fritter away your realization of the person of Christ, and live merely on dogmas and doctrines, you will be far removed from real assurance.

Brethren, furthermore, the apostle attained this full assurance through growing knowledge. He did not say, “I am persuaded that Christ will save me, apart from anything I know about him;” but he begins by saying, “I know.”  Let no Christian among us neglect the means provided for obtaining a fuller knowledge of the gospel of Christ. I would that this age produced more thoughtful and studious Christians.  I am afraid that, apart from what many of you gather from the sermon, or from the reading of the Scriptures in public, you do not learn much from the word of God, and from those innumerable instructive books which godly men have bequeathed to us.  Men are studious in various schools and colleges in order to obtain knowledge of the classics and mathematics, but should we not be even more diligent that we may know Christ, that we may study him, and all about him, and no longer be children, but in knowledge may be men?  Many of the fears of Christians would be driven away if they knew more.  Ignorance is not bliss in Christianity, but misery; and knowledge sanctified, and attended by the presence of the Holy Spirit, is as wings by which we may rise out of the mists and darkness into the light of fall assurance.  The knowledge of Christ is the most excellent of sciences.  Seek to be masters of it, and you are on the road to full assurance.

Once, again, the apostle, it appears from the text, gained his assurance from close consideration as well as from knowledge. “I know and am persuaded.”  As I have already said, persuasion is the result of argument.  The apostle had turned this matter over in his mind; he had meditated on the pros and cons; he had carefully weighed each difficulty, and he felt the preponderating force of truth which swept every difficulty out of the way.

How many Christians are like the miser who never feels sure about the safety of his money, even though he has locked up the iron safe, and secured the room in which he keeps it, and locked up the house, and bolted and barred every door!  In the dead of night, he thinks he hears a footstep, and tremblingly he goes down to inspect his strong-room.  Having searched the room, and tested all the iron bars in the window, and discovered no thief, he fears that the robber may have come and gone, and stolen his precious charge.  So he opens the door of his iron safe, he looks and pries, he finds his bag of gold all safe, and those deeds, those bonds, they are safe too.  He puts them away, shuts the door, locks it, bolts and bars the room in which is the safe and all its contents; but even as he goes to bed, he fancies that a thief has just now broken in.  So he scarcely ever enjoys sound, refreshing sleep.

The safety of the Christian’s treasure is of quite another sort.  His soul, not under bolt and bar, or under lock and key of his own securing, but he has transferred his all to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, our Savior — and such is his security that he enjoys the sleep of the beloved, calmly resting, for all is well.  If Jesus could fail us, we might wear sackcloth forever, but while he is immutable in his love and omnipotent in his power, we may put on the garments of praise.  Believing as we do that eternal love neither can nor will desert a soul that reposes in its might, we triumph in heart and find glory begun below.

IV. Now, to close, what is THE INFLUENCE OF THIS ASSURANCE when it penetrates the mind?

As time fails me, I shall but say that, as in the apostle’s case, it enables us to bear all the obloquy which we may incur in serving the Lord.  They said Paul was a fool.  “Well,” replied the apostle, “I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed; I am willing to be thought a fool.”  The ungodly may laugh at us now, but their laugh will soon be over, and he will laugh that wins forever.  Feel perfectly confident that all is safe, and you can let the world grin at you till its face aches.  What does it matter what mortals think?   What signifies it what the whole universe thinks if our souls are beloved of God?  You will, my dear friends, as you live in full assurance of God’s love, grow quite indifferent to the opinions of the carnal.  You will go about your heavenly service with an eye only to your Master’s will: and the judgment of such as cavil and carp will seem to you to be too inconsiderable to be worth a thought.  If you doubt and fear, you will be hard put to it; but if you are serenely confident that he is able to keep you, you will dare the thickest of the fray, fearless because your armor is of proof.  Assurance will give you a serenity within, which will qualify you for doing much service.  A man who is always worrying about his own soul’s salvation, can have little energy with which to serve his Lord.  But when the soul knows the meaning of Christ’s word, “It is finished,” it turns all its strength into the channels of service, out of love to such a blessed Savior.

O you that doubt, and therefore fret and care, and ask the question, “Do I love the Lord or no?  Am I his or am I not?”  How I wish this suspense were over with you.  O you who fear daily lest after all you be castaways, you lose your strength for serving your God.  When you are sure that he is able to keep what you have committed to him, then your whole manhood, excited by gratitude, spends itself and is spent in your Master’s cause.  God make you men to the fullness of vigor, by giving you a fullness of assurance.

Those who are unsaved in this place may well envy those who are.  That which attracted me to Christ — I have not heard of others brought in this way, but this brought me to Christ mainly — was the doctrine of the safety of the saints.  I fell in love with the gospel through that truth.  What! I thought, are those who trust in Jesus safe?  Shall they never perish, and shall none pluck them out of Christ’s hand?  Everybody esteems safety.  One would not insure his life where he thought there was a doubt as to the safety of the insurance.  Feeling that there was perfect safety if I gave myself up to the Redeemer, I did so; and I entertain no regrets this day that I committed my soul to him.

O may the Holy Spirit softly whisper in your ear reasons that shall persuade you to give yourselves to Christ.  I say, again, my testimony is that you cannot do a wiser or a better thing.  Oh! the happiness my soul has known in resting on my Lord. I wish you knew it.  I would not cease to be a Christian, if I might be made a king or an angel.  No character can be to me so suitable or so happy as that of a humble dependant upon the faithful love of my redeeming Lord.  O come and trust him, dear young friends!  You older ones, do you need that I should speak to you, when you are getting so near your grave?  You are now out of Christ — how soon may you be in hell?  You younger ones, I say, embrace this flying hour, and let this be the day of which you shall have to sing in after years —

“‘Tis done! the great transaction’s done;

I am my Lord’s, and he is mine:

He drew me, and I follow’d on,

Charm’d to confess the voice divine.

High heaven, that heard the solemn vow,

That vow renew’d shall daily hear:

Till in life’s latest hour I bow,

And bless in death a bond so dear.”

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“He that endureth to the end shall be saved.” — Matthew 10:22

This particular text was originally addressed to the apostles when they were sent to teach and preach in the name of the Lord Jesus.  Perhaps bright visions floated before their minds, of honor and esteem among men.  It was no mean dignity to be among the twelve first heralds of salvation to the sons of Adam.  Was a check needed to their high hopes?  Perhaps so.  Lest they should enter upon their work without having counted its cost, Christ gives them a very full description of the treatment which they might expect to receive, and reminds them that it was not the commencement of their ministry which would win them their reward, but “He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.”  It would be well if every youthful aspirant to the gospel ministry would remember this, if merely to put our hand to the plough proved us to be called of God, how many would he found so?  But alas, too many look back and prove unworthy of the kingdom.

The charge of Paul to Timothy is a very necessary exhortation to every young minister: “Be thou faithful unto death.”  It is not to be faithful for a time, but to be “faithful unto death,” which will enable a man to say, “I have fought a good fight.”  How many dangers surround the Christian minister!  As the officers in an army are the chosen targets of the sharpshooters, so are the ministers of Christ.  The king of Syria said to his servants, “Fight neither with small nor great, save only with the king of Israel;” even so the arch-fiend makes his main attack upon the ministers of God.

From the first moment of his call to the work, the preacher of the Word will be familiar with temptation.  While he is yet in his youth, there are multitudes of the softer temptations to turn the head and trip the feet of the youthful herald of the cross.  And when the blandishments of early popularity have passed away, as soon they must, the harsh croak of slander and the adder’s tongue of ingratitude assail him, he finds himself stale and flat where once he was flattered and admired; nay, the venom of malice succeeds to the honeyed morsels of adulation.  Now, let him gird his loins and fight the good fight of faith.  In his after days, to provide fresh matter Sabbath after Sabbath, to rule as in the sight of God, to watch over the souls of men, to weep with them who weep, to rejoice with those who do rejoice, to be a nursing father unto young converts, sternly to rebuke hypocrites, to deal faithfully with backsliders, to speak with solemn authority and paternal pathos to those who are in the first stages of spiritual decline, to carry about with him the care of the souls of hundreds is enough to make him grow old while yet he is young, and to mar his visage with the lines of grief, till, like the Savior, at the age of thirty years, men shall count him nearly fifty.  “Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?” said the adversaries of Christ to him when he was but thirty-two.  If the minister should fall, my brethren; if, set upon a pinnacle, he should be cast down; if, standing in slippery places, he should falter; if the standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may, what mischief is done to the Church, what shouts are heard among the adversaries, what dancings are seen among the daughters of Philistia!  How hath God’s banner been stained in the dust, and the name of Jesus cast into the mire!

When the minister of Christ turns traitor, it is as if the pillars of the house did tremble; every stone in the structure feels the shock.  If Satan can succeed in overturning the preachers of the Word, it is as if yon broad-spreading tree should suddenly fall beneath the axe; prone in the dust it lies to wither and to rot; but where are the birds of the air which made their nests among its boughs, and whither lie those beasts of the field which found a happy shadow beneath its branches?  Dismay hath seized them, and they flee in affright.  All who were comforted by the preacher’s word, strengthened by his example, and edified by his teaching are filled with humiliation and grief, crying, “Alas! my brother.”  By these our manifold dangers and weighty responsibilities, we may very justly appeal to you who feed under our ministry, and beseech you, “Brethren, pray for us.”  Well, we know that though our ministry be received of the Lord Jesus, if hitherto we have been kept faithful by the power of the Holy Ghost, yet it is only he who endureth to the end who shall be saved.

But, my brethren, how glorious is the sight of the man who does endure to the end as a minister of Christ. I have photographed upon my heart just now, the portrait of one very, very dear to me, and I think I may venture to produce a rough sketch of him as no mean example of how honorable it is to endure to the end.  This man began while yet a youth to preach the Word.  Sprung of ancestors who had loved the Lord and served his Church, he felt the glow of holy enthusiasm.  Having proved his capabilities, he entered college and, after the close of its course, settled in a spot where for more than fifty years he continued his labors.  In his early days, his sober earnestness and sound doctrine were owned of God in many conversions both at home and abroad.  Assailed by slander and abuse, it was his privilege to live it all down.  He outlived his enemies, and though he had buried a generation of his friends, yet he found many warm hearts clustering round him to the last.  Visiting his flock, preaching in his own pulpit, and making very many journeys to other Churches, years followed one another so rapidly that he found himself the head of a large tribe of children and grandchildren, most of them walking in the truth.  At the age of fourscore years, he preached on still, until laden with infirmities, but yet as joyful and as cheerful as in the heyday of his youth, his time had come to die.  He was able to say truthfully, when last he spake to me, “I do not know that my testimony for God has ever altered as to the fundamental doctrines; I have grown in experience, but, from the first day until now, I have had no new doctrines to teach my hearers.  I have had to make no confessions of error on vital points, but have held fast to the doctrines of grace and can now say that I love them better than ever.”  Such an one was he, as Paul, the aged, longing to preach so long as his tottering knees could bear him to the pulpit.  I am thankful that I had such a grandsire.  He fell asleep in Christ but a few hours ago, and on his dying bed talked as cheerfully as men can do in the full vigor of their health.  Most sweetly he talked of the preciousness of Christ, and chiefly of the security of the believer; the truthfulness of the promise; the immutability of the covenant; the faithfulness of God, and the infallibility of the divine decree.  Among other things which he said at the last was this, which is, we think, worth your treasuring in your memories. “Dr. Watts sings —

“Firm as the earth thy gospel stands,

My Lord, my hope, my trust.”

What, Doctor, is it not firmer than that?  Could you not find a better comparison?  Why, the earth will give way beneath our feet one day or another, if we rest on it.  The comparison will not do.  The Doctor was much nearer the mark when he said –

“Firm as his throne his promise stands,

And he can well secure

What I’ve committed to his hands.

Till the decisive hour.”

“Firm as his throne,” said he, “he must cease to be king before he can break his promise or lose his people.  Divine sovereignty makes us all secure.”  He fell asleep right quietly, for his day was over and the night was come.  What could he do better than go to rest in Jesus?  Would God it may be our lot to preach the Word, so long as we breathe, standing fast unto the end in the truth of God; and if we see not our sons and grandsons testifying to those doctrines which are so dear to us, yet may we see our children walking in the truth.  I know of nothing, dear friends, which I would choose to have, as the subject of my ambition for life, than to be kept faithful to my God to death, still to be a soul-winner, still to be a true herald of the cross, and testify the name of Jesus to the last hour.

Our text, however, occurs again in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, at the fourteenth verse, upon which occasion it was not addressed to the apostles, but to the disciples.  The disciples, looking upon the huge stones which were used in the construction of the Temple, admired the edifice greatly, and expected their Lord to utter a few words of passing encomium [praise]; instead of which, he who came not to be an admirer of architecture but to hew living stones out of the quarry of nature, to build them up into a spiritual temple turned their remarks to practical account, by warning them of a time of affliction, in which there should be such trouble as had never been before, and he added, “No, nor ever shall be.”  He described false prophets as abounding, and the love of many as waxing cold, and warned them that “He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.”  So that this solemn truth applies to every one of you.

The Christian man, though not called to the post of danger in witnessing publicly of the grace of God, is destined in his measure to testify concerning Jesus and, in his proper sphere and place, to be a burning and a shining light.  He may not have the cares of a Church, but he hath far more, the cares of business: he is mixed up with the world; he is compelled to associate with the ungodly.  To a great degree, he must, at least six days in the week, walk in an atmosphere uncongenial with his nature: he is compelled to hear words which will never provoke him to love and good works, and to behold actions whose example is obnoxious.  He is exposed to temptations of every sort and size, for this is the lot of the followers of the Lamb.  Satan knows how useful is a consistent follower of the Savior, and how much damage to Christ’s cause an inconsistent professor may bring, and therefore he emptieth out all his arrows from his quiver that he may wound, even unto death, the soldier of the cross.  My brethren, many of you have had a far longer experience than myself; you know how stern is the battle of the religious life, how you must contend, even unto blood, striving against sin.  Your life is one continued scene of warfare, both without and within; perhaps even now you are crying with the apostle, “O wretched man that I am!  Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”  A Christian’s career is always fighting, never ceasing; always ploughing the stormy sea, and never resting till he reaches the port of glory.  If my God shall preserve you, as preserve you he must, or else you are not his; if he shall keep you, as keep you he will if you have committed your souls to his faithful guardianship, what an honor awaits you!

I have in my mind’s eye, just now, one who has been for about sixty years associated with this Church, and who this week, full of years and ripe for heaven, was carried by angels into the Savior’s bosom.  Called by divine grace, while yet young, he was united with the Christian Church early in life.  By divine grace, he was enabled to maintain a consistent and honorable character for many years; as an officer of this Church, he was acceptable among his brethren and useful both by his godly example and sound judgment; while in various parts of the Church of Christ, he earned unto himself a good degree.  He went last Sabbath day twice to the house of God where he was accustomed of late years to worship, enjoying the Word and feasting at the Communion-table with much delight.  He went to his bed without having any very serious illness upon him, having spent his last evening upon earth in cheerful conversation with his daughters.  Ere the morning light, with his head leaning upon his hand, he had fallen asleep in Christ, having been admitted to the rest which remaineth for the people of God.

As I think of my brother, though of late years I have seen but little of him, I can but rejoice in the grace which illuminated his pathway.  When I saw him the week before his departure, although full of years, there was little or no failure in mind.  He was just the picture of an aged saint waiting for his Master, and willing to work in his cause while life remained. I refer, as most of you know, to Mr. Samuel Gale.  Let us thank God and take courage — thank God that he has preserved, in this case, a Christian so many, many years, and take courage to hope that there will be found in this Church, many, at all periods, whose grey heads shall be crowns of glory.  “He that endureth to the end,” and only he “shall be saved.”

But, dear friends, perseverance is not the lot of the few; it is not left to laborious preachers of the Word, or to consistent Church-officers.  It is the common lot of every believer in the Church.  It must be so, for only thus can they prove that they are believers.  It must be so, for only by their perseverance can the promise be fulfilled, “He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved.”  Without perseverance, they cannot be saved; and, as saved they must be, persevere they shall through divine grace.

I shall now, with brevity and earnestness, as God enables me, speak upon our text thus: perseverance is the badge of saints — the target of our foes — the glory of Christ — and the care of all believers.

I. First, then, PERSEVERANCE IS THE BADGE OF TRUE SAINTS.

It is their Scriptural mark.  How am I to know a Christian?  By his words?  Well, to some degree words betray the man; but a man’s speech is not always the copy of his heart, for with smooth language many are able to deceive.  What doth our Lord say? “Ye shall know them by their fruits.”  But how am I to know a man’s fruits?  By watching him one day?  I may, perhaps, form a guess of his character by being with him for a single hour, but I could not confidently pronounce upon a man’s true state even by being with him for a week.  George Whitfield was asked what he thought of a certain person’s character.  “I have never lived with him,” was his very proper answer.  If we take the run of a man’s life, say for ten, twenty, or thirty years, and, if by carefully watching, we see that he brings forth the fruits of grace through the Holy Spirit, our conclusion may be drawn very safely.  As the truly magnetized needle in the compass, with many deflections, yet does really and naturally point to the pole; so, if I can see that despite infirmities, my friend sincerely and constantly aims at holiness, then I may conclude with something like certainty that he is a child of God.

Although works do not justify a man before God, they do justify a man’s profession before his fellows. I cannot tell whether you are justified in calling yourself a Christian except by your works; by your works, therefore, as James saith, shall ye be justified.  You cannot by your words convince me that you are a Christian, much less by your experience, which I cannot see but must take on trust from you; but your actions will, unless you be an unmitigated hypocrite, speak the truth, and speak the truth loudly too.  If your course is as the shining light which shineth more unto the perfect day, I know that yours is the path of the just.  All other conclusions are only the judgment of charity such as we are bound to exercise; but this is as far as man can get it, the judgment of certainty when a man’s life has been consistent throughout.

Moreover, analogy shows us that it is perseverance which must mark the Christian.  How do I know the winner at the foot-race?  There are the spectators, and there are the runners.  What strong men!  What magnificent muscles!  What thighs and sinews!  Yonder is the goal, and there it is that I must judge who is the winner, not here, at the starting-point, for “They which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize.”  I may select this one, or that other person, as likely to win, but I cannot be absolutely sure until the race is over.  There they fly!  See how they press forward with straining muscles; but one has tripped, another faints, a third is out of breath, and others are far behind.  One only wins — and who is he?  Why, he who continueth to the end.  So I may gather from the analogy, which Paul constantly allows us from the ancient games, that only he who continueth till he reaches the goal may be accounted a Christian at all.  A ship starts on a voyage to Australia — if it stops at Madeira, or returns after reaching the Cape, would you consider that it ought to be called an emigrant ship for New South Wales?  It must go the whole voyage, or it does not deserve the name.  A man has begun to build a house and has erected one side of it — do you consider him a builder if he stops there, and fails to cover it in or to finish the other walls?  Do we give men praise for being warriors because they know how to make one desperate charge, but lose the campaign?  Have we not, of late, smiled at the boasting dispatches of commanders in fights where both combatants fought with valor, and yet neither of them had the common sense to push on to reap the victory?  What was the very strength of Wellington, but that when a triumph had been achieved, he knew how to reap the harvest which had been sown in blood?  And he only is a true conqueror, and shall be crowned at the last, who continueth till war’s trumpet is blown no more.  It is with a Christian as it was with the great Napoleon: he said, “Conquest has made me what I am, and conquest must maintain me.”  So, under God, conquest has made you what you are, and conquest must sustain you.  Your motto must be, “Excelsior;” or, if it be not, you know not the noble spirit of God’s princes.  But why do I multiply illustrations when all the world rings with the praise of perseverance?

Moreover, the common-sense judgment of mankind tells us that those who merely begin and do not hold out, will not be saved.  Why, if every man would be saved who began to follow Christ, who would be damned?  In such a country as this, most men have at least one religious spasm in their lives. I suppose that there is not a person before me who at some time or other did not determine to be a pilgrim.  You, Mr. Pliable, were induced by a Christian friend, who had some influence with you, to go with him some short way, till you came to the Slough of Despond, and you thought yourself very wise when you scrambled out on that side which was nearest to your own home.  And even you, Mr. Obstinate, are not always dogged; you have fits of thoughtfulness and intervals of tenderness.  My hearer, how impressed you were at the prayer meeting!  How excited you were at that revival service!  When you heard a zealous brother preach at the theater what an impression was produced!  Ah!  Yes; the shop was shut up for a Sunday or two; you did not swear or get drunk for nearly a month, but you could not hold on any longer.

Now, if those who were to begin were saved, why you would be secure, though you are at the present time as far from anything like religion, as the darkness at midnight is from the blazing light of midday.  Besides, common sense shows us, I say, that a man must hold on or else he cannot be saved, because the very worst of men are those who begin and then give up.  If you would turn over all the black pages of villainy to find the name of the son of perdition, where would you find it?  Why, among the apostles.  The man who had wrought miracles and preached the gospel sold his Master for thirty pieces of silver — Judas Iscariot betrays the Son of Man with a kiss.  Where is a worse name than that of Simon Magus?  Simon “believed also,” says the Scripture, and yet he offered the apostles money if they would sell to him the Holy Ghost.

What an infamous notoriety Demas has obtained, who loved the present evil world!  How much damage did Alexander the coppersmith do to Paul?  “He did me much evil,” said he, “the Lord reward him according to his works.”  And yet that Alexander was once foremost in danger, and even exposed his own person in the theater at Ephesus, that he might rescue the apostle.  There are none so bad as those who once seemed to be good.  “If the salt has lost its savor, wherewith shall it be seasoned?”  That which is best when ripe is worst when rotten; liquor which is sweetest in one stage becomes sourest in another.  Let not him that putteth on his armor boast as though he putteth it off; for even common sense teaches you that it is not to begin but to continue to the end which marks the time of the child of God.

But we need not look to analogy and to mere common sense.  Scripture is plain enough. What says John?  “They went out from us.”  Why?  Were they ever saints?  Oh! no — “They went out from us, because they were not of us, for if they had been of us, doubtless they would have continued with us, but they went out from us, that it might be manifest that they were not of us.”   They were no Christians, or else they had not thus apostatized.  Peter saith, “It hath happened unto them according to the proverb, the dog hath returned to its vomit, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire,” indicating at once most clearly that the dog, though it did vomit, always was a dog.  When men disgorge their sins unwillingly, not giving them up because they dislike them, but because they cannot retain them, if a favorable time comes, they will return to swallow once more what they seemed to abandon.  The sow that was washed — ay, bring it into the parlor, introduce it among society; it was washed, and well-washed too; whoever saw so respectable a member of the honorable confraternity of swine before?  Bring it in!  Yes, but will you keep it there?  Wait and see.  Because you have not transformed it into a man, on the first occasion it will be found wallowing in the mire.  Why?  Because it was not a man, but a sow.  And so we think we may learn from multitudes of other passages, if we had time to quote them, that those who go back into perdition are not saints at all, for perseverance is the badge of the righteous.  “The righteous shalt hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall wax stronger and stronger.”  We not only get life by faith, but faith sustains it: “the just shall live by faith;” “but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.”

What we have learned from Scripture, dear friends, has been abundantly confirmed by observation.  Every day would I bless God that in so numerous a Church we have comparatively so few who have proved false; but I have seen enough, and the Lord knoweth, more than enough, to make me very jealous over you with a godly jealousy.  I could tell of many an instance of men and women who did run well.  “What did hinder them that they should not obey the truth?”  I remember a young man of whom I thought as favorably as of any of you, and I believe he did at that time deserve our favorable judgment.  He walked among us, one of the most hopeful of our sons, and we hoped that God would make him serviceable to his cause.  He fell into bad company.  There was enough conscience left, after a long course of secret sin, to make him feel uncomfortable in his wickedness, though he did not give it up; and when at last his sin stared him in the face, and others knew it, so ashamed was he, that, though he bore the Christian name, he took poison that he might escape the shame which he had brought upon himself.  He was rescued — rescued by skill and the good providence of God; but where he is, and what he is, God only knoweth, for he had taken another poison more deadly still which made him the slave of his own lusts.

Do not think it is the young alone, however.  It is a very lamentable fact that there are, in proportion, more backslidings among the old than the young; and, if you want to find a great sinner in that respect, you will find him, surely, nine times out of ten, with grey hairs on his head.   Have I not frequently mentioned that you do not find in Scripture, many cases of young people going astray?  You do find believers sinning, but were they all old men?  There is Noah — no youth.  There is Lot, when drunken — no child.  There is David with Bathsheba, — no young man in the heat of passion.  There is Peter denying his Lord — no boy at the time.  These were men of experience and knowledge and wisdom.  “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”

With sorrow do we remember one whom, years ago, we heard pray among us, and sweetly too, esteemed and trusted by us all.  I remember a dear brother saying very kindly, but not too wisely, “If he is not a child of God, I am not.”  But what did he, my brethren, to our shame and sorrow, but go aside to the very worst and foulest of sins, and where is he now?  Perhaps the ale-house may tell or worse places still.  So have we seen that earth’s sun may be eclipsed, earth’s stars may go out, and all human glory melt into shame.  No true child of God perishes — hold that fast; but this is the badge of a true child of God: that a man endures to the end.  And if a man does not hold on, but slinks back to his old master, and once again fits on the old collar, and wears again the Satanic yoke, there is sure proof that he has never come out of the spiritual Egypt through Jesus Christ, his leader, and hath never obtained that eternal life which cannot die, because it is born of God.  I have thus then, dear friends, said enough to prove, I think, beyond dispute, that the true badge of the Christian is perseverance, and that without it, no man has proved himself to be a child of God.

II. Secondly, PERSEVERANCE IS THEREFORE THE TARGET OF ALL OUR SPIRITUAL ENEMIES.

We have many adversaries. Look at the world! The world does not object to our being Christians for a time; it will cheerfully overlook all misdemeanors in that way, if we will now shake hands and be as we used to be.  Your old companions who used to call you such good fellows when you were bad fellows, would they not very readily forgive you for having been Christians if you would just go back and be as in days gone by?  Oh! certainly, they would look upon your religion as a freak of folly, but they would very easily overlook it if you would give it up for the future.  “O!” saith the world, “come back; come back to my arms once more; be enamored of me, and though thou hast spoken some hard words against me and done some cruel deeds against me, I will cheerfully forgive thee.”

The world is always stabbing at the believer’s perseverance.  Sometimes she will bully him back; she will persecute him with her tongue — cruel mockings shall be used; and at another time, she will cozen [cajole] him, “Come thou back to me; O come thou back!  Wherefore should we disagree?  Thou art made for me, and I am made for thee!”  And she beckons so gently and so sweetly, even as Solomon’s harlot of old.  This is the one thing with her that thou shouldst cease to be a pilgrim and settle down to buy and sell with her in Vanity Fair.

Your second enemy, the flesh. What is its aim?  “Oh! “cries the flesh, “we have had enough of this; it is weary work being a pilgrim, come, give it up.”  Sloth says, “Sit still where thou art.  Enough is as good as a feast at least of this tedious thing.”  Then lust crieth, “Am I always to be mortified?  Am I never to be indulged?  Give me at least, a furlough from this constant warfare?”  The flesh cares not how soft the chain, so that it does but hold us fast and prevent our pressing on to glory.

Then comes in the devil, and sometimes be beats the big drum and cries with a thundering voice, “There is no heaven; there is no God; you are a fool to persevere.”  Or, changing his tactics, he cries, “Come back!  I will give thee a better treatment than thou hadst before.  Thou thought me a hard master, but that was misrepresentation; come and try me; I am a different devil from what I was ten years ago; I am respectable to what I was then.  I do not want you to go back to the low theater or the casino; come with me, and be a respectable lover of pleasure.   I tell thee, I can dress in broad cloth as well as in corduroy, and I can walk in the courts of kings, as well as in the courts and alleys of the beggar.”  “O come back!” he saith, “and make thyself one of mine.”  So that this hellish trinity, the world, the flesh, and the devil, all stab at the Christian’s perseverance.

His perseverance in service they will frequently attack: “What profit is there in serving God?  The devil will say to me sometimes, as he did to Jonah, “Flee thou unto Tarshish and do not stop in this Nineveh; they will not believe thy word, though thou speak in God’s name.”  To you he will say, “Why, you are so busy all the six days of the week, what is the good of spending your Sunday with a parcel of noisy brats in a Sunday School? Why go about with those tracts in the streets?  Much good you will get from it.  Would not you be better with having a little rest?”  Ah! that word rest — some of us are very fond of it; but we ought to recollect that we spoil it if we try to get it here, for rest is only beyond the grave.  We shall have rest enough when once we come into the presence of our Lord.  Perseverance in service, then, the devil would murder outright.

If he cannot stay us in service, he will try to prevent our perseverance in suffering.  “Why be patient any longer?” says he; “why sit on that dunghill, scraping your sores with a potsherd? — curse God, and die.  You have been always poor since you have been a Christian; your business does not prosper; you see, you cannot make money unless you do as others do.  You must go with the times, or else you will not get on.  Give it all up.  Why be always suffering like this?”  Thus the foul spirit tempts us.  Or you may have espoused some good cause, and the moment you open your mouth, many laugh and try to put you down.  “Well,” says the devil, “why be put down — what is the use of it?  Why make yourself singularly eccentric, and expose yourself to perpetual martyrdom?  It is all very nice,” saith he, “if you will be a martyr, to be burnt at once and have done with it; but to hang, like Lord Cobham, to be roasted over a slow fire for days, is not comfortable.”  “Why,” saith the tempter, “why be always suffering? — give it up.”  You see, then, it is also perseverance in suffering which the devil shooteth at.  Or, perhaps, it is perseverance in steadfastness.  The love of many has waxed cold, but you remain zealous.  “Well,” saith he, “what is the good of your being so zealous?  Other people are good enough people, you could not censure them: why do you want to be more righteous than they are?  Why should you be pushing the Church before you, and dragging the world behind you?  What need is there for you to go two marches in one day?  Is not one enough?  Do as the rest do; loiter as they do.  Sleep as do others, and let your lamp go out as other virgins do.”  Thus is our perseverance in steadfastness frequently assailed.

Or else, it will be our doctrinal sentiments.  “Why,” says Satan, “do you hold to these denominational creeds?  Sensible men are getting more liberal, they are giving away what does not belong to them — God’s truth; they are removing the old landmarks.  Acts of uniformity are to be repealed, articles and creeds are to be laid aside as useless lumber, not necessary for this very enlightened age; fall in with this, and be an ‘Anythingarian.’  Believe that black is white; hold that truth and a lie are very much akin to one another, and that it does not matter which we do believe, for we are all of us right, though we flatly contradict each other; that the Bible is a nose of wax to fit any face; that it does not teach anything material, but you may make it say anything you like.”  “Do that,” saith he, “and be no longer firm in your opinion.”

I think I have proved — and need not waste more words about it — that perseverance is the target for all enemies.  Wear your shield, Christian, therefore, close upon your armor, and cry mightily unto God, that by his Spirit you may endure to the end.

III. Thirdly, brethren, PERSEVERANCE IS THE GLORY OF CHRIST.

That he makes all his people persevere to the end is greatly to his honor.  If they should fall away and perish, every office, and work, and attribute of Christ would be stained in the mire.  If any one child of God should perish, where were Christ’s covenant engagements?  What is he worth as a mediator of the covenant and the surety of it, if he hath not made the promises sure to all the seed?  My brethren, Christ is made a leader and commander of the people, to bring many souls into glory; but if he doth not bring them into glory, where is the captain’s honor?  Where is the efficacy of the precious blood, if it does not effectually redeem?  If it only redeemeth for a time and then suffereth us to perish, where is its value?  If it only blots out sin for a few weeks, and then permits that sin to return and to remain upon us, where, I say, is the glory of Calvary, and where is the luster of the wounds of Jesus?  He lives, he lives to intercede, but how can I honor his intercession, if it be fruitless?  Does he not pray, “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am;” and, if they be not finally brought to be with him where he is, where is the honor of his intercession?  Hath not the Pleader failed, and the great Mediator been dismissed without success?  Is he not at this day in union with his people?   But what is the value of union to Christ if that union does not insure salvation?  Is he not today at the right hand of God, preparing a place for his saints; and will he prepare a place for them, and then lose them on the road?  Oh! can it be that he procures the harp and the crown, and will not save souls to use them?  My brethren, the perishing of one true child of God, would be such dishonor to Jesus that I cannot think of it without considering it as blasphemy.

One true believer in hell!  Oh! what laughter in the pit — what defiance, what unholy mirth! “Ah! Prince of life and glory,” saith the prince of the pit, “I have defeated thee; I have snatched the prey from the mighty and the lawful captive I have delivered; I have torn a jewel from thy crown.  See, here it is!  Thou didst redeem this soul with blood, and yet it is in hell.”  Hear what Satan cries — “Christ suffered for this soul, and yet God makes it suffer for itself.  Where is the justice of God?  Christ came from heaven to earth to save this soul, and failed in the attempt, and I have him here;” and as he plunges that soul into deeper waves of woe, the shout of triumph goes up more and more blasphemously — “We have conquered heaven!  We have rent the eternal covenant; we have foiled the purposes of God; we have defeated his decree; we have triumphed over the power of the Mediator and cast his blood to the ground!”  Shall it ever be?  Atrocious question!  It can never be.  They who are in Christ are saved.  They whom Jesus Christ hath really taken into union with himself shall be with him where he is.  But how are you to know whether you are in union with Christ?  My brethren, you can only know it by obeying the apostle’s words, “Give all diligence to make your calling and election sure.”

IV. I close, therefore, with but a hint on the last point, PERSEVERANCE SHOULD BE THE GREAT CARE OF EVERY CHRISTIAN — his daily and his nightly care.

O beloved!  I conjure you by the love of God and by the love of your own souls, be faithful unto death.  Have you difficulties?  You must conquer them.  Hannibal crossed the Alps, for his heart was full of fury against Rome; and you must cross the Alps of difficulty, for I trust your heart is full of hatred of sin.  When Mr. Smeaton had built the lighthouse upon the Eddystone, he looked out anxiously after a storm to see if the edifice was still there, and it was his great joy when he could see it still standing, for a former builder had constructed an edifice which he thought to be indestructible, and expressed a wish that he might be in it in the worst storm which ever blew, and he was so, and neither he nor his lighthouse were ever seen afterwards.

Now you have to be exposed to multitudes of storms; you must be in your lighthouse in the worst storm which ever blew; build firmly then on the Rock of Ages, and make sure work for eternity, for if you do these things, ye shall never fall.  For this Church’s sake, I pray you do it; for nothing can dishonor and weaken a Church so much as the falls of professors.  A thousand rivers flow to the sea and make rich the meadows, but no man heareth the sound thereof; but if there be one cataract, its roaring will be heard for miles and every traveler will mark the fall.  A thousand Christians can scarcely do such honor to their Master as one hypocrite can do dishonor to him.  If you have ever tasted that the Lord is gracious, pray that your foot slip not.  It would be infinitely better to bury you in the earth than to see you buried in sin.  If I must be lost, God grant it may not be as an apostate.  If I must, after all, perish, were it not better never to have known the way of righteousness than after having known the theory of it, and something of the enjoyment of it, to turn again to the beggarly elements of the world?  Let your prayer be not against death, but against sin.  For your own sake, for the Church’s sake, for the name of Christ’s sake, I pray you do this.

But ye cannot persevere except by much watchfulness in the closet, much carefulness over every action, much dependence upon the strong hand of the Holy Spirit who alone can make you stand.  Walk and live as in the sight of God, knowing where your great strength lieth, and, depending upon it, you shall yet sing that sweet doxology in Jude, “Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever.  Amen.”  A simple faith brings the soul to Christ; Christ keeps the faith alive; that faith enables the believer to persevere, and so he enters heaven.  May that be your lot and mine for Christ’s sake.  Amen.

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LET US ADORE HIM WHO CAN KEEP US FROM FAILING.

I address myself, of course, near only to God’s own people.  When shall we ever see a congregation in which it will be needless to make such a remark as that?  I cannot call upon some of you to adore God for keeping you from falling; for, alas! you have not yet, learned to stand upright.  God’s grace has never yet been accepted by you.  You are not on the Rock of ages; you have not yet set out upon the heavenly pilgrimage.  It is a wretched state for you to be in, in which you cannot worship him whom angels worship.  It is a sad state of heart for any man to be in! to be excluded — self-excluded — from the general acclamations of joy in the presence of God, because you feel no such joy, and cannot, therefore, unite in such acclamations.

But to the people of God, I have to say this dear brothers and sisters, we need keeping; therefore, let us adore him who can keep us.  As saved souls, we need keeping from final apostasy.  “Oh!” saith one, “I thought you taught us that those who are once saved shall never finally apostatize.”  I do believe that doctrine, and delight to preach it; yet it is true that the saved ones would apostatize, every one of them, if the Lord did not keep them.

There is no stability in any Christian, in himself considered; it is the grace of God within him that enables him to stand. I believe than the soul of man is immortal, yet not, in and of itself, but only by the immortality which, God bestows upon it from his essential immortality.  So is it with the new life that is within us.  It shall never perish; but it is only eternal because God continues to keep it alive.  Your final perseverance is not the result of anything in yourself, but the result of the grace which God continues to give you, and of his eternal purpose which first chose you and of his almighty power which still keeps you alive.  Ah, my brethren, the brightest, saints on earth would fall into the lowest hell if God did not keep them from falling.  Therefore, praise him, O ye stars that shine in the Church’s sky, for ye would go out with a noxious smell, as lamps do for want of oil, did not the Lord keep your heavenly flame burning.  Glory be unto the Preserver of his Church who keeps his loved ones even to the end!

But there are other ways of falling besides falling finally and fatally.  Alas, brethren! we are all liable to fall into errors of doctrine. The best-taught man, apart from divine guidance, is not incapable of becoming the greatest fool possible.  There is a strange weakness which sometimes comes over noble spirits, and which makes them infatuated with an erroneous novelty, though they fancy they have discovered some great truth.  Men of enquiring and receptive minds are often decoyed from the old paths, — the good old ways; and while they think they are pursuing truth, they are being led into damnable error.  He only is kept, as to his thoughts and doctrinal views, whom God keeps, for there are errors that would, if it were possible deceive even the very elect; and there are men and women going about in this world, with smooth tongues and plausible arguments, who carry honeyed words upon their lips, though drawn swords are concealed behind their backs.  Blessed are they who are preserved from these wolves in sheep’s clothing.  Lord, thou alone canst preserve us from the pernicious errors of the times, for thou art “the only wise God our Savior.”

And, dear friends, we need keeping from an evil spirit.  I do not know whom I should prefer, — to see one of my dear Christian brethren fall into doctrinal error, or into an un-Christian spirit.  I would prefer neither, for I think this is a safe rule, — of two evils, choose neither.  It is sad to hear some people talk as if they alone are right, and all other Christians are wrong.  If there is anything which is the very essence and soul of Christianity, it is brotherly love; but brotherly love seems to be altogether forgotten by these people; and other Christians, who, in the judgment of sobriety, are as earnest, and as true-hearted, and as useful as themselves, are set down as belonging to a kind of Babylonian system; — I hardly know what they do not call it, but they give it all sorts of bad names, and this is thought to be a high style of Christianity.  God grant that the man may be forgiven who thought it, to be a worthy purpose of his life to found a sect, whose distinguishing characteristic should be that it would have no communion with any other Christians!  The mischief that, man hast done is utterly incalculable, and I can only pray that, in the providence of God, some part of it may die with him.

O brethren and sisters, I charge you, whatever mistakes you make, not to make a mistake about this one thing, — that, even if you have all knowledge, and have not charity, it profiteth you nothing; even if you could get a perfect creed, and knew that your modes of worship was absolutely apostolic, yet, if you also imbibed this idea that you could not worship with any other Christians, and that they were altogether outside your camp, your error would be far worse than all other errors put together, for to be wrong in heart is even worse than to be wrong in head.

I would have you true to God’s truth, but, above all, I would have you true to God’s love.  My brother, I think you are mistaken about this matter or that, but do you love the Lord Jesus Christ?  If so, I love you. I have no doubt, that I also am mistaken about some things, but, do not therefore withdraw your hand, and say that you cannot have fellowship with me.  I have fellowship with my Father who is in heaven, and with his Son, Jesus Christ, and with his blessed Spirit; and methinks that it ill becomes you, if you call yourself a son of that same God, to refuse to have fellowship with me when I have fellowship with him.  God save you from this evil spirit;

but, you may readily enough fall into it unless the Lord shall keep you.  Your very zeal for truth may drive you into a forgetfulness of Christian love; and if it does, it will be a sad pity.  O Lord, keep us from falling in this way!

But there are falls of another sort which may happen to the brightest Christian; I mean, falls into outward sin.  As you read Jude’s Epistle through, you will see what apostates some professors became, and you will be led to cry, “Lord, keep me from falling.”  And if you were the pastor of a large church like mine, you would see enough to convince you that traitors like Judas are not all dead, — that, amidst the faithful, the unfaithful are still found, — that there are bad fish to be thrown away, as well as good fish to be kept; and every time we execute an act of discipline, — every time we have to bemoan the fall of one, who looked like, a brother, — we may thank God that, we have been kept, and may sing this doxology, “Unto him that is able, to keep us from falling, be glory and power for ever.”

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