Teaching Resources International

Piercing Preaching by C. H. Spurgeon

“Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ. Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?”-Acts 2:36, 37

This was the first public preaching of the gospel after our Lord was taken up into glory.  It was thus a very memorable sermon, a kind of first-fruits of the great harvest of gospel testimony.  It is very encouraging to those who are engaged in preaching that the first sermon should have been so successful.  Three thousand made up a grand take of fish at that first cast of the net.  We are serving a great and growing cause in the way chosen of God, and we hope in the future to see still larger results produced by that same undying and unchanging power which helped Peter to preach such a heart-piercing sermon.

Peter’s discourse was not distinguished by any special rhetorical display: he used not the words of man’s wisdom or eloquence.  It was not an oration, but it was a heart-moving argument, entreaty, and exhortation.  He gave his hearers a simple, well-reasoned, Scriptural discourse, sustained by the facts of experience; and every passage of it pointed to the Lord Jesus.  It was in these respects a model of what a sermon ought to be as to its contents.  His plea was personally addressed to the people who stood before him, and it had a practical and pressing relation to them and to their conduct.  It was aimed, not at the head, but at the heart.  Every word of it was directed to the conscience and the affections.  It was plain, practical, personal, and persuasive; and in this it was a model of what a sermon ought to be as to its aim and style.

Yet Peter could not have spoken otherwise under the impression of the divine Spirit: his speech was as the oracles of God, a true product of a divine inspiration. Under the circumstances, any other kind of address would have been sadly out of place.  A flashy, dazzling oration would have been a piece of horrible irreverence to the Holy Ghost; and Peter would have been guilty of the blood of souls if he had attempted it.  In sober earnestness, he kept to the plain facts of the case, setting them in the light of God’s Word; and then with all his might he pressed home the truth upon those for whose salvation he was laboring.  May it ever be the preacher’s one desire to win men to repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ!  May no minister wish to be admired, but may he long that his Lord and Master may be sought after! May none bewilder their people with the clouds of theoretic philosophy, but refresh them with the rain of revealed truth!  Oh, that we could so preach that our hearers should be at once pricked in their hearts, and so be led at once to believe in our Lord Jesus, and immediately to come forward and confess their faith in his name!

We must not forget, however, to trace the special success of the sermon on the day of Pentecost to the outpouring of the Holy Ghost in which Peter had shared.  This it is which is the making of the preacher.  Immersed into the Holy Spirit, the preacher will think rightly, and speak wisely; his word will be with power to those who hear.  We must not forget, also, that there had been a long season of earnest, united, believing prayer on the part of the whole church.  Peter was not alone: he was the voice of a praying company, and the believers had been with one accord in one place crying for a blessing; and thus not only was the Spirit resting upon the preacher, but on all who were with him.  What a difference this makes to a preacher of the gospel, when all his comrades are as much anointed of the Spirit as himself!  His power is enhanced a hundred-fold.  We shall seldom see the very greatest wonders wrought when the preacher stands by himself; but when Peter is described as standing up “with the eleven,” then is there a twelve-man ministry concentrated in one; and when the inner circle is further sustained by a company of men and women who have entered into the same truth and are of one heart and one soul, then is the power increased beyond measure.  A lonely ministry may sometimes affect great things, as Jonah did in Nineveh; but if we look for the greatest and most desirable result of all, it must come from one who is not alone, but is the mouthpiece of many.  Peter had the one hundred and twenty registered brethren for a loving bodyguard, and this tended to make him strong for his Lord.  How greatly I value the loving co-operation of the friends around me!  I have no words to express my gratitude to God for the army of true men and women who surround me with their love, and support me with their faith.  I pray you never cease to sustain me by your prayers, your sympathy, and your co-operation, until some other preacher shall take my place when increasing years shall warn me to stand aside.

Yet much responsibility must rest with the preacher himself; and there was much about Peter’s own self that is well worthy of imitation.  The sermon was born of the occasion, and it used the event of the hour as God intended it to be used.  It was earnest without a trace of passion, and prudent without a suspicion of fear.  The preacher himself was self-collected, calm, courteous, and gentle.  He aired no theories, but went on firm ground, stepping from fact to fact, from Scripture to Scripture, from plain truth to plain truth.  He was patient at the beginning, argumentative all along, and conclusive at the end.  He fought his way through the doubts and prejudices of his hearers; and when he came to the end, he stated the inevitable conclusion with clearness and certainty.  All along he spoke very boldly, without mincing the truth – “Ye with wicked hands have crucified and slain him whom God has highly exalted.”  He boldly accused them of the murder of the Lord of glory, doing his duty in the sight of God, and for the good of their souls, with great firmness and fearlessness.  Yet there is great tenderness in his discourse.  Impulsive and hot-headed Peter, who, a little while before, had drawn his sword to fight for his Lord, does not, in this instance, use a harsh word; but speaks with great gentleness and meekness of spirit, using words and terms all through the address which indicate a desire to conciliate, and then to convince.  Though he was as faithful as an Elijah, yet he used terms so courteous and kindly that, if men took offense, it would not be because of any offensiveness of tone on the speaker’s part.

Peter was gentle in his manner, but forceful in his matter.  This art he had learned from his Lord; and we shall never have master-preachers among us till we see men who have been with Jesus, and have learned of him.  Oh, that we could become partakers of our Lord’s spirit and echoes of his tone!  Then may we hope to attain to Pentecostal results, when we have preachers like Peter, surrounded by a band of earnest witnesses and all baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire.

When we follow the run of Peter’s argument, we do not wonder that his hearers were pricked in their hearts. We ascribe that deep compunction to the Spirit of God; and yet it was a very reasonable thing that it should be so.  When it was clearly shown to them that they had really crucified the Messiah, the great hope of their nation, it was not wonderful that they should be smitten with horror.  Looking as they were for Israel’s King and finding that he had been among them, and they had despitefully used him, and crucified him, they might well be smitten at the heart.  Though for the result of our ministry we depend wholly upon the Spirit of God, yet we must adapt our discourse to the end we aim at; or, say rather, we must leave ourselves in the Spirit’s hand as to the sermon itself as well as in reference to the result of the sermon.  The Holy Ghost uses means which are adapted to the end designed.  Because, beloved, I do desire beyond all things that many in this congregation may be pricked in the heart, I have taken this concluding part of Peter’s discourse to be the text of my sermon this morning.  Yet my trust is not in the Word itself, but in the quickening Spirit who works by it.  May the Spirit of God use the rapier of his Word to pierce the hearts of my hearers!

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Working for Christ by C. H. Spurgeon

“I must work the works of him who sent me …” John 9:3

So I introduce you tonight to the first topic of the present discourse, which is THE WORKER.  I give that as a well-earned title to the Lord Jesus Christ.  He is the worker, the chief worker, and the example to all workers.  He came into the world, he says, to do the will of him that sent him and to finish his work.  On this occasion, when he is pursued by his enemies, he is still a worker, a wonder-worker with the blind man.  There are many in this world who ignore sorrow, who pass by grief, who are deaf to lamentation, and blind to distress.  The easiest thing that I know of to do with this wicked, wretched City of London is not to know much about it.  They say that half the world knows not how the other half lives.  Sorely if it did know, it would not live as carelessly as it does, or be quite so cruel as it is.  There are sights in this metropolis that might melt a heart of steel and make a Nabal generous.  But it is an easy way of escaping from the exercise of benevolence to shut your eyes and see nothing of the abject misery, which is groveling at your feet.

“Where ignorance is bliss it is folly to be wise;” so said some easygoing ignoramus of old time.  If beggars are importunate, then passersby must be deaf.  If sinners are profane, it is a simple matter to stop your ears and hurry on.  If this blind man must needs sit and beg at the gate of the temple, then those who frequent the temple must just slip by as if they were as blind as he.  Crowds pass by and take no notice of him.  Is not that the way with the multitude today?  If you are in trouble, if you are suffering heartbreak, do they not ignore you and go their way to their farm and to their merchandise, though you lie down and starve?  Dives [the Rich Man in Luke 16] finds it convenient to remain ignorant of the sores of Lazarus.  It is not so with Jesus.  He has a quick eye to see the blind beggar if he sees nothing else.  If he is not enraptured with the massive stones and the beautiful architecture of the temple, yet he fixes his eyes upon a sightless mendicant at the temple gate.  He is all eye, all ear, all heart, all hand, where misery is present.  My Master is made of tenderness: he melts with love.  O true souls who love him, copy him in this and ever let your hearts be touched with a fellow feeling for the suffering and the sinning.

There are others who, though they see misery do not diminish it by warm sympathy, but increase it by their cold logical conclusions.  “Poverty,” they say, “yes: well: that of course is brought on by drunkenness and by laziness and by all sorts of vice.”  I do not say that it is not so in many cases; but I do say that the observation will not help a poor man to become either better or happier: such a hard remark will rather exasperate the hardened than assist the struggling.  “Sickness,” say some, “oh, no doubt, a great deal of sickness is caused by wicked habits, neglect of sanitary laws,” and so on.  This also may be sadly true, but it grates on a sufferer’s ear.  A very kind and pleasing doctrine to teach in the wards of our hospitals!  I would recommend you not to teach it till you are ill yourself, and then perhaps the doctrine may not seem quite so instructive.

Even Christ’s disciples, when they saw this blind man, thought that there must be something particularly wicked about his father and mother, or something especially vicious about the man himself, which God foresaw, and on account of which he punished him with blindness.  The disciples were of the same spirit as Job’s three comforters, who, when they saw the patriarch on a dung-hill, bereft of all his children, robbed of all his property, and scraping himself because he was covered with sores, said, “Of course he must be a hypocrite.  He must have done something very dreadful, or he would not be so grievously afflicted.”  The world will still stick to its unfounded belief that if the Tower of Siloam falls upon any men they must be sinners above all sinners upon the face of the earth.  A cruel doctrine, a vile doctrine, fit for savages, but not to be mentioned by Christians, who know that whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and even his best beloved have been taken away on a sudden.  Yet I do see a good deal of this cruel notion about, and if men are in trouble, I hear it muttered, “Well, of course they brought it on themselves.”  Is this your way of cheering them?  Cheap moral observations steeped in vinegar make a poor dish for an invalid.  Such censures are a sorry way of helping a lame dog over a stile; nay, it is putting up another stile for him so that he cannot get over it at all.

Now I mark this of my Lord: that it is written of him that he “giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not.”  When he fed those thousands in the wilderness, it would have been most just if he had said to them, “Why did you all come out into the wilderness, and not bring your provision with you?  What have you to do out here without something to eat?  You are unthrifty and deserve to hunger.”  No, no, he never said a word of the sort, but he fed them, fed them all and sent them home filled.  You and I are not sent into the world to thunder out commandments from the top of Sinai: we are come unto Mount Zion.  We are not to go on circuit as if we were judge and hangman rolled into one to meet all the sorrow and misery in the world with bitter words of censure and condemnation.  If we do so how different we are from that blessed Master of ours who says not a word by way of rebuke to those who seek him, but simply feeds the hungry and heals all those who have need of healing!  It is easy to criticize, it is easy to upbraid, but ours should be the higher and nobler task of blessing and saving.

I notice yet again that there are certain others who, if they are not indifferent to sorrow, and do not pitch upon some cruel theory of condemnation, nevertheless speculate a good deal where speculation can be of no practical service.  When we get together there are many questions which we like to raise and dispute upon which are of no practical value whatever.  There is the question of the origin of evil.  That is a fine subject for those who like to chop logic by the week, without making enough chips to light a fire for cold hands to warm at.  Such was the subject proposed to the Savior: foreseen guilt, or hereditary taint? – “Who did sin, this man, or his parents?”  How far is it right that the sin of parents should, as it often does fall upon the children?  I could propose to you a great many topics equally profound and curious, but what would be the use?  Yet there are many in the world who are fond of these topics, spinning cobwebs, blowing babbles, making theories, breaking them, and making more.  I wonder whether the world was ever blessed to the extent of a bad farthing by all the theorizing of all the learned men that have ever lived.  May they not all be put down under the head of vain janglings?  I would rather create an ounce of help than a ton of theory.

It is beautiful to me to see how the Master breaks up the fine speculation, which the disciples are setting forth.  He says somewhat shortly, “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents,” and then he spits on the ground, and makes clay, and opens the blind man’s eyes.  This was work, the other was mere worry.  “Father,” said a boy, “the cows are in the corn.  How ever did they get in?”  “Boy,” said the father, “never mind how they got in, let us hurry up and get them out.”  There is common sense about that practical proceeding.  Here are these people sunken in vice, and steeped in poverty.  Postpone the inquiries: How did they get into this condition?  What is the origin of moral evil?  How is it transmitted from parent to child?  Answer those questions after the day of judgment, when you will have more light; but just now the great thing is to see how you and I can get evil out of the world, and how we can lift up the fallen and restore those who have gone astray. Never let us imitate the man in the fable who saw a boy drowning, and there and then lectured him upon the imprudence of bathing out of his depth.  No, no, let us land the boy on the bank, dry him and dress him, and then tell him not to go there again, lest a worse thing come unto him.

I say that the Master was no speculator; he was no spinner of theories; he was no mere doctrinalist; but he went to work and healed those that had need of healing.  Now, in this, he is the great example for us all in this year of grace.  Come, what have we ever done to bless our fellow men?  Many of us are followers of Christ, and, oh, how happy we ought to be that we are so!  What have we ever done worthy of our high calling?  “Sir, I heard a lecture the other night,” says one, “upon the evils of intemperance.”  Is that all you did?  Has any action come of that brilliant oration and of your careful attention to it?  Did you straightway try to remove this intemperance by your example?  “Well, I shall think of that, sir, one of these days.”  Meanwhile what is to become of these intemperate ones?  Will not their blood lie at your door?  “I heard the other day,” says one, “a very forcible and interesting lecture upon political economy, and I felt that it was a very weighty science and accounted for much of the poverty you mention.”  Perhaps so: but political economy in itself is about as hard as brass; it has no bowels, or heart, or conscience, neither can it make allowance for such things.  The political economist is a man of iron, who would be rusted by a tear, and therefore never tolerates the mood of compassion.  His science is a rock, which will wreck a navy, and remain unmoved by the cries of drowning men and women.  It is as the moon of the desert, which withers all it blows upon.  It seems to dry up men’s souls when they get to be masters of it or rather are mastered by it.  It is a science of stubborn facts, which would not be facts if we were not so brutish.  Political economy or no political economy, I come back to my point: What have, you done for others?  Do let us think of that, and if any of us have been dreaming day after day what we would do “if,” let us see what we can do now, and, like the Savior, get to work.

Yet that is not the point, which I am driving at.  It is this.  If Jesus be such a worker, and no theorizer, then what a hope there is tonight for some of us who need his care!  Have we fallen?  Are we poor?  Have we brought ourselves into sorrow and misery?  Do not let us look to men or to ourselves.  Men will let us starve, and then they will hold a coroner’s inquest over our body to find why we dared to die, and so necessitated the paying for a grave and a coffin.  They will be sure to make an inquiry after it is all over with us; but if we come to Jesus Christ, he will make no inquiry at all, but receive us and give rest unto our souls.  That is a blessed text, “He giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not.”  When the prodigal son came home to his father, according to all propriety, as people would do nowadays, the father should have said to his son, “Well, you have come home, and I am glad to see you, but what a state you are in!  How did you get into this condition?  Why, you have scarcely a clean rag on your back!  How is it you have become so poor?  And you are lean and hungry: how comes this about?  Where have you been?  What have you done?  What company have you kept?  Where were you a week ago?  What were you doing the day before yesterday at seven o’clock?”  His father never asked him a single question, but pressed him to his bosom and knew all about it by instinct.  He came as he was, and his father received him as he was.  The father seemed, with a kiss, to say, “My boy, bygones are bygones.  You were dead but you are alive again; you were lost but you are found, and I inquire no further.”

That is just how Jesus Christ is willing to receive penitent sinners tonight.  Is there a streetwalker here?  Come, poor woman, as you are, to your dear Lord and Master, who will cleanse you of your grievous sin.  “All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven.”  Is there one here who has transgressed against the rules of society and is pointed at as especially sinful?  Yet, come, and welcome, to the Lord Jesus of whom it is written, “This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.”

The physician never thinks it scorn to go among the sick; and Christ never felt it shame that he looks after the guilty and the lost.  Nay, write this about his diadem: “The Savior of sinners, even of the very chief:” he counts this his glory.  He will work for you, not chide you.  He will not treat you with a dose of theories and with a host of bitter abjurations; but he will receive you just as you are into the wounds of his side and hide you there from the wrath of God.  Oh, blessed gospel that I have to preach to you!  May the Holy Spirit lead you to embrace it!

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How Sweet is Thy Word by C. H. Spurgeon

“How sweet are thy words unto my taste!  Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” — Psalm 119:103

It is delightful to find how exactly the experience of David, under the Jewish dispensation, tallies with the experience of the saints of God in these gospel times.  David lived in an age of miracles and divers manifestations.  He could have recourse to the Urim and the Thummim and the priesthood; he could go up to Zion and listen to the holy songs of the great assembly; he could converse with the priesthood; but, still, the food of his soul was supplied to him from the written Word of God, just as it is with us now that we have no open Vision, and the Urim, and the Thummim and the priesthood are altogether departed, we still feed upon the Word.  As that is the food of our souls, so it was the food of David’s soul.

Martin Luther says, “I have covenanted with the Lord that I would neither ask him for visions, nor for angels, nor for miracles, but I would be satisfied with his own Word, and if I might but lay hold upon Scripture by faith, that shall be enough for me.”  Now it seems to be so with David here.  The honey that gratifies his taste is not found in angels’ visits or miraculous signs or officiating priesthoods or special revelations, but in the words of God’s mouth and in the testimonies of Holy Writ.

Let us, then dear brethren, prize this Book of God. Be not ambitious, as some are, of seeking new revelations, or enquire for the whispers of disembodied spirits, but be satisfied with this good household bread which God has prepared for his people; and while others may loathe and dislike it, let us be thankful for it and acknowledge with gratitude the bread which came down from heaven, testifying to us, as it does, of the Lord Jesus, the Word of life that liveth and abideth forever.

Notice that the Word of God is greatly appreciated! This exclamation of David is a clear proof that he set the highest possible value upon the Word of God.  The evidence is more valuable, because the Scripture that David had was but a slender book compared with this volume which is now before us.  I suppose he had little more than the five Books of Moses, and yet, as he opened that Pentateuch, which was to him complete in itself, he said, “How sweet are thy words unto my taste!”  If that first morsel so satisfied the psalmist, surely this fuller and richer feast of heavenly dainties ought to be yet more gratifying to us.  If, when God had but given him the first dish of the course, and that by no means the best, his soul was ravished with it, how should you and I rejoice with joy unspeakable, now that the King has brought on royal dainties, and given us the revelation of his dear Son!

Think a minute.  The Pentateuch is what we should call, nowadays, the historical part of Scripture; and haven’t you frequently heard persons say, “Oh, the sermon was historical, and the minister read a passage out of the historical parts of the Word.”  I have, with great pain, heard persons speak in a very depreciating manner of the histories of Holy Writ.  Now, understand this.  The part of the Word which David loved so much is mainly historical, and if the mere history of the Word was so sweet, what ought those holy Evangels and sacred Epistles to be which declare the mystery of that narrative — which are the honey whereof the Old Testament is but the comb — which are the treasures of which the Old Testament is but the casket?  Surely we are to be condemned indeed who do not prize the Word now that we have it all.

That Word of God, which David so much prized, was mainly typical, shadowy, symbolical.  I do not know that he understood it all.  I do know that he understood some of it, for some of his Psalms are so evangelical that he must have perceived the great sacrifice of God foreshadowed in the sacrifices described in the books of Numbers and Leviticus, or it would not have been possible that he should, in so marvelous a style, express his faith in the great offering of our Lord Jesus.  I put it to some professors here: do you often read the types at all?  If, now, your Bible was so circumscribed that all was taken from you but the Pentateuch, would you be able, to say, “Thy Word is sweet unto my taste?”  Are not many of us so little educated in God’s Word that, if we were confined to the reading of that part of it, we should be obliged to confess it was unprofitable to us?  We could not give a good answer to Philip’s question, “Understandest thou what thou readest?”  Oh, shame upon us that, with so many more Books, and with the Holy Spirit so plenteously given to guide us into all truth, we should seem to value at least half of the Word of God even less than David did!

A great portion of the Pentateuch is taken up with precepts, and I may say of some of them that they are grievous.  Those commandments which are binding upon us are not grievous.  Some of the commands of Leviticus and Deuteronomy are so complex, that they were a yoke of bondage, according to Peter, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear.  Yet, that wondrous 20^th chapter of Exodus with its ten commandments and all the long list of the precepts of the ceremonial law, which you may perhaps account wearisome to read, David says were sweet to his taste, sweeter than honey to his mouth.  What!  Did he so love to hear his heavenly Father speak that it did not much matter to him what he said so long as he did but speak, for the music of his voice was gladdening in its every tone to him?  Now that you and I know that all the bondage of the ceremonial law is gone, that nothing remains of it but blessing to our souls, and now that we are not under the law, but under grace, and have become inheritors of rich and precious and unspeakably great promises, how is it that we fall so far short, and do not, I fear, love the Word of God to anything like the degree that David loved it?

David here speaks of all God’s words, without making any distinction concerning some one of them. So long as it was God’s Word, it was sweet to him, whatever form it might take.  Alas, this is not true of all professors.  With an unwise partiality, they pronounce some of God’s words as very sweet, but other portions of God’s truth are rather sour and unsavory to their palates.

There are persons of a certain class who delight in the doctrines of grace. Therein they are to be commended, for which of us do not delight in them if we know our interest in them?  The covenant and the great truths which grow out of the covenant, these are unspeakably precious things and are rightly enough the subjects of joy to all believers who understand them.  Yet certain of these persons will be as angry as though you had touched them with a hot iron if you should bring a precept anywhere near them; and if you insist upon anything being the duty of a believer, the very words seem to sting them like a whip; they cannot endure it.  If you speak of the “holiness without which no man shall see the Lord,” and speak of it as a holiness which is wrought in us by God the Holy Spirit and as a holiness of mind and thought and action — a personal holiness which is to be seen in the daily life — they are offended.  They can say, “How sweet are thy doctrinal words to my taste, but not thy precepts, Lord; those I do not love; those I call legal.  If thy servants minister them, I say they are gendering bondage and I go away from them and leave them as Arminians or duty-faith men or something of that kind; for I love half thy Word and only half of it.”  Alas, there are not a few of that class to be found every here and there.

And there are some who go on the other side. They love God’s Word in the precepts of it, or the promises, but not the doctrines.  If the doctrine be preached, they say it is dangerous — too high; it will elevate some of God’s servants to presumption it will tempt them to think lightly of moral distinctions; it will lead them to walk carelessly, because they know they are safe in Christ.  Thus they love one half of the truth and not the whole of it.  But, my dear brethren and sisters, I hope you are of the same mind as David.  If God shall give you a promise, you will taste it, like a wafer of honey, and feed on it; and if he shall give you a precept, you will not stop to look at it, and say, “Lord, I don’t like this as well as the promise;” but you will receive that and feed upon that also.  And when the Lord shall be pleased afterwards to give you some revelation with regard to your inward experience or to your fellowship with his dear Son, you welcome it with joy, because you love any truth and every truth so long as you know it to be the truth of God’s own Word.

It is a blessed sign of grace in the heart when God’s words are sweet to us as a whole — when we love the truth, not cast into a system or a shape,  but as we find it in God’s Word.  I believe that no man who has yet lived has ever proposed a system of theology which comprises all the truth of God’s Word.  If such a system had been possible, the discovery of it would have been made for us by God himself: certainly it would if it had been desirable and useful for our profit and holiness.  But it has not pleased God to give us a body of divinity; let us receive it as he has given it each truth in its own proportion — each doctrine in harmony with its fellow — each precept carefully carried out into practice and each promise to be believed and by-and-by received.  Let the truth and the whole truth, be sweet to our taste.  “How sweet are thy words!”

There seems to be an emphasis on the pronoun, “How sweet are thy words!”  O my God, if the words be thine, they are sweet to me. Had I perceived them to be merely the words of man, I might then have estimated them at their own weight, without reference to their authority; but when my Father speaks, when the Spirit lives and breathes in the truth to which I listen, when Jesus Christ himself draws near to me in the preaching of the gospel — then it is that the Word becomes sweet unto my taste.  Beloved, let us not be satisfied with the truth except we can also feel it to be God’s truth.  Let us ask the Lord to enable us, when we open this Book, to feel that we are not reading it as we read a common book — truths put there by some means, unimportant to us how; but let us recollect that we are reading truth put there by an inspired pen — that we have there God’s truth such as he would have us receive — such as he thought it worth his while to write and to preserve to all ages for our instruction.

The psalmist is not content to say, “God’s Word is sweet, and sweeter than honey,” but “How sweet are thy words unto my taste!  Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!”  After all, the blessedness of the Word is a matter to be ascertained by personal experience.  Let others choose this philosophy and that form of thought, let them gad abroad after the beauties of poetry, or dote upon the charms of oratory; my palate shall be satisfied with thy Word, O God, and my soul shall find an excess of sweetness in the things which come from thy mouth into my mouth!

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