Teaching Resources International

“For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12.

Those who are fond of a labyrinth of exposition will find a maze perplexing to the last degree if they will read the various commentators and expositors upon this verse. This is the question: by the Word of God, are we here to understand the Incarnate Word, the Divine Logos, who was in the beginning with God. O; or does the passage relate to this inspired Book, and to the gospel, which is the kernel of it, as it is set forth in the preaching of the truth in the power of the Holy Ghost? Confusing!You shall find Dr. John Owen, with a very large number of eminent servants of God, defending the first theory, that the Son of God is doubtless here spoken of; and I confess that they seem to me to defend it with arguments which I should not like to controvert. Much more is to be said on this side of the question than I can here bring before you.

On the other side, we find John Calvin, with an equally grand array of divines, all declaring that it must be the Book that is meant, the gospel, the revelation of God in the Book. Their interpretation of the passage is not to be set aside, and I feel convinced that they all give as good reasons for their interpretation as those who come to the other conclusion. Where such Doctors differ, I am not inclined to present any interpretation of my own which can be set in competition with theirs, though I may venture to propound one which comprehends them all, and so comes into conflict with none. It is a happy circumstance if we can see a way to agree with all those who did not themselves agree. But I have been greatly instructed by the mere fact that it should be difficult to know whether in this passage the Holy Ghost is speaking of the Christ of God, or the Book of God. This shows us a great truth, which we might not otherwise have so clearly noted. How much that can be said of the Lord Jesus may be also said of the inspired volume! How closely are these two allied! How certainly do those who despise the one reject the other! How intimately are the Word made flesh, and the Word uttered by inspired men, joined together!

It may be most accurate to interpret this passage as relating both to the Word of God incarnate, and the Word of God inspired. Weave the two into one thought, for God hath joined them together, and you will then see fresh lights and new meanings in the text. The Word of God, namely, this revelation of himself in Holy Scripture, is all it is here described to be, because Jesus, the incarnate Word of God, is in it. He doth, as it were, incarnate himself as the divine truth in this visible and manifest revelation; and thus it becomes living and powerful, dividing and discerning. As the Christ reveals God, so this Book reveals Christ, and therefore it partakes, as the Word of God, in all the attributes of the Incarnate Word; and we may say many of the same things of the written Word as of the embodied Word; in fact, they are now so linked together that it would be impossible to divide them.

This I like to think of, because there are some nowadays who deny every doctrine of revelation, and yet, forsooth, they praise the Christ. The Teacher is spoken of in the most flattering style, and then his teaching is rejected, except so far as it may coincide with the philosophy of the moment. They talk much about Jesus, while that which is the real Jesus, namely, his gospel, and his inspired Word, they cast away. I believe I do but correctly describe them when I say that, like Judas, they betray the Son of man with a kiss. They even go so far as to cry up the names of the doctrines, though they use them in a different sense that they may deceive. They talk of loyalty to Christ, and reverence for the Sermon on the Mount; but they use vain words. I am charged with sowing suspicion. I do sow it, and desire to sow it. Too many Christian people are content to hear anything so long as it is put forth by a clever man, in a taking manner; I want them to try the spirits, whether they be of God, for many false prophets have gone forth into the world. What God has joined together these modern thinkers willfully put asunder, and separate the Revealer from his own revelation. I believe the Savior thinks their homage to be more insulting than their scorn would be. Well may he do so, for they bow before him, and say, “Hail, Master!” while their foot is on the blood of his covenant, and their souls abhor the doctrine of his substitutionary sacrifice. They are crucifying the Lord afresh, and putting him to an open shame, by denying the Lord that bought them, by daring to deride his purchase of his people as a “mercantile transaction,” and I know not what of blasphemy beside.

Christ and his Word must go together. What is true of the Christ is here predicated both of him and of his Word. Behold, this day the everlasting gospel has Christ within it. He rides in it as in a chariot. He rides in it as, of old, Jehovah “did ride upon a cherub, and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind.” It is only because Jesus is not dead that the Word becomes living and effectual, “and sharper than any two-edged sword;” for, if you leave Christ out of it, you have left out its vitality and power. As I have told you that we will not have Christ without the Word, so neither will we have the Word without Christ. If you leave Christ out of Scripture, you have left out the essential truth which it is written to declare. Ay, if you leave out of it Christ as a Substitute, Christ in his death, Christ in his garments dyed in blood, you have left out of it all that is living and powerful. How often have we reminded you that as concerning the gospel, even as concerning every man, “the blood is the life thereof:” a bloodless gospel is a lifeless gospel!

A famous picture has been lately produced, which represents our Lord before Pilate. It has deservedly won great attention. A certain excellent newspaper, which brings out for a very cheap price a large number of engravings, has given an engraving of this picture; but, inasmuch as the painting was too large for the paper to give the whole, they have copied a portion of it. It is interesting to note that they have given us Pilate here, and Caiaphas there, but since there was no room for Jesus upon the sheet, they have left out that part of the design. When I saw the picture, I thought that it was wonderfully characteristic of a great deal of modern preaching. See Pilate here, Caiaphas there, and the Jews yonder-but the Victim, bound and scourged for human sin, is omitted. Possibly, in the case of the publication, the figure of the Christ will appear in the next number; but even if he should appear in the next sermon of oar(?) preachers of the new theology, it will be as a moral example, and not as the Substitute for the guilty, the Sin-bearer by whose death we are redeemed. When we hear a sermon with no Christ in it, we hope that he will come out next Sunday; at the same time, the preaching is, so far, spoilt, and the presentation of the gospel is entirely rained so long as the principal figure is left out. I don’t understand the previous sentence. Oh, it is a sad thing to have to stand in any house of prayer and listen to the preaching, and then have to cry, “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him!” Rest assured that they have laid him in a tomb. You may be quite certain of that. They have put him away as a dead thing, and to them he is as good as dead. True believer, you may comfort your heart with this recollection that he will rise again. He cannot be held by the bonds of death in any sense; and, though his own church should bury him, and lay the huge lid of the most enormous sarcophagus of heresy upon him, the Redeemer will rise again, and his truth with him, and he and his Word will live and reign together forever and ever.

Brethren, you will understand I am going to speak about the Word of God as being, like the Lord Jesus, the revelation of God. This inspired volume is that gospel whereby you have received life, unless you have heard it in vain. It is this gospel, with Jesus within it, Jesus working by it, which is said to be living and effectual, and “sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” I shall only talk with you in very simple style. First, concerning the qualities of the Word of God; and, secondly, concerning certain practical lessons which these qualities suggest to us.

I. First let me speak CONCERNING THE QUALITIES OF THE WORD OF GOD. It is “quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword.”

The Word of God is said to be “quick.” I am sorry the translators have used that word, because it is apt to be mistaken as meaning speedy, and that is not the meaning at all; it means alive, or living. “Quick” is the old English word for alive, and so we read of the “quick and dead.” The Word of God is alive. This is a living Book. This is a mystery which only living men, quickened by the Spirit of God, will fully comprehend. Take up any other book except the Bible, and there may be a measure of power in it, but there is not that indescribable vitality in it which breathes, and speaks, and pleads, and conquers in the case of this sacred volume. We have in the book-market many excellent selections of choice passages from great authors, and in a few instances the persons who have made the extracts have been at the pains to place under their quotations from Scripture the name “David,” or “Jesus,” but this is worse than needless. There is a style of majesty about God’s Word and with this majesty a vividness never found elsewhere. No other writing has within it a heavenly life whereby it works miracles and even imparts life to its reader. It is a living and incorruptible seed. It moves, it stirs itself, it lives, it communes with living men as a living Word. Solomon saith concerning it, “When thou goest, it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest, it shall keep thee; and when thou awakest, it shall talk with thee.” Have you never known what that means? Why, the Book has wrestled with me; the Book has smitten me; the Book has comforted me; the Book has smiled on me; the Book has frowned on me; the Book has clasped my hand; the Book has warmed my heart. The Book weeps with me, and sings with me; it whispers to me, and it preaches to me; it maps my way, and holds up my goings; it was to me the Young Man’s Best Companion, and it is still my Morning and Evening Chaplain. It is a live Book: all over alive; from its first chapter to its last word it is full of a strange, mystic vitality, which makes it have pre-eminence over every other writing for every living child of God.

See, my brothers, our words, our books, our spoken or our printed words by-and-by die out. How many books there are which nobody will ever read now because they are out of date! There are many books that I could read profitably when I was a youth, but they would teach me nothing now. There are also certain religious works which I could read with pleasure during the first ten years of my spiritual life; but I should never think of reading them now, any more than I should think of reading the “a-b ab,” and the “b-a ba,” of my childhood. Christian experience causes us to outgrow the works which were the class-books of our youth. We may outgrow teachers and pastors, but not apostles and prophets. That human system which was once vigorous and influential may grow old, and at length lose all vitality; but the Word of God is always fresh, and new, and full of force. No wrinkle mars its brow: no trembling is in its foot. Here, in the Old and New Testaments, we have at once the oldest and the newest of books. Homer and Hesiod are infants to the more ancient parts of this venerable volume, and yet the gospel which it contains is as truly new as this morning’s newspaper. I say again that our words come and go: as the trees of the forest multiply their leaves only to cast them off as withered things, so the thoughts and theories of men are but for the season, and then they fade and rot into nothingness. “The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the Lord endureth forever.”

Its vitality is such as it can impart to its readers. Hence, you will often find, when you converse with revelation, that if you yourself are dead when you begin to read, it does not matter, you will be quickened as you peruse it. You need not bring life to the Scripture; you shall draw life from the Scripture. Oftentimes a single verse has made us start up, as Lazarus came forth at the call of the Lord Jesus. When our soul has been faint, and ready to die, a single word, applied to the heart by the Spirit of God, has aroused us; for it is a quickening as well as a living Word. I am so glad of this, because at times I feel altogether dead; but the Word of God is not dead; and coming to it, we are like the dead man, who, when he was put into the grave of the prophet, rose again as soon as he touched his bones. Even these bones of the prophets, these words of theirs spoken and written thousands of years ago, will impart life to those who come into contact with them. The Word of God is thus overflowingly alive.

Hence, I may add it is so alive that you need never be afraid that it will become extinct. They dream that they have put us among the antiquities, those of us who preach the old gospel that our fathers loved! They sneer at the doctrines of the apostles and of the reformers, and declare that believers in them are left high and dry, the relics of an age which has long since ebbed away. Yes, so they say! But what they say may not after all be true; for the gospel is such a living gospel that, if it were cut into a thousand shreds, every particle of it would live and grow. If it were buried beneath a thousand avalanches of error, it would shake off the incubus and rise from its grave. If it were cast into the midst of fire it would walk through the flame as it has done many a time, as though it were in its natural element. The Reformation was largely due to a copy of the Scriptures left in the seclusion of a monastery, and there hidden till Luther came under its influence, and his heart furnished soil for the living seed to grow in. Leave but a single New Testament in a Popish community, and the evangelical faith may at any moment come to the front, even though no preacher of it may ever have come that way. Plants unknown in certain regions have suddenly sprung from the soil: the seeds have been wafted on the winds, carried by birds, or washed ashore by the waves of the sea. So vital are seeds that they live and grow wherever they are borne; and even after lying deep in the soil for centuries, when the upturning spade has brought them to the surface, they have germinated at once. Thus is it with the Word of God: it liveth and abideth forever, and in every soil and under all circumstances it is prepared to prove its own life by the energy with which it grows and produces fruit to the glory of God.

How vain, as well as wicked, are all attempts to kill the gospel. Those who attempt the crime, in any fashion, will be forever still beginning, and never coming near their end. They will be disappointed in all cases, whether they would slay it with persecution, smother it with worldliness, crush it with error, starve it with neglect, poison it with misrepresentation, or drown it with infidelity. While God liveth, his Word shall live. Let us praise God for that. We have an immortal gospel, incapable of being destroyed, which shall live and shine when your? lamp of the sun has consumed its scant supply of oil.

In our text, the Word is said to be “powerful” or “active.” Perhaps “energetic” is the best rendering, or almost as well, “effectual.” Holy Scripture is full of power and energy. Oh, the majesty of the Word of God!

They charge us with Bibliolatry; it is a crime of their own inventing, of which few are guilty. If there be such things as venial sins, surely an undue reverence of Holy Scripture is one of them. To me the Bible is not God, but it is God’s voice, and I do not hear it without awe. What an honor to have it as one’s calling, to study, to expound, and to publish this sacred Word! I cannot help feeling that the man who preaches the Word of God is standing, not upon a mere platform, but upon a throne. You may study your sermon, my brother, and you may be a great rhetorician, and be able to deliver it with wonderful fluency and force; but the only power that is effectual for the highest design of preaching is the power which does not lie in your word, nor in my word, but in the Word of God. Have you never noticed, when persons are converted, that they almost always attribute it to some text that was quoted in the sermon? It is God’s Word, not our comment on God’s Word, which saves souls.

The Word of God is powerful for all sacred ends. How powerful it is to convince men of sin! We have seen the self-righteous turned inside out by the revealed truth of God. Nothing else could have brought home to them such unpleasant truth, and compelled them to see themselves as in a clear mirror, but the searching Word of God. How powerful it is for conversion! It comes on-board a man, and without asking any leave from him, it just puts its hand on the helm, and turns him round in the opposite direction from that in which he was going before; and the man gladly yields to the irresistible force which influences his understanding and rules his will. The Word of God is that by which sin is slain, and grace is born in the heart. It is the light which brings life with it. How active and energetic it is, when the soul is convinced of sin, in bringing it forth into gospel liberty! We have seen men shut up as in the devil’s own dungeon, and we have tried to get them free. We have shaken the bars of iron, but we could not tear them out so as to set the captives at liberty. But the Word of the Lord is a great breaker of bolts and bars. It not only casts down the strongholds of doubt, but it cuts off the head of Giant Despair. No cell or cellar in Doubting Castle can hold a soul in bondage when the Word of God, which is the master-key, is once put to its true use, and made to throw back bolts of despondency. It is living and energetic for encouragement and enlargement.

O beloved, what a wonderful power the gospel has to bring us comfort! It brought us to Christ at the first, and it still leads us to look to Christ till we grow like him. God’s children are not sanctified by legal methods, but by gracious ones. The Word of God, the gospel of Christ, is exceedingly powerful in promoting sanctification, and bringing about that whole-hearted consecration which is both our duty and our privilege. May the Lord cause his Word to prove its power in us by its making us fruitful unto every good work to do his will! Through the “washing of water by the Word”—that is, through the washing by the Word—may we be cleansed every day and made to walk in white before the Lord, adorning the doctrine of God our Savior in all things!

The Word of God, then, is quick and powerful in our own personal experience, and we shall find it to be so if we use it in laboring to bless our fellow-men. Dear brethren, if you seek to do good in this sad world, and want a powerful weapon to work with, stick to the gospel, the living gospel, the old, old gospel. There is a power in it sufficient to meet the sin and death of human nature. All the thoughts of men, use them as earnestly as you may, will be like tickling Leviathan with a straw. Nothing can get through the scales of this monster but the Word of God. This is a weapon made of sterner stuff than steel, and it will cut through coats of mail. Nothing can resist it. “Where the word of a king is, there is power.” About the gospel, when spoken with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, there is the same omnipotence as there was in the Word of God when in the beginning he spoke to the primeval darkness saying, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Oh how we ought to prize and love the revelation of God; not only because it is full of life, but because that life is exceedingly energetic and effectual, and operates so powerfully upon the lives and hearts of men.

Next, the apostle tells us that this Word is cutting. “Cutting” would be as correct a translation as that of our own version: it is “more cutting than any two-edged sword.” I suppose the apostle means by the description “two-edged” that it is all edge. A sword with two edges has no blunt side: it cuts both this way and that. The revelation of God given us in Holy Scripture is edge all over. It is alive in every part, and in every part keen to cut the conscience and wound the heart. Depend upon it; there is not a superfluous verse in the Bible, nor a chapter which is useless. Doctors say of certain drugs that they are inert-they have no effect upon the system one way or the other. Now, there is not an inert passage in the Scriptures; every line has its virtues. Have you never heard of one who heard read, as the lesson for the Sabbath-day, that long chapter of names, wherein it is written that each patriarch lived so many hundred years, “and he died”? Thus it ends the notice of the long life of Methuselah with “and he died.” The repetition of the words, “and he died,” woke the thoughtless hearer to a sense of his mortality, and led to his coming to the Savior. I should not wonder that, away there in the Chronicles, among those tough Hebrew names, there have been conversions wrought in cases unknown to us as yet. Anyhow, any bit of Holy Writ is very dangerous to play with, and many a man has been wounded by the Scriptures when he has been idly or even profanely reading them. Doubters have meant to break the Word to pieces, and it has broken them. Yea, fools have taken up portions, and studied them, on purpose to ridicule them, and they have been sobered and vanquished by that which they repeated in sport. There was one who went to hear Mr. Whitefield—a member of the “Hell-fire Club,” a desperate fellow. He stood up at the next meeting of his abominable associates, and he delivered Mr. Whitefield’s sermon with wonderful accuracy, imitating his very tone and manner. In the middle of his exhortation, he converted himself, and came to a sudden pause, sat down broken-hearted, and confessed the power of the gospel. That club was dissolved. That remarkable convert was Mr. Thorpe, of Bristol, whom God so greatly used afterwards in the salvation of others. I would rather have you read the Bible to mock at it than not read it at all. I would rather that you came to hear the Word of God out of hatred to it than that you never came at all.

The Word of God is so sharp a thing, so full of cutting power that you may be bleeding under its wounds before you have seriously suspected the possibility of such a thing. You cannot come near the gospel without its having a measure of influence over you; and, God blessing you, it may cut down and kill your sins when you have no idea that such a work is being done. Dear friends, have you not found the Word of God to be very cutting, more cutting than a two-edged sword, so that your heart has bled inwardly, and you have been unable to resist the heavenly stroke? I trust you and I may go on to know more and more of its edge till it has killed us outright, so far as the life of sin is concerned. Oh, to be sacrificed unto God, and his Word to be the sacrificial knife! Oh, that his Word were put to the throat of every sinful tendency, every sinful habit, and every sinful thought! There is no sin-killer like the Word of God. Wherever it comes, it comes as a sword, and inflicts death upon evil. Sometimes when we are praying that we may feel the power of the Word we hardly know what we are praying for. I saw a venerable brother the other day, and he said to me, “I remember speaking with you when you were nineteen or twenty years of age, and I never forgot what you said to me. I had been praying with you in the prayer-meeting that God would give us the Holy Ghost to the full, and you said to me afterwards, ‘My dear brother, do you know what you asked God for?’ I answered, ‘Yes.’ But you very solemnly said to me, ‘The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of judgment and the Spirit of burning, and few are prepared for the inward conflict which is meant by these two words.”’ My good old friend told me that at the time he did not understand what I meant, but thought me a singular youth. “Ah!” said he, “I see it now, but it is only by a painful experience that I have come to the full comprehension of it.” Yes, when Christ comes, he comes not to send peace on the earth, but a sword; and that sword begins at home, in our own souls, killing, cutting, hacking, breaking in pieces. Blessed is that man who knows the Word of the Lord by its exceeding sharpness, for it kills nothing but that which ought to be killed. It quickens and gives new life to all that is of God; but the old depraved life which ought to die, it hews in pieces, as Samuel destroyed Agag before the Lord. “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword.”

But I want you to notice next, that it has a further quality: it is piercing. While it has an edge like a sword, it has also a point like a rapier, “Piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.” The difficulty with some men’s hearts is to get at them. In fact, there is no spiritually penetrating the heart of any natural man except by this piercing instrument, the Word of God. But the rapier of revelation will go through anything. Even when the “heart is as fat as grease,” as the Psalmist says, yet this Word will pierce it. Into the very marrow of the man, the sacred truth will pass and find him out in a way in which he cannot even find himself out. As it is with our own hearts, so it is with the hearts of other men. Dear friends, the gospel can find its way anywhere. Men may wrap themselves up in prejudice, but this rapier can find out the joints of their harness; they may resolve not to believe and may feel content in their self-righteousness, but this piercing weapon will find its way. The arrows of the Word of God are sharp in the hearts of the King’s enemies, whereby the people fall under him. Let us not be afraid to trust this weapon whenever we are called up to face the adversaries of the Lord Jesus. We can pin them, and pierce them, and finish them with this.

And next, the Word of God is said to be discriminating. It divides asunder soul and spirit. Nothing else could do that, for the division is difficult. In a great many ways, writers have tried to describe the difference between soul and spirit; but I question whether they have succeeded. No doubt it is a very admirable definition to say, “The soul is the life of the natural man, and the spirit the life of the regenerate or spiritual man.” But it is one thing to define and quite another thing to divide. We will not attempt to solve this metaphysical problem. God’s Word comes in, and it shows man the difference between that which is of the soul, and that which is of the spirit; that which is of man and that which is of God; that which is of grace and that which is of nature.

The Word of God is wonderfully decisive about this. Oh, how much there is of our religion which is-to quote a spiritual poet—“The child of nature finely-dressed, but not the living child:” it is of the soul, and not of the spirit! The Word of God lays down very straight lines and separates between the natural and the spiritual, the carnal and the divine. You would think sometimes, from the public prayers and preaching of clergymen, that we were all Christian people; but Holy Scripture does not sanction this flattering estimate of our condition. When we are gathered together, the prayers are for us all, and the preaching is for us all, as being all God’s people-all born so, or made so by baptism, no question about that! Yet the way the Word of God takes is of quite another sort. It talks about the dead, and the living; about the repentant, and the impenitent; about the believing, and the unbelieving; about the blind, and the seeing; about those called of God, and those who still lie in the arms of the wicked one. It speaks with keen discrimination and separates the precious from the vile. I believe there is nothing in the world that divides congregations, as they ought to be divided, like the plain preaching of the Word of God. This it is that makes our places of worship to be solemn spots, even as Dr. Watts sings—

“Up to her courts with joys unknown

The holy tribes repair;

The Son of David holds the throne,

And sits in judgment there.”

“He hears our praises end complaints;

And, while his awful voice

Divides the sinners from the saints,

We tremble and rejoice.”

The Word of God is discriminating. Once more, the Word of God is marvelously revealing to the inner self. It pierces between the joints and marrow, and marrow is a thing not to be got at very readily. The Word of God gets at the very marrow of our manhood; it lays bare the secret thoughts of the soul. It is “a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Have you not often, in hearing the Word, wondered how the preacher could so unveil that which you had concealed? He says the very things in the pulpit which you had uttered in your bed-chamber. Yes, that is one of the marks of the Word of God that it lays bare a man’s inmost secrets; yea, it discovers to him that which he had not even himself perceived. The Christ that is in the Word sees everything.

Read the next verse—“All things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” The Word not only lets you see what your thoughts are, but it criticizes your thoughts. The Word of God says of this thought, “it is vain,” and of that thought, “it is acceptable;” of this thought, “it is selfish,” and of that thought, “it is Christ-like.” It is a judge of the thoughts of men. And the Word of God is such a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart that when men twist about, and wind, and wander, yet it tracks them. There is nothing so difficult to get at as a man. You may hunt a badger, and run down a fox, but you cannot get at a man—he has so many doublings and hiding-places: yet the Word of God will dig him out, and seize on him. When the Spirit of God works with the gospel, the man may dodge, and twist, but the preaching goes to his heart and conscience, and he is made to feel it, and to yield to its force.

Many times, I do not doubt, dear brothers, you have found comfort in the discerning power of the Word. Unkind lips have found great fault with you; you have been trying to do what you could for the Lord, and an enemy has slandered you, and then it has been a delight to remember that the Master discerns your motive. Holy Scripture has made you sure of this by the way in-which it understood and commended you. He discerns the true object of your heart and never misinterprets you; and this has inspired you with a firm resolve to be the faithful servant of so just a Lord. No slander will survive the judgment seat of Christ. We are not to be tried by the opinions of men, but by the impartial Word of the Lord; and, therefore, we rest in peace.

II. I have been all this while over the first part of the discourse. I have only a minute or two just to show ONE OR TWO LESSONS WE OUGHT TO GATHER FROM THE QUALITIES OF THE WORD OF GOD that I have described.

The first is this. Brothers and sisters, let us greatly reverence the Word of God. If it be all this, let us read it, study it, prize it, and make it the man of our right hand. And you that are not converted, I do pray you treat the Bible with a holy love and reverence, and read it with the view of finding Christ and his salvation in it. Augustine used to say that the Scriptures are the swaddling-bands of the child Christ Jesus: while you are unrolling the bands I trust you will meet with him.

Next, dear friends, let us, whenever we feel ourselves dead, and especially in prayer, get close to the Word, for the Word of God is alive. I do not find that gracious men always pray alike. Who could? When you have nothing to say to your God, let him say something to you. The best private devotion is made up, half of searching Scripture in which God speaks to us, and the other half of prayer and praise, in which we speak to God. When thou art dead, turn from thy death to that or which still lives.

Next, whenever we feel weak in our duties, let us go to the Word of God, and the Christ in the Word, for power; and this will be the best of power. The power of our natural abilities, the power of our acquired knowledge, the power of our gathered experience, all these may be vanity, but the power which is in the Word will prove effectual. Get thou up from the cistern of thy failing strength to the fountain of omnipotence; for they that drink here, while the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, shall run, and not be weary, and shall walk, and not faint.

Next, if you need as a minister, or a worker, anything that will cut your hearers to the heart, go to this Book for it. I say this because I have known preachers try to use very cutting words of their own. God save us from that! When our hearts grow hot and our words are apt to be sharp as a razor, let us remember that the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Let us not attempt to carry on Christ’s war with the weapons of Satan. There is nothing so cutting as the Word of God. Keep to that. I believe also that one of the best ways of convincing men of error is not so much to denounce the error as to proclaim the truth more clearly. If a stick is very crooked, and you wish to prove that it is so, get a straight one, and quietly lay it down by its side, and when men look they will surely see the difference. The Word of God has a very keen edge about it, and all the cutting words you want you had better borrow therefrom.

And next, the Word of God is very piercing. When we cannot get at people by God’s truth, we cannot get at them at all. I have heard of preachers who have thought they ought to adapt themselves a little to certain people, and leave out portions of the truth which might be disagreeable. Brothers, if the Word of God will not pierce, our words will not, you may depend upon that. The Word of God is like the sword of Goliath, which had been laid up in the sanctuary, of which David said “There is none like it, give it me.” Why did he like it so well? I think he liked it all the better because it had been laid up in the Holy Place by the priests; that is one thing. But I think he liked it best of all because it had stains of blood upon it-the blood of Goliath. I like my own sword because it is covered with blood right up to the hilt: the blood of slaughtered sins, and errors, and prejudices has made it like the sword of Don Rodrigo, “of a dark and purple tint.” The slain of the Lord have been many by the old gospel. We point to many vanquished by this true Jerusalem blade. They desire me to use a new one. I have not tried it. What have I to do with a weapon which has seen no service? I have proved the Sword of the Lord, and of Gideon, and I mean to keep to it. My dear comrades in arms, gird this sword about you, and disdain the wooden weapons with which enemies would delude you! Let us use this blade of steel, well tempered in the fire, against the most obstinate, for they cannot stand against it. They may resist it for a time, but they will have to yield. They had better make preparations for surrender; for if the Lord comes out against them with his own Word, they will have to give in and cry to him for mercy.

Next, if we want to discriminate at any time between the soul and the Spirit, and the joints and marrow, let us go to the Word of God for discrimination. We need to use the Word of God just now upon several subjects. There is that matter of holiness, upon which one [person] saith says one thing and another. Never mind what they all say, go to the Book, for this is the umpire on all questions. Amidst the controversies of the day about a thousand subjects, keep to this infallible Book, and it will guide you unerringly.

And lastly, since this Book is meant to be a discerner or critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart, let the Book criticize us. When you have issued a new volume from the press—which you do every day, for every day is a new treatise from the press of life—take it to this great critic, and let the Word of God judge it. If the Word of God approves you, you are approved; if the Word of God disapproves you, you are disapproved. Have friends praised you? They may be your enemies in so doing. Have other observers abused you? They may be wrong or right, let the Book decide. A man of one Book—if that Book is the Bible-is a man, for he is a man of God. Cling you to the living Word, and let the gospel of your fathers, let the gospel of the martyrs, let the gospel of the Reformers, let the gospel of the blood-washed multitude before the throne of God, the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, be your gospel, and none but that, and it will save you and make you the means of saving others to the praise of God.

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“Coming to Christ” is a very common phrase in Holy Scripture.  It is used to express those acts of the soul wherein, leaving at once our self-righteousness and our sins, we fly unto the Lord Jesus Christ and receive His righteousness to be our covering and His blood to be our atonement.  Coming to Christ, then, embraces in it repentance, self-negation, and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and it sums within itself all those things which are the necessary attendants of these great states of heart, such as the belief of the truth, earnestness of prayer to God, the submission of the soul to the precepts of God’s gospel, and all those things which accompany the dawn of salvation in the soul.  Coming to Christ is just the one essential thing for a sinner’s salvation.  He that cometh not to Christ, do what he may, or think what he may, is yet in “the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity.”

Coming to Christ is the very first effect of regeneration.  No sooner is the soul quickened than it at once discovers its lost estate, is horrified by its state, looks for a refuge, and, believing Christ to be a suitable one, flies to Him and reposes in Him.  Where there is not this corning to Christ, it is certain that there is as yet no quickening: where there is no quickening, the soul is dead in trespasses and sins, and being dead it cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.  “No man can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him.”  Wherein does this inability lie?

First, it does not lie in any physical defect. If in coming to Christ, moving the body or walking with the feet should be of any assistance, certainly man has all physical power to come to Christ in that sense.  I remember to have heard a very foolish Antinomian declare that he did not believe any man had the power to walk to the house of God unless the Father drew him.  Now, the man was plainly foolish, because he must have seen that as long as a man was alive and had legs, it was as easy for him to walk to the house of God as to the house of Satan.  If coming to Christ includes the utterance of a prayer, man has no physical defect in that respect; if he be not dumb, he can say a prayer as easily as he can utter blasphemy.  It is as easy for a man to sing one of the songs of Zion as to sing a profane and libidinous song.  There is no lack of physical power in coming to Christ.  All that can be wanted with regard to the bodily strength man most assuredly has, and any part of salvation which consists in that is totally and entirely in the power of man without any assistance from the Spirit of God.

Nor, again, does this inability lie in any mental lack. I can believe the Bible to be true just as easily as I can believe any other book to be true.  So far as believing on Christ is an act of the mind, I am just as able to believe on Christ as I am able to believe on anybody else.  Let his statement be but true, it is idle to tell me I cannot believe it.  I can believe the statement that Christ makes as well as I can believe the statement of any other person.  There is no deficiency of faculty in the mind: it is as capable of appreciating as a mere mental act the guilt of sin, as it is of appreciating the guilt of assassination.  It is just as possible for me to exercise the mental idea of seeking God as it is to exercise the thought of ambition.  I have all the mental strength and power that can possibly be needed, so far as mental power is needed in salvation at all.  Nay, there is not any man so ignorant that he can plead a lack of intellect as an excuse for rejecting the Gospel.

The defect, then, does not lie either in the body or, what we are bound to call, speaking theologically, the mind.  It is not any lack or deficiency there, although it is the vitiation of the mind, the corruption or the ruin of it, which, after all, is the very essence of man’s inability.  Through the fall and through our own sin, the nature of man has become so debased and depraved and corrupt that it is impossible for him to come to Christ without the assistance of God the Holy Spirit.  Now, in trying to exhibit how the nature of man thus renders him unable to come to Christ, take this figure [example].  You see a sheep; how willingly it feeds upon the herbage!  You never knew a sheep sigh after carrion [meat]; it could not live on lion’s food.  Now bring me a wolf; and you ask me whether a wolf cannot eat grass, whether it cannot be just as docile and as domesticated as the sheep.  I answer, no; because its nature is contrary thereunto.   You say, “Well, it has ears and legs; can it not hear the shepherd’s voice and follow him whithersoever he leadeth it?”  I answer, certainly; there is no physical cause why it cannot do so, but its nature forbids, and therefore I say it cannot do so.  Can it not be tamed?  Cannot its ferocity be removed?  Probably it may so far be subdued that it may become apparently tame; but there will always be a marked distinction between it and the sheep because there is a distinction in nature.  Now, the reason why man cannot come to Christ is not because he cannot come so far as his body or his mere power of mind is concerned, but because his nature is so corrupt that he has neither the will nor the power to come to Christ unless drawn by the Spirit.

But let me give you a better illustration.  You see a mother with her babe in her arms.  You put a knife into her hand and tell her to stab that babe to the heart.  She replies, and very truthfully, “I cannot.”  Now, so far as her bodily power is concerned, she can, if she pleases; there is the knife, and there is the child.  The child cannot resist, and she has quite sufficient strength in her hand immediately to stab it to its heart.  But she is quite correct when she says she cannot do it.  As a mere act of the mind, it is quite possible she might think of such a thing as killing the child, and yet she says she cannot think of such a thing as killing the child; and she does not say falsely, for her nature as a mother forbids her doing a thing from which her soul revolts.  Simply because she is that child’s parent, she feels she cannot kill it.

It is even so with a sinner.  Coming to Christ is so obnoxious to human nature that, although, so far as physical and mental forces are concerned (and these have but a very narrow sphere in salvation), men could come if they would: it is strictly correct to say that they cannot and will not unless the Father who hath sent Christ doth draw them.  Man is by nature blind within.  The Cross of Christ, so laden with glories and glittering with attractions, never attracts him because he is blind and cannot see its beauties.  Talk to him of the wonders of the creation, show to him the many-colored arch that spans the sky, let him behold the glories of a landscape – he is well able to see all these things; but talk to him of the wonders of the covenant of grace, speak to him of the security of the believer in Christ, tell him of the beauties of the Person of the Redeemer – he is quite deaf to all your description.  You are as one that plays a goodly tune, it is true; but he regards not, he is deaf, he has no comprehension.  I ask, do you find your power equal to your will.  You could say, even at the bar of God Himself, that you are sure you are not mistaken in your willingness; you are willing to be rapt up in devotion, it is your will that your soul should not wander from a pure contemplation of the Lord Jesus Christ, but you find that you cannot do that, even when you are willing, without the help of the Spirit.  Now, if the quickened child of God finds a spiritual inability, how much more the sinner who is dead in trespasses and sin?  If even the advanced Christian, after thirty or forty years, finds himself sometimes willing and yet powerless — if such be his experience — does it not seem more than likely that the poor sinner who has not yet believed should find a need of strength as well as a want of will?

But, again, there is another argument.  If the sinner has strength to come to Christ, I should like to know how we are to understand those continual descriptions of the sinner’s state which we meet with in God’s holy Word?  Now, a sinner is said to be dead in trespasses and sins.  Will you affirm that death implies nothing more than the absence of a will?  “Surely a corpse is quite as unable as unwilling?” says one.  “Well then, if I cannot save myself and cannot come to Christ, I must sit still and do nothing.”  If men do say so, on their own heads shall be their doom.  There are many things you can do.  To be found continually in the house of God is in your power; to study the Word of God with diligence is in your power; to renounce your outward sin, to forsake the vices in which you indulge, to make your life honest, sober, and righteous, is in your power.  For this you need no help from the Holy Spirit; all this you can do yourself; but to come to Christ truly is not in your power until you are renewed by the Holy Ghost.

But mark you, your want of power is no excuse, seeing that you have no desire to come and are living in willful rebellion against God.  Your want of power lies mainly in the obstinacy of nature.  Suppose a liar says that it is not in his power to speak the truth, that he has been a liar so long that he cannot leave it off – is that an excuse for him?  Suppose a man who has long indulged in lust should tell you that he finds his lusts have so girt about him like a great iron net that he cannot get rid of them, would you take that as an excuse?  Truly it is none at all.  If a drunkard has become so foully a drunkard, that he finds it impossible to pass a public-house without stepping in, do you therefore excuse him?  No, because his inability to reform lies in his nature, which he has no desire to restrain or conquer.  The thing that is done, and the thing that causes the thing that is done, being both from the root of sin, are two evils which cannot excuse each other.  What though the Ethiopian cannot change his skin nor the leopard his spots?  It is because you have learned to do evil that you cannot now learn to do well; and instead, therefore, of letting you sit down to excuse yourselves, let me put a thunderbolt beneath the seat of your sloth, that you may be startled by it and aroused.  Remember, that to sit still is to be damned to all eternity.

And, now, we gather up our ends and conclude by trying to make a practical application of the doctrine; and we trust a comfortable one.

“Well,” says one, “if what this man teaches be true, what is to become of my religion?  For do you know, I have been a long while trying, and I do not like to hear you say a man cannot save himself.  I believe he can, and I mean to persevere; but if I am to believe what you say, I must give it all up and begin again.”  It will be a very happy thing if you do.  Remember, what you are doing is building your house upon the sand, and it is but an act of charity if I can shake it a little for you.  Let me assure you, in God’s name, if your religion has no better foundation than your own strength, it will not stand you at the bar of God.  Nothing will last to eternity but that which came from eternity. Unless the everlasting God has done a good work in your heart, all you may have done must be unraveled at the last day of account.  It is all in vain for you to be a church-goer or chapel-goer, a good keeper of the Sabbath, an observer of your prayers; it is all in vain for you to be honest to your neighbors and reputable in your conversation; if you hope to be saved by these things, it is all in vain for you to trust in them.  Go on; be as honest as you like, keep the Sabbath perpetually, be as holy as you can.  I would not dissuade you from these things.  God forbid!  Grow in them, but oh, do not trust in them for, if you rely upon these things, you will find they will fail you when most you need them.  And if there be anything else that you have found yourself able to do unassisted by divine grace, the sooner you can get rid of the hope that has been engendered by it, the better for you, for it is a foul delusion to rely upon anything that flesh can do.  A spiritual heaven must be inhabited by spiritual men and preparation for it must be wrought by the Spirit of God.

“Well,” cries another, “I have been sitting under a ministry where I have been told that I could, at my own option, repent and believe, and the consequence is that I have been putting it off from day to day.  I thought I could come one day as well as another; that I had only to say, ‘Lord, have mercy upon me,’ and believe, and then I should be saved.  Now you have taken all this hope away from me.  I feel amazement and horror taking hold upon me.”  I am very glad of it.  This was the effect which I hoped to produce.  I pray that you may feel this a great deal more.  When you have no hope of saving yourself, I shall have hope that God has begun to save you.  As soon as you say, “Oh, I cannot come to Christ. Lord, draw me, help me,” I shall rejoice over you.  He who has got a will, though he has not power, has grace begun in his heart, and God will not leave him until the work is finished.  But, careless sinner, learn that thy salvation now hangs in God’s hand.  Oh, remember, thou art entirely in the hand of God!  Thou hast sinned against Him, and if He wills to damn thee, damned thou art.  Thou canst not resist His will nor thwart His purpose.   Thou hast deserved His wrath, and if He chooses to pour the full shower of that wrath upon thy head, thou canst do nothing to avert it.  If, on the other hand, He chooses to save thee, He is able to save thee to the very uttermost.  But thou liest as much in His hand as the summer’s moth beneath thine own finger.  He is the God whom thou art grieving everyday.  Doth it not make thee tremble to think that thy eternal destiny now hangs upon the will of Him whom thou hast angered and incensed?  Dost not this make thy knees knock together and thy blood curdle?  If it does so, I rejoice, inasmuch as this may be the first effect of the Spirit’s drawing in thy soul.  Oh, tremble to think that the God whom thou hast angered is the God upon whom thy salvation or thy condemnation entirely depends!  Tremble and “kiss the Son lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way while His wrath is kindled but a little.”

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“Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” — Hebrews 12:11

Last Sabbath morning we tried to show you how the uncleanness of sin is removed. By the application of the blood of Christ the guilt of sin is cleansed; by the water which flowed with the blood from the side of Jesus defilement is taken away forever. Our work this morning is to consider the destruction of the power of sin. This is a work which rests in the hand of God the Holy Ghost, and is not comprehended under the head of justification, but of sanctification. Beware, my brethren, lest ye mix these two different things. It is in the sense of sanctification that the trials and afflictions of this life have the blessed influence of purging us from sin. It were a very great error to imagine that affliction ever cleanseth us from the guilt of sin; for if we could be afflicted with all the pangs of the lost spirits in hell, and that forever, not a single spot of sin would be washed away by all our miseries and tears. Nor are we saved from the pollution of sin by our trials; our conscience must be purged from dead works by the blood of Jesus alone. If the wedge of gold which Achan stole were accursed, you might have thrust it into the fire as many times as you would, but it would have been accursed still. There were fiery serpents which bit the children of Israel; their way was long, and their journey tedious, but yet I find that they needed the ashes of the red heifer, because that purification did for them what affliction could not do. No amount of affliction can avail, either to take away the guilt or the defilement of sin. It is in this sense that Kent sings,

“With afflictions he may scourge us,

Send a cross for every day,

Blast our gourds; but not to purge us

From our sins as some would say:

They were numbered

On the scapegoat’s head of old.”

Yet, as we have said, if you separate between sanctification and justification, and make a clear distinction between the indwelling power of sin and the guilt of it, then you may clearly perceive the place which affliction holds. When the Holy Spirit acts as Christ’s representative, and sits as a refiner, his furnace is affliction; the trials and troubles through which we have to pass are the glowing coals which separate the precious from the vile. They are, through divine grace, the means of restraining and destroying in us the tremendous power of indwelling sin, until the day shall come when the blessed Spirit shall take away from us all corruption, and, consequently, we shall need no more affliction.

Coming at once to the text, we shall notice, first, the outward appearance of our trials, or SORE CHASTISEMENTS; secondly, the result of our chastening, or BLESSED FRUITFULNESS; and, thirdly, the characters benefited by these exercises, or FAVORED SONS.

I. First, we have very clearly in the text, SORE CHASTISEMENTS.

1. Keeping literally to the words of the text, we observe that all which carnal reason can see of our present chastisement is but seeming. “No chastisement for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous.” All that flesh and blood can discover of the quality of affliction, is but its outward superficial appearance. We are not able by the eye of reason to discover what is the real virtue of sanctified tribulation; this discernment is the privilege of faith. Brethren, how very apt we are to be deceived by seemings! Why, to our senses, even natural things are too high for us. The world seems to stand still, and yet we know, without any faith, that it is always moving. The sun seems to climb the heights of heaven, and then to descend and hide himself in the west, and yet we are sure that the sun is fixed in his sphere. When the sun is setting, he seems larger than when he shone in his zenith, but we are well aware, in this case, that the seeming is not the truth, and that the sun is no broader at his setting than when he was shining in the highest heaven. Now, if even in natural things the seeming is not the truth, and the appearance is very often false, we may rest quite sure that though affliction seemeth to be one thing, it really is not what it seemeth to be. Understand, that all that you can know about trial, by mere carnal reason, is no more reliable than what you can discover by your feelings concerning the motion of the earth.

Nor, dear friends, are our seemings at all likely to be worth much, when you recollect that our fear, when we are under trouble, always darkens what little reason we have. Besides, we are very unbelieving, and you know how unbelief is apt always to exaggerate the black, and to diminish the bright. When Giant Despair had put his victims into the castle, he was wont to beat them with a crab-tree cudgel. Some of us have felt the weight of that crab-tree cudgel; sore are its blows. Lying in that dungeon, Christian began to think whether it were not better to destroy himself, though, poor silly man, all the while the key of promise was in his bosom, and he needed not to have lain rotting in that dungeon for a single hour. We cannot, therefore, expect with such a mischiefmaking propensity within us as our inclination to unbelief, that we can fairly judge what affliction means.

2. The text shows us that carnal reason judgeth afflictions only “for the present.” “No chastisement for the present seemeth to be joyous.” It judges in the present light, which happens to be the very worst light in which to form a correct estimate. Suppose that I am under a great tribulation to-day — let it be a bodily affliction — the head is aching, the heart is palpitating, the mind is agitated and distracted, am I in a fit state then to judge the quality of affliction, with a distracted and addled brain? With the scales of the judgment lifted from their proper place, how can I sit and form a just idea of the wisdom of God in his dispensations?

3. This brings me to observe, that since carnal reason only sees the seeming of the thing, and sees even that in the pale light of the present, therefore, brethren, affliction never seemeth to be joyous. If affliction seemed to be joyous, would it be a chastisement at all? I ask you, would it not be a most ridiculous thing if a father should so chasten a child, that the child came down stairs laughing, and smiling, and rejoicing at the flogging.  joyous? Instead of being at all serviceable, would it not be utterly useless? What good could a chastisement have done if it was not felt? No smart? Then surely no benefit!

Let us here note, that no affliction for the present seemeth to be joyous, in two or three respects. It never seems to be joyous in the object of it. You know the Lord always takes care when he does strike his people, to hit them in a tender place.

Nor is it, my brethren, joyous in the force of it. “Oh,” we are apt to think, “if the trial had not been quite so severe, the temptation so strong; if the difficulty had not been so great, I could have sustained it; but the north wind hath come down against me; the Lord hath broken me in pieces with a terrible hurricane.” My dear friends, you must never expect to have the trial joyous in the force of it. God will put just so much bitters into the draught that they shall not tickle your appetite as some bitters do, but shall really fill you with loathing and real misery. He will do it efficiently and effectively in the force of it.

Again, no chastisement ever seems to be joyous as to the time of it. We always think it comes at the wrong season. “I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came,” saith Job. And David has a complaint somewhat of the same kind. “In my prosperity I said I shall never be moved. Lord, by thy favor thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled.” The time of our afflictions, if it were left to our choosing — well, I suppose we should never have any at all — but if we must have them, and had to choose the time, then they would be joyous, and so would lose their very meaning.

Certainly, brethren, they are very seldom joyous as to the instrument. Hear David. “It was not an enemy; then I could have borne it.” O yes, that is what we always think. “If it was not just that, I could have borne it. If I had been poor I could have borne that, but to be slandered I cannot endure. To have even lost my wife — ah! it would have been a dreadful blow! but I might have borne it — but to have lost that dear child — how can I ever rejoice again?” Have not you sometimes heard brethren speak so, when they did not know what they said, for God had sent them the very best affliction they could have. He turned over all the arrows in the quiver, and there was not one which would suit to wound thee with but just the one he used, and therefore that one he fitted to the string and sent it with just as much force as was required, and certainly no more. It all goes to prove this, that in no respect — neither in the object, nor the instrument, nor the time, nor the force of it, can an affliction ever seem to carnal reason to be joyous.

4. Nay more, dear brethren, the text assures us in the next place that every affliction seemeth to be grievous. Perhaps to the true Christian, who is much grown in grace, the most grievous part of the affliction is this. “Now,” saith he, “I cannot see the benefit of it, if I could I would rejoice. I do not see why this trouble was sent to me. Instead of doing good, it really seems to do harm.” “Such a brother has been taken away just in the midst of his usefulness;” cries the bereaved friend. A wife says, “My dear husband was called away just when the children needed most his care.” And ourselves say, “Here am I, laid aside upon a bed of sickness just when the Church wants me, just when I proceeded most triumphantly in a career of usefulness.” This is always grievous to the Christian because he cannot see, though indeed it ought not to be grievous on that account, since he should never expect to see, but should walk by faith and not by sight.

5. But now let me add, and then I have done with the first head, that all this is only seeming. Do let me keep you to this, all this is only seeming. Faith triumphs in trial. When reason is sent into the background and has her feet made fast in the stocks, then faith comes in and cries, “I will sing of mercy and of judgment. Unto thee, O Lord, will I sing.”

II. We have spoken of sore afflictions; well, now, next we have BLESSED FRUIT-BEARING.

I want you to notice the word which goes before the fruit-bearing part of the text. “No chastisement for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless.” Now what does that mean? It gives me my first point under the second head, that this fruit-bearing is not natural — it is not the natural effect of affliction. “Why, what are you doing? You are spoiling that precious metal!”

And, then, observe, dear friends, that this fruit is not instantaneous. “Nevertheless,” what is the next word? “Afterwards.” Many believers are deeply grieved, because they do not at once feel that they have been profited by their afflictions. Well, you do not expect to see apples or plums on a tree which you have planted but a week. Only little children put their seeds into their flower-garden, and then expect to see them grow into plants in an hour. I would have you look for very speedy fruit, but not too speedy fruit, for sometimes the good of our troubles may not come to us for years afterwards, when, perhaps, getting into a somewhat similar experience, we are helped to bear it by the remembrance of having endured the like ten or twenty years ago. It is “nevertheless afterwards.” The good of trouble is not generally while we are in trouble, but when we get out of trouble. Yet, on the other hand, it sometimes happeneth that God can give us the jewels even before we leave Egypt, so that we can march out of the house of bondage with golden earrings hanging at our ears, and covered with all manner of ornaments. For the most part however, “it is nevertheless afterwards.”

Well now, you will note in the text a sort of gradation with regard to what affliction does afterwards. It brings forth fruit; that is one step. That fruit is the fruit of righteousness, here is an advance. That righteous fruit is peaceable, this is best of all. First, affliction really does to the Christian, when the time comes, bring forth fruit. This is the object of Christ in sending it. In his sweet prayer for the elect, he prayed that his people might bring forth fruit. He said, “Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bring forth much fruit.” He assured them that every branch of the true vine that brought forth fruit, would be purged, that it might bring forth more fruit. So far as this world is concerned, God getteth his glory out of us, not by our being Christians, but by our being fruitful Christians; and the end and object of divine husbandry is to make our branches hang down with fruit. Blessed is that chastening which being fruitful in us makes us also fruitful. (John 12:24?)

It brings forth the fruit of righteousness; not natural, and therefore impure fruit, but fruit such as God himself may accept — holiness, purity, patience, joy, faith, love, and every Christian grace. It does not make the Christian more righteous in the sense of justification, for he is completely so in Christ; but it makes him more apparently so in the eyes of onlookers, while he, through his experience, exhibits more of the character of his Lord.

Note again, that this righteous fruit is peaceable. There is none so happy as tried Christians, afterwards. No calm more deep than that which precedes a storm.

III. And now for the third point, and that is, FAVORED SONS.

“Nevertheless, afterwards it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness in them which are exercised thereby.” I will venture to say this, that it does not yield peaceable fruit to everybody, nay, that it does not yield peaceable fruit to every “son” either. It is not every Christian who gets a blessing from affliction, at least not from every affliction that he has. I conceive that the last words are inserted by way of distinction, and of real difference — “those that are exercised thereby.” You know, brethren, there are some of the Lord’s children who, when they get a trouble, are not exercised by it, because they run away from it. They imagine and employ rash means of avoiding it; they use subterfuges in order to escape from it; they are not exercised thereby. Their Father holds the rod over them, and they run away from his hand. Perhaps they get a tingling smart as they run, far worse than if they had stopped; they may get a sorry cuff from his hand, but they are not exercised by it.

Now, you know what the word “exercised” means. In the Greek gymnasium, the training master would challenge the youths to meet him in combat. He knew how to strike, to guard, to wrestle. Many severe blows the young combatants received from him, but this was a part of their education, preparing them at some future time to appear publicly in the games. He who shirked the trial and declined the encounter with the trainer, received no good from him, even though he would probably be thoroughly well flogged for his cowardice. The youth whose athletic frame was prepared for future struggles, was he who stepped forth boldly to be exercised by his master. If you see afflictions come, and sit down impatiently, and will not be exercised by your trials, then you do not get the peaceable fruit of righteousness; but if, like a man, you say, “Now is my time of trial, I will play the man; wake up my faith to meet the foe; take hold of God; stand with firm foot and slip not; let all my graces be aroused, for here is something to be exercised upon;” it is then that a man’s bone, and sinew, and muscle, all grow stronger. We know that those who strive for the mastery, keep under their body, in order that they may come prepared in the day of contest, and so must the Christian use his afflictions, exercise himself by them to the keeping down of the flesh to the conquest of his evil desires, that he may be as strong as if his flesh were iron, and his muscles hardened steel.

You ask me, what in the Christian is exercised by affliction? Everything new-born in the Christian is exercised. The new-born seed is exercised by affliction, and that filial spirit which springs from it. There is sonship in every believer in Christ, that is exercised; and the spirit of sonship, and the graces of sonship all are tried; in fact, affliction, when it does us most good, exercises all the man, sets every power to work, strains his patience, tests his faith, proves his love, developes his fears, glorifies his hopes, and whatsoever other power there be in his spiritual manhood, it exerciseth all to the very uttermost point, and it maketh every part grow stronger and nearer to perfection, and so the peaceable fruits of righteousness are yielded to those “that are exercised thereby.” Mark that distinction, because we are not all thus favored. We are all sons and shall all have to bear the trial, yet we may not all be exercised by it. Let us pray God to give us to be exercised by affliction when we do get it, that so we may possess the practical benefit of it.

I have done when I have added three practical reflections. First, see the happy estate of a Christian. His worst things are good things, his smarts are his joys, his losses are his gains. Did you ever hear of a man who got his health by being sick? That is a Christian. He gets rich by his losses, he rises by his falls, he goes on by being pushed back, he lives by dying, he grows by being diminished, and becomes full by being emptied. Well, if the bad things work him so much good, what must his best things do? If his dark nights are as bright as the world’s days, what shall be his days? If even his starlight is more splendid than the sun, what must his sunlight be? If he can sing in dungeon, how sweetly will he sing in heaven! If he can praise the Lord in the fire, how will he praise him before the eternal throne! If even a thorn in the flesh only drives him to his God, brethren, where will the angel-convoy carry him? If evil be good to him, what will the overflowing goodness of God be to him in another world? Who would not be a Christian? Who would not know the transcendent riches of the believer’s heritage?

Secondly, see where the believer’s hope mainly lies; it does not lie in the seeming. He may seem to be rich, or seem to be poor, seem to be sick, or seem to be in health, he looks upon all that as the seeming. He notices that the thing seen is the thing that seemeth, but the thing that is believed is the thing that is. He knows that what his eye catches is only the surface, what his finger touches is only the exterior; but what his heart believeth, that is the depth, the substance, the reality. So, brethren, he finds all his joy in the “nevertheless afterwards.” Sometimes he is in great trouble, dark trouble, and the devil tempts him, but he spells that word over, and repeats it, “Never-the-less, I am very poor, but I shall never-the-less, obtain heaven forever. I am very weak, but never-the-less, I shall be where the inhabitant is never sick. The devil has beaten me, I am on the ground, and he has his foot on my neck, and says he will make an end of me, but I have, never the-less, eternal security in Christ.” Never-the-less, not a grain — not an atom the less, in fact, he throws the never-the-less into an ever-the-more; he believes he shall have ever-the-more of bliss, and so, looking to the afterwards, he rejoiceth in tribulation, for tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope. Why, the Christian often learns his best lessons about heaven by contrast. If a man should give me a black book printed in the old black letter, and should say, “You want to know about happiness, that book is written about misery, learn from the opposite;” I would thank him just as much for that as if the book were on happiness. So the believer takes his daily trials and reads them the opposite way. Trial comes to him and says, “Your hope is dry.”  “My hope is not dry,” says he. “While I have a trial I have a ground of hope.” “Thy God has forsaken thee,” says tribulation. “My God has not forsaken me,” says he, “for he says, in the world ye shall have tribulation, and I have it. I have a letter from God in a black envelope, but, as long as it came from him I do not mind what kind of envelope it comes in. He has not forgotten me — has not given me up — he is still gracious to me.” And so the Christian begins to think about heaven, “For,” says he, “this is the place of work, that is the place of rest; this is the place of sorrow, that is the place of joy; here is defeat, there is triumph; here is shame, there glory; here it is being despised, there it is being honored; here it is the hiding my Father’s face, there it is the glory of a presence; here it is absence in the body, there it is presence with the Lord; here weeping, and groaning, and sighing, there the song of triumph; here death — death to my friends and death to myself, there the happy union of immortal spirits in immortality.” So he learns to sing not of the seeming but of the “nevertheless afterwards,” with sweet hope, as his harp of many golden strings.

Lastly, brethren, afterwards is just the point where the unconverted feel the pinch. “Nevertheless afterwards.” I walk round your gardens: you are rich. How beautifully they are laid out! What rare flowers! What luxuries! And as I look at them all, if I remember that you will die, I say to myself, “Nevertheless afterwards.” This poor man who has a paradise on earth can have no paradise in the world to come. Do I see you riding gaily along the street? You have abundance of wealth and honor, but you are without God and without Christ; then I see close behind you a grim executioner, bearing this motto, “Nevertheless afterwards.” You wear a smiling face this morning, for though you have neither riches nor honor, still you are young, and have health and beauty, and are looking out on the pleasures of this world, I want you to take a telescope in your hand and look a little further — “Nevertheless afterwards!” You are thinking about this present life, and hoping you will prosper in it, and hitherto you have not wanted any religion — you say you have been happy enough without Christ, and you dare say you will get on without him, but I want you to remember “nevertheless afterwards.” When you come to die, when you stand before an angry God, when you rise amid the terrors of the day of judgment, when you have to meet the open book and the burning eyes of the great Judge, when you hear the sentence. “Come, ye blessed,” or “Depart, ye cursed,” you will think of “Nevertheless afterwards.” I would ye would bring these eternal things before your mind and reckon with your conscience concerning them. Soul, if thy joy be in earth and thy trust in self, thou mayst spread thyself like a green bay tree, thou mayst become as a bullock fattened for the slaughter, but nevertheless afterwards, beware lest he tear thee in pieces and there be none to deliver. Believe thou in Christ. Trust thy soul with him, and then whatever is to come afterwards, whatever “Nevertheless afterwards” may come, thou mayst always be sure of this, that there is for thee an eternal and exceeding weight of glory. May my Master give you an interest in that “Nevertheless afterwards,” and then I shall not fret, nor will you either if you have to have an interest in the rod of the covenant which is for the present, at least in seeming, not joyous but grievous.

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“And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.”-Luke 22:43

I suppose that this incident happened immediately after our Lord’s first prayer in the garden of Gethsemane.  His pleading became so fervent, so intense, that it forced from him a bloody sweat.  He was, evidently, in a great agony of fear as he prayed and wrestled even unto blood.  We are told, by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that he “was heard in that he feared.”  It is probable that this angel came in answer to that prayer.  This was the Father’s reply to the cry of his fainting Son, who was enduring an infinity of sorrow because of his people’s sin; and who must, therefore, be divinely upheld as to his manhood, lest he should be utterly crushed beneath the terrible weight that was pressing upon his holy soul.

Scarcely had our Savior prayed before the answer to his petition came.  It reminds us of Daniel’s supplication, and of the angelic messenger who was caused to fly so swiftly that as soon as the prayer had left the prophet’s lips, Gabriel stood there with the reply to it.  So, brethren and sisters, whenever your times of trial come, always betake yourselves to your knees.  Whatever shape your trouble may take, if, to you, it should even seem to be a faint representation of your Lord’s agony in Gethsemane, put yourselves into the same posture as that in which he sustained the great shock that came upon him.  Kneel down, and cry to your Father who is in heaven, who is able to save you from death, who will prevent the trial from utterly destroying you, will give you strength that you may be able to endure it, and will bring you through it to the praise of the glory of his grace.

That is the first lesson for us to learn from our Lord’s experience in Gethsemane—the blessing of prayer.  He has bidden us pray, but he has done more than that, for he has set us the example of prayer; and if example be, as we are sure it is, far more powerful than precept, let us not fail to imitate our Savior in the exerciser of potent, prevalent, repeated supplication, whenever our spirits are cast down, and we are in sore distress of soul.  Possibly, you have sometimes said, “I feel so sorrowful that I cannot pray.”  Nay, brother, that is the very time when you must pray.  As the spices, when bruised, give forth all the more fragrance because of the bruising, so let the sorrow of your spirit cause it to send forth the more fervent prayer to the God who is both able and willing to deliver you.

You must express your sorrow in one way or another; so let it not be expressed in murmuring, but in supplication.  It is a vile temptation, on the part of Satan, to keep you away from the mercy-seat when you have most need to go there; but do not yield to that temptation.  Pray till you can pray; and if you find that you are not filled with the Spirit of supplication, use whatever measure of the sacred bedewing you have; and so, by-and-by, you shall have the baptism of the Spirit, and prayer shall become to you a happier and more joyful exercise than it is at present.  Our Savior said to his disciples, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death;” yet then, above all times, he was in an agony of prayer; and, in proportion to the intensity of his sorrow was the intensity of his supplication.

In our text, there are two things to note.  First, our Lord’s weakness; and, secondly, our Lord’s strengthening.

I. First, then, let us meditate for a little while upon OUR LORD’S WEAKNESS.

That he was exceedingly weak, is clear from the fact that an angel came from heaven to strengthen him, for the holy angels never do anything that is superfluous.  They are the servants of an eminently practical God, who never does that which it is unnecessary for him to do.  If Jesus had not needed strengthening, an angel would not have, come from heaven to strengthen him.  But how strange it sounds, to our ears that the Lord of life and glory should be so weak that he should need to be strengthened by one of his own creatures!  How extraordinary it seems that he, who is “very God of very God,” should, nevertheless, when he appeared on earth as Immanuel, God with us, so completely take upon himself our nature that he should become so weak as to need to be sustained by angelic agency!  This struck some of the older saints as being derogatory to his divine dignity; so some manuscripts of the New Testament omit this passage; it is supposed that the verse was struck out by some who claimed to be orthodox, lest, perhaps, the Arians should lay hold upon it, and use it to bolster up their heresies, I cannot be sure who did strike it out, and I am not altogether surprised that they should have done so.  They had no right to do anything of the kind, for whatever is revealed in the Scriptures must be true.  But they seemed to shudder at the thought that the Son of God should ever have been so weakened as to need the support of an angelic messenger to strengthen him.

Yet, brethren and sisters, this incident proves the reality of our Savior’s manhood.  Here you can perceive how fully he shares the Weakness of our humanity; not in spiritual weakness, so as to become guilty of any sin; but in mental weakness, so as to he capable of great depression of spirit; and in physical weakness, so as to he exhausted to the last degree by his terrible bloody sweat.  What is extreme weakness?  It is something different from pain, for sharp pain evidences at least some measure of strength; but perhaps some of you know what it is to feel as if you were scarcely alive; you were so weak that you could hardly realize that you were actually living.  The blood flowed, if it flowed at all, but very slowly in the canals of your veins; everything seemed stagnant within you.  You were very faint, you almost wished that you could become unconscious, for the consciousness you had was extremely painful; you were so weak and sick that you seemed almost ready to die.  Our Master’s words, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death,” prove that the shadow of impending dissolution hung darkly over his spirit, soul, and body, so that he could truly quote the 22nd Psalm, and say, “Thou hast brought me into the dust of death.”  I think, beloved, that you ought to be glad it was so with your Lord, for now you can see how completely he is made like unto his brethren, in their mental depression and physical weakness, as well as in other respects.

It will help you to get an idea of the true manhood of Christ if you remember that this was not the only time when he was weak.  He, the Son of man, was once a babe; and, therefore, all the tender ministries that have to be exercised because of the helplessness of infancy were necessary also in his case.  Wrapped in swaddling bands, and lying in a manger, that little child was, all the while, the mighty God, though he condescended to keep his omnipotence in abeyance in order that he might redeem his people from their sins.  Doubt not his true humanity, and learn from it how tenderly he is able to sympathize with all the ills of childhood, and, all the grief’s of boyhood, which are not so few or so small as some people imagine.

Besides being thus an infant, and gradually growing in stature just as other children do, our Lord Jesus was often very weary.  How the angels must have wondered as they saw him, who sways the scepter of universal sovereignty, and marshals all the starry hosts according to his will, as he, “being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well” at Sychar, waiting for the woman whose soul he had gone to win, and wiping the sweat from his brow, and resting himself after having traveled over the burning acres of the land.  The prophet Isaiah truly said that “the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary.”  That is the divine side of his glorious nature.  “Jesus, therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well.”  That was the human side of his nature. We read that “he did eat nothing” during the forty days’ temptation in the wilderness, and “he afterwards hungered.”  Have any of you ever known what it has been to suffer the bitterness of hunger?   Then, remember that our Lord Jesus Christ also endured that pang.  He, whom we rightly worship and adore as “God blessed for ever,” as the Son of man, the Mediator between God and men, hungered; and he also thirsted, for he said to the woman at the well, “Give me to drink.”

In addition to this, our Savior was often so weary that he slept, which is another proof of his true humanity.  He was so tired, once, that he slept even when the ship was tossing to and fro in a storm, and was ready to sink.  On one occasion, we read that the disciples “took him even as he was in the ship,” which seems to me to imply even more than it says, namely, that he was so worn out that he was scarcely able to get into the ship; but “they took him even as he was,” and there he fell asleep.  We know, moreover, that “Jesus wept,” not merely once, or twice, but many times; and we also know what completes the proof of his humanity, that he died.

It was a strange phenomenon that he, to whom the Father has given “to have life in himself,” should have been called to pass through the gloomy shades of death, that he might in all points be made like unto his brethren, and so be able to fully sympathize with us.  O ye weak ones, see how weak your Lord became that he might make you strong!  We might read that familiar passage, “though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich; “in a slightly different way, “though he was strong, yet for your sakes he became weak, that ye through his weakness might be strong.”  Therefore, beloved, “be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.”

What was the reason for the special weakness of our Savior when in the garden of Gethsemane?  I cannot now go fully into that matter, but I want you to notice what it was that tried him so severely there.  I suppose, first, it was contact with sin.  Our Savior had always seen the effects of sin upon others, but it had never come home to him so closely as it did when he entered that garden; for there, more than ever before, the iniquity of his people was made to meet upon him, and that contact aroused in him a holy horror.  You and I are not perfectly pure, so we are not as horrified at sin as we ought to be; yet, sometimes, we can say, with the psalmist, “Horror hath taken hold upon me because of the wicked that forsake thy law;” but for our gracious Savior—hearken to the inspired words, they are none of mine, —to be “numbered with the transgressors,” must have been an awful thing to his pure and holy soul.  He seemed to shrink back from such a position, and it needed that he should be strengthened in order that he might be able to endure the contact with that terrible mass of iniquity.

But he had, in addition, to bear the burden of that sin.  It was not sufficient for him to come into contact with it; but it is written, “The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all;” and as he began fully to realize all that was involved in his position as the great Sin-hearer, his spirit seemed to droop, and he became exceedingly weak.  Ah, sir! if you have to bear the burden of your own sin when you appear before the judgment seat of God, it will sink you to the lowest hell; but what must Christ’s agony have been when he was bearing the sin of all his people?  As the mighty mass of their guilt came rolling upon him, his Father saw that the human soul and the human body both needed to be upheld, else they would have been utterly crushed before the atoning work had been accomplished.

Contact with sin, and the bearing of sin’s penalty, were reason enough to produce the Savior’s excessive weakness in Gethsemane; but, in addition, he was conscious of the approach of death.  I have heard some people say that we ought not to shrink from death; but I aver that, in proportion as a man is a good man, death will be distasteful to him.  You and I have become, to a large extent, familiarized with the thought of death.  We know that we must die, —unless the Lord should come soon, —for all who have gone before us have done so, and the seeds of death are sown in us, and, like some fell disease, they are beginning to work within our nature.  It is natural that we should expect to die, for we know that we are mortal.  If anybody were to tell us that we should be annihilated, any reasonable and sensible man would be horrified at the idea, for that is not natural to the soul of man.  Well, now, death was as unnatural to Christ as annihilation would be to us.  It had never come to be a part of his nature, his holy soul had none of the seeds of death in it; and his untainted body, — which had never known any kind of disease or corruption, but was as pure as when, first of all, “that holy thing” was created by the Spirit of God, —that also shrank hack from death.  There were not in it any of the things, which make death natural; and, therefore, because of the very purity of his nature, he recoiled at the approach of death, and needed to be specially strengthened in order to meet “the last enemy.”

Probably, however, it was the sense of utter desertion that was preying upon his mind, and so produced that extremity of weakness.  All his disciples had failed him, and presently would forsake him.  Judas had lifted up his heel against him, and there was not one of all his professed followers who would faithfully cleave to him.  Kings, princes, scribes, and rulers were all united against him, and of the people, there were none with him.  Worst of all, by the necessity of his expiatory sacrifice, and his substitution for his people, his Father himself withdrew from him the light of his countenance; and, even in the garden, he was beginning to feel that agony of soul which, on the cross, wrung from him that doleful cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”  And that sense of utter loneliness and desertion, added to all that he had endured, made him so exceedingly weak that it was necessary that he should be specially strengthened for the ordeal through which he had still to pass.

II. Now, in the second place, let us meditate for a little while upon OUR LORD’S STRENGTHENING: “There appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.”

It is night, and there he kneels, under the olives, offering up, as Paul says, “prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death.”  While wrestling there, he is brought into such a state of agony that he sweats great drops of blood; and, suddenly, there flashes before him, like a meteor from the midnight sky, a bright spirit that had come straight from the throne of God to minister to him in his hour of need.

Think of the condescension on Christ’s part to allow an angel to come and strengthen him.  He is the Lord of angels as well as of men.  At his bidding, they fly more swiftly than the lightning flash to do his will.  Yet, in his extremity of weakness, he was succored by one of them.  It was a wondrous stoop for the infinitely —great and ever —blessed Christ of God to consent that a spirit of his own creation should appear unto him, and strengthen him.

But while I admire the condescension which permitted one angel to come, I equally admire the self-restraint which allowed only one to come; for, if he had so pleased, he might have appealed to his Father, and he would at once have sent to him “more than twelve legions of angels.”  No, he did not make such a request; he rejoiced to have one to strengthen him, but he would not have any more.  Oh, what matchless beauties are combined in our blessed Savior!  You may look on this side of the shield, and you will perceive that it is of pure gold.   Then you may look on the other side of it, but you will not discover that it is brass, as in the fable, for it is gold all through.  Our Lord Jesus is “altogether lovely.”  What he does, or what he refrains from doing, equally deserves the praises of his people.

How could the angel strengthen Christ?  That is a very natural enquiry; but it is quite possible that, when we have answered that question as well as we can, we shall not have given a full and satisfactory reply to it.  Yet I can conceive that, in some mysterious manner, an angel from heaven may have actually infused fresh vigor into the physical constitution of Christ.  I cannot positively affirm that it was so, but it seems to me a very likely thing.  We do know that God can suddenly communicate new strength to fainting spirits; and, certainly, if he willed it, he could thus lift up the drooping head of his Son, and make him feel strong and resolute again.

Perhaps it was so; but, in any case, it must have strengthened the Savior to feel that he was in pure company.  It is a great joy to a man, who is battling for the right against a crowd who love the wrong, to find a comrade by his side who loves the truth as he loves it himself.  To a pure mind, obliged to listen to the ribald jests of the licentious, I know of nothing that is more strengthening than to get a whisper in the car from one who says, “I, too, love that which is chaste and pure, and hate the filthy conversation of the wicked.”  So, peradventure, the mere fact of that shining angel standing by the Savior’s side, or reverently bowing before him, may in itself have strengthened him.

Next to that, was the tender sympathy, which this angelic ministration proved.  I can imagine that all the holy angels leant over the battlements of heaven to watch the Savior’s wondrous life; and now that they see him in the garden, and perceive, by his whole appearance, and his desperate agony, that death is drawing to him, they are so astonished that they crave permission that at least one of their number shall go down to see if he cannot carry succor to him from his Father’s house above.  I can imagine the angels saying, “Did we not sing of him at Bethlehem when he was born!  Did not some of us minister to him when he was in the desert, and amongst wild beasts, hungry after his long fast and terrible temptation?  Has he not been seen of angels all the while he has been on earth!  Oh, let some one of us go to his relief!”  And I can readily suppose that God said to Gabriel, “Thy name means, The strength of God, go and strengthen your Lord in Gethsemane,” “and there appeared an angel unto him from heaven strengthening him;” and I think that he was strengthened, at least in part, by observing the sympathy of all the heavenly host with him in his season of secret sorrow.  He might seem to be alone as man; but, as Lord and King, he had on his side an innumerable company of angels who waited to do his will; and here was one of them, come to assure him that he was not alone, after all.

Next, no doubt, our Savior was comforted by the angel’s willing service.  You know, dear brothers and sisters, how a little act of kindness will cheer us when we are very low in spirit.  If we are despised and rejected of men, if we are deserted and defamed by those who ought to have dealt differently with us, even a tender look from a child will help to remove our depression. In times of loneliness, it is something even to have a dog with you, to lick your hand, and show you such kindness as is possible from him.  And our blessed Master, who always appreciated, and still appreciates, the least service rendered to him, —for not a cup of cold water, given to a disciple, in Christ’s name, shall lose its reward, —was cheered by the devotion and homage of the ministering spirit that came from heaven to strengthen him.  I wonder if the angel worshipped him, —I think that he could do no less; and it must have been something to worship the Son of God.  Oh, that any one of us could have paid him such homage as that!

The time for such special ministry, as that is over now; yet my faith seems to bring him back here, at this moment, just as if we were in Gethsemane.  I adore thee, thou blessed eternal God, —never more God —like than when thou didst prove thy perfect manhood by sweating great drops of blood in the awful weakness of thy depression in the garden of sorrow!

Peradventure, too, the angel’s presence comforted and strengthened the Savior as being a sort of foretaste of his final victory.  What was this angel but the pioneer of all the heavenly host that would come to meet him when the fight was over?  He was one who, in full confidence of his Lord’s victory, had flown before the rest, to pay homage to the conquering Son of God, who would tread the old dragon beneath his feet.  You remember how, when Jesus was born, first there came one angel who began to speak of him to the shepherds, “and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”  The first angel had, as it were, stolen march upon his brethren, and got before them; but, no sooner was the wondrous news bruited through heaven’s streets, than every angel resolved to overtake him ere his message was completed.  So, here again is one that had come as an outrider, to remind his Lord of his ultimate victory, and there were many more afterwards to come with the same glad tidings; but, to the Savior’s heart, that angel’s coming was a token that he would lead captivity captive; and that myriads of other bright spirits would crowd around him, and cry, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors; that the King of glory, fresh from his blood-red shame, may enter into his heavenly and eternal inheritance!”

Yet once more, is it not very likely that this angel brought the Savior a message from heaven?  The angels are generally God’s messengers, so they have something to communicate from him; and, perhaps, this angel, bending over the Savior’s prostrate form, whispered in his ear, “Be of good cheer; thou must pass through all this agony, but thou wilt thereby save an innumerable multitude of the sons and daughters of men, who will love and worship thee and thy Father for ever and for ever.  He is with thee even at this moment.  Though he must hide his face from thee, because of the requirements of justice that the atonement may be complete, his heart is with thee, and he loves thee ever.”  Oh, how our Lord Jesus must have been cheered if some such words as these were whispered into his ears!

Now, in closing, let us try to learn the lessons of this incident. Beloved brothers and sisters, you and I may have to pass through great griefs, —certainly, ours will never be so great as those of our Divine Master; —but we may have to follow through the same waters.  Well, at such times, as I have already said, let us resort to prayer, and let us be content to receive comfort from the humblest Instrumentality.  “That is too simple an observation,” say you.  It is a very simple one, but it is one that some people have need to remember.  You remember how Naaman the Syrian was healed through the remark of a little captive girl; and, sometimes, great  saints have been cheered by the words of very little people.  You recollect how Dr. Guthrie, when he was dying, wanted “a bairn’s hymn.”  It was just like him, great, glorious, simple-minded child that he was.  He said what you and I must sometimes have felt that we wanted, —a bairn’s hymn, —a child’s joyful song to cheer us up in our hour of depression and sorrow.

There are some people, who seem as if they would not be converted unless they can see some eminent minister, even that will not suit some of them; they want a special revelation from heaven.  They will not take a text from the Bible, —though I cannot conceive of anything better than that; —but they think that, if they could dream something, or if they could hear words spoken, in the cool of the evening, by some strange voice in the sky, then they might be converted.

Well, brothers and sisters, if you will not eat the apples that grow on trees, you must not expect angels to come and bring them to you.  We have a more sure word of testimony in the Bible than we can have anywhere else.  If you will not be converted by that Word, it is a great pity; and it is much more than a pity, it is a great sin.  If your Lord and Master condescended to receive consolation from an angel whom he had himself created, you ought to be willing to gather comfort from the feeblest speech of the poorest person, —from the least of the people of God when they try to cheer you.

I have known an old professor say of a young minister, “It is no use for me to hear him, for he has not had the experience that I have had, so how can he instruct or help me?”  O sirs, I have known many old saints get more comfort out of godly boys than they did from those of their own age!  God knows how, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, to perfect praise; and I have never heard that he has done that out of the mouths of old men.  Why is that?  Because they know too much; but the children do not know anything; and, therefore, out of their mouths the praise of God is perfect.  So let us never despise God’s messengers, however humble they may be.

The next lesson is, while you should be thankful for the least comforter; yet, in your times of deepest need, you may expect the greatest comforters to come to you. Let me remind you that an angel appeared to Joseph when Herod was seeking Christ’s life.  Then, later, angels appeared to Christ when the devil had been tempting him.  And now, at Gethsemane, when there was a peculiar manifestation of diabolical malice, for it was the hour of the powers of darkness; then, when the devil was loose, and doing his utmost against Christ, an angel came from heaven to strengthen him.  So, when you are in your heaviest trials, you shall have your greatest strength.

Perhaps you will have little to do with angels till you get into deep trouble, and then shall the promise be fulfilled, “He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.”  They are always ready to be your keepers; but, in the matter of spiritual strengthening, these holy spirits may have little to do with some of you until you stand foot to foot with Apollyon, and have to fight stern battles with the evil one himself.  It is worth while to go through rough places to have angels to bear you up.  It is worth while to go to Gethsemane, if there we may have angels from heaven to strengthen us.  So, be of good comfort, brethren, whatever lies before you.  The darker your experience is, the brighter will be that which comes out of it.  The disciples feared as they entered the cloud on the Mount of Transfiguration; but when they had passed right into it, they saw Jesus, Moses, and Elias in glory.  O ye who are the true followers of Christ, fear not the clouds that lower darkly over you, for you shall see the brightness behind them, and the Christ in them; and blessed shall your spirits be.

But if you are not believing in Christ, I am indeed grieved for you, for you shall have the sorrow without the solace, —the cup of bitterness without the angel, —the agony, and that for ever, without the messenger from heaven to console you.  Oh, that ye would all believe in Jesus! God help you so to do. for Christ’s sake!  Amen.

Delivered at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington, June 5th, 1881.

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“When Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a garden, into the which be entered, and his disciples.  And Judas also, which betrayed him, knew the place; for Jesus ofttimes resorted thither with his disciples.” John 18:1, 2

I remember to have read somewhere, though I cannot just now recall the authority, that Bethany, to which place one would have thought the Savior would have gone to spend the night, at the house of Mary and her sister Martha, was over the brow of the Mount of Olives, and was out of the bounds of the city of Jerusalem.  Now, at the Passover, it was incumbent that all who kept the feast should spend the whole night within the bounds of the city; and our Divine Lord and Master, scrupulous to observe every point of the old law, did not go over the hill, but stayed within the area which was technically considered to be part and parcel of Jerusalem; so that his going to Gethsemane was, in part, a fulfillment of the ceremonial law; and, for that reason, he went no further, and sought no other shelter.

Our Lord also knew that, on that particular night, he would who betrayed into the hands of his enemies; and, therefore, he would need to be prepared, by a special season of devotion, for the terrible ordeal he was about to endure.  That Passover night was a night to be remembered on this account, and he would, therefore, keep it peculiarly sacred; but it was to be made still more memorable as the time of the commencement of his passion sufferings, so he determined to spend the whole night in prayer to his Father.  In this act, he reminds us of Jacob by the brook Jabbok; when he had to face trouble on the morrow, he spent the night in wrestling prayer; and this greater Jacob spent his night, not by Jabbok, but by the black, foul brook of Kedron, and there wrestled with mightier power even than the patriarch put forth in his notable night struggle with the Angel of the covenant.  I want you to try, in thought, to go as far as Gethsemane, and I think you ought to be encouraged to go there because our text say; “Jesus offtimes resorted thither with his disciples.”

I. And, first, so far as we can in thought, LET US VIEW THE PLACE.

I have never seen the garden of Gethsemane; many travelers tell us that they have done so, and they have described what they saw there.  My impression is, that not one of them ever saw the real spot, and that not a trace of it remains.  There are certain old olive trees, within an enclosure, which are commonly thought to have been growing at the time of the Savior; but that seems scarcely possible, for Josephus tells us that the whole of the trees round about Jerusalem were cut down, many of them to be made into crosses for the crucifixion of the Jews, others of them to assist in building the bulwarks with which the Roman emperor surrounded the doomed city.  There does not seem to have been scarcely anything left that would be a true relic of the old city, and I cannot imagine that the olive trees would be spared.  From what I have heard from brethren who have gone to the reputed garden of Gethsemane, I conclude that it is not very helpful to one’s devotions to go there at all.  One, who thought to spend a part of his Sabbath there, and who hoped to enjoy much fellowship with Christ in the place, said that he was made very bitterly to learn the meaning of our Savior’s words to the woman at the well of Sychar, “The hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father… The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.”

I do not want to find out exactly where Gethsemane was; it is enough for me to know that it was at the side of Mount Olivet, and that it was a very retired spot.  My conception of it is the result of having, for many winters, resided in a little town in the South of France where olive trees grow to perfection; and where, on the side of the hills, I have often sat me down in olive groves, and I have said to myself, “Gethsemane was a place just like this.”  I am sure it was so, because one olive garden, on the side of a hill, must necessarily be very like another.  The hills are lined out in terrace above terrace, each one seldom above eight, ten, or twelve feet wide; then you rise, say, five, six, seven, or eight feet, and there is another terrace, and so on right up the hill; and on these terraces the olive trees grow.

One of the charms of an olive garden of that kind is that, as soon as you get into it, you may sit down under the lee of the bank at the back of the terrace, perhaps in an angle where you are sheltered from the wind, and you will be completely hidden from all observers.  I have had persons sitting within a few yards of me, of whose presence I had no idea.  One Sabbath day, when we had been spending a little time in prayer together, I saw what appeared to be an Englishman’s tall hat moving away, at a little distance, just above one of the terraces.  By-and-by, I recognized the head that was under the hat as that of a Christian brother whom I knew, and I found that he had been walking up and down there, studying his sermon for the afternoon.  He had not noticed us, except that he had heard some sounds that seemed to him like prayer and praise.

Many of you might be in an olive garden; but, unless you made some sign of recognition to your friends, they would scarcely know that anybody else was there; and under the thick yet light foliage, with the glints of sunlight shining through, or at night, under the kind of ashy, grey color, with the moonlight glimmering through with its silvery beams, I cannot imagine a more delightful place of retreat, a place where one would feel surer of being quite alone, even though somebody might be near you, a place where you might feel free to express your thoughts and your prayers; because, at any rate, to your own consciousness, you would seem to be entirely alone.

I cannot help thinking that our Savior also loved to get among the olive trees, because of the very congenial form of the olive.  It twists and winds and turns about as though it were in an agony.  It has to draw up oil out of the flinty rock, and it seems to do so with labor and travail; the very shape of many olive trees seems to suggest that thought.  So, an olive garden is a place of painful pleasure and of fruitful toil, where the oil is rich and fat, but where much effort has to be expended in the extract on of it out of the hard soil on which the olive stands.  I believe that others have felt about this matter as I have felt, namely, that there is no free which seems more suggestive of a fellow-feeling with the sufferer than an olive, no shade that is more sweetly pensive, more suitable to the season of sorrow, and the hour of devout meditation.  I marvel not, therefore, that Jesus sought the garden of Gethsemane that he might be quite alone, that he might pour out his soul before God, and yet might have some companions within call without being disturbed by their immediate presence.

One reason for his going to that particular garden was, because he had gone there so often that he loved to be in the old familiar place.  Do you not feel something of that in your own special place of prayer?  I do not like reading out of other people’s Bibles so well as out of my own.  I do not know how it is, but I like my own study Bible best of all; and if I must have a smaller one, I prefer one that has the words on the same page as in my Bible, so that I may easily find them; and I do not knew whether you feel the same, but I can usually pray best in one place.  There are certain spots where I delight to be when I draw near to God; there is some association, connected with them, of former interviews with my Heavenly Father, that makes the old arm-chair to be the very best place at which one can kneel.

So, methinks, the Savior loved Gethsemane, because he had oftentimes resorted thither with his disciples; and, therefore he makes that the sacred spot where his last agony of prayer shall be poured out before his Father.

II. That, however, is only the introduction to the main matter of our meditations; so, now, LET US VIEW THE SAVIOR IN GETHSEMANE, THAT WE MAY IMITATE HIM.

And, first, our blessed Lord is to be imitated by us in that he frequently sought and enjoyed retirement. His was a very busy life; he had much more to do than you and I have; yet he found abundant time for private prayer.

He was much holier than any of us are; yet he realized his need of private prayer and meditation.  He was much wiser than we shall ever be; yet he felt the necessity for retiring into solitude for communion with his Father.  He had much power over himself, he could control and compose himself far more readily than we can; yet, and the distractions of the world, he felt that he must frequently get away alone.

It would be well for us if we were more often alone; we are so busy-so taken up with this or that committee meeting, working-class, Sunday-school, preaching, talking, visiting, gossiping, all sorts of things, good, bad, or indifferent, that we have no leisure for the due cultivation of our spiritual life.  We rush from pillar to post, without proper time for rest; but, brothers and sisters, if we want to be strong, if we mean to be like Jesus our Lord and Savior, we must have our Gethsemane, our place for secret retirement, where we can get alone with our God.  I think it was Luther who said, “I have a hard day’s work before me today; it will take me many hours, and there will be a stern struggle, so I must have at least three hours’ prayer, that I may gain the necessary strength for my task.”  Ah!  We do not act in that wise fashion nowadays; we feel as if we cannot spare the time for private prayer; but, had we more communion with God, we should have more influence with men.

But our blessed Master is especially to be imitated in that he sought retirement when he was about to enter upon the great struggle of his life. Just then, when Judas was about to give the traitor’s kiss, when scribes and Pharisees were about to hound him to the cross, it was then that he felt that he must get away to Gethsemane, and be alone in prayer with his Father.  What did you do, my dear brother, when you apprehended trial?  Why, you sought out a sympathizing friend.  I shall not blame you for desiring the consolations of true friendship, but I shall not commend you if you put them into the place of communion with God.  Are you, even now, dreading some approaching calamity?  What are you doing to meet it?  I will not suggest that you should neglect certain precautions, but I would admonish you that the first and best precaution is to get away to your God in prayer.  As the feeble conies find their shelter in the solid rock, and as the doves fly away to their home in the dovecot, so should Christians, when they expect trouble, fly straight away to their God upon the wings of fear and faith.  Your great strength does not lie in your hair, else might you feel as proud as Samson was in the days of his victories; your great strength lies in your God.  Wherefore, flee away to him with all speed, and ask from him help in this your hour of need.

Some of you pray when you are, as it were, at Calvary, but not at Gethsemane.  I mean, you pray when the trouble comes upon you, but not when it is on the road; yet your Master here teaches you that to conquer at your Calvary, you must commence by wrestling at your Gethsemane.  When as yet it is but the shadow of your coming trial that spreads its black wings over you, cry unto God for help.  When you are not emptying the bitter cup, when you are only sipping the first drops of the wormwood and the gall, begin even then to pray, “Not as I will, but as thou wilt, O my Father!”  You will thus be the better able to drink of the cup to its very dregs when God shall place it in your hand.

We may also imitate our Lord, in his taking his disciples with him.  At any rate, if we do not imitate him in this respect, we may certainly admire him; for he took the disciples with him, I think, for two purposes.

First, for their good. Remember, brethren and sisters, that the morrow was to be a day of trial for them as well as for himself.  He was to be taken to trial and condemnation; but they were to be severely tried, in their fidelity to him, by seeing their Lord and Master put to a shameful death.  So he took them with him that they also might pray, that they might learn how to pray by hearing his wondrous prayers, that they might watch and pray, lest they should enter into temptation.  Now, sometimes, in your special hour of trouble, I believe that it will be for the good of others for you to communicate to them the story of your distress, and ask them to join you in prayer concerning it.  I have often done this, so I can urge you to do the same.  I found it a great blessing, on one dark day of my life, to ask my sons, though they were but lads, to come into my room, and pray with their father in his time of trouble.  I know that it was good for them, and their prayers were helpful to me; but I acted as I did in part that they might realize their share in domestic responsibilities, that they might come to know their father’s God, and might learn to trust him in their time of trouble.

But our Savior also took his disciples with him to Gethsemane that they might assist to comfort him; and, in this respect, he is to be imitated by us because of his wonderful humility.  If those disciples had all done their best, what would it have been worth?  But what they really did was most discouraging to Christ, instead of being at all helpful to him.  They went to sleep when they should have watched with their Lord, and they did not assist him with their prayers as they might have done.  It is noteworthy that he did not ask them to pray with him; he bade them watch and pray, lest they should enter into temptation, but he said to them, “What, could ye not watch with me one hour?”  He did not say, “What, could ye not pray with me one hour?”  He knew that they could not do that.  What mortal man could pray at such a time as that, when great drops of bloody sweat punctuated every paragraph of his petition?  No; they could not pray with him, but they might have watched with him; yet that they did not do.

Sometimes, dear friends, when a very great trial comes upon you, it will be well for you to ask some brothers and sisters, who cannot do much, but who can do something to come and watch with you, and pray with you.  If it does not do any good to you, it will be good for them; but it will do good to you also, I feel sure.  Often, I have to confess it, I have got two brethren to kneel with me in prayer, when I have been depressed through this late illness of mine, and their honest, earnest, hearty prayers in my study have often lifted me right up into joy and peace.  I believe it has done them good also; I know it has done me good, and I feel sure that you might often he a blessing to others if you did not mind confessing to them when you are depressed and sad at heart.  Say, “Come into my room, and watch with me one hour;” and you may add to that request this other one, “Come and pray with me,” for some of them can pray as well as you can, and even better.  So imitate the Savior in endeavoring not only to pray yourself, but to call to your assistance the praying legion of God’s elect ones when a great trial is impending.

Still, our Lord’s example may mainly he followed in another direction, namely, when we do pray in the presence of a great trouble, it is well to pray with much importunity. Our Savior prayed in Gethsemane three times, using the same words.  He prayed with such intensity of desire that his heart seemed to burn with anguish.  The canals overflowed their banks, and the red streams came bursting down in bloody drops that fell upon the earth in that rightly, named “olive-press.”  Ah!  That is the way to pray, if not actually unto a bloody sweat, as we may not have to do, or be able to do, yet with such intensity of hearty earnestness as we can, and as we ought, when God the Holy Spirit is working mightily in us.  We cannot expect to be helped in our time of trouble unless it is intense prayer that we send up to heaven.

But imitate Christ also in the matter of your prayer. I feel sure that he only softly whispered the request, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.”  You also may present that petition, but mind that you say it very softly.  Yet I feel certain that it was with all his might that our Savior said, “Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.”  In the presence or in the prospect of a great trouble, make this your prayer to God, “Thy will be done.”  Resign yourself absolutely into his hands, and say, “Nevertheless, O my Father, not as I will, but as thou wilt!”

It is prevailing prayer when one gets as far as that; a man is prepared to die when he knows how to present that petition.  That is the best preparation for any cross that may come upon your shoulders.  You can die a martyr’s death, and clap your hands even in the midst of the fire, if you can, with all your soul, really pray as Jesus prayed, “Not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

This is the object which I set before you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, that, if you are expecting sickness, if you are fearing loss, if you are anticipating bereavement, if you are dreading death, let this be your great ultimatum, go to God now, in the time of your distress, and, by mighty prevailing prayer, with such prayerful sympathy as others can give you, breathe out this one petition, “Thy will be done, O my Father!  Thy will be done; help me to do it; help me to bear it; help me to go through with it all, to thy honor and glory.  Let me be baptized with thy baptism, and drink of thy cup, even to the dregs.”

Sometimes, dear friends, you may wish, in your hearts, that the Lord would make great use of you, and yet perhaps he may not do so.  Well, a man who holds his tongue, when Christ tells him to do so, is glorifying Christ more than if he opened his mouth, and broke the Master’s commandment.  There are some of the Lord’s people who, by a quiet, holy, consistent manifestation of what the Lord has done for them, glorify him more than they would do if they went from place to place telling out his gospel in a way which would make the gospel itself disgusting to those who heard it.  That is quite possible, for some people do it.  If my Lord puts me in the front rank, blessed be his name for it, and I must fight for him there as best I can.  But if he says to me, “Lie in bed!  Be bed-ridden for seven years, and never get up!”  I have nothing to do but to glorify him in that way.  He is the best soldier who does exactly what his captain bids him.

III. Now, in the third place, and only briefly, LET US VIEW THE DISCIPLES IN GETHSEMANE, BY WAY OR INSTRUCTION TO OURSELVES.

Probably, the disciples had often been with their Master to Gethsemane; I suppose, sometimes by day, and oftentimes by night, in secret conclave they had been instructed in the olive garden.  It had been their Academy; there they had been with the Master in prayer; no doubt, each one praying, and learning how to pray better from his divine example.  Dear brothers and sisters, I recommend you oftentimes to get to the place where you can best commune with your God.  But, now, the disciples came to Gethsemane because a great trouble was impending.  They were brought there that they might watch and pray.  So, get you to the place of prayer, at this time of trouble, and at all other times of trial that shall come upon you throughout your whole life.  Whenever you hear the knell ringing out all earthly joy, let it ring you into the garden of prayer.  Whenever there is the shadow of a coming trouble looming before you, let there also be the substance of more intense communion with God.  These disciples were, however, at this time, called to enter into fellowship with their Master in the thicker, deeper darkness that was coming over him, far denser than any that was coming over them.  And you are called, dear brothers and sisters, each in your measure, to be baptized unto Jesus in the cloud and in the sea, that you may have fellowship with him in his sufferings.  Be not ashamed to go even to Gethsemane with Christ, entering into a knowledge of what he suffered by being made, according to your capacity, to stiffer in the selfsame manner.  All his true followers have to go there, some have only to stand at the outside gate, and keep watch; but his highly-favored ones have to go into the denser gloom, and to be nearer to their Lord in his greatest agonies; but, if we are his true disciples, we must have fellowship with him in his sufferings.

Our difficulty is, that the flesh shrinks from this trial, and that, like the disciples, we sleep when we ought to watch.  When the time of trial comes, if we get depressed in spirit about it, we are apt not to pray with that fervor and vigor which greater hopefulness would have begotten; and when we come to feel something of what the Savior endured, we are to apt to be overwhelmed by it rather than stimulated by it; and so, when he comes to us, he finds us, like the disciples, “sleeping for sorrow.”  The Master gently said, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak;” but I do not suppose that one of the disciples made any excuse for himself.  I feel, if I may judge them from myself, that I should always have said, “I never can forgive myself for going to sleep that night; how could I fall asleep when he said, ‘Watch with me?’  And when he came again, with his face red with bloody sweat, and with that disappointed look upon his countenance, said, What, could ye not watch with me one hour?  How could I go to sleep a second time and, then, how could I go to sleep a third time?”  Oh, methinks that Simon Peter must ever have remembered that his Savior said to him, “Simon, couldst not thou watch with me one hour?”  That question must have stuck by him all his life; and James and John must have felt the same.  Brethren and sisters, are any of you sleeping under similar circumstances, while Christ’s Church is suffering, while Christ’s cause is suffering, while Christ’s people are suffering, while a trial is coming upon you to help you into fellowship with him?  Are you, instead of being aroused to a higher and more intense devotion, sinking into deeper sleep?  If so, Christ may in his great love excuse you, but I beg you not to begin making excuses for yourself.  Nay, arouse ye, brethren, and “watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation.”

That slumber of theirs must have been greatly rebuked by their Savior’s kindness to them.  As I understand the narrative, our Lord came to his disciples three times, and on the third occasion he found them still heavy with sleep, so he sat down beside them, and said to them, “Sleep on now, and take your rest.”  There he sat, patiently waiting for the traitor’s arrival; not expecting any help or sympathy from his disciples, but just watching over them as they would not watch with him, praying for them as they would not pray for themselves, and letting them take another nap while he made himself ready to meet Judas and the rabble throng that would so soon surround him.  Our Master, in his great tenderness, sometimes indulges us with such sleeps as these; yet we may have to regret them, and to wish that we had had sufficient strength of mind and earnestness of heart to keep awake, and watch with him in his season of sorrow.  It appears to me that, of all the eleven good disciples, there was not one who kept awake.  There was one vile traitor, and he was wide-awake. He never went to sleep, he was awake enough to sell his Master, and to act as guide to those who came to capture him.

I think also that, at least partly in consequence of that slumber of the disciples, within a short time, “they all forsook him, and fled.”  They seem, for the time, to have slept away their attachment to their Lord, and waking, as from a disturbed dream, they scarcely knew what they did, and helter-skelter away they fled.  The sheep were all scattered, and the Shepherd was left alone, thus fulfilling the ancient prophecy, “Smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered;” and that other word, “I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me.”  Wake up, brothers and sisters, else you too may forsake your Master; and in the hour when you ought most to prove your fidelity, it may be that your slumbering state of heart will lead on to backsliding, and to forsaking of your Lord.  God grant that it may not!

IV. Now I close with a word of warning which I have almost anticipated. LET US, IN THOUGHT, GO TO GETHSEMANE TO TAKE WARNING FROM JUDAS.

Let me read to you the latter part of the text: “Judas also, which betrayed him, knew the place: for Jesus ofttimes resorted thither with his disciples.”

“Judas also, which betrayed him, knew the place.” Yes, he had probably, many times, been there all night with Christ.  He had sat with the other disciples in a circle round their Lord on one of those olive-clad terraces, and he had listened to his wondrous words in the soft moonlight.  He had often heard his Master pray there.  “Judas also, which betrayed him,” had heard him pray in Gethsemane.  He knew the tones of his voice, the pathos of his pleading, the intense agony of that great heart of love when it was poured out in prayer.  He had, no doubt, joined with the other disciples when they said, “Lord, teach us to pray.”

“Judas also, which betrayed him, knew the place.” He could have pointed out to us the very spot where the Savior most loved to be, that angle in the terrace, that little corner out of the way, where the Master was wont to find a seat when he sat down, and taught the chosen band around him.  Yes, Judas knew the place; and it was because he knew the place that he was able to betray Christ; for, if he had not known where Jesus was, he could not have taken the guard there.

It does seem, to me, very dreadful that familiarity with Christ should have qualified this man to become a traitor; and it is still true that, sometimes, familiarity with religion may qualify men to become apostates.  Oh, if there be a Judas here, I would speak very solemnly to you!  You know the place; you know all about church government and church order, and you can go and tell pretty tales about the mistakes made by some of God’s servants, who would not err if they could help it.  Yes; you know the church members; you know where there are any flaws of character and infirmity of spirit; you know how to go and spread the story of them among worldlings, and you can make such mischief as you could not make if you had not known the place.  Yes; and you know the doctrines of grace, at least with a measure of head-knowledge, and you know how to twist them, so as to make them seem ridiculous, even those eternal verities, which ravish the hearts of angels and of the redeemed from among men.  Because you know them so well, you know how to parody them, and to caricature them, and to make the grace of God itself seem to be a farce.  Yes, you know the place; you have been to the Lord’s table, and you have heard the saints speak of their raptures and their ecstasies; and you pretended that you were sharing them.  So you know how to go back to the world and to represent true godliness as being all cant and hypocrisy; and you make rare fun out of those most solemn secrets of which a man would scarcely speak to his fellow because they are the private transactions between his soul and his God.

I can hardly realize how terrible will be the doom of those who, after making a profession of religion, have prostituted their knowledge of the inner working of the Church of God, and made it the material for novels in which Christ’s gospel is held up to scorn.  Yet there have been such men, who have not been content to be like birds that have fouled their own nests, for they have also gone forth, and tried also to foul the nest of every believing heart that they could reach.  What a dreadful thing it will be if any one of us, here, should know the place, and therefore should betray the Savior!  Do you know the place of private prayer, or do you think you do?  Do you know the place where men go when the shadow of a coming trial is looming before them?  Do you think you know something about fellowship with Christ in his sufferings?  But, what if the greed of gold should overmaster in you, as it did in Judas, such natural attachment as you feel towards Christ and better things?  And what if even Gethsemane should, like a pit, open wide its mouth to swallow you up?  It is terrible to contemplate, yet it may be true, for “Judas also, which betrayed him, knew the place.”  I cannot bear to think that any one of you should be familiar with the ins and outs of this Tabernacle, and yet should betray Christ; that you should be one of those who gather around this communion table, that you should be familiar with all the loving and tender expressions which we are wont to use here, and yet, after all, should forsake our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Pass the disciples question round, and each one ask it, “Lord, is it I?”

“When any turn from Zion’s way,

(Alas, what numbers do!)

Methinks I hear my Savior say,

‘Wilt thou forsake me too?”

“Ah Lord! with such a heart as mine,

Unless thou hold me fast,

I feel I must, I shall decline,

And prove like them at last.”

Therefore, hold thou me up, O Lord, and I shall be safe; keep me even to the end, for thy dear Son’s sake!  Amen.

Preached on March 6, 1881.

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