vol. 2 contd

“We are all born great the first time—it is only when we are born the second time, born from above—that we come to be little. When we were born the first time, we were so great that we were really nothing—but when we are born a second time, we are so little that we are everything in Christ!”—1897, Sermon #2514

“We need not wonder if those who have no knowledge of God, no Savior, no Father in Heaven, should try to get all they can out of this world, for they have no other! Well may they make gold their god, for they have no God who can give them any pleasure or delight. But it should not be so with you who are the twice-born, the immortal, the God-descended. You who have eternal life within you, you in whose bodies the Holy Spirit is dwelling as in a temple—and it is so with you unless you are hypocrites and are making a pretense to that which is not true—you should not be fretting and stewing about what you shall eat, or what you shall drink and how you shall be clothed! Endowed with such a noble nature, called to higher things than the heathen have ever dreamed of, descend not to the trifles which content them, but let your spirit rise above these earthly things!”—1897, Sermon #2515

“Remember what David said, long ago—“Cast your burden upon the Lord and He shall sustain you: He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.” But if you cast your burden upon the Lord, do not go looking after it when I have pronounced the benediction—leave it altogether! The fault with many of us is that when we have cast our burden upon the Lord, we beg Him to let us have it back! And if He grants our foolish request, it comes back twice as heavy as it was before. Oh, that we were wise enough to leave our troubles with our Father who is in Heaven as little children leave things with their father! Then we shall find that He comforts us in all our tribulation.”—1899, Sermon #2640

“The least mercy from God is a miracle.”—1900, Sermon #2702
“Whenever there is the shadow of a coming trouble looming before you, let there also be the substance of more intense communion with God!”1902, Sermon #2767
“Our blessed Savior is honestly intolerant! He says, ‘He that believes and is baptized shall be saved, but He that believes not shall be damned.’Because He loves the souls of men, He will not bolster up the fiction of universal charity.” —1903, Sermon #2826

“Whatever the other Bethlehem people might be, there was among them one notable being, and it was worthwhile to join the nation for the sake of union with him. Ruth found it all out by degrees. There was a near kinsman among those people and his name was Boaz. She went to glean in his field and, by-and-by, she was married to him. Ah, that was the reason why I cast in my lot with the people of God, for I said to myself, ‘There is One among them who, whatever faults theymay have, is so fair and lovely that He more than makes up for all their imperfections! My Lord Jesus Christ, in the midst of His people, makes them all fair in His fairness and makes me feel that to be poor with the poorest and most illiterate of the Church of Christ, meeting in a village barn, is an unspeakable honor since He is among them!”—1900, Sermon #2680

“Being in the Kingdom of God, and enjoying its privileges, then seek to extend that Kingdom. Go forth every morning, conquering and to conquer! With the weapons of love and kindness, seek to win men to Christ. Enlisted in this holy army, carry on a constant crusade for Christ. From your earliest waking thoughts, till you fall asleep at night, be intent, first and foremost, to win other hearts to Christ. Let all your care go in this direction—to serve God, to live for God, to glorify God! Seek this as earnestly as the merchant seeks more trade, as the miser seeks more gold, as the sick man seeks a return of health: ‘Seek you first the Kingdom of God.’”—1897, Sermon #2515

“I cannot understand the indifference of some people to the crime that flows in black torrents down our streets. It seems to me that if I am a Christian, I am to seek to promote the kingdom of righteousness everywhere! And that the side I ought to take in social life, politics and everything else, is the side of righteousness.”—1897, Sermon #2515

“O Brothers and Sisters, in proportion as you are holy, the absence of the Light of God’s Countenance will be grief to you! And as Jesus was perfectly holy, it was the utmost anguish to Him to have to cry to His Father, ‘Why have You forsaken Me!’”—1902, Sermon #2803

“David said, ‘I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.’ If you will care only to seek your bread, yourself. If you will make your gain your great objective in life, then you may provide for yourself. But if you will serve God. If you will mind His business, He will mind your business! And as surely as He lives, He will provide for His own.”—1897, Sermon #2518“Always expect the unexpected when you are dealing with God! Look to see, in God, and from God, what you never saw before, for the very things which will seem to unbelief—to be utterly impossible—will be those which are most likely to happen when you are dealing with Him whose arm is Omnipotent, and whose heart is faithful and true.”—1900, Sermon #2702

“Why does God lay trouble upon His people and comfort them in it? It is that He may make them comforters of others—“that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble.” A man who has never had any trouble is very awkward when he tries to comfort troubled hearts. Hence, the minister of Christ, if he is to be of much use in God’s service, must have great trouble. ‘Prayer, meditation, and affliction,’ says Melanchthon,‘are the three things that make the minister of God.’ There must be prayer. There must be meditation and there must be affliction. You cannot pronounce the promise correctly in the ears of the afflicted unless you, yourself, have known its preciousness in your own hour of trial. It is God’s will that the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, should often work by men according to that ancient word of His, ‘Comfort you, comfort you My people, says your God. Speak you comfortably to Jerusalem.’ These comforting men are to be made—they are not born so—and they have to be made by passing through the furnace themselves. They cannot comfort others unless they have had trouble and have been comforted in it.”—1899, Sermon #2640

“ And as they went to tell His disciples, behold, Jesusmet them—Happy are the ministers who meet their Lord when they are going up the pulpit stairs! Blessed are the teachers who meet Jesus when they are going to the class! They will be sure to preach and teach well when that is the case. ‘As they went to tell His disciples, behold, Jesus met them.’”—1897, Sermon #2518

“There are many ways of praising God. We should do it with the lips and grateful is the voice of song in the ears of the Lord God of Sabaoth. We should do it by our daily conversation—let our acts be acts of praise, as well as our words be words of praise. We should do it even by the very look of our eyes and by the appearance of our countenance. Let not your face be sad, let your countenance be joyous! Sing wherever you go, yes, when you are laden with trouble, let no man see it.”—1900, Sermon #2681

“You may cut the evil weed, self-righteousness, up, but when you think you have got to the last root of it, it will be shooting up again before you can sharpen your knife to cut it up once more! This evil thing is bred in man’s nature. When you preach against it, see how men will roar at you—they cannot bear that teaching.”—1898, Sermon #2594

“Oh, to have a cheerful spirit, not the levity of the thoughtless, nor the gaiety of the foolish, nor even the mirth of the healthy—there is a cheerful spirit which is the gift of Grace—that can and does rejoice evermore. Then, when troubles come we bear them cheerfully! Let fortune smile, we receive it with equanimity. Or let losses befall us, we endure them with resignation, being willing, so long as God is glorified, to accept anything at His hands.”—1903, Sermon #2850

“Men are frightened into Hell, but not into Heaven. Men are sometimes driven to Sinai by powerful preaching. Far be it from us to condemn the use of the Law of God, for, “the Law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ,” but if you want to get a man to Christ , the best way is to bring Christ to the man!”—1898, Sermon #2563

“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!”1902, Sermon #2767

“Now, look at the text [Luke 18:1] again, and lay stress upon the first word of it—‘ Menought always to pray.’ I feel so grateful to the Holy Spirit that this text does not say, ‘ Saintsought always to pray,’ because then I might ask myself, ‘Am I a saint?’ and, perhaps, I might have to answer, ‘No, I am far from it.’ But the text does not say, ‘saints,’ and it does not even say, ‘Tender-hearted, penitent persons who are in a very gracious state ought always to pray.’ No, there is no description of character given in the text, for which I am deeply grateful.”—1897, Sermon #2519

“Do not give way to little sins and you will not give way to big ones… Beware of little sins and you will not commit great ones.”—1900, Sermon #2703

“All the adulteries, murders, unnatural vices and accursed blasphemies that had ever defiled the race of mankind have not so certainly proved it to be a desperately fallen thing as the murder of the Son of God, the Savior and the Friend of men! This appalling crime of Deicide stands out without a parallel in the history of the universe! There was no guilt in the Lord Jesus for which He deserved to die, yet, with wicked hands, they crucified and slew Him.” —1903, Sermon #2826

“Let all the infidels in the world assuredly know that the Gospel will win its way, whatever they may do. Poor creatures! Their efforts to oppose it are not worthy of our notice and we need not fear that they can stop the Truth of God! As well might a gnat think to quench the sun! Go, tiny insect, and do it, if you can! You will only burn your wings and die. As well might a fly think it could drink the ocean dry. Drink the ocean, if you can—more likely you will sink in it and so it will drink you!”—1898, Sermon #2594
“The man who knows that his eternal future is secured by the unfailing Grace of God may forever praise the Lord who has given him life!”—1900, Sermon #2682

“Christ’s testimony concerning His own ministry was, ‘The poor have the Gospel preached to them,’ so if you bring me a Gospel which can only be understood by gentlemen who have passed through Oxford or Cambridge University, I know that it cannot be the Gospel of Christ!”—1902, Sermon #2803

“I can well believe that when the holy angels heard that the Son of God was to be Incarnate, and when it oozed out that in human flesh He was to die, even they could scarcely believe that such a thing was possible!”—1899, Sermon #2641

“The Jews prayed three times a day. There have been some holy men who have prayed at least seven times a day, but I take it that the man who lives near to God could not tell how many times a day he prays, for, whether he has three or seven times of special and notable prayer in word, he will have 70 times seven times in a day in which his heart speaks with God about everything that occurs. I think that it is well before every action to breathe a prayer, and during every action to breathe a prayer, and after every action to breathe a prayer.”—1897, Sermon #2519“If your religion is to be worth anything, it must have a heart—there must be heart-work—the work of the Holy Spirit upon your hearts and the drawing near of your souls unto God. Otherwise, all your outward performances, however excellent they may appear to be, will land you short of Heaven.”—1903, Sermon #2851

“Ah, a religion that does not begin with secret prayer is not worth the label you put on it! A religion that is not sustained by secret prayer is a lie! A religion that does not grow through secret prayer may be puffed up, but it is not truly builtupby the hand of God. No, no, if you seek to join a Church, to be baptized, to come to the Communion Table and, all the while, you do not pray, your religion is but the baseless fabric of a vision and will disappear! You must either pray or you will faint!”—1897, Sermon #2519

“The most effective sermons are those which make opposers of the Gospel bite their lips and gnash their teeth.”—1898, Sermon #2594

“There is no going to Heaven by following the road to Hell! There is no finding pardon while continuing in sin. Depend upon it, Mr. Drunkard, you will not be forgiven for your drunkenness if you still go on with your drinking. Let not the man who is unchaste imagine that he can go on with his sin and yet be forgiven. Let not the thief dream that there is any pardon for him unless he quits his evil course and tries to make such restitution as he can to those whom he has wronged.”—1900, Sermon #2704

“You shall never so fully and so truly find yourself as when you have lost yourself in God.”—1899, Sermon #2641
“Life without God’s love is death. But put God’s love with it and then what a song we ought to send up to His Throne if we feel that He has given us both spiritual life and infinite love.”—1900, Sermon #2682

“I would rather be the means of saving a soul from death than be the greatest orator on earth. I would rather bring the poorest woman in the world to the feet of Jesus than I would be made Archbishop of Canterbury. There is no honor and no dignity under Heaven that can content us unless souls are won for Christ! And if souls are won, we shall care little how the great work was done instrumentally, for God will have the whole of the glory of it.”—1897, Sermon #2520

“Ah, poor Sinner, I daresay your first prayer is full of blunders, but that does not matter as long as your heart is in it. The Lord knows how to put our prayers together and take all the contradictions out of them—He understands the meaning of our sighs and our groans!”—1897, Sermon #2520

“Often times a sinner will become more adept in guilt and more inclined to evil the further he advances in years. Certain sins may decline through the weakening of the flesh, but the sins of the heart do not. The power to sin may grow less, but the will to sin continues to increase as the sinner grows older.”1902, Sermon #2768

“I have heard preachers ignorantly talk about ‘natural’ love to the Gospel—there cannot be such a thing! I heard someone say that there was a ‘natural’ love to Christ—it is all rubbish! Nature cannot beget a love to Christ, nor love to any good thing—that must come of God, for all love is from Him.”—1898, Sermon #2594

“In reference to this matter of predestination and free will, I have often heard men ask, ‘How do you make them agree?’ I think there is another question just as difficult to solve, ‘How can you make them differ?’ The two may be as easily made to concur as to clash.”—1903, Sermon #2828

“And oh, poor troubled Sinner, if you cannot pray, but can only get alone and moan, that is good praying!”—1897, Sermon #2520“Railway men do not build bridges over rivers without an intention of sending engines and trains across them—and God does not give faith without an intention of letting it be tried. And He wants you to know, when He does try you, or permit others to try you, that He still loves you. When He leaves you for a little while in the dark, He loves you just as much as when you were in the light.”—1900, Sermon #2682

“You will be as surely damned by your righteousness, if you trust in it, as you will by your unrighteousness! Christ, alone, the Gift of the free Grace of God—this is the gate of Heaven—but all self-satisfaction, all boasting, all exaltation of yourself above your fellow men is mischievous and ruinous, and will surely be deadly to your spirit forever.”—1900, Sermon #2704

“Think it not a strange thing that you are subject to this eclipse—others have been eclipsed, too—and all those who have found the Sun of Righteousness have had to run through the dark to get at Him! There must be a dark tunnel before we can get at Christ and we must grope through worse than an Egyptian night before we behold the face of God with joy.”—1899, Sermon #2642

“If, dear Friend, you are self-condemned and can see no reason why the Lord should have mercy upon you, yet He spies a reason in the very fact of your being unable to see any! He finds, in that very brokenness, misery and helplessness of yours, a reason why His own sweet love and mercy should come and deal with you, even with you.”—1898, Sermon #2564

“I do not know how to put Christ’s love more plainly, or give the invitation more simply. I wonder that souls do not come and yet I know that you will not come unless my Master draws you!”—1897, Sermon #2520

“If you think that your prayers help in any degree to put away sin, you make an antichrist of your prayers! Christ’s blood and righteousness form the onlyground of your acceptance before God. If you reckon your prayers as a ground, or medium, or even helpto your acceptance with God, you push the Cross of Christ into the background and put your prayers into the place of the only Substitute for sinners—and the more you pile them up, the more you multiply your sin!”—1903, Sermon #2851

“Now, Beloved, possibly you will say to me, ‘How is it that the Gospel—God’s glad tidings to guilty man, the Gospel which is full of Grace, which is, indeed, all of Grace from top to bottom—comes in the shape of a command? Does it not tend to make your preaching legal?” My answer to that question is that if it did have that effect, I could not help it. I am bound to preach what I find in God’s Word. Whatever may be the consequences, I must not alter the form of my Master’s message!”—1902, Sermon #2803

“Dear Friends, you know as well as I do that there are many sorts of Christians. I am sorry to say that there are some nominal Christians who are no credit to Christianity—they bear the name of Christians and though I will not say that they are dead—yet certainly they are very sickly and seem ready to die. They stand among the people of God and their names are put down in the Church Book, but if they are spiritually alive, theirs is a very feeble form of life. Their heart is not in God’s ways. They are active and energetic when they get into the shop, but they are half asleep when they are in the sanctuary. They leave “footprints on the sands of time” when they are devoting their attention to politics, but when they come to the things of God, they tread so lightly that we cannot tell that they have passed that way!”—1897, Sermon #2521

“And, mark you, that mistakes concerning the Gospel are never little things—they are always dangerous, they are always painful. Sinners have more griefs than they need have because they have less knowledge than they should have.”—1899, Sermon #2642

“It is good evidence that Grace has been given to any man when he looks upon Christ, obeying the great command—‘Look unto Me, and be you saved, all the ends of the earth.’ This is the first sign and token of Believers and it is to be our continual distinguishing mark, for we are always to be ‘looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith.’”—1900, Sermon #2683

“Dear Friends, look not towards any sin, for looking breeds longing, and longing begets lusting, and lusting brings sinning! Keep your eyes right and you may keep your heart right. If that first woman had not looked upon the forbidden tree and seen “that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise,” she would not have plucked and eaten of the fruit—and we would not have been the children of sorrow.”—1897, Sermon #2521

“I used to think that if I once told this wondrous story of “Free Grace and dying love,” everybody would believe it. But I have long since learned that so hard is the heart of man, that he will sooner be damned than be saved by Christ!”—1900, Sermon #2704
“Among the wise concealments of God is that which hides from open view the depravity of our heart and the corruption of our nature.”—1903, Sermon #2828

“Old John Newton used to say, ‘You who are called Calvinists—though you are not merely Calvinists, but the old, legitimate successors of Christ—you ought, above all men, to be very gentle with your opponents, for, remember, according to your own principles, they cannot learn Truth of God unless they are taught of God. And if you have been taught of God, you ought to bless His name—and if they have not, you should not be angry with them, but pray to God to give them a better education.’ Do not let us make any extra “offense of the Cross” by our own ill humor, but let us show our love to the Cross by loving and trying bless those who have been offended with it.”—1898, Sermon #2594

“O Friends, if we begin to look upon iniquity, we shall almost certainly fall! There are some sins that we poor, frail creatures cannot endure to look at. We are as moths near a burning candle—the only safety for us is to get out of the room and fly into the open air. But if we stop near the light, we shall certainly burn our wings and, perhaps, even destroy ourselves. So we must take care that we do not get used to sin. I believe that even the common reading in the newspapers of accounts of evil things is defiling to us and if we habitually read such things, we shall come, at last, to think less and less of the coarser forms of vice than we ought to do.”—1897, Sermon #2521 “Sin will ruin any man. If it is not forsaken, it will eternally ruin him.”—1898, Sermon #2565

“What a dreadful lie it is when men stand up as sponsors for a child and promise and vow various things, none of which are within their power to perform! As to anything that anybody ever promised with regard to your soul, what can another person do for you in such a matter as that? The most earnest faith in your parents can never bring you to Heaven unless you, also, have faith in Jesus!”1902, Sermon #2770

“Beloved Brothers and Sisters, pray that God will bless the message I am trying to deliver, in deep solemnity of soul, to poor sinners. Ask Him to send it home to their hearts by the effectual working of His Holy Spirit.”—1902, Sermon #2803

“Nothing can keep us away from the fangs of error like falling into the embraces of Christ. Looking unto Jesus is the great remedy against looking unto sin! Turn away my eyes from vanity, my Lord, by filling them full with a vision of Yourself and holding me spellbound with that grandest spectacle that eyes of men, or angels, or even of God, Himself did ever see—the spectacle of God Incarnate bearing our sin in His own body on the Cross! Keep your eyes fixed there and all will be well.”—1897, Sermon #2521

“It will never do for any man to hope to be saved by putting prayer into the place of genuine repentance and immediate forsaking of sin.”—1903, Sermon #2851

“There is a poor soul in this place now—I have talked with her many times. I know her sad condition and I have often shaped my discourse so as to meet her case. Many times I have thought that the Lord has given me some sweet word that would break the gates of brass and set the imprisoned one at liberty, It has taken a little of the pride out of me and shown me how impossible it is for man, when he labors the hardest, to bring a soul out of bondage before the Lord’s promised hour of redemption comes.”—1899, Sermon #2642

“I invite each one of you personally to offer this prayer, “Turn away my eyes from beholding vanity; and quicken me in Your way.” It is the preacher’s prayer. Let each of us who preach the Gospel ask God to keep the dust out of our eyes and make us full of spiritual life, for, if we are not filled with heavenly life, we shall be a curse to our people instead of a blessing.”—1897, Sermon #2521

“They say when a man is sick, that it is a good thing to take him to his native place. And when a true Believer’s soul gets faint and unbelieving, let him breathe the air of Calvary over again!”—1900, Sermon #2705

“It is quite true that of all sights in the world, the sight of Christ crucified is the sweetest. People say, ‘See Naples and die.’ But it would be worthwhile to see Christ, by faith, even if that sight were necessarily followed by death. Of all that can be seen in the world, there is nothing so delightful as a believing sight of Jesus Christ!”—1900, Sermon #2683

“You cannot be a blessing to others unless God has first blessed you. We do not encourage selfishness in anything, but we do say that you must fill your own pitcher before another man can drink out of it. You must have bread in your own hands before you can break it for the multitudes. It is no use for you to attempt to sow out of an empty basket, for that would be sowing nothing but wind. First of all, then, you must get the blessing yourself, for until it can be said to you, ‘I will bless you,’ it cannot be said, ‘You shall be a blessing.”—1897, Sermon #2523 “I do not know how they get on who have the communion only once a quarter or once a year. Paul said, ‘As often as you eat this bread, and drink this cup.’ He should have said, ‘as seldom as you drink it,’ according to the habit of some! There is no law about the frequency of its observance, except the sweet Law of Love which seems to say, ‘If this is a window where Christ looks out, then let me often approach it. If this is a door through which He comes to my heart, then let me stand often at this door.’ ‘Often’—frequently—I think that at least once in the week it is well for us to come to the Table of our Lord.”—1898, Sermon #2595

“A sinner’s sight of Christ must breed sorrow for sin—it is unavoidable—and the more clear that sight shall become, and the more it is mixed with faith, and the more sure we are of pardon, the more bitterness will there be in it. When we know that our sins are forgiven, it is then that we, most of all, realize their guilt and abhor and hate them.”—1900, Sermon #2683

“‘The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar,’ so the Light of God’s Countenance rises upon poor sinners when they come to

Jesus!”—1899, Sermon #2642
“And if you, dear Friends, have a faith that never works for Christ, I beg you to get rid of it at once, for it will turn out to be a bastard faith! The faith that never kisses His feet is a faith that He will tread under His feet! The faith that never anoints Him is a faith that will have no fragrance in His esteem and He will not accept it. We are not saved by works and faith combined, much less by works alone, but, nevertheless, the faith which saves is not a barren faith—it produces the good fruit of love and service for Christ.”1902, Sermon #2770

“There are no men who are in such danger as the men who think they are not in any danger! There are none so likely to sin as those who say they cannot sin!”—1903, Sermon #2828
“Well may we forget our enmities against men when we begin to repent of our enmities against God! It is time for a man to forgive his brother his trespasses when he, himself, prays to the Lord, ‘Forgive me my trespasses.’”—1898, Sermon #2566

“That heart is full of Heaven that is full of God. That man is blessed to all the intents of bliss who dwells in God and in whom God dwells! And that is the privilege of all who truly believe in Jesus, all who come out from the world and live a life of faith as Abraham did.”—1897, Sermon #2523

“Oh, who can describe the raptures of the dying saint, the glories of that moment when God is pleased to cut the fetters that bind us to our clay and give us leave to soar into His Presence?”—1899, Sermon #2642
“You are not to make faith in God an excuse for idleness. It would be equally wrong to make your industry a pretext for trusting to yourselves, instead of confiding only in God.”—1902, Sermon #2805

“Beloved, if you and I are to be made a blessing to others, it must be by our bringing the Lord Jesus Christ to those whom we meet from day to day. Do not talk to a friend without speaking of your Savior. Do not be long in a house without introducing that dear name—there is so much of savor, of sweetness, of comfort, of healing, of life in that precious name of Jesus, that you cannot too often speak of it, or too frequently introduce it into all sorts of companies!”—1897, Sermon #2523

“I know men talk of the laws of nature, but the laws of nature have no force in themselves—the whole force that carries out a law of nature is a Divine force. So, your difficulties are of God’s sending, trials of God’s making and they are all still in the hands of the All-Powerful One to restrain, or mitigate, or increase, or direct according to His own will.”—1903, Sermon #2852

“Have you come to a great difficulty, my dear Friend? Cannot you get over it? Are you in trouble about it? Now, if this is a difficulty that ought to be removed, the shortest way to have it removed is to go to God about it! If it is one that ought not to be removed, then you also have done rightly in going to God, for He who willnotremove it will at least give you Grace to glorify Him in some other way! The best thing we can do, in all times of trouble and trial, is to lay the matter before the Lord.”—1898, Sermon #2596

“A minister, then, is one who should be diligent in his Master’s business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord by endeavoring to warn men of the terrible nature and consequences of sin.”—1900, Sermon #2684

“Oh, how sadly true it is that, sometimes, true saints as well as mere professors slumber and sleep! Even those who have the oil of Grace are not always wide awake to serve their Master and to proclaim the Gospel as they should. There are, alas, sleeping Believers and sleeping hypocrites side by side!”—1899, Sermon #2642

“Puritan divines are at a great discount today, but I believe that some of us will live to see them prized more than they ever were! The Doctrines of Grace are, for a while, trod in the mire, but after infidelity has emptied the chapels, and the churches have lost the true missionary spirit, they will come back again to the grand old Truths of the Gospel, and we who are spared shall see a revival of them such as our hearts have longed for!”—1897, Sermon #2524 [preached in 1885.]

“There is a difference between seeking Christ and seeking Christ’s people that should always be noticed—you are not to seek Christ’s people so as to join with them until you have, first of all, found Christ! No man, no woman, no child, has any right to Gospel ordinances till first of all he has trusted Christ.”—1898, Sermon #2566

“All who have heard the Gospel preached have been called to some extent. The Word of God calls every sinner to repent and trust the Savior, but that call brings nobody to Christ unless it is accompanied by the special effectual call of the Holy Spirit.”—1897, Sermon #2526

“It is a great honor to do anything for your Master’s children which will be for their good. In the Kingdom of God, the way to go up is to go down—and the way to grow great is to grow little. Look at little Paul—that man short of stature and with many infirmities. Why, he is the biggest of all the Apostles! And what is “great Paul”? Oh, he is only sounding brass and the less we hear of him, the better. Get to be like little Paul, Brother, and your sound shall go out to the very ends of the earth! Whereas if you are ever a big Paul, you will only give out a brazen note which will be heard for a very little way. If the Lord Jesus Christ has made us to be His servants, let us count it our highest honor to be a servant of the least of His servantsso that we may bless them and glorify Him!”—1899, Sermon #2643

“A man with intellect and mind to bow himself down before a carved image is most degrading. That he should worship that which is made of wood, or stone, or metal is practically to make himself inferior to the dead thing which he worships!”—1900, Sermon #2684

“You and I are going about after this and after that till we compass sea and land, and miss the blessing! Straightforward makes the best running. Let us go straight to God in prayer, with simple confidence in Him, and we shall not have long to ask, “Where is Jehovah, the God of Elijah?”for we shall prove that He still answers prayer even as He did in the Prophet’s day.”—1898, Sermon #2596

“Let every unconverted person be sure that whatever spirits there may be in the unseen world—and there are good angels and bad ones—they will, none of them, work for the good of the ungodly! The evil angels may tempt and mislead, and help to destroy, but they can do no good, even if they wished to do so, to the ungodly. And as for the pure and holy spirits that behold the Father’s face in Glory, I think that their flaming swords must often be ready to start from their scabbards as they hear God’s holy name profaned and see how mortal men, puny creatures as they are, dare to provoke the majesty of Heaven! If angels are capable of experiencing horror, I think they must often be horrified into burning indignation at the transgressions which they behold among the sons and daughters of men!”1902, Sermon #2773

“Now, dear Friends, sermons, good books and even the Bible, itself, may be made into idols if you look to them for salvation and expect that by hearing and by reading—and going no further—you will be saved!”—1902, Sermon #2805

“The Levite of old had no business to do in the world but the business of God—and the true Christian is in the same condition for, though he keeps a shop, or plows the fields—he keeps shop for Jesus and plows the fields for Jesus. He is not his own master, but he is the servant of Another, even the Lord Jesus Christ, and it is his joy to labor faithfully as a steward and a servant on behalf of his Master!”—1903, Sermon #2829

“I am afraid that there are some persons who do not want to be instructed in the things of God. They are afraid of knowing too much. I know some good Christian people—good in their way—who cautiously avoid portions of Scripture that are contrary to their creed. And I know a good many more who, when they get hold of a text, stretch it a little, or squeeze it a little, to make it fit in with what they, byprejudice, conceive oughtto be the Truth of God! But that should not be your method or mine. Let us say, ‘Speak, Lord, and say to me what You will. Whatever You have to say to me, Master, say on.’ The Lord Jesus may perhaps reply to us, ‘I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.’ Howbeit, it is for us to ask Him to lead us into all Truths of God. If there is a Truth that quarrels with you, depend upon it there is something in you to quarrel with! You cannot alter the Truth of God—the simplest thing is to alter yourself! It is not for us to shorten the measure, but to endeavor to come up to it. Let us lay our hearts before God and pray Him to write His Truth upon them. Let us yield our understanding and every faculty that we have to the supreme sway of Jesus and, like Mary, sit down at His feet and receive His gracious Words. ‘Speak, Lord, to instruct me. Tell me all about this and that Truth which it is necessary for me to know.’”—1897, Sermon #2526

“Did not Jesus Christ come into the world to save sinners? Is there any sin which He is not able to forgive? It is true that there is a sin which is unto death, but you have not committed that sin, or else you would be in a state of death—and would have no desire to be saved. But if you have any spiritual life, so that you long to be saved, you have not committed that unpardonable sin—and all other sin and blasphemy can be forgiven unto men if they repent of it and trust the Lord Jesus Christ.”—1903, Sermon #2852

“I wish that some Christian men of my acquaintance would leave out the Lord’s name a little in their prayers, for we may take the name of the Lord in vain even in our supplications! When the heathen are addressing their gods, they are accustomed to repeat their names over and over again. ‘O Baal, hear us! O Baal, hear us!’ Or, as the Hindu say when they cry, ‘Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!’ repeating the name of their god. But as for us, when we think of the infinitely-glorious One, we dare not needlessly repeat His name.”—1897, Sermon #2526

“Be content with none but Christ! Have no Gospel but Jesus Christ and Him Crucified. May God so satisfy the souls of His saints that they shall be able either to serve well or to suffer well! We are only strong either in patience or in zeal as the Lord God of Elijah feeds us with the Bread which came down from Heaven, the Bread of Life, Christ Jesus, himself. ‘Lord, evermore give us this Bread!’”—1898, Sermon #2596

“He who worships the little round images of the Queen is as gross an idolater as the man who bows down before Juggernaut or Baal! The sin of idolatry is still abundant everywhere and it is always, in its nature and essence, a degrading thing to man and an insult to God and, therefore, He continues to say to all idolaters, ‘Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate!’”—1900, Sermon #2684

“It is a blessed thing when faith rises as tribulations increase. A little faith may do for a skirmish with the enemy, but you need the full assurance of faith for a pitched battle. When the waters are up to the ankles, a little faith may enable you to stand. But when you get to “waters to swim in,” then you need, in childlike confidence, to cast yourself entirely upon the stream of Divine Love, or else, assuredly, you will sink. May God be pleased to increase the faith of all of us who believe in Jesus!”—1897, Sermon #2527
“Without faith, it is impossible to please God. Is it not strange that the eternal God can ever be ‘pleased’ with us? It is a wonderful thing, certainly, that we poor creatures should, by any means, be able to give pleasure to the infinitely-happy God—yet so we do when we trust Him.”—1901, Sermon #2721

“He is also our lifelong Master. No, that is a mistake, for there was, alas, a time when we lived, yet we lived not unto Him. Some of us were but boys when we first began to serve Him. I always feel glad to think that I wore a boy’s jacket when I was baptized into His name. I had not assumed the garb of a man, but my whole soul was His and I was buried with Him. I wish it had been still earlier! O dear young people, there is no such joy as that of knowing Christ in your early youth! We hear, sometimes, of life-long teetotalers, but I could wish that I had been a life-long abstainer from self-righteousness, a life-long drinker of the river of the Water of Life! But, as all of us have failed to serve the Lord at the beginning of our life, let us try, with all our hearts, to serve Him right to the end! Oh, to have Him for our lifelong Master—with no little intervals of running away, no furloughs, no holidays!”—1899, Sermon #2643

“There are two kinds of tears and I think that they who truly seek the Lord shed both of them—the one is a tear of sorrow because of sin, the other is a tear of joy because of pardon.”—1898, Sermon #2566
“Oh, if the children of God would sometimes be silent instead of speaking, they would be wise! But if, on the other hand, they would sometimes speak instead of remaining silent, they might be equally wise!”—1897, Sermon #2527

“If a man is oppressed, if he is slandered, if he is evil spoken of, let him just say to himself, ‘God will see to this. He is the Judge of all the earth and shall not He do right? Do not meddle with the case yourself. Leave it in the Lord’s hands. Our proverb says, ‘If you want a thing done well, do it yourself,’ but, if it is anything which has to do with your own character, let me tell you that this is the worst proverb that ever was invented! If you want a blot that you have made, or that somebody else has made, multiplied into two, try and rub it out with your finger while it is wet. But if you are wise, you will leave it alone. All the dirt that ever comes on a man’s coat will brush off when it is dry. I do believe that, sometimes, holy characters shine all the brighter because they have been tarnished for a while by the filth cast upon them by ungodly men. If men cast mud at you, leave it alone.”—1897, Sermon #2527

“What do I mean by will-worship? I mean any kind of worship which is not prescribed in God’s own Word. It has sometimes been pleaded, as an excuse for the observance of some rite or ceremony which is not commanded in the Scriptures, that it is very instructive, or very impressive. That is no excuse or justification for disobedience.”—1903, Sermon #2855

“We always learn much more by our griefs and woes than by anything else. God has often produced in us much richer and sweeter fruit by pruning than by any other process of His Divine husbandry.”—1903, Sermon #2829

“If there is anything recorded as having been done by Christ, a believing child can judge whether it is authentic or not. Those miserable false gospels that were brought out did very little if any mischief, because nobody with any true spiritual discernment was ever duped into believing them to be genuine!”—1899, Sermon #2644

“No one rebels against Christ because he believes in Him, but, because we believe in Him, He becomes our Lord and we learn to obey Him.”—1902, Sermon #2806

“There are people, nowadays, who make a difficulty about Moses praying for Israel, ‘If You will forgive their sin—and if not, blot me, I pray You, out of Your Book which You have written.’ And they raise questions about Paul being willing to be separated from Christ for his brethren, his kinsmen according to the flesh. Oh, but there is no difficulty in the matter if you once get to feel such an intense love for the souls of men that you would, as it were, pawn your own salvation and count it little if you might but bring the people to the Savior’s feet!”—1898, Sermon #2596

“Long before He was born into this world, His delights were with the sons of men and He looked forward with joy to the time of His appearing.‘Lo I come,’ said He, ‘in the volume of the Book it is written of Me, I delight to do Your will, O My God.’ In the fullness of time He came, leaping over the mountains, skipping over the hills, that He might save His people! It is no unwilling Savior who has come to save you and me, Beloved. Feed on that sweet Truth of God. Think of the love that did lie at the back of it all, the love He had to His Church and people, which moved Him to lay aside all His Glory and take upon Himself all our shame—to surrender the ineffable splendor of His Throne—to be nailed up to the shameful Cross! O Brothers and Sisters, there is a great feast for the soul in the love of Christ! This is ‘butter in a lordly dish .’ There was never such wine, even at a king’s marriage, as that which Christ Himself made, and we can truly say to Him, ‘You have kept the best wine until now.”—1897, Sermon #2528

“It is all in vain that you have a Bible, or read your Bible, unless you do really ‘take the water of life’ of which it speaks. It is worse than vain, for if it is not a savor of life unto life to you, it shall be a savor of death unto death!”—1900, Sermon #2685
“Do not imagine that any amount of prayer will have the effect of staving off all trouble, for surely never did anyone else pray like our Lord Jesus Christ did!... His agony in Gethsemane was a time of the mightiest prayer that was ever heard in Heaven, yet it was followed very closely by His death upon the Cross. You may abound in prayer, in thanksgiving, in patience and yet, for all that, all God’s waves and billows may roll over you and you may be brought into the depths of soul-trouble.”—1901, Sermon #2722

“He who has never sorrowed for sin has never rejoiced in a Savior! And the more you rejoice in Christ, the more you will sorrow for sin.”—1898, Sermon #2566
“If you mean to be a Christian, you must remember there remains but one source of true delight to you—but that one Source of delight contains more than all other springs of joy put together!”—1902, Sermon #2774

“It is idle to merely let the eyes glance over the Words, [of the Bible] or to remember the poetical expressions, or the historic facts—but it is blessed to eat into the very soul of the Bible until, at last, you come to talk in Scriptural language and your very style is fashioned upon Scripture models—and, what is still better, your spirit is flavored with the words of the Lord!”—1899, Sermon #2644

“I believe the Eternal might sooner forgive the sin of ascribing the creation of the heavens and the earth to an idol, than that of ascribing the works of Grace to the efforts of the flesh, or to anyone but Himself.”—1898, Sermon #2598

“I solemnly declare, as the result of thorough and, I trust, impartial observation, that the conversation of Christians, while it cannot be condemned on the score of morality, must often be condemned on the score of Christianity! We talk too little about our Lord and Master!”—1898, Sermon #2598

“Being priests, we are, first of all, to offer ourselves. What says the Apostle? ‘I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.’ Now, you will never do this unless you feed upon Christ! I shall never be a sacrifice to God unless my soul is nourished upon the true and living Sacrifice, Christ Jesus my Lord! To attempt sanctification apart from justification is to attempt an impossibility! And to endeavor to lead a holy life apart from the work of Christ is an idle dream! You priests who offer yourselves unto God must take care that it is all done through Christ who is in you.”—1897, Sermon #2528

“And, in dying, His [Jesus] expiring heart was buoyed up and comforted with the thought that God was His Father. It was because He said that God was His Father that they put Him to death, yet He still stood to it even in His dying hour and said, “Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit”!”—1899, Sermon #2644

“There is a great deal of fuss made nowadays about ‘ordaining’ a minister. I was never “ordained” by mortal men, for I did not believe in having their empty hands laid on my head. If they had any of them had any spiritual gift to impart to me, I would have been glad to receive it, but, as they had nothing to give me, I could not accept it. I believe that every true Christian is ordained of God to his particular work and, in the strength of that Divine ordination, let him not bother his head about merely human forms and ceremonies, but just keep to his proper work and shoulder his own burden.”—1903, Sermon #2829

“I pray that there may come to all sections of the Church of Christ—Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Episcopalian—this one resolve, ‘We will get back to Holy Scripture and to the sole Headship of Christ, cost whatever it may.’ If all of us should ever get to that point, we should get closer to one another than we now are, for we should be all one in Christ Jesus our Lord.”—1902, Sermon #2806

“There is, perhaps, nothing more amazing in this century than the ignorance of men about the things of God. It is certain that a knowledge of Scripture does not keep pace with the growth of knowledge of other things and that the understanding with regard to eternal realities is not so instructed as it is with regard to politics, to science and to other matters which are of temporary importance for this present life.”—1897, Sermon #2529

“A man might spend a century under the best ministry, or in the best school that ever existed on earth and yet, at the end of one hundred years, he might not know the things of God, for these Truths must come as a revelation to each man and God, the Holy Spirit, must teach them to each one, or they will never be learned. This is the standing miracle in the Church of God—and unless we see it continually worked, we have not the clearest evidence that our religion is supernatural and Divine!”—1897, Sermon #2529

“Ah, we, many of us, need reviving, but few of us feel that we need it. It is a blessed sign of life within when we know how to groan over our departure from the living God. It is easy to find hundreds who have thus departed, but you must count by ones and twos those who know how to groan over their departure! The true Believer, however, when he discovers that he needs revival, will not be happy. He will begin at once that incessant and continuous strain of cries and groans which will, at last, prevail with God and bring the blessing of revival down!”—1898, Sermon #2598
“Whoever you may be, you will have to come down to God’s terms if you wish to be saved! There is only one door to Heaven and but one way for the worst and for the best. You must bow down and accept Jesus as the sinners’ Savior, or else you cannot have Him at all! God’s terms are, ‘Come... take.’ So, do not try any other plan. Do not say, ‘Well, I will bring something.’ Do not bring anything! It is not what you bringto Christ, but what you take ofChrist that will save you! Therefore hear and heed the message of the text. God make you to hear it in your very soul! It is the true Gospel message—‘Come... take.’”—1900, Sermon #2685

“Good Mr. Whitefield used to cry, ‘Oh, the wrath to come! The wrath to come!’ And, verily, I know not what he could have said about it except to utter the exclamation—and there to leave it—for that wrath to come must surpass all human language or imagination!”—1903, Sermon #2856

“Some of us can bear witness to His faithfulness—not for so many years as others of you have seen—but some of us can talk of 30 years’ experience of a faithful God. And though we have forgotten Him and grieved Him, He has never once broken any promise that He has made! Oh, the deliverances we have had, the merciful interpositions of His gracious hand on our behalf! He is a good God, a blessed God! His praises we can never fully sing. The service of God is happiness below as it is eternal bliss above. If I knew that I would die like a dog. If it could be proven to me that my faith would all turn out to be a delusion, I would like, somehow, never to be free from the delusion! It is so blessed a thing to serve God, even in this life! He gives us such joy and peace that though many are the afflictions of the righteous, yet His service is perfect freedom—and to honor Him is our supreme delight. Blessed be His holy name!”—1901, Sermon #2723

“David said to the Lord, ‘Into Your hands I commit my spirit.’ But let me beg you to add that word which our Lord inserted—“ Father.” David is often a good guide for us, but David’s Lord is far better. And if we follow Him, we shall improve upon David. So, let us each say, ‘ Father, Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit.’ That is a sweet way of living every day—committing everything to our Heavenly Father’s hands, for those hands can do His child no unkindness. ‘Father, I might not be able to trust Your angels, but I can trust You.’”—1899, Sermon #2644

“I remember one who was, afterwards, an eminent saint, who first went to hear Mr. Whitefield because he was a great mimic. He wanted to hear him so he could later mimic him in a club which they called the ‘Hell Fire Club.’ ‘Now, my mates,’ he said, ‘I am going to give you a sermon that I heard Mr. Whitefield preach yesterday.’ And the man repeated the sermon, but he, himself, was converted while he preached it—and so were several of his mates who had met for blasphemy! So, come even if you come for such an evil purpose as that! Still, it is a sorrowful business that there should be men who ask the way to Zion and turn their faces in the opposite direction. Turn them, O God, and they shall be turned!”—1898, Sermon #2566

“No man can long know anything of himself without discovering that he has a biastoward evil—that if let alone, quite alone, his thoughts go the wrong way! He finds that he needs to school himself to be right, kind and loving, but that he needs no effort to be proud, domineering, and revengeful! He finds that sin is indigenous to the soil of his heart, while everything that is good needs cultivation, watching and tender care. He finds, in fact, that his heart is ‘deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.’”—1897, Sermon #2529

“There is no prayer that is purer, more spiritual, more heavenly than the prayer which comes out of a heart full of praise! How often have I said that prayer is the breathing in of the air of Heaven and praise is the breathing of it out again? Prayer and praise make up the best life of the Christian and he is not yet thoroughly in spiritual health who is all for prayer and not at all for praise—but he is the really healthy Christian who has these two things rightly balanced.”—1898, Sermon #2599

“When we are in love, we need no one to urge us to give tokens and pledges of love—it is a joy to us to do anything that will give pleasure to our beloved. It is no misery to the tree to produce its luscious fruit and it is no severe task to a Christian to perform deeds of love to Christ! So I will not urge you to it, but leave the matter with you, and with the Well-Beloved of your souls.”—1902, Sermon #2774

“I sometimes bless God that He does not give to some comers such a sight of sin as they get afterwards. A full sight of sin, my Brothers and Sisters, without a sight of the precious blood of Christ, would drive any man or woman among us mad!”—1897, Sermon #2529

“Suppose I become like Solomon, so that I have all which the eyes, or the ears, or the passions can delight in? Should I, after all, be tired? Yes! Solomon tried it, and said, ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’ Why? Because there were other cravings in Solomon which all these things did not satisfy. His mind was hungering after knowledge and when Solomon satisfied that, for he spoke of all things, from the hyssop on the wall up to the cedar of Lebanon, there was one thing that was still not satisfied—that was His soul. His immortal spirit was longing for communion with his God! There was a hunger and thirst after something higher than mere mental food. His mind could not be content with wine to drink and meat to eat, for it needed knowledge. And his spirit could not be satisfied with mere knowledge, for it needed something higher than that—the ethereal and celestial ambrosia of the glorified! His spirit was panting for communion with God and, therefore, Solomon felt that all here was vanity because it could not satisfy that craving. ”—1901, Sermon #2724
“If you have not believed in Christ, you may well be afraid even to rest on the seat where you are sitting! I wonder that the earth itself does not say, “O God, I will not hold this wretched Sinner up any longer! Let me open my mouth and swallow him!” All nature must hate the man who hates God! Surely, all things must loathe to minister to the life of a man who does not live unto God. Oh that you would seek the Lord and trust Christ, and find eternal life! If you have done so, do not be afraid to go forth to live, or to die, just as God pleases.”—1899, Sermon #2644

“As no living man should complain, so no living man should despair—and especially no child of God!”—1903, Sermon #2830

“Isaiah 1 is a chapter which, I think, teaches an important lesson to those of us who desire the salvation of men, for it shows us how God sets about that work. He begins by exhibiting the sinner’s sin to him before He proclaims mercy to him—and if we want to be the means of doing good to men, it will not be by merely crying to them, ‘Believe, believe, believe’—there must be a laying of the axe at the root of the tree of selfrighteousness and a cutting away of all trust in self. A man must realize his danger before he will desire to escape from it and it is a mistaken kindness which refuses to set before him the peril in which he is. God, who is infinitely tender and inconceivably merciful, shows us, in this chapter, how to go to work with sinners.”—1900, Sermon #2685

“Whenever there is a cross to be carried by any of Christ’s followers, He always bears the heavy end on His own shoulders.”—1903, Sermon #2856
“Alas, I suppose that no one is more orthodox than the devil, yet no one is more surely lost than he is!”—1898, Sermon #2566

“Possibly you have sometimes had a dread of death. So had your Lord—not a sinful fear of it, but that natural and perfectly innocent, yet very terrible dread which comes to a greater or less extent upon every living creature when in expectation of death. Jesus also comes very near to us because He was notliterally heard and answered. He said, ‘If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me.’ But the cup did notpass from Him! The better part of His prayer won the victory, and that was, ‘Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.’ You will be heard, too, if that is always the principal clause in your prayers. But you may not be heard by being delivered from the trouble. Even the prayer of faith is not always literally heard! God, sometimes, instead of taking away the sickness or the death, gives us Grace that we may profit by the sickness, or that we may triumph in the hour of death. That is better than being literally heard, but even the most believing prayer may not meet with a literal answer. He ‘was heard in that He feared.’ Yet He died and you and I, in praying for ourselves, and praying for our friends, may pray an acceptable prayer and be heard—yet they may die, or we may die.”—1897, Sermon #2529

“You can scarcely have a better gift than this, ‘the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.’ The knowledge of Christ Crucified is the most excellent of all the sciences! It is better to be well acquainted with Christ than to be a very Solomon concerning all other things, yet not to know Him.”—1902, Sermon #2807

“I grieve, sometimes, when I see how God’s people manage to live a great way off from Him and yet appear to be quite comfortable, and to have all that they could wish. But I am glad when any one of them is thrust right out of all harmful associations and so is drawn nearer to God, for when God says,” Come you out from among them, and be you separate,” if we do not at once obey His command, He has many ways of makingus come out and it may be that we have to come out in a fashion that is exceedingly painful. Yet, however trying it is, it matters little if we but get nearer to Him.”—1899, Sermon #2645

“Some people make out faith to be a marvelously easy thing—and so it is in theory—but it is the hardest thing in the world in practice.”—1901, Sermon #2728

“You remember that it is said of Mr. Rowland Hill that he was met, somewhere about the New Cut, by a drunken man who reeled up to him and said, ‘Well, Mr. Hill, I am glad to see you, Sir. I am one of your converts.’ ‘Yes,’ replied the good minister, ‘you certainly may be one of my converts. If you had been one of the Lord’s converts, you would not be drunk.’”—1898, Sermon #2599 “He only knows the music of mercy who knows the misery of sin!”—1900, Sermon #2685

“There is nothing that does a man so much good as to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. A little heavenly excitement is a blessed refreshment and revival for the entire manhood and—turning again to the other side of the subject—to walk uprightly towards our fellow men, to forgive those who injure us and to bless with our beneficence all those who need anything at our hands is a kind of exercise that is eminently suitable to our renewed manhood!”—1902, Sermon #2775

“To trust God while you are alive is good, but to say, with Job. ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him,’ that is the very cream of faith! ‘He knows’—with approving knowledge—‘all them that trust in Him.’”—1898, Sermon #2555
“They who are born twice have a life which cannot be comprehended by those who are only born once! Those who have received the Spirit of God have a new spirit within them which is so amazing that the carnal mind cannot perceive what it is! Spiritual things must be spiritually discerned.”—1897, Sermon #2530

“The great goodness of God to rebellious sinners is proof positive that He is willing to bestow His forgiving mercy upon them as soon as they repent of their sin. And so it should be a great inducement to them to turn unto Him and live.”—1903, Sermon #2857

“No lonely watcher on the tower did ever sigh for the dawn as they do who love the Savior and have lost His company—and never were hands so heartily clapped with exultation at the light of the sun reappearing in the far North as we clap ours, in a spiritual sense, when Christ manifests Himself to us, for He is, indeed, ‘the consolation of Israel.’”—1901, Sermon #2729

“There are many who will criticize some of the sentences of Ralph Erskine in his Believer’s Riddle, and say that these things are contradictory. Just so, but faith has to credit contradictions. If you do not know that the spiritual life is a profound paradox, you do not know anything at all. The way of a serpent on the rock, or of a ship in the sea, is a mere trifle compared with the way of spiritual life in the soul of man. To understand yourself, you must understand the mystery of the two natures and of the daily inward conflict between them—the carnal mind that never can be reconciled to God and that heavenly mind that cannot sin because it is born of God—both of which co-exist in the Believer.”—1897, Sermon #2531

“Why did the Romanists not burn Luther? I never could make that out. If I had been the Pope, I think I would have got rid of him someway or other. Yet nobody could touch Luther! They made short work of John Huss and Jerome of Prague, but, even when the princes and prelates had Luther before them at the Diet of Worms, they did not destroy him! It could not be, for God meant that Luther should die in his bed, notwithstanding all the rage of the enemy!”—1899, Sermon #2645

“Now, I believe that a temporary salvation is a trumpery salvation and that it is neither worth preaching nor receiving. but God’s salvation is both worth preaching and receiving because it is everlasting salvation.”—1898, Sermon #2599

“If God gives you your health and you are grateful for it, you shall have true sanity, for your soul shall be in health even as your body is. Restoration from sickness should always be ascribed to God. Whatever part the physician may play—and he often plays a very important part—yet to God, who gives the physician wisdom and skill, must the gracious result be ascribed.”—1897, Sermon #2531

“Ah, my dear Friends, he whose great trouble lies in his own heart cannot run away from it, for he bears it about with him wherever he goes! The old man of the mountain who sits upon your shoulder and clings so tightly to you, if he is yourself, is not to be shaken off by your running away!”—1903, Sermon #2830

“Prayer is a vital evidence of Christianity, but prophecy is not. A thousand sermons would not prove a man to be a Christian, but one genuine prayer would. It is easy enough to speak to men, but quite another thing, from our inmost soul, to speak to God.”—1902, Sermon #2808

“There is but one true religion and there is only one way of receiving that religion. There are many false religions and there are many wrong ways of professing the true religion. There are a thousand paths that lead to Hell, but only one that leads to Heaven. In the many broad roads that lead to destruction, there is room for innumerable winding alleys, but the way that leads to Heaven is a strait and narrow one—there is no room for any divergence there. We must have the same religion and have it in the same way, or else we shall not arrive at that hoped-for end, towards which, by our profession, we pretend to be pressing.”—1900, Sermon #2686

“How many roads are there to Heaven? This Book declares that there is only one! It says , ‘Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.’ And Jesus Himself says, ‘I am the way.’ Not, “I am one of the ways,” but, “I amTHE way.” I quoted to you, just now, one of His last sayings—‘He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.’ Well, suppose that he does not believe, what then? ‘He that believes not shall be damned.’ Thus, you see, the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ is intolerant of all compromise! It will not admit that there may be other ways to Heaven and other methods of salvation.”—1898, Sermon #2566

“Because He first loved us and that love of His has been shed abroad in our hearts, we have loved Him in return as a matter of course—we cannot help doing so. The mighty deeps of His immeasurable love, high up on the eternal hills, flow down into the inmost recesses of our empty hearts and when, afterwards, a fountain of love is seen springing up out of them, the secret of its action is to be traced to that great reservoir away up on the everlasting hills!”—1901, Sermon #2730

“‘Let me never be ashamed: deliver me in Your righteousness. Bow down Your ear to me; deliver me speedily: be You my strong rock for an house of defense to save me. For You are my rock and my fortress; therefore for Your name’s sake lead me, and guide me.’ [Psalm 31:1-3] See how logical David is with his, ‘for,’ and, ‘therefore’? It is the very essence of prayer to be able to urge pleas with God and to say to Him, ‘Do it for this reason,’ or, ‘Therefore, do it for such another reason.’ I would that we, all of us, studied more fully this blessed art of pleading with God—bringing forth sound arguments as we approach Him.”—1899, Sermon #2645

“Those things which you can see are merely the garments of some great thought of God. The sea, the land, the sky—these are, as it were, the words in which some thought of the Eternal is couched—in part concealed, in part revealed.”—1897, Sermon #2531

“There is, at the back of it all, the reason that the Lord gave to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.’ I find such a stuttering and stammering about this great Truth of God in these days that I mean to be all the more emphatic in preaching it, for I believe that this doctrine largely helps in producing that state of spirit into which God would have sinners brought so as to make them feel that they have no claim upon Him—no right to His mercy and that, if He gives it, He gives it simply because He chooses to give it!”—1898, Sermon #2600

“You and I have nothing at all to do with consequences! Be it ours to hearken to the voice of the Lord and obey His high behests. When God prompts our conscience to a course of action, the slightest demur will recoil with a sense of intolerable guilt. Though the heavens should fall, through our doing right, we are not to sin in order to keep them up.”—1903, Sermon #2859

“One of the greatest rewards that we ever receive for serving God is the permission to do still more for Him.”—1902, Sermon #2775

“There are millions of the human race who have never heard the Good News—and millions, I fear, will yet die without having even heard the nameof Jesus! Even in our own country and under the semblance of religious teaching, what masses of people we have who never hear the Gos
pel—they hear about forms and ceremonies, and they are deceived by the falsehoods of priest-craft, but the Truth of God, as it is in Jesus, is an
untold tale to them. So, if you have heard the Gospel, and heard it often, there has been, in that privilege, a wonderful manifestation of the love
of God to you!”—1897, Sermon #2532

“The Apostle [2 Peter 3:17] has told us that there will come, in the last days, scoffers. We, therefore, know this is to be the case, for we have been informed concerning it. Forewarned is forearmed and now that we see the scoffers, and cannot help seeing them, we perceive another proof of the truth of Scripture. Every time a blasphemer opens his mouth to deny the truth of Revelation, he will help to confirm us in our conviction of the very Truth of God which he denies! The Holy Spirit told us, by the pen of Peter, that it would be so, and now we see how truly he wrote.”—1897, Sermon #2533

“I believe that the very soul of Christianity lies in the sanctifying of what is called secular—the bringing of all things under the cognizance of our God by intense, constant, importunate, believing prayer.”—1903, Sermon #2830

“‘ I have hated them that regard lying vanities: but I trust in the LORD.’ [Psalm 31:6] ‘In Jehovah.’ David had no patience with those who trusted in gods of wood and stone. He knew very little, indeed, of that spurious charity which leads some men to speak respectfully even of idolatry. David was ‘a good hater’ and there is something gracious about that when the thing hated is really hateful and something which ought to be hated!”—1899, Sermon #2645

“No man is so ready to suck in any delusion as the one who professes to abhor superstition. You will never find anyone so ready to be led astray as the man who says that he cannot be led astray. He who despises the miracles of our Lord and all that is recorded in the Word of God is the most gullible creature alive—and we know that however high his opinion of himself may be—he is a deceived man and feeds upon ashes.”—1900, Sermon #2686

“Service rendered in unbelief is like a vessel marred on the potter’s wheel, but as long as faith can turn it round upon the wheel and fashion it, it will come to something that the Master can use. You must believe, for so will you be able to serve. ‘Trust in the Lord and do good,’ but be sure to do the first thing. The trustingmust come before the doing—and be mingled with all the doing—or else it will be a very poor piece of doing, indeed!”—1902, Sermon #2809

“You may not be able to be always thinking about Divine subjects, but if your heart is right, your love to your Lord is there all the while.”—1901, Sermon #2730

“If Jesus trod the winepress, and trod it alone, you shall never have to tread it. What mistakes Christians often make in this matter! You will hear one say that such-and-such a good man was punished for his transgressions, and I have known Believers think that their afflictions were punishments sent from God on account of their sins. The thing is impossible! God has punished us, who are His people, once and for all in Christ and He will never punish us again! He cannot do it, seeing He is a just God. Afflictions are chastisements from a Father’s hand, but they are not judicial punishments!”—1898, Sermon #2567
“ Singpraises unto His name; for it is pleasant. That is, singing God’s praises is pleasant—it is a pleasant duty and the Lord’s name is pleasant, or lovely. The very thought of God brings the sweetest emotions to every renewed heart. There is no pleasure in the world that exceeds that of devotion. As we sing praises unto the Lord, we shake off the cares of the world, we rise above its smoke and mists and we get, then, the clearer atmosphere of communion with Him.”—1898, Sermon #2600

“Have you a religion that did not begin with rigorous self-denial. Then, get rid of it! If you have a religion that suits your constitutional fondness for ceremonies, your aesthetic taste for culture, your habitual passion for music, beware of it! The root of all real religion is simple faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Away with every counterfeit. That faith which lives only on Jesus, rests solely on Jesus, builds wholly on Jesus and shows itself in earnest prayer, will give you a consistency and decision of character that will make you like Daniel all your days!”—1903, Sermon #2859

“There must be, on the part of a minister of Christ, a deep and intense affection towards all those whom he believes to belong to Christ.”—1897, Sermon #2533

“Perhaps some of you, from your childhood, always said a form of prayer and if you ever went to bed without saying it, you dared not go to sleep. Yet how much of that formality was but a mockery of God! I will not speak too harshly about the child’s form of prayer, for sometimes that form has been made use of by God to lead on to true spiritual supplication. Still, it would be idle for us to imagine that the mere repetition of certain words was prayer—we know, now, that it was notprayer.”—1898, Sermon #2555

“I wish that all of us, when we go forth as Christ’s heralds, crying, “Behold the Lamb of God”—and that is our main business here below—would take care that we were never so grand in our style of thought or language that when the Master, Himself, came in all His wondrous simplicity, men would begin to despise Him because they remembered the fine tones of his pretended herald! No, let us be simple and plain whenever we have to speak of Christ and when our King, Himself, comes, let us step back and get out of sight, that He alone may be seen, and that all the people’s hearts may be won to Him.”—1899, Sermon #2646

“You know, a silver sixpence is as really silver as a half-crown. And the Queen’s image on the one is as genuine as on the other. They are current coin of the realm and I am sure you will not treat with scorn the little pieces of money. Then why should we despise the small coins in Christ’s treasury? When our dear young Brothers and Sisters are made of the same metal and stamped with the same image as we are, why should we despise them, though we happen to be, or thinkwe are, of somewhat more weight and value in the Church of God than they are?”—1898, Sermon #2601

“Blessed are they who never exalt themselves over the weak and afflicted among the children of God!”—1903, Sermon #2831
“Our love is a force. If you truly love God, you feel it to be so. It is a force that comforts and emboldens us. Out of love to God, we feel that we can even dare the devil to do his worst against us. When love fills us to the full, it makes us courageous.”—1901, Sermon #2730

“The Roman Catholic will tell you, when he converses with you, that he is quite content with his religion, but I cannot believe it. There may be times when he is so imposed upon as to believe that, in his church, there is infallible salvation and that, by attention to ceremonies as absurd and wicked as those of idolaters, he shall obtain the favor of the Lord his God. But there are hours when Romanists, especially in this country, must tremble for the stability of their religion! There are times when they must be a little shaken! Surely there is enough of moral dignity and conscience in most men to teach them that a rotten rag cannot have any saving virtue about it! Surely the man who has kissed the toe of the Pope must feel everything within him that is noble recoil from the act! There ought to be enough humanity in man to rise above that groveling system which has sought to bring human nature lower than the dregs of the brute creation! I cannot suppose that a man who has a soul—a soul whose high aspirations are among the best proofs of its immortality—can be content with that poor piece of outside show which we call Popery! No, in that case, also, man “feeds on ashes.” He is not satisfied with his religion, although he may pretend to be.”—1900, Sermon #2686

“The highest reward that God ever gives His servants on earth is when He permits them to make such a sacrifice as actually to die in His service as martyrs.”—1902, Sermon #2775

“I know some who have said, ‘Really, it does not matter what we believe so long as we are right on the main point.’ But it doesmatter, for they who neglect any of Christ’s Words shall fall by little and little. Every Truth of God is a diamond of untold value! I do not know whether there is such a thing as an unimportant Truth of God. Somewhere or other, near to it, there may lie certain consequences that we know not of and, the Truth of God being neglected, an error may fill its place—and that error may become pregnant with mischief from generation to generation!”—1897, Sermon #2533

“ Some saintshavemore faith thanothers have—and very much in proportion to their faith will be their condition of heart and mind! Such saints, having more faith than others have, will also have more zeal for God, more conscientious observance of His commands, more complete devotion to His will, more self-denying consecration to His service—and where there is much of all these things, there will be more joy than there can be in any other condition of heart and life!”—1903, Sermon #2860
“I do not care what clothes you come in [to worship]—the only clothes that are unfit to wear are those that you have not paid for!”—1898, Sermon #2568

“Let not any of us go and talk to our Sunday school class, or preach from the pulpit, or write a letter about our Lord until we have had a fresh glimpse of Him. It is wonderful how nimbly the pen or the tongue moves when the eye has just feasted itself upon Christ!”—1899, Sermon #2646

“For a man to take his creed blindly from a pope or a priest is to degrade himself because he receives that teaching from his fellow man—but for him to lay his whole mind down at the feet of Jesus Christ is no degradation since Christ is the Wisdom of God, and all wisdom is Infallibly gathered up in Him. I do not expect fully to understand my Lord’s will, I only ask to be informed what that will is. I do not suppose that I can comprehend it, but I say, ‘What is Your will, my Master? If You will reveal it to me, I will believe it.’”—1902, Sermon #2810

“Errors of doctrine are almost always attended with errors of practice and, certainly, they legitimately lead that way. Those who scoff according to the lusts of their intellect are very likely to live according to the lusts of their flesh! The two things are congruous. They are born from the same cause, they flourish for the same reasons, and they tend to the same ends!”—1897, Sermon #2533

“Further, if God were to justify those who are like this Pharisee was, He would be either making two ways to Heaven or else shutting sinners out. You see, dear Friends, God must shut the sinners out if the door into Heaven is only for the good, or else He must make a special entrance for the gentlefolk, a little private door where qualified people can go in by presenting tickets describing their own merits.”—1900, Sermon #2687

“If we pray for anything, God expects us to use the proper means of obtaining it—and if we neglect the means, we have no right to expect Him to believe in the sincerity of our prayer. If a father and mother pray fortheir children, but never pray withthem, or speak to them personally about the welfare of their souls, they must not wonder if they are not brought to Christ.”—1901, Sermon #2731

“I have often quoted to you the words of Jerome when he said that he loved Christ in Augustine and he loved Augustine in Christ. So ought we to love the weakest Believers—to love Christ in them, and to love them in Christ. May the Holy Spirit teach us to be like our Master in this respect as well as in all others!”—1898, Sermon #2601

“A glorified Christ makes men run to Him! When Christ is glorified in your hearts, dear Friends, you will run to Him!”—1897, Sermon #2533
“Let it be reported of you in your biography, if it is ever written, ‘This was one of his sayings. He often said, ‘Lord, be merciful unto me.’”—1897, Sermon #2535

“Sinners’ prayers suit depressed saints! The prayer of the publican is, after all, my everyday prayer. I have what I may call a Sunday prayer, a prayer for high days and holiday, but my everyday prayer, the one that I can use all through the week, the one that I can pick up when I cannot pick up anything else, is the publican’s prayer, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’”—1897, Sermon #2535

“There is such a thing as Divine Sovereignty with regard to the choice of persons who are to be saved. If one man is saved and not another, God has made the difference and God has the rightto make the difference. If my brother shall enter Heaven and I shall be sent to Hell, God has a right to save my brother and He would be righteous in my damnation, for I deserve it. And if my brother does not deserve to be saved—as he does not—yet God has a right to give salvation to him and to withhold it from me, if so it pleases Him. My soul falls down in abject submission at His feet! I have no rights when I come before the Almighty. I have no claims on Him. I have so sinned and so erred that if He had sent my soul to Hell, I should have richly deserved it. God has a right to do as He wills with His creatures and He exhibits this right in His choice of those whom He calls to work in His vineyard.”—1898, Sermon #2602 “Good works are not the root of faith, but they are its fruit.”—1902, Sermon #2778

“Blessed is that man who is saved beyond all fear and who, for the love he bears his Lord, lives wholly and only to prove the power of the Grace of God that has been bestowed upon him—and earnestly seeks to be the means of saving the souls of others. The doctrines of Grace do this for us, by delivering us from all fear with regard to the future and fixing us firmly upon the Rock of Ages. They turn our thoughts away from self to the service and the glory of our God.”—1903, Sermon #2831

“It was a beautiful trait in the character of John the Baptist that he was so ready to pass on to Christ his own disciples—he did not want to keep them merely to swell the number of his own followers, but only kept them with him until he could point them to his Master. When we try to win souls, if we find that people have confidence in us and affection for us, let us use that influence not to attach them to ourselves except with the earnest desire to pass them on to Christ—that they may become disciples of the Savior for themselves and grow up from being babes who have to be nursed to become strong men in Christ Jesus.”—1899, Sermon #2646

“Sinners may rest content in their sin, for as yet they know no better, but you [backsliders] are disqualified even for that!”—1898, Sermon #2569

“When you thank God for the good things He has done for you, thank Him not only for keeping you out of sin, but also thank Him for enabling you to do His will. No man has any right to take credit to Himself for His own integrity, for, if he is a Christian, that integrity is the gift of God’s Grace and the work of God’s Spirit within him.”—1902, Sermon #2810

“The loss of God’s Presence is also inexpressibly painful to aBeliever. If you can live without God, I am afraid you will die without God. But if you cannot live without God, that proves that you are His, and you will bear me out in the assertion that this is the heaviest of mortal griefs—to feel that God has forsaken you and does not hear your prayer—no, does not even seem to help you to pray, so that you can only groan, “Oh that I knew where I might find Him! . . . Behold, I go forward, but He is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive Him.””—1901, Sermon #2732

“…Satan betrays his cunning by the weapons which he will often use against us. Sometimes he will attack the child of God with the remembrance of a ribald song, or a licentious joke which he may have heard in the days of his carnal state. But far more frequently he will attack him with texts of Scripture! It is strange that it should be so, but it often is the case that when he shoots his arrow against a Christian, he wings it with God’s own Word!”—1900, Sermon #2707

“If you are a true Believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, yet are slack in serving God, you shall get to Heaven but you shall have very little Heaven on the way there.”—1903, Sermon #2860

“One of the surest proofs to any man of the existence of a God consists in his dealings with that man in turning him front darkness to light, and from the power of sin and Satan, unto God. All the arguments that ever were written by Butler, or Paley, or any of the defenders of religion, will never convince a man like coming into personal dealings with God. And when those dealings assume this form—that we have passed from death unto life—they become indisputable proofs of the Godhead and of the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!”—1898, Sermon #2555

“I know that I am addressing some who are not yet saved, but I wish that this prayer might get into each one of their hearts—‘Lord, be merciful unto me.’ Keep on praying it until you obtain the mercy! Every five minutes in the day, wherever you are, let your heart go beating—beat, beat, beat, beat—to this tune, ‘Lord, be merciful unto me. Be merciful unto me. Be merciful unto me.’ You cannot have a prayer that will better fit your lips.”—1897, Sermon #2535

“I feel that working side by side with Christ is the only style of working at which a man can keep on year after year.”—1902, Sermon #2779
“There is no novel that ever was written that can equal in interest the true life of a believing man. His path is strewn with wonders and thick with marvelous displays of his Lord’s love.”—1900, Sermon #2688
“When a man sins outwardly, it is because he has sin inwardly. If there were no sin in us, no sin would come out of us.”—1897, Sermon #2535

“I am old enough to remember the times when we used to strike with a flint upon the steel in order to get a light in the morning, and I recollect that I always left off trying to produce a spark when I found that there was no tinder in the box. I believe that the devil is no fool and that if there is a man who has no tinder in the box—that is, no corruption in his nature—depend upon it, Satan will not long continue to tempt him!”—1899, Sermon #2603

“I reckon that there is no man who loves the means of Grace like the man who at one time felt them to be dry and barren. When the Lord fills the dry beds of the rivers with the torrents of His love, then we come and drink abundantly and we rejoice exceedingly. When, for a while, all outward means have seemed to become a wilderness to us, oh, how glad we are when, once again, the Lord appears, and puts life, and power, and efficacy into them, so that our soul rejoices in them!”—1898, Sermon #2569

“When God’s will and our will are contrary to one another, we may be sure that there is something amiss with us. We are never right till God’s will becomes our will and we can honestly say, ‘The will of the Lord be done.’”—1901, Sermon #2739
“You have never truly found Jesus if you do not tell others about Him!”—1899, Sermon #2646

“You cannot get to Heaven by your mother’s godliness, or by your father’s graciousness—there must be a work of Grace in your own souls. No man can be a sponsor for another in spiritual things. There is no more gigantic lie than that one person should promise that another shall do this and that, which he cannot even do himself! No, “every man shall bear his own burden.” Everyone must come, with his own sin, to his own Savior and, by his own act of faith, must find peace through the blood of Jesus Christ. Do not trust to any national religion, for it is utterly worthless. It is only personalreligion that can save you. If the blood of saints is flowing in your veins, it brings you nothing except greater responsibility, for salvation is not of blood, nor of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God, and of God alone.”—1903, Sermon #2831

“And this I know, that life would not be worth living if it did not continually touch the hem of Jehovah’s garments! The very virtue of life streams into our life through our being in contact with Him. Where the little circle of our existence impinges upon the unutterably vast circumference of His power and Glory is where we get the blessings that we need!”—1900, Sermon #2688

“Satan, I tell you to your face, you are the greatest fool that ever breathed, and I will prove it to you in the day when you and I shall stand as enemies—sworn enemies, as we are this day—at the great bar of God! And so, Christian, may you say to him whenever he attacks you! Hear him not, but resist him steadfast in the faith and you shall prevail.”—1900, Sermon #2707

“The way to Heaven is not by explaining riddles, but by believing Revelations. The way to Heaven is not through the cleverness that can spell out an enigma, but through the simplicity that believes in God who cannot lie. It is true that God’s eternal purpose is fixed, do not doubt that—but it is equally true that the Lord listens to the voice of a man and that whatever we ask in prayer, believing, we shall receive.”—1897, Sermon #2537

“Some people will always look on what they call “the black side” of things, but to faith’s eye, there is no black side, for even the dark side of God’s Providential dealings with us glows with light when faith looks at it!”—1903, Sermon #2860

“The Presence of God is absolutely essential for the edification, instruction, growth and perfecting of Believers! If we have not this, the means of Grace are empty, vain and void. Clouds without rain that mock the thirsty land. Wells without water that tantalize the perishing caravan, but yield no moisture to burning lips—a mere mirage in the desert, looking like pools of water and fruit-bearing palm trees—but only mocking the wayfarer’s gaze. We must have the Presence of God for His people’s sake, for without Him they can do nothing.”—1902, Sermon #2811

“There are some things about which a man must not be undecided—you must not be undecided about being chaste, about speaking the truth—and you cannot be undecided about serving God without being guilty, in that very indecision, of manifest treason against the majesty of Heaven!”—1897, Sermon #2537

“Christ reckons that the man who is not with Him is against Him! He who does not serve Christ is opposing Him. There are no ‘betweenites’—none can dwell on the fence. You are either in Immanuel’s land, or else you are in the dominions of Satan—you can be sure of that! If not right, you are wrong! If not a friend of Christ, you are His enemy!”—1897, Sermon #2537

“Again, before coming to the Communion, it behooves you to consider the great distance there is between you and God. Even though you now have very blessed and hallowed fellowship with the Lord Jesus, remember that in this Supper, there is a memorial of yourguilt. It is true that you see here how your sins were taken away by the broken body and the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, but let the very bath in which you were cleansed remind you of your sinfulness!”—1899, Sermon #2647

“I know of nothing that can lift you up so much above the evil influences of an ungodly world as constantly abiding in close fellowship with Christ and telling Him all that you feel in your heart of hearts.”—1902, Sermon #2779

“Any man who is selfish is an unsaved man, for the chief point in salvation is to save us from ourselves. As long as you live simply within your own ribs, you live in a dungeon. You will never come into the palace where the many mansions are—the liberty of our great Father’s House—until you can say, ‘I love others more than I love myself. Above all, I love the great Burden-Bearer who took my burden of sin upon His shoulders and carried it up in the Cross and away from the Cross and now, through love to Him, the love of self is gone and I will live to glorify His name forever and forever.’”—1903, Sermon #2831

“‘Come unto Me,’ says Christ, ‘and I will give you rest.’ Here I ask you to admire the wonderful Grace and mercy of this arrangement. According to Christ’s words, you are to obtain rest of heart, not by coming to a ceremony, or to an ordinance, but to Christ, Himself! ‘Come unto Me.’ He does not even say, ‘Come to My teaching, to My example, to My Sacrifice,’ but, ‘Come unto Me.’ It is to a Person you are to come—to that very Person who, being God, and equal with the Father, laid aside His glories and took upon Himself our human flesh.”—1901, Sermon #2708

“I am sure that in looking back upon all the way that the Lord has led you, those of you who are His children will be bound to say that goodness and mercy have followed you all the days of your life! There has not been a single mistake or one unkind act on God’s part. He has sometimes cut you with the very sharpest knife He had and it was necessary for Him to cut deeply with it so as to get out the very roots of the cancer that was destroying you. You would have been lost if it had not been that you lost your all—but that loss was your greatest gain!”—1900, Sermon #2688
“The strength to overcome temptation comes from God, alone, and the conquering name is the name of Jesus Christ! Therefore, go forward in that strength and in that name against all your temptations. Up and at them, for they have been routed long before, and you shall rout them again!”—1899, Sermon #2603

“Fools say that time is long, but only fools talk like that. They say that “time is made for slaves.” He alone is a free man who knows how to use his time properly—and he is a slave, indeed, who finds it slavery to pursue his calling with a good conscience and serve his God with diligence, fidelity, and zeal.”—1903, Sermon #2861

“There is many a sinner who cannot find the door of hope because he is holding on to some evil thing. There is, for instance, the man who is clinging to strong drink—he never can have peace with God when, perhaps, only once in six months can he walk home in an upright fashion. He cannot drink of the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils! There is another man who is practicing some secret sin. I dare not say what it is, but he knows. Yet he says that he is trying to find peace with God. Ah, Sir, you will never obtain it while you cling to that iniquity! You must cut off the evil thing, even if it is your right arm! You must pluck it out, even if it is your right eye! Here is a person who does something in business that he ought not to do—and here is another man who omits to do what he knows that he ought to do. They think that God will make peace with them on theirterms, but He makes no terms with sinners unless they will part with their sins and trust in Christ alone! God will not save you and let you save your pet sin—that cannot be!”—1898, Sermon #2569

“If religion does not salt your tongue and keep it sweet, it has done nothing for you. If the doctor wants to know the state of your health, he says, ‘Let me see your tongue.’ And there is no better test of the health of the mind than to see what is on the tongue! When it gets furred up with unkind words. When it turns black with blasphemy. When it is spotted with lasciviousness, there is something very bad inside the heart, you may be quite sure of that!”—1897, Sermon #2537

“Christian experience is the richest product of Grace and it ought to be laid at the feet of the Well-Beloved from whom it comes, and to whom it belongs. What God has done for one of His people is an indication of what He will do for others of His chosen. The Lord’s Providences are promises and His benedictions are predictions. To be silent concerning the loving kindness of the Lord is a robbery of the worst kind—it is taking from our God the glory due unto His holy name.”—1897, Sermon #2538

“Jesus Christ says to all who labor and are heavy laden, ‘Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.’ This invitationimplies a movement—a movement from something to something. You are bid to come away from whatever else you have been trusting in and to move towards Christ and trust to Him. And when you do so, He will give you rest.”—1901, Sermon #2708

“To serve God is to reign!”—1900, Sermon #2688
“It is worthwhile to be like Christ in the worst of times because that is an assurance that we shall be like He in the best of times.”—1902, Sermon #2780

“There is no need of fear to the man who relies upon his God, but there is every reason for fear to the man who begins to rely upon himself.”—1902, Sermon #2811
“By the brevity of time, then, and by the rapidity of its flight, I admonish you to refrain from all abuses of the tongue. Invest each hour in some profitable manner that, when past, it may not be lost. Let your lips be a fountain from which all streams that flow shall savor of Grace and goodness.”—1903, Sermon #2861

“Let us abase ourselves in the Presence of God. Let us humble ourselves before Him and, while we feed, by faith, on our Master’s body, let us feel as if our own proud flesh were cut away and humbled by the very communion we hold with Christ, our Redeemer.”—1899, Sermon #2647

“If the Holy Spirit takes possession of a man, or a woman, what can they not say? What can they not do? The Lord can take up the poorest worm among us and make him thresh the mountains till they become like chaff! Let us, therefore, sing this charming sonnet with all our hearts, ‘The Lord is my strength.’ I will rely in no degree upon oratorical power, or human learning, or natural gifts, or acquired aptitude, or on anything that I have, but I will rest in the Lord alone!”—1897, Sermon #2538

“Child of God, are you vexed and embittered in soul? Then bravely accept the trial as coming from your Father and say, ‘The cup which my Father has given me, shall I not drink it?’ ‘Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?’ Press on through the cloud which now lowers directly in your pathway—it may be with you as it was with the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration, ‘they feared as they entered the cloud,’ yet in that cloud they saw their Master’s Glory and they found it good to be there.”—1898, Sermon #2557

“We do not come to Christ by the exertion of our own power to come, but by the cessation of the will to stay away!”—1901, Sermon #2708“Oh, I never imagined how strong Christ was till I saw His love hold back His Deity!”—1898, Sermon #2570

“Whenever I grow very dull through pain, or heavy through lack of sleep, I say to myself, ‘I will note down what I owe to God of praise, which I cannot just now pay to Him, that I may do so when I get a little better.’ And then my conscience chides me, saying, ‘Praise Him NOW! Bless God for aching bones! Bless God for a weary head! Bless God for troubles and trials, for he who can so praise the Lord is singing a truer and more acceptable song than youth, health and happiness can present!’ A seraph never praised God with an aching head. Cherubs never blessed the Lord upon a sick bed—so you will excel even the angels if you magnify the Lord in sickness! Why should you not, since you also can say, ‘The Lord is my strength and song’?”—1897, Sermon #2538

“Remember that you can never be really whole till you are holy, for holiness is spiritual sanity—it is the caring of the mind and heart from the disease which sin brought upon them.”—1899, Sermon #2649

“It is so blessed to think that there is a Gospel that will suit the man who cannot read—and that will suit the man who cannot put two consecutive thoughts together—and that will suit the man whose brain has almost failed him in the hour of death—a Gospel that suited the thief dying upon the cross—a Gospel so simple that if there is but Grace to receive it, there needs no great mental power to understand it! Blessed be my Master for giving us a Gospel so simple and so plain as this!”—1901, Sermon #2708

“It were not worth while living if we could not die! It is the very joy of this earthly life to think that it will come to an end! What would a sailor say who was on a voyage that would never bring him to a port? What would a traveler say if he was toiling along a road which would never bring him home? Blessed be God, we shall come to the pearly gates, by-and-by! Let us not be alarmed about that, for the Lord has become our salvation.”—1897, Sermon #2538

“The yoke of sin—the yoke of selfishness, the yoke of greediness, the yoke of drunkenness, the yoke of unbelief—is the heaviest yoke of all! The crux of infidelity is heavier than the Cross of Christ. You may depend upon it, that Christ’s yoke, compared with any other, or with all others, is truly easy and light!”—1903, Sermon #2832

“There are some people who talk about presenting the perpetual sacrifice of the “mass.” There is perhaps, no grosser blasphemy under Heaven than the idea that we can offer up the body and blood of Christ again.”—1900, Sermon #2689

“We ought to be happy to be where we can make others happy. It should be our will to do the Lord’s will by being useful to our fellow men. We must not value our position according to the ease it brings to us, or the respectability with which it surrounds us, but by the opportunities which it affords for overcoming evil and promoting good.”—1897, Sermon #2539

“How happy ought to be your ears that hear the Gospel’s joyful sound, yet, as you hear it not in your hearts, you cry to the Lord, ‘In what way have You loved us?’”—1902, Sermon #2782

“Yes, the chief joy in the tabernacles of the righteous is a spiritual one! A joy of the father because he is saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation. A joy of the mother because she, too, has had her heart opened, like Lydia, to hear and to receive the Word. A joy of the dear children as they offer their little prayers and as they talk of Jesus, whom their soul loves. I do not know that I ever have a greater joy than when, sometimes, I have to receive a whole family into the Church! Five came to see me at one time, from one house—quite a company of boys and girls. It is delightful to see our beloved offspring early in life giving their hearts to the Lord! Happy mothers, happy fathers, happy brothers, happy sisters where the Lord works so graciously! May you long continue to praise and bless His name for this singular blessing, if you are partakers in it! I know none of my father’s family, or of my own, who are unsaved and, therefore, I can lead you in the song!”—1897, Sermon #2539

“You, dear Friends, cannot love the right if you do not hate the wrong. I would not give a penny for your love to the Truth of God if it is not accompanied with a hearty hatred of error.”—1899, Sermon #2604
“Blessed is he who can expound the mysteries. I have no doubt about his blessedness, but I am perfectly satisfied with another blessedness, namely, if I can bring sinners to Jesus and teach the saints some practical Truths which may guide them in daily life.”—1903, Sermon #2861

“My deacons know well enough how, when I first preached in Exeter Hall, there was scarcely an occasion in which they left me alone for ten minutes before the service, but they would find me in a most fearful state of sickness produced by that tremendous thought of my solemn responsibility. And, even now, if I ever sit down and begin to turn that thought over, and forget that Christ has all power in Heaven and in earth, I am always affected in the same way. I scarcely dare to look that thought in the face and I am compelled to put my responsibilities where I put my sins—on the back of the Lord Jesus Christ, hoping, trusting, believing, knowing, that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that Last Great Day.”—1902, Sermon #2811
“Perhaps in the case of some of you Christ is wearied with your religion. Wearied with our religion?” asks one. When you get home, will you read the first chapter of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah and you will see there how God declares Himself to be tired of the empty formalism of the people? “Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto Me. The new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot endure. It is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates: they are a trouble unto Me; I am weary to bear them.” It was a weariness unto Him and, if you pray, but do not pray sincerely, my Lord will be tired of hearing your mockery of prayer! If you go to sacraments, or come to public worship and think that this will save you, my Lord will be weary of you, for it is all a sham! There is a shell, but there is no kernel. You mock Him with the solemn sound upon a thoughtless tongue. You sit as His people sit and your minds are far away on the mountains of vanity. You hear, you join in the hymn and listen to the prayer, but there is no true worship, praise, or supplication. I tell you, sirs, my Lord is getting weary of you—getting sick and tired of your religion! What a picture! Christ wearied with sin and wearied with dead religion!—1898, Sermon #2570

“This is the greatest thing we can do for God—to be emptied, so that His fullness may flow into us. That is what I want to do when I go down to the Communion Table—I want to just sit there and not try to think of anything that I can offer to my Master—but to open my soul and to take in all that He is willing to give me!”—1901, Sermon #2708

“I have heard of one who was said to love his wife too much, but I did not believe it, because the model for a husband’s love is, “even as Christ also loved the church,” and who could go beyondtha?”—1899, Sermon #2650

“I would ask any of you young people who are newly-married and just starting in life, how can you expect happiness unless you seek it in God? You have given your hearts to one another—oh, that you had given your hearts to Christ as well—for then you would be joined in One from whom you can never be separated! If you are one in Christ, you will have surer grounds of union than natural affection can afford. There will be a brief separation of the body when one of you is taken Home, but you will meet again and dwell forever in the same Heaven. Unions in the Lord are unions which have the blessing of the Lord. See to it that you begin as you mean to go on, namely, with that blessing which makes rich and brings no sorrow with it. If your home is to be happy, if the children that God may give you are to be your comfort and your delight, first let your own souls be right with God. If the Lord is the God of the parents, he will be the God of their seed. The God of Abraham will be the God of Isaac and He will be the God of Jacob, and He will be the God of Joseph, for He keeps His faithfulness from generation to generation of them that love Him. He does not cast off His people, nor their children, either. If you are an Ishmael, what will your children be? If you are far from God, how can you hope that your posterity will be near to Him?”—1897, Sermon #2539

“Be not startled if I say that it is very much in proportion to our thought that we really worship and, without thought, there is no true worship.”—1902, Sermon #2783

“I am not one of those who think that the result of Christ’s death ever hung in jeopardy for a single moment. I believe that all He intended to do by His death will be done and that there is not one soul, for whom He stood as Substitute, that shall ever be lost. He has paid the debt for all His elect and they shall never be charged with their debts again—they are gone, and gone forever. If the Son of God has actually laid down His life to achieve a certain purpose, I cannot suppose that He will be prevented from achieving it. I can imagine myself living and dying for a certain end and yet being foiled, for I am but a man. But I am not capable of such blasphemy as would be involved in believing that the Son of God could ever be born and live for a certain set purpose—and die to carry out that purpose and yet not accomplish it! ‘He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied.’ He ‘was dead’ and He has, therefore, put forth all His strength for the accomplishment of the end He had in view—and that end will certainly be achieved!”—1900, Sermon #2689

“Where there is no family prayer, we cannot expect the children to grow up in the fear of the Lord—neither can the household look for happiness.”—1897, Sermon #2539

“The gentlemen of the modern-thought school, who have been to Germany for their theology, do not like that glorious Doctrine of Substitution! They think that the Atonement is a something or other, that in some way or other, somehow or other, has something or other to do with the salvation of men—but I tell them that their cloudy Gospel might have surrounded me till my hair grew gray, but I would never have been any the better for it!”—1901, Sermon #2709

“The Prayer Meeting is the gauge of the Church’s spiritual condition. You may always test our prosperity by the multitudes who assemble to pray.”—1902, Sermon #2811
“There is more joy in being unknown than in being known and there is less care in having no wealth than in having much of it.”—1903, Sermon #2832

“If a man is poor, let him rejoice that everybody is not as poor as he is. If he is troubled about his worldly circumstances and he meets with a Brother who has no cause for such sorrow, let him say, ‘I am glad he is better off than I am. I do not want him to have anything to worry him as my troubles perplex me. I praise God for his prosperity, I bless the Lord for his happiness.’”—1899, Sermon #2650
“What new worlds may yet be created, what revolts there may be among fresh orders of creatures, how many orders of creatures there may yet be in the universe and how great and comprehensive the vast dominions of Jehovah may be, we do not, at present, know—but we shall know all that we need to know in due time! It is enough for us now to know that our Bible is true, that Jesus Christ is our Savior and that we shall be with Him where He is and behold His Glory forever and ever.”—1903, Sermon #2862

“Oftentimes, in seeking to bless people, the kindest way is not to build them up, but to pull them down—not to begin to encourage their hopes—but to let them see how hopeless their case is apart from sovereign Grace.—1898, Sermon #2570

“Do you think that the Lord saved you that you might just be happy, keeping your joy within your own heart, ever feeding and fattening it? I do not think the Lord had such a narrow purpose as that in His mind when He saved you. Depend upon it, if God has given you a jewel to wear, it is that other eyes may be gladdened by the sight of it.”—1897, Sermon #2540

“My dear Brother, you cantalk to those few poor people in that hamlet where you live. You have been afraid to try to speak to them and so you have let them remain uninstructed. But you will not be able to be silent if you think upon God’s loving kindness to you!”—1902, Sermon #2783
“I am afraid that there are many people who think all others evil except themselves, yet if they could but look within, they would discover that the evil person not only lives in their house, but that his head is under their hat!”—1897, Sermon #2541

“The very genius of the Christian religion is enthusiasm, but the enthusiasm is created by contact with Christ. As we come near to our great Captain, every soldier in the ranks of the King’s army feels that he must be a hero. We look at His scars and wounds, and see what He did and suffered, and then we feel that it would be mean and contemptible on our part to be otherwise than altogether in earnest for so great and good a Lord, and for so grand a cause!”—1901, Sermon #2709

“It is not the placewhich makes the true worship—it is the heart. It is not even the day—it is the state of a man’s mind. It is not that the place is said to be holy and, therefore, prayer is accepted—every place is equally holy where holy men worship God. All distinctions of buildings are heathenish or, at the best, Jewish—they are done away with by Christ.—1898, Sermon #2570

“The Revelation of God in Nature is not unique. If He has made one world, He can make another. If He has made one universe, He can make 50 universes! But after having given us one complete Revelation of His will, He will never give another, that one stands alone.”—1899, Sermon #2604

“Some dear souls are afraid to trust Jesus. If they better understood the matter, they would be afraidnot to trust Him. He commands us to trust Him and He has declared very plainly what are the consequences of disobedience to this command—‘He that believes not shall be damned’—so that faith must be a duty, and unbelief a terrible offense in the sight of God.”—1897, Sermon #2541

“Remember that the greatest force in the world is love—it is invincible. You can love a man to Christ, but you cannot bully him into salvation. I never heard of a soul that was scolded to the Savior, but I have known many drawn to Him by love. So love them, dear Friends, keep on loving them more and more, until they shall be brought to feel that the love of God shed abroad in your heart has also reached their hearts.”—1901, Sermon #2710

“When God looks upon Christ’s shed and sprinkled blood, it is then that He looks on you with pity and compassion! Look where God looks and then your eyes will meet His! If you look to Christ, and God looks to Christ, then you shall see eye to eye, and you shall find joy and peace in believing.”—1898, Sermon #2577

“…the pilgrim path to Heaven is by Weeping Cross—the road to joy and peace is by the way of a sense of sin and a sense of the Lord’s anger!”—1898, Sermon #2557
“God had one Son without sin, but He never had a son without suffering. We may escape the rod if we are not of the family of God, but the trueborn child must not—and would not if he could—avoid that chastisement of which all such are partakers.”—1900, Sermon #2689
“‘Glory be to God,’ should always be the preacher’s motto.”—1902, Sermon #2784
“A grainof Divine Grace is worth more than a ton of knowledge! If you have but a spark of true faith in Jesus Christ, it is better than a whole volcano full of worldly wisdom!”—1903, Sermon #2862

“Brothers and Sisters, we must be willing to be nothing—we shall never be anything till we are willing to be nothing. If any man will be perfectly content to be nobody, he shall be somebody. But he who must be somebody shall be nobody.”—1902, Sermon #2811“The yoke of Christ is His word, His precepts, His commands, the following of His example, the bearing of suffering which He appoints, the persecution which comes to us for His sake. This is His yoke, and His burden, quite as much as we need desire to carry. So, let us be content that we are not our own masters, but that we are our Lord’s servants and that we have not even a pennyworth of our own to carry, but only mean to be carriers for Him. We have hired ourselves out to carry the vessels of the sanctuary—and we will carry no other burden than that.”—1903, Sermon #2832

“ Hear, O LORD, when I cry with my voice—have mercy also upon me and answer me. One moment he praises and the next moment he prays. That is quite right. I have often said to you that we live by breathing in and breathing out. We breathe in the atmosphere of Heaven by prayer and we breathe it out again by praise. Prayer and praise make up the essentials of the Christian’s life. Oh, for more of them—not prayer without praise, nor praise without prayer! Prayer and praise, like the two horses in Pharaoh’s chariot, make our Christian life to run smoothly and swiftly to God’s honor and glory.”—1897, Sermon #2541

“Another method of fruit-bearing is by a holy character. O Beloved, I implore you to be holy men and women! Seek after close conformity to the likeness of Christ. Nothing does more good for a Church than for its members to live the Gospel in all their concerns at home and abroad.”—1899, Sermon #2650

“Man is not so dead that he sins without guilt, or lives without responsibility. No man who remains out of Christ is without guilt on that account. He who continues an unbeliever may not say that he cannot help it—it is his fault and his sin that he does not believe.”—1899, Sermon #2605

“The way to become like Christ is to think about Christ. Some people think so much about their own sanctification that they miss sanctification altogether. They are looking at their own image and admiring it until they are gradually being more and more conformed to their own image! But he who looks away from himself, entirely to Christ, shall go from glory unto glory and be transformed into the image of his Master.”—1898, Sermon #2559

“Some people believe that children of God can fall from Grace. If that were true, the members of Christ’s mystical body would be severed from Him and He would be no longer a perfect Christ! I believe no such teaching as that! If I am one with Christ, I defy the devil, himself, to tear me away from Him.”—1897, Sermon #2542

“Do not refuse to be comforted, for if you do, you will be spiritually a suicide! The man who will not eat and so dies of starvation, is as much a suicide as he that puts the pistol to his head and blows out his brains. He that rejects Christ, damns himself as surely as he that gives himself body and soul to the devil. He that refuses what God has provided and will not have pardon through the precious blood, dashes himself upon the bosses of Jehovah’s buckler and fixes himself upon the point of the javelin of Divine Justice.”—1898, Sermon #2578

“However gracious our genealogy may be, unless our family tree begins in Christ and we, ourselves, are personally grafted into Him, we shall die in our sins and perish forever. God help us, who have been so highly privileged as to be born of godly parents, to lay that Truth of God to heart and to seek the Lord now, that we also may be numbered among those who are saved!”—1899, Sermon #2652

“Rest assured, dear Friends, that where your pleasure is, there your heart is. If you find your pleasure in the world, your heart is in the world and you are to be reckoned among the worldly. But if Christ is your joy, your pleasure, your delight, your very Heaven—then there is a difference between you and worldlings.”—1901, Sermon #2710

“You say you do not wish to die? Well, perhaps you never may, but why should you fear death? Why should you dread the grave? Our Lord Jesus left His grave clothes behind for our use, and He carefully laid the napkin apart for our friends to wipe their eyes with. We go not to a bare, unfurnished chamber when we go to our last sleep on this earth— “‘Tis no mere morgue to fence The ruins oflost innocence, A place of sorrow and decay—The imprisoningstone is rolled away!”—1897, Sermon #2542

“Brethren, what a grand expression that is, ‘eternal salvation!’ You know that there are some who preach a temporary salvation. They say that you may be in Christ today and out of Christ tomorrow, that you may be saved by Grace at one hour, but damned by sin the next. Ah, but the Bible says no such thing! This may be the Gospel according to Arminius, but it is not the Gospel according to John, nor according to Paul, nor according to our Lord Jesus Christ.”—1900, Sermon #2689

“Flimsy views of human depravity lead to very indistinct ideas of the Grace of God. There is nothing but deep sub-soil plowing that ever makes a man sound in the Doctrines of Grace—and I will defy any man who has had a deep experience of his own odious depravity to believe any other doctrines but the Doctrines of Grace which are commonly called Calvinism.”—1903, Sermon #2833
“The Lord is such a great God that if we rejoice in Him at all, we ought greatlyto rejoice in Him. Little sources of blessing may well produce little joy, but when we think of the great goodness of the great God to such great sinners as we have been, each one of us who has been greatly pardoned through the great Sacrifice of Jesus may well say, ‘I will greatly rejoice in the Lord.’”—1897, Sermon #2543 “It is congenial to God’s Nature to make His creatures happy.”—1898, Sermon #2557

“It is a sign of something radically rotten within when a man can apparently be just as holy and as earnest without prayer as he is with it. You cannot really know the power of the life of God if you are able to live without prayer, for, just as a man who is unable to breathe, soon faints, so must a person spiritually faint if he does not pray.”—1903, Sermon #2812

“There is always a set of grumblers about who think they could preach better and manage Sunday schools better than anybody else. They are the people who generally do nothing at all.”—1902, Sermon #2785

“Joy in the creature must necessarily be limited, for the creature is limited. Joy in the creature may be harmful, for the creature may beguile you and allure you away from the Creator. Joy in yourself is a fiction—there can be no true satisfaction in it. Joy even in the work of God in your soul may sometimes be questionable, for you may not be sure that it is God’s work in which you are rejoicing. But when you can say, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God,” you have a subject for joy and an object of joy higher than I can ever describe!”—1897, Sermon #2543

“Brothers and Sisters, there is no seeing unless there is believing! I have heard that seeing is believing, but it is not—it is the very opposite! Seeing and believing do not run this way—to see first and then to believe. They run the other way—believe and then see! And that is just what Abraham did. He believed God and then he saw Christ’s day afar off and was glad. See as much as you like after you have believed, but remember our Lord’s words to Thomas, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed”—that is, those who did not need to see first, but believed first, and then their eyes were so opened that they saw the salvation of God.”—1899, Sermon #2652

“…whenever a man doubts the mercy of God, the best thing that I can say of him is that he is a fool.”—1898, Sermon #2578

“Perhaps, God allows wicked men to come in our way to make us see the evil of sin, that we may turn from it, pass by it, abhor it andnot indulge in it. I have no doubt that the wickedness of men may be employed under the Divine wisdom and the overruling hand of God for the sanctifica
tion of His own people.”—1901, Sermon #2711

“As far as spiritual things are concerned, man’s understanding is dead. He can comprehend the highest and most wonderful of sciences, but he cannot—or, what is tantamount to it, he willnot—understand the things of God.”—1899, Sermon #2605

“If you want to see Christ, dear Friends, borrow the telescope of promise. Faith is very fond of that optic glass, and it is wonderful what she can see when she puts it to her eye. Ten thousand blessings, not seen by our natural vision, become visible to the eye of faith when we look at them through the medium of the promises of God.”—1899, Sermon #2652

“No matter what sorrow falls to your lot, if you can pray, you will rise out of it.”—1898, Sermon #2578

“I think there is nothing that I detest more than the idea of priest-craft and I hope that you do the same. Who is any poor mortal man that he should interpose himself between a sinner and his Savior? Take care to go straight away to Christ. But, in the true Scriptural sense, there is a priesthood which belongs to all Christians and I want you to understand, poor Believer, notwithstanding all your infirmities and imperfections, that the Lord has so covered you with the righteousness of Christ that you are clad in a priest’s holy vestments! You have, all over you, the pure white linen which is the righteousness of saints, and you are wearing that royal miter which permits you to exercise the priesthood, for He, ‘has made us kings and priests unto God.’ We are ‘a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people.’”—1897, Sermon #2543

“Meditation and prayer are twin sisters and both of them appear to me equally necessary to Christian life. I think meditation mustexist where there is prayer, and prayer is sure to exist where there is meditation.”—1900, Sermon #2690
“The man who habitually lives in sin is not a free man, for he is still a slave to sin. If he finds pleasure and delight in disobeying God, he has no right to talk about being a free man. His chains are rattling on his wrists—what can he know about freedom?”—1899, Sermon #2652

“Oh, what myriads of men there are in the world! When I traverse this city of five million souls, it appalls me! It can scarcely be called a city—it is a province, it is a nation! There are two or three nations which, if put together, would not make up as many inhabitants as the population of this wonderful city! Yet, over all this vast population the taint of sin has spread. But what is London compared with all the nations of the globe, the almost innumerable hosts that people this round world? Yet there is not one who bears the countenance of a man upon whom the shadow of the curse has not fallen. Each man must toil for his bread with the sweat upon his brow and, in due time, it must be said to each one of us, ‘dust you are, and unto dust shall you return.’ What has caused all this? It is the one offensewhich has brought judgment unto condemnation upon all!”—1897, Sermon #2544

“O dear Friends, search out one of the exceeding great and precious promises of the Word—feed upon it, get it right into your soul and then you may feel that your soul can no more be troubled, for you believe in God and you believe in Christ and, therefore, you are full of gladness! ‘Let your soul delight itself in fatness.’ There is this joy as one of the benefits of obedience to the exhortation of the text.”—1902, Sermon #2786

“Yes, Christian, God has put you in the very midst of sin to make His Grace the more conspicuous.”—1901, Sermon #2711

“Good John Newton used to say that for a Calvinist to be proud was the most inconsistent thing in the world, because, by his own profession, there were Truths of God which no man could receive or understand of himself—so, why should he boast of his own attainments and why should he blame others for not doing what he knows they cannot do of themselves?”—1903, Sermon #2833

“The Father does not draw us to Christ by a force which is contrary to our nature and will—we are not sticks and stones—and He does not treat us as if we were. We are rational, responsible, free agents and He deals with us as such, never snapping even the finest strings in the instrument of human nature, so far as it is human nature. So, when He draws men, He draws them by teaching them!”—1899, Sermon #2606

“There is no preaching like that which Gods bids us. The preaching that comes out of our own heads will never go into other men’s hearts. If we will keep to the preaching that the Lord bids us, we shall not fail in our ministry.”—1897, Sermon #2544
“Any man who is born of God must love Jesus Christ.”—1899, Sermon #2652
“The way to make us love God is for the love of God to be shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit!”—1897, Sermon #2544

“You may dive as far as you like into the sea, but you will not find any fire there. You may rake as long as you please in the burning fiery furnace, but you will never reach any cooling blocks of ice. You may hunt, for many a day, in the human heart’s natural death, but you will not there discover any signs of life. And, within the morgue of man’s corruption, you shall never be able to discern any remedy for a sin-sick soul.”—1900, Sermon #2691

“I would rather find God beneath a shed with half-a-dozen poor working men, than I would go and see the gorgeous ceremonies in a cathedral where God is not present! It is not the place, it is not the form, it is not the garb, it is not the sweet tone of song or music—it is getting near to God that is the all-important matter! Whatever else we do—whether our service is plain as a Quaker’s, or gorgeous as a Romanist’s, if we do not seek God, it is all nothing—a bottle of smoke—and it shall come to nothing. The outward ceremonialist has no understanding, for he does not seek after God.”—1897, Sermon #2545

“If a man is truly converted, the influence of his conversion will spread to others—it is an act of mercy from God to him with a view also to his children, his friends, his neighbors, his dependents.”—1897, Sermon #2546

“I have heard some people say that they will have such sweet and satisfying fellowship with Christ that they will not want to have any with His people, but that is both absurd and impossible because you cannot have fellowship with the Head without having fellowship with the members at the same time! Christ will never wish you to look upon Him in Heaven as divided from His people—they shall be so completely one with Him that in fellowship with His people, you shall in no degree be diminishing your fellowship with Christ, but rather be enjoying it in the form in which He, Himself, rejoices, for His delights will still be with the sons of men and if, on earth, they were the excellent in whom was all your delight, He would have you take the same delight in them when you meet them before His Throne in Glory.”—1903, Sermon #2813

“God can lift up your head, poor mourner, sorrowing under sin and a fear of wrath. I tell you, God can at once forgive your sin, turn away all His wrath and give you a sense of perfect pardon—and with it a sense of his undying love.”—1898, Sermon #2557
“Not a step heavenward, not in the least likeness to God, not to the smallest degree of holiness can you proceed apart from Jesus Christ your Head! Never forget this fact, simple though it is.”—1899, Sermon #2653

“When you have abundant provision in your house, it is your duty to send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared. Mind that you attend to this matter lest your Lord should put you on short commons, too, and make you feel a little more as you ought to towards the afflicted.”—1897, Sermon #2546
“If any man preaches that which does not lead you to Christ, do not listen to it, for evidently he has not been taught of God. And, if you find in any book, teaching which makes you think less of Christ than you did before, burn the book! It will do you no good—and it may do you a great deal of mischief.”—1899, Sermon #2606

“Are there not in it [the Gospel] great Truths of God that cannot be cut down to fit any system that the human mind can make? And ought we not to be thoroughly glad that it is so? For, surely, it is better that the Gospel should be according to God’s mind than that it should be according to the mind of Toplady, or the mind of Wesley, or the mind of Calvin, or the mind of Arminius! The mind of God is greater than all the minds of men, so let all men leave the Gospel just as God has delivered it unto us.”—1903, Sermon #2834

“Young Brothers in the College, you must eat your way into the ministry! You will never be able to say to others, “Eat what is good,” unless you have feasted upon those things yourselves! Unless you have an inward appreciation of their sweetness and have sucked them into your very being, you will never be able to talk with power to others concerning them. Paul wrote to Timothy, “The husbandman that labors, must first be partaker of the fruits,” so Christian ministers, Sunday school teachers, and all workers for Christ must eat that which is good if they are to be used in feeding others with spiritual food!”—1902, Sermon #2786

“Whitefield said, in one of his sermons, ‘O my God, when I think how this wicked city is perishing, and how many are dying for lack of knowledge, I feel as if I could stand on the top of every hackney coach in the streets of London to preach the Gospel.’ Why did he say that? Why was his zeal so burning? Because he had seen the sinfulness of men and marked their follies. We shall never be thoroughly in earnest till we are thoroughly aware of the evil that is before us.”—1901, Sermon #2711

“It will never do for men to be led to think that they are healed before they know that they are sick unto death, or to imagine that they are clothed before they see themselves to be naked, or to be taught to trust Christ before they are aware that they have anything for which they have need to trust Him. It would be a happy circumstance if, in our preaching, we could have a blending of these two elements so that we could have somewhat of our forefathers’ deep experimental teaching and, with it, and growing out of it a plain, unfettered delivery of the Gospel declaration, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.’”—1900, Sermon #2691

“I notice that when converts do not begin to speak a little for Christ very early in their Christian career, they become tongue-tied—that is how we get so many dumb members of the Church who seem as if they could not offer up a prayer to save their lives. And what is worse, they cannot talk to their personal friends about the things of God.”—1897, Sermon #2546

“Shall I ever get to be so holy that I can stand before God without my Mediator? Shall I ever have a spiritual beauty of my own which shall render the imputed righteousness of Christ unnecessary for me? Never! For, even in our highest estate in Heaven, we shall still need to have our vital union with Christ perpetually maintained. He is the Head of the Church triumphant as well as of the Church militant! He will be forever the Head of the Church made perfect as surely as He is the Head of His poor, weak, feeble, but ever-growing Church on earth.”—1899, Sermon #2653

“We have lately lost some of our dearest and best friends from the Tabernacle. Some of our most earnest helpers have passed away, but, oh, they have died gloriously! It has been a pleasure and a privilege to see them rejoicing while everybody else was weeping—to hear them triumphant when all around them were sorrowful—to behold them casting gleams of sunlight from their eyes even when those eyes were being glazed in death! Give me a religion by which I can live, for that is the religion on which I can die! Give me that faith which will change me into the image of Christ, for then I need not be afraid to bear the image of death! God grant that you and I, dear Friends, may know, as a matter of personal experience, that there is a solid truth in our religion, that it is, indeed, our life! ”—1898, Sermon #2575

“When that great saint and preacher, Augustine, lay dying—and I venture to say of Augustine that among all who were born of women, there has hardly ever been a greater than he—his mind was equal to any philosophy for its depth, its length and its breadth. And as an instructor in theology he still remains, under Christ, next to the Apostle Paul, the master-teacher of the churches—yet, as he lay dying, he asked to have certain texts of Scripture printed in large capitals. Which do you suppose he chose? You may think that he selected some deep and mysterious passage about the high doctrine which he so greatly loved, but he did nothing of the kind. He chose those texts of Scripture which we commonly quote to sinking sinners—such as these—‘He that believes on the Son has everlasting life.’ ‘Whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ And that great saint feasted his dying eyes on the texts which we usually give to babes in Christ’s faith, or those who are seeking the Savior, for they suited him just then!”—1897, Sermon #2546

“There is not, in unrenewed human nature, a place where you could put the point of a pin where it is not defiled with sin! It is in our entire system—we have been lying in it until we are steeped through and through with it. Sin, in human nature, is like those colors that are ingrained—the more you wash the material, the more clearly are they discovered! You can never wash them out—only the precious blood of Jesus can wash out man’s sin.”—1903, Sermon #2835
“A day is coming when every minister of Christ shall speak with unction, when all the servants of God shall preach with power, and when colossal systems of heathenism shall tumble from their pedestals and mighty, gigantic delusions shall be scattered to the winds! The shout shall be heard,‘Alleluia! Alleluia! The Lord God Omnipotent reigns.’”—1898, Sermon #2558

“People seem to jump into faith very quickly nowadays. I do not disapprove of that happy leap, but still, I hope my old friend, Repentance, is not dead! I am desperately in love with repentance—it seems to me to be the twin sister to faith. I do not, myself, understand much about dry-eyed faith—I know that I came to Christ by the way of Weeping-Cross. I did not come to shelter beneath His blood immediately when I heard of it, as I now wish that I had done, but when I did come to Calvary, by faith, it was with great weeping and supplication, confessing my transgressions and desiring to find salvation in Jesus, and in Jesus only.”—1900, Sermon #2691

“It could not be that a body in which dwelt the fullness of the Godhead could be held by thin bonds of death—He who slept in Joseph’s tomb was the Son of God!”—1901, Sermon #2712
“The Lord will not let even the suburbs of the New Jerusalem be conquered by the foe! He will preserve the holy city, His own Church, until the day when His Son shall come to reign in her forever.”—1899, Sermon #2654

“A million millions, what must that be? The human mind cannot grasp the meaning of such vast numbers, yet, when millions of millions of millions of millions of years have passed over the heads of Christ’s saints in Glory, this text will not be exhausted! No, more—not one jot or tittle of it will be exhausted—and throughout eternity it will still be, “pleasures forevermore.” Ah, my Brothers and Sisters, this prize is worth winning! Eternal life is worth having! And it shall be the portion of everyone who truly trusts in our Lord Jesus Christ.”—1903, Sermon #2813

“The longer you stay away from God, the more deeply you will sin. If you keep on in the wrong path, not only will you have sinned the more, but that sin will have taken a more terrible hold upon you. Habits begin like cobwebs, but they end like chains of iron. A man might more readily have swept away the temptation when it was new to him than he will be able to do when, having yielded to it many a time, the devil has learned the way to master him. May God help you to flee from sin as soon as you perceive it, lest you be caught in its net of steel and be held in it to your eternal destruction!”—1897, Sermon #2547

“So, Beloved, feed on the Word of God—especially feed on the Incarnate Word, Christ Himself—otherwise, you cannot possibly enter into true spiritual fellowship with God.”—1902, Sermon #2786

“Sorrow for sin is a perpetual rain—a sweet, soft shower which, to a truly gracious man, lasts all his life! He is always sorrowful that he has sinned. He is continually grieved that there should still be any sin remaining in him and he will never leave off grieving till all that sin has gone.”—1900, Sermon #2691

“He who is idle has as good reason to be penitent before God as David had when he was an adulterer. Indeed, David’s adultery probably resulted from his idleness. It is an abominable thing to let the grass grow up to your knees and do nothing towards making it into hay. God never sent a man into the world to be idle—but there are some who make a profession of being Christians who do nothing to serve the Lord from one year’s end to the other.”—1899, Sermon #2607

“I have preached the Gospel, now, these 30 years and more, and some of you will scarcely believe it, but in my vestry behind that door, before I come to address the congregation in this Tabernacle, I tremble like an aspen leaf. And often, in coming down to this pulpit, have I felt my knees knock together—not that I am afraid of any one of my hearers—but I am thinking of that account which I must render to God, whether I speak His Word faithfully or not. On this service may hang the eternal destinies of many. O God, grant that we may all realize that this is a matter of the most solemn concern! May we all come to God by Christ Jesus, that everything may be right with us, now, and right for eternity! God grant that it may be!”—1898, Sermon #2575

“Some fellows will get up, and, under the pretense that they are going to glorify God, will tell of all manner of filthiness and vice which cannot do any good to anybody. Stand up and cry, Brother, that is the best thing you can do. Or else, sit down, and cover your face, and say, ‘Concerning those things of which I am now ashamed, I only pray God, as He has blotted them out of His memory, to put them out of my own, also.’”—1897, Sermon #2549

“The disease of sin is everywhere in the realm of manhood and it is all the more certainly proved to be everywhere because so many people cannot see it! This is why you cannot see sin in yourselves—it has made all the various faculties of your soul to mortify so that you cannot feel the pains which this mortal disease would otherwise have caused you. Thus your heart has lost any tenderness that it may have had, naturally, and your conscience is seared as with a hot iron so that it cannot warn you of the mischief within, but prophesies smooth things, while all is in a state of ruin, destruction and dismay—and will be so forever unless God, by His Grace, shall work a miraculous change.”—1903, Sermon #2835“Singing is the best thing to purge ourselves of evil thoughts. Keep your mouth full of songs and you will often keep your heart full of praises—keep on singing as long as you can—you will find it a good method of driving away your fears.”—1898, Sermon #2558

“It is a sweet thing to be sorrowful for sin, to be sorrowful for impurity, to be sorrowful for anything that made Jesus sorrow—it is not a thing that happens once, and then is done with—the godly sorrow of a Believer lasts throughout his life.”—1900, Sermon #2691
“… true religionis alwaysa matter of desire. If you do not desire to fear God, you do not fear Him. If you do not feel any desire after that which is right in God’s sight, you have not anything at all right in your heart.”—1901, Sermon #2714
“None but the God of Infinite patience could bear with such a family as He has. Any one of us might exhaust the patience of a hundred Jobs rolled into one—yet, shout it out and let even the angels hear it—we have not exhausted the patience of God!”—1899, Sermon #2654

“Go where you may, my dear Brother, you need not puzzle your head about the sort of Gospel you are bound to preach. To the jailor at Philippi, to the Areopagites on Mars’ Hill, to the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem, to Nero at Rome, to barbarian, Scythian, bond, or free—to the very chief of sinners, to the greatest or the least of mankind, you have to deliver but one message—‘God has set forth His Son, Jesus Christ, to be the propitiation for sin, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but should have everlasting life.” There is the essence of the one message we have to deliver to all men! ‘There is no difference.’”—1899, Sermon #2608

“Restoration from sickness should always be ascribed to God. Whatever part the physician may play—and he often plays a very important part—yet to God, who gives the physician wisdom and skill, must the gracious result be ascribed.”—1897, Sermon #2531

“When people come to the House of God and they expectto be saved, and weexpect it, too, it is tolerably certain that they will beconverted before long! We may rejoice and bless God if you live in an atmosphere of holy expectancy! Where the great door stands wide open for the prodigal son to come back, where all in the house are on the watch for his return, where they keep on sending letters to him to ask him to come home, is there not a good hope that such a wanderer will, indeed, return, and that the great Father will be made glad?”—1900, Sermon #2692

“Brothers and Sisters, we know that God loves us. I never dare to try to speak about this great Truth of God—it is a thing to think over rather than to talk of. I like to get away quietly in a corner and just try to roll this sweet morsel under my tongue, to suck on it till I draw the very essence out of it—God loves me.”—1903, Sermon #2814

“That first Grace which works in the heart—is not that just like the rain which comes when nobody is looking for it? The man has never prayed for Grace or, even if he has prayed for it, there is no true prayer ever offered until first of all Grace has come to produce that prayer. The sinner is never beforehand with God. If you begin to pray at this moment, it is because God’s Grace has begun to work upon your heart so that you canpray. He is always first! That is one of the blessings of Heaven, then—that first movement of the Eternal Spirit upon the dead, chaotic heart—producing light and order. That is surely from Heaven and God has given it to His people.”—1897, Sermon #2531

“There may be more prosperity in a place where but six of Christ’s true people meet together than where thousands congregate to worship God in a way which they think to be right, but which is not in accordance with His sacred Word.”—1898, Sermon #2576

“I believe that all schemes for comprehending all the saints in one visible church must fail. Adam never saw Eve until God had perfectly fashioned her—and you will never see the Church, the Bride of Christ, till she is perfect and complete! And when she is, you will clap your hands with joy at the sight of the exquisite beauty which God shall have given to her before she is presented to her Heavenly Bridegroom. The process of perfecting her is going on now, and Christ’s Bride is being “curiously worked” out of material taken from Christ’s own side.”—1902, Sermon #2788

“There are those whose fear of God arises entirely from dread. They dare not go to bed at night without offering some sort of prayer—not because they have any real desire to pray, or to commune with God, but through fear as to what might happen if they omitted their usual form! They would not allow a Sunday to pass without attending the means of Grace at least once—not because they have any desire to go, or any delight in the services of God’s House—but because they are afraid notto go. Yet we must always remember that the religion of dread is not the religion of Christ. That which you do because you are afraid to act otherwise is no evidence of a renewed heart—it is, rather, the proof that you are a slave, living in dread of the lash, and that you would act far otherwise if you dared!”—1901, Sermon #2714

“We may do, or say, or give anything we like, but nothing will please God except our turning from our sin and trusting in the atoning Sacrifice of His dear Son. We may pray till our knees grow hard as iron and weep our eyes away till their sockets are empty, but we shall never obtain the great blessing of salvation while we link our arm with sin and go on delighting in iniquity.”—1899, Sermon #2655

“None but the poor will value the charity of men and none but the guilty will value the charity of God!”—1897, Sermon #2535“First, I have to tell you that ‘ all thingsare of God.’ That is the first sentence [2 Cor 5:18] of the verse from which our text is taken. If, therefore, you are willing to be at peace with God, there is nothing whatever needed from you. God has prepared all things that are needed for this present and perpetual reconciliation. To make the friendship between God and man firm and lasting, all that is needed has been already supplied!”—1903, Sermon #2837

“The text says, ‘Set your house in order.’ This shows that we are not to destroy it, nor even to injure it. Our body should be the temple of the Holy Spirit. Nothing should be done by us that may injure our body, for, in the case of the Believer, it is a precious thing, ordained to rise, again, at the Last Day, since Chris Jesus has bought it, as well as the soul which it contains, with His own blood! Nor are we to waste our substance, for this is the accusation which, of old, was brought against the unjust steward, that he had wasted his master’s goods.”—1897, Sermon #3021

“Whether sin is open or covert, whether it is less or more than that of other men, it needs the atoning Sacrifice of Christ to remove it!”—1899, Sermon #2608

“And you, dear Brother, must not go home to your church in the country and say, ‘I cannot stir the people. The work does not flourish as I wish it would.’ Of course it does not! My work does not prosper as I wish it might. You and I can never go at the pace we would like to go, but can we not be willing to be driven by our Lord and to go at HIS pace? It is quite right to work as if the salvation of all the souls in the world depended upon you, yet, as it does not, you had better throw that burden back upon your Lord and Master! Feel the weight of men’s souls till it crushes you down to Christ’s feet, but do not let it crush you any lower than that—you are not the Savior, you are not to have the Glory of their salvation.”—1898, Sermon #2559

“There is no possibility of converting anybody by persuasion, by logic, by rhetoric, or anything of the sort. It is the work of God, and the work of God, alone! And though He uses instrumentality in almost every case, yet He will not use that instrumentality which thinks itself sufficient for the work. He will make us know that we are nothing—and then He will make everything of us. He does not mind how much He makes of His servants when all that He does for them brings the more glory to His own name, and they do not, even with their little finger, touch the honor of it, or wish to do so.”—1900, Sermon #2692

“I verily believe that some people think more of their fingernails than they do of their souls, and there is many a man who spends more on the blackening of his boots than he does on the cleansing of his soul from sin.”—1899, Sermon #2655

“It is a blessed thing, sometimes, to soar aloft, as on the wings of eagles, and to seem to play with the young lightning that is at home with the sun! It is a grand thing to live evenherein the very Presence of God and feel that earth has grown into a little Heaven! But I find that such an ecstatic state as that is frequently followed by deep depression. Elijah runs before Ahab’s chariot, but the next morning he runs away from a woman and asks that he may die. Our great ‘ups’ are not far off equally great ‘downs.’”—1898, Sermon #2550

“There is many a pretty face that has been admired because of its appearance, but when its owner’s not very pretty tongue has begun to chatter, love has been almost driven to its wits’ end to find any cause for admiration!”—1898, Sermon #2577

“That blessed Book of Solomon’s Song is misunderstood by many Believers because they never knew the joy of conjugal love with Christ and the sweetness of His heart when He lays it bare to His Beloved people. ‘The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him’ and I can assure you, Beloved, that, if you do but become reconciled to God, it will be the best day that you ever spent.”—1903, Sermon #2837

“It often happens that there is very little power in those prayers that leap out of our lips without premeditation—born in a minute, like gnats, and dying just as soon. But the prayer that lies in the soul, like eggs in a nest, and that has to be sat upon, as it were, and hatched, and brought forth—there is life in such supplication as that and that is the kind of prayer which prevails with God! Such was the prayer of Daniel.”—1902, Sermon #2788

“A man may have other rewards if he is content with God as his reward. But he who has any sinister or even secondary aim in what he does in the cause of God, spoils it all. This is the fly in the precious ointment! We must get rid of everything of this sort and be just as satisfied to serve God in obloquy and reproach as we are to serve Him amid the acclamations of the multitude!”—1903, Sermon #2814

“Desire must be at the back of every religious act, or else there is nothing at all in it. It is so in the case of almsgiving. Always take heed that you do not give to the poor, or to any charity, or to the funds of the Church simply because you are asked to do so, for, unless you really desire to give what you appear to present, you have not, in God’s sight, given it at all! If, in your heart of hearts you feel, ‘I wish I had dodged round the pillar, or gone down the other aisle, and so escaped having to give,’ you have not truly offered anything to God.”—1901, Sermon #2714

“There is a secret sweetness in the gall and wormwood of our daily trials—a sort of ineffable, unutterable, indescribable—but plainly experienced joy in sorrow and bliss in woe! O Friends, I think that the happiest moments I have ever known have been just after the sharpest pains I have ever felt! As the blue gentian flower grows just upon the edge of the Alpine glacier, so, too, extraordinary joys, azure-tinted with the light of Heaven, grow hard by the severest of our troubles—the very sweetest and best of our delights.”—1898, Sermon #2550

“Men may put cruel pressure upon you till your fear of them drives you away from God, but it would be well if your fear of them could be slain by a greater fear, for it is infinitely better to dread the wrath of God than to fear the anger of man!”—1899, Sermon #2655

“Once more, there is no difference as to the efficacy of the plan of salvation. This man believed in Jesus Christ and was saved. So shall that other man be if he believes in Jesus Christ. All who believe in Christ are justified from all things. All who trust in Christ have eternal life and shall never perish. The blood of Jesus was never yet applied to a conscience without giving it peace. A persecutor is washed and his crimson stains are gone. A thief believes and he is, that day, with Christ in Paradise! Mary Magdalene believes and seven devils are cast out of her. A rough Philippian jailor believes and that night he is baptized, rejoicing in God with all his house. Never sinner yet did try this blessed remedy and find it fail! And none ever shall, for “there is no difference.””—1899, Sermon #2608

“A true prayer is the Revelation of the Spirit of God to our heart, making us desire what God has appointed to give us. Hence the success of prayer is no difficulty to the man who believes in predestination. Some foolishly say, ‘If God has ordained everything, what is the use of praying?’If God had notordained everything, there would be no use in praying, but prayer is the shadow of the coming mercy which falls across the spirit—and we become, in prayer, in some degree, gifted like the seers of old. The spirit of prophecy is upon the man who knows how to pray! The Spirit of God has moved him to ask for what God is about to give!”—1898, Sermon #2550

“The Roman Catholic Church teaches us that we must do penance if our sin is to be forgiven. There must be so many lashes for the bare back, or so long abstention from food—and purgatorial pains to be inflicted after death and I know not what besides! Yes, but this is the glory ofGod—that He can cover all this sin now, upon the spot, without any price being paid by the sinner, or any suffering being endured by him! He has but to come and confess his sin and accept the Divine covering, namely, the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ—and the whole of it shall be covered once and for all!”—1903, Sermon #2838

“The Apostle Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, was inspired to pass a very sharp sentence upon them—‘This we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat’—a sentence which would exterminate a great number of persons who at the present time seem to flourish! If in business I am not diligent, I cannot expect to prosper. If I wish to be a man of learning, I cannot get it simply by praying for it—I must study , even to the weariness of the flesh. If a man is sick, he may trust in God as much as he wills—that should be his first thing—but let him also use such remedies as God has given if he can discover them, or learn of them from others.”—1898, Sermon #2559

“If you would find out the cause of most of your sorrows, dig at the root of your self-will, for that is where it lies. When your heart is wholly sanctified unto God and your will is entirely subdued to Him, the bitter becomes sweet, pain is changed to pleasure and suffering is turned into joy. It is not possible for that man’s mind to be disturbed whose will is wholly resigned to the will of God.”—1901, Sermon #2715

“God speaks to men by men. He has made them to be the choice and chosen instruments of His wondrous works of Grace upon earth. Oh, what a solemn thing it is to be a preacher of the everlasting Gospel! It is an office so high that an angel might covet it, but one that is so responsible that even an angel might tremble to undertake it! Brothers and Sisters, pray for us who preach, not merely to a few, but to many of our fellow creatures, that we may be the means, in the hand of God, of blessing to our hearers.”—1899, Sermon #2655

“The Lord has aneternal knowledge ofour sins. He will never forget them. If they are not washed away by the blood of Christ, He can never forget or cease to be angry because of them!”—1898, Sermon #2551
“A sense of satisfaction with yourself will be the death of your progress and it will prevent your sanctification.”—1898, Sermon #2551

“I have heard of a king of Sweden who, when he lay dying, had a bishop to pray with him. And when the bishop had finished his prayer, the king said, ‘Somehow I have derived no comfort from that prayer. I remember once hearing a shepherd pray in a hut when I had lost my way—will you send for him?’ They did so, and when the shepherd poured out his heart in his own simple language, then the king saw the Light of God and died rejoicing! ‘There is no difference’—the king and the shepherd need the same Savior—and must go to Heaven by the same royal road.”—1899, Sermon #2608

“We are bound to love our enemies, but we are not bound to love God’s enemies. We are to wish them, as enemies, a complete overthrow, but to wish them, as men, a gracious conversion, that they may obtain God’s pardon and become his friends, followers and servants.”—1898, Sermon #2551

“Oh that God the Holy Spirit would teach you that first 1esson, my Brothers and Sisters—the boundless wickedness of sin—for Christ had to lay down His life before your sin could be wiped away!”—1900, Sermon #2656
“It is all very well for a man to pray, but the value of his prayer very much depends upon its sincerity, and that sincerity will be proved by his doing something that will help to answer his own prayer.”—1902, Sermon #2788

“You may go to Hell heedlessly, but you cannot so go to Heaven. Many stumble into the bottomless Pit with their eyes shut, but no man ever yet entered into Heaven by a leap in the dark.”—1898, Sermon #2552

“They are ‘the enemies of the Cross of Christ,’ who try to belittle this great Atonement and to make it out to be a very small affair, next to nothing in importance. As I have often said of some preachers, they teach that Jesus Christ did something or other, which in some way or other, is in some measure or other connected with our salvation. We do not teach any such hazy ideas as that! We say that He laid down His life for the sheep and that for those sheep He has made a perfect, complete and effectual Redemption by which He has delivered them from the wrath to come. Blessed is he who rejoices in that doctrine of the Cross of Christ!”—1898, Sermon #2553

“I do verily believe that the great sweetness of giving to God begins when we feel the pinch, when we have to deny ourselves in order that we may give. Then it is that there is the true spirit of Christian liberality!”—1901, Sermon #2716

“You will never understand the agony of Christ’s soul if you despise the agony of His body, for, while the sufferings of His soul were the soul of His sufferings, yet the sufferings of His body were the body of His sufferings and he who does not think much of the body of the sufferings is not likely to know much about the soul of them.”—1900, Sermon #2693

“Think not, dear Friend, that your ignorance can push you out of the family of God! Little children cannot read Greek and Latin, but they can say, “Abba, Father,” and that is all they need to say. If you cannot read books of deep theological lore, yet, if Jesus Christ is yours—if you are trusting in Him—even the imperfect knowledge that you have of Him proves that you are His!”—1903, Sermon #2815

“See to what Paul is looking forward—resurrection—and therefore he lets this life go as of secondary importance. He is willing to suffer as Christ suffered and to die as Christ died. You and I may never be called to make that great sacrifice, but if we are true followers of Christ, we shall be prepared for it. If ever it should happen that Christ and our life shall be put in competition, we must not deliberate for a moment, for Christ is All, and we must be ready to give up all for Christ.”—1898, Sermon #2553

“As long as you have God, you have the essence of all good—and as long as God lives, whoever else dies, the goodness on which your soul is to feed has an independent existence.”—1898, Sermon #2555

“In the last dread hour of death, when conscience looks at sin as it really is and no longer is blinded, nothing can bring it peace but the blood of the Lamb! Nothing can give the soul repose when it is about to meet its God, except the knowledge that Christ was made a curse for us that we might be blessed in Him.”—1903, Sermon #2839

“If you are not just now being assailed by any temptation, it is because God is delivering you from it.”—1901, Sermon #2718

“Faith and hope and love are plants that only live in the sunlight of God. And if the great Father of Lights withdrew, all these would die. ‘Without Me you can do nothing,’ is as certainly true of us who are His people, as of those who are far from Him by wicked worlds.”—1899, Sermon #2609

“Let me say to you mourners and sufferers that your praises of God when you have no trouble are not worth half as much as they may be now. If you can sing His praises on the bed of sickness and extol Him in the fire of a sore bereavement, that will be grand! The praises of the angels, as they bow in perfect happiness, and say, “God is good,” must be very blessed. And the praises of men of God on earth, who are prospering in business and who have health and strength, and who say, “God is good,” are very precious. But you take me to one who is poor and needy, one who scarcely knows where his daily bread will come from—and when he says, ‘But God is good,; I think the Lord finds a sweeter note in that praise than He does even in the music of the angelic choirs!”—1898, Sermon #2555

“There is nothing in the world that God approves of more than faith. To trust God is the greatest of all works. ‘What shall we do,’ said the Jews to our Lord, ‘that we might work the works of God?’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe on Him whom He has sent.’ To erect a row of almshouses, or to build a cathedral—is not that a big work? No, not compared with believingonJesusChrist whom Godhassent.”—1898, Sermon #2555

“Praying is the end of preaching! Preaching has its right use, and must never be neglected, but real heart devotion is worth more than anything else. Prayer is the power which brings God’s blessing down upon all our work. I beg you, day by day, as you walk the streets, to have this petition in your hearts and in your mouths, ‘Cause Your face to shine upon Your sanctuary.’ ‘O God, bless Your Church all over the world—in Europe, in America, in Asia, in Africa, in Australia! Everywhere prosper Your work among the heathen, and in our own highly-favored land, too, cause Your face to shine upon Your sanctuary.’ And do not cease to present that prayer until, to the fullest possible extent, it shall be answered. And when will that be? When He comes, for whose coming we look with joyful expectation! The Lord blesses you for Christ’s sake! Amen.”—1902, Sermon #2788

“If you were to get quite alone, as our Savior was in the wilderness, with nothing but the wild beasts round about you, you could not shut out the devil even then! Forty days He had for meditation, prayer and fasting, yet there was the devil waiting to assail Him again and again! So I repeat that not even solitude, if the lonely hours were spent in prayer, fasting and watching, could secure us immunity from temptation—it must and will attack us.”—1900, Sermon #2694

“If God works in me to will and to do of His good pleasure, then the natural result is that I must work out what He has worked in.”—1898, Sermon #2559

“How graciously God is preserving many of us from the tongue of slander! It is a wonderful thing for any man to live much in public without being accused of some vile crime. And the woman who lives in the most retired position, the housewife who does nothing but look after her own children, will find somebody or other slandering her. You cannot always escape from the envenomed tongue of slander, be you what you will and where you will—and for God to keep the reputation of any Christian man unstained year after year is a subject for the greatest thankfulness.”—1901, Sermon #2715

“Jacob had gone below the surface and spied out the hidden meaning—and if you should ever be able to see more in a promise than is in it, it is in it! I seem to contradict myself by that paradox, yet it is true. If the Word of the Lord should, in its literal construction, not actually contain all that your faith can see in it, yet over every promise there is this Law of God written, ‘According to your faith, be it unto you.’ And you may rest assured that your faith will never outrun the promise of God! He will keep His promise, not only to the letter, but to the fullest possible meaning that you can impart to it!”—1903, Sermon #2817

“Flowers are not more frail, moths more fragile, bubbles more unsubstantial, or meteors more fleeting than man’s life! What transient things we are! I said, We are, but I mistake myself— we are not. We but begin to be and before we are, we are not! It is God alone who can say, ‘I AM.’None of the human race should dare to pronounce those words!”—1897, Sermon #3021 “God can bring men to Himself, so let us never despair of any!”—1896, Sermon #2453

“Revelation is a constant source of thanksgiving to those who understand it through the teaching of the Spirit who inspired it. God might never have spoken to us, or we might not have lived in a world wherein God had deigned to reveal His will. But that is not the case—‘He made known His ways unto Moses, His acts unto the children of Israel.’ [Psalm 103]”—1903, Sermon #2839

“A soul must get alone if it is really born again—it cannot live without private prayer.”—1896, Sermon #2480
“Yes, the Church of God has often been preserved by persecution—she was never purer, she was never holier, she was never truer and she never lived nearer to God and more like her Savior than when she was persecuted!”—1898, Sermon #2574

“I wish I could speak right to the very soul of some of you who do not know my Master—how I wish you did know Him! I cannot imagine what some of you have to comfort you which you can, for even a moment, compare with the bliss of knowing my Lord! I have seen your joys. I know something of what mirth can do and what relief laughter may be able to bring, but I also know that these things are of little use in the time of sickness, or when one is near death. It is just at such times that true joy in Christ becomes more deep, more sweet than ever! The less there is of the creature, the more room is there for the Creator. The more of suffering and sorrow we have to endure, the more of content and bliss can we enjoy. And oftentimes, when the body is weak and the head is aching, and the soul is faint, there is, as it were, a sweet swoon of Divine delight which comes over the spirit, which has more strength in it than strength, more joy in it than joy, and almost as much of Heaven in it as there is in Heaven! May you know this, for the sake of Him who has loved us and given Himself for us! God bless you all! Amen.”—1899, Sermon #2610

“It was pronounced as a curse upon one of old that he should die childless. Oh, I think that though the Christian is always blessed, it is half a curse to die spiritually childless. There are some of you who are childless tonight. You never were the means of the conversion of a soul in all your lives. You hardly remember having tried to win anyone for the Savior. You are good religious people so far as your outward conduct is concerned. You go to the House of God, but you never concern yourselves about winning souls for Jesus!”—1900, Sermon #2695

“Men who are to stand pre-eminent as God’s ministers must make up their minds, when they commence their ministry, that they will probably be accused of every crime in the calendar! I should not be greatly surprised if you were to be told that I had committed the grossest iniquity that ever was perpetrated and, my Brethren, should you hear such a thing, it will not so much distress my spirit as it might have done in years gone by, now that I know that the world’s tongue is always ready to speak the worst word it can against the man who does it the most harm. If I am to fight the Lord’s battles, I may leave Him to fight mine! If I defend His Character, He will defend mine! I shall not defend my own, that I know. It is always a bad thing for a man to be his own defender!”—1902, Sermon #2789
“Do you notice that there is not a single petition in the whole of this Psalm? [103] It is all praise! And herein it is like Heaven, where they cease to pray, but where they praise God without ceasing! We cannot rise to that height here, but let us both praise and pray when we can.”—1903, Sermon #2839