vol. 4 contd

“We shall all have contributed our quota to the reform of the Church when we are, ourselves, reformed. There can be no better way of promoting general holiness than by increasing in personal holiness. ‘Let us cleanse ourselves.’”—Volume 57, Sermon #3245

“O God, You have bid me open my mouth wide and you will fill it, but I do not open my mouth! You are ready to bestow great things upon me, but I am not ready to receive great things! I am straitened, but it is not in You—I am straitened in my own desires!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3083

“As workers, we are to be hidden away in the hand of God, or to quote the other figure, “in His quiver has He hid me”—we are to be unseen till He uses us! It is possible for us not to be known somewhat if the Lord uses us, but we may not aim at being noticed—on the contrary, if we are as much used as the very chief of the Apostles, we must truthfully add, “though I am nothing.” Our desire should be that Christ should be glorified, and that self should be concealed.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3267

“Perhaps some of us have been too severe upon certain people. We have said that they come to our place of worship out of mere curiosity. What if they do? It is well that they come at all, so let us not cut even the spider’s web that links a man in any sense with Christ—hat web may grow into a thread, that thread into a cord, that cord into a cable and there may yet be an unbreakable union between that man and Christ.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3192

“Victory must come to the Lamb that was slain! He shall come from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah. His apparel shall be red, like the garments of him that treads in the wine vat, for all His enemies shall be trodden down in His wrath! And Rome, the harlot church, the chief of all His foes, shall be hurled down like a millstone into the flood and sink to rise no more.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3180

“Now if in our blackest parts of sorrow there is brightness, there must be brightness elsewhere and, indeed, if we were half as inquisitive to find out that which will cheer us, as to discover that of which we may complain, we should soon have reasons of gratitude in the lowest and worst condition!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3164

“Faith is the uniting bond which binds together the Christ in whom we believe and those who believe in Him. If you are truly trusting in Christ, God looks upon you as a part of Christ’s Mystical Body and He is well-pleased with you for Christ’s sake.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3298

“Indeed, it strikes me that the wise man is rather delighted that things are as well as they are, than displeased that they are not any better, for he knows that the best of men are but men at the best. He knows from his own experience that men are very likely to go fast in the way of error and to travel very slowly in the way of right—and so when he does see a cause prosper, or a holy deed done, he is grateful to God for it!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3163

“If we had no idols in children, friends, wealth, ourselves, we would not need half the trials we have! Foolish loves make rods for foolish backs!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3272
“Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, always do what is right! Whatever may come of it, be out-and-out for Christ. Verily I say unto you—there is no man who shall be a loser by Christ at the last! Great shall be his gain who, for Christ’s sake, can give up even all that he has!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3078

“I thank God, also, that we are not mourning as those do who fiendishly regret that accidentally they have done a good thing. You remember how angry Pharaoh was with himself because he had let Israel go—I have known men who have never been penitent till they have, by mistake, done something good, or given too much away!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3325

“The special Truth of God which distinguishes us as a denomination is regarded by many with supreme contempt! Not long ago a professedly Christian minister said that he did not care a penny about Baptism! If he belongs to Christ, he will have to answer to his Master for that saying! But I could not utter such sentence as that without putting my very soul in peril! He who really loves His Lord will not trifle with the least jot or tittle of His Lord’s will.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3228

“I hope none of you are under the impression that, at the close of the present service, I am going to administer the Lord’s Supper. God forbid that I should ever venture to do such a thing as that! No, it is you, or we, who come to the Lord’s Table, to break bread and to drink of the cup—and we come together, not as a Church holding certain views, but we come simply as Christians to, “do this in remembrance” of the Savior who died for us!...“This do you as often as you drink it,” is no command addressed to an ecclesiastical organization concerning an ordinance to be administered by men who have the impertinence or impudence to call themselves priests, but a command to all Christians everywhere, on any day of the week, and in any place…to break a piece of bread in memory of their Lord’s broken body, and to drink of the cup in mutual loving memory of His precious blood poured out for them!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3099

“God and mammon cannot abide in the same house! Remember that you serve a jealous God and be very careful not to provoke Him to jealousy. Every idol must be cast down, or His comfortable Presence cannot be enjoyed.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3242

“My dear Friend, if you are determined to be damned, leave religion alone altogether—but do not pretend to be a child of God and yet live in sin. To profess to be an heir of Heaven and then to live as an heir of Hell is such detestable hypocrisy that I pray God that all of you may be preserved from ever falling into it! Where the Spirit of God dwells, there is sure to be purity!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3298

“Those who are really chosen of God hear and heed the voice of Christ but those who are not Christ’s chosen ones will not heed His discourse, but will listen to the many voices which attract the ears and the hearts of sinful men. The elect of God are known by this mark, that they hear the voice of Christ! Just as you can find out in a heap of ashes, whether there are any pieces of steel there by simply thrusting in a magnet, so can you find out God’s chosen people by the mighty magnet of Christ’s voice! ”—Volume 56, Sermon #3190

“There is nothing so terrible to look upon as injured love. Fiercer than a lion leaping upon its prey is love when once it is incensed. Oil flows smoothly, but it burns furiously—and when the love of Jesus has been finally rejected—then the sight of Him whose head was once crowned with thorns will be more terrifying than anything else to the eyes of those who have rejected Him.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3198

“There are some persons who seem to have been reared on vinegar—who wherever they go, see some defeat—and where this cannot be discovered will insinuate, ‘Ah, well, but we do not know what they do in secret.’ Or, ‘we do not know their motives.’ But those who love one another can see much to rejoice in everywhere.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3272

“Do not forget what you have been told about study and culture, but remember at the same time that the heart has more power in pastoral work than the head. In this ministry, a humble, godly, ill-educated man with a great, warm, heart will be blessed far more than the large-headed man whose heart is a little diamond of rock-ice which could not be discovered without a microscope even if he were dissected!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3211

“Love is one of the most jealous things in the universe. ‘God is a jealous God,’ because ‘God is Love.’”—Volume 56, Sermon #3228

“Oh, for more consecration! We are, most of us, up to our ankles in our religion—very few of us are up to our knees. But oh, for the man that swims in it, who has got off the earth altogether and now swims in consecration, living wholly unto Him who loved him and gave Himself for him!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3185

“I believe that the religion of Jesus Christ is so certain a truth to that man who has believed it, that it is so verified to his inner consciousness, and so interweaves itself with his entire being that no proposition of Euclid could ever be more demonstrable, or more absolutely conclusive.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3299
“If you have to mourn an absent God, seek to know the reason why He has withdrawn Himself from you—and repent of the sin that has separated you from Him.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3242

“I have always found that the meaning of a text can be better learned by prayer than in any other way. Of course we must consult lexicons and commentaries to see the literal meaning of the words and their relation to one another—but when we have done all that, we shall still find that our greatest help will come from prayer!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3178

“Many Christians appear to hold their religion as a pious fiction—regarding the promises of God as pretty things for sentimentalism to play with—and His Providence as a poetical idea. We must get out of that evil fashion and make God to be the greatest factor in our daily calculations—the chief force and fact of our lives! We must each one boldly act on the conviction that ‘it shall be even as He has told me.’”—Volume 55, Sermon #3145

“If in the winter you complain of the cold, get to the plow and you will soon glow with warmth! But sit down to moan and complain and blow on your blue fingers, you shall feel the cold more and more! Holy activity is the mother of holy joy!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3272

“I have been in a foreign land where there was no congregation to meet for public worship, but the two or three Believers who were there have always broken bread together each Sunday, and it has been to us quite a full service, most strengthening to the soul, when we have gathered around the Table of our Lord to do “this” in remembrance of Him!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3130

“Till we see Christ’s face in Glory and are perfect through His perfections, the Law will be far above us and will continue to condemn us for our shortcomings. But the great reason why men do not comprehend the high spirituality of the Law, its exceeding breadth and wondrous severity, is because they are blind.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3117

“ Adoptiongives us the privilegesof the children of God. Regenerationgives us the Nature of the children of God. Adoption admits us into the Divine family. Regeneration makes us akin to the Divine Father—it creates us anew in Christ Jesus and puts into us a spark from the eternal Spirit, Himself, so that we become spiritual beings. Before regeneration, we are only body and soul—but when we are born-again, born from above—we become body, soul and spirit. Being born of the Spirit, we understand spiritual things and have spiritual perceptions which we never possessed before.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3198

“Awakened souls mourn for Jesus as one that is in bitterness for his first-born. You can never stand at the altar and see Jesus bleed without your own heart bleeding if, indeed, the life of God is in you! Can any but a heart of me stone unmoved at the sight of Calvary? Blessed are they who amidst their joy for pardoned guilt wash the pierced feet of Jesus with tears of love and grief!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3325

“But let me tell you, if you believe in Christ you are one of His elect! And it is because He elected you that you come to believe in Him—it is because He chose you that you are led to desire Him and made to accept Him! Let not that Doctrine ever terrify you, or provoke your distrust, for if you rightly understand the Revelation, it is rather a finger beckoning to Christ than a specter that should intimidate you, or drive you away from Him!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3299

“When the Lord descends from Heaven, it will be time enough for us to talk of what He will then do—but till He comes, let us continue to gather the souls He gives us. We are not in such great need of conferences about how to win souls as of men who will do it. I vote for less talk and more work! We cannot have too much prayer, but we certainly need more effort.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3149

“There are three classes of blind people—the physically blind, the mentally blind and the spiritually blind. In illustration, I would take you to the London Road and there you will find these three orders of blind people. There is the school for the blind, where you will find the physically blind. Just before you is the Roman Catholic Cathedral—there you will find the spiritually blind. And further on is the Bethlehem Hospital, commonly called Bedlam, where you will find the mentally blind. These are, then, the three divisions—the naturally, or physically blind; the mentally blind and the spiritually blind.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3139

“There would be no hope of our ever getting to Heaven if we had to depend upon our own efforts, or our own merits, or anything of our own—our comfort arises from the fact that the Covenant is made on our behalf by our great Representative and Redeemer, who will Himself see that all that is guaranteed to us in the Covenant is fulfilled in due season!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3242

“We, too, meet with many who can talk glibly enough of their miseries, but who are silent concerning their mercies! I daresay some of you know old Mrs. Complaint. If you ever go to see her, the moment you sit down she beams to tell you how she has been tormented all the week with rheumatism and then she says troubles never come alone, for that son of hers gives her constant anxiety, and her neighbors are continually slandering her—and so on, and so on.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3214
“If it is written on all your hearts by the Holy Spirit, you will not need any other sermon than this Divine text—‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believes on Me has everlasting life.’”—Volume 56, Sermon #3192

“Is a Christian to be afraid of man and conceal his principles for fear he should be ridiculed? God forbid! Leave shame for those who have no religion, or have a religion which is of no value! Let us be true witnesses for Christ in life and death, worthy of the ancestors that went before us and mindful of the eyes which rest upon us.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3165

“For your own sake, and for the sake of those whom you would bless, you must see to it that sitting at the Savior’s feet is not neglected, even though it is under the specious pretext of waiting upon Him. The first thing for our soul’s health, the first thing for His Glory and the first thing for our own usefulness is to keep ourselves in perpetual communion with the Lord Jesus—and to see that the vital spirituality of our religion is maintained over and above everything else in the world!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3163

“It is said that there is a lack of love in certain churches that profess to be Christian. Well, perhaps there is. I am not going to be an accuser of the brethren in that respect, but I believe there is a great deal more love existing among Christians than many persons imagine. Possibly, those who say there is a lack of love in our midst judge by the state of their own hearts, while those who really love the saints find that the saints also love them.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3300

“The builder uses many poles that are not part of the permanent building, but as soon as the house is up, down goes the scaffolding. So God may permit us to be scaffolding for His Church, and when that Church is completed, He may take us down and we may be consumed in the fire of Hell. Oh, may the Lord grant that this may never be so with any one of us! Deacons and Elders of churches, the same may be said of you! If bearing the vessels of the Lord you are not clean, have not been washed in the great laver of the Savior’s Atonement, remember that this bearing this Lord’s vessels will not save you! Just as the carrying of bread and meat by the ravens did not put them in the list of clean birds, but left them still unclean.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3264

“Our duty is not to judge whether such-and-such a course will be profitable or beneficial, but to consider whether such-and-such a course is in accordance with the Word of the Lord!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3228
“People are not made to grow in Grace as plants grow, of which it is said, ‘They grow you know not how.’ The Christian is developed by actively seeking growth, by earnestly striving after holiness and resolutely endeavoring to obtain it.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3245
“That man is worthy of being called a man who dares to do right whatever others may do or say.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3090

“I think it is conclusively proven that Jesus died of a broken heart. The most careful investigation of the symptoms preceding His death appears to lead to that conclusion. He could say, with an emphasis that was not possible even with David, “Reproach has broken My heart and I am full of heaviness.” The broken-hearted Savior is the Healer of broken-hearted sinners!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3104

“There is a day coming when all Christ’s sheep shall pass again under the hand of Him that counts them—and in that day, not one of the whole redeemed flock shall be missing! As the long roll of God’s ransomed family is called, it shall be asked, ‘Is Little-Faith here?’ And he will answer to his name not at all in the trembling way in which he used to speak when he was upon earth. When it is asked, ‘Is Miss Much-Afraid here?’ she will reply, in jubilant tones, ‘Glory be to God, I am here!’ No matter how weak and feeble you may be, if you are a child of God, you shall certainly be there and the inheritance shall assuredly be yours!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3198

“We cannot help feeling that blindness has seized the church of Rome when she boasts of the commission to feed Christ’s sheep having been given to the Apostle Peter, when, with half an eye anyone can see that our Lord addressed these words to Peter because at that time he was the least of the twelve! He had denied his Master, The others had not and, therefore, he was the one concerning whose Apostleship distrust was most likely to arise!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3211

“Oh, Friends, if the frost of sin rules in a Church, every tender flower is injured and nothing flourishes! Love is a sensitive plant and if it is touched by the finger of sin, it will show it. The lilies of Love’s Paradise cannot bloom amid the smoke and dust of unholiness! ”—Volume 58, Sermon #3301

“Certain personsdream that God is their salvation! Go to bed and dream again, and dream fifty times, and when you have dreamed the same thing fifty times, there can and will be nothing but dreaming in it after all! You who build on dreams had better mind what you are doing!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3137

“Dear Friends, that sword was so keen and piercing that it cut Him to the very soul. I talk of these great Truths of God very simply, for I do not think there is any occasion here for using flowers of speech. But if we were as we ought to be, we should be very deeply affected at the thought that the Son of Man most perfect, and the Son of God most glorious, should have the sword of Divine Vengeance against sin plucked out of its scabbard that it might be used upon Him!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3088

“Perhaps our faith has got to be very low. ‘O Lord, will You destroy my little faith? I know there is sin in it. To be so unbelieving as I am is no little crime, but Lord, I thank You that I have anyfaith. It is weak and trembling, but it is faith of Your own giving! Oh, break not the poor leaf that is driven to and fro!’”—Volume 57, Sermon #3269

“Scripture promises have, all of them, a message to all Believers—and if you believe in Jesus Christ—what God has said to other Believers of old He says this day to you!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3150

“Oh, if the Lord would but convert some of the cardinals and priests of the Church of Rome—and some of the great infidel philosophers of the present day, and some of the licentious ‘nobility,’ as they are called—what high honor would be brought to the name of Jesus Christ!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3111

“Albeit sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit, yet it is equally true and this we must always bear in mind, that the Holy Spirit makes us active agents in our own sanctification!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3245

“If today you have indulged an unholy temper, if you have given way to covetousness, if you have in any way transgressed against the Lord, you will not feel that warmth of love towards Jesus Christ which you felt yesterday! Your life will have lost much of its beauty and its sweetness. Cry to God that He would give it back to you! Do not rest satisfied until it is perfectly restored.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3301

“Comfort God’s people and labor at the same time to win sinners to Jesus—and the love of your heart shall bring untold blessings into your own bosom! Happiness is contagious and the cheerfulness of your piety will be so attractive that the careless and indifferent will be allured to the ways of piety. Do not run about with ill news, but make your communications joyous by mixing up the glad tidings of salvation with your cheerful daily talk!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3145

“In the Presence of the Royal Intercessor who pleads for us day and night, one would think there would be some interest excited! But no, the multitude warm their hands and think nothing of Him. In His Presence, they forget His redeeming love, neglect His great salvation and remain without God and without Christ. This is terrible! As I see the worldling merely caring for his personal comfort while Christ is in Glory, I marvel, first, at the insolence of the sinner and, secondly, at the Infinite Patience of the Savior!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3181

“Let us not forget that our souls need to be fedand this I say to some of you who do but little for the Lord Jesus, and may be said neither to work nor to eat. Look at the mass of our Christian people, what do they do? Monday morning early at business and on till Saturday evening late at business! What is their reading? The daily paper! I condemn it not, but of what use is this to their souls? ”—Volume 56, Sermon #3199

“We speak with bated breath when we say that to some men, a painful break-down has been the making of them. They became from that time, free from their former self-esteem and were as cleansed and emptied vessels, fit for the Master’s use! A deep sense of our weakness and a humbling consciousness of unworthiness form a considerable part of our qualification for dealing with Christ’s sheep. Because you are a sinner, you will deal lovingly with sinners. Because you know what backsliding means, you will be very gentle and forbearing with backsliders.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3211

“A man who is really saved by Grace does not need to be told that He is under solemn obligations to serve Christ—the new life within him tells him that. Instead of regarding it as a burden, he gladly surrenders himself—body, soul and spirit, to the Lord who has redeemed him, reckoning this to be his reasonable service.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3229

“Do you not feel, beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ, whenever you meet a Believer in Jesus, and begin to talk of the things that belong to His Kingdom, you have fellowship with him in heart and spirit even though you had never seen him before? When we talk of Jesus, our love to one another soon begins to flow! The true basis of our communion with one another is that we are there in Christ Jesus—and that union manifests itself in love to all who are, as our text puts it, ‘brethren beloved of the Lord.’”—Volume 58, Sermon #3300

“If you are over a 100 years old, yet, as you are a creature, I have to preach the Gospel to you and the Gospel is, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved!’ So, if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, however great your age may be, or however many times you may have refused to believe on Him, there is no doubt about God’s willingness and power to still receive, pardon and accept you!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3262

“Brothers and Sisters, it is so sweet to know that our best things are ahead. O Sinner, you are leaving your best things behind and you are going to your worst things! But the Christian is going to his best things. His turn is coming. He will have the best of it before long, for the shadows will flee away! No longer shall he be vexed, and grieved, and troubled, but he shall be eternally in the light, for the shadowsshall flee away!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3185
“There is one consideration which has done me a deal of good and it is this—that the Lord Jesus got on very well before we were born, and it is very likely that He will get on exceedinglywell when we are dead.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3163

“O Christian, you may very well doubt your right to that name unless all sin is obnoxious to you! You have no right to say, ‘I will give up pride and vanity,’ if you excuse yourself for being covetous. If covetousness is the leak in your vessel, it will sink it quite as surely as pride!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3245

“When I hear Brothers and Sisters say how amazing it is that God has heard prayer, I think it far more amazing that they should talk so, for surely it is not surprising that God should keep His Word! No, these are the commonplace of genuine Christianity—a prayer-giving God working in the heart—and a prayer-answering God working both in Providence and in Grace. Brothers and Sisters, never be slow to bear your testimony to a prayer-hearing God.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3165

“I will let no man or woman in this congregation take a place before me in obligation to the Most High! Brothers and Sisters, we are all debtors, but I count myself most of all a debtor! I boast that I have nothing to boast of! I would desire to lie the lowest and to take the meanest place, for I owe most of all to the Grace of God!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3131

“We hear a great deal about the universal fatherhood of God, but it is all nonsense! There is no Scripture for it whatever. Those only are the children of God who are ‘the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.’”—Volume 56, Sermon #3194

“Providence may be seen as the finger of God, not merely in those events which shake nations and are duly emblazoned on the page of history, but in little incidents of common life—yes, in the motion of a grain of dust, the trembling of a dew-drop, the flight of a swallow or the leaping of a fish!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3075

“There is a straight line from my heart to the heart of God—and so there is from your heart, my Brother or my Sister in Christ—so our Father’s heart is our common meeting place.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3300

“The Doctrine of Election is not one about which you need trouble yourself just now. Begin to read your Bible and the Gospel according to Matthew, and see there how you are bid to repent and invited to come to Christ. When you have done that, you can go on to the Epistles and read about election and all the other Doctrines of Grace, but your first business is to repent of sin and to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3262

“I would like—oh, that I might realize it—to ‘follow the Lamb wherever He goes.’ Not to say, ‘This is not essential, and that might be dispensed with,’ but, like the Master, Himself, to say, ‘Thus it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness.’”—Volume 54, Sermon #3102

“Through His Sovereign Grace, He loves many of the poor, darkened sons of men. Blind men are not chosen for soldiers except in the army of God, but in that army He enlists many blind warriors and makes them the best of His soldiers! Yes, blind saints, God loves you and will not exclude you from Heaven!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3139

“When will God’s people perceive that it is not enough to be born-again, but that the life then received must be nourished daily with the Bread of Heaven. It is not enough to be spiritually alive—our life, to be vigorous—must be familiar with its Source. Every Christian should know that he needs times for supplying his soul with the meat which endures unto life eternal. As the body needs its mealtimes, so must you sit down to your heavenly Father’s table until He has satisfied your mouth with good things and renewed your strength like the eagle’s. The more intensely earnest we are in feeding upon the Word of God, the better!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3199

“We may lead blind men to Jesus, but we cannot open their eyes. We can, in a measure, indicate to them what spiritual sight is and we may explain to them what their own sad condition is—but we cannot open their eyes! Neither can anyone but God alone open their eyes.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3117

“God has so linked you with His Son that He has made you also to have a life which is eternal and which can never die. Let all things else perish and the pillars of the universe crumble and decay, and the whole visible creation fall with thunderous crash, yet you, the Beloved of the Lord, shall dwell safely with Him!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3246

“There are certain sacred passwords that are common to all the saints and I will defy the hypocrite or the worldling to pronounce them aright—but if he should be able to utter them with his lips—he can never really know their meaning in his heart.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3300
“If you wish to save yourselves, do it, but God will have no share in the work under such conditions. If He is to save you, He must be Alpha and

Omega—He must have all the praise because He gives all the power.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3262
“I believe that the Peter of the Epistles grew out of the Peter of the Sea of Tiberias and the Peter of the denial, by means of the Grace given him, while feeding the flock of God. Peter was a bigoted, narrow-minded Jew—he could not readily believe that any others beyond the chosen nation were to be saved! But when he mixed with mankind and was sent to the house of Cornelius, his heart grew larger, although it was not as large as it should have been till Paul boldly withstood him to his face because he was to be blamed! “Feed My sheep” is, therefore, Beloved, a commission intended for your own good as well as theirs.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3211

“It is not remarkable that a minister gets skeptical if he never sees conversions. The proof of the Gospel lies in what it does. If it does not save men from sinning, if it does not lift up the fallen, if it does not give light and joy to the despairing, then surely it lacks the evidences of its Divine mission—for even Jesus Christ, Himself, gave to His own mission this as the proof—‘The deaf hear, the blind see, the lepers are cleansed, the poor have the Gospel preached to them.’ If these things are not true now, we may doubt whether the Gospel which we preach is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But we can bear witness and, oh, how joyfully we do it—that the Gospel has not lost its power!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3165

“Let a man once know what sin really is and he needs nothing else to make him thoroughly unhappy.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3229
“Oh, that every Christian enterprise were commenced with prayer, continued with prayer and crowned with prayer! Then might we, also, expect to see it crowned with God’s blessing!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3178

“So, if our fretting over God’s work would improve it, Brothers and Sisters, let us fret! Let us fret together in harmony! But if it really will not, and if after having done all we can in prayer and holy work, the thing does not go on quite as well as we could wish it, then let us say, ‘My Master, let it be according to Your will, and if it is according to Your mind, it is sure to be according to my mind, or if not, Lord, give me a better mind.’”—Volume 55, Sermon #3163

“And, higher still, there is a Divine nourishment in Communion when the soul ascends to Jesus Christ and feeds on the Lord, Himself, when the Incarnate God becomes the soul’s Bread and the bleeding Savior in His substitutionary Sacrifice, becomes the heart’s wine. Feed on Him, O Beloved, you who have lately come to Him! Eat, yes, drink abundantly, O Beloved! May the Lord give you a mighty hunger after His Word, after Himself and then lead you by the still waters, and make you to lie down in green pastures!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3199

“If we could go through the wards of Bethlehem Hospital, not far away from us, and see the many forms of madness represented, I think each one of us would be moved to say, ‘My God, I thank You that, however poor or sick I am, You have preserved me from such mental affliction as many have to bear.’”—Volume 57, Sermon #3244

“If my sermons kept people from reading the Bible for themselves, I would like to see the whole stock in a blaze and burned to ashes! But if they serve as finger-posts, pointing to the Scriptures and saying, ‘Read this, and this, and this,’ then I am thankful to have printed them. But if they keep you from your Bibles, burn them, burn them, burn them! Do not let them overlay the Scriptures, but lie beneath them, for that is their proper place. Keep you first to God’s revealed Word.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3272

“One unrepented sin. One sin indulged in and delighted in will as effectually stop the gates of Heaven against your soul as if you were living in fornication, adultery, or murder! Your heart must hate all sin and your heart must love all holiness.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3073
“Nobody has ever had his hunger satisfied by hearing a discourse about bread! It is bread itself that is needed to feed the hungry, so keep on, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, giving the Bread of Life to starving souls!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3127

“You cannot understand your Lord till you have wept over your congregations! You will understand Him then, as you see Him weeping over Jerusalem. If you feel towards your hearers that you could die to save their souls, you will then have fellowship with the death of your Lord. In grief over backsliders and joy over penitents you will commune with the Redeemer in the most practical manner.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3211

“In former days our fathers counted it a small thing to go to prison for a Doctrine, or to be burnt to death for a testimony! Look at the multitudes in Holland who were drowned, or who were tied to ladders and roasted to death for nothing but their conviction that Believers should be baptized!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3301

“Every time we stay from a labor because we covet ease, every time we are impatient at the suffering which the Cross involves, every time we “make provision for the flesh, to obey the lusts thereof,” every time we seek ease where He toiled, honor where He was put to shame and luxury where He endured an ignominious death, we are like Peter among the ribald throng, warming our hands at the fire while our Lord is buffeted and shamefully entreated!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3181
“The answer to some prayers would be a dire calamity! Some pray for riches, and they get it—but they also get leanness in their soul. Some ask for earthly honors and success, and get them, but with them they also get leanness in their soul. And if a man is lean in his soul, it is not much good being fat anywhere else.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3193

“Oh, if you are sick of the world, come to my Master! May God the Holy Spirit sanctify this sickness and bring you to Jesus because you have nowhere else to go. Jesus will not spurn even the devil’s castaways! The sweepings of humanity who have gone so far that their friends reject them, Jesus Christ will accept and bless!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3272

“Beloved, he who receives Christ both as Prince and Savior has the blessed and happy experience of resigning his own will and subjecting all the passions of his soul to the sacred control of his glorious Prince and, at the same time he daily realizes in his soul the cleansing power of the precious blood of Jesus and so, as Mary sang, his spirit rejoices in God his Savior.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3229

“Perhaps I am addressing members of a bereaved Church. You have lost a man of God who went in and out among you as Moses did among the children of Israel in the wilderness—and you are asking, ‘Where is his successor to come from?’ Perhaps there is a Joshua within sight, but you are half afraid as to whether he will have the power needed to carry on the great work. Trust that the God who was with Moses will also be with Joshua and take this promise home to your own heart—and say to each of your fellow members in the sorrowing Church that the Lord has said, ‘I will not fail you, nor forsake you.’”—Volume 55, Sermon #3150

“We do not pray as if we believed. Believing prayer is a grasping and a wrestling, but ours is a mere puffing and blowing, a little breathing—not much more. God is true and we pray to Him as if He were false. He means what He says, and we treat His Word as if it were spoken in jest. The master-fault of our prayer is lack of faith.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3083

“Dear and blessed was the woman who bore us, nursed us and cared for us as no one else could have done! Yet this mortal life of ours would have been a curse to us if Jesus had not come to redeem us from eternal death and shown us a greater love even than our mother’s!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3092

“There are certain experiences that cannot be learned without the teaching of the Holy Spirit. There is a certain way of speaking about Christ that can never be acquired as a parrot learns to talk. There is a certain ring which God gives to His gold which is never bestowed upon baser metal—and there is a certain something about a true child of God which enables him to recognize others of the same family and which also enables them to recognize him so that, when they come together, their hearts leap up at the thought that they are ‘brethren beloved of the Lord.’”—Volume 58, Sermon #3300

“Oh, may we always be kept at peace! I bless God for the love that has reigned among us. May it continue and may it deepen! Beloved Friends, when we fall out with one another, we shall find that the Spirit of God has fallen out with us! We cannot expect to see young converts among us at all, much less can we hope to see them advance in Divine Grace, if we indulge a party spirit, or a controversial spirit within the fold. All Believers should endeavor to maintain a sacred quiet within the Church for the sake of the little ones.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3199

“Paul was Inspired when he wrote to the Philippians, ‘Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice.’ And I believe it is the cheerful Christian, and especially the Christian who can be happy in sickness, patient under adversity and joyous even in the hour of death, who will win fresh adherents for the Lord Jesus Christ!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3214

“How thankful we all ought to be that we are not in prison! Does it seem improbable that such good people as we are could ever be numbered among the law-breakers of the land? You know how Hazael said to Elisha, ‘Is your servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?’ Yet he did all that the Prophet foretold—and but for the restraining Grace of God, you and I, dear Friends, might have been suffering the agony and remorse that many are tonight enduring in the prisons of this and other lands!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3244

“If such a thing were possible, I cannot conceive of a more lamentable condition than for a man to have the happiness of salvation without the holiness of it! Happily, it is not possible. If you could be saved from the consequences of sin, but not from the sin itself, and its power and pollution, it would be no blessing to you. But the salvation to which God has from the beginning chosen you is inseparably linked with the cleansing and sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, who operates within you through the instrumentality of faith.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3300

“The world looks on a man under scoffing and ridicule to observe how he behaves. And if he conducts himself like a Christian, it feels his power and respects his consistency. Give way a little, and you will have to give way more—and be despised! But adherence to principle commands respect. Put your foot down! Stand firmly where God would have you stand, and your testimony will gather value from the very ridicule which is poured upon it.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3165
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, if you have not something more than what Nature gave you, you will perish! If you are not something higher than the best morality, the most exact discipline and the most consistent moral behavior can make you, you will never enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. ‘You must be born-again!’”—Volume 57, Sermon #3275

“I think that one of the grandest passages in the whole Word of God is Psalm 147:3, 4—‘He heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds. He counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by their names.’ Does it not seem to be a great stoop from marshalling the stars to bending down over poor broken hearts and closing up their wounds?”—Volume 54, Sermon #3104

“Christ Crucified is the foundation of all our hopes, for Christ could not have risen from the dead if He had not first died. Of what use would His plea be if He had not His blood to offer? Do not be led astray even by ideas about the Second Advent if they depreciate the death of Christ! Rejoice in Christ’s Second Coming and look and long for it, but remember that the basis of our hope lies in Christ Crucified. ‘We preach Christ Crucified’ and as we have preached so have you believed, so let none turn you away from your confidence in Christ Jesus suffering in the sinner’s place.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3099

“I believe that we make more real advance in the Divine Life in an hour of prayer than we do in a month of hearing sermons. I do not mean that we are to neglect the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is, but I am sure that without the praying, the hearing is of little worth!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3178

“If we ever get upon the mountain summit and bask our foreheads in the sunlight of fellowship with God, we stand there only by faith! It is because our faith is strong and in active exercise that we realize the things not seen as yet, and behold the God whom mortal eyes cannot gaze upon!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3265

“It is easy to have a faith that acts backwards, but a faith that will act forwards—a faith for the present and for the future is the true faith—and the faith that you need now.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3215

“The way to assurance is through the door ofsimplefaith. The Gospel is, ‘He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.’ To believe is to trust Christ. Now, if I know that I trust Christ and that I have, in obedience to His command, been baptized, then God says I shall be saved and is not that enough for me? Ought it not to be, at any rate? If God says it, it must be true!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3137

“I know that however many may preach the Gospel better than I do, there is no one who can preach a better Gospel than the one I preach, for it is that Gospel which ‘is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes.’ ‘Our Gospel’ is the best of gospels, the richest of gospels, it cannot be excelled, it cannot be equaled! In fact, it is the only Gospel that is worthy of the name!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3300

“As for any affliction that you ever can have to endure on earth, it is not merely light, it is absolutely unworthy of mention in comparison with the eternal woe that is the portion of the lost! Be thankful that, up to the present moment, this has not been your portion—and lest it should be—flee at once for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before you in the Gospel!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3244

“There are preachers who preach mere morality. I trust their number is smaller than it used to be, but there are still too many professedly Christian ministers who are like that notable man who said that he preached morality till there was no morality left in the place. Yet afterwards, when he imitated Paul and preached Christ crucified, he soon found that vice hid her dishonored head and that all the Graces and virtues flourished under the shadow of the Cross! So have we found it and, therefore, whoever may preach anything else, we shall still stick to the old-fashioned theme that Paul preached—that old, old story which the seeker after novelties condemns as stale, but which, to the man who needs eternal life and longs for something that will satisfy his conscience and satiate his heart—has a freshness and charm which the lapse of years only intensifies, but does not remove!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3229

“We are accustomed to sing to Him as pleading before the Eternal Throne, but we must forever banish from our minds all idea of His needing to plead because God is unwilling to hear! No, what the Son desires, the Father desires—that which He seeks at the Divine Throne is flowing from that Throne—but His intercession it not the cause of it, but the channel through which it comes to us!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3329

“John Bunyan says if you send a servant off for the doctor and you tell him to go on horseback as fast as ever he can—and there is but a very sorry nag in the stable, so the man uses the spur and the whip, and tugs at the bridle, but cannot make the horse go—you see that the man would go if he could, and so you do not blame him. So, he says, our poor flesh is that sorry nag, but the spirit is willing, and Jesus Christ looks on us and says—‘Truly the flesh is weak, he would go if he could.’ And so He takes the will for the deed and does not blame us, but covers our faults in the mantle of His love.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3163
“There are people about who seem to be cut on the cross and the only use they are in this world seems to be to raise irritating questions. They and the mosquitoes were created by Infinite Wisdom, but I have never been able to discover the particular blessing which either of them confer upon us!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3199

“The world is against the true faith. The faith of God’s elect is not a flower that men delight to admire and praise—it is a thing which, wherever they see it, they count as a speckled bird and they are sure to be against it! If you have faith in God, remember that this is not the world of faith, but the world of unbelief—and the darkness that is in the world will try to quench your Light!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3265

“Oh, hearts that are to glow forever with delight in the Presence of the Reigning One, who once was crucified, what ails you if you grow cold when you most need His love and are receiving most from Him? I cannot bear it that we should love Jesus so little! It seems to me horrible! Not to have your heart all on fire for Christ Jesus is immoral! Let us love Him to the utmost! Let us ask Him to give us larger hearts and to fire them with the same love that is in His own, that we may love Him to the utmost possibilities of affection!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3301

“It is a very familiar thing for us who are sitting here to hear the Gospel, but will you just carry your minds back some two or three thousand years to the period when this Psalm was written? What was then known concerning salvation was known almost exclusively by the Jews. Here and there, a proselyte was led into the bonds of the Covenant, but for the most part, the whole world lay in heathen darkness. Where there was the seal of circumcision, there were the oracles of God—but as for the sinners of the Gentiles, they knew nothing whatever concerning the Truth of God.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3086

“An aged Christian who has little or nothing to say for his Master is a sad drawback to young beginners. I very greatly deprecate the example of some who have long been professors, but who still remain babes in Christ, if they are in Christ at all. It is a great pity to see the head white with the sunlight of Heaven, and yet so little of Heaven in the daily conversation. Rise up, you grave and reverend sires, and declare the faithfulness of our God!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3165

“I think this must have been a sort of proverb or common saying among the early Christians, ‘The Lord has said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you,’ and that it was one of the things that they constantly said, the one to the other. I wish that we had more such holy proverbs current among us nowadays—that our common sayings were more worth saying than they often are, and that our proverbial philosophy were more truly Christian philosophy!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3150

“We may well say that no affliction weighs more than a gnat resting upon an elephant when the Lord’s upholding Grace is sweetly manifested to our soul in times of perplexity, anxiety and pain. It is just then that Jesus often so graciously reveals Himself to us that we even come to love the cross that brings Him specially near to us.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3244

“I am always afraid of a dry-eyed repentance and, mark you, if forgiveness should be granted to those who were not sorry for their sin, such forgiveness would tend to aid and abet sin—and would be no better than the Romish heresy that when you have sinned, all you have to do is to confess it to a priest, pay a certain sum of money according to the regular Roman tariff and start over again on your career of evil. God forbid that we should ever fall into that snare of the devil!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3229

“In the Infallible Truth of God, which has been revealed by the Holy Spirit, there is no possibility of progress or advance! He has been pleased to reveal the whole Truth, so there is nothing more to be revealed! We can continually search further and deeper into the Truth that has been revealed, and so may be enabled, by the help of the Spirit of God, to speak better concerning it, but better Truth we never shall have and “another Gospel” we never will declare! We should certainly be “accursed” if we did, for there is but one Gospel—and to that Gospel we shall remain steadfast, God helping us—even to the end.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3127

“In our peace of soul, if God has given it to us by lot and by inheritance, some thorns and thistles must and will spring up in this present world.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3265

“I have preached in places whose spiritual temperature was that of an icehouse and, preach as hard as I could, nothing could possibly come of it, for my words fell to the ground like lumps of ice! Colder and colder Churches become till, at last, the great God who breaks up icebergs in due season, destroys a Church and its place knows it no more.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3301

“I charge you, Brothers and Sisters, remember that if you cannot be admitted into ‘society’ without concealing your principles, you are far better off without society! Has not our Lord called us to go outside the camp? Are we not warned against being conformed to this world? Deny yourselves the warm place around society’s charcoal brazier, for its sulfurous vapor will do you more harm than the cold!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3181
“Wonderful is the capacity of faith, but a hundred times more wonderful is the capacity of unbelief. The most credulous persons in the world are unbelievers. He who refuses to swallow the gnat of Scriptural difficulty, usually swallows camels in large quantities of other difficulties of all sorts!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3112

“Let your brightest thoughts, Beloved, always be those that concern your Lord! And above all the joys of earth let this joy rise to the very zenith—that your heavenly Father thinks of you!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3246

“The medicine not received may be very potent, but the man cannot know its value—and the promise of God may be very sweet and precious, but it cannot comfort you unless it is applied. Do ask, then, for Grace that you may believe while you are still under the cloud, black as it looks, that it will empty itself in blessed rain upon you.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3215

“Happy, happy child, whose earliest work is work for God, whose earliest hearing is hearing the voice of God, whose earliest breath is spent in the praise of God! God grant, of His infinite mercy, that our children may be such children, and He shall have the praise!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3082

“When I hear of one minister after another giving up the old-fashioned Gospel, [1866] do you know what I say to myself? I resolve that I will stick the closer to it! If the many cannot bear Calvinistic Doctrine, I will be more Calvinistic than ever! The more men do not like the Truths of God, the more they shall have it! Let this be our line of action. If men become more worldly, we will become more Puritanical. If professing Christians do not exhibit the spirit of Christ, we will ask our Lord to give us sevenfold of His spirit, that we may maintain His Truths!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3301

“He [God] taught us to desire when we neither willed nor ran, and so fulfilled the text, ‘it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy.’”—Volume 58, Sermon #3329

“That word, ‘blood,’ is one of the most solemn and most important in the whole of Scripture! ‘The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin,’ is one of the most weighty of all the Truths of Revelation—and he that speaks that Doctrine stammeringly, or who holds it without confidence, had better go to his bed—but never to his pulpit, for he cannot win souls! Let him repent of his iniquity, but never pretend to be a minister of Christ!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3275

“Now if you, dear Brother and Sister, want to shine before God and be among the illustrious elect who the Lord makes as stars in the Church’s history, pray for patience towards men and patience towards God. Pray for bright eyes to find out the light even in the darkness. Pray to always lean wholly upon God and keep yourself upon Him. You will glorify God in that way and you will be the means of bringing others to God. Distrustful preachers do not win souls. Moaning and repining Sunday school teachers will not bring children to Christ. ‘The joy of the Lord is our strength.’ The patience which makes us possess our souls gives us the fullness of the blessing of the Lord!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3164

“I am glad our friends do not universally call out in the Tabernacle, ‘Hallelujah,’ and, ‘Hosannah,’ and the like. But, for my part, when I am preaching in the open air in the country and our Methodist friends do so, it seems to stir my blood and I am glad of it. It is much better than having a sleepy congregation!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3199

“We are all somewhat blind. We have all, we must confess, an imperfect vision—except the “Pope” who claims to be infallible and, therefore, proves that He is more blind than the rest of us! There are some of us who feel our fallibility in point of judgment and who are obliged to acknowledge our ignorance and lack of clear mental perception.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3139

“True Bible readers and Bible searchers never find it wearisome. They like it least who know it least and they love it most who read it most.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3246
“We believe the Holy Spirit to be no mere influence, no inferior or secondary power of moral suasion, but to be absolutely Divine —a Divine Being exerting irresistible force upon the mental powers of man!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3215
“The rich should give that they may be rich and the poor that they may become rich—for those who give shall usually find that God returns it into their bosoms abundantly.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3275

“Trust in Jesus, for this is the vital sign by which we discern those who are chosen of the Father, regenerated by the Holy Spirit and redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus! If you truly believe in Jesus, you are born of God—you need not fear that you shall ever perish, but you may even now rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of Glory!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3302
“Some whom I have known have ventured very far upon very dangerous ground to win the affection of a chosen object. There is no wiser precept in Holy Scripture than that which commands Christians to marry “only in the Lord.” It never can conduce to take comfort of any Christian man or woman to be unequally yoked together with an unbeliever—you had far better remain in the cold of your bachelor or spinster life than warm your hands at the fire of unhallowed marriage.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3181

“It is a blessed thing to be driven to despair as to any ability of our own to do any good, for we never rely wholly on God’s power as long as we have any confidence in our own. While the preacher imagines that he can do something, he will do nothing. While teachers or parents entertain the belief that there is some innate power in themselves with which they can do God’s work, they are not on the right track, for God will not work through those who believe in their own self-sufficiency.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3117

“If ever a man ought to concentrate all his faculties and pray to be in the best mental order, it should be when he comes to study the Word of God upon matters which concern his noblest being.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3303
“If the Lord of Hosts is with us, what grounds can there be for fear? I know of no supposable dangers, no imaginable troubles, no conceivable difficulties through which, and out of which, and beyond which this text will not carry us, if by faith we grasp it, ‘He has said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you.’”—Volume 55, Sermon #3150

“It is an admirable plan to fix your thoughts upon some text of Scripture before you leave your bedroom in the morning—it will sweeten your meditation all the day.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3090

“So let us be thankful if God sends us a glowing and zealous minister, for even those who count it an affliction to have a minister, would be more afflicted if they had not a good one! But how evil it is when men get itching ears, when they need someone to be perpetually tickling them, giving them some pretty things, some fine pretentious intellectualism! In all congregations there is good to be done, except in a congregation having itching ears. From this may God deliver us!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3331

“If we want to bring up a godly family who shall be a seed to serve God when our heads are under the clods of the valley, let us seek to train them up in the fear of God by meeting together as a family for worship.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3103

“We hear a great deal, nowadays, about the liberty of ministers to preach what they like, but what about the liberty of the people? Are they not to be considered? Are churches made for ministers, or ministers made for churches? After the people have elected a man to be their pastor, and he changes his views, it is only common honesty that he should say so and no longer pretend to preach what he does not believe, or to belong to a church with which he is not sincerely in sympathy.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3200

“As we look back over our past experience, we see how precious our trials have been to us. Someone said, ‘Give me back my bed of languishing. Give me back the aches and pains that I suffered in that long trying illness if I may but have such enjoyment of my Master’s Presence as I had then.’”—Volume 57, Sermon #3246

“Suppose I do now hate some sin that I once loved or that I hate all sin? No credit is due to me, for that abhorrence of sin is what I ought always to have had! God had the right to claim from me the hatred of sin of every sort, but that hatred does not discharge the debt which I owe to God. I will go further than that and say that no one ever repents of sin so thoroughly as he does when he knows that it is forgiven.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3229

“An ordinary Christianity is not worth the picking up, but the true Christianity that wraps a man up and envelopes him as the bush was enveloped in the fire and was not consumed—that will make you happy—that will make the eyes to flash and the soul to beat high with a more than earth-born joy!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3275

“It is a bad thing for a man not to know a little of all sciences, but a man may go to Heaven well enough if he knows only the science of Christ Crucified. Not to know Jesus will shut you out of Heaven though you had all the degrees of all the universities in the world appended to your name! Ignorance of Him who is the Savior of sinners is ignorance of the remedy for your soul’s disease, ignorance of the key which unlocks Heaven’s gate, ignorance of Him who can kindle the lamp of life in the sepulchers of death! Oh, I pray you, if you have been hitherto ignorant of the Savior, be not satisfied till you know Him!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3085

“The God of Israel had given rules for the preservation of the Scriptures, but they had evidently fallen into disuse. It is expressly laid down in the Book of Deuteronomy that each king was to copy out the Book of the Law for himself. We have no evidence that any one of them did so.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3303

“We were told, the other day, that Calvinism is almost obsolete, but we do not mind what men say about it—we believe that it will yet see everything else obsolete! When modern culture has been blown away, like the thistledown from the side of the hill, the Gospel I have preached will stand like the eternal hills themselves, outliving every opposition, for God Himself has piled this Truth like a mighty mountain and it shall stand fast till Christ Himself shall come! Not a jot or tittle of it shall ever pass away.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3127

“When you have read the Bible through a score of times, you may have only walked over the surface then, or plowed, at most, the upper soil. If you take one passage and dig deep for the treasure that couches beneath, you will find it inexhaustible! This Book has in it a matchless fullness. It were as possible to measure space, or to grasp the infinite in the hollow of your hands, as to take the entire compass of Holy Scripture.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3215

“As I meditated upon this sad scene[the crucifixion]—while my eyes were streaming with tears on the Savior’s account, it seemed to me that the ribald crowd was unconsciously honoring Him, after all, because contempt from such people was true honor for Jesus. If they had applauded Him, He might have blushed at the disgrace of being praised by such miscreants! But when they despised and rejected Him, it brought Him true honor! Thus virtue received the homage of vice and the beauty of holiness was the more plainly manifested in contrast with the ugliness of sin!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3276

“He who hopes that what he says will be accepted by those who hear it, opens his ears to hear what God says to him. There will be no acceptance of what you say to others unless you accept what God says to you!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3246

“Nowadays, we do not so much need Bibles as Bible-readers. Are any of you in that condition—that you would not be without a Bible in your house—and yet you never read it? Do you treat this Book as a fetish? Do you reverence words which you do not care to read? Is there some kind of witchcraft about paper and binding in a certain form? Do you think it a very pious thing to put a big Bible under your arm and march to a place of worship with it, and yet never read it?”—Volume 58, Sermon #3303

“Oh, a great change would come over religious opinion in England if people were not led by that absurd idea that they ought to be just what their parents were! If we once could grow a race of men and women that would read the Scriptures for themselves, and judge of Doctrines for themselves, we would have grand times again!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3166

“It was because the Lord had made Ezekiel a watchman unto the house of Israel that he proclaimed his Master’s message with such power and unction—and it must be in a similar way that a minister must be to his people as the mouth of God!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3200

“He who simply believes in Jesus Christ must have some degree of assurance, for the simple act of reclining, recumbently resting upon Christ, if it is done truly and sincerely is, in its measure, assuring to the heart. At any rate, it is the milk that brings the cream. Faith is the milk and assurance is the cream! You must get your assurance from your faith—and if it is a simple faith which relies entirely upon Jesus Christ, it will, if not directly, yet very speedily, bring you some degree of assurance of your interest in Christ.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3137

“The faith that saves is a trusting faith, a reliant faith, a sacred recumbency, confidence and leaning upon the Lord Jesus Christ!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3112

“Some persons allege that the children of God may act on different principles, may believe different doctrines, may be the recipients of different kinds of Divine Grace and that their apprehensions of God and of Christ may be thoroughly diverse—we hold no such opinion! If there is not the vital principle in a man’s heart, teaching him the Truth of God as it is in Jesus, he does not belong to the one ‘Church of the living God.’ Thus, there is but one Church, however divided it may be.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3093

It is of no use to be acquainted with the Scriptures if you are not acquainted with God. You may read the Scriptures till you perish unless you see God in the glass of Scripture, for it is to Him that you must come. A personal Christ must have personal dealings with a personal sinner, or else there will be no personal salvation.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3303
“True love proves itself when it comes to something like self-denial, but how few of God’s servants ever reach to self-denial for Jesus? They could not remember, if they sat down, that they ever denied themselves a penny’s worth of anything to eat or drink, or denied themselves a pound’s worth of finery, or a comfort in their homes, or anything else for the sake of Christ! We should do better if we could get to feel that we love Christ so much that we could not give too much to Him.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3166

“Brothers and Sisters, I cannot do without you! If I want to celebrate the Lord’s death, I cannot go into my chamber and take the piece of bread and the cup and celebrate the ordinance alone—I must have you with me! I cannot do without you! And you, the most spiritually-minded of you, if you shut yourselves up in a cell and try to play the monk and the super-excellent, cannot keep this ordinance! You must have fellowship with other Believers! You must come down among the saints, for our Savior has given us this memorial which cannot be celebrated except jointly, by the whole of us together!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3151
“I have often said, ‘There is no true coming which can be wrong’ ‘No man can come unto Me, except the Father which has sent Me draw him.’ So if God draws, He cannot draw the wrong way. Looking for the mercy of Christ, trusting the merits of His sacrificial death, then you have come and come aright to the door of mercy! And yet you may for a time not have a word to comfort you.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3268

“If a man trusts in God and his friends, he has no secure trust. He is like one that has one foot upon the rock and another on the quicksand.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3247

“When Jesus grants the Divine Grace of forgiveness, at the same moment He gives the tender heart that mourns that it should have needed forgiveness. I believe that if this Truth of God were thoroughly understood, it would help many more to receive the Calvinistic system of theology which now puzzles them. I know that when I first realized that my repentance was the gift of God, the whole Doctrine of Salvation by Grace fell into my soul as by a lightning flash!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3229

“Beloved, often deny yourselves what you might have—what might lawfully be yours. Put away every alluring bait if in any wise you would injure your usefulness or mar your character by taking it. The Lord help you to do this by His good Spirit! ”—Volume 56, Sermon #3208

“The work of the Law upon the enlightened conscience is a very healthy operation—it is like a sharp needle that goes through the soul, but it draws the golden thread of Mercy after it—or like the sharp plow which breaks up the ground and prepares it for the seed which in due time shall bring forth the harvest to God’s praise and Glory! Whenever the entrance of the Law makes the offense to abound, may God grant us Grace to receive the Gospel so that Grace shall much more abound!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3304

“When we are asking for anything about which we are somewhat doubtful as to whether it will glorify God or not, we may well speak with hesitation, but as we are sure that it is for God’s Glory that men should see Jesus and rejoice in Him, let us crave this gift for them with great importunity and much holy boldness—and we shall certainly have our heart’s desire.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3117

“We may receive new light upon what is in the Word, but the new light will not make that false which was true before the new light came! We hope, when the time comes for us to die, that we shall be able to say, ‘As we commenced our ministry, so we finish it. Our first sermon was on the same lines as our last. Of course there was a growth in our power of receiving and expounding the Truth of God, but it was the same Truth that we received and that we preached at the first and at the last.’”—Volume 56, Sermon #3200

“When God’s Infinite Justice was wide awake and in sternest action, you may guess in a measure, but you cannot fully conceive what our Lord must have endured!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3088
“Your own righteousness is such an abominable thing that it will as surely damn you as the greatest profanity! The best thing for you to do with it is to bury it, and run away from it.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3084
“Our dear Lord has many things to say to us, but we cannot bear them yet because we are so unbelieving. But if we had more faith and rested like little children upon Him, He would tell us more and show us more!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3247

“Ignorance of the Bible often troubles men’s hearts and consciences—and prevents them from finding that peace of God which a little more knowledge of it would be sure to give them. And I am certain that ignorance or forgetfulness of many of the exceedingly great and precious promises of God and of the marvelous things He has engaged to do for His people, often causes our eyes to flow with tears and our hearts to be overwhelmed with suffering. The more a Christian knows of his religion, the better for his peace and for his happiness!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3077

“A deep sense of need often reveals to us Christ’s All-Sufficiency.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3268
“If I am now addressing any backslider, let me remind him or her that the Lord Jesus has been sent “to bind up the brokenhearted.” Return to your first love, poor Backslider, for it was better with you then than it is now!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3104
“Oh, how guilty we much be that we will not believe that what God says it true, that we will not believe though millions of witnesses before the Throne of God attest the Truth of God that ‘where sin abounded, Grace did much more abound.’”—Volume 58, Sermon #3304
“Your proper note on joining the Church is not one of congratulation, as though the victory were won, but one of preparation—for now the trumpet sounds and the fight begins! ”—Volume 55, Sermon #3167

“No doubt the excitement of having slain the Philistines would naturally be followed by depression of spirits in Samson. When David had mounted the throne of Judah, there came a reaction and he said, ‘I am this day weak, though anointed king.’ You must expect to feel weakest just when you are enjoying your greatest triumph!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3131
“I think that certain forms of Arminianism are injurious to the faith of the Christian—those forms, for instance, which deny the election of God, the effectual calling of the Holy Spirit and the final perseverance of the saints. These denials seem to me to cut from under a man’s foot everything he has to stand upon! And I do not wonder that the man who believes them has no assurance. If I believe that God’s children may fall away and perish, it seems to me that full assurance, at any rate, becomes an impossibility, for if they may fall, why may not I?”—Volume 55, Sermon #3137

“You think about saving—God only thinks about giving. You take a delight in getting—He takes a delight in bestowing. Go to Him! Go to Him! You would not need anybody to be long praying you to accept a gift, so do not think that God needs much beseeching in order to give, for it is as easy for Him to give as it is for you to accept! And as accepting seems congenial to our nature, so does bestowing seem congenial to His! Go to Him and He will empty out His Grace upon you!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3215

“If, indeed, you have been redeemed by His precious blood. If His Spirit has, indeed, regenerated you. And if His Grace is working in your hearts and lives, surely you cannot be so cowardly as to try to conceal yourselves as secret disciples of Christ!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3200

“I must not fail to remind you that as a memorialofChrist, while it is very solemn, it is singularly happy. Christ has ordained, as a memorial of His death, what? Why, a feast! Not a funeral, not a meeting together to sing dirges over His mangled body, or to go to a grave to weep! That might have been a memorial, but we have a better one—we have a happy one!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3151

“The Lord’s Prayer is quite as good said backwards as forwards if you do not say it from the heart. There is quite as much likelihood of a benediction in a number of words thrown out pell-mell, without any kind of connection, as there would be in the best-arranged sermon, if there is not an attentive ear and an understanding heart.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3305

“And so, wearisome nights may have been appointed for you, strong crying and tears—but keep on, for if God has given you genuine faith, He must give you eternal salvation unless He breaks His promises—which He can never do! He must save them who come unto Him through Jesus Christ! Your business is with His command and when you have obeyed, and believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, then, even if you weep in the dark, your tears will be for your spiritual strengthening!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3268

“Of how many places might it not be said, ‘He could not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief?’ Unbelief seems to hamper Omnipotence, to tie the hands of the Almighty! We do not know what losers we have been by our unbelief.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3247

“I hope none of you are under the impression that, at the close of the present service, I am going to administer the Lord’s Supper. God forbid that I should ever venture to do such a thing as that! No, it is you, or we, who come to the Lord’s Table, to break bread and to drink of the cup—and we come together, not as a Church holding certain views, but we come simply as Christians to, “do this in remembrance” of the Savior who died for us!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3099

“Divide yourselves upon this question as to how far you are Believers, for we cannot assert that Christ is precious to you if you are not Believers. We know He will not be your heart’s Monarch if you have no faith. He will be the very reverse! But if you are Believers in and upon Him, He will be precious to you beyond all comparison!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3112

“Brothers and Sisters, if we could see what God sees, we would feel that the heaviest trouble we have ever had was the thing that we would choose above all other things! You probably sometimes think that the course of Divine Providence is very mysterious, but were you as well informed concerning all the circumstances as the Lord is, you would say, ‘That is the course I, myself, would have chosen.’—Volume 54, Sermon #3076

“Shame on the man or woman who can live in the midst of worldlings and never let them know that they belong to Christ!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3200

“Why, even a solitary Divine precept is so precious that if all the saints in the world were burnt at one stake for the defense of it—it would be well worth the holocaust! If the whole of us went to prison and to death for the preservation of a single sentence of Scripture, we would be fully justified in making such a sacrifice.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3248

“Let it never be supposed that the office of teaching in the Christian Church can exclusively belong to one man, or to one class of men! It belongs to every Christian man, and to every Christian woman, too! You cannot teach beyond what you have been taught of God, and it is in proportion as you are taught of God that your teaching takes a wider sphere. But you must teach what you know!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3305

“To get the goodness out of the Scriptures, you must meditate upon them and so digest them, just as you have seen the cattle lie down to chew the cud after eating. To get the nourishment out of a text, turn it over and over in your mind, ruminate upon it, pull it to pieces word by word.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3090

“Coming to Christ means, first, turning away from all confidence in ourselves or inothers andtrusting alone in Jesus.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3230

“If old age could keep men out of Heaven, there are many now before the Throne of God who would never have been there! If you are seventy, or eighty, or even 90 years of age, it is a sad and solemn thing that you should have lived so long without Christ—but this is no reason why you should die and be damned! God’s message to you is still this, “Turn you, turn you from your evil ways; for why will you die?””—Volume 57, Sermon #3262

“When a man once gets into the habit of giving to the cause of God, it becomes as much a delight to contribute of his substance as to pray for God’s bounty or to drink in the promises! How could I dare to exist if I fill not do something for Christ? Not do something for Jesus? Where it not to rob me of the highest privilege which can be accorded a man this side the grave?”—Volume 56, Sermon #3215

“I remember my dear old grandfather looking about his study to find his spectacles while he had them on! He was looking through the spectacles to find the spectacles and there are many who act just as inconsistently as that with regard to salvation!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3117

‘‘Dread the Greeks, even when they bring you gifts,’ said the tradition of old—and let the Christian dread the world most when it puts on its softest speeches! Stand, then, upon your guard, you warriors of the Cross, when least you fear, the cringing foe will come behind you and stab you under the pretense of friendship! Your Master was betrayed with a kiss, and so will you be unless you watch unto prayer.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3167

“The Word of God is to us an Infallible Revelation of the Eternal Truth of God and that part of it which has already been proved to be true to us is the seal and pledge that the whole of it is true and precious!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3248
“If a man needs an excuse for clinging to his sin, he can always find one, and any lie will satisfy the soul that is resolved not to be saved!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3306

“There is powder enough in all our hearts to blow our character to pieces if God does not keep the devil’s sparks away, or quench them in a mighty stream of Grace before they can do us mischief! Utter weakness are you, O Man, and many and mighty foes are seeking your destruction! You need an infinite Friend to keep you in safety against all the machinations of your adversaries!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3074

“If we never doubt God till we have cause to do so, distrust will be banished from our hearts forever! Of men, we speak as we find them—let us do the same with God.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3131
“Many who are ordained unto eternal life, are yet held back, as John Bunyan was, for many a day and even years in doubt and perplexity and trouble! ”—Volume 57, Sermon #3268
“I would like to make those four words ring again and again in your ears, ‘God knows all things.’ Then He knows the sins that you have forgotten, or that you wish you could forget! ”—Volume 55, Sermon #3152

“If the snowy peaks of Piedmont, if the lowlands of Holland, if the prisons of Spain could speak, they would tell of Infinite Mercy experienced by the saints under terrible oppression—of hearts that were leaping to Heaven while the bodies were bruised or burning on earth! God has been gracious to His people when they have been driven out.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3201

“There will be people in Heaven who never read a word in their lives. I know not how low the Grace of God can go. Some poor creatures who know nothing of the things of earth, even these may understand the Gospel, it is so plain! We do not need a giant intellect in order to grasp its Doctrines. Its element and substance is, ‘He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.’ Believer, ignorant though you may be, you can comprehend this grand scheme of man’s redemption, so do not say that because you are poor and ignorant, you will not enter Heaven!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3139

“No honey is so sweet as that which drops freely from the comb, and no service is so sweet to the Lord Jesus as that which a Believer spontaneously renders to Him.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3092

“Our Lord turns His face from His people though He never turns His heart from His people. He may even close His eyes in sleep when the vessel is tossed by the tempest, but His heart is awake all the while.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3307
“‘He that is not with Me is against Me,’ is still one of the infallible tests by which He [Jesus Chris] tries the sons of men! And if you are not with Him, you are against Him! If you are not out-and-out for Him, you are mocking Him in your way even as the Jews did in theirs [at the Cross]!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3276

“‘With all our imperfections, we feel that we do love God’s people and we do love our fellow men.We desire to relieve their distresses as far as we can. And as much as lies in us, we desire to promote the happiness and comfort of others.’ If a man cannot say this, he cannot claim to be a Christian because any man who lives for himself is no more a Christian than the devil is!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3152

“When I pray, I ask for something for myself or other people. When I praise, it is but little I can render. But oh, to think that, I, a poor creature of God’s own making, should be able to give to Him! It puts the creature in the highest conceivable light. It lifts him well above angels. There are works which laborious, disinterested, self-sacrificing Christians can do for Christ. Let the wealthy empty themselves upon the earth and this shall be the way to fill themselves!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3215

“There are scattering times, no doubt, but we should always pray that we may live in gathering times, that we may be gathered together in unity, in essential oneness around the Cross, in united action for our glorious Master, and that sinners who are far away may be gathered in, too, and backsliders who have wandered may be restored! Pray for gathering times, Brothers and Sisters, and may the day come when the Lord will assemble the lame and will gather the outcast and afflicted.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3201

“If a man can stand commendation, he can stand anything. The severest trial which a Christian has to bear is probably the trial which comes from his kind but inconsiderate friends who would puff him up, if they could, by telling him what a fine fellow he is.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3167

“Everything short of personal godliness falls short of eternal life. Remember that nobody can be born-again for you. You yourselves must be regenerated. Nobody can renounce “the pomp and vanities of the world” for you. Sponsorship in religion is the most transparent of frauds. Nobody can love Christ for you—your own heart must beat high with affection towards His dear name! It must be a personal religion if it is to be of any value to you.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3112

“‘Give me Christ, or else I die,’ is the cry of every spirit that has lost the dear Companionship of Jesus. We do not part with such heavenly delights without many a pang. It is not with us a matter of ‘maybe He will return, and we hope He will,’ but it must be, or we faint and die!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3307

“He [Jesus Christ] is a Savior—do not believe that fact and yet remain unsaved. As far as Christ is known to you, so far make use of Him! Is not this sound common sense?”—Volume 57, Sermon #3249

“Happy day! Happy day when I shall sit down at the feet of Jesus Christ and hear Him preach! O Beloved, what we shall then think of our poor preaching, I cannot tell! It is a mercy that Jesus Christ does not preach here now, for, after hearing Him, none of us would preach again, so ashamed would we be of ourselves.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3081

“But, dear Friends, if you want to get full assurance, I can recommend to you another thing and it is this, work for Christ. We are not saved by works, but working for God brings us many blessings. Rest assured that if you spend and are spent for Christ, you shall never be out of spendingmoney! If you lay out your strength for Him, He will lay in for you fresh stores of strength. He does not give us faith that we may bury it as the man buried his talent, but if we have five talents of faith and use them, He will give us five talents more—and so we shall have assurance if we use our faith well.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3137

“It will not suffice for you to come to Christ’s Doctrine—you must, of course, believe what He taught—but believing His teaching will not save you unless you come to HIM.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3230

“We have heard persons talk about their natural inability to perform gracious acts and we have not answered them because it will be time enough to talk of what they cannot do when they have done what they can do. There are some things which we are sure they can do, and these they have neglected—it is mere hypocrisy, therefore, for them to be pleading lack of power when they do not use the strength they have.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3277

“In the sacred emblems now upon this Supper Table Jesus is already among us. Faith cries, ‘He has come!’ Like John the Baptist she gazes intently on Him and cries, ‘Behold the Lamb of God!’”—Volume 58, Sermon #3307

“It is a terrible thought to me that although God’s Word says, ‘Owe no man anything,’ yet that the Church should be more awfully in debt than any corporation in England! I do not think that the debts of all the people put together would equal the debts of professing Christians—debts which they have entered into often on account of religion.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3100
“That man only is rich towards God who begins to know his emptiness and feels that he is less than nothing, and vanity.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3201

“The joys of fellowship with God are written in marble. ‘Engraved as in eternal brass’ are memories of communion with Christ Jesus.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3249

“When a man will not believe the Truth of God, he is sure, before long, to be a greedy believer of lies! No persons are so credulous as skeptics. There is no absurdity so gross but what an unbeliever will very soon be brought to receive it, though he rejects the Truth of God.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3331

“A Primitive Methodist Brother said at one of the meetings, lately, that the reason why the Primitive Methodists got on so was that other Christians were waiting for something to turn up, but that the Primitive Methodists turned it up, themselves! It was an odd thing to say, but there is a great truth in it. Some Christian people are always waiting for something to turn up. They want an opportunity of doing good and they mean to do it—oh, so well—when they get the opportunity.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3215

“I pray the Lord to open your eyes and mine to see what it is to be a lost soul, that we may sigh and cry over souls that are being lost by millions! May He open our eyes to see the true character of sin and the desperate condition of those who are steeped in it—to see the terrors of the wrath to come, that final judgment of God which shall overwhelm the wicked! Then may he open our eyes to see the reality of His eternal love, the cleansing power of the precious blood of Jesus and the almighty efficacy of the ever blessed Spirit. And may He open our eyes in such a way that, seeing these things, we may be startled into earnestness, amazed in devotion, constrained unto consecration and may give ourselves up, from this time forth—spirit, soul and body—to serve the Lord!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3117

“The more you give up self, the more you dare and do for Christ, the more fully Jesus sits on the throne of your heart and the more Divinely blessed will this life become to you! But the farther you keep from Christ and the more content you are with a half-hearted religion, the more will you find it to be a weariness, a mere burden to be borne, a custom to be endured—not a banquet to be enjoyed, nor a thing Divine to be loved and to be grasped with all your mind and heart!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3275

“I have always taught you that the Omnipotence of God over the human heart is never exercised in such a way as to violate the free will of man. It would be a clumsy kind of Omnipotence that would do as it pleased with men whether they were willing or not! But it is Divine Omnipotencethat molds the will, enlightens the judgment and fashions the heart and mind and character of man according to the Lord’s eternal purpose.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3308

“I have heard of men who mark a hundred as a hundred and twenty, and who mark goods as of certain lengths when they know they are not of such lengths. And they say, ‘It is the custom of the trade.’ Well, if it is the custom of your trade to lie, remember that it is God’s custom to send all liars to Hell! A Christian man has no right to lie even if all the world should concur in the lies! He should say, ‘No, I serve the God of Truth and, come what may, no lie shall defile my tongue, for Christ has cleansed it and made it His own.’”—Volume 55, Sermon #3152

“A man cannot have spiritual life in him and yet be unconscious of it.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3079
“Who among us has not doubted his own interest in Christ? Happy are you who are free from such trouble! But there are seasons with some of us when we turn our title deeds over and we are sometimes afraid lest they should not be genuine.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3167
“I never met with anybody who ever thought that he deserved to be chosen unto salvation—the very fact of the choice proves that it must have been all of Grace.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3248

“The Gospel is to be preached to every creature in order that Christ’s chosen ones may be gathered unto Him. We cast the net into the sea, for we do not know where the fish are, but God knows and He guides into the net those He means us to catch for Him. You know that a magnet will attract steel to itself—well, the Gospel attracts souls that have an affinity to itself—and thus Christ draws His chosen ones unto Himself with the cords of a man, and bands of love!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3216

“It is not any rite and it is not the neglect of any rite which can produce righteousness. It is as easy to trust in your non-observance of a ceremony as to trust in the ceremony, itself, and it will be quite as delusive. It is faith in Christ that brings righteousness—the ‘faith which works by love.’”—Volume 57, Sermon #3249

“You cannot praise another man’s God. Possession is not only nine points of the law, but it is all the points of the Gospel!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3275
“There were also others [God’s chosen] in the far-away islands of the south—cannibals given up to the wildest passions—but Christ had bought them with His precious blood and a sacred instinct compelled John Williams and many another martyrs and missionaries to go forth to the Apostolic task of turning savages into saints!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3308

“Many come into this place of worship as skeptics and go out sincere Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. Some have I known who have come here only to laugh and scoff, but they have remained to pray. No thought was further from their mind than that they should ever become the followers of the Lamb—but the Divine power, which was not necessarily connected with the preacher—carried the Word into their hearts, arrested them on the spot, changed their natures, made them new creatures in Christ Jesus and sent them on their way rejoicing in their newly-found Savior!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3202

“Those silly butterflies of fashion who spend all their time in flitting about from flower to flower are so heartless and thoughtless that I can, to some extent, comprehend how they can do without God. With empty heads and silly hearts, men and women can make gods of anything! Their own pretty persons can be quite a sufficient object for their idiotic worship. But a man who stands right straight up, a sensible thinking man—a working-man, if you will—I do not mind whether he works with the dry heat of his brain or with the damp sweat of his face—I cannot understand how a man like this, with organs of thought and a reasoning soul, can go on without God!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3131

“The discussion between Catholics and Protestants has been far from what it ought to have been. We seem bent upon forcing them to submit at once to our views, but this is wrong of us. We may condemn wrong principles, but let us always speak gently of the men who hold them. They are spiritually blind, so we should deal kindly with them, avoiding that bitterness of spirit which is so often manifested. Sick men will not take your medicine if you give them vinegar with it—give them something sweet with it and they will take it. So be kind and loving to the spiritually blind and they will be likely to give heed to you.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3139

“I am quite certain that God has an elect people, for He tells me so in His Word. And I am equally certain that everyone who comes to Christ shall be saved, for that also is His own declaration in the Scriptures! When people ask me how I reconcile these two Truths of God, I usually say that there is no need to reconcile them, for they have never yet quarreled with one another! Both are true and both relate to the same persons, for those who come to Christ are those who were from eternity given to Christ by His Father!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3230

“It would be a mistake in language, a contradiction in thought even to suggestthat there was some measure of deserving about any of those sinners for whom Christ died!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3248

“If your faith is as feeble, now, as it was 20 years ago. If you have not made any spiritual advance during the last 10 years, you ought very gravely to question whether you have any spiritual life at all! You may not be able to see the growth, but there must be growth if there is life.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3250

“One vessel may leak at the bow and another may leak at the stern, but it does not much matter where the leak is—in either case the vessel will sink.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3202

“If you are, indeed, ‘bought with a price,’ Christ will surely gather you with the rest of His redeemed! By might and main He will make a conquest of you, for, when the Lord determines to bring His people to Himself, neither material distance nor moral distance can prevent Him from doing so!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3308

“It is the duty of every Christian to forsake every known sin, whatever it may be, and, in doing so, he is not to consult with flesh and blood. ”—Volume 54, Sermon #3078

“The sufferings of the Man who was the Fellow of the Lord of Hosts, in place of us poor worms of the earth, were more than we can comprehend! God grant us Grace, if startled as we hear about them, to rally again to Him and, each one of us to say, with Thomas, ‘My Lord, and my God,’ and then to cling to Him through life and in death, come what may!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3088

“Some even complain of Christian importunity and are weary of it, not liking to be spoken to about their souls. ‘Intrusion,’ it has been called by some cavilers, but indeed it is a blessed intrusion upon a sinner, slumbering in his sin over the brink of Hell, to disturb his slumber and awaken him to flee for his life!...I reckon that a breach of courtesy is often a most courteous thing when the desire is the benefit of an immortal soul! If I say a very personal thing and it arouses anyone to seek and find salvation, I know that he will never blame me on that score!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3277

“Those who are pushed about by many as though they were not fit to live are the very ones for whom I would gladly make a way and bring them to the softest place and say, ‘Be of good comfort, for it is for you and such as you that God has sent His Son and His Spirit into the world.’”—Volume 54, Sermon #3113
“I thank God every time I remember the scores of young men we have here whose mouths have been opened to speak for Christ. Go, on, my brave sons, bearing your testimony for the Master! Even if the police should sometimes move you off, be content to be moved and go and blow the Gospel trumpet somewhere else! But take care to proclaim the good tidings of salvation, for you have your Lord’s commission to do so! When a man receives a commission from the Queen, he is not a little proud of it. But you have a commission from the King of kings empowering you to gather together unto Him all who are included in the Covenant of His Grace!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3216

“O you great sinners, Jesus Christ knows how to pardon you! He knows how to lay home to your hearts such texts as these—‘All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men.’—‘Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.’—‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved,’ even you, O you greatest of sinners!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3104

“May God the Holy Spirit teach us to weep at the remembrance of our sin, to weep at the foot of the Cross as we look upon Him whom our sins have pierced, and mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son and be in bitterness for Him as one that is in bitterness for his first-born!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3308

“Sin indulged will prevent the full assurance of faith—and even a little sin will do this. Have you ever had a small stone in your boot? If so, and you have tried to walk, you have found it very uncomfortable travelling. If you have a tiny splinter of wood beneath your nail, you know how painful it is—you get it extracted as soon as you can lest you should lose your finger, or even your hand. Beware of little sins, Beloved, for they will keep all comfort out of your life and effectually hinder the growth of your faith.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3250

“Do not any of you imagine because your children can get good books, that you are exonerated from speaking to them personally about their souls! Mother, you are the best instructor that your child can have. Father, your loving, gracious talk with your boy will have more effect upon him than any book you can give him.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3248

“Once you get to know Christ personally and that He loved you and gave Himself for you—and then rejoice that you are forgiven and justified through Him—the world will count you stupid and obstinate, but you will stand firm and be able to resist all its sarcasm and its ridicule. He who has made a refuge of Jesus Christ may stand safe, whatever errors may invade the land!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3167

“You say that your enemies are doing all that they can to destroy you, but can they destroy the Divine promises? The Lord has promised to give unto His sheep eternal life—can they take that promise from you, or make it of no value? They may frown at you, but can they keep you out of Heaven? They may threaten you, but can they make the Covenant of Grace to be of no effect? While eternal things are safe, we may well be content to let other things come or go just as God wills!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3098

“There may be some here who are now truly converted, who have sinned as deeply as even Saul of Tarsus did. Then let them acknowledge, as he did, that their conversion was due to the undeserved favor of God!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3202

“We, as Calvinists, believe that men cannot see the Truth of God unless it is revealed to them by God. We should, therefore, be the last to condemn the ignorant, but should do our utmost to instruct them and to open their eyes. It is of no use to attempt to force a man to believe.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3139

“Hearing true Gospel sermons is one of the most solemn occupations in which intelligent beings can be employed. Hearing ears are by no means common things—happy are you who have them.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3082

“The last tear will be dropped in Jordan’s flowing stream, for we shall sorrow no more and repent no more when we stand before the Eternal Throne of God! And the last prayer—at any rate, the last prayer that has any sense of sin in it—shall be breathed just on the bank of the river which we cross to enter into Glory!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3308

“‘The Lord stood by him.’ This shall be said of each one who diligently serves God. Dear Friend, if you are a worker for the Lord Jesus, depend upon it He will not desert you. If, in the course of your endeavors, you are brought into sadness and depression, you shall then find it sweetly true that the Lord stands by you.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3153

“We find a very large number of invitations, both in the Old and New Testament, addressed to persons in certain conditions and positions. And when we meet with a person whose case is thus anticipated, we are bound to bid him be of good cheer because the Lord is plainly calling him.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3277

“This is the foundation of our faith—that this Book is Divinely Inspired! Allow nobody to make you doubt concerning this matter, for you must give up Christianity, itself, if you give up the Inspiration of this Book!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3248
“The Lord says, ‘Gather My saints together unto Me.’ [Psalm 50:5.] We are not told to gather them into the Baptist denomination, or into the Presbyterian kirk, or into the Episcopal establishment, or into any particular church! Our Lord’s command is, ‘Gather My saints together unto Me.’ I have never been ashamed of being called a Baptist since I became one. And if I did not believe that the Lord Jesus Christ ordained the immersion of Believers on profession of their faith, I would not preach and practice it. But, dear as Christ’s own ordinances ought always to be to all Christians, our main business is not to bring men and women to Baptism, but to bring them to Christ!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3216

“This is the best test I can give you, Beloved—the most accurate thermometer by which you can ascertain the rise or fall of your spiritual temperature—Is Christ Jesus more precious to you than He ever was before? If so, then I am bound to thank God always for you, Brothers and Sisters, because your faith grows exceedingly!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3250

“The path to Heaven is not at all difficult to find. It would be very difficult to find the way to Heaven by the rites and ceremonies about which some are so particular, but to those who trust in Jesus the way of salvation is a very simple one, so simple that the wayfaring man, though a fool in other things, need not err therein!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3308

“The false doctrine of general redemption—that Christ died for the damned in Hell and suffered the torment of those who afterwards are tormented forever—seems to me to be detestable, subversive of the whole Gospel and destructive of the only pillar upon which our hopes can be built! Christ stood in the place of His elect—for them He made a full Atonement—for them He so suffered that not a sin of theirs shall ever be laid at their door. As the Father’s love embraced them, so the death of His Son reconciled them.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3085

“It is a very good sign that a man has been really awakened when he goes uninvited to a Prayer Meeting. I love to see a stranger come stealing in and sit in a corner where God’s people are met for supplication. Any hypocrite may come to worship on a Sunday, but it is not every hypocrite who will come to the meeting for prayer!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3118

“Dread, mysterious and profound as the Doctrine of Divine Sovereignty is, yet it certainly must be acknowledged that He who is God has an absolute and inherent right to do as He wills with all those whom He has, Himself, created.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3202

“The true helmet of hope must come from the heavenly arsenal! You must go to the Divine Storehouse, for unto God belongs salvation and the hope of salvation must be given to you by His free Grace. A hope of salvation is not purchasable. Our great King does not sell his armor, but gives it freely to all who enlist. They take the shilling and accept faith. They trust Christ and they are enlisted—and then the armor is given them gratis. From head to foot they are arrayed by Grace!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3167

“Bartimaeus followed a despised and crucified Christ! Friend, will you do the same? Will you fare as He fares, and endure reproach for His sake? Brave men are needed for these evil times—we have too many of those thin-skinned professors who faint if society gives them the cold shoulder! Power to walk with the crucified Lord into the very jaws of the lion is a glorious gift of the Holy Spirit! May it rest on you, dear Friend, to a full degree! May the Spirit of God help you!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3277

“The people were quick to express their admiration [Matthew 9:33] yet we see very little trace of their believing in our Lord’s mission. It is a small thing to marvel, but a great thing to believe! O Lord, give the people around us to see such revivals and conversions as they have never known before!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3139

“Are you trusting in God, dear Friends? Are you living a life of faith? Then the walk of faith will be followed, in due time, by the triumph of faith! Blessed are all they that put their trust in the Lord, and blessed forever shall they be.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3131

“There were many ways by which men might die, but there was only one death which God pronounced to be accursed. He did not say, ‘Cursed is he that dies by stoning, or by the sword, or by a millstone being fastened about his neck, or by being eaten of worms.’ But it waswritten, ‘Cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree.’ By no other death than that one, which God did single out as the death of the accursed, could Jesus Christ die!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3251

“When you see a Christian in the furnace, you cannot expect that he will get out by asking, ‘When will this flame abate?’ But the fire will soon be over when a man, in such circumstances, can say, ‘The Lord’s will be done.’ It is a sign that the metal has been properly fused and that the dross has gone when you can see the image of the Refiner in it—when the heart reflects the face of God and says, ‘Not as I will, but as You will.’”—Volume 54, Sermon #3073

“If we have nothing, we should be humble because of our poverty—and if we have much, we ought to be humble because we are so much in debt to God!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3202
“A text of Scripture is often like an apple tree with abundance of ripe fruit on it and we are underneath the tree. Give it a shake, Brothers and Sisters—shake it till the ripe fruit drops down!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3090

“I do not know whether there are any degrees in Glory and I do not trouble about whether there are or are not—but this I do know, that all the saints shall be gathered together unto Christ—and that degree is high enough for any of them!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3216
“‘The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost,’ is a sentence as majestic as Prophet ever penned when in fullest Inspiration he extolled the Prince of Peace!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3309

“I have always found that as my trust in self went up, my trust in Christ went down—and as my trust in self went down—my trust in Christ went up. So I urge you to take an honest view of your own blackness of heart and life, for that will cause you to pray with David, ‘Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.’”—Volume 57, Sermon #3278

“Jesus can stand side by side with us, for He has been afflicted in all our afflictions.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3153
“Why should there not be money to send forth missionaries abroad? It is just this—there is not enough of the love of Christ in the Church and there is not enough of preaching Christ—otherwise there would be more of Christian giving!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3100

“Do we sufficiently reverence the Holy Spirit and love Him as we should for all that He has done? The Incarnation of the Son of God is no greater mystery than the indwelling of the Spirit of God in the hearts of men. It is truly marvelous that the ever-blessed Spirit, who is equally God with the Father and the Son, should come and reside in these bodies of ours and make them His temple.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3086

“The Atonement of Christ gives such an exhibition of the guilt of sin as is not to be seen anywhere else—no, not even in the flames of Hell! ”—Volume 57, Sermon #3252

“One thing in which we all betray our littleness is the readiness with which we fall intothe gross sin ofidolatry. We are, none of us, likely to bow down before blocks of wood and stone as the heathen do. Nor are we likely to worship the god made of bread which is the god of so many in this country—yet we are all too prone to make unto ourselves gods that are really idols! At one time it is favorite child who is thus worshipped.‘There never was a fairer child than mine. She is more like an angel than a human being,’ says the fond and foolish mother whose heart is wrapped up in her little one! Then comes God’s great hammer that breaks all idols—and the dead child is carried to the silent tomb. After such a painful experience as that, will the mother ever make an idol of another child? Yes, there are some who have done that, to their own confusion, time after time!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3140

“Oh that blessed word, HOPE! You know what the New Zealanders call hope? They call it in their language, ‘the swimming thought,’ because it always swims. You cannot drown it—it always keeps its head above the wave! When you think you have drowned the Christian’s hope, up it comes, all dripping from the brine, and cries again, ‘Hope you in God, for I shall yet praise Him!’”—Volume 55, Sermon #3167

“Men have tried to overcome sin by the reasoning of philosophy, or by arguments fetched from common sense—but those blunt wooden swords have been powerless to destroy it! It is only the sharp two-edged sword of the Spirit—the grand doctrine of the love and Grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that can pierce our sin to the heart and lay it in the dust!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3252

“I do not know that I would pray for sudden death, though sudden death is, to a Believer in Christ, sudden Glory, but I certainly would not pray that I might not be called home suddenly. So far as I am personally concerned, I would like to have a similar experience to that of good Dr. Beaumont who was preaching the Word on earth, and just as he finished uttering a sentence of his sermon, was singing the praises of God in Heaven!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3216

“It was but yesterday that I saw it alleged against Christianity that it discourages virtue and patronizes the guilty. They say that we ministers lift the sinful into the most prominent place and give them the preference above the moral and excellent in our preaching. This is a soft impeachment to which, in a better sense than is intended by those who bring it, we are glad to plead guilty!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3309

“I heard one say of a certain preacher, ‘I greatly admired him, for he commenced his sermon by saying, ‘Permit a young man to address you.’’ I said, ‘That is not the way God’s servants ought to talk. If God has given them anything to say for Him, they have not to ask anybody’s permission to say it, nor should they apologize to anybody for saying it as God enables them to say it.’”—Volume 56, Sermon #3202

“We hold most firmly the Doctrine of Particular Redemption, that Christ loved His Church and gave Himself for it. But we do not hold the doctrine of the limited value of His precious blood! There can be no limit to Deity—there must be infinite value in the Atonement which was offered by Him who is Divine. The only limit of the Atonement is in its design, and that design was that Christ should give eternal life to as many as the Father has given Him—but in itself the Atonement is sufficient for the salvation of the whole world—and if the entire race of mankind could be brought to believe in Jesus, there is enough efficacy in His precious blood to cleanse everyone born of woman from every sin that all of them have ever committed!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3278

“Numbers of persons are kept from peace of mind through mistaken ideas of God. They think that He is like themselves and so they do not receive the Gospel.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3119
“No Church will long continue in the enjoyment of the blessing of unity unless it continues in nearness to Christ. Communion with Christ means the communion of Christians with one another—we can only get true union and true communion in that way.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3104

“If any of us should fall into straitened circumstances, it will be a comfort to be able to say, ‘When I was rich, I freely used my wealth for my Lord.’ If we are ill, it will be a satisfaction to remember that when we were in health, we used our strength for Jesus. These are reflections which give light in the shade and make music at midnight. It is not out of our own reflections that the joy arises, but out of the witness of the Holy Spirit that the Lord is not unrighteous to forget our work of faith and labor of love.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3153

“It is a thrice-blessed fact that Christ came to save the lost, for such are we all—and had He not made lost ones the object of His searching and saving, there would have been no hope for us!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3309

“Very often, some of those who really do believe in Jesus neglect to avow their faith in the Lord’s appointed way. Nothing is more plainly taught in the New Testament than that it is the duty of every Believer in Christ to be baptized. It is the duty of every Christian, having first given himself to Christ, afterwards to give himself to Christ’s Church, according to the will of God. Now, my dear Friend, do your Master’s will and consult not with flesh and blood.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3078

“Alas, alas, our thoughts, if left to themselves, are as a cage of unclean birds or a den of wild beasts! And as Hercules needed to turn a stream of water to clean the Augean stable, our Lord Jesus Christ needed to pour rivers of water out of His own heart to cleanse the foul stable of our corrupt thoughts!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3252

“Brothers and Sisters, we must get back this old enthusiasm if ever our land is to be swept clear of Popery! If ever Europe is to become free with God’s freedom, if ever Africa is to have the light of the Truth of God driving away her dense darkness, if ever Asia, America and Australia are to be won for the Lord Jesus Christ, they whom God has called to the conflict must fight because it pleases God!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3202

“The world can neither give nor take away the hope of a Christian! It comes from God and He will never withdraw it, for His gifts and calling are without repentance. Once let this helmet be put on and He will never remove it, but we shall hope on and hope always until we shall see His face at the last.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3167

“Always read Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy with this view—‘This is the story of the Church of God in the wilderness—I would see how God dealt with them and how they dealt with Him, and from this learn lessons that may be useful to me in my own pilgrimage to the eternal rest.’”—Volume 56, Sermon #3217

“We [ministers] were sent by God to be personal and to deliver personal messages, as Nathan did to David when he said to him, ‘You are the man.’ I wish it were possible for us, in a wise and prudent manner, to be more closely personal than we have ever been—and so to imitate our Savior’s example of wise personal enquiry when He said to this man, ‘Do you believe on the Son of God?’”—Volume 55, Sermon #3132

“Justification is not a work of degrees—it does not progress from one stage to another—but it is the work of a moment and it is instantly complete. God’s great gift of Eternal Life is bestowed in a moment and you may not be able to discern the exact moment when it is bestowed.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3278

“It is worthwhile to feel the sentence of death in one’s soul in order to know, by the testimony of Inspiration, that God is looking upon one out of Heaven in this special and peculiar sense! He can never forget His children anywhere, but if there is one place where He remembers them more specially than anywhere else, it is in the place of their sorrow!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3113

“I would like to die talking of this blessed Doctrine of Substitution and I intend, by Divine Grace, to live proclaiming it, for it is the keystone of the Gospel! Jesus Christ did literally take upon Himself the transgression and iniquity of His people and was made a curse for them, seeing that they had fallen under the wrath of God! And now every soul that believes in Jesus is saved because Jesus has taken away the penalty and the curse due to sin. In this let us rejoice!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3309

“I long to get to this Table again, though I have not been away from it any Sabbath for many a long day, for it has been my constant habit, wherever I have been, to get a few Christian friends together to break bread in remembrance of Christ. ”—Volume 54, Sermon #3099 “Do not ever say of anybody, ‘That person is too bad for me to do anything with him.’ It is the genius of Christianity to select the worst, first, and we should never regard any man as utterly hopeless until he is dead. As long as the breath is in his body, no matter though all the devils from Hell were also in him, there is enough power in the Lord Jesus Christ to make the whole troop of them flee—and it is for us to attack those devils in His name! Jesus Christ, having saved us, the salvation of other sinners mustbe possible.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3092

“God forgive us for the sins of the tongue! If we had nothing else for which to praise Christ, we ought to bless Him to all eternity that He came‘by water’ to cleanse that tongue which is naturally so foul!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3252

“This day, in the proclamation of the Gospel, the demand is made of faith in God. And if there is no faith, no matter how rich the Gospel, how full its provisions and how precious the portion which God has prepared, none of us can ever enter into the enjoyment of them!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3217

“He that is a surety shall smart for it—and Jesus found that proverb true. When Justice came to smite the sinner, it found Him in the sinner’s place and smote Him without relenting, laying to the full the whole weight upon Him which had otherwise crushed all mankind forever into the lowermost Hell! Let us love Jesus as we think that He endured all this.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3203

“True Believers, though they are a very feeble folk in themselves, are very strong when God is with them!...The strength of the true Christian is so great that nothing can overcome him and he is more than a conqueror in every engagement into which he enters!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3140
“Great errors have come into the Christian Church by the alteration of simple points in God’s commands and, therefore, since a little thing in the sign may involve a great thing in the substance, it becomes us to cultivate exact obedience!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3168

“No man is really saved unless he is, in his heart, obedient to Christ. I do not say that you will be perfect, but you will desire to be so. I do not say that you will not be tempted to sin until you die, but there will be no sin that you will love, there will be no sin from which you will not long to be delivered.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3310

“Now, if you were to set the dish with the whole roast on it down on the floor, your dog would probably be afraid to touch it lest he should get a cut of the whip! He would know that a dog does not deserve such a dinner as that—and that is just your difficulty, poor Sinner! You know that you do not deserve such Grace as God delights to give. But the fact that it is of Grace shuts out the question of merit altogether! ‘By Grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.’”—Volume 57, Sermon #3278

“If I were to say, ‘Hands up, everyone who has a Bible,’ everybody’s hands here would go up. I suppose that nobody here is without a Bible. But if I were to ask, ‘How many here, constantly, as a habit and a delight, meditate upon the Scriptures?’—I wonder what answers I would receive? Well, I will not ask you that question, but let everybody ask it for himself and judge himself concerning it in the sight of God.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3090

“As the Apostle John says, ‘All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.’ All these evils continually beset us and powerful, indeed, must be that stream which can counteract and overcome them! Yet Jesus Christ does this through coming ‘by water’ as well as by blood!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3252

“If men become negligent of hearing and our audience dwindles down to a handful, it will be a great distress to us if we have to remember that when the many were anxious to hear, we were not diligent to preach to them. He who will not reap when the fields are white unto the harvest, will have only himself to blame if in other seasons he is unable to fill his arms with sheaves!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3155

“The greatness of the Divine promises, instead of staggering our faith, ought to be the evidence of their truthfulness! Is it reasonable to suppose that God would promise to do only little things for those who trust Him? Oh, judge not so! He ‘does great things past finding out; yes, and wonders without number.’ His mercies are high as Heaven, and wide as the East is from the West!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3119

“Oh, that the Lord Jesus would now send fire into all your souls and make you love Him, for surely, if you have but the sense of what He has done and how He did it, and what it cost Him to do it, and who He is that has done it—and who you were for whom He has done it—you will surely say, ‘Oh, for a thousand hearts that I may love You as I should, and a thousand tongues that I may praise You as I should!’”—Volume 56, Sermon #3203

“The best thing we ever do needs to be washed in the fountain filled with blood, or God can only look upon it as a sin.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3083
“If any of you have thought that trusting Christ does not involve obeying Him, you have made a great mistake. They do very wrong who cry up believing in Christ and yet depreciate obedience to Him, for obeying is believing in another form and springs out of believing. Neither may anyone say, ‘I will obey one command of Christ, but I will not obey another.’”—Volume 58, Sermon #3310

“The Inquisition, in its dreary vaults, almost rivaled Hell in its pains and torments, but it was not able to quench the noble spirit of God’s faithful servants. The persecutors may do what they will, but only give us a band of men and women who have God’s Spirit in them—and even though their foe may tear them limb from limb—they shall not conquer them! It is impossible that God’s true saints should be overcome, for they have a glory of strength that nothing can destroy!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3140

“Generally there is no greater coward in this world than the man who never will acknowledge that he is afraid.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3253
“There is no eye that is quicker to see the mercy of God than an eye that is washed with the tears of repentance!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3278

“Morality is excellent as far as it goes, but without holiness no man shall see the Lord—and holiness far exceeds mere morality. Holiness can only be produced by a real change of heart and that real change of heart can only come through the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit which manifests itself through faith in Jesus Christ.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3132

“You must be Believers, or the blood of Jesus Christ itself shall never be sprinkled upon you to your cleansing. However great your sins may have been, all manner of sin and iniquity shall be forgiven you if you believe. The greatness of your sin shall not shut you out of Heaven—only unbelief will stop the way.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3217

“Your sins are not put away through your repentance. That repentance becomes to you the token of the pardon of sin, but the true cleansing is found, not in the eyes of the penitent, but in the wounds of Jesus! Your sins were virtually discharged upon the accursed Cross. You stand this day accepted, not for anything you are, or can be, or shall be, but entirely and wholly through the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3203

“When death is called a sleep, it is not because the soul sleeps—that, we are told by Holy Scripture—rises at once to Heaven. The soul of the saint is found at once before the Throne of God. It is the bodywhich is said to sleep. The soul sleeps not! Absent from the body, it is present with the Lord. It stretches its wings and flies away up to yonder realm of joy! And there, reveling in delight, bathing itself in bliss, it finds a rest from the turmoil of earth infinitely better than any rest in sleep. It is the body, then, that sleeps, and the body only.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3077

“Unless we give abundant attention to the Word of God, we shall fall into mistakes beyond number! Errors are unavoidable if we do not study our perfect Chart, even as it is certain that a man will lose his way if he never enquires about it. At any rate, we need not rush into mistakes by omitting to use our judgment, and to inform our understanding.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3168

“Genuine evangelical repentance runs in double harness with faith and they should never be separated. To suppose that we are to go through a sort of quarantine before we can be admitted into the harbor of salvation is a very serious mistake. Our text flatly [Psalm 18:44] contradicts this idea, for it says, ‘As soon as they hear of Me, they shall obey Me.’”—Volume 58, Sermon #3310

“The best way to preach of the faithful Promiser is to tell you some of His promises. I will not tell you what treasures there are in Christ’s cabinet—I will break the door open and let you look at some more of the treasures for yourselves!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3081

“If God has sent us to preach His Word, you may depend upon it that He will resent it if you do not hear the message that He sends to you through us. It will not merely be a rejection of the ambassador of Christ, but a rejection of the King who sent him to you! Therefore, I pray that God may give to each one of you a hearing ear.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3082

“If a man’s skepticism includes a doubt of the existence of God, or the truth of Scripture, we will talk to him another time. But with most of you there are no such questions, and the Lord Jesus might well demand of you, “If I tell you the truth, why do you not believe Me?” If before the Judgment Seat of Christ a man shall be forced to confess, ‘I believe the Bible to be God’s Word,’ I cannot imagine the apology which he can frame in his heart for not having believed in Jesus Christ! To you, then, there is no lack of evidence—and if you are shut out of Heaven, your own willful unbelief must bear the blame!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3217

“If you are never afraid about the condition of your souls, I am afraid for you!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3253

“The Beatitudes before us, which relate to character, are seven. The eighth is a benediction upon the persons described in the seven Beatitudes when their excellence has provoked the hostility of the wicked and, therefore, it may be regarded as a confirming and summing up of the seven blessings which precede it… The whole seven describe a perfect character and make upa perfect benediction. Each blessing is separately precious, yes, more precious than much fine gold. But we do well to regard them as a whole, for as a whole they were spoken, and from that point of view they are a wonderfully perfect chain of seven priceless links put together with such consummate art as only our heavenly Bezaleel, the Lord Jesus, ever possessed!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3155

“God, the Everlasting Father, has staked His honor and His Glory upon the success of Christ. I make bold to say that if Christ wins not the world, and if He is not crowned King of kings and Lord of lords, it is not Jesus that is dishonored so much as the Great Father by whom He was ordained, sent and anointed!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3279

“‘Do you believe on the Son of God?’ is the most important question that a man can ever have to answer! This is vitally and overwhelmingly important.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3132

“We need not say, as many do, that ‘He is a prayer-hearing and prayer-answering God,’ for prayer-hearing involves prayer-answering! O mourners, still mourn before your God, but mourn with this mixture of hope—that God will not suffer the groaning that arises from your heart, in the name of Jesus, to be like the mere whisperings of the wind! He will hear them before long!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3113

“It is not faith to trust God as a saint when you feel you are a saint. Faith is to trust Christ as a sinner—while you are conscious that you are a sinner. To come to Jesus and to think yourselves pure, is a sorry coming to Him—but to come with all your impurity—this is true coming.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3203

“For the most part there is such a thing as terror in prospect of death—the fear is often greater in prospect than in reality! In fact, it is always so in the case of the Christian. But yet, when we give ourselves up to fear for a time, we are grievously afraid.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3253

“It was one of the worst days that ever dawned upon the Church of Christ when it began to cultivate the art of oratory and turned aside to ‘enticing words of man’s wisdom.’ But when men speak out of an overflowing soul of what God has done for them, that is the power which the Spirit of God gives to them and the power which He will bless to their hearers! They do not then try to use out-of-the-way words and nicely rounded sentences, nor to pile up perorations—for that is magnifying the preacher and dishonoring the Word that has come out of the mouth of God!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3140

“We are never so near to the condition of the glorified saints above as when we are, with heart, and soul, and voice, glorifying God! ”—Volume 54, Sermon #3105

“There is life for a look at the Crucified One.”—There is life for a look—even though the heart should be as hard as the nether millstone! There is life for a look—even though as yet the character has undergone no change! There is life for a look—even though you cannot see any signs of Grace—“There is life for a look at the Crucified One.”

“No man that I know of saw the blood upon the lintel and the two side posts, at the dead of night, in the land of Egypt, for there were none abroad to look upon it—but God saw it, and it is written—“When I see the blood, I will pass over you.” When God sees our simple confidence in His dear Son and perceives us resting upon His Word without the admixture of human reason and opinion, then, Beloved, He will accept us in the Beloved and our house shall stand when others fall!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3168

“There is one word that every true servant of Christ must be able to speak very distinctly—that word is Substitution. I believe that substitution is the keyword to all true theology—Christ standing in the place of sinners and numbered with the transgressors because of their transgressions, not His own—Christ paying our debts and discharging all our liabilities. This truth involves, of course, our taking Christ’s place as He took ours, so that all Believers are Beloved, accepted, made heirs of God, and in due time shall be glorified with Christ forever.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3218

“There is no grief which the Holy Spirit cannot relieve! That Divine Comforter knows so well how to get at the secret springs of our sorrow and to put the comfort right into the spring, itself, that there can never be a grief which can elude Him, or which can baffle His skill.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3260

“What the Lord does requires no time. We need weeks, months, years, to do what we have so do, but when Christ had even to raise the dead, He did it in a moment! He simply said, ‘Lazarus, come forth,’ and there was Lazarus! He touched the bier on which the dead young man lay—and the young man at once sat up and began to speak! He said to the little maiden, ‘Talitha cumi,”’ and she opened her eyes at once and rose from her bed ready to eat the refreshment which the Savior commanded her parents to bring her! O poor Sinners, I pray you do not doubt that the great mercy, the free mercy of Jesus Christ is to be given even now, if your hand is but stretched out to receive it!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3119 “If one should spend one’s whole life for God and win only one soul by the most earnest and devoted effort, it would be a rich reward to see that one star shining forever in the firmament of Heaven, to see that one gem glistening forever in the diadem of Christ, to see that one sheep feeding forever in the pastures of Eternal Life!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3310

“When your souls are at the blackest, seek for nothing but the blood! When your soul are at the darkest, seek no light anywhere but in the Cross! Do not cling to preparations, to humbling, to repentings. All these things are good in their way, but they cannot be a balsam to a wounded conscience! Christ and Christ crucified is what you need.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3203

“That is true faith which, when it cannot stand by itself, which sees death written upon all its own power, which sees almost all its hopes withered and blasted with the East wind, yet cries, ‘My God, it is enough! My soul waits only upon You. My expectation is from You.’ This is, indeed, the way to honor God!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3253

“The depravity of mankind is a miracle of sin. It is as great a miracle from one point of view, as the Grace of God is from another. Jesus Christ neglected! Eternal Love slighted! Infinite Mercy disregarded!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3086

“Ah Sin, what a shameful thing you must be! Blush, Christian, that you should be guilty of it. Blush again, that you do not blush more often! Be ashamed that you are not ashamed of sin, and be offended that your heart should be so stolid over a thing so detestable. ”—Volume 58, Sermon #3311

“Give us a Bible reading, Bible loving people, and all the ‘priests’ in the world, with all their finery, will never make any headway! An open Bible is death to their follies and lies if there are but people with open eyes to read it! The worst of it is that although we have the open Bible, we have not as many Bible readers and Bible lovers as we wish to see. May the Lord graciously increase the number the wide world over!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3090

“When Rutherford was talking of the beauties of the Christ whom he loved so dearly, one of his hearers was compelled to cry out, “Now, mon, you are on the right string, keep to that!” And, indeed, this is a theme that might stir the stammerer to speak with power and make the very dumb to be eloquent for Christ! Oh, how glorious is our blessed Lord!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3218

“Till we are emptied of self we cannot be filled with God. Stripping must be worked upon us before we can be clothed with the righteousness which is from Heaven. Christ is never precious till we are poor in spirit—we must see our own needs before we can perceive His wealth. Pride blinds the eyes and sincere humility must open them or the beauties of Jesus will be forever hidden from us. ”—Volume 55, Sermon #3156

“Where Christ is exalted, there will be a willing, generous people. I do not believe it is so much the fault of Christians that they have not given more to the cause of God, as it has been the fault of ministers that they have not more fully preached Jesus Christ.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3100

“One of the most powerful preachers who ever lived was the Prophet Jonah. And I believe that Jonah learned to preach by going, in the whale’s belly, to the bottom of the Mediterranean. That voyage was better than a university education for him and he became a good sound Calvinist before he was cast up again upon the land. He said, ‘Salvation is of the Lord,’ before the Lord told the fish to give him up and I have no doubt that he often preached that doctrine afterwards!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3113

“It is no part of the business of Christ’s ministers to modify the Truth of God which He has entrusted to them, or to put new meanings into it which God never meant, draining away the very life-blood of the Gospel and leaving it dead and useless! But it isboth our duty and our privilege to state it just as we find it and to proclaim it in as plain a language as possible so that everybody may understand what the teaching of God really is.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3203

“Yes, the Master is pleased, in the assembly of His saints, when we break the Bread of Life, to feed the multitude to the fullest and they go away refreshed!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3260

“Now, dear Friends, let us say that there is no blood and no water that can wash away sin anywhere but in Christ. All the blood of bulls could not take away sin, though offered by Aaron, himself, the father of the Levitical priesthood! And all the water in the world, though consecrated by bishops, cardinals and popes, cannot take away a single spot of iniquity! The only blood that can cleanse us from God’s wrath is the blood of Jesus Christ, Himself, and the only water that can wash out of us the damning stain of sin is the water which came from Jesus Christ’s heart!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3311

“Beloved, there is no difference in the affection of God towards His children! There is an elect out of the elect, I will acknowledge, as to gifts and standing and as to the labor they may accomplish in this world—but there is no election out of the elect as for a deeper extent of love! They are all loved alike! They are all written in the same book of eternal love and life. They were all purchased with the same precious blood of the Savior…They are all saved by the same Grace, loved by the same love, heirs of the same inheritance—and Jesus Christ puts them all together when He says, ‘Neither pray I for these alone, but for them, also, which shall believe on Me through their word.’”—Volume 55, Sermon #3133

“Ah, my Hearers, had humbling is this truth to our pride—that the curse of God is upon everyone who is of the seed of Adam, that every child born into this world is born under the curse since it is born under the Law. ”—Volume 57, Sermon #3254

“Coming here, the other afternoon, and walking down one of the back streets, I amused myself by observing how many houses were insured. I noticed the marks of the different Insurance Companies. There was the sun on one, with his bright face looking down upon us, as much as to say,‘There shall be no loss here.’ The globe, the star, the Phoenix—all were there as seals of safety. Now there was only one house in Jericho that was insured—and that had for its symbol and mark of insurance a scarlet line tied in the window! What a mercy it is when houses are insured by the Grace of God and dedicated to the Lord—the very houses and, much more—the inhabitants of those houses!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3168

“We must be very clear in telling the sinner that there is no hope for him anywhere else but in Christ. Nine out of ten of the arrows in a minister’s quiver ought to be shot at the sinner’s good works, for these are his worst enemies. That “deadly doing” that needs to be cast “down at Jesus’ feet”—that trying to beor to feel somethingin order that they may save themselves—this is the curse of many!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3218

“No lie was ever more extraordinary than the lie that baptismal water can regenerate the soul. I marvel more and more that I should find myself living in an age of such idiots and have almost come to think that Carlyle was right when he spoke of our nation as, ‘Consisting of twenty million people, mostly fools.’”—Volume 58, Sermon #3311

“I do implore you never to be satisfied with any religion which does not affect your heart, and with no religious exercise which is not true heartwork. You might as well be sitting in your own homes as be here without your hearts.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3094

“The best way to repay God, and the way He loves best, is to take encouragement from past answers to prayer and ask Him ten times as much each time! Nothing pleases God as much as when a sinner comes again very soon with twice as large a petition, saying, ‘Lord, You did hear me last time, and now I have come again.’”—Volume 54, Sermon #3120

“I wish that all the saints would meet for Communion on every ‘first day of the week.’ I cannot conceive it to be possible for them to meet thus too often. As for myself, unless sickness keeps me away, I find it most helpful to come to the Lord’s Table every Lord’s-Day, for although we believe neither in, transubstantiation nor in consubstantiation, yet there is a very real sense in which we do spiritually eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man and so become ‘strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.’”—Volume 57, Sermon #3260

“Are you concerned about how you are to get food and clothing? How can God deny you such trifles as these when He has given you His Son? Perseverance in Grace—is that what you ask? Even that is but a crumb under the Master’s table compared with His Son! You need certain virtues, you need help in trouble, you need sustenance under stern difficulties—I know not what you need, but this I know—all the needs of all of us put together could only make one little drop in comparison with the tremendous ocean of benevolence which flowed out of God’s heart when He spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3204

“Give the Gospel a fair consideration and very especially and impartially weigh in the scales of sound judgment the Doctrine of the Atoning Sacrifice of Christ. Sit down at the foot of the Cross and study the wounds of Jesus—and do not pour contempt and scorn upon Him until you have found good reason to do so—and that I am sure you never will do. Shake off all prejudice, again I entreat you, for it is a deadly disease which may prove eternally fatal to you.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3312

“If every convert were brought in through the usual means of Grace, we would come to regard conversion as a necessary result from certain fixed causes—and attribute some mystic virtue to the outward means. But when God is pleased to distribute the blessing entirely apart from these, then He shows that He can do without means as well as with means—that nothing is too mighty a work for Him, that His arm is not shortened at all so that He needs to use an instrument to make up the length of it—neither has He lost any strength so as to be forced to appeal to us to make up the deficiency!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3075

“If our prayers were forcible according to their expression, then rhetoric would be more valuable than Grace and a scholastic education would be better than sanctification—but it is not so. Some of us may be able to express ourselves very fluently from the force of natural gifts, but it should always be to us an anxious question whether our prayer is a prayer which God will receive, for we ought to know and must know by this time, that we often pray best when we stammer and stutter—and we pray worst when words come rolling like a torrent, one after another! God is not moved by words—they are but a noise to Him. He is only moved by the deep thought and the heaving emotion which dwell in the innermost spirit.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3083
“Eternity alone can reveal the value of Christ! By the miseries of the Hell from which He saves us, let us measure Him! By the bliss of the Heaven to which He lifts us, let us estimate His worth! By the depths of ignominy and shame into which He dived, let us conceive of Him! By the glories He relinquished and by the agonies He bore, let us attempt to form some faint idea of His value!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3204

“It were enough to make our knees knock together, to chill our blood and to cause every hair of our head to stand on end if we did but know what it is to be under the curse of God!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3254

“The learned have collected 288 different opinions of the ancients with regard to happiness—and there is not one which hits the mark! But our Lord has, in a few telling sentences, [the Beatitudes] told us all about it without using a solitary redundant word, or allowing the slightest omission! The seven golden sentences are perfect as a whole and each one occupies its appropriate place. Together they are a ladder of light—and each one is a step of purest sunshine.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3155

“There is no lack which a Christian ever has which Christ cannot fully supply and there is nothing in Christ which is not useful to a Christian.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3218

“I long to see my Lord Jesus Christ in Heaven, but I think I would almost as gladly have seen Him in the carpenter’s shop. I delight in the thought that I shall see Him on the Throne of God, but I sometimes wish that I could have seen Him on the Cross, for it was there that His love reached its climax as He bore our sins in His own body on the tree!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3312

“Beloved Believer, remember that you are not partlysaved, but you are wholly saved! The robe you wear today does not reach part of the way to cover you, but covers you from head to foot! The washing which the Savior has given you has not washed away a part of your spots, but you are clean every whit! And looking upon the work of your salvation as you receive it from the hands of Jesus, you may rest as God rested and keep a long and blessed Sabbath just as God has kept it! He rested because His creative work was finished—and you may rest because the work of your salvation is also finished! ”—Volume 55, Sermon #3169

“For a man to bend his knees and utter the hypocritical language of affection before God which he never feels in his heart is little short of blaspheming God. We must have very light thoughts of God when we try to deceive Him with such prayers as these.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3133

“What we do for God, God’s Grace has first bestowed upon us! If there is any virtue, if there is any zeal, if there is any faith, if there is any love, it is the result of the Grace of God bestowed upon us! Always look upon things in that light, for then you will not grow proud. Give what you may, and do what you may—you may regard it as the effect of the Grace of God bestowed upon you.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3092

“In the olden days, ‘they that feared the Lord spoke often, one to another.’ Let this good practice be revived, for thereby, depend upon it, many will be strengthened in the Lord!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3260

“O Brothers and Sisters in Christ, we have need to pray for God the Holy Spirit to work mightily among us! We have the Holy Spirit still with us, so we have no need to pray that He would come down from Heaven. He came down at Pentecost and He never went back to Heaven, so He is still here. He is in all His people! He is in this assembly right now. He dwells among us, though we are apt to forget that He does. We reckon that the glory of our strength lies in our ministers, or in our organizations, or in our creeds. We forget that the glory of our strength is spiritualand lies in the Holy Spirit, Himself, who is in us and who shall be forever in us if we are truly the Lord’s!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3140

“It is a sweet thought to me that even Satan himself can never rob me of my pardon. I may lose my copy of it, and lose my comfort from it, but the original pardon is filed in Heaven!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3254
“Those who follow the despised Christ will not be rejected by the reigning Christ!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3312

“When a man becomes nothing in his own estimation, then Jesus Christ becomes everything to him, but not till then. Self is an effectual darkener of the windows of the soul. How can men see the Gospel while they see so much of themselves? With such a noble righteousness of their own to deck themselves with, is it likely that they will buy of Christ the fine white linen which is the righteousness of saints?”—Volume 56, Sermon #3205

“Virtues in unregenerate men are nothing but whitewashed sins! The best performance of an unchanged character is worthless in God’s sight. It lacks the stamp of Grace upon it and that which has not the stamp of Grace is false coin. Be it ever so beautiful in model and finish, it is not what it should be. ‘So then they that are in the flesh cannot praise God.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3105

“When a certain clergyman asked the Duke of Wellington, ‘Does Your Grace think it is any use preaching the Gospel to the Hindus?’ He simply replied, ‘What are your marching orders?’ As a soldier, he believed in obeying orders. And when the clergyman answered that the orders were, ‘Preach the Gospel to every creature,’ the Duke said, ‘Then your duty is quite clear. Obey your Master’s orders and don’t you trouble, about anybody else’s opinions.’”—Volume 56, Sermon #3218

“If some preachers whom I know, instead of having lessons in elocution, were sent for a little while down into the depths of soul-despair. If they were tried, plagued, vexed and chastened every morning, they would learn a way of speaking which would reach the people’s hearts far better than any that can be learned by human teaching!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3113

“Beloved, to make a true Sabbath, there must be a sanctifying of the day—it must be a holy day if it is to be a restful day. It is no use for men to say that they can get a rest by spending the Sabbath in amusement—they never will. There is no perfect rest to our entire manhood except in holiness and holy exercises, alone, can give complete rest to our whole being.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3169

“The clearer view we have of Christ, the firmer confidence we have in His faithfulness and His power to save, the stronger will our spiritual nature grow and the more like our Lord shall we become! They who live near to Christ must derive strength from Him.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3260

“Let me tell you that you virtually pray for Christ, Beloved, whenever you pray for one of His people. And whenever we do a kindness to one of them, we do it unto Him. Whenever we pray for one of His servants, we pray for Christ! You prayed for that poor miserable looking penitent who was afraid to call himself a Christian, though he was so in deed and in truth. Do you know that you then prayed for Christ? You interceded for that simple-minded woman who did not know the way to Heaven and who asked you to put up a prayer to God that she might be taught. Do you know that you then prayed for Christ, for she was part of His flesh and blood and was afterwards brought into His family.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3100

“Now, am I addressing one man who feels that he is saved by faith, and yet he is sinning as he used to do? Give up that belief, Sir, or it will ruin you! I pray you do not indulge in it, for it is a delusion of Satan! Do I address one man who has a hope that perhaps he can so trust Christ as to be saved, and yet continue to live in his own wicked way? If anyone has told you that, he has told you a lie! Rest assured that you are mistaken! Christ never came to be the minister of sin. He came to save us, not inour sins, butfromour sins.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3311

“Observe well that the patience of Job was the patience of a man like ourselves, imperfect and full of infirmity, for as one has well remarked, we have heard of the impatience of Job as well as of his patience! ”—Volume 57, Sermon #3255

“And how many there are in this city of London, in what we call this ‘enlightened’ 19^th Century, who know a great deal about a thousand things, but nothing about the one thing necessary! They have never troubled to study Christ and so, for lack of knowledge, they grope about as the blind!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3205

“There is not one step in the whole Divine experience of the Believer—not one link in the wonderful chain of Divine Grace—in which there is a withdrawal of the Divine smile or an absence of real happiness! Blessed is the first moment of the Christian life on earth—and blessed is the last!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3155

“We preach Christ to the harlots in the street and oh, how joyfully have many of them received Him and how gladly have they found cleansing from their foul stains in Jesus’ precious blood! We preach Christ to the drunk, for we believe that nothing but the Grace of God can rescue him from his degradation and sin—and many such sinners haves we seen reclaimed by the Gospel!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3218

“Do you not know that God is an eternal, self-existent Being, that to say He loves now, is, in fact, to say He always did love, since with God there is no past and can be no future? What we call past, present and future, He wraps up in one eternal NOW. And if you say that He loves you nowyou thereby say that He loved you yesterday, He loved you in the past eternity and He will love you forever—for nowwith God is past, present and future!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3133

“Christ is your Savior from beginning to end, so always regard Him in that light. And as your Savior, let it be very comforting to you to reflect that He is Divine—“The only wiseGodour Savior.” He who has undertaken to save you is no mere man and no angel—He is nothing less than the Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient God!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3074

“Working for the Lord necessitates prayer and this is a great blessing to us. If a man gives himself wholly to soul-winning, he must be much in prayer, for he will be all at sea without help from Heaven! If he tries to comfort the downcast penitent, how readily will he be baffled! How soon will he cry to the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, to do the work effectually!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3313

“Our Doctrine may be as high as the Scripture warrants us in teaching, but we shall never find there any ground for the infamous deduction that because God works in us, we are to lie inert as if we were logs or stones. Oh, no! That is not His will concerning us, for the Apostolic injunction is, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God which works in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure.””—Volume 57, Sermon #3260

“Many judge what the Gospel ought to be, but do not actually enquire as to what it is. They do not come to the Bible to obtain their views of religion, but they open that Book to find texts to suit the opinions which they bring to it. They are not open to the honest force of the Truth of God and, therefore, are not saved by it!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3205

“Dead fish float down the stream, but live fish swim against it. Do you swim against the stream? Have you learned to go against the current? Do you strive to get up, up towards the great Source of everything that is good and true or do you float along the stream of pleasure with the mases of the world? Then you may readily know to which side you belong.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3079

“The Dog of Hell is allowed to snap and snarl, but his chain is not removed and the collar of Omnipotent restraint is on him. Come, dear Friends, you that are in trouble, remember that God is in your sorrow, ruling it to its desired end and checking it that it should go no further than according to His will! And you neither have suffered, nor in the future will suffer, any more than He in Infinite Love permits!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3255

“The man who believes in Jesus knows that he is saved, so he has no need to try to save himself. That work is done and done forever! And now we work from life, not for life! Now we work because we are saved, not in order to be saved!Now we feel that we have not to win any merit by anything that we do, but that the Infinite Merit of Christ has already procured for us full acceptance with God. And what we have to do now is to prove our gratitude to God for the Divine work that is already completed. What a blessed thing it is to rest both from the sinful service of Satan and from the servile service of the Law!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3169

“God wants nothing of us except our needs and these furnish Him with room to display His bounty when He freely supplies them! It is from the worse and not from the better side of fallen man that the Lord wins glory for Himself. Not what I have, but what I have not, is the first point of contact between my soul and God.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3156

“Does anybody know how precious the Gospel is till he has seen it light up the eyes that were dim with despondency? Does any man know how the joyful sound of the name of Jesus can charm a heart till he has seen the smile of newborn faith? I do not see how our coming memories can minister to our eternal happiness unless we earnestly labor to being sinners to the Savior!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3313

“We know that there is a Book of Life before the Throne of God and that no more names can be written there—they were all recorded before the foundation of the world when the Father gave to Christ those who are to be eternally His. We cannot mount up to Heaven to read the names that are written there, but we believe the list contains millions upon millions of names of those who have not yet trusted in Christ, so we mean to keep on preaching Christ to sinners of every age, of every rank, of every sort, of every degree of blackness and vileness! And we believe that ‘there is yet room,’ there is yet mercy for the miserable, there is yet forgiveness for the guilty who will come and trust in Jesus Christ and Him crucified!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3218

“Daughters of godly parents, children of those who have gone before to eternal Glory, I entreat you, look to Jesus! Go and present your suit to Him now. It shall surely prosper. If the question was once doubtful, it has now become ‘a statute of judgment.’ The Lord has commanded it! May God bless these counsels and exhortations to you, for Christ’s sake! Amen.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3141

“Some of you, too, whom I have been addressing for years, are Believers in the head, but unbelievers in the heart, not really putting your trust in Jesus! Who can see if he refuses the Light of God? Who shall find salvation if he will not trust the Savior for it? Unbelief is as sure to destroy those who are guilty of it as faith is sure to save Believers!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3205

“Fussy work that is done for Christ without communion with Christ comes to nothing because it is not worked in the strength of God. O my Brothers and Sisters, nothing can come out of us if it is not first worked in us by the Holy Spirit! It is essential that a Christian worker should himself be the workmanship of God. If we would heal, we must be healthy. If we get out of fellowship with Jesus, it will lead to innumerable evils… You must walk in the light as God is in the light if you are to enlighten a dark world and glorify your Lord!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3313

“O my God, if You should make all Your goodness pass before me, all Your goodness to the children of man, I must sit me down on an adamantine rock forever and look through eternity! I should wear these eyes out and must have eyes of fire, or else I should never be able to see all Your goodness towards the sons of men!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3120

“A life of Christian activity down here is a fitting prelude to a life of heavenly activity up there! The best Christians are those who serve God the most.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3260
“It is well to have a little singing as well as weeping at a funeral. It well becomes the burial of the saints. Angels never weep when saints die—they sing. You never heard a saint say, when he was dying, ‘There are angels in the room. Listen! You can hear them sobbing because I am dying.’ No, but we have often heard a saint say, ‘There are angels in the room and I can hear them singing.’ That is because angels are wiser than we are. We judge by the sight of our eyes and the hearing of our ears—but angels judge after another fashion. They ‘see and hear and know’ the joys of the blessed and therefore they have no tears—but they have songs for them and they sing loudly when the Christian is carried Home like a shock of corn fully ripe.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3077

“Never will a man became rich in faith until first he has learned that he is penniless so far as his own merit is concerned. You must be emptied, you must be drained dry, you must be made to feel and to confess that in your flesh there dwells no good thing, or else the Sovereign Mercy of God and the riches of His loving kindness shall never be your heritage.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3256

“The more faith grows, the more rest grows. But when our faith begins to forget the Lord and we commence to worry and to fret, then our rest goes at once. It is glorious to live exempt from care by the blessed power of prayer—to be able to take every trouble to God and leave it with Him.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3169

“There might as well be found water in Hell as true comfort for a soul that realizes its guilt and fears the thunders of the wrath of God, yet is not reconciled to God by the death of His Son. Apart from that Living Water which Jesus came to bring, such a soul is truly in ‘the pit wherein is no water.’”—Volume 54, Sermon #3106

“Talking about the Bible is well enough, but searching the Scriptures is better! Feed on the Word yourselves, or else your teaching will be thin and watery.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3313

“A true servant of Christ must never try to let the people see how well he can preach. He must never go out of his way to drag a pretty piece of poetry in his sermon, nor to introduce some fine quotations from the classics. He must employ a simple, homely style, or such a style as God has given him. And he must preach Christ so plainly that his hearers can not only understand him, but that they cannotmisunderstandhim even if they try to do so.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3218

“Beloved, you must have a personal experience of the things of God, or you cannot help newborn souls. If you do not know what it is to pass from death to life, and do not know the marks of regeneration, you are useless.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3205
“It is better for each one of us to be rendering our homage to God than picking holes in the coats of others, so let each one of us ask, ‘What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me?’”—Volume 54, Sermon #3086

“But when the roll was read just now, where was that man who used to teach in the Sunday school ten years ago? He has given up, he says, to let the young people have a turn. Yes, but he would not like the Lord to leave off blessing him and to give the young people all His Presence and Grace!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3082

“An Omnipotent hand created us out of nothing and the same Omnipotence is needed to bring us to feel that we are nothing! We can never be saved unless we are made alive by Infinite Power, nor can we be made alive at all unless that same Power shall first slay us. It is amazing how much is needed to strip a man and lay him in his true place!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3156

“The length and breadth and depth and height of Scripture all surpass the comprehension of mortal men! And though we do unfeignedly believe and devoutly rejoice in them, it is not within the range of our powers to fully comprehend them.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3314

“I remember an old countryman saying to me, long ago, ‘Depend upon it, my Brother, if you or I get one inch above the ground, we get just that inch too high.’ And I believe it is so. Flat on our faces before the Cross of Christ is the place for us—realizing that we are nothing and that Jesus Christ is everything!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3169

“There are some of you between whom and myself there are ties which death cannot snap. I will find you in Heaven if I can and I know you will desire to meet me. The Lord gave you to me as my spiritual children and if it should come to pass that earthly fathers should not see their children in Heaven, yet the spiritual father will see his children there praising and blessing the Lord! One of the next joys to knowing Christ, yourself, must surely be that of leading others to know Him. Seek after this bliss!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3205

“‘Light be.’ ‘Light was.’ God had but to speak the word and the great wonder was accomplished! How there was light before there was any sun—for the sun was not created until the fourth day of the week—it is not for us to say. But God is not dependent upon His own creation. He can make light without a sun! He can spread the Gospel without the aid of ministers, He can convert souls without any human or angelic method, for He does as He wills in the heavens above and on the earth beneath.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3141
“I know that if there is much to dispirit me in my ministry and I see but little of its effects, yet He shall keep all whom the Father has given to Him—and this makes me preach. I come into this Chapel tonight with the assurance that God has some child of His in this place—not yet called—and I feel confident that He will call someone by the use of the ministry, so why not by me?”—Volume 55, Sermon #3133

“Ask the gardener which is the best apple tree in the garden and he will tell you that it is not the one which has the best shape, but the one which yields the most fruit! And he is not the best Christian who occupies the highest position, or who talks the most about Divine things, but it is he whose life is most fruitful in good works to the Glory of God!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3260

“Have you come to the end of yourself? Well, then, now you have come to the beginning of God! It is when the last penny of creature merit is gone that God comes to us with the boundless treasures of His Grace! If you have one moldy crust of your own homemade bread left, you shall not have the Bread of Heaven! But when you are starved. When you have no goodness in you, nor any hope of goodness, no merit, nor hope of merit, no reliance, nor shadow of reliance upon anything that you are, or ever can be—then is the time to cast yourself upon the all-sufficient mercy of God in Christ Jesus!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3113

“It is brightness that discovers dimness, holiness that reveals unholiness and the purity of God that shows the impurity of man.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3256

“We must hold firmly whatever we have learned of the Truth of God, but we must always be prepared to learn more. To say of my Bible that I have attained to every height that it reveals, is as foolish as to say that I have reached the highest degree of spiritual life that is possible.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3314

“It were well if we were to have some seasons set apart for seeking communion with Christ, for at such times He would bless us.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3073

“There is never a child of God brought into the Church by man’s contrivance or man’s persuasions—each precious stone is brought there by God, and by God alone! No child of God is sanctified by man—he is sanctified by the living God. No heir of Heaven is fitted into the Church by man—God alone puts him into his proper position.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3093

“If there is not enough prayer in us to stir our own hearts, how can we expect that God should be moved by our entreaties? It was not so with Jacob—“He blessed him there.” There he prevailed, and if you want a blessing, you must get it in that way. When you get to the state that you will take no denial—that you would sooner die than not be blessed—you shall get it.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3219

“Human weakness is a small obstacle to salvation compared with human strength—there lies the work and the difficulty! Hence it is a sign of Grace to know one’s need of Grace. He has some Light of God in his soul who knows and feels that he is in darkness.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3156

“Wherever the Bible goes, it appears not as an exotic, but as a homegrown flower. And whenever the Gospel is preached, it comes, not as a Revelation from the East, or the West, or the North, or the South, but as God’s message to all mankind in the whole world!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3314

“I rejoice that so many whom I am now addressing are occupied in various forms of Christian activity—and I hope that each one of us who loves the Lord will continue thus to walk up and down in His name until He calls us to serve Him in the upper sanctuary!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3260

“Then, again, it is true that noman, even asa saint,can see God’s faceand live—not because of moral disability, but because of physical inability. The body is not strong enough to bear the sight or vision of God. I cannot tell whether even the saints in Heaven see God. God dwells among them, but I do not know whether they ever behold Him. That is a speculation. We can leave that till we get there—we will decide it when we get to Heaven.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3120

“If that which men see of you is foul, how foul must you be where only God can see you? We are none of us better than we seem, but we are all of us far worse than we think. May God tear away every veil which hides us from ourselves, that we may see ourselves even as we are in His sight! ”—Volume 56, Sermon #3206

“Show your love to Jesus by trying to find some of His lost sheep for Him. Awaken yourselves, my Brothers and Sisters who have entered into rest, and prove to mankind that the grand old Calvinistic Doctrine of a finished salvation does not breed sluggishness! Rise, I pray you, and show that the children of the freewoman are not slothful, but that the motive of gratitude to God is a higher and more potent one than the selfish motive of seeking to save yourselves! Let those who want to save themselves go and work for themselves, but as for you who are saved, go and work for Jesus!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3169

“I tell you, Sinners, if you are lost, it will not be for lack of mercy! If your sins destroy you, it will not be because the blood of the Covenant has not power to wash away your sins. If you perish, it will not be because Jesus Christ is not able to save you. Why will it be, then? It will be because you have not believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, for ‘he that believes not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.’”—Volume 54, Sermon #3106

“Now, our manna does not come to us every morning, but it comes once a year and is preparing all the time. Behind the baker’s cart with its daily call is the miller. Behind the miller is the farmer and behind the farmer is God who makes the earth to yield her fruits and to multiply them for the sustaining of the whole race of men! ”—Volume 58, Sermon #3315

“Desponding soul, if Jesus speaks to you today you will not be desponding any longer! There is such potency in the word, ‘Jesus,’ that I think it ought to be sung in all hospitals to charm away diseases! Wherever there are diseased hearts and troubled spirits, I would always go and sing,‘Jesus!’ When He draws near to comfort His people, midnight becomes noon and the thickest darkness becomes a blaze of meridian splendor, for Grace is poured into His lips!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3081

“That He does choose them [to salvation] is clear enough from Scripture, so clear that even such an unbeliever as Bolingbroke said to Mr. Whitefield one day, ‘[If we] let it be taken for granted that the Bible is true, then no other Doctrine but Calvinism can be true, for the Bible teaches it from beginning to end.’”—Volume 56, Sermon #3206

“No, Sinner, apart from God, you have not one friend who can help you! You have no merit with which to help yourself, no power to win any merit, no friend to get any merit for you and no character to be a recommendation to you. You are a beggar, indeed.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3256

“We should do well to always make little things as well as great things the objects of prayer.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3142

“God elected His people without ministers. He did not need any ministers to help Him in that. He redeemed His people without ministers. What great Divine could have helped Christ to redeem His people? Yes, more, He can, if He pleases, call His people without ministers, for we know how some have become the subjects of Grace by the reading of the Word, without the assistance of the ministry! And some in the Sunday school have received the words of eternal life. This should make our pride subside at once.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3133

“When I think of it, I can see how my Lord divides the spoil with the strong (Isaiah 53:12). Death comes and he says, “That is mine.” He has taken the poor wrinkled body! And Christ smiles, and lets him have it, for He takes for His share, the soul, the life! And as He bears him off, He takes the best part of the spoil! He has left Death the husk, but He has, Himself, secured the kernel! Yes, the day will come when He will take the body, too, out of the custody of Death, for not a wreck or a rag of all His saints shall remain in the domains of Death. There is a resurrection of dead bodies as well as an immortality of spirits! Glory be to Christ! In this way, here and hereafter, He divides the spoil with the strong! Strong is Death, but still stronger the Omnipotent Son of God!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3279

“It will be our Heaven here to be out of Heaven for a season if we can but thereby bring others to know the Savior and so add fresh jewels to our Redeemer’s crown!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3315

“Brothers and Sisters, we miss a thousand blessings because we are too busy to commune with God! We are here, there, and everywhere, except where we ought to be. We are running to this and to that instead of sitting with Mary at the Master’s feet. He blessed Mary as she sat there, and there, too, will He be sure to bless us.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3219

“The sweet apples of self-esteem are deadly poison—who would wish to be destroyed by them? The bitter fruits of self-knowledge are always healthful, especially if washed down with the waters of repentance and sweetened with a draught from the wells of salvation! He who loves his own soul will not despise them.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3156

“If we are born only once, we must die twice—but if we are born twice, we die but once—and after that one death which is not really death, we enter into eternal life!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3206

“‘But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency ofthe power may be of God, and not of us’ (2 COR4:7). The original might very fairly be rendered, “We have this treasure in oyster shells,” for, just as pearls are found in the shells of oysters, so God gives to those who preach the Word, the treasure of the Gospel, yet they are themselves nothing but the oyster shells, nothing but the earthen vessel in which God pleases to place His priceless treasures. If you have done anything in the service of God, my Brother, remember that you are nothing but the oyster shell, it is God’s Truth that is the pearl in you!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3169
“The natural man discerns not the things that are of God, for they are spiritual and can only be spiritually seen and known. But oh, the bliss of knowing that Christ is yours and of entering into nearness of communion with Him! To thrust your hands into His side and your finger into the print of the nails—these are not everyday joys!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3315

“There is one talisman that will open every vault in the treasury of God—the blood of the Covenant! You cannot be denied if you plead the atoning Sacrifice of Jesus Christ! Knock at Heaven’s gate with the crimson token in your hand and as surely as God loves Jesus Christ—and He loves Him more than all of us put together love Him—He will honor His Son’s great Sacrifice and He will say to you, ‘According to your desire and your faith, so be it unto you.’”—Volume 54, Sermon #3106

“O my Soul, what is the cleft of the rock where youmust stand if you would ever see God’s face and live? Oh, it is the ‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me,’ where I must hide! Oh, what a cleaving that was when Jesus died! O my Soul, enter into the hole in Jesus’ side! That is the cleft of the Rock where you must abide to see God!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3120

“If you have to pray in sore agony of spirit fearing that God has forsaken you, remember that Christ has gone further even than that into the depths of anguish in prayer, for He cried in Gethsemane, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’”—Volume 57, Sermon #3280

“The next thing that Saul would see would be a Savior in Christ, for Ananias said to him, ‘The Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto you in the way as you came, has sent me, that you might receive your sight.’ Now Saul would see what an opener of the eyes Jesus is, what a mighty Savior for sinners! And, oh, this is a blessed sight—to see Christ as a Savior, as my Savior, opening myeyes, so that I can say, ‘One thing I know, whereas I was blind, now I see.’ This is a heavenly sight. May you help many to gaze upon it!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3205

“How impossible it is to fully describe our Lord in human language! He is going away, yet He is, Himself, the way! And He is, Himself, the beginning and the end—He is everything to His people—‘the way, the truth, and the life.’ We are obliged to have mixed metaphors when we talk of Christ, for He is the mixture of everything that is delightful and precious. All over glorious is our Lord—there is no way of setting Him forth to the full in our poor halting speech.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3078

“Ah, no sinner prizes salvation like the sinner who knows he is lost! May our God give you to know that you are!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3316
“The Divine interposition of God in the midst of His Church is her great bulwark, her hope, her shield, her stay.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3087

“I cannot make out what some of you do with your comfortless Gospel—believing that God loves you today and hates you tomorrow. That you are a child of God one day. and a child of the devil the next. I could not believe a Gospel like that. If I were a heathen, I could believe it at once because I could manufacture a god of mud that I could alter with my fingers, and change to any fashion. But if I once believe in the God who “Was and Is, and is to come,” I know that He cannot change and I feel a constancy of faith and a firmness of hope, which the cares and trials of this mortal life cannot destroy. He will not cast off His people whom He has chosen.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3114

“The greatest unfitness for Christ is our own imaginary fitness! When we are utterly undone, we are near to being enriched with the riches of Divine Grace. Out of ourselves is next door to being in Christ. Where we end, mercy begins, or rather, mercy has begun and mercy has already done much for us when we are at the end of our merit, our power, our wisdom and our hope!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3156

“Regeneration makes us actually the children of God, just as adoption makes us virtually the children of God. By regeneration, we become really and truly heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—and our right to Heaven, to all the blessings of the Covenant of Grace, and to the promises of God—arises from this new and heavenly birth!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3206

“Sin is an offense to the nostrils of the thrice-holy Jehovah even more than a dunghill can ever be to the most delicately active man or woman! And when we realize our true condition as sinners, we feel that a dunghill is a fitting place for such a mass of defilement and corruption.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3256

“The glory of the Scriptures is like the glory of the heavens—‘in them has He set a tabernacle for the sun’—and in the Word of God there is a tabernacle for the Sun ofRighteousness. It is within the Truths of Divine Revelation that Jesus Christ abides as the sun does in its proper sphere.
What would the heavens be without the sun? And what would the Scriptures be without the Sun of Righteousness?”—Volume 58, Sermon
#3314

“True Christians live for God and work for God—and everyone of us who claims to be a Christian is either working for God or else an impostor. I repeat my declaration that the man who calls himself a Christian and yet does nothing for Christ, is an impostor!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3142
“Praying without a promise is like going to war without a weapon. God is so gracious that He may yield to our entreaties even when He has not given a definite promise concerning what we are asking at His hands. But going to Him with one of His own promises is like going to a bank with a check—He must honor His own promise. We speak reverently, yet very confidently upon this point. To be consistent with His own Character, He must fulfill His own Word which He has spoken! So, when you approach the Throne of Grace, search out the promise that applies to your case and plead it with your heavenly Father, and then expect that He will do as He has said.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3280

“But every morning also brings a new mercy because every morning ushers in another day. That is a new reason for praise, for we have no right to an hour, or even a minute, much less to a day. To the sinner, especially, it is a great mercy to have another day of Grace, another opportunity for repentance, a new reprieve from death, a little more space in which to escape from Hell and fly to Heaven.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3170

“Is it not one of the greatest blessings that can occur to us to be made to think little of ourselves? May not God be enriching us most when He is emptying us and preparing us for the largest possible benediction when He is making us to see how destitute in all things we are?”—Volume 56, Sermon #3219

“Many professors say, ‘This course is wrong, judging by the Scriptural standard. But then, society has long tolerated it. No, it has even decreed it to be right.’ But will society judge you at the Last Great Day? If you are cast into Hell as a deceitful professor, will society fetch you out of the bottomless pit? If you are found at last outside the gates of Heaven, will society recompense you for your eternal loss? What have you, O man of God, to do with society? Christians are to come out from among the ungodly to daily take up their cross and follow Christ—to go outside the camp, bearing His reproach. The friend of the world is the enemy of Christ! What have you to do with doing as the world does?”—Volume 54, Sermon #3078

“On the fact of your being born-again, or not being born-again, must hang your everlasting destiny!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3206

“There may be more prayer in a groan than in an entire liturgy. There may be more acceptable devotion in a tear that dampens the floor of yonder pew than in all the hymns we have sung, or in all the supplications which we have uttered! It is not the outward, it is the inward! It is not the lips, it is the heart which the Lord regards! If you can only breathe, your prayer is still accepted by the Most High!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3083

“A girl who had been converted was asked what was the difference between her prayers now and before she was converted. She answered, ‘Sir, first I prayed as my mother taught me, but now I pray as God prompts and teaches me.’ That is a blessed and vital difference!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3316

“There is nothing in this world that is more real than hunger and thirst—and the truly blessed man has such a real passion, desire and craving after righteousness that it can only be likened to hunger and thirst. He must have his sins pardoned, he must be clothed in the righteousness of Christ, hemustbe sanctified! And he feels that it will break his heart if he cannot get rid of sin. He pleas, he longs, he prays to be made holy! He cannot be satisfied without this righteousness—and his hungering and thirsting for it is a very real thing.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3157

“Only the Spirit of the living God, who first opens our eyes to see our state as beggars can lead us to look to Jesus Christ and find in Him everlasting riches and eternal salvation!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3256
“I love to find those who have not got anything good at all about them. Some like to find something good in men before they preach to them, but I like to find men who think there is nothing good in them—and then to preach God’s Sovereign Mercy to them.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3133
“I do not see how there can be a Church without worship—and I do not see how there can be a Church in a house unless there is constant worship in the family. ”—Volume 54, Sermon #3103

“Oh, if there is under Heaven an ordinance that is Christ’s mirror. If there is under Heaven a hand that can withdraw the blind and pull up the lattices and let us see the King in His beauty, it is the Lord’s Supper! He has often blessed us there! Let those who despise the Table of the Lord stay away—but those who have got the blessing will wish to be there often and come again and again, saying, ‘Sirs, we would see Jesus.’”—Volume 56, Sermon #3219

“When a martyr has to lay down his life for the Truth of God, his faith is sustained by the comforting Presence of God—he believes in the God who is smiling upon him even while he is in the midst of the fire. But Christ on the Cross trusted in the God who had forsaken Him! ”—Volume 57, Sermon #3280

“Nothing is absolutely wonderful except God—all other things are dwarfed and diminished in wondrousness as compared with Him. The Seven

Wonders of the World are trifles compared with the seven-million wonders of God!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3317
“The beggar in the street says to you, ‘Help me this time, and I will never ask you to help me again.’ Talk not like that, O you who beg at God’s door of Mercy, but—‘Open your mouth wide and I will fill it’ is the Lord’s gracious exhortation and promise! Spread your wings and soar away to the very Throne of God and then expect that He will still exceed your faith and do for you exceeding abundantly above all that you ask or even think!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3170

“The day comes when they that have been ashamed of His Cross will find themselves losing His crown. ‘No Cross, no crown.’ This is what Christ, Himself, says ‘Whoever shall be ashamed of Me and of My Words, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed when He shall come in His own Glory, and in His Father’s, and of the holy angels.’ If you dare not follow Him because you fear shame, shame shall be your perpetual inheritance!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3207

“This coin of Heaven will not have lost its image or its superscription when time shall be no more—it is of God’s minting and will outlast the world—‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.’”—Volume 54, Sermon #3089

“If you teach the Truth and die—and that Truth appears to be forgotten, you have not lived in vain, for that Truth will spring up again in God’s good time! They burnt Jerome of Prague. They took John Huss and when they fastened him to the fatal stake, he said, ‘You may burn the goose, today, but there shall come a swan that you cannot burn’—and that prophecy was fulfilled in Luther, whose crest was a swan.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3142

“O Sinners, quarrel not with Christ for warning you of a Hell from which He would gladly preserve you! Be angry with yourselves, rather, for choosing the path to destruction! Be vexed and wrathful with your own sins for dragging you down to ruin! But oh, be not angry with the loving Savior for telling you, once and for all, that you cannot escape if you neglect this great salvation!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3258“My dear Brothers and Sisters, are you all consciously Christ’s servants? If so, though the service may at times seem heavy because your faith is weak, yet be very thankful that you are servants at all, for it is better to serve God than to reign over all the kingdoms of this world!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3107

“As little children have their own confections that need no vigorous mastication, but will melt in the mouth, so some passages of Scriptures are prepared as choice morsels for the Lord’s children—they have only to receive them by transparent faith and unaffected love—and their enjoyment is great.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3330

“You may be slow to embrace Him, but He is not slow to embrace you! You may not be saying, with the Psalmist, ‘My heart and my flesh cries out for the living God,’ but He wants to see your face, He longs to hear your voice, for with Him it is now, as it has always been, a time to love.’”—Volume 56, Sermon #3220

“Had certain theologians of the present time been present at the Red Sea, they would have cried in sentimental sympathy over the Egyptians! But instead of that, Miriam took a timbrel and said, ‘Sing unto the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously.’ The fates of sinful men are of small moment as compared with the Glory of God! Jehovah fills all things and when the heart is fully taken up with the Glory of God, it learns to sing even this stern refrain—‘To Him that smote Egypt in their first-born: for His mercy endures forever.’”—Volume 58, Sermon #3317

“God has so made man’s heart that nothing can ever fill it but God, Himself. There is such a hungering and thirsting put into the quickened man that he discerns his necessity and he knows that only Christ can supply that necessity. When a man is saved, he has obtained all that he needs. When he gets Christ, he is satisfied.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3157

“Do not pray, ‘Preserve me, O God,’ as though you felt that you were a very precious person. It is true that God regards you as one of His jewels if you are a Believer in Jesus, but you are not to regard yourself as a jewel. Think of yourself as a brand plucked from the burning and then you will pray with due humility.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3280

“It is the duty of every Christian to be witnessing for Christ. Jesus still is on trial every day. He stands before the world, as it were, at this very hour, and the question is—Is He the Son of God or not? Witnesses are being examined every day for Him and against Him. “What do you think of Christ?” is a question which is stirring all this city and all lands, more or less!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3207

“Oh, that thought—it staggers thought! It is an idea that overwhelms me—that God is working in all that happens! The sins of man, the wickedness of our race, the crimes of nations, the iniquities of kings, the cruelties of wars, the terrific scourge of pestilence—all these things are, in some mysterious way, working the will of God! I cannot explain this. I cannot tell you where human will and free agency unite with God’s Sovereignty and with His unfailing decrees.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3114

“There is no worker for Christ like the young worker! I bless God that I was preaching the Gospel at sixteen years of age! I could never have found such pleasure and ease in doing my Master’s work if I had not begun to do it early.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3082“At the worst pinch, God will always be there—you may reckon it as certain that He has never forgotten His people! When the clock strikes and the bell tolls the hour, God will arise for their defense and show Himself to be strong on behalf of all those who put their trust in Him.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3170

“I bless God that the Gospel we have to preach is the Gospel for the illiterate, the Gospel for the poor—and that we can still say, as our Master did—‘The poor have the Gospel preached to them.’ And that many of them have, through that Gospel, become ‘rich in faith, and heirs of the Kingdom which God has promised to them that love Him.’ Do not quarrel with my Master because of the simplicity of the Gospel, lest your pride should hang you on a gallows as high as Haman’s.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3258

“Beloved, have you never felt yourself strangely supported under the direst afflictions, so that they seemed not afflictions at all? And yet when pressure has been removed you have been ready to faint like Samson after he had slain the Philistines! Fear is a strange contradiction, a grim inconsistency, for it is apt to be greatest when the reason for it is least and smallest.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3330

“If you would learn all that you can concerning Jesus Christ, you must diligently study the Word which reveals Him to us.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3314

“While the Golden Rule is more admired than practiced by ordinary men, the Christian should always do unto others as he would that they should do unto him. He should be one whose word is his bond and who, having once pledged his word, swears to his own hurt, but changes not.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3281

“Young converts, make the best use you can of your earliest consecrated hours—let the love of your espousals be inexpressibly sweet. There will be many other times of love, but none of them will ever have quite the same sweetness as you enjoyed when first you realized that Christ had loved you with an everlasting love and, therefore, with loving kindness had drawn you unto Himself.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3220

“How often have we seen the eyes brighten up with an almost supernatural brilliance just before they were closed on all beneath the skies! How often have we seen the hand raised with the parting expression of triumph, and then laid motionless by the side! How often has the Presence of the Beloved sustained the frail tenement of the expiring Christian till he has defied death ‘to quench his immortality, or shake his trust in God!’”—Volume 54, Sermon #3077

“There are some of us who find it sweet to witness for Him—that He is the very Christ of God—and we do not take any honor to ourselves for so doing, for flesh and blood have not revealed it unto us.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3207

“Water will naturally rise as high as its own source, but without extraneous pressure, it will never rise any higher. And humanity may rise as high as humanity can rise, but it can never get any higher until the Spirit of God imparts a supernatural force to it. ‘Except a man be born-again (born from above), he cannot see the Kingdom of God.’ The very first act in the great work of the new creation is that the Spirit of God moves upon the soul as he moved upon the face of the waters.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3134

“Beloved, if you believe in your God, you know that He will bring you through your present trouble and all future trials as well. If you truly love Him, you know that all things are working together for your good. Therefore, let not your heart be troubled! No, it cannot be, for your faith will drive out your fear—your confidence in God will keep your heart from being troubled.—Volume 54, Sermon #3076

“If ever a man is really dead, buried and risen with Christ, there is no fear of his ever undergoing such a backward process as being dead with Christ and then alive again to the world! There are some principles which are only powerful for a time, but the principle of Grace, which produces the fear of the Lord, exerts a permanent influence upon everyone in whom the Holy Spirit works it—and there is no possibility of the love of the world or the fear of man casting it out! May that gracious Spirit work this holy fear in each one of us!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3314

“To do good for the sake of the good done, and not because of the character of the person benefited, is a noble imitation of God. If the Lord only sent the fertilizing shower upon the land of the saintly, drought would deprive whole leagues of land of all hope of a harvest. We also must do good to the evil, or we shall have a narrow sphere—our hearts will grow contracted and our sonship towards the good God will be rendered doubtful.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3157

“And, today, when Christ says concerning the bread at the communion, ‘Take, eat, this is My body,’ the carnally-minded say that the bread is turned into flesh, not having the spiritual discernment to be able to comprehend even the simplest metaphors which the Lord Jesus Christ is pleased to use! Spiritual things must be spiritually discerned and, therefore, the carnal mind cannot discern them!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3121 “There ought to be an essential difference between the Christian and the best moralist, by reason of the higher standard which the Gospel inculcates and the Savior has exemplified. Certainly the highest point to which the best unconverted man can go might well be looked upon as a level below which the converted man will never venture to descend!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3281

“Oh, that all of you whom I am addressing knew at least somethingof the experiences of God’s people! You who only live the life of sense and have no faith in Jesus, little know what I mean, for though I have talked largely of the sorrows of God’s people, yet the joys of faith are unspeakable! One drop of God’s love would sweeten a sea of gall. Yes, I was almost about to say that even the pangs of Hell would lose their bitterness if a drop of the love of Christ could once flow there and be tasted by those who are lost!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3170

“What could be better than the Divine plan of Substitution? God must punish sin—He could not be God unless He did—it is a necessity of His nature that He should hate sin with an infinite hatred and He must punish it! Yet, as He had loved His people with an everlasting love, how could He better show His love to them and His hatred of sin than by giving up His well-beloved Son to die instead of them—making Him who knew no sin to be sin for them, that they might be made the righteousness of God in Him? This seems to me to be the most beautiful thing I ever heard of and it delights my soul to preach it!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3258

“The guilt of one soul might sink a world—the accumulated guilt of all the millions whom Christ redeemed will stand forever as a proof that God delights in mercy!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3317

“Redeemed and glorified spirits can join in the everlasting hallelujahs of the skies, but they can no longer climb up creaking staircases in the haunts of poverty and minister to the sick and dying who lie languishing there. They can still praise their Lord, but they cannot preach Him! They can talk to one another of His love, but they cannot make it known to lost and helpless sinners as you and I can. So let this, Beloved, be our ‘time to love.’”—Volume 56, Sermon #3220

“If you also are one of His disciples, bear your witness for Him, even if it is but one who can hear it! If that one is all the congregation that God sends you, you have done your part. I am not accountable for the people that hear me, but only for the witness that I bear! And you shall not be accountable for the largeness or smallness of your sphere, but for the faithfulness of your testimony for Christ.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3207

“If you are a Christian, be a Christian! If you follow Christ, go outside the camp! But if there is no difference between you and your fellow man, what will you say to the King in the day when He comes and finds that you have on no wedding garment by which you can be distinguished from the rest of mankind?”—Volume 57, Sermon #3281

“Christ saves sinners, but He does not save them in their sins, but fromtheir sins! And when Christ once gets His hand upon a man, He casts out the devils that once dwelt in him and makes him a new creature in Christ Jesus, being henceforth bound to do God’s will and to walk according to God’s Word!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3079

“Suspicion is the death of fellowship! The moment one Christian imagines that another thinks badly of him, though there may not be the slightest truth in that thought, yet straightway the root of bitterness is planted! Let us believe in one another’s sincerity, for we may rest assured that each of our Brothers and Sisters deserves to be trusted more than we do.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3107

“Any common sort of man will love those who love him. Even tax gatherers and the scum of the earth can rise to this poor, starveling virtue. Saints cannot be content with such a groveling style of things. ‘Love for love is manlike,’ but ‘love for hate’ is Christlike. Shall we not desire to act up to our high calling?”—Volume 55, Sermon #3157

“To my mind, the most glorious work that God ever performed was when God Incarnate died that sinners might live! You surely cannot object to that Doctrine of Substitution! If you do and if you persist in that objection, let me tell you that you will perish—for he who rejects the Savior who died upon the Cross brings eternal ruin to his soul.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3258

“The Gospel which God has revealed is so essentially THE Truth there is nothing false, as there is nothing trifling in it. It is Truth unalloyed. It is Truth which ought to be undoubted. It is a vile sin to imagine that there can be any fallacy in the utterances of an Infallible God! Let everything else we credit be a lie. Let all that man has asserted and proved be swept away—God’s Words are the Truth, substantially and really so!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3093

“Tell all with whom you come in contact that He is your Savior, a precious Savior, a true Promiser, a Promise-Keeper, a faithful Friend, a Helper in life and in death! And I say again, you know not what may be the value of your testimony, for if it is borne but to a child, that child may grow up to bear testimony to tens of thousands!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3207
“The cry of Rachel, ‘Give me children, or I die,’ is the cry of your minister this day—and the longing of thousands more besides! As that desire grows in intensity, a revival is surely approaching! We must have spiritual children born to Christ, or our hearts will break for the longing that we have for their salvation! Oh, for more of these longings, yearnings, cravings, travailing! If we plead till the harvest of revival comes, we shall partake in the joy of it!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3315

“There is no doubt about the hardness of your heart and the badness of your nature—you are probably much worse than you think are—but it is impossible that your depravity should exceed the potency of the Holy Spirit’s influence to renew your nature and change your whole life!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3262

“If the days of persecution were to come back, how many of us would be willing to go to the stake and be burned alive rather than give up our love to Christ? Yet think of all that He endured for us! He gave His back to the smiters and His cheeks to them that plucked out His hair, and He hid not His face from shame and spitting! My gracious Master, You have given Your flesh and Your blood to be the spiritual food of my soul—give me the Grace to consecrate my flesh and blood and all the powers of my body, soul, and spirit to You and to Your blessed service!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3220

“I am glad to be associated with all of you in your various works of faith and labors of love—but I have often learned more about Christ from the poor than from the rich. Besides, if Jesus Christ was willing to be reckoned among the poor, there is no man who needs to be ashamed of his poverty unless it is brought on by his own sin!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3258

“There are persons whose names will never be known to fame—some of the very poorest on the earth who, nevertheless, are speaking softly with their voices for Jesus and who are also speaking very powerfully by their lives for Jesus—as servants in the household, as toilers in the workshop, as poor humble bed-ridden sufferers who patiently endure great pain and privation because the Lord gives them the Grace to bear it for His sake!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3171

“I do not think our prayers would ever be heard in Heaven if it were not for Jesus Christ. He is the great Mediator by whom our prayers must be presented.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3081

“If I am never to preach the Gospel to a sinner till I see something in him that will help the Holy Spirit to save him, I shall never be able to preach the Gospel at all! And if Jesus Christ never saves a man till He sees something in that man that cries to Christ to save Him, then no man will ever be saved!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3134

“What? Should Sodom go unpunished? Shall the bestial vice of which Sodom was guilty never be checked? Why, if this should spread among the sons of men, it would bring in its infernal train ten thousand times more damage than the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3317

“Brothers and Sisters, Beloved in the Lord, you may depend upon it that nothing worse can happen to a Church than to be conformed unto this world! Write “Ichabod” upon her walls, then, for the sentence of destruction has gone out against her.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3281
“It is wealth enough to a Believer to possess his God, honor enough to please his God, happiness enough to enjoy his God. My heart’s best treasure lies here—‘This God is our God forever and ever: He will be our guide even unto death.’”—Volume 58, Sermon #3330

“I could ask for some men whom I know no greater mercy than that they might be blessed with spiritual poverty—that they might be made to feel how poor they are—for they will never know Christ and they will never rise to be practically merciful till first they have seen their own true condition and have obtained mercy enough to lie down at the foot of the Cross—and there, with a broken heart, to confess that they are empty and poor!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3158

“The Scriptures have taught us that whoever dares to administer that ordinance [Believers’ Baptism] to any but those who believe with their heart and profess with their mouth, dares to touch with sacrilegious hands, God’s own institution, and is guilty of breaking down the hedges of the Church and throwing open to the world that which was never intended but for the Lord’s own family!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3100

“Repentance and faith are distasteful to the unregenerate—they would sooner repeat a thousand formal prayers than shod a solitary tear of true repentance! They would sooner work their way to Heaven even if they had to pass through Hell itself to get there, than come and simply receive salvation for nothing as the gift of God by Jesus Christ. Brothers and Sisters we must be born-again because the Truth of the Gospel cannot be understood and the commands of the Gospel cannot be obeyed except where the Spirit of God works regeneration in the heart!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3121
“A person does not become a member of Christ’s Church by Baptism, nor by birthright, nor by profession, nor by morality. Christ is the Door into the sheepfold! Everyone who believes in Jesus Christ is a member of the true Church. Being a member of Christ, he is a member, consequently, of the body of Christ which is the Church.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3281

“‘Whoever believes in the Lord Jesus Christ shall never perish, but have everlasting life.’ There is an alternative. It is, ‘He that believes not, shall be condemned.’”—Volume 58, Sermon #3317

“I rejoice that we are a praying Church, but I am always jealous lest we should lose the spirit of prayer which the Lord has so graciously poured out upon us. Some of us recollect times when we have gripped the Angel of the Covenant and we would not let Him go until He blessed us. Many of you were given to us in answer to these effectual fervent prayers—and this makes me the more urgent in pleading with you to pray for others.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3258

“This is the world of the dying! You seem to be passing before me in a procession and I, too, am part of the procession, myself! Oh, make sure work for eternity! Run no risk concerning your souls—not even this night’s risk, for this night, at midnight, without a knock at your door there may come the messenger saying, ‘Prepare to meet your God.’ And then— and then, it will matter if you are Christ’s disciple, or not! It will not matter, then, whether you have been rich or not, educated or not—but it will matter for all eternity whether you are His or not, for remember the division—‘These shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal.’ God grant that you then may be with the company of the disciples of Jesus for Jesus Christ’s sake! Amen.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3207

“You may sometimes write much in a very few words and here you have an epitome of the whole Gospel of God in these few syllables—‘Behold the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world.’”—Volume 56, Sermon #3222

“Be cheered, you humble penitents, the Lord’s heart is too large to permit Him to send you away empty! Be encouraged, at this moment, to breathe the silent prayer, “O God, the Lord and Giver of Grace, give Your Grace to us who seek it now!” Why, dear Heart, you have Grace already, or you would not seek it, for Grace must first come to you to make you seek Grace! Be thankful, for salvation has come to your house! Dead men do not long for life. In the marble limbs of the corpse there is no struggling after life, no pangs of desire for health. God has looked on you in love—look you to Jesus and live!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3075

“It is your Master’s new command that you love one another—will you disregard it? He has given this as the badge of Christians—‘By this shall all men know that you are My disciples’— not if you wear a gold cross, but—‘if you have love one to another.’ That is the Christian’s badge of his being, in very truth, a disciple of Jesus Christ!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3107

“We are dependent upon God for everything! And sometimes He makes use of the ordinary laws of Nature to be a chastisement to those who forget Him. If we will not be reminded of Him by His mercies, we shall be reminded by His judgments! And if, as stewards, we do not make a proper use of that which He entrusts to us, He can easily take it all away.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3073

“I recollect when, at one time, I was a little afraid to preach the Gospel to sinners as sinners, and yet I wanted to do so, so I used to say, “If you have but a millionth part of a desire, come to Christ.” I dare say more than that now, but, at the same time, I will say that at once—if you have a millionth part of a desire, if you have only a little breathing—if you desire to be reconciled, if you desire to be pardoned, if you would be forgiven, if there is only half a good thought formed in your soul, do not check it, do not stifle it and do not think that God will reject it!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3083

“No Scripture is of private interpretation—you may take out the name of Abram [Genesis 15:1] and put your own name into the promise if you are of Abram’s spiritual seed, and do not stagger at the promise by reason of unbelief. ‘If children, then heirs’ applies to all the spiritual family and to the pledging of all the promises to them!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3330

“When you really draw near to God and other saints draw near [in prayer] to Him, you also draw near to them. No, more, since Jesus Christ, Himself, prays when you pray, you have fellowship with Him! And as the Holy Spirit inspires your prayers if they were according to the mind of God, you also have fellowship with the Spirit and through Him with the Father! Thus prayer becomes a glorious bond which binds God and all His people together in one sacred bundle of life! And to be without prayer is to be outside that blessed bundle.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3282

“I plead with you, Christians—and I wish I had more power to do it effectually—for the sake of sinners, to stir yourselves up to pray for them and to labor for them that through the mighty working of the Spirit of God, they may no longer stumble at the Word, but may yield themselves to Christ and be saved!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3258

“The point I want to emphasize is this, that the reliance of the Church, under God, must not be upon the voices that ring out, far and wide, like a peal of bells, nor upon the tongues that give forth the sweet music that pleases the ear! We must rely upon the Gospel, itself—upon the Gospel simply stated, upon the Gospel taught in the Sunday school, the Gospel explained at the family altar, the Gospel lived and loved by holy men and women! It is that which will do the work of God effectually and accomplish His glorious purposes of Grace.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3171

“Temptations frequently come in the form of very pleasing baits. Satan gilds the pill that he offers us. He very seldom presents to any of us a bare hook, though that may be done with those who become habituated in sin. It is almost a bare, unbaited hook when persons continue in drunkenness after they have ruined their health and brought themselves to beggar’s rags. Satan hardly has to tempt them at all, for they go willingly after their idols and dote upon them. But with God’s own people, Satan generally takes care to bait his hook and cover it so that it is scarcely seen.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3208

“It may not appear to some that the quarter of an hour in the morning spent in looking into the face of God with ecstatic joy can fill us with strength, but we know from blessed experience that there is no strength like it! If the Eternal overshadows us, then Omnipotence comes streaming into us!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3330

“No, where God has given a man a new heart and a right spirit, there is great tenderness to all the poor—and especially great love to the poor saints—for, while every saint is an image of Christ, the poor saint is a picture of Christ set in the same frame in which Christ’s picture must always be set—the frame of humble poverty.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3158

“Why should the Spirit of God ever have come into our hearts? What was there in us to induce the Spirit of God to begin a work of Grace in us? We admire the condescension of Jesus in leaving Heaven to dwell upon earth, but do we not equally admire the condescension of the Holy Spirit in coming to dwell in such poor hearts as ours? Jesus dwelt with sinners, but the Holy Spirit dwells in u.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3134

“I thank God for any revival that produces any genuine results but, just because I rejoice in revivals of the right kind, I tremble as I think of many of the supposed converts who are only converted to self-conceit and other delusions—and not to real faith in Jesus Christ. I charge you, by the living God, everyone of you, not to trust to mere excitement, or fancy as a ground of salvation. You must be made new creatures in Christ Jesus—your very nature must be changed—the whole bent, current and tenor of your life must be altered and that not by human arguments and persuasions, but by the Holy Spirit’s power, or else into God’s Kingdom you cannot come!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3121

“It is true that meekness of heart produces rest. And yet it is a still deeper Truth of God that rest produces meekness of heart!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3330

“Do not think that what the Lord worked in the early saints cannot be worked in you. It is because you think so that you do not pray for it—and because you do not pray for it, you do not attain it! The Grace of God sustained the Apostles—that Grace is not less today than it was then! The Lord’s arm is not shortened! His power is not straitened. If we can but believe and be as earnest as those first saints were, we shall yet subdue kingdoms and the day shall come when the gods of Hinduism and the lies of Mohammed, and the lies of Rome shall as certainly be overthrown as were the ancient philosophies and the classic idolatries of Greece and Rome by the teaching of the first ministers of Christ!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3107

“To be a true Christian is something higher and nobler than simply sitting in our pews twice on Sunday, or even teaching in a Sunday school or giving away tracts. It is the laying of one’s whole self upon the altar—offering your body, soul and spirit as a living sacrifice unto God, which is our reasonable service, so that, whether we live or whether we die, we shall be the Lord’s, and live or die for Him!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3258

“So, my Brother, your prayer may never edify your Brothers and Sisters. It may not be suitable to be presented in public, but if your soul is in it, if your heart goes out towards God through your poor feeble prayer, it will be so precious in His sight that He will not have it thrown away!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3282

“The poor will never cease out of the land and the poor will never cease out of the Church of Christ. They are Christ’s legacy to us! It is quite certain that the Good Samaritan got more out of the poor man whom he found between Jerusalem and Jericho than the poor man got out of him! He had a little oil and wine, and twopence, the expenses at the inn—but the Samaritan got his name in the Bible and there it has been handed down to posterity—a wonderfully cheap investment! And in everything that we give, the blessing comes to those who give it, for you know the Words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ Blessed are they who are merciful to the poor.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3158

“Riches procured by impoverishing the soul are always a curse! To increase your business so that you cannot attend week-night services is to become really poorer—to give up heavenly pleasure—and receive earthly cares in exchange, is a sorry sort of barter.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3208

“Saints in Heaven sparkle like the sun when they put on this glorious array. Not Christ, Himself, on Tabor’s mountain shone more lustrously than will poor sinners shine when they are covered with the righteousness of Jesus Christ!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3122 “If it were possible for the condescension of the Incarnation to be outdone, it would be in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of men!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3134

“I wish the whole Church of Christ would realize that her greatest victories have usually been accomplished by those who did not seem, from a human standpoint, competent for the task and that she may still expect to see the grandest results coming to her by the use of ordinary means, by ordinary persons devoutly exercising, in the name of God, their ordinary functions in an ordinary way—the workers being, however, under the gracious influence of the Divine Spirit from whom all true power must come!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3171

“Now Paul did not merely write ‘it is a saying,’ but, ‘ itisa faithful saying,’ a saying worthy of faith, a saying full of the Truth of God, a saying about which no doubts may be entertained, a sure and certain saying, ‘that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.’”—Volume 54, Sermon #3089

“I am persuaded that often, when we think we have prayed as we ought, we have only been feeding our own vanity—and that at other times, when we have found that we could not pray, that we could hardly express a single desire, but could only sigh and groan before the Lord—then we have really prayed and God has heard our prayer!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3282

“Of course, an oppressor cannot or will not see the evil of oppression. If you put before him a case of injustice which is as plain as the nose on his face, he cannot see it because he has always been under the delusion that he was sent into the world with a whip in his hand to drive other people about, for he is the one great somebody and other people are poor nobodies, only fit to creep under his huge legs and humbly ask his leave to live.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3159

“I charge you people of God who are here present to try how near you can get to complete consecration to the Lord Jesus Christ! Never say, ‘I am as good as my minister.’ You had need be much better than I am! Never say, ‘I am as good as such-and-such a Christian.’ O Sirs, if you compare yourselves among yourselves, you are not wise! The only model for Christians is Christ Himself.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3078

“You must have faith or you will perish. “He that believes and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believes not shall be damned,” is the declaration of Jesus Christ the Savior, Himself!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3259
“You may judge of it [the Truth of God] by three things—by God, by Christ and by man. That is, the truth which honors God, the truth which glorifies Christ, and the truth which humbles man.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3093

“O Believers, be on the watch! Take heed unto yourselves lest you enter into unholy alliances, or put yourselves into positions out of which you may be unable to escape, but may have to mourn to your dying day that you ever entered into that evil confederacy! You must say, ‘Our Master bids us come out from the world, and be separate from sinners. He bids Christians walk with Him and be choice in their company, and not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers, for that would be dishonoring to God and ruinous to their souls!’”—Volume 56, Sermon #3208

“You will make a fatal mistake if you suppose that you are saved simply because you have been driven almost to despair. There can be no more insecure foundation for a hope of Heaven than to think that you are saved because you have realized that you were lost. It would be a very absurd idea for a man to conclude that he was in health because he had felt that he was ill, or for another to fancy that he was rich because he had felt that he was poor. There is a remorse which is near akin to repentance, but it is not the fruit of the Grace of God.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3171

“I daresay some of you remember Dr. Hamilton’s story of poor Betty who said, ‘The Lord said to me, Betty, look after your husband and your house, and I did it. And then He said, Betty, go and talk to your neighbors about Jesus, and I did that. And then He said, Betty, go and lie on the bed and cough, and I am doing it, blessed be His holy name!” Ah, but it needs a great deal of Grace to lie and cough to God’s Glory! Yet it is being done—and the groans of sick, yet submissive saints are as musical to God’s ear as the hallelujahs of archangels!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3082

“If you are conscious of the Lord’s Presence, you will do the best thing possible by being very calm, deliberate and quiet in His service. ‘He that believes,’ in that sense, ‘shall not make haste, but he shall go about the business in a restful spirit.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3330
“It is not the merit of our prayers that secures the gracious answers to them, but the power of Christ’s prevailing intercession!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3282

“Sinner, if you will be saved, you must give yourself up to Jesus Christ to be His servant and to do all that He bids you! You must rely alone, upon Him! Trust not in fiction, but in reality—not by mere profession, but with your whole heart—and you must continue to lean, rest and lie upon Him, trusting alone in Him! This is what saving faith is.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3259
“Dear Brother, you may be preaching to those who are dead in sin, but preach the Gospel to them all the same! It is your business to preach the Gospel to dead sinners, for it is the Gospel that makes the dead to live! If we had to look for some natural goodness in the sinner before we preached the Gospel to him, we would never preach to him at all! But we have to go to him where he is, with darkness over his soul and ruin and confusion all around—and while we preach the Word, the Spirit of God accompanies it with saving power and the man is made to live—and he is fashioned in the image of God!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3134

“When you hear some people talk about there being no God and no spiritual things, and so on, you need not be at all concerned at what they say, for they are not in a position to warrant them in speaking about the matter! For instance, an ungodly man says, ‘I do not believe there is a God, for I never saw Him.’ I do not doubt the truth of what you say, but when I tell you that I have seen Him, you have no more right to doubt my word than I have to doubt yours!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3159

“Now, there are a thousand things which may be right in worldlings which are wrong in Christians. There is a very high law for all men and I will not depreciate the true standard of common morality, but set it as high as it can be set! But over and above that there is a law of consecration—there is a rule, not merely of morality, but of something more—of holiness.”—Volume 56, Sermon #3208

“If you could pray a prayer that seemed to you a thousand times better than those you now present, I am not sure that it would not really be any better. If you said to yourself, ‘There, that prayer will do, it will find its way to God all by itself,’ I am certain that it would never reach the Throne of God! But if, when we have prayed, we feel that we must have Christ’s intercession to make our prayers acceptable, He will add the‘much incense’ to our poor petitions and so they shall prevail with God!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3282

“It is very difficult for man to have much money running through his hands without some of it sticking. It is very sticky stuff—and when it once sticks to the hands, they are not clean in the sight off the Lord! Unless a man is able to use money without abusing it, accepting it as a talent lent to him and not as a treasure given to him—it will very soon happen that the more money he has, the more troubles he will have.—Volume 54, Sermon #3076

“Let your lowliness of heart, your sense of utter nothingness, instead of disqualifying you, be a sweet medium for leading you to receive more of Christ. The more empty I am, the more room is there for my Master. The more I lack, the more He will give me. The more I feel my sickness, the more shall I adore and bless Him when He makes me whole.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3124

“If we would get faith, we must take care how we hear, as well as what we hear. The hearing is, itself, almost as important as the preaching. Faith does not come by every sort of hearing. There have been persons who have heard the Gospel for many years, but they have really heard nothing, for it has gone in one ear and out at the other. Faith does not come by such hearing!”—Volume 57, Sermon #3259

“Many of us could testify, if this were the time to do so, that there is such a thing as fellowship with God even here on earth, but men can enjoy it only in proportion as they give up their love of sin. They cannot talk with God after they have been talking filthiness. They cannot speak with God as a man speaks with his friend if they are accustomed to meet companions in the alehouse and delight to mingle with the ungodly who gather there. The pure in heart may see God and do see Him—not with the natural eyes, and far from us be such a carnal idea as that—but with their inner spiritual eyes they see the great God who is Spirit!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3159

“There is a secret of prevailing in prayer which you may know to your heart’s comfort if you will learn the lesson of our text, (Revelation 8:3, 4) and then, as your prayer is presented by Christ to His Father, the answer will come down in blessings which many others will be glad to share with you.”—Volume 57, Sermon #3282

“I think the moments we are nearest to Heaven are those we spend at the Lord’s Table. I have sometimes looked at your faces, my Brothers and Sisters, at the Lord’s Table, and if anyone wanted to see men’s faces when they looked as if angels themselves were smiling in their eyes, such have your faces been when I have broken the bread and the wine has been passed to you!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3100

“Some sinners seem to think that they are to get comfort and light for themselves—but it is not so—Christ must bring it all to you. You are not to bring anything to Jesus, but to come to His fullness to receive everything!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3172

“I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less than God wishes—that every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit as well as the sun in the heavens—that the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as surely as the stars in their courses—that the chirping of an aphid over a rosebud is as much fixed as the march of the devastating pestilence, and the fall of sere leaves from the poplar is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche. He who believes in God must believe this Truth of His. There is no standing point between this and atheism. There is no half way between an almighty God who works all things according to the good pleasure of His own will and no god at all. A god who cannot do as He pleases—a god whose will is frustrated is not a God and cannot be a God! I could not believe in such a god as that.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3114
“The work of Creation did not end with the first day, but went on till it was finished on the sixth day. God did not say, ‘I have made the light and now I will leave the earth as it is.’ And when He had begun to divide the waters and to separate the land from the sea, He did not say, ‘Now I will have no more to do with the work.’ He did not take the newly-fashioned earth in His hands and fling it back into chaos, but He went on with His work until, on the seventh day, when it was completed, He rested from all His work and, glory be to God, He will not leave unfinished the work which He has commenced in our souls!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3134

“One of the loveliest sights in the world is an aged Believer waiting for the summons to depart… they ought to be in Heaven, but in mercy to us they tarry here to let us see what the glorified are like!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3283

“I know many whose consciences are truly awakened and who see themselves as sinners in the sight of God, but instead of beholding the Lamb of God, they are continually beholding themselves! I do not think that they have any confidence in their own righteousness, but they are afraid that they do not feel their guilt as much as they ought. They think that they are not yet sufficiently awakened, sufficiently humbled, sufficiently penitent and so on, and thus they fix their eyes upon themselves in the hope of getting peace with God!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3222

“That Truth of God which of old was mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, is still mighty, and we will maintain it to the death! The Church needs the Doctrines of Grace today as much as when Paul, or Augustine, or Calvin preached them! The Church needs justification by faith, the substitutionary Atonement, regeneration and Divine Sovereignty to be preached from her pulpits as much as in days of yore! And by God’s Grace she shall have them, too!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3107

“When the Holy Spirit has become to you the Spirit of Adoption, you will go forth to Christian ordinances without fear!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3172

“I was sprinkled when I was a child, but I know that I was not thereby made a member of Christ, a child of God and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven! I know that nothing of the kind took place in me, but that, as soon as I could, I went into sin and continued in it. I was not bornagain, I am sure, till I was about 15 years of age, when the Lord brought salvation so my soul through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit and so I was enabled so trust in Jesus as my Savior.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3121

“Some tell us that in baptism, by which they mean baby sprinkling as a rule, they regenerate and make members of Christ, children of God and inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven! But those who are sprinkled are no better than other people. They grow up in just the same way as others. The whole ceremony is useless and worse than that, for it is clean contrary to the example and teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ! No aqueous applications, no outward ceremonies can ever affect the heart!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3159

“For a man to trust himself in the beginning of his Christian career is very unwise, for Scripture warns him against it! But for him to trust himself after he has been 20 or 30 years a Christian is surely insanity, itself—a sin against common sense!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3283

“Always be afraid of not being afraid—and be always in fear when you feel that you are perfectly safe. When you realize your danger and fly to the Lord to guard you, then you are safe. But when you begin to think, ‘All is right with me, nothing will make me fall now,’ you are not very far off a bad fall in which you may suffer serious hurt. May God keep you, my dear Brothers and Sisters. May He preserve each one of us till we see His face in Glory at the last!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3074

“O my Hearer, do not be lost through a mock humility which is really abominable pride! You are not too great a sinner to be saved. I will venture to say that you will dishonor Christ if you ever think such a thing! So let not that sinful thought destroy you!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3222
“No race of men has ever been discovered that has been sunk too low for the Spirit of God to work upon them and to save them! Let us never despair of any, or think that they are beyond the Spirit’s power.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3134
“I would rather lie sick upon a bed of pain from now till my Master’s appearance than be employed in the preaching of God’s Word if I cannot have my Master’s Presence with me!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3122

“Jesus Christ says, ‘Whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die.’ Do you Believe this? Will you put your trust in Him? Will you drop into His arms and let Him carry you? Will you fall flat upon the Rock of Ages and let that sustain you? If you do it now, this moment, you shall become in this happy moment a changed man! You shall be no longer an heir of wrath, but a child of Grace! And your salvation shall become as inevitably secure as if you were even now among the glorified!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3081

“Whenever a Christian has to say, ‘My leanness, my leanness, woe is unto me,’ it cannot be because suitable food has not been supplied—it must be because he has not fed upon it—for if we have fed upon Christ Jesus, how can we help growing in faith, knowledge, holiness and every spiritual gift?”—Volume 55, Sermon #3172
“Oh, what a glorious Truth of God is this, that although a poor tried child of God may feel the force of his inbred sin and have to continually struggle with it—and though he may, from day to day, be conscious of his many imperfections, yet before those Eyes that see everything, there is no spot to be seen upon the Believer in Christ—I mean no spot in this respect—that he can never be condemned or punished for his sin. His sin is finally and forever pardoned!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3223

“Does not our Savior tell us that the well of water in us is to become rivers of water streaming out from us? As we receive, we should give! The more we learn, the more we should teach—and if God teaches us, it is because He expects us to instruct others.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3283

“The fact is, baptismal regeneration [See Sermon #573, Volume 10—BAPTISMAL REGENERATION—the Sermon which has had the largest circulation of any in the whole of Mr. Spurgeon’s discourses!—Read/download the entire sermon, free of charge, at http://www.spurgeongems.org.] is a lie, a wicked invention of Popery, without the slightest warrant in the Word of God! Not one has ever been born-again in baptism, nor ever can be! Regeneration, in the Scriptures, is always put side by side with faith, as anybody can see who will read the Scripture without prejudice, seeking to know the Truth of God that is there revealed. There is nothing in so called sacraments upon which a soul can rest for salvation. If you have been baptized and even if you have been immersed, which is the only true Baptism, unless the Spirit of God has regenerated you, ‘You must be born-again, born from above.’”—Volume 54, Sermon #3121

“Have you in your heart the intention to serve God when you have amassed so much wealth? What? Shall God be second? Shall mammon take the first place and Jehovah be put in the background? No! Let your gold come in second or not at all. Let your God come in now!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3160

“Holy occupation is one of the most important things for our spiritual health…Very largely will you find that in proportion as you serve Christ, Christ will serve you—therefore seek you to feed His lambs—and He will feed you.”—Volume 58, Sermon #3283

“I do not believe in the faith that is unaccompanied by repentance. Some have spoken in disparagement of repentance by saying ‘that the original word means nothing more than a change of mind.’ And you might imagine that it was a very unimportant change of mind. But their knowledge of Greek is not very deep and their experimental knowledge of true religion would seem to be still more shallow.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3094

“Breathe the prayer, ‘Lord, give me the faith of Your elect and save me with a great salvation!’ Though it is only breathing, yet, as the old Puritan says, when God feels the breath of His child upon His face, He smiles. And He will feel your breath and smile on you, and bless you. May He do so, for His name’s sake! Amen.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3083

“Several of the first followers of Christ were plain, blunt fishermen, honest after their fashion, yet they had to be born-again—it does not matter how good a man may be, or how earnest he may be in seeking to find the Truth of God—he cannot escape from the necessity which applies to the entire human race! ‘You must be horn again.’”—Volume 54, Sermon #3121

“He who has faith is better than the stoic. The stoical philosopher bore trial because he believed it must be. The Christian bears it because he believes it is working for his good.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3114

“When people sometimes say when they know their duty, “We will make it a matter of prayer,” they generally mean that they will try to find some excuse for not doing it. You need not pray about any matter when you know what you ought to do—go and do it!”—Volume 58, Sermon #3283

“I am hopeful, therefore, for our young members, that God will take care of them and that they will surprise us by the advance which they will make. I only hope that they will surpass all who have ever gone before them. Ah, dear young Friends, never take us as an example in stopping short of the Christian ideal! Follow us as far as we follow Christ! But go beyond the very best of us where you see that we come short of what we ought to be. I hope you will be more earnest, more prayerful, more conscientious, more diligent than any of us have been!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3172

“The salvation of sinners is the will of God, the work of Christ and the joy of Christ! Is not this good news?”—Volume 55, Sermon #3135
“Oh, pity those poor souls who live in darkness and do not know our sweet Lord Jesus! ‘You are the light of the world.’ Defer not the lightgiving lest the night come to them wherein you cannot help them!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3160

“Oh, let me rest! Come, night, and let me slumber! Come, my last hour! Let me bow myself upon the bed! Come, Death, oh, come lightly to my couch! Yes, strike if you will, but your stroke is the loving touch that makes my body slumber! Happy, happy, they who die in the Lord!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3077
“Does God accept your heartless sacrifices, your meaningless words and empty phrases? No! He is not to be mocked by mere outward religious forms and ceremonies.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3109

“Rowland Hill used to say that the only thing that he should be sorry to leave when he went to Heaven was that sweet, lovely, sorrowful Grace of repentance—he supposed he could not repent in Heaven, but it was such a sweet experience to keep on repenting that he would wish to repent forever if such a thing might be.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3094

“I fear that some Brothers and Sisters think that a quick temper can never be overcome. But it must be overcome! The reason why so many professors so often fall into that sin is that they do not believe that it is conquerable and, therefore, they do not pray it down! ”—Volume 56, Sermon #3223

“I am afraid there are some sinners that never come to Christ because they do not get an invitation. I know that is not the case with any sinner who is in the habit of coming to thishouse. I believe Christian ministers would do well, or, at any rate not ill, if they never preached anything but invitation!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3160

“‘Ah,’ somebody says, ‘I fear that this kind of preaching will be very discouraging to a great many people.’ Well, how will it discourage them? ‘It will discourage them from trying to save themselves.’ That is the very thing that I want to do! I would like not only to discourage them from attempting that impossible task, but to cast them into despair concerning it! When a man utterly despairs of being able to save himself, it is thenthat he cries to God to save him—so I believe that we cannot do a man a better turn than to discourage him from ever resting upon anything that he can do towards saving himself.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3121

“Are we to praise the Lord now for keeping us to the end? Will it not do if we praise Him when the end comes and we have been kept to the end? Will it not do if we praise Him when we are presented faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy? But can you not believe God’s promise that He will keep you to the end—and bless His name for it even NOW?”—Volume 54, Sermon #3074

“Sowing to the Spirit lifts our sowing altogether above the idea of human merit. He who sows to the Spirit is led and guided by the Spirit of God—led to repent of sin, led to believe in Jesus, led to a new life, led to holiness, led to sanctification and, therefore, he does not take any credit to himself for anything in him that is good, for he knows that it was all implanted there by the Holy Spirit!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3109

“Everything of salvation that a Believer receives, comes to him out of the one storehouse wherein all fullness abides—that is in Christ Jesus!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3223
“The crest and the motto of the American Baptist Missionary Union should be ours. The crest is an ox standing between a plow and an altar, and the motto is, ‘Ready for either.’ May we be ready to be offered up in death or to serve God in life!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3172

“A Christian should be like a steamer that goes straight away to the port it is intended to reach. But many professors are like sailing vessels, the motive power that controls them is outside of them, so they have to tack a good deal—and though they may ultimately get to their destination—there is a good deal of strange sailing to the right and to the left, and their voyage takes a very long while.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3080

“You are a nation of priests! Instead of having some one man selected who becomes a priest and so maintains the old priestcraft in the Christian Church, Jesus our Lord and Head has abolished that monopoly forever! He remains the one great Apostle and High Priest of our profession and we in Him are made, through His Grace, kings and priests unto God. You are, each of you, as Believers, sent into this world with a distinct commission—and that commission is very like the commission given to your Master! In your measure, the Spirit of the Lord is upon you and He has sent you to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and to preach the acceptable year of the Lord!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3135

“The faith by which you received Christ was as much the gift of God to you as was the Christ upon whom your faith was fixed. You know that it is so and, therefore, you also know that boasting is forever excluded from the fact that you are saved.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3173
“I would not live here always. I have a strong appetite for Heaven and I think many of God’s saints, as they grow in age, find it so. They care less and less for this world because they recognize that there is nothing here worth caring for!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3122

“Very often God will not hear us because we will not hear Him. If He speaks and we are deaf to His voice, we must not wonder if we find Him deaf when we speak to Him! Our success in prayer will often depend upon our obedience to the precept—you cannot have the promise torn away from the precept. That would be like cutting a living child in two.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3082
“You can never kill any sin if you turn your eyes away from the Cross. There is no stream that can cleanse from inward lusts but the precious blood of Jesus that flowed on Calvary. Whoever has been victorious over any temptation, it may truly be said of him, ‘he overcame through the blood of the Lamb.’ So that there is no way of receiving the blessings of a present salvation except through believing in Jesus!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3223

“God’s electing love has, in many cases, selected great fools andgreat sinners. At least I know that God’s people think themselves such. I have said, never despair of your child, and I will put it to you again—if you have friends who are infidel, or persecuting, or profane, yet, as long as you live and they live, it is your business to labor for their conversion and to weep and pray for them!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3075

“Where there is a Church in the house, every member strives to increase the other’s comfort, all seek to promote each other’s holiness, each one endeavors to discharge his duty according to the position in which he is placed in that Church. And when they meet together, their prayers are earnest and fervent, and all their actions are not the actions of a worldly family, but of those who have tasted that the Lord is gracious!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3103

“If you are saved, you are saved entirely through Jesus—and you do not need, and you do not desire any other Savior! You look to Jesus for all that can be comprehended in the word, salvation. His name means Savior and you have found Him to be a Savior to you. So you have received the anointed Savior, Christ Jesus.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3173

“Look at the man who has sought to be justified by the works of the Law, or in some way perverted the Gospel of Christ… He sleeps the deep sleep of death, prepared, as he supposes, to meet the Judge. When he awakes, the spell shall be dissolved. The terrible sentence, ‘Depart,’ awaits him! O Beloved, I tremble to think that a man may go up with jaunty step to the threshold of Heaven only to be cast down to the nethermost pit! As you stand among the graves of your departed friends, I beseech you to examine yourselves! Only as you can say, ‘To me to live is Christ,’ have you a right to add, ‘and to die is gain.’”—Volume 54, Sermon #3077

“A man who never gives anything is the worst person in the world to beg from, but he who has given in the past will probably continue to give. There is no heart so generous as the heart that has already given—it will still give. God has blessed millions of others—hosts beyond all counting! Then why should He not bless you? Lord, You gave to others, give to me also!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3122

“I also think that Peter calls our joy, ‘unspeakable,’ [1 Peter 1:8] because if we were to try to explain or describe it to carnal men, they could not understand us. You cannot explain to a person who has never tasted honey, how sweet it is. Neither can you explain to a man who knows not the joy of the Lord, how joyous a thing it is. He could not comprehend what your words meant—you would be talking to him in an altogether unknown tongue!”—Volume 56, Sermon #3223

“You must not marvel if God should be pleased to bless you to the conversion of souls, that He should also make you sometimes smart. Remember that Paul, with all his Grace, could not be without ‘a thorn in the flesh.’ There must also be ‘a messenger of Satan to buffet you,’ lest you should be exalted above measure! So may you learn to submit cheerfully to a discipline which, though painful to you, your Heavenly Father knows to be wise!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3110

“Did you ever know a man whom God blessed who had not some oddity or singularity? I think I never knew such a man or woman either! Whenever God blesses us, there is sure to be something or other to remind men that the vessel containing the treasure is an earthen vessel!...Were they wise, they would understand that this is a part of the Divine appointment, that we should ‘have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.’”—Volume 55, Sermon #3135

“The old attractions of the Cross have not departed. You cannot preach Christ and not get a congregation! Be it ‘the Christ’ whom you preach honestly and preach fully, the people must come to hear! Though they hate and loathe the Truth of God, they will come again to hear it. They will turn on their heel and say, ‘We cannot bear it,’ but the next time the doors are opened they will be there! The Gospel gets them by the ear and holds them!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3085

“Whoever you may be, my dear Friend, though you may be nothing but a poor “somebody,” yet if you have touched Christ, tell others about it in order that they may come and touch Him, too! And the Lord bless you, for Christ’s sake! Amen.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3124
“Truly, the very essence of faith lies there—the consciousness of being lost in ourselves and found in Christ, and the leaving of one’s soul in Jesus’hands!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3095

“We cannot make any terms of peace with those who deny the Deity of Christ, nor ought they to want to be at peace with us, for if Christ is not the Son of God, we are idolaters. And if He is, they are not Christians. There is a great gulf between us and them and we do not hesitate for a moment to say on which side of that gulf we stand. That same Jesus who was nailed to the tree is to us both Lord and Christ.”—Volume 55, Sermon #3173

“If God bids you do any work for Him, go and do it in His strength without consulting with flesh and blood. Many a noble purpose has been strangled by a committee! Many a glorious project that might have been the means of carrying the Gospel to the utmost ends of the earth has been crushed by timid counselors who said that it was not practicable! Whereas, had it been attempted, God would have worked with the worker and great would have been the result. So you go, O man of God, to the work He has called you to do—and consult not with flesh and blood!”—Volume 54, Sermon #3078

“We have seen scores of systems of philosophy come and go, and we shall probably see as many more before we die. Our business is to stand fast to the Truth of Revelation and let philosophies die as the frogs of Egypt died in the days of Moses—for die they will, and when fresh hordes come, they also will die, but the eternal Truth of the ever-blessed God will never die—it will live on in its own glorious immortality.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3080

“Let us discuss the millennium, the secret rapture and all those other intricate questions by-and-by, when we have got through more pressing needs! Just now the vessel is going to pieces, who will man the lifeboat? The house is on a blaze—who is he that will run the fire-escape up to the window? Here are men perishing for lack of knowledge and who will tell them that there is life in a look at the Crucified One? He is the man who shall give men meat to eat! But all others, though they may carry a dish of most exquisite china, will probably give them no meat, but only make them angry at being tantalized with empty wind. Christ’s satisfaction of heart was of a most practical kind—He was subservient to God as a commissioned Servant, and busy with actually doing the will of God!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3135

“Lie low, Brothers and Sisters, lie low, for what the old Essex farmer used to tell me is true, ‘If you are one inch above the ground, you are just that inch too high.’ So lie low and thus continue to walk in Christ—yourself being nothing—and Christ being everything. You know that if you get to be something, Christ cannot then be everything to you. But if you are still nothing—and less than nothing in your own estimation—as you sink in self-esteem, your Lord will rise to His right position in your sight and so you will be walking humbly in Him as you ought!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3173

“Whenever I see a professed Christian walking among his household as though he were a tyrant, letting no one come near him, without affection or kindness and simply a domineering master, I ask—Where is the Grace of God in that man? And I ask the same question with respect to other faults. ”—Volume 54, Sermon #3103

“Hunger will make a man break through stone walls and iron bars, but a soul that is hungering and thirsting after Christ does not know that there are any walls or bars, so overpowering is its eagerness to get to Him! It was with such eagerness as this that we received Christ Jesus the Lord. Are we just as eager to walk in Him?”—Volume 55, Sermon #3173

“I would give nothing for a supposed deliverance from Hell if it does not come by way of deliverance from sin! It is sin that makes Hell, for there would be no Hell if man had no evil within him, as there certainly can be no Heaven for a man till he is made good and fit to dwell with God, for the fire of Hell is a guilty conscience before God—and the bliss of Heaven is holiness and reconciliation to the Most High.”—Volume 54, Sermon #3095

“Oh, the joy of winning a soul! Get a grip from the hand of one whom you were the means of bringing to Christ—why, after that, all the devils in Hell may attack you, but you will not care—and all the men in the world may rage against you and say you do not serve God from proper motives, or do not serve Him in a discreet way—but since God has set His seal upon your work, you can afford to laugh at them! Do but win souls, Beloved, through the power of the Holy Spirit, and you shall find it to be a perennial spring of joy in your own souls!”—Volume 55, Sermon #3135 PRAY THE HOLY SPIRIT WILL USE THESE QUOTES TO BRING MANY TO A SAVING KNOWLEDGE OF JESUS CHRIST.