2 Corinthians 6

2 Corinthians 6:2

WHY NOT ACCEPT CHRIST? 2 Corinthians 6:2THE rain without has so reduced our audience that I am tempted to-night to turn aside from the subject announced to present another, and but for a single circumstance, I should yield to that temptation. The circumstance to which I refer is my own experience in confessing Christ, for it was about fifty years ago, at a meeting similar, in attendance, to this, that I confessed the Lord Jesus. I am glad the preacher was not discouraged that day, by the small audience, to the point of putting aside his sermon; and whilst the most of you are Christians, there may be some—I doubt not there are a few here—who have not as yet found Jesus and experienced His salvation, and may God use His Word while we talk to-night. “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation”.Men are wont to cry their wares in the most startling words. Many a vender of small articles arrests the attention of street travellers by screeching after them, “Behold! Behold!” as if what he had were an absolute essential to happiness, when the facts often are that the things are not worth turning one’s head for.But when God pushes aside the curtains of the heavens and calls to mortal men “Behold!” there is occasion that we stop, consider what He has to present, and come into some appreciation of its importance. And when he repeats that word, saying, “Behold” a second time, we need not be surprised to find that the thing to which He calls our attention is no less important than the salvation of the soul, for the calls of God are always with good occasion.“BEHOLD, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation”.Let us learn then,THE PRESENT IS THE TIME FOR . The provision of salvation is perfected. No sooner did Adam sin than God offered the Son of Man as the one who should bruise the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:6-15). Adam’s sin was the freshest act of his life when God the Father offered him His Son as Saviour, and in His own time that Son came and lived a holy life, died a death that demonstrated His Divinity, came from the grave on the third day, and, leading captivity captive, called to man, “It is finished”; and I tell you, tonight, that delay touching this matter of salvation is not only dangerous, but is absolutely inexcusable, seeing that the whole plan of salvation is perfected.And God has proffered the experience of salvation. That is what the Bible means when it says, “God so loved the world, that He gave His only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life”.That is what the church means when it opens its doors and invites the people to attend its services; that is what the singer means when he gives voice and expression to the sacred hymn, or the inspiring anthem; that is what the people mean when they pray to God; that is what the preacher means when he presents the Gospel as the power of God unto the salvation of every one that believeth; that is what all church organizations and all missionary enterprises mean. They are the Bride’s offer of salvation to a wicked world, and that Bride —the Church—voices the great God in saying, “Whosoever will, let him take the Water of Life freely”.Oh, I wish that unconverted men could properly appreciate that God is here and is offering you the one thing needful for time and for eternity, namely, —the salvation of the soul.A story is told that an infidel was one day troubled in his mind, because his little daughter Nellie had gone off to Sunday School in which he did not believe. He had often said, “There is no God,” and yet he was not living in the assurance of agnosticism, and so the question would keep pushing itself back into his mind, “Are you not mistaken?” To impress his infidelity the more perfectly on his mind, he caused to be printed on some cards, “God is nowhere”, and he hung them up in his study.

When the child came home and began to talk about God and show her Sunday School cards, he pointed to this inscription and said, “Nellie, cannot you read that?” She walked around in front of it and began to spell it out “G-o-d, God; i-s, is; n-o-w, now; h-e-r-e, here. God is now here. Isn’t that right, papa? I know it is right. God is now here.”The hard heart was touched and that father afterward gave up his infidelity and accepted Nellie’s faith instead.I wish you had Nellie’s ability to interpret the Word of God, for He is now here and is saying to you, “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation”.THE PROMISE OF IS FOR THE PRESENT. “Behold, NOW is the accepted time; behold, NOW is the day of salvation”.Now is the pivotal point of time. The great difference between men is the difference in their appreciation of this fact. Some seize upon the present moment; others indolently wait for a more convenient season. The first succeed; the second fail. It cannot be otherwise; and yet men are so foolish that they don’t seem to understand why they fail.And this temporary failure which comes to the indolent is a faint suggestion of the eternal failure that must come to those who are always putting off the soul’s salvation, who live in a state of procrastination.Oh, my friends, that I could bring you to-night to see how infinitely important is the proper occupation of the present.It is told of Napoleon III that he was always dilatory; that his good mother was always telling him that his unnecessary delays would yet be his death. But he would not listen, and when one day he was in camp with some of his soldiers, a messenger brought him a notice to the effect that the Zulus were near, and that an attack might come at any time.

He half indifferently said, “Well, we can spend ten minutes more over our cups and yet be safe.” Ere the ten minutes had passed, the enemy was upon them, Napoleon was stricken down. When his mother heard it, she said, “Oh, my poor boy.

He was always pleading for ten minutes to throw away.”But more depends upon the proper use of ten minutes than the life of the body. Many a man has had such a period of time on which eternity depended and yet has wasted it, and his life went out in darkness.When Canon Wilberforce was in this country preaching from this text, one day he told how a miner, having heard the Gospel, determined that if it promised his immediate salvation he would not leave the presence of the preacher until he was in possession of that salvation. After the meeting was over he addressed the minister in his rude speech, “Didn’t ye say I could have the blessing neow?” “Yes, my friend.” “Then pray with me neow; for I’m not goin awa’ we’-out it.”And they did pray, both the minister and the man, waiting before God until the miner heard the silent words from the still small voice of the Spirit and knew that he was saved. Then he started up saying, “I have got it neow,” and his face was all aglow as he repeated, “I have got it neow.”The next day a terrible accident occurred in the mine and when this minister reached the scene, the dead and the dying were on every side. Searching among them he came upon this big, brawny fellow whom he had seen the night before, and lo he was dying also. But when he recognized the minister, his eyes flashed with their new light and he said, “Oh, I don’t moind to die; for I have got it.

I have got it. It is mine.”And, beloved, today “is the day of salvation”. “To day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.”There is no promise for eternity.

You are familiar with the theory of our second probationists that if a soul fails to be saved in time, he will enjoy a second chance in eternity. We do well to call it Andover theology, for it is certainly not Biblical theology.There are two texts upon which these good people insist, namely, 1 Peter 3:19 and 1 Peter 4:6. They read like this, “By which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison”. “For, for this cause was the Gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit”.But one needs only to give himself to the context to see that neither of these texts necessarily refer to the inhabitants of hell, and one needs only to be fair in his study of the Bible to understand that if they so seemed to teach, it would be necessary to reconcile them to the multitude of Scriptures that array themselves against such an opinion.Take any standard Concordance and look up the final state of the wicked and see what the Scriptures are on this subject and be not deceived. Christ could hardly be guilty of employing a parable that, by the fairest interpretation, must teach grievous error; and in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. He has not Gospel for the doomed man who cries for help, and even teaches that they who reject Moses and the Prophets are incorrigible.What hope then of touching the heart of him who has added Christ and the Apostles to Moses and the Prophets, and, rejecting them all has chosen his bed in hell.No! The present is the time of your probation, and “now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation”.If you have youth on your side, do not dissipate it, for it is the very season in which to seek God.Solomon the wisest of all men, moved by the Holy Spirit, said, “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them”.

And Isaiah wrote, “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near”.Oh, beloved, be wise. Accept the counsel of the Everlasting God.THE PRESENT IS THE TIME TO POSSESS . You need it now.It is a poor view of Christianity that supposes it to be only a passport to Heaven. “Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is”. Who can appreciate its full profit?Go with me tomorrow, and I will take you into a house not far distant from this sanctuary. The father is a drunkard and every appointment of the place is in evidence of that fact. The furniture is scant and old; wife pale and evidently sick at heart; children poorly clad and cringing in fear. No matter how brightly the sun shines without, there is always a gloom in that house, and over those hearts. He had made good resolutions only to break them, and many a time he has pledged his wife never to be guilty again, but found no power with which to keep the pledge.

Oft he has looked upon his little ones and in love of them said, “I will be a man,” but ere twenty-four hours he had turned down his own throat, in drink, what would have been the bread and meat of life for them, and in his intoxication, had come back to add physical injury to all the insults he had heaped upon bride and babes. What does he need?

Such a man told me one night that he was going, the next day, to take the Keeley cure, and I said, “That is good, but there is something better,” and he was eager to know what it was, and I presented Christ and His salvation, and he accepted it, and so far as I know, he has never tasted liquor since.Go with me, tomorrow, and I will show you people with ungovernable tempers; I will show you people with the habits of profanity; I will show you people given to gambling; I will show you people under the dominance of lust; I will show you people demoniacally possessed, and what every one of them needs for his infirmity, his failing, his sin, is not a separate and specific treatment, but this same salvation, to bring sweet spirit, instead of evil temper, godly gain in the room of gambling, genuine love into the place of lust, and the Holy Ghost into the heart inhabited by evil spirits.As I study domestic, social, political, and churchly circles of this world, I say that the sweetest and happiest lives to be found in any and in all of them are those into which God’s Son has come with His present salvation.Again, the present is the time to possess His salvation. The present is in your power. You cannot recall the past. You cannot come into possession of the future. The utmost that you can do is to employ the immediate hour, and I wonder whether you are employing it in seeking for this highest good. I wonder if you esteem salvation as worthy your thought, your effort, your sleepless endeavor.It is told that Pythagoras, the philosopher, in his love of learning, was unwilling to lose time, and when at night he grew weary with his work and the flesh weakened, and would sleep, he tied a cord to the beam over his head and fastened the other end to a lock of his hair, so that every time he slept and nodded, the pain would bring him broad awake that he might go on with his books again.I doubt if human learning, valuable as it is, is worth any such suffering endeavor.

But, oh, beloved, I have no question that he does well who decides that he will never sleep until salvation is found.Again, if you will possess salvation at this present time, you will exercise a sacred influence for all remaining days.One’s interest in salvation should not stop with his own soul, but only begin there.So soon as Andrew and James discovered the Son of God, they went after their brethren and brought them to Jesus. And when we recall the fact that the present is the harvest-time for souls, shall we be satisfied with anything short of being both redeemed ourselves and reapers for our God?I often think of a little poem I read somewhere, entitled “The Curse of Empty Hands”, and it runs like this:At dawn the call was heard, And busy reapers stirred Along the highway leading to the wheat. “Wilt reap with us?” they said. I smiled and shook my head. “Disturb me not,” said I, “my dreams are sweet.” I sat with folded hands And saw across the lands The waiting harvest shining on the hills; I heard the reapers sing Their song of harvesting, And thought to go, but dreamed and waited still. The day at last was done, And homeward, one by one, The reapers went, well laden as they passed. Theirs was no misspent day, Not long hours dreamed away. In sloth that turns to sting the soul at last. A reaper lingered near “What,” cried he, “idle here! Where are the sheaves your hands have bound to-day?” “Alas,” I made reply, “I let the day pass by Until too late to work. I dreamed the hours away.” “O foolish one!” he said, And sadly shook his head, “The dreaming soul is in the way of death. The harvest soon is o’er, Rouse up and dream no more! Act, for the summer fadeth like a breath. “What if the Master came To-night and called your name, Asking how many sheaves your hands had made? If at the Lord’s command You showed your empty hands, Condemned, your dreaming soul would stand dismayed.” Filled with strange terror then, Lest chance come not again, I sought the wheat-fields while the others slept. “Perhaps ere break of day The Lord will come this way,” A voice kept saying, till with fear I wept. Through all the long, still night, Among the wheat-fields white, I reaped and bound the sheaves of yellow grain. I dared not pause to rest, Such fear possessed my breast; So for my dreams I paid the price in pain. But when the morning broke And rested reapers woke My heart leaped up as sunrise kissed the lands; For came he soon or late, The Lord of the estate Would find me bearing not the curse of empty hands.

2 Corinthians 6:14-18

THE PERIL OF THE PUTRID TOUCH 2 Corinthians 6:14-18IN continuing this series of sermons, I want to speak this evening on “The Peril of the Putrid Touch”. The dictionary defines “putrid” as, “in a state of putrifaction; tainted”, and we will so employ it in this discourse. The great Apostle Paul is writing his Second Letter to the Corinthians, and in his earnest endeavor to bring these people to right thinking and holy living, inserts this earnest, comprehensive appeal,“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? “And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? “And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the Living God; as God hath said, I will dwelt in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing: and I will receive you, “And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty” (2 Corinthians 6:14-18). It is the expression of an Apostle’s interest in holy living, with all of its consequent blessing of fellowship with the Father.Two or three suggestions for our study:THE TOUCH DEFINED We discover in the beginning of this text Paul’s definition of the putrid touch.We are experiencing it when we yoke ourselves with unbelievers. “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers”. The reference here is doubtless to one of two scenes which were often witnessed in the Orient. In Deuteronomy 22:10 there is the plain command, “Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together”. Such was an unequal yoking. Their very characters made their fellowship in the yoke an incongruity; and, if there could be a degradation of the lower animal life, surely the ox suffers an indignity when thus associated with the foul-breathed, loud-mouthed, homely-appearing beast—the ass. Possibly, however, the Apostle had in mind that stranger scene where women are yoked with cattle to drag the plow as it scratches the field of the Orient; where human life, made in the image of God, is degraded to the level of the beasts of burden.

In either view, the Christian is not to yoke himself with the bad-breathed, loud-voiced unbeliever, whose words are a stench, and whose infidelity is vociferously expressed. Much less is the man indwelt by the Spirit of God to connect himself with those whose unbelief render them beastly.When Colonel Ingersoll was yet alive, he wrote these things, “I like a man who has good feeling for everybody.

One man said to another, ‘Will you take a glass of wine?’ ‘I don’t drink.’ ‘Will you smoke a cigar?’ ‘I don’t smoke.’ ‘Maybe you will chew something. Let us eat some hay.’ ‘I don’t eat hay.’ ‘Well, then, good-by; you are no company for either man or beast!”‘ was the Colonel’s farewell. No wonder the Colonel did not like this fellow. He was poor company for the intemperate and unclean, and no company for a beast. If he had only been willing to eat some hay, the Colonel would have stood in the same stall with him in the perfect appreciation of his good fellowship; but the sober, clean man can poorly afford to drink wine, or to smoke, or to eat hay; and certainly the Christian man cannot afford to stand in the stall with the man whose infidelity has cultivated in him the habit of strong drink, or other sins. “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers”.But the Apostle further defines this putrid touch as fellowship with unrighteousness. His question is, “What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness”?

The touch of unbelief means a daily temptation to iniquity; and Paul here relates that which is associated in life—unbelief and iniquity. The popular view of unbelief is not the Biblical one.

We have come to think that if only a man is moral, it makes little difference whether he believes on the Son of God. We should remember that unbelief is at the bottom of all sin. It is the very atmosphere in which Satan flourishes, and souls are doomed.Charles Spurgeon tells of a company of ministers who were disputing whether it was a sin, in men, that they did not believe the Gospel. While they were discussing it a young layman entered the room and said, “Gentlemen, am I in the presence of Christians? Are you believers in the Bible, or are you not?” They said, “We are Christians, of course.” Then he said, “Does not the Scripture say, ‘Of sin because they believed not on Me?’ And is it not the condemnation of sinners that they do not believe on Christ?” Then Spurgeon comments, “I would never invent a sophism to prove that it is no sin on the part of the ungodly not to believe, for I read in the Scriptures, “He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the Name of the only begotten Son of God”. Is it not a sin for a creature to doubt the Word of his Maker?

Is it not a crime and an insult to the Deity for me, an atom, a particle of dust, to dare to deny His words? Is it not the very summit of arrogance and extremity of pride for a son of Adam to say, even in his heart, “God, I doubt Thy grace; God, I doubt Thy love; God, I doubt Thy power?” I want to tell you to-night, that I am profoundly impressed that whenever those grosser sins which startle society are committed, unbelief lies back of them; and when we yoke ourselves unequally with unbelievers we are preparing the way for fellowship with iniquity.

People who are to escape some of the most dreadful perils of this world must learn that many insiduous attractions are as deadly in character as they are beautiful in appearance; and that many people whose ways seem winning are only applying the arts of destruction.Do you not recall how in Gibbon’s “Rome” he tells the story of the people of Thessaly, who were invited in the name of their sovereign to the games of the circus; and such was their insatiate avidity for those amusements that they threw off their fears and suspicion and attended in great numbers. As soon as the assembly was complete, soldiers, who had secretly been posted around the circus, received a signal—not for the races, but for a general massacre. An awful carnage lasted for hours, and somewhere between 7,000 and 15,000 people died in their own blood. The devil has changed some of his ways. He does not slaughter the bodies of men as he used to do; but his inventions are to entice men’s souls, luring multitudes; and the great Apostle makes his appeal to Christian people that they have no fellowship with the iniquitous, and he sounds a needed warning which wise men and women will regard.There is, however, a third element in this peril of the putrid touch which the Apostle calls “communion with darkness”. “What communion hath light with darkness”? Of believers Christ has said, “Ye are the light of the world”.

And the Apostle means to say, “If that be true, ye should not love darkness,” for light opposes darkness; light dispels darkness. One’s character is determined absolutely by whether he loves light or darkness.

It is a matter of suspicion, to say the least, when a man has to guard his mail lest it come under the eyes of his wife or Christian friend; when a woman has to throw a cloak over her conduct that she may put off guard some of those whose inherent right it is to know every intent of her heart.It is a material illustration of the great moral fact that the danger places of a city are the dark places—the places where evil men work; and when we have a dark secret in the life we are trampling the edge of the pit. Some centuries ago, before gas or electricity were thought of, the mayor of the great City of London commanded that a light should be suspended in front of the houses on dark evenings; and as the watchman walked his beat he cried out ever and anon, “Hang out your lights”; and the people who failed to do it were prosecuted by law. It is essential to safety, for sin loves darkness!In the great City of Chicago, just opposite where the old auditorium and its hotel stands, there was a house of the deepest infamy. Every art of the Adversary was practiced behind its walls. The police attempted again and again to break it up, but, though it was raided often, it ran on and on until, by and by, when the great auditorium went up and the electric lights were flashed in front of it, and the whole street was illuminated, these children of darkness, whose awful deeds could not bear exposure, removed, without a word from mayor or any man.Irving, in his “Life of Columbus”, tells us how when on his third voyage the provisions were all either consumed or spoiled, the starving men ate nothing in the day time, but after night had fallen they consumed in the darkness food from which the stomach would have revolted had they even so much as looked upon it in the day time. Oh, my friends, if we would see our sins as they are, loath them as does the Lord our God, and fling them from us forever, animated by utter disgust, let us drag them into the light, for “If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the Blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). ADVISED After the Apostle has called attention to the peril of the putrid touch, he calls upon God’s people to separate themselves from sinners, “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters”.God wants a separate people. In the Old Testament He said to Israel, “Ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me”; and again, “The Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people”. This phrase is often repeated in those Scriptures. In the New Testament He speaks of “purifying unto Himself” a “peculiar people”. This does not mean the cloister. Christ never prayed that His people might be taken out from the world, but that they might be kept from the evil which is in the world.

Abraham was never asked to be a hermit, but he was expected to behave well in the midst of heathen. They were to behold in him an example, and come to understand something of what the grace of God can do for a man.

I know of nothing that would settle more of our perplexing questions than a willingness to separate ourselves from sinners. There are some things that are not positively wrong in themselves, but are so fully and completely appropriated by sinners, that I cannot afford to practice them; the utmost that can be claimed for them is that they are on the borderland. They are the peculiar property of the men and women who, rejecting Jesus, “fulfil the lusts of the flesh”.A brilliant woman, a teacher of young women in the University of Lafayette, Indiana, with whom she was so influential, used to say to the girl students, “Young women, when you are in doubt about a thing, don’t.” Who can question that her advice was wholesome? What do the Scriptures mean when they declare that “No man can serve two masters”? What is the significance of John’s sentence, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15)?

Now I am not asking that you assume a long face; I am not asking that you dress in black unless it becomes you. I certainly am not requesting the men to wear high collars, rector’s vests, in order to look pious; or the women to don Salvation Army or Quaker bonnets, or part their hair in the middle and comb it straight, unless these things are comely.

But I am asking that deportment be exemplary; I am asking that men and women go to no place, participate in no thing with which Christ would be displeased. I am asking that we crucify the lusts of the flesh and subject ourselves to personal inconveniences, and even positive humiliation and shame, if need be, for Christ’s sake. “If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him”.Charles Spurgeon has a parable about a certain king whose son was sent upon an errand to a far country, and I suspect that this parable is based upon the New Testament one to which it is so similar. He was the lawful prince of that far country, but they would not acknowledge him—mocked him, set him in the pillory, and they scoffed at him, and pelted him with filth. Now there was one in that country who loved the prince and who stood up for him, and when they pelted him with filth this man was so near that he got some of it in his own face. He tenderly wiped the filth from the face of his prince, and, as often as possible, stood before him and shielded him. Finally one day this man was called to the court, and the peers and their courtiers were sitting in their places when the king called for that man.

As the man approached the king said, “Make way princes and nobles, make way; here is a man I want to honor. He suffered for the sake of my son; he stood with him when they were scorning and scoffing at him.

Make way, I tell you, for he shall sit at my right hand.” There is no need to interpret this parable. The man who endures for Christ’s sake is the man whom God will yet set up upon High. Truly “he that humbleth himself shall be exalted”.He wants a sanctified people. The same God who said, “Be ye separate”, also added, “and touch not the unclean thing”. The Bible clearly teaches sanctification. It does not consist in a speech, but in an experience. The man who says, “I am sanctified”, can hardly understand the meaning of the term. The man who hates sin, and keeps close to Jesus lest he should get into it, and who humbly confesses and asks to be forgiven, has some experience of sanctification.

The best expression of this great Biblical word “sanctification” is not in a creed, but, rather, in conduct. “Touch not the unclean thing”. The Pharisee who stood and prayed thus within himself, “I thank God that I am not as other men”, was not sanctified, his own opinion to the contrary notwithstanding. The publican who smote upon his breast and cried, “God be merciful to me a sinner”, went down to his house justified, and justification is an essential element in sanctification. When I meet people who are striving to surrender all to the Spirit, who really desire His infilling, that they may be better servants of His will—people who are longing to snap every chain that binds them to any wrong, and to be patterns of all that is lovely and of good repute, I am face to face with those whom God is sanctifying through His Truth. I do not pretend to say how long it will be before that is accomplished. The great work of grace can be done in a very short time when the conditions are met.

The times and seasons are with Him; the surrender is with you and with me. Truly did Charles Wesley pray when he said,“Breathe, oh breathe thy Holy Spirit Into every troubled breast; Let us all Thy grace inherit; Let us find Thy promised rest. Take away the love of sinning; Take our load of guilt away; End the work of Thy beginning; Bring us to eternal day. “Carry on Thy new creation; Pure and holy may we be; Let us see our whole salvation Perfectly secured by Thee; Changed from glory into glory, Till in Heaven we take our place, Till we cast our crowns before Thee, Lost in wonder, love, and praise.” SONSHIP The last sentence in this text is its sweetest, “And I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters”. Dr. John Watson, in his volume, “The Mind of the Master”, speaking on the Universal Fatherhood of God, says, “One is aghast to discover that this doctrine * * for long centuries passed out of the Christian consciousness. The Anglican communion has thirty-nine articles with one on the descent into hell; one on the marriage of priests; one on how to avoid people that are excommunicated, and not one on the Fatherhood. The Presbyterian communion has a confession of thirty-three chapters which deal in a trenchant manner with great mysteries, but there is not one expounding the Fatherhood of God.” And yet, if Watson studied the Scriptures better, he would not be surprised, for “the universal Fatherhood of God” is not found in the Scriptures. Why then should it be in creeds, ancient or modem?

Christ plainly taught that men who were of His Father were those who believed on Him. With awful candor He told those who preferred darkness to the light, “Ye are of your father, the devil”.

Our text confirms Christ’s speech. The Apostle does not present God as the Father of all men; he presents Him as ready to become the Father of such as would separate themselves from sin and touch no unclean thing.God proffers His paternity. He says, “I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you”. Oh, how willing no man can ever tell! There is not a lost man on earth whose cry does not stir in the bosom of Deity the longing for paternity. God says with reference to every sinful man, “How I would like to become a Father to him; and I would be his Father if he would let me.

If he would only renounce the evil father—the Adversary—and turn to me, I would adopt him into my family and make him mine own.”I know young women who anticipate the bridal day with double pleasure because they are to marry sons of such noble sires. They are willing to be daughters to these men; they admire them for their nobility of character and are pleased to be able to win their favor.

And, oh, men and women, the most marvelous thing in all our history is the circumstance that we can give our hands in marriage to the Lord of lords, the King of kings, and that when once we have taken our vows of loyalty to Him we become children of God, for His statement is, “I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty”.I wish I could make you understand to-night what joy it would give Him if only there went up from this audience the voices of the willing, the voices of men and women who should say, “Lord, receive us; Lord, save us; Lord, let us become Thy children.” How many of you have ever read that wonderful story of Anthony Hunt, the drover, who used to live out on the western prairies? He tells us how there was not a house in sight; the neighbors were at long distances. He went off one day to sell fifty head of cattle, and to buy some groceries and dry goods, and his little baby girl said, “Papa, bring me a doll.” He promised. And as he went out of the yard gate, she cried, “Papa, buy a big one!”The cattle were sold; the doll was purchased, and along with calico, and tea, and sugar, was being borne home; and he said, “I was anticipating what a good time my little girl would have with it. Long before I reached home the night had set in; and a dark night it was. The rain was falling in torrents.

I urged on my horse and as she responded I heard a cry. I stopped short and listened; I called and it answered; I couldn’t see a thing.

I got down and groped about and couldn’t find a thing. I began to be timid. I was a drover and was known to have money about me. I thought it might be a trap to catch me, and there rob and murder me. I was half inclined to run away. But once more I heard that piteous cry, and, said I, ‘If any man’s child is hereabouts, Anthony Hunt is not the man to let it lie here and die.’ Following the sound I was attracted to a hollow under a hill, and there, surely enough, I stumbled right on the little dripping thing. It moaned and sobbed as I took it in my arms. Once on my horse I tucked the little soaked thing under my coat as best I could.

It seemed tired to death, and soon cried itself to sleep against my bosom. Coming near to my home I saw my own windows lighted, and I supposed wife had done it to show me the way; but entering the door I saw a great company of neighbors who had been gathered from long distances, and my wife amid them was weeping. ‘Oh don’t tell him,’ she said; ‘it will kill him.’ ‘What is it, neighbors?’ I cried. ‘Sit down’, said one; ‘what is that in your arms?’ ‘A poor lost child’. I answered. ‘Take it, will you; and care for it; I feel faint.’ And as I pulled back my coat and put the little one into his arms, lo, the face of my own child! It was my own darling that I had picked up and saved from perishing. After I left, in her eagerness to meet papa and get the doll, she had started down the road, and you can imagine the rest. It is not much of a story, neighbors,” he added, “but I think of it often in the nights, and wonder how I could bear to live had I not stopped and searched in answer to that little cry for help.” Shall man be better than God? Oh, let me say to you tonight, to those of you who have wandered so far from Him as to be lost: there beats in His bosom the Father-heart, and if you will only call, He will come and hunt and find and make you His own.

2 Corinthians 6:17-18

NO , BUT 2 Corinthians 6:17-18. PAUL was not only a great preacher; he was a great soul! He was one of those rare men who see life through serious eyes, and seek to set a true philosophy of the same before their fellows. It takes deep conviction and high courage to do that. It is no shallow flatterer’s work; nor indeed is it possible to him who is selfish or cowardly. Nothing short of moral earnestness can make a true apostle a critic of the conduct of his friends, and no other motive can lead to the voluntary risk of losing friendship by speaking truth than the intense love for the souls of those concerned. That is why Paul said what he did in this Epistle to the Corinthian Christians. He felt commissioned of God to cry aloud against their sins, and the intensity of his speech was only an expression of his desire to save—to save them from going back to unbelief, back to unrighteousness, back to darkness, back to Belial, back to infidelity, back to idols.There is need of reproof for some of us. There is need of persuasion for others. I do not feel myself worthy to criticize my brethren, but I find myself unwilling to see those I love go unchecked into sin, sinking their own souls, injuring other immortals, and dishonoring Him who died for them. “Wherefore”, my text, “come out from among them, and he ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing: and I will receive you”.Such separation from unbelievers ought to characterize the Christian inBUSINESS It is as true for the Christian in the world of trade as anywhere, that: righteousness has no fellowship with unrighteousness; that light hath no communion with darkness; that Christ hath no concord with Belial, nor the believer any part with the infidel (2 Corinthians 6:14).In the very character of his calling, Christ’s man must be separate from sinners. The custom of trade may have weight with unbelievers, and they may silence conscience by saying, “No matter about the morals; there is money in this.” But the believer plays into Belial’s hand the moment he does the same. His calling must be clean, and his shop, Christ’s stopping place.I went one time into a saloonist’s house to see some of our Sunday School children, and learned that the liquor dealer was a professed follower of Christ. I said to myself, “What a travesty!” And yet, that is no more a fresh crucifixion of Christ than many a supposedly respectable Christian is guilty of. I often think of Sidney Lanier’s poem, “Ah, the Cruel Marts of Trade”, and say, one of the cruelest things about them is the unchristian offices into which Christian men are lured by money. I would to God that we had more men among us who would rather live on two dollars a day for honest work than two hundred dollars for the devil’s duty jobs.In the methods of conducting business, Christian men ought to be separate from sinners.

Misrepresentations, deceits, cheats, lies, robbery! Let those be laid to the charge of unbelievers only, and Christ’s kingdom will sooner come!It is not the theoretical infidelity that retards the progress of the church today; it is the practical infidelity of pious hypocrites.

A certain gentleman telegraphed to know what a certain business man was worth. The answer came, “His note is worth a million dollars; his word is not worth a cent.” Over such church members hundreds stumble into unbelief, and go down to eternal death. Making money is not sin per se; but don’t sell the soul and your Saviour for silver and gold.Some years ago, in a southern slave market, a black boy was being cried off to the highest bidder. The last offer on him had come from a cruel driver, and the little fellow shook with fear. A kind man, seeing the situation, went near and said, “Tom, if I buy you will you be honest?” In indescribable tones Tom answered firmly, “I will be honest, sir, whether you buy me or not.” Oh, for a church full of Christians who counted integrity above all temporal gain! God would work miracles for them and through them His kingdom would come.The Christian ought to be separate from sinners in the store he sets by his business pursuits.

It is not a matter of surprise that a godless baker said to me, “Seven days in the week I propose to run this shop wide open, until I accumulate $50,000. That is my dream and I intend to live wholly for it.”But that a Christian should give to self-gain all his time, talent, and energy, how strange!

And yet, the commonest excuse among church members today for absences from important services rests just there. Many seem to reckon that it is not wrong to miss prayer meeting if there is money in so doing; not wrong to sleep all day on Sunday so as to start with recuperated energies on Monday morning. That is true not only of the needy, but of men of excellent income. The millionaire has less time for his soul than the one dollar a day laborer, and Satan has little trouble to convince the competent Christian that the getting of gold is important above hearing the truth, growing in spirit, or saving immortals.At a summer resort, a lady late to breakfast remarked to a friend as she hurried into the dining hall, “I am late because tired! I danced last night until I blistered my feet.” The man was courageous and knew this woman to be a professed Christian, and so he said, “Did you ever blister your feet in the service of your Redeemer?” Of course it hurt her feelings. She looked her contempt for such coarseness, and retreated.One week later she came with tear-filled eyes and said, “Sir, I beg your pardon for my expression of anger.

God has forgiven me, after many days of prayer, and now when my feet blister again it shall be in His service and not in sensual pleasure.” Ah, the multitudes! the multitudes! men and women who have professed Christ, and yet crowd our streets and shops, blistering their feet for mammon, and having not one evening a week, not one hour in an evening to go an errand for Christ, to unsaved or backsliding, or sinking souls! Our Christianity—what is it?

Wherein are we separate from sinners?This text is a call to Christians to be separate from sinners inTHEIR The same great teacher who said of business pursuits, “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24), said to John, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15).There must be a line of separation between the Christian’s accustomed pleasures and those of unbelievers. It is only the carnal that call that into question. It is only when men love modern amusements more than the church that they debate the subject. It is only when liquor has a greater attraction than the Lord that men defend the wine cup, or the whisky goblet.

It is only when lust eats into the life and drives the Spirit of God from the heart, that men defend lewdness and say, “At the most it is only indiscretion.”God’s good men are not debating how far they can be worldly and yet escape hell. Their faces are set the other way.

Like the wise coachman, they see how far they get from the precipice at the roadside, and not how near to it they can drive without going over. And there is nothing that tells the tale of a man’s character as his accustomed pleasures do. It is a surer index than his pursuits. Many a man has chosen an honorable pursuit, or profession, who quits it at close of day to go in quest of evil people and hurtful pleasure. You don’t know a man so much by spending the afternoon with him, as you do by spending the evening with him. In the afternoon he is a skilful doctor; in the evening a sensual dancer.

In the afternoon he is an excellent accountant; in the evening he is a godless gambler. In the afternoon he commands and strong men obey his behests; in the evening he is commanded by harlots and has no mind of his own.Charles Spurgeon says, “When the day’s work is done, then ‘the birds of a feather flock together’.” It is with many men as it was with those Christians of old, of whom, when they were liberated from prison, it was said, “Being let go, they went to their own company”.If your pleasure is in sin, then in sin you choose to live, and unless grace prevent, in sin you will not fail to perish.The Christian who crosses the line that ought to separate him from sinful pleasure, does so at the cost of his character.

Some years ago in Kentucky a man insulted a preacher who wore my name. The story goes that uncle Clark Riley hauled off his broadcloth Prince-Albert, and throwing it on the grass said, “Lay there preacher until I lick this man,” and then he waded in.Christianity is not a coat that you can doff when tempted by the world, and don when the debauch is over. If you have any you will drag it in the mire while you wallow in social mud, and the best you can hope thereafter is a stained character. The way to conquer the world is to separate yourself from its sins and stand on higher ground. Clifford was right in saying, “Holiness is wholeness, health, beauty, and it attracts. It is real, and men love reality.

It is the sham they hate. The real man, even if silent, is always a power; the fraud eloquent as Cicero must collapse.” To the tempted among professed followers, Stebbins’ lines are appropriate,“Christian, walk carefully, danger is near; On in thy journey with trembling and fear. Snares from without and temptations within, Seek to entice thee once more into sin. “Christian, walk prayerfully, oft wilt thou fall, If thou forget on thy Saviour to call; Safe thou shalt walk, through each trial and care, If thou art clad in the armour of prayer.” In the very nature of the case there can be no competition in the matter of pleasure between the church and the world. It is the custom of some backsliders to say that the church didn’t furnish them with amusements, and they had to go to the world for their pleasures. But the charge incriminates the man who makes it. The church doesn’t exist to amuse men; the church exists to save men, and every member of it ought to be engaged in that business. The Christian doesn’t require cards, and dance, and whisky for excitement, until he has turned his back on Jesus. And if he has passions for such things, you can present him all the pure and innocent amusements ever invented and he will not thank you for them.

Bishop Fallow’s “house salon” could never compete with the real saloon, simply because it didn’t satisfy the drinker’s appetite. It didn’t have enough patronage to keep it alive; its visitors were sober men who preferred non-intoxicating drinks, and they were too few.

The well-ordered home cannot compete with the bawdy house. It may have beautiful pictures on the wall, the sweetest music within, and sisters that suggest angels in their virgin sweetness, and yet the lustful brother turns his back on all that attraction and takes his way to the strange woman’s den. Do you upbraid the pure home for not giving him what he craved? No! Nor should you upbraid the Church of God for not competing with the world in presenting pleasure to the men and women who leave it and go in search of that which the lower nature craves. The church is not wrong! It is the sensual man! There are two Greek legends of mythical lore that point a moral.

The one is to the effect that Ulysses, having to sail by a spot on the southern shore of Italy, where the sirens—beautiful mermaids—sang men to their destruction on the rocks, succeeded in passing only by being bound hand and foot. These creatures were so attractive that he would have cast himself into the sea to join them, but for the ropes that held him fast. But the Argonauts, passing the same spot, took with them Orpheus, the sweetest singer ever heard, and being entranced by his music, they laughed to scorn the song the mermaids could sing. That is the secret of the Christian religion! The Christian who lives as he ought finds the temptations defeated by a counter-attraction. The love of Christ in the heart destroys the love of sin, and the new song of salvation enables us to despise the siren song of temptation. That man alone is really proof against the pleasures of the world, who, as he sails the seas of life, carries on board the Divine Orpheus, whose heavenly music is daily satisfying his soul.Finally, let such separation showTHE PURPOSE It will prove its purity if consistently maintained.That is what the world wants to see in Christian character—purity of purpose. There is not a young Christian in the land, nor an older one, who cannot impress men favorably with his profession by purity of life. You are in a shop surrounded by godless men. They swear at you; they laugh at your religion; they try you to see if you will yield to temptation. Stand up in your integrity, maintain quiet dignity, keep your words pure and your every action chaste, and your character will so rise in their estimation that they will honor you.But yield to their temptations, make yourself one of them, and they will despise you for your Christian profession and your dissolute practices. Hence our text, “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing: and I mill receive you”.Such separation shows one’s sincerity.

It isn’t easy to separate one’s self from sinful people. It takes courage!

It requires character! Yes, it takes the aid of Christ. Somebody has said, “Many a soldier can walk right up to a cannon’s mouth who could not say ‘No!’ to two or three companions pressing him to enter the canteen.” But the battle won, when a man separates himself once for all from such pursuits and pleasures and people, is greater than any ever gained at Thermopylae, or Waterloo, or Bunker Hill. It may not be known to many here below, but up yonder all Heaven hears of it, and Jesus Christ, the Great Captain, will record it in His eternal record. Oh, brother! fight down that passion; put your heel on that lust; drive back that evil pleasure. If Heaven is true, and God is as good as His Word, your hope for time, and your happiness in eternity depends upon it. “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing: and I will receive you”.When you cut loose from sinful people and pleasures, God and good people will remain to you.

What need you more? With Christians as your brethren and sisters, and Christ’s service for your work, and all innocent people for your companions, and all pure pleasures for your enjoyment, and God for your Father, what need you more?I pity the man who parts company with good people and accepts the companionship of social carrion crows.

But I pity him most who turns his back on the Great God and says, “I will not be your son!” For him there are such days of darkness ahead; there are such faithless days ahead; there are such fatherless days ahead! When the storms come there will be such despair! When sickness overtakes, such a sense of sin; and when death approaches, such visions of evil spirits waiting to conduct the stained soul to its eternal cell! God separate us from sinful things, pursuits, pleasures, purposes, people! God save us and help us to sing,“Jesus, I my cross have taken, All to leave and follow Thee; Naked, poor, despised, forsaken; Thou from hence my all shalt be. Perish every fond ambition; All I’ve sought, or hoped, or known; Yet how rich is my condition; God and heaven are still my own. “Go then, earthly fame and treasure; Come disaster, scorn and pain; In Thy service, pain is pleasure; With Thy favor, loss is gain. I have called Thee Abba Father; I have stayed my heart on Thee; Storms may howl, and clouds may gather; All must work for good to me.”