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Title: Godliness

Author: Catherine Booth

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GODLINESS.

BEING

REPORTS OF A SERIES OF ADDRESSES DELIVERED AT
JAMES'S HALL, LONDON, W., During 1881,

BY

MRS. CATHERINE BOOTH.

_INTRODUCTION BY DANIEL STEELE, D.D._




PUBLISHERS' PREFACE.


In giving this volume to our American readers, we are assured that
we are doing a special favor to all the lovers of "Christianity in
earnest." "Aggressive Christianity," from the same talented author,
has met with unusual favor, and has been the means of much good. We
are confident that the present volume is in all respects equal to the
former, and that no one can read it without great spiritual profit.

The Introduction, by Dr. Daniel Steele, is a forcible presentation
of the main doctrines of the book, and is creditable to the head and
heart of the writer, and a commendation which all intelligent readers
will highly esteem.

Our object in publishing these sermons, is, that their perusal may
kindle a flame of revival in the hearts of believers, which may
result in many turning unto the Lord.

MCDONALD & GILL

BOSTON, MASS.




AUTHOR'S PREFACE.


In presenting another volume of reports of my Addresses, I have only
to repeat what I have said with respect to similar books before--
Read, for the sake of getting more light and more blessing to your
soul, and you will, I trust, partake of the good which many have
professed to receive at the West-End services, wherein most of these
words were first spoken.

I am well aware that, in such imperfect reports of, for the most
part, extemporaneous utterances, often most hurriedly corrected,
there may be found abundant ground for criticism; but, if this book
may be the means of leading only a few souls to devote themselves
more fully to God and to the salvation of men, I shall be more than
compensated for any unfriendly criticism with which it may meet.

I have not sought to please any but the Lord, and to His fatherly
loving-kindness I commend both the book and its readers.

CATHERINE BOOTH.

_London, Nov._ 10, 1881.




INTRODUCTION.


The sermons of Mrs. Booth already re-published under the title of
"_Aggressive Christianity_," came to American Christians as a tonic to
their weakness, and a stimulant to their inertness.

The sermons in the present volume are a much-needed prophylactic, a
safeguard against several practical errors in dealing with souls;
errors which lead them into Egyptian darkness, instead of the
marvelous light.

The sermon on _Repentance_ is a most faithful showing up of spurious
repentance, the vain substitute for a downright abandonment of every
form of sin, and right-about facing towards the Lord. In directness and
point, it is a model for earnest revival preaching,--rather, for all
preaching to unsaved souls, outside the church, or within it. All of
these will be found in some subterfuge, which must be ruthlessly torn
down, before it will be abandoned for the cleft Rock.

The sermon on _Saving Faith_ is next in order. The disastrous
consequences of what, for the want of a better description, maybe
styled an Antinomian faith, an unrepentant assent of the intellect to
the historic facts of the Gospel, which too many evangelists and
other religious teachers are calling saving faith, are clearly set
forth and plainly labeled, POISON. This spurious trust in Christ
following a superficial repentance, which has never felt the
desperate sinfulness and real misery of sin, has furnished our
churches with a numerous class of members, aptly described by the
prophet Micah: "The sin of Israel is great and unrepented of, yet
they will lean on the Lord, and say, Is not the Lord among us?" We
are convinced that much of the work of the faithful and pungent
preacher, who preaches with his eye fixed on the great white throne
and the descending Judge, is to dislodge professors from their
imaginary trust in a Saviour who does not save them, and probe deeply
their hearts festering with sin, which have been hastily pronounced
healed, "slightly healed." Many of us have incautiously said to
awakened souls, "Only believe," before we have thrust the heart
through and through with the sword of God's law. We have dismissed
God's schoolmaster. The law, like the slave charged with the task of
leading the boy to school, and of committing him to the teacher, we
have thought to be too harsh and severe for our sentimental age, and
have unwisely discharged, and have assumed its office of a
_paidagogos_ to Christ, and we have missed the way, and misled a
priceless soul. God have mercy on us, and give us humility, as He
gave Apollos, to be set right by an anointed woman!

After her timely correction of erroneous teachings on faith, Mrs.
Booth proceeds, pruning-knife in hand, to cut away from the tree of
modern Christianity the poisonous fungus of a "spurious charity." Her
four sermons on _Charity_ are four beacons set on the rocks of
counterfeit Christian love. She sets forth several infallible tests
by which genuine love may be distinguished from the devil's base
imitation. Like the Epistles of St. John, these sermons are full of
touchstones for testing love, that golden principle of the Christian
life. It would be very profitable for all professors of that perfect
love which casteth out all tormenting fear, to apply unflinchingly
these touch-stones to themselves. They may find the word "perfection"
taking on a meaning deeper, broader and higher than they had ever
before conceived. Why should not our conception of Christian
perfection steadily grow with the increase of our knowledge of God
and of His holy law?

The sermon on _The Conditions of Effectual Prayer_, we commend
to all Christians and to all seekers of Christ, who are mourning
because their prayers do not prevail with God. In the clear light of
this sermon they will find that the difficulty lies, either in the
lack of fellowship with Jesus Christ, or of obedience to His
commands, or in the absence from their hearts of the interceding
Spirit, or in defective faith. In the discussion of these hindrances
to prayer, the preacher lays open the heart, and with a skilful
spiritual surgery, searches it to the very bottom. The incisiveness
of her style, her courage and plain dealing with her hearers, tearing
off the masks of sin and selfishness, the various guises in which
these masquerade in many Christian hearts and obstruct their access
to a throne of grace, remind us of Dr. Finney's unsparing exposure
and condemnation of these foes to Christian holiness, and of John
Wesley's cutting up by the roots "Sin in Believers."

In this sermon Mrs. Booth turns her attention to another phase of
faith and of practical error in the guidance of souls to Christ. Her
views on this vexed question are not extreme but philosophical and
scriptural. She teaches that God has made the bestowment of salvation
simultaneous with the exercise of faith, and that "telling a person
to believe he is saved, before he is saved, is telling him to believe
a lie." But she insists that the act of faith is put forth with the
special aid of the Holy Spirit giving an assurance that the blessing
sought will be granted. This assurance, or earnest, given by the
Spirit, becomes the basis on which the final act of faith rests,
namely, "I believe that I receive." This corresponds with William
Taylor's Divine "ascertainment of the fact of the sinner's surrender
to God, and his acceptance of Christ," before justification.
[Footnote: Election of Grace, pp. 38-42.] Both teachers agree with
Wesley's analysis of faith which teaches that the fourth and last
step, "He doth it," can be taken only by the special enabling power
of the Holy Spirit, [Footnote: Sermons. Patience, Section 13; Scripture
Way of Salvation, Section 17; and Whedon on Mark xi. 24.] All three
locate the Divine efficiency before the declaration, "I believe that I
receive," or "have received" (R. V.), making that declaration rest upon
the perception of a Divine change within the consciousness. They all
insist that saving faith is not a mere humanly moral exercise, but
that power to believe with the heart descends from God, and that it
must be waited for in prayer, and that it becomes in the believer a
series of supernatural and spiritual acts, a habit of soul, at once
the seed and fruit of the Divine life-stirring, uniting in itself the
characters of penitent humility, self-renunciation, simple trust, and
absolute obedience grounded in love. These teachers magnify the
Divine element in faith. We look in vain in their writings for any
such direction to a penitent as this, "Believe that you are saved,
because, God says so in His Word," but rather believe that you are
saved when you hear His Spirit crying, Abba, Father, in your heart.

Many modern teachers fall into the error of treating saving faith as
an unaided intellectual act to be performed, at will, at any time. It
is rather a spiritual act possible only when prompted by the Holy
Spirit, who incites to faith only when He sees true repentance and a
hearty surrender to God. Then the Spirit reveals Christ and assists
to grasp Him. In the refutation of the high predestinarian doctrine
that faith is an irresistible grace sovereignly bestowed upon the
elect, there is great danger of falling into the opposite error,
called Pelagianism, which makes saving faith an exercise which the
natural man is competent to put forth without the help of the Holy
Spirit. The real guilt of unbelief lies in that voluntary
indifference toward Christ, and impenitence of heart, in which the
Holy Spirit cannot inspire saving faith.

In our introduction to "_Aggressive Christianity_," we advertised, in
behalf of the American churches, a universal want--Enthusiasm. In her
brief Exeter-Hall address, Mrs. Booth discloses the source of the
supply. Holiness is the well-spring of enthusiasm. Hence it is not a
spring freshet, but an overflowing river of power in all its possessors,
and, notably in the Salvation Army, bearing the unchurched masses of
England on its bosom. A holy enthusiasm is contagious and conquering. We
cannot touch the people with the icicle of logic; but they will not fail
to bow to the scepter of glowing and joyful love. Few men can reason;
all can feel. Enthusiasm and full salvation, like the Siamese twins,
cannot be separated and live. The error of the modern pulpit is that of
the blacksmith hammering cold steel--a faint impression and huge labor.
The baptism of fire softening our assemblies would lighten the
preacher's toil and multiply its productiveness.

The four addresses on _Holiness_ are hortatory rather than
argumentative or exegetical. They are spiritual cyclones. It is
difficult to see how any Christian could withstand these impassioned
appeals to make what Joseph Cook calls "an affectionate, total,
irreversible, eternal, self-surrender to Jesus Christ, as both
Saviour and Lord," in order to attain that "perfect similarity of
feeling with God," wherein evangelical perfection consists.

It gives me great pleasure to have some humble part in echoing
across the American continent these glowing utterances from the lips
of this modern Deborah, the Christian prophetess raised up by God for
the deliverance of His people from captivity to worldliness and
religious apathy. "Would God that all the Lord's people," men and
women, "were prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon
them!"

  "Shall we the Spirit's course restrain,
    Or quench the heavenly fire?
  Let God His messengers ordain,
    And whom He will inspire!
  Blow as He list, the Spirit's choice
    Of instruments we bless:
  We will, if Christ be preached, rejoice,
    And wish the word success."

DANIEL STEELE.

_Reading, Mass., Nov._ 23, 1883.




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER I.

REPENTANCE

CHAPTER II.

SAVING FAITH

CHAPTER III.

CHARITY

CHAPTER IV.

CHARITY AND REBUKE

CHAPTER V.

CHARITY AND CONFLICT

CHAPTER VI.

CHARITY AND LONELINESS

CHAPTER VII.

CONDITIONS OF EFFECTUAL PRAYER

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PERFECT HEART

CHAPTER IX.

HOW TO WORK FOR GOD WITH SUCCESS

CHAPTER X.

ENTHUSIASM AND FULL SALVATION

CHAPTER XI.

HINDRANCES TO HOLINESS

CHAPTER XII.

ADDRESSES ON HOLINESS




CHAPTER I.

REPENTANCE,


  And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of Heaven is at band.--MATT.
  iii. 2.

  From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the
  Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.--MATT. iv. 17.

  "Whereupon, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly
  vision: but shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and
  throughout all the coasts of Judaea, and then to the Qentiles, that
  they should repent and torn to God, and do works meet for
  repentance."--ACTS xxvi. 19,20.

In the mouths of three witnesses--John the Baptist, Jesus Christ,
and the Apostle Paul--this word shall be established, namely, that
repentance is an _indispensable_ condition of entering the kingdom of
God.

People generally are all at sea oh this subject, as though insisting
that repentance were an arbitrary arrangement on the part of God. I
believe God has made human salvation as easy as the Almighty,
Infinite mind could make it. But there is a necessity in the case,
that we should "repent and turn to God." It is just as necessary that
my feelings be changed and brought to repentance towards God, as it
is that the wicked, disobedient boy, should have his feelings brought
back into harmony with his father before he can be forgiven.
Precisely the same laws of mind are brought into action in both
cases, and there is the same necessity in both.

If there is any father here who has a prodigal son, I ask, How is it
that you are not reconciled to your son? You love him--love him
intensely. Probably you are more conscious of your love for him than
for any other of your children. Your heart yearns over him every day;
you pray for him night and day; you dream of him by night; your
bowels yearn over your son, and you say, with David, "Absalom,
Absalom, my son, my son." Why are you not reconciled? Why not pat him
on the head, or stroke his face, and say, "My dear lad, I am well
pleased with you. I love you complacently; I give you my
approbation?" Why are you always reproving him? Why are you obliged
to hold him at arm's length? Why can you not live on amicable terms
with him? Why can you not have him come in and out, and live with you
on the same terms as the affectionate, obedient daughter? "Oh!" you
say, "the case is different; I cannot. It is not, 'I would not;' but,
'_I cannot_.' Before that can possibly be, the boy's feelings
must be changed towards me. He is at war with me; he has mistaken
notions of me; he thinks I am hard, and cruel, and exacting, and
severe. I have done all a father could do, but he sees things
differently, to what they are, and has harbored these hard feelings
against me until he hates me, and will go on in defiance of my will."
You say, "It is a necessity that, as a wise and righteous father, I
must insist on a change in him. I cannot receive him as a son, till
he comes to my feet. He must confess his sin, and ask me to forgive
him. Then, oh! how gladly will my fatherly affection gush out! How I
should run to meet him, and put my arms around his neck! but there is
a 'cannot' in the case." Just so. It is not that He does not love
you, sinner; it is not that the great, benevolent heart of God has
not, as it were, wept tears of blood over you; it is not that He
would not put His loving arms around you this moment, if you would
only come to His feet, and confess you were wrong, and seek His
pardon; but, otherwise, He may not--He _cannot_. The laws of His
universe are against Him doing so. The good, it may be, of millions
of immortal beings, is involved. He dare not, and He _cannot,_ until
there is a change of mind _in you._ You must repent. "Except ye repent,
ye shall all likewise perish."

Well, if repentance be an indispensable condition of salvation, let
us glance at it for a moment, and try to find out what repentance
really is; and, oh! how full of confusion the world and the church
are upon this subject! I say it, because I know it by converse with
hundreds of people. May the Holy Spirit help us!

Well, first, repentance is not merely conviction of sin. Oh! if it
only were, what a different world we should have to-night, for there
are tens of thousands on whose hearts God's Spirit has done His
office by convincing them of sin. I am afraid we should be perfectly
alarmed, astounded, confounded, if we had any conception of the
multitudes whom God has convinced of sin, as He did Agrippa and
Festus. Oh! I could not tell you the numbers of people, who, in our
anxious meetings, have grasped my hand, and said, "Oh! what would I
give to feel as I once felt! There was a time, fifteen, or seventeen,
or twenty years ago," and so on, "when I was so deeply convinced of
sin that I could scarcely sleep, or eat--that I could find no rest;
but, instead of going on till I found peace, I got diverted, cooled
down, and now, I feel as hard as a stone." I am afraid there are tens
of thousands in this condition--once convinced of sin.

There are thousands of others, who are convinced _now_. They say, "Yes,
it is true what the minister says. I know I ought to lay down the
weapons of my warfare against God; I know I ought to cut off this right
hand, and pluck out this right eye." They are convinced of sin, but they
go no further. That is not repentance. They live this week as they did
last. There is no response to the Spirit; they resist the Holy Ghost.

Neither is repentance mere sorrow for sin. I have seen people weep
bitterly, and writhe and struggle, but yet hug on to their idols, and
in vain you try to shake them from them. Oh! if Jesus Christ would
have saved them with those idols, they would have no objection at
all. If they could have got through the strait gate with this one
particular idol, they would have gone through long since; but to part
with that--that is another thing. Such people will weep like your
stubborn child, when you want him to do something which he does not
want to do. He will cry, and when you apply the rod he will cry
harder, but he will not yield. When he yields, he becomes a penitent;
but, until he does, he is merely a convicted sinner. When God applies
the rod of His Spirit, the rod of His providence, the rod of His
Word, sinners will cry, and wince, and whine, and make you believe
they are praying, and want to be saved, but all the while they are
holding their necks as stiff as iron. They will not _submit_.
The moment they submit, they become true penitents, and get saved.
There is no mistake more common than for people to suppose they are
penitents when they are not. There are some of you in this condition,
I know. I am afraid you are quite mistaken--you are not penitents.
God is true though every man should be a liar; and, if you had
sought, as you say you have, and perhaps, think you have; if you had
been sincere and honest with God, you would have been saved years
ago. Oh! may God, the Holy Spirit, help you to come out and be
HONEST. That is what God wants--that you be honest. "Oh," says He,
"why cover ye my altar with tears, and bring your vain oblations?
Just be honest, and I will be honest with you and bless you; but
while you come before Me and weep and profess, and bring the halt,
and the maimed, and the blind, a curse be upon you." He looks at you
afar off. Be honest. Repentance is not mere sorrow for sin. You may
be ever so sorry, and all the way down to death be hugging on to some
forbidden possession, as was the young ruler. _That_ is not repentance.

Neither is repentance a promise that you will forsake sin in the
future. Oh! if it were, there would be many penitents here to-night.
There is scarcely a poor drunkard that does not promise, in his own
mind, or to his poor wife, or somebody, that he will forsake his
cups. There is scarcely any kind of a sinner that does not
continually promise that he will give up his sin, and serve God, but
he does _not do it_.

Then what is _repentance_? _Repentance is simply renouncing
sin_--turning round from darkness to light--from the power of Satan
unto God. This is giving up sin in your heart, in purpose, in
intention, in desire, resolving that you will give up every evil
thing, and DO IT NOW. Of course, this involves sorrow, for how will
any sane man turn himself round from a given course into another, if
he does not repent having taken that course? It implies, also, hatred
of, sin. He hates the course he formerly took, and turns round from
it. He is like the prodigal, when he sat in the swine-yard amongst
the husks and the filth, he fully resolved, and at last he acts. He
went, and that was the test of his penitence! He might have sat
resolving and promising till now, if he had lived as long, and he
would never have got the father's kiss, the father's welcome, if he
had not started; but he went. He left the filth, the swine-yard, the
husks--he trampled them under his feet; he left the citizen of that
country, and gave up all his subterfuges and excuses, and went to his
father honestly, and said, "I have sinned!" which implied a great
deal more in his language then than it does in ours now. "I have
sinned against Heaven, and before thee;" and then comes the proof of
his submission, "and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me
as one of thy hired servants"--put me in a stable, or set me to clean
the boots, so that I can be in thy family and have thy smile. That is
repentance--Jesus Christ's own beautiful illustration of true
penitence. Have you done that? Have you forsaken the accursed thing?
Have you cut off that particular thing which the Holy Spirit has
revealed to you? Is the _"but"_ the hindrance that keeps you out
of the Kingdom? You know what it is, and you will never get saved
until you renounce it. Submission is the test of penitence. My child
may be willing to do a hundred and fifty other things, but, if he is
not willing to submit on the one point of controversy, he is a rebel,
and remains one until he yields.

Now, here is just the difference between a spurious and a real
repentance. I am afraid we have thousands in our churches who had a
spurious repentance: they were convinced of sin--they were sorry for
it; they wanted to live a better life, to love God in a sort of
general way; but they skipped over the real point of controversy with
God; they hid it from their pastor, perhaps, and from the deacons,
and from the people who talked with them.

Now, I say, Abraham might have been willing to have given up every
other thing that he possessed; but, if he had not been willing to
give up Isaac, all else would have been useless. It is your Isaac God
wants.  You have got an Isaac, just as the young ruler had his
possessions.  You have got something that you are holding on to, that
the Holy Spirit says you must let go, and you say, "I can't." Very
well; then you must stop outside the kingdom. I beseech you, do not
deceive yourselves by supposing that you repent, for you do not; but,
oh! my dear friends, let me beseech you to repent. The apostle says,
"Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men;" and this
is, I believe, the greatest work of the ministry.  To do what?  To
persuade men to submit. We are constantly talking to thousands of
people who know just what God wants of them.  We cannot bring many of
them any new light or new Gospel. They know all about it. They used
to tell me that so often, that I longed for a congregation of
heathen, which I have found since then. Consequently, when they hear
the Gospel, like the publicans and sinners of old, they go into the
kingdom, while such as some of you who are the natural children of
the kingdom, are shut out, because when they hear they receive, and
submit, and obey, while you stand outside and hold on to your idols,
and reason, and quibble, and reject!  My dear friends, let me
persuade you to trample under foot that idol, to tear down that
refuge of lies, and to come to God honestly, and say, "Lord, here I
am, to be a servant, to be nothing, to do anything, to suffer
anything. I know I shall be happier with Thy smile and Thy blessing
than all these evil things now make me without Thee."  When you come
to a full surrender, my friends, you will get what you have been
seeking, some of you, for years.

But then another difficulty comes in, and people say, "I have not
the power to repent." Oh! yes, you have. That is a grand mistake. You
have the power, or God would not command it. You can repent. You can
this moment lift up your eyes to Heaven, and say, with the prodigal,
"Father, I have sinned, and I renounce my sin." You may not be able
to weep--God nowhere requires or commands that; but you are able,
this very moment, to renounce sin, in purpose, in resolution, in
intention. Mind, don't confound the renouncing of the sin, with the
power of saving yourself from it. If you renounce it, Jesus will come
and save you from it. Like the man with the withered hand--Jesus
intended to heal that man. Where was the power to come from to heal
him? From Jesus, of course. The benevolence, the love, that prompted
that healing, all came from Jesus; but Jesus wanted a condition. What
was it? The response of the man's will; and so He said, "Stretch
forth thy hand." If he had been like some of you, he would have said,
"What an unreasonable command! You know I cannot do it--I cannot."
Some of you say that; but I say you can, and you will have to do it,
or you will be lost. What did Jesus want? He wanted that, "I will,
Lord," inside the man--the response of his will. He wanted him to
say, "Yes, Lord;" and, the moment he said that, Jesus supplied
strength, and he stretched it forth, and you know what happened.

Don't look forward, and say, "I shall not have strength;" that is
not your matter--that is His. He will hold you up;--He is able, when
you once commit yourself to Him. Now then, say, "_I will._" Never mind
what you suffer--it shall be done. He will pour in the oil and balm. His
glorious, blessed presence will do more for you in one hour, than all
your struggling, praying, and wrestling have done all these weary years.
He will lift you up out of the pit. You are in the mire now, and the
more you struggle the more you sink; but He will lift you out of it, and
put your feet on the rock, and then you will stand firm. Stretch out
your withered hand, whatever it may be;--say, "I will, Lord." You have
the power, and mind, you have the obligation, which is universal and
immediate. God "now commandeth all men everywhere to repent," and to
believe the Gospel. What a tyrant He must be if He commands that, and
yet He knows you have not the power!

Now, do you repent? Mind the old snare. Not, do you weep? The
feeling will come after the surrender.

Now, do not say, "I do not feel enough." Do you feel enough to be
willing to forsake your sin? that is the point. Any soul who does not
repent enough to forsake his sin, is _not a penitent at all!_
When you repent enough to forsake your sin, that moment your
repentance is sincere, and you may take hold of Jesus with a firm
grasp. You have a right to appropriate the promise, then it is "look
and live." "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be
saved."

Will you come to that point now? Don't begin making an excuse.
_Now!--all men! everywhere!_--NOW! Oh! my friend, if you had done that
ten years ago! You have been accumulating sin, condemnation, and wrath
ever since. God commanded you these ten years to repent, and believe the
Gospel, and here you are yet. How many sermons have you
heard?--invitations rejected? How much blessed persuasion and reasoning
of the Holy Spirit have you resisted?--how much of the grace of God have
you received in vain? I tremble to think what an accumulated load of
abused privilege, lost opportunity, and wasted influence, such people
will have to give an account of. Talk about hell!--the weight of this
will be hell enough.  You don't seem to think anything of the way you
treat God. Oh! people are very much awake to any evil they do to their
fellow-men. They can much more easily see the sin of ruining or injuring
their neighbors than injuring the great God; but He says, "Will a man
rob God? Yet ye have robbed me." Do you not see; the awful weight of
condemnation that comes upon you for putting off, rejecting, resisting,
vascilating, halting, while He says, _Now--now?_  He has had a right to
every breath you have drawn, to all your influence, every hour, of every
day of all your years. Is it not time you ended that controversy?  He
may do with you as He did with such people once before--swear in His
wrath that you shall not enter into His rest. Are you not provoking
Him as they provoked Him? Oh! my friend, be persuaded now to repent.
Let your sin go away, and come to the feet of Jesus. For your own
sake be persuaded. For the peace, the joy, the power, the glory, the
gladness of living a life of consecration to God, and service to your
fellow-men, yield; but most of all, for the love He bears you, submit.

A great, rough man (stricken down), said to my husband, a few weeks
ago, when he looked up to the place where other people were being
saved, "Mr. Booth, I would not go there for a hundred pounds!"  My
husband whispered, "Will you go there for love?" and, after a
minute's hesitation, the man, brushing the great tears away, rose up,
and followed him.

Will you go there for love--the love of Jesus!--the great love
wherewith He loved you and gave Himself for you? Will you, for the
great yearning with which your Father has been following you all
these years--for His love's sake, will you come? Go down at His feet
and submit. The Lord help you! Amen.




CHAPTER II.

SAVING FAITH.


  And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
  And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be
  saved, and thy house.--ACTS xvi. 30,31.

This is one of the most abused texts in the Bible, and one which,
perhaps, has been made to do quite as much work for the devil as for
God. Let every saint present, ask in faith for the light of the Holy
Ghost, while we try rightly to apply it. Let us enquire:--

1. _Who are to believe_? 2. _When are they to believe_? 3. _How are they
to believe_?

I. Who are to believe? To whom does the Holy Spirit say, "Believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved?" Now mark, I answer,
_not_ to all sinners indiscriminately. And here is a grand
mistake in a great deal of the teaching of this age--that these words
are wrested from their explanatory connexion, and from numbers of
other texts bearing on the same subject, and held up independently of
all the conditions which must ever, and did ever, in the mind and
practice of the Apostles, accompany them; indeed, it has only been
within the last sixty or seventy years that this new gospel has
sprung into existence, preaching indiscriminately to unawakened,
unconverted, unrepentant sinners--"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ."
It seems to me, that great injury has been done to the cause of
Christ by thus wrongly dividing the Word of truth, to say nothing of
the unphilosophical character of such a course, for how can an
unawakened, unconvicted, unrepentant sinner, believe? As soon might
Satan believe. It is an utter impossibility. Thousands of these
people say, "I do believe." My dear son, only a little time ago, on
the top of an omnibus, was speaking to a man who was the worse for
liquor, and using very improper language; trying to show him the
danger of his evil, wicked course, as a transgressor of the law of
God. "Oh!" said the man, "it is not by works, it is by faith, and I
believe as much as you do." "Yes," said my son, "but what do you
believe?" "Oh," he said, "I believe in Jesus Christ, and of course I
shall be saved." That is a sample of thousands. I am meeting with
them daily. They believe there was such a man as Jesus, and that He
died for sinners, and for them, but as to the exercise of saving
faith, they know no more about it than Agrippa or Felix, as is
manifest when they come to die, for then, these very people are
wringing their hands, tearing their hair, and sending for Christians
to come and pray with them. If they had believed, why all this alarm
and concern on the approach of death? They were only believers of the
head, and not of the heart; that is, they were but theoretical
believers in the facts recorded in this book, but not believers in
the Scriptural sense, or their faith would have saved them. Now, we
maintain that it is useless, and as unphilosophical as it is
unscriptural, to preach "only believe" to such characters; and
Christians have not done their duty, and have not discharged their
responsibility to these souls, when they have told them that Jesus
died for them, and that they are to believe in Him! They have a much
harder work to do, and that is, "to open their eyes" to a sense of
their danger, and make them, by the power of the Spirit, realize the
dreadful truth that they are sinners, that they are sick, and then
they will run to the Physician.

The eyes of the soul must be opened to such a realization of sin,
and such an apprehension of the consequences of sin, as shall lead to
an earnest desire to be saved from sin. God's great means of doing
this is the law, as the schoolmaster, to drive sinners to receive
Christ as their salvation.

There is not one case in the New Testament in which the apostles
urged souls to believe, or in which a soul is narrated as believing,
in which we have not good grounds to believe that these preparatory
steps of conviction and repentance, had been taken. The only one was
that of Simon the sorcerer. He was, as numbers of people are, in
great religious movements, carried away by the influence of the
meeting, and the example of those around him, and professed to
believe. Doubtless, he did credit the fact that Jesus died on the
cross. He received the facts of Christianity into his mind, and, in
that sense, he became a believer--in the same sense that tens of
thousands are in these days--and he was baptized. But when the
testing point came, as to whose interests were paramount with him,
his own or God's, then he manifested the true state of the case, as
the apostle said, "I see thy heart is not right with God." And nobody
is converted whose heart is not right with God! That is the test. If
Simon had been converted, his heart would have been right with God
and he would not have supposed the Holy Ghost could have been bought
for money. And Paul added, "For I perceive that thou art still in the
gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity." And what further
did he say to him? "Therefore, at once believe"? No; he did not.
"Therefore, repent, and pray God, if, perhaps, the thought of thine
heart may be forgiven thee." Repent first! and then believe, and get
this wickedness forgiven, and so we get a double lesson in the same
passage. This Simon was the only person we have any record of, as
believing, where there is not in the passage itself, taken with the
context, a reasonable and rational evidence, that these preparatory
steps of conviction and repentance, were taken before the teaching of
faith, or the exercise and confession of faith. Simon had this faith
of the head, but not of the heart, and, therefore, it ended in defeat
and despair.

Some have written me this week that they had believed. They had been
persuaded into a profession of faith, but no fruits followed. Ah! it
was not the faith of the heart: it was the faith of the head--like
that of Simon's--and it left you worse than it found you, and you
have been groping and grovelling, ever since. But do not think that
was real faith, and that therefore real faith has failed, but be
encouraged to begin again, and _repent_. Try the real thing, for
Satan always gets up a counterfeit. Therefore, don't go down in
despair because the wrong kind of faith did not succeed. That shall
not make the real faith of God of none effect--God forbid!

Look at one or two other cases--the three thousand in a day. Surely
this is a scriptural illustration. Surely no one will call that
anti-Gospel or legal. What was the first work Peter did? He drove the
knife of God's convincing truth into their hearts, and made them
_cry out_. He awoke them to the truth of their almost lost and
damned condition, till they said, "What must we do to be saved?" They
were so concerned, they were so pricked in their hearts, their eyes
were so opened to the terrible consequences of their sin, that they
cried aloud before the vast multitude, "Men and brethren, what must
we do to be saved?" He convinced them of sin, and thus followed the
order of God.

Again, the eunuch is often quoted as an illustration of faith; but
what state of mind was he in? Was he a careless, unconvicted sinner?
There he was--an Ethiopian, a heathen; but where had he been? To
Jerusalem, to worship the true and living God, in the best way he
knew, and as far as he understood; and then, what was he doing when
Philip found him? He was not content with the mere worship of the
temple, whistling a worldly tune on his way back. He was searching
the Scriptures. He was honestly seeking after God, and the Holy Ghost
always knows where such souls are; and He said to Philip, "Go, join
thyself to that chariot: there is a man seeking after Me; there is a
man whose heart is honestly set on finding Me. Go and preach Christ,
and tell him to believe." That man would have sacrificed, or done, or
lost anything, for salvation, and, as soon as Philip expounded the
way of faith, he received it, of course, as all such souls will.

Saul, on his way to Damascus, is another instance. Jesus Christ was
the preacher there, and surely, He could not be mistaken. His
philosophy was sound. Where did He begin? What did He say to Saul? He
saw there an honest-hearted man. Saul was sincere, so far as he
understood, and if, in any case, there needed to be the immediate
reception of Christ by faith, it was in his. But the Lord Jesus
Christ did not say one word about faith. "Saul, Saul, why
_persecutest_ thou Me?"--tearing the bandages of deception off
his eyes, and letting him see the wickedness of his conduct. When
Saul said, "Who art Thou, Lord?" He repeated the accusation. He did
not come in with the oil of comfort; He did not plaster the wound up,
and make it whole in a moment; but He said, "I am Jesus of Nazareth,
whom thou persecutest." He ran the knife in again, and opened Paul's
eyes wider, and his wounds wider, too, and sent him bleeding on to
Damascus, where he was three days before he got the healing. He had
to send for a poor human instrument, and he had to hear and obey his
words, before the scales fell from his eyes, and before the pardon of
his sins was pronounced, and the Holy Ghost came into his soul. I
wonder what Paul was doing those three days! Not singing songs of
thanksgiving and praise. That had to come. Oh! what do you think he
was doing? He neither ate nor drank, and he was in the dark. What was
he doing? No doubt he was praying. No doubt he was seeking after this
Christ, who had spoken to him in the way. No doubt he was looking
with horror upon his past life, and abjuring forever his accursed
antagonism to Jesus Christ, and to His Gospel. Of course, he was
bringing forth fruits meet for repentance, according to the Divine
order--Acts xxvi.: And then came Ananias, and preached Christ unto
him, and he believed unto salvation, and the scales fell off, and his
mouth was filled with praise and thanksgiving to God.

Cornelius, is another instance, but what was the state of his mind
and heart? We know that he feared God and wrought righteousness, as
far as he was able. He gave alms to the people, and prayed day and
night. That is more than some of you ever did, who live in the Gospel
times. You never prayed all night about your souls. No wonder if you
should lose them--not half a night, some of you. But Cornelius
did--he was seeking _God_. He honestly wanted to know Him. He was
willing, at all costs, to do His will: consequently, the Lord sent
him the glorious message of the revelation of Jesus Christ.

I might go on multiplying instances, but I must stop. We have said
enough to show who are to believe. Truly penitent sinners, and they
only.

This text is to a repenting, enlightened, convicted sinner. Now,
some of you are enlightened, convinced, and so wretched that you
cannot sleep. You _do_ repent. You are the very people, then, to
whom this text comes--Believe. You are just in the condition of the
gaoler.

"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved," and now
let us look what state of mind the gaoler was in. We see, from the
whole narrative, how his eyes had been opened. The earthquake had
done that. Some people need an earthquake before they get their eyes
opened, and it has to be a loud one, too. The gaoler's eyes were
opened, and he made the best use of his time. He was lashing their
backs a little while before! Talk about a change--here was a change.
"Sirs, what must I do to be saved? I am ready to do anything, only
tell me what." And when a soul comes to that state of mind, he has
nothing more to do but to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And he
came in, trembling, and went down on his knees, and washed their
stripes. When you get to that state of mind, you will soon get saved.
You will have nothing more to do but to believe. You will find it
easy work, then.

II. When is a sinner to believe? When he repents? Here again I am
going to answer some of your letters. One writes: "I am afraid I do
not realize my sin sufficiently. I have no particular agony on
account of sin, but I do see my whole life to have been one huge
error and sin." There is nothing more common than for souls to delude
themselves on this point of feeling. That gentleman confounds feeling
with conviction. He thinks because he has not this extreme agony
which some have, therefore he is not sufficiently convinced, while
the Holy Ghost has opened his eyes to see that his whole life has
been one huge error and sin. He is convinced that it has been
_all_ sin--not one isolated sin here and there abstracted from
his life, but such a perception of his true character that he sees
his whole life to have been sin. Surely, my friend, you are convinced.
What else but the Holy Ghost could have shown you _that_? Now, the truly
repentant soul first sees sin; secondly, he _hates_ sin; thirdly, he
_renounces_ sin. Now, let me try you by each of these tests. Don't let
Satan deceive you, and make you belie the exercises of your own mind.
Face the facts, and when you have come to a conclusion, don't allow him
to raise a controversy, but stick to your facts, and go on from them, or
you will never get saved. Satan is an accuser of the brethren, and, I
suppose, of the sisters too. I will be as honest and as searching
with you as I possibly can. I will not spare the probe, but when we
have probed and found the truth, stand on it, for Christ's sake, and
don't let it go from under your feet, because Satan will try to cheat
you out of your common sense, conscience, and convictions.

You _see_ sin. An entirely unawakened soul does not see sin;
that is, in its true character, in its heinousness, in its
consequences. He admits that all people are sinners. Oh! yes; but he
does not see the deadly, damning character of sin. He does not see
what an evil and bitter thing sin is in itself. Now, the Holy Ghost
alone can open the soul's eyes to see this. Without Him, all my
preaching, or any other preaching, even the preaching of the angels,
if they were permitted to preach, might go on to all eternity, and it
would never convince of sin. If you see sin, it is the Holy Ghost who
has opened your eyes. Praise Him, and take encouragement, my friend.
If God has thus far dealt with you, and opened your eyes to see the
character and consequences of sin, does it not augur well that He
desires also to save you from it? He has opened your eyes in order
that He may anoint them with eye-salve, and cause you to see light in
His light.

Now, have you got thus far? You have told me that your life has been
one great sin; others say, one particular form of sin. Whatever it
is, if you are convinced of sin, it is the Holy Ghost who has
convinced you; therefore, thank God, and take courage thus far.

Further, the true penitent _hates_ sin; that is, his feelings
towards sin are quite different to what they were in the past. There
was a time when you could commit sin, almost without notice, without
concern. People do not realize the great change that has taken place
in them in this respect. They are brought gradually to it. Translate
yourself back into your unawakened state. How did you live then? The
very things that now cause you such distress, you practised every
day, and they gave you no concern. The things that horrify you now,
in the very thought or temptation to them, you then were daily
practising without compunction. You had no hatred to, no dread of
sin. You were willing bondslaves of Satan. Now, you are his unwilling
slave. Then, you _ran_ towards sin, now, he has to drive you,
and when you fall, it is against your will. You hate sin. Now, mind,
this is not being saved from it. This is not saying you have power to
save yourself from it. In fact, this is the very difficulty
personified by the apostle, when representing the ineffectual
struggles of a convicted sinner. The things you would not, those you
do, and the things you would, those you have not the power to do.
Nevertheless, you _desire_ to do them. There is the difference.
Once you did not desire to do them, and, perhaps, those who did, were
a pack of hypocrites, in your estimation. Now, you feel quite
differently, and you struggle, and strive, and pray, and watch. Some
of you have told me so, and yet you say, "I am again and again
overcome." Of course you are, because you are not _saved yet_!
But don't you see, you _desire_ to be. You hate the sin which
enthrals you. You struggle against it. You watch against it and you
are not overcome half so frequently, perhaps, as you were before.
People do not see what a great deal they owe to the convincing and
preventing power of the Holy Spirit helping their infirmity, even
now, to cut off and pluck out the right hand and the right eye, and
bringing them up in a waiting attitude before God, like Cornelius and
the eunuch. You, my hearers, some of you, are following after God.
You are longing for deliverance, are striving against sin.

Take an another illustration. I don't mean that the soul has power
to save itself from its internal maladies. That you will get when
Jesus Christ saves you. But, I mean this: here is a soul convinced of
sin. Here is a man who is daily addicted to drink. He is a drunkard.
He becomes convinced of sin. Now, then, the Spirit of God says, "Will
you give up the cup?" Then commences the struggle. Now, the question
is, are you to teach that man that he is to go on drinking, and
expect God to save him? Are you to keep putting before him faith, and
telling him, "Oh! never mind your cup, but believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ and you shall be saved"--or, are you to tell him, "you must
put away your sin, cut off that right hand, pluck out that right eye,
renounce that drink forever in your heart, in your purpose, in your
will, and until you do, you cannot exercise faith on the Lord Jesus?"

Here is another person addicted to lying. He, when he is convinced
of sin, sets a watch over his lips, that he may not offend with his
mouth, and he does succeed in so guarding himself, or the Holy Spirit
so helps him to guard himself, that he does not lie as he used. He is
overcome now and then, because he has not yet found the power, but he
is resolutely, and as far as his will is concerned, cutting off this
outward sin, and waiting in the way of obedience for full deliverance
and salvation.

There is a servant systematically robs his master's till. He goes to
a religious meeting and is convinced. "Now," the Spirit of God says,
"you must cut off that dishonesty. You cannot come to this meeting
night after night pretending to want to be saved, while you are going
on every day robbing your master! You must cut off that right hand,
and give up that pilfering, and resolve that you will make
restitution, and wait for Me in the way of bringing forth fruits meet
for repentance." You see what I mean. Now, you are just here, some of
you--you know you are. If you are addicted to any evil habit, it is
just the same. Jesus Christ wants you to forswear that habit in your
will, determination, and purpose. You have not the power to deliver
yourself from it. You may struggle, as some of you tell me you are
doing, but it overcomes you, and down you go. He knows all about
that, but He approves of the struggle, and the effort, and the
watchfulness, and the determination, and when He saves you, He will
give you the power, and then you will stand and not fall, for He will
hold you up.

Now you know that you go thus far, and you know that at this moment,
if you had the power in yourself to extinguish the force of that evil
habit over you forever, you would do it without another moment's
hesitation. You say, "Oh yes, I would indeed. Would to God I had the
power." That is repentance; that is _genuine_ repentance. Now,
what you cannot do for yourself, He meets you just where you stand,
and says, "I will do it for you; I will break the power of that
habit; I will deliver you out of the hands of the enemy; I will save
you out of that bondage. Only throw your arm of faith around me, and
I will lift you up; and I will inspire you with my Spirit; you shall
stand in Me and by Me; and what you are now struggling to do for
yourself, I will do for you."

Then you have got thus far that you hate sin? "Yes, I have." You
have said it in your letters to me, and there are others saying it
who have not written to me. "Yes," you are saying, "I desire to be
saved from it. I would save myself this very instant if I could, and
never sin again." Would you? Is not that repentance? What else is it,
think you?

Suppose you had a disobedient and rebellious son, and he had been
living irrespective of your law and will, wasting your money and
trampling under foot your commandments. Suppose he comes back, he
sees the error of his course. His eyes are opened, perhaps, by
affliction, perhaps by want, or ten thousand other things. At any
rate he sees it, and he comes home and says, "Oh! father, what a fool
I have been; how wicked I have been. I see it all now--I did not see
it when I was doing it. I see my evil course, my sins that made you
mourn, and turned your hair grey. Oh! how I hate it all. I repent in
dust and ashes. Father! I forsake it all! I come home to you!"  What
would you say? Would you say, "My son, you have not repented enough.
Go! begone! Wait till you feel it more!"  No, your paternal heart
would go out in love and forgiveness, and you would put the kiss of
your reconciling love upon his cheek. "Even so there is joy in the
presence of the angels of God over one sinner that _repenteth!_"
as there would be joy in that family circle over the return of that
wandering child.

But suppose that lad were to come and say, "Father, I do thus
repent; I do thus forsake my sins; but there are some companions who
will follow me so closely that I am afraid I shall again fall under
their power, and there are some habits so terrible that I am afraid
they will again conquer. Let me, then, be always by your side. You
must strengthen me." What would you say? Would you not say, "Then,
come in, my son; sit by me, live with me, and I will shield you--I
will deliver you? Thou shalt never cross this threshhold without me.
I will live with you; I will hold you up." And, as far as a human
being could shield another, you would shield your son; he would never
lack your sympathy or your strength day or night. Your Heavenly
Father lacks neither sympathy or strength. His eye never sleeps. His
arm never tires, and you have only to go and lay your helpless
weakness on His Almighty strength by this one desperate leap of
faith, and He will hold you up, even though there were a legion of
devils around you.

Lastly, you _renounce_ your sins, that is, in will, purpose, and
determination. You say, "I never wish to grieve Him again." You
sing it, and you feel it. "I never want to grieve Him any more;" and
if you could only live without grieving Him, you would not much mind,
even if it were in hell itself. Is not that penitence? You know it
is. You renounce sin. You do not say, "Lord Jesus, save me with this
right hand, with this right eye; Lord Jesus, save me with these
forbidden things hanging about my skirts." No; you say, "Lord Jesus,
save me out of them. Make me clean." That is penitence. You see it.
You hate it. You renounce it. Now then, believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ. Oh, Holy Spirit, reveal the simple way of faith.

III. You say, "How am I to believe?" Some despairing soul asked me
this in large letters, "How am I to believe?" How does a bride
believe in her husband when she gives herself to him at the altar?
She trusts him with herself. She believes in him. She makes a
contract, and goes home, and lives as if it were true. That is
_faith_. How do you trust your physician when you are sick, as
you lay in repose or anguish upon your bed? You trust him with your
case. You commit yourself to him. You believe in his skill, and obey
his orders. Have faith like this in Jesus Christ.

Trust and obey, and expect that it is going to be with you according
to His Word.

Instead of this, the faith of many people is like that of a person
afflicted with some grievous malady. A friend tells him of a
wonderful physician who has cured hundreds of such cases, and gives
him abundant evidence that this doctor is able and willing to cure
him, if he will only commit himself to his treatment. The sick man
may thoroughly believe in the testimony of his friend about this
physician, and yet, for some secret reason, he may refuse to put
himself into his hands. Now, there are numbers like that with Jesus
Christ. They believe He could cure the malady of sin on certain
conditions. They believe He is no respecter of persons. They believe
He has done it for hundreds as bad as they, and yet there is some
reason why they do not _trust Him_. They hold back.

Now, what you want is to give your case into His hands, and say,
"Lord Jesus, I come as Thou hast bid me, confessing and forsaking
sin. If I could, I would jump out of it now and forever. Thou knowest
I come renouncing it, but not having power to save myself from it;
and now, Lord Jesus, Thou hast said, "Him that cometh unto Me, I will
in no wise cast out." I do come; Thou dost not cast me out; Thou dost
take me; Thou dost receive me. Blessed, Holy Father, I give myself to
Thee. I put my sins upon the glorious sacrifice of Thy Son. Thou hast
said Thou wilt receive me, and pardon me for His sake. Now, I roll
the guilty burden on His bleeding body, and I believe Thy promise, I
trust Thee to be as good as Thy word." _That is faith_. "Oh!" said a
dear lady, "I do not feel it."  No: you must trust first. Mark, not
believe you are saved, but believe that He does now save you.

"What things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive
them, and ye shall have them." That is the law of faith. Believe that
ye receive it before you feel it; when you receive it then you shall
feel it. God shall be true, and every man or devil who contradicts
Him, a liar. Throw your arms around the Crucified. Take fast hold of
the hand of the Son of God. Put your poor, guilty soul right at the
foot of His cross, and say, "Thou dost receive; Thou dost pardon;
Thou dost cleanse; Thou dost save;" and keep using the language of
faith. I have seen numbers of souls step into liberty repeating these
precious words in the first person, "He was wounded for _my_
transgressions, He was bruised for _my_ iniquities, the chastisement of
_my_ peace was laid upon Him, and by His stripes _I am_ healed." Keep
using the language of faith all the way home to-night. Go into your
closet and say, "I am determined to be saved, if there is any such thing
as salvation." Resolve that if you perish, you will perish in that room,
at the foot of the cross, suing for pardon, and you will get it. I have
never known a soul come to this who did not soon get saved. Get into the
lifeboat. Put off from the old stranded wreck of your own righteousness
or your own efforts; step right into the lifeboat of His broken,
bleeding body. Take fast hold, and resolve that you will never let go
until the answering Spirit comes into your soul, crying, "Abba, Father,"
and you shall know of a truth that you have passed from death unto life.
The Lord help you. Amen.




CHAPTER III.

CHARITY.


  And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest
  of these is charity.--1 COR. xiii. 13.

It must be a precious thing to be greater than _faith_, and
greater than _hope_--it must, indeed, be precious!--and, just in
proportion as things are valuable and precious amongst men, so much
trouble and risk will human speculators take to counterfeit them. I
suppose that in no department of roguery in this roguish world, has
there been more time and ingenuity expended, than in making
counterfeit money, especially bank notes. Just as wicked men have
tried to imitate the most valuable of human productions for their own
profit, so the devil has been trying to counterfeit God's most
precious things from the beginning, and to produce something so like
them that mankind at large should not see the difference, and,
perhaps, in no direction has he been so successful as in producing a
_Spurious Charity_.--I almost think he has got it to perfection
in these days. I don't think he can very well improve on the present
copy. This Charity--this love--is God's most precious treasure; it is
dearer to His heart than all the vast domains of His universe--dearer
than all the glorious beings He has created. So much so, that when
some of the highest spirits amongst the angelic bands violated this
love, He hurled them from the highest Heaven to the nethermost hell!
Why? Not because He did not value those wonderful beings, but because
He valued this _love more_. Because He saw that it was more
important to the well-being of His universe to maintain the harmony
of love in Heaven than to save those spirits who had allowed
selfishness to interfere with it. So our Lord says, "I beheld Satan
as lightning fall from Heaven."

The day is coming when He will behold all the dire progeny of this
first rebellion fall also. Haste, happy day!

But, let us look for a few minutes at this precious, beautiful
Charity. Let us try, first, to define it. What is it?

_First_.--_It is Divine_. It must be shed abroad in the heart by the
Holy Ghost.

In vain do we look for this heavenly plant amongst the unrenewed
children of men--it grows not on the corrupt soil of human nature; it
springs only where the ploughshare of true repentance has broken up
the fallow ground of the heart, and where faith in a crucified
Saviour has purified it, and where the blessed Holy Spirit has taken
permanent possession. It is the love _of_ God--not only love _to_ God,
but _like_ God, _from_ God, and fixed on the same objects and ends which
He loves. It is a Divine implantation by the Holy Ghost. Perhaps some of
you are saying, "Then it is useless for me to try to cultivate it,
because I have not got it,--exactly!" You may cut and prune and water
forever, but you can never cultivate that which is not planted. Your
first work is to get this love shed abroad in your heart. It is one of
the delusions of this age that human nature only wants pruning,
improving, developing, and it come out right. No, no! Every plant which
my Heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up. If you want this
Divine love, you must break up the fallow ground of your hearts, and
invite the Heavenly Husbandman to come and sow it--shed it abroad in
your soul.

_Secondly_, I want you to note that this love is a Divine principle, in
contradistinction to the mere love of instinct. All men have love as an
instinct; mere natural love towards those whom they like, or who do well
for them. "If ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not
even publicans the same?" Wicked men love one another from mere natural
affinity, as the tiger loves its cubs. There is great confusion amongst
professors of religion on this subject. They feel sentiments of pity and
generosity towards their fellow-men, and they may even give their goods
to feed the poor, and yet not have a spark of Divine Charity in their
hearts. Saul, after God departed from him, was not wholly destitute of
generous feeling respecting his family and kingdom. Dives in hell had
some pity for his brethren! But neither of them had a spark of this
Divine Charity. Mind you are not deceived; millions are!

Let us note one or two points wherein a spurious and Divine Charity
utterly and forever diverge--disagree in nature.

_First._--Spurious Charity is selfish--is never exercised but
to gratify some selfish principle in human nature. Thousands of
motives inspire it--too many to enumerate; but we will glance at two
or three. We read in the context that a man might give his goods to
feed the poor, and his body to be burned, and yet be destitute of
true Charity.

Now what an anomaly. But we have wonderful illustrations that such a
thing is possible. First, a man may do this to support and carry out
a favorite system of intellectual belief of which he has become
enamored, just as men become absorbed, in politics, or in what they
consider the good of their nation, so that they will even go to the
cannon's mouth to promote it.

Further, a man may do it in order to merit eternal life. Paul did
this when he went about to establish his own righteousness. He tells
us afterwards that self was the mainspring of all his zeal. It was
all his own exaltation; there was no Divine love; he was an utterly
unrenewed, Christless, and selfish man, at the very time he was doing
this.

Or, it may be, in the third place, to gratify a naturally generous
disposition. I used to say to a generous friend of mine, when he was
talking in a confidential way about his giving, and the delight it
gave him, attributing it to Divine grace--I used to put my hand on
his, and say, "Hold! my friend; I am not so sure it is all grace. You
like giving better than other people do receiving. Look out that you
do not lose your reward through not taking the trouble to see what
you give to; don't give your money to every scheme that comes across
you. Remember that you are answerable to God for your wealth, and
that God will demand of you HOW you have bestowed your goods." That
is true Charity that takes the trouble to investigate relative
claims, and tries to find out the best channels in which to give for
God's glory and the salvation of men. Don't you put down your
generosity to the Holy Ghost if it is not of that kind, for you will
never receive a bit of interest for it, here or hereafter--not a
fraction!

A false Charity begins in self and ends on earth. Here is a mark for
you to distinguish between it and God's Charity. The devil's Charity
always contemplates the earthy part of man in a superior degree to
the spiritual part; and here it exactly crosses and contradicts the
Divine Charity, which always contemplates man in the entirety of his
being, and always gives the first importance to the soul.

We have plenty of spurious Charity in these days. The other day when
I took up a so-called "religious print," and saw some fulsome things
it had been saying about a certain individual, lately dead, I
thought, really, would one ever imagine this were a Christian paper,
in a Christian country? There is not the slightest recognition of a
soul, no reference to the man's spiritual condition or his future
state. Here are one or two of the most ordinary human qualifications
seized on, and made the most of, to make it out that he was something
beyond his fellows, but, as to any recognition of a soul, or of a God
who will judge him, of a Heaven or hell, nothing!

Oh, people say, when speaking of Godless, and even wicked men, "You
must be _charitable,_ you must not judge." Satan does not care
how much of this one-sided Charity there is; the more the better for
his purpose; it will make people all the more comfortable in their
sins, and get them all the more easily down to hell.

My friends, are you more concerned about relieving temporal distress
than you are about feeding famished souls? If you are, you may know
where your charity comes from! Don't misrepresent me, and say that I
teach all of one, and none of the other. God forbid, for, if any man
"hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and
shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love
of God in him?" But, on the other side, if he sees him spiritually
famishing--dying for want of the bread of life--how dwelleth the love
of Christ in him, if he does not minister to this spiritual
destitution? I know that real Christianity cares for body and soul.
Bless God, it does; but, always mind that it sets the soul FIRST. I
know the Master fed the multitude; but, before that, He had them with
Him three days, trying to save their souls, and when they got hungry
in the process, then He made them sit down, and fed their bodies. He
always looked after the soul first, and so does everyone possessed of
Divine Charity.

Why? Because Divine Charity has opened his eyes. He realizes the
value of souls. He sees them famishing. He sees them being damned,
and he cannot help himself. His desire to save them rushes out of him
like a torrent; he beholds them, and has compassion on them. Try your
Charity by this mark: Do you contemplate the dying, famishing, half-
damned souls of your fellow-men? Do you look abroad on the state of
the world, and the state of the church? Do you think about it? Do you
go into your closet, and spread it before the Lord, as Hezekiah and
Jeremiah and Hosea did? Do you look at it, and turn it over, and weep
over it, and pray and cry, as Daniel and Paul did? Try yourselves, my
brethren, my sisters, by this mark.

Divine Charity is always revolving round that great problem of
infinite love. "What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole
world, and lose his own soul?" Oh, I can never get it out of my ears
or away from my heart! Oh, how I see the emptiness and vanity of
everything compared with the salvation of the soul! What does it
matter, if a man dies in the work-house--if he dies on a door-step,
covered with wounds, like Lazarus--what does it matter, if his soul
is saved? It is your creed as much as mine, that the soul is
immortal, and that the death of the body is only its introduction, if
it be saved, to a glorious future of everlasting felicity, progress,
and holiness. Does the child remember how he used to cry over his
lessons, when he becomes a man? Does he remember all the little
difficulties of his school days, when he is inheriting the fruits of
them? Just so; ten thousand times less important will be all our
sufferings, trials, and griefs here, if we save our souls, and the
souls of others.

This Divine Charity makes everything else subservient to the
salvation of souls; it uses everything else to save and bless the
inner and spiritual man. Do you remember, on one occasion, when the
Master had fed the multitudes, and when they came to Him again to be
fed, He said, "Ye seek Me, not because ye saw the miracles, but
because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled." You would have
said, "Quite right; the people want to be fed; they are hungry." But
do you hear the Divine lament that comes out in these words, that
they were so spiritually obtuse, that they valued the earthly bread
more than the heavenly! Give them as much temporal bread as you like,
but mind you give them the spiritual bread first, for this is
characteristic of true Charity.

Have you got this Charity? Every soul knows whether it has or not.
People are so unphilosophical in religion; they talk about not
knowing; but you can find out in two minutes whether you love God or
yourself best. Tell me that woman does not know whether she loves her
husband or herself best! Nonsense! What is the proof?--she seeks to
please him, and is willing to sacrifice herself for him--in fact,
merges her interests altogether in his. Do you love God best? Are you
willing to forego your interests, and to seek His? Have you this
Divine Charity, born of Heaven, tending to Heaven? If not, my friend,
resolve you will have it now. Begin to cry mightily to God, for the
Holy Spirit to shed it abroad in your heart; give up your quibblings
and reasonings, and go down at the foot of the cross and ask Him,--
"Come, Lord, and break up this poor, wicked heart of mine, and shed
this beautiful, pure, Divine Charity abroad in it," and then you will
not, henceforth, seek your own, but the things that are Jesus Christ's.




CHAPTER IV.

CHARITY AND REBUKE.


  And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest
  of these is charity.--1 COR. xiii. 13.

The second main point of difference between a true and a false
Charity, we want to remark, is, _Divine Charity is not only
consistent with, but it very often necessitates, reproof and rebuke
by its possessor_. It renders it incumbent on those who possess it
to reprove and rebuke whatever is evil--whatever does not tend to
the highest interests of its object.

This Charity conforms in this, as in everything else, to its Divine
model--"As many as I love I rebuke and chasten"--when necessary for
the good of its object, for He doth not _willingly_ afflict or
grieve the children of men, any more than a father willingly
chastises a disobedient child; but, if he be a wise father, he will
do it because he loves it. Just so the possessor of this Divine
Charity can afford to rebuke and reprove sin wherever he finds it. He
will not suffer sin upon his neighbor, but will in any wise reprove
him, and strive to win him to the right. We will just turn to a
beautiful illustration (there are many, if we had time to go into
them) of the working of this Divine Charity in the heart and life of
the very apostle who wrote this 13th of Corinthians. We cannot get
wrong, because it is Paul himself. (Gal. ii. 11-15.)

"But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face,
because he was to be blamed. For before that certain came from James,
he did eat with the Gentiles; but when they were come, he withdrew
and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision.
And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that
Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation. But when I
saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the
Gospel, I said unto Peter before _them_ all"--

Well done, Paul,--noble, gloriously courageous Charity that! He did
not go and mutter behind Peter's back and stab him in the dark--

"I said unto Peter _before them all_, If thou, being a Jew, livest after
the manner of the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou
the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? We _who are_ Jews by nature, and
not sinners of the Gentiles."

You want a characteristic of true Charity. Now, listen to it. It
would be exceedingly painful to Paul thus publicly to rebuke Peter.
They loved one another, for we find Peter, long after this, in one of
his Epistles, calling Paul "our beloved brother, Paul." They loved
one another. Paul understood the claims of true Charity, for he wrote
this thirteenth of Corinthians. If he loved Peter, and if he
understood the claims of true Charity, why did he thus openly rebuke
Peter, why did he inflict upon himself the pain of doing it?
Faithfulness to Peter himself, faithfulness to the truth,
faithfulness to Jesus Christ demanded it; therefore, he sacrificed
his own personal feelings, and inflicted this pain upon himself,
rather than allow Peter to go wrong, the Romans to be misled, and the
Jews to be carried away with worldly policy. Paul set himself to
rebuke Peter in the presence of all, for truth lay, as it very often
does, with the minority; nearly all the influence was on the side of
the circumcision. _They_ were the most influential of the
brethren, and Paul set himself against all this influence in his
rebuke of Peter. Why? Because faithfulness to the truth demanded it,
and Divine Charity is FIRST PURE.

There is a greater example still in our Lord Himself, in the Master
whose whole soul was love, whose life was one sacrifice for the good
of His creatures; and yet how faithfully He reproved His own when
they erred from the truth, and how fearlessly He exposed and
denounced the shallowness and hypocrisy of those who professed to
love God, and yet contradicted this profession in their lives. How
fearlessly He reproved sin everywhere. He said to his disciples on
one occasion, "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the
Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." As
if He had said, you ought to have learned this before now.

On another occasion, He said, "Are ye also yet without
understanding?" And again, "Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou
savourest not the things that be of God;" that was Divine Charity,
that was faithful love, that dared to rebuke, rather than let the
object of it do wrong, and sin against God. And again, when He goes
to the hypocrites and Pharisees, He says, "Ye say ye are the children
of Abraham"--(it was as difficult for Jesus Christ to confute the
professors of His day, as it is for His ambassadors to confute the
professors of this day, who are living inconsistently with their
professions)--He said, "Ye say that ye are the children of Abraham;
if ye were the children of Abraham, ye would listen to me; or, if ye
were the children of God, ye would believe in me, for I came out from
God. No! ye are the children of your father, the devil, and his works
ye do." And yet His Divine heart was full, to breaking, of love, and
broke itself on the cross for them, and prayed, "Father, forgive
them; for they know not what they do." Oh, that your Charity and mine
might not lack this lineament of the Divine likeness! Would to God
there were more of this faithful, loving Charity, that dares to
reprove sin, and to rebuke its brother, instead of the false Charity
that fawns on a man to his face, and goes behind him and stabs him in
the back.

Do you suppose that the great mass of the professors of this
generation think one another to be right? Take almost any given
church. Do you suppose that the great mass of the members of that
church suppose in their hearts that their fellow members, brothers
and sisters in church communion, are living consistently--I don't
mean in _things_ only, but in heart--that they are living really
godly lives? Alas! witness what they say behind each other's backs.
They believe no such thing; they know perfectly well it is not so,
and they take care to tell other people so; and yet there is not one
in a thousand of them ever went privately to his brother, and took
lovingly hold of his hand, and reproved him for his sinful and
backsliding conduct.

What would be thought of any woman who were to go, after being to
church the day before, and ask for a private interview with Mrs. ---,
and, when alone with her, with tears in her eyes, and deep
earnestness in her voice, were to say, "Dear Mrs. ---, I have come to
see you on a very painful errand, but will you suffer a word of
exhortation from one so unworthy and weak as I feel myself to be, and
yet, I trust, one who has the Spirit of God, which urges me to come
to you? Will you allow me to say that I was much pained with your
attitude at church, yesterday. It seemed to me that your mind was not
at all occupied with the solemnity of the service, but seemed to be
occupied in criticising the person's dress in the seat opposite to
you, and I could not help noticing that when you got outside the
doors you began to laugh and talk in a way quite incompatible with
the service you had been attending?" If she were to say, "Dear Mrs. ---,
I have not mentioned this to a soul, not even to my husband, but I
have come to tell it to you; let us go down before the Lord and ask
Him for the Holy Spirit, that He may show you how wrong you are, and
how you are sliding away from the love of God"--what would be the
thought, what would be said, of such conduct?

If everybody who sees sin upon his neighbor would do that--if he
would take the Lord's counsel and go and see his brother alone, and
tell him his fault--how many would be saved from backsliding, and how
many a disgraceful split and controversy in churches might be saved!

But where are the people who will do it? I don't mean there are not
any--God forbid--I know there are; but I am speaking comparatively.
Where is the man who will inflict pain upon himself?--for that is the
point. If it were a pleasant duty, he would do it easily enough; but
it is a painful duty, he does not like to screw himself up to it.
Where is the man that will do it, rather than suffer his brother to
go to sleep in his sin, and rather than the precious cause of Christ
shall be disgraced and injured? Where are the saints who will go in
meekness and in love to try to reclaim the one who has erred? I hope
you know a great many. I am sorry to say I know only a few. If you
know many, I am very glad, and the more you know the better I am
pleased. If you are one of these, that is one, at all events. If
every Christian would have this sort of Charity, what a change would
soon come about. That is what the church wants--people who can afford
to rebuke and reprove, because they don't care what men think of THEM
--who are set only on pleasing their Lord and Master, and doing His
will.

Have you got this Charity that seeketh not her own? What a contrast
between Saul and Paul. Did you ever think about it? What does he say?
"I went about to establish my own righteousness." That was his
inspiring motive; that was the spring of his action, before he got
true Charity; not that he cared for the kingdom of God, but he cared
for his own honor, glory, and exaltation, and wanted to stand well
with his nation. Then contrast him when he becomes Paul. What does he
say? "For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my
brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." _There_ is
Charity, if you like. These were the very people with whom he had
been so anxious to stand well, and whose good word he wanted; but,
when the Holy Ghost had come, and Paul had got the Divine Charity,
and got his eyes opened to see their devilish and lost condition, he
so weeps over them that he says, "I have great heaviness and
continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were
accursed from Christ, for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the
flesh."

_There is a contrast_. He does not care now, what they think of
HIM; he is going about, trying to open their eyes and make them see
that they are not the children of Abraham, but the children of the
devil, that they are going to the bottomless pit, and that, unless
they turn round and seek the God of their fathers, they must perish.
Self is lost sight of altogether, now; Paul's heart and soul and
efforts are set on the salvation of men. If they choose to; praise
him, he takes it as a matter of course; if they choose to condemn
him, he takes that as a matter of course, too. He is seeking the
kingdom, and, however men treat him, the kingdom he seeks, right on
to martyrdom. He runs the gauntlet of their direst hate and malice,
that he may open their eyes and turn them from Satan to God, and from
sin to righteousness. Self is lost sight of; it is not Paul now--it
is Christ and His kingdom.

False Charity is the opposite of this. Its possessor is most
concerned about what people think of HIM; not how they treat his
professed Lord. The possessor of false Charity cannot afford to
reprove anybody. Oh, dear, no! he would faint at the very idea; and
he calls people hard and legal and censorious who dare to do it--
poor, sneaking coward! but he will not be afraid to stab a man behind
his back. The speech of this false Charity betrayeth it, it
flattereth with its lips; honey is on its tongue, but the poison of
asps is underneath; beware of it! Even when it professes to commend a
brother, or neighbor, it rolls up its sanctimonious eyes, and always
puts a "but" in--one of the devil's "buts." "Oh, he is a good man,
but--." "Yes, I have a great esteem for him, only there is such and
such a thing." Oh, it is very Divine. The devil can put on a garb of
light when it answers his purpose. Oh, the fair reputations that this
slime of the serpent has trailed over! Oh, the influence for good
that this venom of the devil has poisoned and ruined, for it has
been, truly said, "There is no virtue so white that back-wounding
calumny will not strike"--even in God's perfect man, those who are
watching and seeking to betray can find something on which to ground
their accusations.

I say, mind which Charity you have got True Charity, rejoiceth not
in iniquity. Are you conscious in your soul of a feeling of triumph
when anybody that you don't like happens to fall on some evil thing?
If you have, look out--the devil has got hold of you. Do you rejoice
in iniquity when it happens to an enemy? If so, woe be to you, unless
you get that venom out. God won't have it in Heaven. _One man with
that venom in him would damn Paradise_, "Love your enemies"--love
them; "bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and
pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye
may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven." Now, my
brother, my sister, try yourself. "We shall meet again, and you will
find that these are no imaginary vagaries that I have been talking
of; they are realities--though these great realities of our Christianity
are seldom preached in these days; but they are _here_, and there is no
truth in you if you have not got the Charity which hates evil as evil,
and which will reprove it, and root it out, and have it _cured_!"

Here, again, false Charity is the very antipodes of the Divine. It
does not care much about righteousness. Quietness is its beau ideal
of all that is lovely and excellent. It says, "Let us be quiet; you
must not disturb the peace of the church." It cries, "Peace, peace!"
when there is no peace. It says, "We cannot help these evils. Every
man must look after himself; we are not responsible for our
neighbor." It knows very often that there are continents of dirt
underneath--"things," and "systems," and men--which it chooses to
patronize; but then, it is covered up, and so it says, "Let it alone;
we cannot have a smudge. Let it alone. Peace! Peace! Never mind
righteousness--the church must be supported, if the money does come
out of the dried-up vitals of drunkards and harlots; never mind, we
must have it. Never mind if our songs are mixed with the shrieks of
widows and orphans, of the dying and damned! Sing away, sing away,
and drown their voices. Never mind; we cannot have it looked into,
and rooted out, and pulled up. Peace; we must have peace!" And they
call you, as Ahab did Elijah, the disturber of Israel, if you dare to
touch the sore place and exhibit their putrifying wounds and bruises;
and when you say to them, "The law of life is, 'Do unto others as you
would they should do unto you,'" they impudently turn upon you and
say, "But we are not expected to be perfect in this life," and so
they throw a thicker covering over the filth, and on it goes.

This is the devil's Charity; and the more the better for his
purpose. But the Charity and the wisdom which is from above, is first
pure, and then peaceable! I would rather be in everlasting warfare in
company with that which is fair, and true, and good, than I would
walk in harmony with that which is hollow, and rotten, and vile, and
destined for the bottomless pit. The Lord help you to make the same
choice!




CHAPTER V.

CHARITY AND CONFLICT.


  And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest
  of these is charity.--1 COR. xiii. 13.

Another characteristic of this Divine Charity is, that it OFTEN
INVOLVES CONFLICT.

It was so with our Lord. He was the very personification of it. He
was love itself, and grace and truth poured from His lips
incessantly. His blessed feet went about doing good, and His hands
ministering to the necessities and happiness of His creatures, yet
His whole course through this degenerate world was one of conflict,
opposition, and persecution. His proper mission was to bring peace on
earth; but the result of it was a sword! Why? That was not His fault.
He would, doubtless, have enjoyed being at peace with all men, as His
ambassador exhorts us--"as much as lieth in us to be." More, He was
the Prince of Peace! Then, how was it that wherever He went, there
was sword, opposition, and conflict to the death? Because men
_resisted_ and _rejected_ His Divine and Heavenly ministrations. They
would not hear His rebukes and His teaching, because they condemned
them. They would not listen to His voice, because they were of their
father the devil, and the works of their father they would do; and,
therefore, they went about to persecute Him, and to kill Him.

This was the reason--not that _He_ wanted it to be so, but it
was the consequence of their resistance to the beautiful, heavenly,
and Divine truths which He taught; and it is just so now, with the
same truth, and the living embodiments of such truth. JESUS CHRIST
COME IN THE FLESH AGAIN IN HIS PEOPLE, living out before the world
His principles, acting upon His precepts, living for the same objects
for which He lived, will produce, exactly and everywhere, the same
result. It must be so while men are divided into two classes--the
righteous and the wicked--those who are born of the flesh, and those
who are born of the Spirit. One must either give in, or there must be
perpetual conflict and warfare. It was so with the Saviour, and so,
perhaps, with some of us.

I think this is often a snare to God's really sincere people. I
think some of God's people are afraid; they don't like the feeling
that their hand is against every man, and every man's hand against
them, or nearly so. They do not like the feeling of isolation; they
do not like being compelled to take a course which nearly all the
Christian professors round about them condemn, and make out to be
uncharitable, and they often examine themselves to see whether it is
possible that they may be going wrong in following the Divine Spirit.
They say with Jeremiah, and with the Jeremiahs of every age, "Woe is
me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of
contention to the whole earth!" They are as "speckled birds, against
whom all the birds round about are gathered." They feel this
opposition and conflict deeply, but what are they to do? Very often,
in following the leadings of the Divine Spirit, it is impossible for
us to avoid such consequences. We have to march through troops of
opposing forces. We have to become the subjects of almost universal
suspicion. But what then? Must we give in? Must we decline to tread
in the bloodstained footsteps of the Captain of our salvation? Must
we decline the honor of being in the advance guard of the Lamb's army
because of the conflict, because of the pain, because of the
persecution? Nay, nay; let us hold on, those here, who are thus led
by the Divine Spirit into paths which involve conflict with
everybody. Follow on, brother! follow on, sister!

There is no point on which those who want to come out thoroughly for
God, suffer more than oh this. They continually say, "You see, my
friends"--they are Christian, friends--"my friends object." People
come, to see me, or they write that the Spirit of God has been urging
them into a certain course, for months or years, and they are held
back by the opinions and wishes, perhaps, of parents, or of brothers
and sisters, or uncles, or aunts, or Christian friends.

_I believe it will be found, in the great day of account, that
there have been more blessed enterprises crushed, more leadings of
the Holy Ghost disobeyed, more urgings of the Spirit quenched,
through the influence of what are called Christian friends, than all
other influences put together. "Suffer me first to go and bury my
father," is an everlasting standing excuse for those whom, the Lord
calls on in advance paths of Christian service! Oh, my friends, I am
sure of it. Look out, you fathers and mothers, you brothers and
sisters, and aunts!_

Do not misunderstand me. Carefully weigh, probe, and examine, before
God, your impressions and desires. Go into your closet, spread them
there before the Lord. Lay them out, examine your own heart. Be sure
there is no self-interest, no vain glory, no desire to be great, or
to do some out-of-the-way thing. Be as clear as you like; be
satisfied, in your own mind, that it is God's call, and then let
fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, husbands, or wives complain--but
go forward, my brother, and God will justify you. If, twenty years
ago, I had stopped for Christian friends to sanction and to open the
door, I should have waited till today, and the number of souls God,
in His infinite mercy, has given me, I should not have gathered. But
I did not wait for anybody's sanction to my Lord and Master's call;
but said, "Lord, if I die in attempting it, I will do it." He seldom
lets people die in attempting His will. He stands by them, and gives
them abundant fruit.

A lady said to me the other day, "You know my father is a Christian,
and I am so afraid of going opposite to him." "Yes," I said, "that is
quite a right feeling; I respect that feeling in you." But she was a
woman of considerably matured age, and I added, "But is your father
awake to the interests of God's kingdom as he ought to be?" She
replied, "I dare not say he is." "I suppose," I said "he is
comparatively old--a sort of dried-up Christian, who has lost the
vigor and enterprise of his youthful days, when he wanted to go out
and make everybody Christian?" "Yes," she said, "he has gone sadly
behind in his zeal for the kingdom of Jesus Christ." "Now," I said,
"God holds you responsible, just as He holds any other being. _He
has not two codes-one for men and one for women._ There will be no
two judgment seats, whatever men do here. God will hold you
responsible for obedience to the teaching of His Spirit, and the
leading of His providence, as much as your brother. What shall you
say? You will be in the position of the man who said, 'Suffer me
first to go and bury my father.'" She said, "I am afraid I shall."

Now, I say, let us settle this, you Protestant Christians here.
Because Catholicism has abused this principle, that a man is to leave
his father and mother, and houses and lands, if needs be, is that any
reason that we Protestants are to give it up? And has it come to
this, that a man has only to follow Christ when everybody approves it
--cries "Amen"--and when his own interests appear to him to be
secured by so doing? Then, if it were so, I would give up religion
altogether, and go and enjoy myself. I said to a lady, "When you
married yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ, you put yourself in the
same position as you would to an earthly husband." What woman in the
world would feel that she ought to obey father and mother, rather
than her husband? Ridiculous! Much less is she to obey her father, if
her father's wishes are exactly contrary to the Divine teaching. She
is only to obey IN THE LORD, and yet thousands of fathers and mothers
are preventing their children working for God. Oh! what will you say
to God when your precious children stand at His bar, without the
sheaves they might have gathered, and the souls they might have won?
What will you say to Him? And why do you hold them back? Oh, the
mean, paltry considerations that you would be ashamed to own before
this congregation! Is it for fear of suffering? Not in many
instances; but, even if it were, did you bargain with Jesus Christ
when you gave yourself and children to Him, that they were not to
suffer for Him? Is it because of your pride?--because you want for
them this world's applause and favor? Look out! God has wonderful
ways of chastising His people in those very things in which they sell
His interest. But you say that "everybody will be against you!" Yes,
very likely. Let us settle that at once. Count all things dung and
dross. Let none of these things move you. You say, "It will be a life
of conflict to the end." Very likely, so was His. "I am so weak," you
say. He knows all about that. You say, "It will be so cutting to have
people saying this, and saying the other." I know it is cutting, but
that is the path He calls you to tread, and He will give you grace to
bear the cutting. "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and
persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you, falsely,
for my sake;" and, "If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy
are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you."

He does not show where He is leading us, so we can only go a step at
a time. The future may look dark, but let us be fully persuaded in
our own minds that the step in advance is the step the Lord wants us
to take--then take it, and leave the future with Him. Come out, as
Abraham did, not knowing whither you go; and, as sure as He sits upon
the throne, He will vindicate your course, and, perhaps, the very
things that you sacrifice, or that you think you sacrifice, for Him,
He will give you, as the reward of your faithfulness.

Oh, have I not known many such instances. I have known daughters who
have been turned out of their father's houses for following the
leadings of the Spirit of God, and who have endured all sorts of
persecution, and trial, and suffering, and those fathers, when they
were dying, would have nobody else to pray with them but that
individual daughter. The way to win the souls of parents is by a
consistent, steadfast, holy consecration to the Lord Jesus; whereas,
if you pander, and trim, and hesitate, you will miss the reward. Do
you think people do not know when we are inconsistent? Oh, yes, they
know quite well, and they say, "That is not the right sort of
religion;" but you be consistent and thorough, and God will honor
these very means to the winning of the souls about whom you are so
concerned.

Further, a false Charity shrinks from opposition. It cannot bear
persecution. Now, here is one unfailing characteristic of a false
Charity: _it is always on the winning side_--that is, apparently, down
here; not what will be, ultimately, the winning side. When Truth sits
enthroned, with a crown on her head, this false Charity is most
vociferous in her support and devotion; but when her garments trail in
the dust, and her followers are few, feeble, and poor, then Jesus Christ
may look after Himself. I sometimes think respecting this hue and cry
about the glory of God and the sanctity of religion, I would like to see
some of these saints put into the common hall with Jesus again, amongst
a band of ribald, mocking, soldiers. I would like to see, then, their
zeal for the glory of God, when it touched their own glory. They are
wonderfully zealous when their glory and His glory go together; but,
when the mob is at His heels, crying, "Away with Him!--crucify
Him!--crucify Him!"--then He may look after His own glory, and they will
take care of theirs.

True Charity sticks to the LORD JESUS IN THE MUD, when He is
fainting under His cross, as well as when the people are cutting down
the boughs and crying "Hosanna!" I fear many people make the Lord
Jesus Christ a stalking-horse on which to secure their ends. God
grant us not to be of that number, for, if we are, He will topple us
from the very gates of Heaven down to the nethermost hell. This false
Charity cannot go to the dungeon--you never find it at the stake. It
always manages to shift its sides, and change its face, before it
goes as far as that. Never in disgrace; never with Jesus Christ in
the minority, at Golgotha--on the cross. Always with Him when He is
riding triumphant!

Oh, I often think if times of persecution were to come again how
many of us would be faithful? How many would go to the dungeon? How
many would stand by the truth, with hooting, howling mobs at our
heels, such as followed Him on the way to the cross--such as stood
round His cross and spat upon Him, and cast lots for His vesture, and
parted His garments among them, and wagged their heads and cried, "He
saved others; Himself He cannot save"? How many of us would stick to
Him then? But, as your soul and mine liveth, that is the only kind of
love that will stand the test of the Judgment Day.

Oh, have you got this Charity? Love in the darkness; Love in the
Garden; Love in sorrow; Love in suffering; Love in isolation; Love in
persecution; Love to the death!--Have we got this love? Examine
yourselves, beloved, and see whether you are in the faith or not, for
there is much need of it in this day, when there are so many false
gospels and so much false doctrine;--when we hear so much about being
"complete in Him" by people who never were in Him at all, and no more
understand what it means than the very kitten that lies on their
hearth. I say, examine yourself, whether you be in the faith or not,
and whether you are in Him; for, verily, it is no easier now to be
His real followers than ever it was.

Further, a false Charity _refuses to call things by their proper
names!_ Oh! what endless ways it has of putting lying! lying that
is done on this day by professing Christians! Oh, the nice,
comfortable, self-indulgent ways it has of looking at ungodly trades
and practices! What do I mean? I mean trades that cannot be made
subservient to the interest of the kingdom of Christ; trades that
thrive by ministering either to the vile passions of human nature, or
to the ungodliness of human nature. By what nice names it calls
Satanic traffics in the bodies, hearts, and souls of men! And, when
Divine Charity remonstrates with it, it turns round and says, "Well,
you know, but we must have regard to our own interests; we have large
interests at stake." I sometimes say, "God knows you have! and, when
the Judge riseth up to avenge those who have been oppressed and
destroyed by your iniquitous traffics, you will find them sadly TOO
LARGE, TOO BIG FOR THE HELL ITSELF TO CONTAIN."

The Lord have mercy on any of you who are living on the follies or
wickedness of your fellow-men. Make haste to get out of such trades.
Wash your hands of them, for, depend upon it, that is the devil's
Charity that would try to make you comfortable in them! It has
nothing to do with Divine Charity.

"Oh, my soul, come not into their secret; unto their assembly, mine
honor, be not thou united," but stand aloof from all such alliances
of light with darkness, of truth with falsehood; "have no fellowship
with the unfruitful works of darkness," "For behold the day cometh
that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do
wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them
up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root
nor branch." He is the same God; He changes not! Let us call things
by their right names. Let us face the evil. Let us chase it out of
the world--or, at any rate, chase it out of the church. Depend upon
it, the Lord is going to prove all things. I can hear, as it were,
the rumbling of the earthquake of the Divine indignation underground,
I can see the gathering of the Divine wrath overhead; and, IF THIS
NATION DOES NOT REPENT, AND IF THE CHURCHES OF THIS LAND DO NOT COME
OUT AND WASH THEIR HANDS OF THESE THINGS, GOD WILL SEND US SUCH A
BAPTISM OF BLOOD AS WE HAVE NEVER CONCEIVED OF, AND HE WILL PUT US
OUT, and put some other nation in our place, or else He will act
contrary to all His former dealings with nations! Do you suppose that
Jerusalem was more guilty than we are? Have we not been exalted much
higher than Jerusalem ever was? And have we not sinned against
greater light and privilege than ever she did? Are not our professed
Christians exactly the same in character as her Pharisees? Do they
not make fine and long prayers, and, at the same time, devour the
widow and fatherless? Yea, for hellish gain, do they not make widows
and orphans wholesale? Might not God truly say of us, "Ah, sinful
nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children
that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked
the Holy One of Israel unto anger: they are gone away backward." Even
the prophets prophesy falsely, and the people love to have it so!

Do you say, "No, we are not so _bad?"_ I answer, look abroad
over the land, open your eyes, observe and see. Has it not become
proverbial--have you not heard it until your ears have tingled, and
your face burned with shame--"Better go and deal with anybody than a
Christian"? and, alas! has there not been much ground for it? Have we
any need to wonder that infidels wag their heads? Can you go into a
shop where you are sure you will not be extortioned? Do you know
anybody who keeps a conscience with respect to the profits he makes?
Is there anybody scarcely who won't charge his neighbor more than the
article is worth, if he has a chance, and call it lawful? _That_
is extortion. It may be only asking twopence for an article worth a
penny, or a 1,000  pounds for what 700 pounds should buy; it does not
matter the amount--it is EXTORTION!

God puts extortioners amongst the blackest of sinners. The Lord help
me to "Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on
the things of others," and have the Charity that will not take a mean
advantage of my neighbor because I have the chance, and thus traduce
the precious name of the Holy Jesus by calling myself one of His
followers. It is time this satanic Charity was swept out! The very
first law, the very vital principle of true Charity, is _righteousness._
There is no Charity apart from righteousness. If your Charity is
incompatible with righteousness, it is born of the devil and leads to
hell!

If you have had anything revealed to you, in your heart or life,
that you see to be wrong, say, "Here Lord, pour the light in; I am so
glad You have shown this thing to me while there is time to alter it.
Now bring your dissecting knife, and cut it away, even if the roots
go deep down into my very heart's core. I will have it out." Will
you? Will you be made true, straight, clean? Will you be made Divine?
Will you be filled with the pure, holy love of God towards God, and
towards men, and all beings? That is what the Lord wants you to have.
This is what He has sent His Son to do. No subterfuge; no make-believe
work to get you into Heaven as you are; but He wants to make
you as He wants you to be, and _He can do it._ The Great
Physician is able, He is willing, He has got love enough, and power
enough and grace enough to do it for you. Confide all your heart to
Him. Will you have this Divine Charity wrought in you? It will make
you willing to suffer, to endure hardness, and shame, and contempt,
and persecution. It will make you willing to do anything that human
nature can do, and endure anything that human nature can suffer, that
you may accomplish the same purposes that He came to accomplish, that
you may help onward the progress of His glorious kingdom.





CHAPTER VI.

CHARITY AND LONELINESS.


  And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest
  of these is charity.-I COR. xiii. 13.

_The possession of this Divine Charity often necessitates walking
in a lonely path._

Not merely in opposition and persecution, but _alone_ in it,
and here, again, Jesus, who was the personification of Divine lore,
stands out as our great example. He was emphatically alone, and of
the people there was none with Him. Even the disciples whom He had
drawn nearest to Him, and to whom He had tried to communicate most of
His thought and spirit, were so behind that He often had to reprove
them, and lament their obtuseness and want of sympathy. In the
greatness of His love He had to go forward into the darkness of
Gethsemane. He was alone while they slept, and then through ribaldry,
scorn, and sarcasm, to the cross. Alas! alas! almost alone, except a
few--to their everlasting honor--poor faithful women--_alone!_

And, as it was with the Master, so it has been with all those whom
God has called to go in advance of their race. It was so with John,
and with Paul, and with most of the apostles, and with all those whom
God has called to extraordinary paths since. Must John have a
revelation of things shortly to come to pass? He must go alone into
the Isle of Patmos! Must Paul hear unspeakable words, not, at that
time, lawful for a man to utter? He must go alone into the third
heaven, and not be allowed even to communicate what he saw and heard
when he came down; alone, he must necessarily go in advance.

And just so, when God has called some of His followers to an out-of-
the-way path, they have had to go alone in an untrodden way. Superior
love necessitates a lonely walk. You shrink, and say, "That seems so
hard." Yes, I know; I wish I could make it easier, but I cannot help
it. I simply state the fact, that superior love necessitates, in some
measure, a lonely walk, because you see it is only they who--thus
love, to whom the Lord tells His secrets. If you want to ask a
confidential question and get a confidential answer, you must be on
the bosom of your Master. You won't be able to do it at a distance.
Then, you see, when He gives to any soul superior light to its
fellows, and that soul _follows_ the light, it necessarily entails a
path in advance of its fellows. Unless he can inspire and encourage them
(which, alas! is hard work) to follow, he must go on alone.

That was a beautiful illustration we read in the lesson (Acts x.).
Here is Peter called to go in advance of the whole Church! Now, the
Lord wants a man to do this, and whom does He choose? He chooses
impulsive, energetic, head-first Peter. But then, there is something
to be done first God lets down the sheet with all its unclean contents,
and Peter fastens his eyes upon it. (I wish you had studied all the
sheets the Lord has let down before _your eyes_, you would have come out
very differently to what you have.) Peter studies them, and soon the
Divine vision has absorbed Peter's attention. When the Lord has fairly
got his attention, then comes the voice, "Now, Peter, rise, slay and
eat." Then, when the Lord had taught him his lesson effectually, and
when Peter saw that he had not yet explored all the ideas of the Divine
mind about the extension of His kingdom, and that his business was to
follow his Lord's directions, and not to have his own "ifs" and "buts,"
but go ahead and do as God bade him, then Peter goes on to carry out the
Divine direction. Then the church, aghast, as usual, at anything new--
always down upon a measure, whether good or bad, if it has the _awful
quality of being new_--was down upon it. This new church, which had only
just itself been brought to God by a set of _new measures_, is down
upon Peter, and they call him to the council to answer for his conduct.

He tells them all about it in the truthful simplicity of a man of
God, and, thank God, they bad sense enough--yes, and love enough,
charity enough, to accept his explanations, and to glorify God. Would
to God we could get as much sense and charity in these days!

A lady writes to me, only the other day, of her husband, saying that
he sympathises with outside work, but contends that there is
everything one wants in the church; and another contends that there
is everything everybody wants somewhere else, and so they are down
upon all the Peters that dare to do anything out of the jog-trot
line. You may reason ever so urgently, and show them that all these
old measures are not enough for everybody, that there is a great mass
of outlying population which they do not reach--the Gentiles of this
generation; you may show them that these Gentiles are without the
Holy Ghost, that they are not cleansed, that they are yet common and
unclean; you may show them that these new measures of yours are quite
as lawful as their old measures, and that, probably, they would be a
great deal more useful, and, moreover, that they have been borne in
upon you by the Holy Ghost, and that you feel as if there were a fire
in your bones urging you to go and try them, but they will not hold
their peace and glorify God, but will loose their tongues and villify
you.

False Charity looks more at the means than at the end. Its possessor
is more concerned about what men will think of _him_, than what
will exalt the Redeemer. You can know it by this mark. Are you more
concerned about what your neighbor, Mr. So-and-So, or your minister,
Rev. Mr. So-and-So, or even your bishop, thinks about you, than you
are about the extension of the kingdom of Christ? Look out, my
friend, yours is the wrong sort of Charity. True Charity looks at the
end--the spread of righteousness in the earth--_the reign of the
King_--and it is not very fastidious about the measures, so that
they are lawful.

I do not advocate anything unlawful, to do good--God forbid. Divine
Charity says, "Anywhere with Jesus"--in the temple or outside of it--
at the seaside or in Cheapside--on the mountain top or in the market
place--in the streets--anywhere, Lord Jesus, if Thou wilt only come
and take Thine inheritance and reign over the hearts and souls of
men. True Charity is only too glad to become a Jew to the Jews, as
weak to the weak, if it can only pick them up;--only too glad to
descend to men of low estate, and put its arms round their necks, if
it can only bring them to the cross and bring them back to the heart
and Heaven of God; and it does not care what the Pharisee on the
other side says; it is set on saving the poor sinner; it is pouring
in oil and wine, and putting him on its own beast; _it is intent on
saving him_, and does not care what anybody thinks. Have you got
it? It is so good. It makes you feel so warm and comfortable inside.
It is beautiful, and it proves better and better every day, and it
will be better still when you are dying--Faith and Hope will be done
away, but this love will last _forever!_

But this necessitates somebody leading the way--going on in advance.
Will _you_ be content to go in advance? Will _you_ endure the hardness
of a pioneer? Can you bear the ridicule and gibes of your fellow-men?
Dare _you_ go where the Holy Ghost leads, and leave Him to look _after
the consequences?_ If so, happy are you, and you shall have a harvest of
precious souls; you shall shine as the stars forever; but, if you draw
back, His soul shall have no pleasure in you. Step out on to the Divine
love, that is able, alone amongst the breakers, to bear your little
bark--able to make you _more_ than a conqueror. Oh, step out--follow,
follow, follow--do not be afraid!

_Spurious Charity_ is the opposite of this. It must have human
notice. Ostentation is its very essence. Cease to notice it, and it
will soon die. "I went about to establish mine own righteousness,"
says Paul, before he got the true Charity. Here was a grand
opportunity for Pharisaic Saul. These Nazarenes, were they not
everywhere spoken against? Was not this a grand opportunity for
_him_ to be everywhere spoken for?--and so he takes advantage of
public opinion, and becomes "exceedingly mad" against them; and, not
satisfied with persecuting them in his own city, he goes after them
into strange cities, but he reveals, afterwards, when he got the
Divine Charity, that the mainspring of his zeal was SELF-GLORY.

False Charity hates to be in a minority--you never find it in an
unrespectable minority,--it wants company, and that of a respectable,
genteel kind. Its possessors are always sticklers for the traditions
of the elders; their horizon is bounded very largely by the opinions
of men and the attitude of the _rulers_. They are always asking,
"Have any of the rulers believed on Him?"

Now, my friends, let this teach you wisdom and love. Prove all
things before you condemn. I have no doubt Saul was an honest man, in
the world's acceptation of the term, for he says he persecuted the
Nazarenes ignorantly, thinking he was doing God service; but what a
grand mistake he was making, and how effectually he was doing the
_work of the devil!_ Of course, if he had _seen_, he was mistaken, he
would have ceased to _be mistaken_.

I wish people would stop and think that the path they are now
standing in the well-beaten track on which they are now walking with
such slow dignity--was one quite as new and unconventional and
outrageous to the coadjutors of their forefathers, as the path which
any new departure by the Holy Ghost may set before them _now_. I
wish such people would read history. I suppose they do not, or, if
they do, they read it as they do the Bible--they fail to draw any
practical principle from it. Such people should read "Neale's History
of the Puritans," and see in what a hurricane of excitement,
opposition, contempt, and persecution, their forefathers fought for
the very paths they are now _standing still in_, and holding so
sacred that they cannot have them disturbed. Do you see how
unphilosophically they are acting? If their forefathers had acted on
the principles they are acting on, they would have stood still in old
paths, and we would never have been in the new ones. These people
stand in these paths of traditionalism and routinism, just where
their forefathers left them, occupying all their time in admiring the
wisdom and benevolence and devotion of their forefathers, instead of
imitating _their aggressive faith_ and MARCHING ON TO THE CONQUEST OF
THE WORLD.

Which is the most God-honoring? Which has the most common sense in
it? Which will please your, forefathers the most? But it is now as it
was in the days of the Son of Man--for, "ye build the tombs of the
prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, 'If
we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been
partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.' Wherefore ye be
witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which
killed the prophets."

Alas! what a deal of this is going on to-day, only there is one
difference--it is going on "under a Christian creed, instead of a
Jewish." It is only the _creed_ that differs--the character, the
spring of action, is the same.

Now, my friends, try yourselves--which Charity _have you got?_
Do you rejoice in the extension of the kingdom of Jesus Christ by any
lawful means, or are you more concerned _about the color of a man's
coat than the state of his heart?_ Would you rather the poor
drunkard were left to rot and seethe in his misery, than that a man
should put on a blue jacket with an S.[Footnote: Badge of the
Salvation Army.] on his collar, and go and fetch him out? Would you
rather have men damned conventionally, than saved unconventionally?
If you would, you are a Pharisee at heart--I care not what you call
yourselves. Go home and read for your instruction Matt, xxiii. 23-28.

Further, how bitterly this false Charity often comes out in
individual cases. We will just take an illustration. We will suppose
here is a family of decent, respectable, professedly Christian
people, who have been to church or chapel most of their lives. Or
here is a Church, we will suppose, of the same character--nothing
particular has happened; they fear the Lord, and go comfortably
along, and are just where they were ten or fifteen years ago, making
up for _deaths_ and _removals_. We will suppose that a member of that
family or that church, as the case may be, gets converted. He reads a
book, goes to a special meeting, or some providential utterance is the
means of sending the light of God's Spirit upon his soul, and he is
quickened and woke up to see the miserable, half-dead, guilty condition
in which he is; he is praying and groaning, and feeling after God; he
gets the sense of his transgressions and unfaithfulness being taken
away, and the joy of God's salvation restored to his soul. Now, in a
moment, almost immediately, as in the case of Peter, as soon as the
internal work is done, comes the external path opened up. The Spirit of
God lays before him some new work, something strikes him which has been
long forgotten, or which never seems to have been recognised in his
family or church. He sees what a grand thing that would be for the
conversion of souls, and the extension of the kingdom of Jesus
Christ, and he feels it beginning to burn like a fire in his bones to
enter this path of usefulness. He prays much over it, and he waits
until he is fully satisfied that it is not a vain impulse, but that
it is of the Spirit of God. Full of love, and faith, and zeal, he
goes to tell his minister, or some Christian friend; he expects that
they will sympathise with his feelings, and enter into his project;
but, alas! alas! they begin by raising objections--they start
difficulties:--"Well, but you see that would be a little out of our
order: that is not exactly our way of doing things. I am afraid the
deacons would object, or I am afraid something would happen;" and if
he has the misfortune to be young (anybody would think it was a sin
to be young), they will "crush" him out; they put the extinguisher
on, and say, "Wait, my brother, until you have more experience," or,
"my sister," especially, "_you_ must never presume to do
anything of which we cannot approve!"

Oh! friends, you smile because you _know_ how true it is! Oh,
alas! the thousands of urgings of the Holy Ghost; the thousands of
heavenly voices that have been as clear to human souls as ever
Peter's sheet was to him; the thousands of glorious aspirations and
schemes for the spread of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ that
have been thus crushed by this spurious, false, selfish, devilish
Charity! The Lord put it out.

Oh! I would not care what the Lord called my child to do that would
be for the extension of His kingdom and the glory of His name; I
would not restrain her or keep her back. I might say, "My child, it
may be a painful thing for me to consent. I might have chosen another
path for you; but if you are satisfied the Spirit leads you, go
forward, and I will do all I can to help you." Why? Because I want
the King to have His own, and I do not care how it is, so that He gets
His own, and I will have Him to use _mine_ as well as me to get it.

Fathers and mothers, look out! If you grudge your children to God,
He will be even with you. "They that honor Me, I will honor, but they
who do not, shall be lightly esteemed." They shall get light weight
all round, and be whipped with their own rods. Mind how you withhold
that which is most precious from God! Mind you do not receive the
grace of God in vain; _some people do_.

The fifth point in which this Divine and spurious Charity contradict
each other, is, that Divine Charity--the pure love of God--is _law
abiding_.

That is, it always manifests itself in harmony with the great moral
law of the universe--it never does evil that good may come! You never
hear it saying--"I cannot say that this is exactly square; I know
this is not exactly the right course, but then I can accomplish such
and such objects by adopting it." Never! that is of the devil! You
may always know that the law of righteousness is entwined round the
very heart of Divine Charity, and as justice and judgment are the
habitation of the throne of its Divine Author, so righteousness is in
the very core of its soul. It will never sacrifice righteousness for
peace, or anything else.

Now, what is the whole duty of man? To love mercy, to do justly, and
walk humbly with God; and, when the Holy Spirit has brought about
that result in your soul, God will look on you with a beneficent eye,
with a smile of approbation, and its genial influence will sun your
whole being, and you will walk in the light of it, even as the angels
do in Heaven. "Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God;"
that is the whole duty of man--everything is included in that.

Do you hear it, oh! ye temporizers with Divine law? Do you hear it,
ye who say that we must come down partly, and be a little like the
world in order to win it? that you must come on to the level of the
ungodly in order that you may win them to God?--I tell you that
_all unrighteousness is sin!_ Do you hear this, you who contend
for covering up by a false Charity certain sins which are sending men
to perdition wholesale, and make laws and acts of parliament to
protect men in these crimes? I know your specious arguments that come
from the devil; but I ask, is it justice to take one part of the human
race, and that the weaker, and, therefore, according to the law of
Divine Charity, demanding the greater protection from cruelty and wrong,
and offer that part up for the _supposed_ good of the other, because
the latter is stronger? Is that justice? Is that mercy? and, mind, I say
emphatically _supposed good_; for, do you think one part of God's
creation can be trodden down without reacting with terrible moral force
upon the other? Do you think it can? Was it ever done? Will it ever be
done? _No! not while He sits on His throne_. Yes, _supposed_ good, for
facts mock your arguments. It is not for their good; you know it is not.
You cannot accomplish your purpose when you have done all; and think you
that you will escape, by your satanic inventions, the Divine
Executioner? Think you that your specious arguments will avail with Him
who hath sworn in His holy habitation that He will avenge the oppressed
and down-trodden of the earth? No, no! I see written between the lines,
and I hear muttering between your speeches. "Be not deceived; God is not
mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." You
cannot escape the penalty!

The last characteristic of true Charity which I shall name is, that
_it holds out_, in spite of ingratitude, opposition, and persecution!
Its possessor seeks the good of all men, not because he ought, merely,
but because he cannot help it. His _heart_ is on the side of God and
truth. He _loves_ righteousness, and, therefore, cannot desist from
seeking to bring all beings to love it, too, although they hate and
despise him for so doing. Jesus held out in this glorious love, even in
the agonies of crucifixion. "Father, forgive them; they know not what
they do." His heart was set on bringing man back to God, and He went
through with it. His soul did not draw back, and His Divine love
constrained Him, even onto death.

Paul followed his Master in this respect; and though the more he
loved some of his converts, the less he was loved, he went on,
seeking their highest good, not being hindered for a moment by their
ingratitude. He loved _them_--not their good opinion or applause! A
spurious Charity soon tires when the objects of it prove unworthy. Its
possessor says: "I have had enough of this; the kinder I am, the worse
people treat me. I shall button up my pocket, and take my ease, till I
am better appreciated." _Self_-glory is the very life of spurious
Charity: it dies right out under ingratitude and contempt.

Which have you got, my brother?--my sister?

Does somebody say, as a man who had been to a service at Scarborough
the other, day, and had been hearing some straight truth, said, when
asked, "How did you like it?" The man, a young, prosperous tradesman
in the town, shuffled about, and said: "Well, it was awful; if that
is true, I am on my way to hell." Thank God he had found it out. Now,
have you got this Divine Charity? I told you, at the beginning, it
did not grow on unregenerate human nature, so if you are an
unregenerate man, and have not the Holy Spirit, I want you to find it
out. You have to begin at the beginning, and get the plant planted.
No matter what spurious imitations you have got, if you have not got
_the love of God_. Have you got it, brother?--sister? If you
have not, you can have it this afternoon. Will you seek it? We were
all once without it, even as it is said, "We were the children of
wrath, even as others;" we hated those who hated us; we hated things,
not because they were wicked, and against God, but because they were
opposed to us personally; our love and hate were influenced by
selfishness, the same as others, but now the Lord has renewed our
hearts, and made us in some little measure, like Him who "loved
righteousness, and hated iniquity; and, therefore, God anointed Him
with the oil of gladness above His fellows." Oh! yes; the more you
love righteousness and hate iniquity, the more of gladness you will
have, and the more glorious the testimony you will give for God. You
will be able to say, with David, "I have not hid Thy righteousness
within my heart; I have declared Thy faithfulness and Thy salvation:
I have not concealed Thy loving kindness and Thy truth from the great
congregation." There will be no difficulty about declaring it. We
find it easy to declare it when people get it. We cannot keep them
quiet; they are like the early converts--they are up two or three
together; and, like Paul, we have to say, "One at a time; you shall
all prophecy, if you do it one at a time." When people get it, it
bubbles up, and runs over; "it springs up," as out great Master said,
"as a well of water, unto everlasting life." Many floods cannot
quench it; it abideth forever.

Have you got it? Have you got enough of it to lift you above your
petty, selfish interests, or are you guided by the Charity that first
looks inside to see how any proposition will affect _self_,
instead of seeing how it will affect the kingdom of God? And you,
poor sinner, who know you have not got it--I have more hope of you
than some who profess to have it. His great bowels of compassion move
towards you; He is waiting to shed abroad this love in your heart.
The feast is spread; all things are now ready. Oh! come into His
banqueting house, and sit under His banner of love for ever and ever.




CHAPTER VII.

CONDITIONS OF EFFECTUAL PRAYER.


  If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what you
  will, and it shall be done unto you.--JOHN xv. 7.

  Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye
  pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.--MARK
  xi. 24.

  If any of you lack wisd