vol. 5

NOTABLE QUOTES OF CHARLES H. SPURGEON
~ PART 5 ~
July 26, 2010
Dear Reader, This is the fifth compilation of Brother Spurgeon’s quotes from my work of modernizing his sermons. All of these quotes are found in volumes 59-63 of his work. Thus I identify them by the volume and sermon number.
If you want to read or download the sermon from which a quote comes, simply go to our site and look in SPURGEONSERMONS link on the front page—each link identifies the sermon numbers in that link.
Nothing on our site is copyrighted—feel free to copy anything—but please use it only for the honor and glory of our Master, Jesus Christ.
My prayer for you and yours is Paul’s to the Ephesians 3:17-19.

Emmett O’Donnell_________________________________

“I am persuaded that the holiest of characters take more matters to God than you and I are accustomed to do. I mean they not only consult Him, as we do, upon certain great and critical occasions, but those saints who live nearest to Christ, go to Him about little matters, thinking nothing to be too trifling to speak into the ear of Christ.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3335

“Most men choose cheerful company whereby they may be entertained, but the Lord Jesus evidently selects mourners and delights in those whom He may encourage and cheer. Blessed be His name!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3336

“Let us bless Him [Jesus Christ]! Let us, tonight, extol this blessed Servant of God in our hearts, who though King of kings had His ears opened because He loved His master, He loved His spouse, and He loved His children—and has, therefore, become their Servant forever!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3337

“THE center of our holy religion is the Cross. The central thought of the whole of Christianity is Christ and the great point in Christ’s history is His Crucifixion. We preach Christ—but more—we preach Him Crucified!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3338
“The love of God, itself, is, even to us, as spikenard unperceived until He brings it to the spiritual senses and makes it sweet to us! The love of God is like light to a blind eye until the Holy Spirit opens that eye!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3339
“If God’s servants are treated with scorn and harshness they need not fear, for they are put just where they are, that unconverted men may be blessed by their agency.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3340

“The Atonement will be no more ours in Heaven than it is now. “We have redemption by His blood.” Our sin will be no more put away in Glory than it is at this moment, for our iniquity is even now cast into the depths of the sea! Our Substitute has finished transgression and made an end of sin. And having believed in Him, we know that for us the full Atonement is already made and the utmost ransom forever paid!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3341

“A poor woman upstairs in an attic found the Savior and her finding the Savior affected three worlds in one moment. It made earth glad. It made Hell howl with indignation and it set Heaven in a blaze of extraordinary joy!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3342

“All Nature, above as well as around us, is laid under contribution to set forth our Lord. All the flowers of the field and many of the beasts of the plain—and now the very orbs of Heaven—are turned into metaphors and symbols by which the Glory of Jesus may be manifested to us!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3343

“The man that has so prayed as to find complete forgiveness, he is the man that will never leave off praying as long as he lives! The one gain which covers everything, the gain of conscious forgiveness, inspires a man to pray about anything and about everything as long as ever he lives!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3344
“Never mind how poor and needy you are, you may yet be heirs of God, joint-heirs with Jesus Christ!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3345

“The body that has been bought with His blood—that is to sleep on His bosom, that is to be awakened in His likeness, that is to dwell with Him forever, molded after His own image—take care of that body and keep it consecrated unto the Lord!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3346
“Draw courage from the recollections of the past and go forward to the fears of the future—and they shall vanish as you advance, confident in your God.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3347
“It is greatly to be regretted that there are some persons who do not know the Truth of God because they have no care to know at all. They have a contempt for anything that God reveals.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3348
“To be wrapped in praise to God is the highest state of the soul. To receive the mercy for which we praise God is something, but to be wholly clothed with praise to God for the mercy received is far more!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3349

“To be a minister is the aspiration of many a youth. Perhaps if the word were otherwise rendered, their ambition might cool. Ministers are servants—they are not guests, but waiters, not landlords, but laborers. The word has been rendered ‘under-rowers,’ men who tug the oar on the
lowest bench.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3350

“Apart from Christ, the Church is a broken thing, divided into sects and parties, but in Christ Jesus, the Savior’s prayer is answered, ‘That they all may be one.’”—Volume 59, Sermon #3351
“PERHAPS no verse in the whole of Scripture [Matthew 11:28] has been handled in the pulpit more frequently than this, and yet it has not been exhausted and never can it be!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3352
“If my Lord has taught anything, it must be worth my while to learn it. If Christ lifts the veil, it is my privilege to look—and what He manifests to me I ought not to be slow to gaze upon”—Volume 59, Sermon #3353
“You who have buried your little children. You who have wept so bitterly when your dear babes were snatched from your bosoms may far prefer that sorrow to having your sons and your daughters live to dishonor your name by plunging into glaring sin!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3354

“It may be useful to us, Brothers, to learn never to draw arguments and doctrines from metaphors. Many do and there are many supposed doctrines which really have no better ground-work than mere metaphors…The fact is, the reasoning from metaphor is always risky and sometimes proves quite absurd!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3355

“I do believe I have sincerely striven to serve my Master, and have served Him so as to have had given me many seals of my service, but I never did serve Him in such a way as to be satisfied with my service!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3356

“The chief matter with a hearer when he goes to a town to live and has to enquire, ‘Where shall I attend on the Lord’s-Day?’ should be this— ‘Where can I hear most concerning the Lord Jesus Christ? Where shall I hear a man who can touch my conscience? Where shall I hear truth that will be quick, powerful and sharp as a two-edged sword to my soul? Where may I hope to be saved?’”—Volume 59, Sermon #3357

“IT is very wise to look within ourselves to discover our own weakness and spiritual poverty, but it is very unwise to be always dwelling upon that weakness and poverty—and to forget that our strength does not lie there, nor are our riches to be found within ourselves! Let us look within to be humbled, but not to be made unbelieving. Look within, so as to be driven from all confidence in ourselves, but never so as to shake our absolute confidence in God.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3358

“Though God has made this round world exceedingly fair, yet no work of Creation reflects so much of His highest Glory as the manifestation of His Grace in a pardoned sinner!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3359

“I wish we had more Marys who would break the alabaster box of precious ointment upon His dear head. Oh, for a little extravagance of love, a little fanaticism of affection for Him, for He deserves ten thousand times more than the most enthusiastic ever dream of rendering!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3360

“The Christ of God came in lowliness and in shame, to be despised and rejected of men, but for all that He fought great battles in the midst of His weakness and won for Himself wondrous spiritual victories.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3361
“God has not made this world to be a nest for us—and if we try to make it such for ourselves—He plants thorns in it so that we may be compelled to mount and find our soul’s true home somewhere else, in a higher and nobler sphere than this poor world can give!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3362

“To bear a saved sinner away from all further conflict is great Grace. But the power and love of God are, if anything, even more conspicuous when, like a sheep surrounded by wolves, or a spark in the midst of the sea, a Believer is enabled to live on in the teeth of an ungodly world and maintain his integrity to the end!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3363

“God will not bless us to the Christian Church if we want to make a party to ourselves, or to take to ourselves the leadership. He will not acknowledge us in the work if we are merely seeking our own esteem, good name and fame under cover of a zeal for righteousness and for the Glory of God.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3364

“It seems to be to be one of the peculiar gifts of the Christian Sisterhood to be the means of holding the entire fabric of the Christian Church in sacred love! And though in our belief they ought not to do this by public speech, yet by quiet conversation, active sympathy and the patient endurance and holy tenacity of affection, they may help to keep the Church well bolted together… Happy is the Church that abounds in Christian matrons and younger women willing to be serviceable for Christ!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3365

“Christ’s mission had for one of its many gracious purposes and ends the taking away of the darkness of human ignorance and the pouring of light upon the intellect of man. I thank God that many of us, though we know comparatively little, do know that, whereas we were once blind, now we see!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3366

“The Lord, by calling one out of any society of men, finds for Himself a recruiting officer who will enlist his fellows beneath the banner of the Cross! May not this fact encourage some seeking soul to hope that the Lord may save him, though he is the only thoughtful person in all his family—and then make him to be the means of salvation to all his kindred?”—Volume 59, Sermon #3367

“The safest part of a Christian’s life is the time of his trial…Smooth water on the way to Heaven is always a sign that the soul should keep wide awake, for danger is near!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3368

“God has wondrous ways of making men feel that they are but dust, but when nothing else can serve His turn He will sweep whole dynasties away, as men remove an anthill when it has become a nuisance. Yes, He will shake mighty nations, and make ‘eternal cities,’ as they were called, only to stand as the memorials and the wrecks of greatness!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3369

“I fear that many, trusting, in the greatness of their mental light, have become blind to the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Blessed is he who sees Christ by Christ—the Crucified in the light of His five wounds—the Risen One by the brilliance of His own life!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3370

“When God blesses us, I say, it is well-doing! He blesses us in our very creation and much more in our new creation. It is a blessed thing to be born, but a much more blessed thing to be born-again!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3371

“Servants of Jesus Christ, never be discouraged when you are opposed, but when things run counter to your wishes, expect that the Lord has provided some better thing for you! He is driving you away from shallow waters and bringing you into deeper seas where your nets shall bring you larger draughts. Paul and Silas must go to prison because a chosen person [the jailer] was to be converted in the prison who could not otherwise be reached!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3372

“At the first there is nothing, perhaps, more staggering to the young Christian than to find that his “worst foes” are they of his own household and that they who should have cherished and nurtured in him the piety which is so excellent a flower, do their cruel worst to nip it in the bud!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3373

“Oh, the world is scarred with death! What is this earth today, but a great Aceldema—a field of blood, a vast cemetery? Death has worm-eaten the world through and through. All its surface bears relics of the human race. Who slew all these? Who slew all these? Who, indeed, but Sin? Sin, when it is finished, brings forth death!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3374

“The worst evil that can befall a Christian, I say, is to fall into sin and continue to do so. On the contrary, one of the richest blessings that a Christian can enjoy is to be kept aright in his walk and conversation—year after year to wear a spotless character—year after year to be such an one as Daniel, that even the man’s enemies can find nothing against him except touching the Law of his God.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3375“If the times should be full of danger, if there should be forebodings in the hearts of the bravest, if infidelity should threaten to put out the light of the Gospel, or if Romanism should seem to blot out the name of Christ from under Heaven, yet still God can appear!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3376

“A day is surely coming when the Lord Jesus, who came once to save, will descend a second time to judge! Despised mercy has always been succeeded by deserved wrath—and so must it be in the end of all things.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3377
“But what is the meaning of this ‘love of God,’ [Jude 21] in which we are to keep ourselves? It means, first, Believer, that you are to keep your mind in the remembrance of the love of God toyou.We, alas, forget too often what a Friend we have above.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3378

“We all bear trouble in a measure, for, ‘Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upwards.’ Some have more troubles than others and these often happen to be those who are dearest to the Lord. If any man escapes the rod, the true-born children of the royal family of Heaven never can!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3379

“Happy are they who have a religion that is grounded upon a clear knowledge of eternal Truths of God! A religion which is all excitement and has little instruction in it, may serve for transient use, but for permanent life purposes there must be a knowledge of those great Doctrines which are fundamental to the Gospel system.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3381

“Like a handful of salt scattered over a mass of putridity, like here and there a lamp hung up in the thick darkness, God has a chosen people and in their hearts Jesus Christ is great—and shall be great in time and in eternity!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3382

“Unless the great Husbandman shall till us by His Grace, we shall produce nothing that is good, but everything that is evil. If one of these days I shall hear that a country has been discovered where wheat grows without the work of the farmer, I may then, perhaps, hope to find one of our race who will bring forth holiness without the Grace of God.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3383

“I could wish that our religion would go back somewhat more to that personal apprehension of Christ than it does. By all means let us have dogmatic teaching, setting forth those most precious Truths of God that are our consolation, but better than all is the Person of Christ Himself—the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3385

“It is the preaching of Christ which is the power of God and the wisdom of God. Therefore, wherever we may wander around the circumference, we always feel a drawing in of our soul toward the center, which is ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory.’”—Volume 59, Sermon #3386
“Is it not an amazing fact that while others leave usand forsake us, that God never does?”—Volume 60, Sermon #3387
“If sin is shut out at the front door, it tries the back gate, or climbs in at the window, or comes down the chimney. Those who cannot perceive it in themselves are frequently blinded by its smoke.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3388
“Christ is constantly raising the spiritually dead and giving them life. Oh that we may be enabled by God’s Spirit to open up this Truth of God to your understanding and may it be applied to your hearts!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3389

“Those who fear God are the same persons as those that hope in His mercy and this is very consoling, for to hope in God’s mercy seems to be but a very small evidence of Divine Grace and yet it seems to be a very sure sign, for those who hope in God’s mercy are the same persons who are said to fear Him. They are the same persons as are described as being His saved ones, His children—the truly godly ones.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3390

“Brothers and Sisters, you members of the Church about to come around this Table, give heed to the mandate of the Holy Spirit, by the inspired Apostle! ‘Let each one here examine himself, and so let him eat of this bread.’”—Volume 60, Sermon #3391

“If some of you plume yourselves with the notion that you are righteous, I pray God to pluck those fine feathers off you and make you see yourselves, for if you never see your own nothingness, you will never understand Christ’s All-Sufficiency. Unless you are pulled down, Christ will never lift you up!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3392

“We can very well suppose that godly men and women might be willing that their unconverted children should dwell with them in Heaven, but it cannot be, for God will not have His cleansed ones defiled, nor His glorified ones tried by the presence of the unbelieving.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3393

“Oh, what astonishment will seize the sons of men when they see the King in His Glory, whom they would not understand nor serve when He came in the meekness and gentleness of love!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3394
“We have sinned. God must punish sin. According to the inexorable laws which God has stamped upon the universe, the sinner cannot go unpunished. His sin is, in fact, its own punishment and becomes the mother of unnumbered griefs.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3395

“There is none that does good, no not one, and in the perfect light of Calvary, we have seen that even the perfections of Jesus will not be seen by a blind world, nor will they attract a corrupt world. ‘Crucify Him! Crucify Him!’ will be the verdict of humanity even upon the perfections of the Incarnate God.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3396

“Zeal is a good thing, but like the horse without a bit, it becomes useless and even dangerous. Knowledge is the bridle in the mouth of zeal. Zeal is like fire which may burn the house which it was intended to warm unless it is carefully governed. There must be knowledge in zeal.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3397

“We cannot love whom we do not know or esteem. If we know nothing about Christ, have no understanding of Him, have not in any degree occupied our minds with Him, we may talk about love to Him, but it will be mere talk.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3398
“It is much better to pray in silence if you will be heard by others, for we are not to pray to be heard of men, but if you have opportunity to pray aloud, I am sure you will feel it very helpful to devotion to do so.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3399
“Every human sin is an attack upon the whole Character and life of God—and sin, itself, is a dishonor done to the glorious attributes of Jehovah.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3400
“When Jesus was here among men, the world saw Him in a certain sense, but yet in truth it did not see Him at all. The world’s eyes saw the outside of Christ—the flesh of the Man, Christ, but the true Christ the ungodly eyes could not discern.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3401
“There is no man so vile but he still wraps himself up in his rags and cajoles himself into the belief that he has some degree of excellence, spiritual or moral. Before Christ can come into the heart, all this natural excellence must be tornto shreds.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3402
“Note, however, particularly, that the center of the heavenly worship is not God in the act of Creation, but God upon the Throne. Divine Sovereignty is the very center of Heaven. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3403

“When I see Adam in the midst of comfort putting forth his hand to take that one fruit which his Master had reserved for Himself, I see, indeed, sin and arrogance, daring assumption and a heinous crime! But I do not see so much of levity and lawlessness there, as I do in this, that creatures should spit on the Creator!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3404

“This seems to me to be clear beyond dispute. To ‘profess’ Christ is but an easy thing. To ‘confess’ Him implies that the circumstances make that confession a deed of courage, exposing the confessing soul to peril and penalty. But he gladly accepts the suffering or the shame, and confesses that what may seem to be a foolish thing to others, is a wise thing to him. He confesses Christ. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3405

“The Apostle John seems to tell us this when he says, ‘And these things write I unto you’—nothing about prosperity in this world, but all about fellowship with Christ—‘And these things we write unto you, that your joy may be full.’ From which I infer that everything which isrevealed to us inScripture has for its intentionthe filling upofthe Christian’s joy. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3406
“A man has a right to live, to bring up his family, to educate them and see them comfortably settled in life—but that ought to be only for God’s Glory!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3409

“May God grant us Grace to beware of the least touch of self-righteousness, for it is evil, only evil and that continually! May we always be as timid as the publican who stood afar off and dared not even lift up his eyes to Heaven, rather than be as censorious and presumptuous as the Pharisee, whose sole prayer consisted in flattering himself that he was better than others.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3410

“Long before time had begun, God had foreknown His chosen, and foreordained them unto eternal life. They had not chosen Him, for they were not in existence!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3413
“Observe the condescension of God, that we are allowed to ask Him to teach us such a lesson as our frailty. And mark the proof of our own ignorance and our own forgetfulness that we cannot even learn this lesson unless God teaches us!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3414

“SALVATION is by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not of works, neither can it be procured by human merit. It is the free gift of God through the atoning sacrifice of Christ to every soul that believes. But what is salvation? Salvation is, in short, deliverance from sin, deliverance from the guilt of it, from the punishment of it, from the power of it. If, then, any man is saved, he is delivered from the reigning power of sin. It is not possible, therefore, that any man should have salvation and yet continue in the indulgence of sin.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3415

“Prayer is itself a blessing. The desire to pray, the disposition to pray, the resolve, the determination to pray—what hopeful, healthy symptoms these are! But to be able to pray—ah, what some might give if they could put forth their soul’s strength in this cheering exercise!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3416

“There is no religion under Heaven, except the evangelical Truth of God that teaches present salvation!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3417

“Remission, notwithstanding the stern requirements of the Law of God, is not to be abandoned in sheer despair. The word, remission, means the putting away of debts. Just as sin may be regarded as a debt incurred to God, so that debt may be blotted out, cancelled, and obliterated. The sinner, God’s debtor may cease to be in debt by compensation, by full acquittance and may be set free by virtue of such remission. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3418

“SIN is greatly aggravated by the mercy of God, of which the sinner has been a partaker. Sin in a child of God is peculiarly sinful. Instead of its being a trifle, as some men seem to think, it is a very solemn matter indeed.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3419
“Ah, Lord, it is better for us to lie passive in Your hands than to be attempting to sit upon Your Throne, holding the balance and judging Your work!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3420

“Now, it may be profitable, now and then, to look over some of our institutions, to see whether they are Scriptural—to notice their defects, to see in what respect they may be improved, or to observe their merits—that we may be induced still further to carry them on. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3421

“Unless the joy of the Lord is your strength, your soul will breathe a heavy atmosphere and your utterance will be checked, if it is not chokedby your misgivings! It is your confidence in Christ and the peace it brings you, that helps you speak to others as a true witness, because you are an experimental witness of the power of true religion.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3422

“The Church is a wonderful piece of architecture and well worth our walking round because, unlike any other, her strength is not merely material. The Church is built up of living stones. Life flows through the whole. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3423

“There must be, in the Lord’s Supper, bread and wine—but bread separated from the wine—as our Lord speaks of His flesh as separate from His blood, and this was to indicate that it is as a dying Savior that He is most precious to us. The blood separated from the flesh indicates death. It is to the death of Jesus that the Believer first turns His eyes and it is when considering the living, reigning Christ as having once been slain that our richest comfort comes to us.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3424

“The first day of our conversion, when we know Christ and have peace through Him, is a peculiarly green and happy spot in our life’s pilgrimage. We can never forget it. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3425
“Were the mind more occupied with Christ, there would be less likelihood of our forgetting Him!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3426

“My dear Friends, we desire to do all we can for the Lord Jesus Christ, but how very limited are our capacities! If we were to give Him all we have, and give our bodies to be burned, it would be very little for us to give to such a Savior. But what a mercy it is that there is no limit to what we may wish. We can bless Him with our wishes, if we cannot with our acts. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3427

“We have heard of some who have said that they have never had any consciousness of the existence of spirit. Very likely. Very likely. I do not suppose, either, that pigs or asses, or any dumb driven cattle ever had any spiritual apprehensions!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3428
“God is perfectly pure. He cannot bear the slightest trace of sin—and Jesus is ‘holy, harmless, and undefiled, and separate from sinners.’ God cannot look upon sin, as it is abhorrent to His Nature, but He can look upon Christ, for ‘in Him was no sin.’”—Volume 60, Sermon #3429

“Remember what Christ said to Simon Peter when he proved that he knew Him beyond all the rumors that were floating about, beyond all the opinions that were entertained, beyond all the prejudices that were nursed among the rulers or the people of those days. He said, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood have not revealed this unto you, but My Father who is in Heaven.’ No minister can make us know Christ! No book, no, not even the Bible, itself, apart from this celestial teaching”—Volume 60, Sermon #3430
“Despite the one great stain upon his character in the matter of Bathsheba, David was one of the best and most devout of men. I am sure the older one grows, the more one loves his Psalms, and what a history of the man you have there! It is a mercy for us that he was not a better man than he was, or else he could not have written Psalms suitable to such poor creatures as we are.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3431

“The zeal of God burned at Calvary!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3432
“Doubtless the words of Inspired men are very precious as a Divine testimony, but when God, Himself, directly speaks to us in His own name, what an extraordinary weight attaches to every syllable He utters!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3433
“In a certain sense Christ died for all men, but since it is evident that many men are lost, Christ’s dying for all men is not at all a ground upon which any man may hope to be saved. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3434

“If I rightly read the Scriptures, the lost tribes are to be converted, first, and gathered afterwards, while the people distinguished among us as Jews are to be restored to their own land, and then convinced by seeing the Man whom they pierced, enthroned with honor and majesty. Here the world’s history reaches a majestic climax!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3435

“How deeply we ought to regret that we glorify Christ so little, bought with His precious blood, owing all we have to Him. We make but a very poor return and even when we are helped by the Spirit of God to glorify Christ, yet I am sure we should always feel an insatiable desire to do it yet more. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3436

“Oh, shun the slavery of all who take their religion from men, be they who they may, whether called priests or presbyters, or from human creeds or books!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3437

“O, be astonished, you angels, that you were witnesses of it, and you men that you beheld it! The Infinite came down to earth in the form of an Infant! He who spans the heavens and holds the ocean in the hollow of His hand, condescended to hang upon a woman’s breast—the Eternal King became a little Child! Let Bethlehem tell that He had compassion! There was no way of saving us but by stooping to us!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3438

“Surely, Brothers and Sisters, the best that man can do for himself, with all his diligence and all his care, is but as a fading flower! And when he sits himself down at ease in his contentment and says, ‘I shall see no sorrow. I have served my Maker. I thank God that I am not as other men,’ even then is he naked, and poor and blind and miserable—a blighted, blasted, withered flower, though he thinks ‘himself to be as a rose of Sharon, or a lily of the valley.’ ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3439

“Greater than the greatest sermon that was ever preached in the world, is the Word made flesh.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3440
“Child of God, you cost Christ too much for Him to forget you! He recollects every pang He suffered in Gethsemane, and every groan that He uttered for you upon the Cross.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3441

“If the nation did but know it, the saints in a nation are the aristocrats of that nation. Those who fear God are the very soul, marrow, and backbone of a nation. For their sakes God has preserved many a nation. For their sakes He gives unnumbered blessings.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3442

“SELF-SUFFICIENCY is the sin of nature—all-sufficiency is the supply of Divine Grace!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3444

“It is delightful to see these exquisite prayers come from holy men in times of extreme distress. As the sick oyster makes the pearl, and not the healthy one, so does it seem as if the child of God brought forth gems of prayer in affliction more pure, brilliant and sparkling than any that he produces in times of joy and exultation.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3445

“Your great aim must be to glorify Christ on earth, in the hope and expectation of enjoying Him forever above. ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3446
“Under the worst circumstances, true Christians find the richest comfort if they do but know that Jesus is with them!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3447
“The full display of the goodness of God, however, is reserved for the working of His Grace inthe redemption of man.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3448

“I would sooner discover one fact and lay down one certain truth, than be the author of ten thousand theories, even though those theories should, for a while, rule all the thought of mankind!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3449
“What an incredible thing it is, that while the ox knows its owner and the ass its master’s crib, man, the object of Divine love, should not know his Lord, his Friend, his Benefactor! Oh, may you give no rest to your eyes or slumber to your eyelids till you have opened your mouth to profess the name of the Lord and fled for refuge to take hold of his righteousness and strength!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3450

“‘The Cross’ is the short term for ‘substitutionary suffering,’ for ‘vicarious sacrifice,’ for the offering up of the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3451
“This sin of sins—unbelief—is still at this very hour too common among the people of God. ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3452

“Well, when a man is in error about his calling, if it really is not his calling, let him leave it—but let him first be sure that it is not his calling, for otherwise he will sin against the express words of Inspiration. The Apostle Paul says, ‘Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called’—that is to say, the occupation or profession in life you were engaged in when you were converted need not be rashly abandoned. ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3453

“If you have come to Baptism and to the Lord’s Supper with the faith which works by love, you have doubtless received benefits by the ordinances—but if you have come without that faith—Baptism or no Baptism avails nothing whatever!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3454
“Beware, you who refuse to listen to Moses and the Prophets! If you will not hear them, you will not be converted, though one should rise from the dead and admonish you of your peril!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3455

“WE like to know how a person used to act, for we think we can infer from that how he will act. That is not always correct, however, for men change. But in our Savior’s case, if we study His life, we may very well infer from what He did, what He will do because He never changes.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3456

“Take but small account of human applause…Heed not the world’s frowns and court not its smiles. When you are flattered by its approbation, or calumniated by its persecution, remember that men’s temper and disposition vary like the climate and change like the weather!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3457

“Did it ever strike you that man, according to the Jewish ceremonial Law, is an unclean creature? Nothing was clean, according to the Law of Moses, but that which divided the hoof and chewed the cud. Now man fails in one of these, and by the Law he is put down as a sinner, as being on a level with the unclean beasts.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3458 “Indulgences for sin may come from Rome, but they never come from Zion!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3459

“Think not that all praise is gathered up in singing! It is the praise of God when the mother tells her child of the goodness of Him who made the stars, and who spread the world with flowers. It is praise when the young convert tells of the joy of his heart to his companion and bids him fly to the Fountain where he has washed and been made clean. It is praise, praise of a high order, too, when the advanced Believer in his old age tells of the faithfulness of God, and how not one good thing has failed of all that the Lord God has promised!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3460

“How sweetly does, ‘my Master,’ sound! ‘My Master.’ Why, if nothing else might bestir us to get up and run to meet Him, it should be the sound of that blessed word, ‘The Master is here: the Master has come.’”—Volume 61, Sermon #3461
“Every creature of Adam born, who has not been saved by Grace, is a prisoner to sin.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3462
“There are some men in such a condition of mind, of such a blinding sort, that even if the Truth of God could be still more plain, it would be the most unlikely thing in all the world that they would receive it!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3463
“Lay it down, then, beyond all question, that formal worship which is not attended with the heart—which is not the worship of the spirit—can never be acceptable with the Most High!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3464
“Jesus Christ suffered so that I despair of conceiving His sufferings, or of conveying them to you by any form of words.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3465

“Stand fast to the old Truths of God—they will outlast all these philosophies! Stand fast to the old way of living—it will outlast all the inventions of men! Stand fast by Christ, for you need no other object of worship but himself!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3466“The day shall come when this world shall be as fair as it was at the primeval Sabbath. When there shall be a new Heaven and a new Earth, wherein shall dwell righteousness…This great work of Christ, this grand design of making this old world into a new one shall be carried into effect!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3467

“There is no true child of God that is possessed of a dumb spirit. “Behold he prays” may be said of each of the Divine family—and place them in what circumstances you will, you might sooner call a man, living, and prevent his breathing, than call a man, Christian, and prevent his praying!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3468

“I may sometimes run with Martha to do what Christ needs of me, but I think I ought more frequently to sit with Mary to receive from Christ what I need from Him.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3469

“Oh, as I read the matchless story of love without beginning, which can never, never cease, I marvel that our hearts are not all on fire, that our passions do not boil over and that our lips do not become like the red lips of Vesuvius when the burning lava sweeps down her sides!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3470

“Observe that when He was born, midnight turned to midday, and when He died mid-day turned to midnight. When He was born, Heaven was lit up with splendor and from angelic choirs the Bethlehem song was heard, while men also rejoiced, because unto them a child was born, unto them a Son was given. But when he died, Heaven put out her brightest light!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3471

“Men sit in darkness until Jesus appears. The gloom is thick and dense—not sun, nor moon, nor star appears, and there can be no light to illumine the understanding, the affections, the conscience.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3472

“Unbelief is a very prolific sin. Once we doubt the Lord, I know not what we may do next, and next, and next! It is a sharp turning off of the right road, that turning to trust in ourselves rather than in the Most High! It won’t do, my Brothers and Sisters. It won’t do.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3473

“If you have forsaken the drunkard’s haunts, if you have broken off the swearer’s profane tongue, if the pleasures of sin have ceased their fascination, you must ascribe it to your Redeemer and say, ‘He delivered me,’ for it is Grace that has rescued you from the destroyers!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3474

“There are many others who are living in the same self-righteous way—good self-righteous people, wrapping themselves up in the garment of their goodness because they have really been very careless about what the Law is. They have not looked into it. Whether there is a Law of God or not, has really never been thoroughly and deeply considered by them. They know it as a matter of religious teaching, but nothing more.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3475

“There is no engagement under Heaven that is more exalting than praising God—and however great may be the work which is committed to the charge of any of us, we shall always do well if we pause awhile to spend a time in sacred praise.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3476

“Men fight hard to try and prove that there is not [sin]. In vain they strive, for as long as the Inspired Book is extant, and so long as there is one man on the face of the earth with a clear conscience, healthy and undrugged, to bear witness with that Book, sin will be discovered to be exceeding sinful!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3477

“When I think of the strength of Divine Grace, I do not marvel that saints would persevere, but when I remember the weakness of their nature, it seems a miracle of miracles that there should be one Christian in the world at a single hour.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3478

“No one in the Church of Rome claims to be now saved—completely and eternally saved. Such a profession would be heretical! Some few Catholics may hope to enter Heaven when they die, but the most of them have the miserable prospect of ‘purgatory’ before their eyes. We see constant requests for prayers for departed souls and this would not be if those souls were saved and glorified with their Savior!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3479

“Do you want to reach Christ? Your prayers can do it! Would you now adore Him? Would you now set forth your love? With mingled prayer and praise, like the offering of the morning and the evening sacrifice, your incense can come up acceptably before the Lord!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3480

“We, as a Christian Church, are engaged in the great soul-fishery, seeking by any means to bring some to Christ. Out on the dark waters of the Dead Sea of Sin we seek to bring the souls of men, not to destroy them, but that Christ may save them! This is to be the Church’s perpetual work. She must never cease from it. For this purpose is she kept in the world and if she does not answer this purpose, she is faulty before her Lord.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3481
“But it appears to me that there is a work of Grace in the heart where there is a fear of sinrather than a fear of Hell—where the desire of the soul is not so much to escape from the punishment, as to escape from the guilt which is the cause of the punishment.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3482

“I am afraid we don’t render that honor to the blessed Spirit which He deserves. Our ministry is not deficient, I trust, in magnifying the Christ of God, but too often the Holy Spirit is not sufficiently honored and, perhaps, this may be a reason why He does not so many mighty works in the Christian Church as He did at first.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3483

“It is a sad fault with those Christians who think themselves full of Grace, when they begin to despise their fellows! They may rest assured they are greatly mistaken in the estimate they have formed of themselves.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3484

“…let it be remembered that it is not upon communion with Christ our life depends. Our salvation stands in the knowledgeof Him, not in communion with Him. We are made safe by what He has done, not by what we feel. Not our enjoyments, but His sufferings we must lay as the solid foundation of our hope!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3485

“Your first and chief business with your God has to do with your innermost self—your real self. You shall come to keep your outward rightly enough if you will begin to cleanse the inside of the platter first.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3486
“Outside the door of our heart Jesus is a stranger; He is no Savior to us—but inside the heart which has been opened, by Divine Grace, to admit Him, His power is displayed, His worth is known and His goodness is felt!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3487

“The Doctrine of Justification by Faith through the substitutionary Sacrifice of Christ is very much to my ministry what bread and salt are to the Bible. As often as ever the table is set, there are those necessary things. I regard that Doctrine as being one that is to be preached continually, to be mixed up with all our sermons, even as, under the Law of God it was said, ‘With all your offerings you shall offer salt.’”—Volume 61, Sermon #3488

“He that lives by feelings will be happy, today, and unhappy tomorrow—and if our salvation depended upon our feelings, we would be lost one day and saved another, for they are as fickle as the weather and go up and down like a barometer!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3489

“Seek a Christ-exalting ministry. Desire to be where your soul will be handled with fidelity and where Christ will be held up before you with simplicity and earnestness—for the hearing that God blesses is not the hearing of every man that speaks, but the hearing of the Word of God that, ‘the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.’”—Volume 61, Sermon #3490

“The Gospel’s message is not so much about your sin as it is about the remedy for it! And when it comes to deal with your sin, it deals less with it as a crime than as a disease.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3491
“Let the Gospel be preached, and these birds of the air, fiends of Hell, will soon by some means try to remove these Truths from your hearts, lest they should take root in your hearts and bring forth fruit unto repentance.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3492
“When God draws the curtain and stands in the sunlight, mercy streams in on the sunbeam! And when He shuts the eyelids of the day and the evening comes, it is mercy that puts its finger upon our eyelids and bids us rest.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3493

“From the time when Satan fell, God’s purpose was to break down everything which set itself up in opposition to Him. From that day till now, no matter how great, how lofty, how apparently excellent a thing might be, it has been the rule with God to pull it down if it did not stand in Him and for Him! Yes, and wherever He has looked, no matter how mean a thing may have been, how low, how degraded to outward appearance, it has been God’s constant rule to lift it up if it stood in Him and for Him!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3494

“There is nothing in the world that costs a saint so dear as doubt. If he disbelieve his God, he most assuredly robs himself of comfort, deprives himself of strength, and does himself a real injury.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3495

“And now with lowly reverence at the foot of the Cross bow down your soul and say, ‘My Lord, between me and the greatest reprobate there is no difference but what Your Grace has made. Between me and lost souls in Hell there is no difference except what Your Infinite Compassion has deigned to make. I humbly bless You, and adore You, and love You because You have brought me near.’”—Volume 62, Sermon #3496

“Never in the heart of any natural man, unless Divine Grace has put it there, has a desire to reestablish peace been felt or entertained! If any of you long to be at peace with your Maker, it is because His Spirit has made you long for it. Left to yourselves, you would go from conflict to conflict, from struggle to struggle, and perpetuate the encounter, until it ended in your eternal destruction.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3497 “‘Eloquent sermons’ usually seem to me to be the least eloquent things in the world, for eloquence means speaking from the heart—and I cannot believe that the fine periods we sometimes hear read ever spring anywhere but from the head!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3498

“WE cannot too often turn our thoughts heavenward, for this is one of the great cures for worldliness. The way to liberate our souls from the bonds that tie us to earth is to strengthen the cords that kind us to Heaven.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3499

“ Excuse-makingis the most common trade under Heaven! The slenderest materials are put to the greatest account. A man who has no valid argument in arrest of judgment, no feasible reason why he should not be condemned, will go about and bring a thousand excuses and ten thousand circumstances of extenuation—the whole of them weak and thin as a spider’s web.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3500

“Now that more than 1800 years ago Jesus Christ, of the seed of David, died upon Calvary by Crucifixion, we do here proclaim and declare! We set forth again to a world that is skeptical and denies the fact which is its brightest hope—we set forth our confident belief that so it was—and as long as this ordinance shall be celebrated, [Lord’s Supper] there shall be a standing proof in the world that that was the case!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3501

“I HAVE preached to you, dear Friends, several times from the words, “Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” There is such sweetness in the precept, such solace in the promise, that I could gladly hope to preach from it many times more!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3502

“We have had many kindnesses from friends, but never such love as Jesus showed when, we being His enemies, He yet redeemed us with His most precious blood.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3504

“Alas, full often we know not what we pray for!...Could some parents have read the history of their children from the day of their birth, they might rightly have wished that they had never been born. We had better leave such matters with God and submit to His Sovereign will. He knows better than we do, for He is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working. Thank God these affairs are not in our own hands! They are in far better and wiser keeping than ours.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3505

“Mercy never makes us proud! As mercy is given to the humble, it has a humbling effect. Wherever it comes, it makes a man lie low before the Throne of the heavenly Grace, and leads him to ascribe all honor and glory to the God from whom the mercy comes.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3506

“Now it is easy to believe that God is ours when He smiles upon us and when we have the sweet fellowship of His love in our hearts—but the point for faith to attend to is to hold to God when He gives hard words, when His Providence frowns upon you—and when even His Spirit seems to be withdrawn from you!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3507

“We full often bemoan our circumstances as altogether disastrous, while God, who sees the end from the beginning, is working out His ordained purpose.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3508
“Coming to Christ does not mean coming with any natural motion of the body, for He is in Heaven, and we cannot climb up to the place where He is—it is a mental coming, a spiritual coming—it is, in one word, a trusting in and upon Him.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3509
“God is Immutable—He cannot change. His Covenant is steadfast—He will not alter it. If He has loved you once, He loves you now.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3510

“What is life but a great battle, lasting from our earliest days until we sheathe the sword in death? This battle we hope to win and yet, if we succeed, it will be a distinct and definite response to the challenge before us, ‘Who ever goes to war at his own expense?’ (1 Cor 9:7). We may be quite sure that if ever we attempt the warfare of life at our own expense we shall soon find ourselves failing—and it will end in a miserable defeat.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3511

“GOD’S Word divides the whole human race into two portions. There is the seed of the serpent, and the seed of the woman—the children of God, and the children of the devil—those who are by nature still what they always were, and those who have been begotten again unto a lively hope by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3512

“You dishonor Christ if you do not believe in His Deity. He will have nothing to do with you unless you accept Him as being God as well as Man. You must receive Him as being, without any diminution, completely and wholly Divine, and you must accept Him as being your Brother, as being a Man just as you are. This, this is the Person and, relying upon Him, we shall find salvation! But rejecting His Deity, He will say to us, ‘You know Me not, and I never knew you!’”—Volume 62, Sermon #3513
“Take heart, Brothers and Sisters—these things are written for our example and for our encouragement. His Church can never sink to so low an ebb that He cannot soon build her up again, nor in our own hearts can the work of Grace ever decline so grievously that the same mighty power which once quickened cannot revive and restore us!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3514

“Let not the missionary be afraid, even if for thousands of years to come there should be little apparent success to the preaching of the Gospel. If the Lord should tarry another 6,000 years, yes, sixty thousand years—and He may—we are still to go on working, still to go on laboring, looking for His coming and expecting it, but not relaxing our efforts because He pleases to delay it, for the Lord has sworn that all flesh shall know His Glory and you may depend upon it—there is no spot of earth that shall be left to be Satan’s dominion!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3515

“The Supernatural Grace of God has made a bed of spikes to be a bed of roses to some of the martyrs. Amidst the flames they have even leaped and sung for very joy! That was a grand saying of one of the martyr of Mary’s age, who, when he was told by Bonner that his life would be spared if he would recant, said, ‘Look here, Bishop, if I had as many lives as I have hairs on my body, I would burn as many times as that before I would bend myself down before the superstitions of Rome!’”—Volume 62, Sermon #3516

“If there are any persons in the world who must of necessity be happy, they are those who have newly found ‘peace through believing.’”—Volume 62, Sermon #3517
“The Gospel of Jesus Christ was not intended for one century or two, but for all time. ”—Volume 62, Sermon #3518

“The Holy Spirit is needed for the very least form of spiritual life and is equally necessary for its highest development. Without the Holy Spirit, we cannot go through the first gate—and without the Spirit we cannot pass the last. No man can say in his heart that Jesus is the Christ but by the Holy Spirit—much less can any man attain to the perfection which is necessary to Heaven except through the work and power of the Spirit of the living God!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3519

“How terrible must be the deathbed of a man who, after having made a profession, and perhaps preached the Gospel, has become an apostate!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3520
“The true solution of the conduct of a man who professes to be pure in mind and yet commits himself to an unholy course of life, is not that the man makes that unholy life, pure, but that his unholy living proves that his mind is not pure at all!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3521
“Our Lord Jesus Christ is a place of secure refuge for every soul that flies to Him. The moment a sinner believes in Jesus, he is safe—and continuing to believe, he remains safe in life, safe in death, safe in judgment, safe in eternity!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3522

“When in the very fact of presenting to God your sacrifice, can you account that you are losing nothing, but committing your treasure to His custody? Can you believe that the promise of God is not compromised by your parting with the earnest that gladdened your eyes?”—Volume 62, Sermon #3523

“Beloved, I infer that it is of infinitely more consequence for me to know that I love Christ than it is to know the meaning of the little horn, or the ten toes, or the four great beasts!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3524
“A man is never saved until he gets to feel something of the nearness of God, God in Christ Jesus, but yet God. Consciousness of Deity is one of the marks of salvation.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3525

“Business is rotten through and through, nowadays. The whole style of conducting your merchandise is so doubly dyed in deceit, that I should not marvel if a Christian often finds himself a loser by doing the right thing and maintaining a strict integrity! But we must sooner be losers in this way than lose our acceptance with God!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3526

“A person under a tyrannizing power who is driven to sin by fear may be far less guilty than another who is under no such constraint, but who willfully, of his own heart, chooses the evil.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3527

“Cheer up! Be of good courage, preacher of the Word. You may not find the sheep, but your Master will! Take heart, you that wait upon the Lord in prayer—you may see some of your agencies fail and success may not wait upon all your efforts, but God’s purposes must stand—He will do all His pleasure and at the last it shall be seen that not a single sheep was left for want of being sought out.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3528

“Let not the haughty, the arrogant, or the scornful of the children of men imagine that their paltry conceit can thwart God’s Covenant purpose or bring discredit on the riches of His mercy.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3529
“That name of Jesus—a name of highest heavenly Glory, a name of profound peace, a name of universal good will, a name to knit all mankind in one common brotherhood—has become, by the perversity of human nature, a by-word and a reproach!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3530

“He is the happiest man who shall have the most of God’s people lift up their hearts in prayer for him!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3531
“Jesus is not merely a Son of Man, but He is preeminently the Son of Man foretold in the prophecy of Daniel and predicted on the threshold of Paradise in the language of the first promise, ‘The Seed of the women shall bruise the serpent’s head.’”—Volume 62, Sermon #3532

“Blessed are they to whom it shall be given to enlist under the banner of Christ at this present time, who shall not be ashamed to confess Him before the sons of men, or to boldly take up His Cross and to suffer such loss and persecution as it may please His Providence to ordain for them to bear.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3533

“Oh, Beloved, the Light of Christ comes out brightest upon the Cross! Someone called it the Lighthouse of this world’s sea. So it is. This is the Lighthouse that throws its beams across the dark waters of human guilt and misery, warns men of the rocks, and guides them to the haven.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3534

“I have been inclined, lately, when I have read the papers, to interpret the term, ‘the scum of society,’ to refer to those who float on the top, for certainly there is no rank of society that could have figured more abominably in the Divorce Court, no rank of society that could have exhibited itself so detestably upon the racecourse, than the peerage of this realm! And unless God mends the manners of the Right Honorables, their names will have to be Right Abominables—the term will be more suitable to them by far!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3535

“Our first text is to be found in the Gospel according to Luke 10:44, “One thing is necessary.” This one thing, according to this passage, is faith in Christ Jesus, the sitting down at the Master’s feet, the drinking in of His Word.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3536

“May we not draw some comfort from the thought that our prayers never are intrusions? Whenever we go before God in deep distress, He is always ready to listen to our cry. Whatever grand purpose or momentous project engage His mind, He will surely be attentive to the longings of His needy suppliants.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3537

“He who can talk of the grave and of the hereafter with such intelligence, thoughtfulness, faith and strong desire as Paul did, is a man to be envied.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3538

“How gracious a thing it is on God’s part to make prayers for us! He puts them into our mouths. No one need say, “I cannot pray because I am unable to compose a sentence.” Here is a prayer [Psalms 106:4] already composed which would be suitable for the lips of anyone here present—high or low, rich or poor, saint or sinner!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3539

“Brothers and Sisters, if you wish to give your children a blessing when you die, be a blessing to them while you live! If you would make your last words worth the hearing, let your whole life be worth the seeing. It is graceful to die blessing, but let it be always consistent with the blessedness of our former life.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3540

“Let no man judge his fellow man. Above all, let no man exalt himself. He that is in his best estate, today, may be in spiritual poverty tomorrow! He who rejoices in God and walks in holy consistency may, before another sun has risen—few, though the hours of interval are—have felt his feet slide from under him and so fallen from his steadfastness as to have dishonored his God—and pierced himself through with many sorrows!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3541

“But mark, the limit of His [Jesus Christ] power is not according to the will of man, for where He does not reign by the joyful consent of His people and the mighty conquest of His love, He still exercises absolute dominion! Even the wicked are His servants! They shall be made in some way or other to subserve His glory, for He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3542

“It seems to me that the chief business of a Christian while here below is to speak on God’s behalf.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3543
“A finger never suffers without the brain participating—and no humble member of the true Church of Christ ever suffers without Christ, the glorious Head, suffering in sympathy therewith. ”—Volume 63, Sermon #3545

“It is a sign of adoption, a mark of the residence of the Spirit of God within us, if in our times of trouble we fly to our God! Soul, can you find any difficulty in doing so? Is this not one of your spiritual instincts? Then, be afraid lest you are an alien, and no true-born child, for the trueborn child seeks its Father’s face, cries out for its Father’s notice and creeps into its Father’s bosom!”—Volume 63, Sermon #3546“All the Seers whose eyes were anointed of God to look into the future, heralded the advent of a Great Prophet, a Prince and a Savior, whose claims to homage it would be alike perilous and preposterous to reject! These Prophets appeared at divers times and various places and, without any collusion they, one and all, proclaimed the same thing!”—Volume 63, Sermon #3547

“I am delighted when I have been with young Christians full of their first joy—and I earnestly pray that it will be very long before those joys are dampened, but, at the same time, it may be prudent to let them know that should those joys depart, it will be no evidence whatever that God’s love is departed, too!”—Volume 63, Sermon #3548

“Some of you may be residing in localities where there are but a few Believers meeting together. The company looks slender. Do not, I pray you, give place to despondency. You can surely worship God in sincerity and truth, though you may lack the excitement of a crowd. Perhaps you live where there are so few that you can hardly assemble a congregation. Why think yourself denied the privilege of communion with Christ because there are only one or two gathered together in His name? Some of the happiest days Believers have ever known have been alone with Christ!”—Volume 63, Sermon #3549

“Were it the fashion for people to carry brains in their heads, some religions which are now very rife would soon come to an end! I have stood aghast with wonder and with awe at the sublime folly of mankind, when I have seen how eagerly and devoutly they will bow down before baubles and street shows, while they vainly imagine that they are worshipping God!”—Volume 63, Sermon #3550

“The happiest condition of a Christian out of Heaven is to live in the conscious enjoyment of the Presence of the Lord Jesus. When the love of Christ is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit, the Believer need not envy an angel his harp of gold!”—Volume 63, Sermon #3552
“Do not suppose that Jesus is less human than you are, yourselves—He is fully human. Do not imagine that He is less tender than you would be towards the weak and suffering—He is full of tenderness.”—Volume 63, Sermon #3553
“The most wonderful thing in all this Book of wonders [Bible] is this—that God should become Man and then, as Man, should bear the sin of His people.”—Volume 63, Sermon #3554
“The rest that comes of pardoned sin is sweet, but the rest that comes of conqueredsin through obedience is sweeter still.”—Volume 63, Sermon #3555

“There are many points and particulars in which the Gospel is offensive to human nature and revolting to the pride of the creature. It was not intended to please man. How can we attribute such a purpose to God? Why should He devise a Gospel to suit the whims of our poor fallen human nature? He intended to save men, but He never intended to gratify their depraved tastes.”—Volume 63, Sermon #3556

““Observe all Divine Grace must come from Him. Rain comes from God. He rains it. Every drop of Grace comes from Heaven. You, Sinner, can never get any Grace unless He gives it you!”—Volume 63, Sermon #3557
“Abide at the Cross, Beloved—there is no air so healthy and quickening as that which is breathed there!”—Volume 63, Sermon #3558
“That rock-hewn cell in the garden sanctified every part of God’s acre where saints lie buried. Instead of longing to live till Christ comes, as some do, we might rather pray to have fellowship with Jesus in His death and burial.”—Volume 63, Sermon #3559
“Happy the man who believes in Jesus, for he becomes at once a contented man. Not only does he find rest in Christ, but joy and gladness, peace and abiding satisfaction are the portion of his lot.”—Volume 63, Sermon #3560

“‘As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live’ (Ezekiel 33:11). And whoever of the whole human race, penitent for past sin, will turn to Jesus, the Savior of sinners, he shall find in Him pardon for the past and Grace for the future!”—Volume 63, Sermon #3561

“Those saints of God who appear to you to be favored with perpetual sunshine could tell you quite another tale. Some whom God highly honors in public, He often deeply humbles in private. He has a way of taking His children behind the door and making them see some of the abominations within them, while at the same time He is giving them to see the beauties of Christ and enabling them to feed on Him.”—Volume 63, Sermon #3562

“We of mortal race were proved, tried and condemned long ago. It is not possible, now, for us to have the blessedness of uncorrupted innocence. And yet, thank God, blessedness is still possible to us, sinners though we are!”—Volume 63, Sermon #3563
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“Oh, it is grand praying when our mouth is full of God’s Words, for there is no word that can prevail with Him like His own!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3484
“When the Countess of Huntingdon said to Whitfield, ‘What makes you look so sad, Mr. Whitfield?’ he replied, “Oh, I may well look sad, for I am lost.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘Mr. Whitfield, I am so glad, for Jesus Christ came to seek and save that which was lost.’”—Volume 61, Sermon #3475
“Above all things, Christian fellowship is the chief auxiliary of Christian joy. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3406

“Beware of superficial religion! I think if I might only say two things before I die, one out of the two would be— beware of surface godliness Take care of the paint, the tinsel, the varnish, the oil! There must be in us a hungering and a thirsting after righteousness! There must be in us the broken heart and the contrite spirit. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3390

“I tremble when I hear of a man’s giving up, one by one, the vital principles of the Gospel and boasting of his liberality! I hear him say, ‘These are my views, but others have a right to their views, also.’”—Volume 59, Sermon #3381

“Was there ever such a tender heart elsewhere as that which glowed in the Master’s bosom and gleamed from His loving eyes? He was a mass of love! He was Love performing and Love suffering. Love made Him live as He did and love made Him die as He did! And love still pervades His Nature—now that He lives on high, still loving the sons of men. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3429

“It is not possible that any one of us should be acquitted on the ground of our not being guilty, for we must all confess that we have broken the Law of God thousands of times!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3488
“The Christian has no right to have anything to do for which he cannot ask God’s help.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3445

“Oh, Brothers and Sisters, you can have no thought—it is impossible you should—of the depth of the Savior’s sufferings! [On the Cross.] The Greek liturgy, when it speaks of Christ’s sufferings as, “Your unknown sufferings,” has just hit the mark. They were unknown—unknown to us and unknown, also, perhaps, to lost souls in Hell, so dire and so extreme were they!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3471

“Brothers and Sisters, our Lord Jesus Christ would have us to know that we have not a High Priest who cannot be touched with a feeling of our infirmities. He would have us be certain that He, Himself, was tempted in all points like as we are. With equal certainty would He have us to know that the chosen twelve, the leaders of His host who went forth from Him, were men of like passions with ourselves. We are not to look upon them as though they were unapproachable heroes, a sort of Divine character, or as though they were free from our infirmities and our troubles. They were as we are—and if they excelled us it was by Divine strength, alone, by strength which we also may receive—by Grace which is as free to us as it was to them.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3384

“It is a theory held by some persons of skeptical minds that the only benefit of prayer is the good it does to us…Oh, do they think us such idiots that we would go on speaking in a keyhole with nobody to hear us? Do they think us brought so low—so destitute of wit—that we think it worth our while to speak out what is in our heart if God does not hear and does not answer? I reckon prayer to be the most idiotic of all occupations unless there is really a God to hear and a God to answer! And the benefit of prayer is not in itself so much as in the full confidence that it is a real thing and an effective thing—that God does hear and does interpose on our behalf!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3399

“The Atonement of Christ is not a new idea—it is an old determination of the Most High and it is no close secret! God has published it—set it forth. By His Prophets in His Word—by His preachers in all your streets—God has set forth Christ to be the Propitiation for human sin!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3488

“The actions of the Christian—I do not claim perfection for them, but I do claim that the true Christian strives after perfection in his actions, that he seeks after it, yes, and that, as a rule, he comes nearer to it than his enemies would allow, or than even his own reflections, when he is examining himself, would permit him to believe!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3521

“Well now, the place of a lost sinner is the place of darkness. Outer darkness will be his eternal place, and darkness is his present state—his natural condition—as the Apostle said, ‘We were sometimes darkness.’”—Volume 61, Sermon #3471
“I would rather see the whole stock of my sermons in a blaze, all burned to ashes, than that they should keep anybody from reading the Bible. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3406

“When the Spirit of God comes to deal with a man, if all the devils in Hell and all the sinners on earth should laugh around him all day long, it would only drive the shafts deeper into his soul!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3373
“Oh, it is a sweet thing, though, perhaps, you may, some of you, think it a hard thing—it is a sweet thing when God enables you to leave tomorrow with Him and to depend upon your Father who is in Heaven!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3362
“I like revivals—far be it from me to ever say a word against them—but I have seen scores of men jump into religion just as men jump into a bath—and then jump out, again, just as quickly because they have not felt their deep need of Christ. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3390
“The power which rendered the Gospel saving in the olden times was not Paul’s logic, or Apollo’s eloquence—the saving power lay in the Holy Spirit accompanying the Divine Truth.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3518
“…when I trust the blood of Jesus, my sin is all forgiven me in one moment. When I humbly rely upon my Savior’s finished work, ‘Though sins were as scarlet, they become as wool; though they were red like crimson, they are whiter than snow.’”—Volume 61, Sermon #3488
“It was only when Christ bowed His head in the agonies of death that man knew there was a gate to Paradise! I mean not that the saints did not know it, but they only knew that this was the gate, that it was the dying Savior who was the road to Heaven.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3471

“Religion is not to be stowed away in the dark attic of the brain. Christianity is a heartreligion, and if you cannot say, from the very depths of your being, ‘Christ is all,’ you have neither part nor lot in the blessings and privileges of the Gospel—and your end will be destruction, everlasting banishment from the Presence of the Lord!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3446

“Understand me, my dear Brothers and Sisters, Jesus Christ loved you, and He tells you the Father Himself loved you before the foundation of the world! He did not begin to love you after you loved Him. Is that a new Truth of God to you? That is the Doctrine of Election.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3430

“Thrice happy they who hear the pure Truth of Jesus Christ, even though it is spoken in a rough manner and in a style that has no enchantments for the soft lovers of rhetoric and elocution!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3365

“Brother, there is no reason why, if you have gone very far in sin, you should not go equally far in usefulness! On the contrary, there is a reason why you shoulddo so, for it is a rule of Grace that to whom much is forgiven, the same loves much—and much love leads to much service.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3367

“When your faith lays its hand upon the dear head of the Redeemer—what if I say upon the horns of the altar of His Sacrifice—then is your soul secure and nothing can destroy it!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3522

“We do not expect men, when they speak frequently, so to speak that every particle of what they say may be correct. We admit them to be fallible—we always make some allowance for some slips of the tongue. But all through these thousands of years in which God spoke of Christ and of the Gospel Kingdom, there never was a single trifling word that was not fulfilled!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3396

“A great deal is said about the usefulness of education and I suppose that no intelligent person would say a word against it. The more education the better, but it is outrageous to suppose that education, even carried to the highest degree, will necessarily better a man! A man may be all the worse for education unless the spiritual part of his nature is educated.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3471

“Beginners in the way of Grace, it is a great and solemn Truth of God that every child of God will hold on until the end, but it is an equally solemn Truth that many who profess to be the Lord’s, are self-deceivers and will turn out apostates, after all!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3520

If I might have a perfect righteousness of my own, I would not—I would sooner have my Lord’s, for my righteousness, were it perfect, were but the righteousness of a man—but His is the righteousness of God and man, God-Man! Oh, it is not merely immaculate and complete—it overflows with merit!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3488

“There is a living unity between Christ and His people, as between the husband and the wife, as between the branch and the stem. We are one with Him by vital union. Have you realized this, Believer? Do you seek to live as one that is one with Jesus? Do you try to act as one that has learned His unity to the heavenly One, to the Second Adam? It is so. If you have believed, you are one with Him!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3429“If I am living in such a state that I cannot ask God to carry out for me the enterprises I have embarked in, and entirely rely on His Providence for the issues, then what I cannot ask Him to do for me, neither have I any right to do for myself!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3445

“Beloved, long for no joy but that which the Holy Spirit gives you! Thank God for the comforts of this life, but do not let them become your idols, as they will be if they become your exceeding joy. Draw from the upper fountains, fill your pitcher at the eternal springs—ask neither for the cinnamon nor camphor of this world’s gardens, but let your chief spices be the fruit of the Spirit which are joy and peace through believing!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3341

“I would have perfect orthodoxy in my head if I could, but I know even if I had that, an unhallowed life would render it of little service to me. But could I have a clean heart, other things would come with it and from it, for the pure in heart shall see God!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3521

“Understand that you cannot save yourself—that you have no right to be saved—that if saved, it will be by His Sovereign Grace—therefore, cry humbly, but oh, note the value of the blessing you need and, therefore, pray earnestly! Do not let Him go except He blesses you. Rob yourself of sleep, Sinner, rather than rob your soul of Christ!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3490

“Oh, my Brothers and Sisters, it needs an angel to set forth the Person of the Lord Jesus, and yet an angel might fail, for an angel was never washed in the Savior’s blood and never redeemed from wrath by Jesus the Substitute!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3382

“The only place of light in the world is where the Cross beams. All other systems have tried, but they have only increased the darkness. Mohammedanism was, for a time, a great improvement on anything that went before it, but what is it now? What is its teaching and what is its influence upon man now? It is “evil, only evil, and that continually.””—Volume 61, Sermon #3471

“It is said that the working classes do not attend places of worship because we do not dress ourselves in white, and blue, and green, and I do not know what other colors besides—in fine because we do not make fools of ourselves! It is said that people will not come to hear us because of this, but our Lord Jesus Christ never put on anything like a priestly vestment in His life.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3410

“Believer, Jesus Christ’s spiritual and most real Presence is with you! This should greatly comfort you because it is the Presence of One whom you dearly love and who reciprocates that affection with an accord so intimate that every hope or fear you feel is reflected in His breast.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3447

“It is not possible for you to shut the door so quickly as to shut out temptations to sin!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3347

“Child of God, if you happen to be in the dark just now, do not think that some strange thing has happened to you! Your Master went through the darkness. He fought upon the Cross and triumphed, but remember that the Savior’s triumph was on the Cros, and yours will be there too! You will suffer, and your triumph will be in suffering. You must expect to earn the victory in death. It shall be when you bow the head and give up the ghost that you shall have your, “It is finished!” on your lips, and enter into glory won! Expect the darkness if you have it, wonder not at it, but cheerfully wait until the Light of God shall come!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3471

“Go, servant of Christ, go where God sends you! There are some prepared of God to receive you. In the most barren country there are some pieces of soil that, like oases, are abundantly fertile! In any company of the most depraved of men there are some hearts made willing by God who will receive the Gospel at once! We must never think, if God sends us upon what looks like hard ground, that it is as hard as it looks! It is our unbelief that is hard. If we conquer that, shall be surprised to find that God has cleared the way for us and, perhaps, where we looked to find no friend, there shall be a chosen 12 who will be glad to receive us!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3518

“We live by faith, and if that faith is weak, bless God that weak faith is faith and that weak faith is true faith!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3489

“There is no such thing as a Lord’s Supper with the bread, alone, nor with the cup, alone, nor with the bread and wine mingled! They must both be distinct. Without shedding of blood there is no remission of sin. And until the blood has been poured forth, the flesh still remains and retains its life. But put the two, distinctly, and you get the idea of death as clearly as you can have it.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3338

“None make such mighty Christians and such fervent preachers as those who are lifted up from the lowest depths of sin and washed and purified through the blood of Jesus Christ!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3367
“The enemies of Christ are very many. The Church is very feeble, yes, she is like a reed shaken by the wind. Without her Lord, she is less than nothing—like chaff in the whirlwind!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3427

“…—‘For God so loved the world’—so much and no more—‘that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ The work of Christ thus begins and ends with, ‘ Whoever believes on Him.’ If you believe not, dying as you are, the death of Christ has nothing to do with you except to plunge you into yet deeper despair! It is only to the man who believes, that the blood is applied!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3522 Do not harbor the idea that the further you go, the less will you have of enjoyment in religion. Oh, no! It has deep draughts of great bliss! The shallow draughts will sustain, but oh, it is sacred intoxication with the love of Christ which brings the highest joy and the most Divine mirth!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3396

“I do not know that I have ever more tenderly felt the Presence of Jesus than when, while my heart has been broken with a sense of my own worthlessness and insignificance, I have confidently fled for refuge to the Hope that is set before me in the finished Sacrifice and the perfect Redemption that Christ has accomplished.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3447

“Alas, for the Church when she is satisfied with an increase of one or two during a year! Ah, miserable Church that shall be content if the pool of Baptism is never stirred by those that profess their faith in Jesus or if at the sacramental Table there should be no fresh visitors at the feast of love! Ah, miserable state of religion in which the Churches shall think this to be their fit and proper condition and shall say they are comfortable while the world is perishing and none cares for souls!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3365

“There is much mischief done in believing that we are to follow the promises of Scripture apart from the Law of God!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3473

“No one place is a bit more sacred than another…It is nothing but a relic of Judaism, or a result of Roman Catholic superstition, to suppose that there are specially holy places constructed of bricks and mortar, or consecrated stones. Your bedroom, where you bow the knee, may be as near the gate of Heaven as the grand cathedral along whose vaulted roofs the music of song has resounded for centuries!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3522

“But I hear somebody in the corner saying, ‘It is no use my thinking of seeking Christ, I am too poor.’ Oh, my dear Friend, your mistake, indeed, is a strange one, for did not Jesus say, ‘To the poor the Gospel is preached’? I’ll be bound to say you are not poorer than the Savior, Himself, for He said, ‘Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but I, the Son of Man, have not where to lay My head.’ Gold and silver have no value in His Kingdom! The poorest is as wealthy as the wealthiest if He comes to Christ!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3490

“That eternal Love of God, by which we were first chosen, was the same Love which sent the Savior to redeem the chosen. It was that Grace from which all Covenant mercies spring—the ancient wellhead of distinguishing Grace—which brought the Savior here!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3380

“No, my Brothers and Sisters, of all the preachers that ever lived, none ever preached on the wrath of God in such terrible terms as Jesus Christ, Himself! Though He was full of tenderness and full of love, yet you hear Him speak of the worm that never dies, and of the fire that never shall be quenched! He loved men’s souls too well to make them think that sin was a trifle.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3410

“You may depend upon it, there is no sound bottom to a man’s religion unless he begins with a broken heart. And that religion that does not begin with a deep sense of sin, and a thorough heartbreaking conviction, is a repentance that will have to be repented of before long. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3390

“No matter what your wealth, if you have not Christ, you are miserably poor—but with Christ, you are rich to all eternity!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3446
“The Divine Presence and the Divine hand, mysteriously hidden though they are, from all mortal eyes, are discerned by such as live in fellowship with God, for ‘the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him.’ ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3428

“I have often heard expressions from the pulpit and read them in books which led me to infer that every fallen man has got not only something good in him, but some strong principle almost akin to the Divine! I believe in the fall of man and I believe that to be total—and that conscienceis a power which has fallen with all the rest, and that there does not exist in the world a pure conscience—except so far as God has purified it by the work of his Spirit.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3521

“It is not great faith that is essential to salvation, but faith that links the soul to Christ, and that soul is, therefore, saved!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3489

“Speak of the disinterestedness that has made men heroes from the mere love of their fellow men? What had Christ to gain? Oh, you lamps of Heaven, what had He to gain? Your splendor was enough for Him! What could He win but shame, disgrace, abuse, the spit on His face and the scourging on His shoulders?”—Volume 59, Sermon #3382
“Without Christ your religion is dead, corrupt, a stench, a nuisance before God—a thing of abhorrence—for where there is no Christ there is no life in any devotion, nothing in it for God to see that can possibly please Him.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3472

“When the Believer feels that Grace is at a very low ebb with him, let him take care that he does not resort to Sinai for the refreshment of his evidences.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3397
“In looking back, I cannot remember any day in my whole life that was at all comparable to the day in which I looked to Him and was lightened.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3517

“The hypocrite and self-righteous need have no tenderness shown towards them Caresses would but nourish their conceit. The Savior addresses them with loathing threats—‘Woe unto you, Scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites!’ What indignant epithets does He use! With what utter contempt does He assail them, calling them, ‘fools, and blind,’ ‘serpents, and a generation of vipers!’ Yes, ‘whitewashed sepulchers,’ and I know not what besides!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3491

“Oh, there is no talk with Christ so sweet as that which He gives His people when they walk up the bleak side of the hill with Him, with the snow blowing in their teeth! Then He covers them with the mantle of His love and lets His soul out in springs of love, comfort and delight to them!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3373

“That God should be good to creatures is something to be thankful for, but that He should be good to sinfulcreaturesexhibits His Character in a far more marvelous light and should compel our gratitude beyond all degree. ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3448
“He that sows [the word of God] is responsible for the sowing, not for the reaping. If he does what his Master bids him, it is his Master’s work to take care of the precious Seed and make it spring up—not the servant’s.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3518

“It is a great sorrow not to see our families growing up in piety and advancing in holiness—a great grief not to see our Churches making steady progress—and a heavy trouble, most of all, not to see our own hearts growing in love and other Divine Graces, and so going onward towards ripe maturity of blessed character.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3356

“You moral people without Christ, you are lost as much as the immoral! You rich and respectable people, without Christ, you will be as surely damned as the prostitute that walks the streets at midnight.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3472
“The only salvation that is worth being our own is that which is God’s. ‘I will rejoice in Your salvation.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3362

“The Lord send such seasons to any of you who are backsliding! May He come to you now and knock at the door of your heart! Oh, open to Him and bid Him come in, for ,there is no power on earth that can revive a decaying heart like the coming of Christ afresh by renewed communion!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3427

“Instead of mourning so much that your faith is not strong, bless God that you have any faith at all, for if He sees that you despise the faith He has given you, it may be long before He gives you more. Prize that little, and when He sees that you are so glad and thankful for that little, then will He multiply it and increase it, and your faith shall mount even to the full assurance of faith!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3489

“And there is some one Truth of God, perhaps, my Brother, about which you have a little Light of God, a little more Light than your neighbors. Do not hide the Light of God! God does not ever light a lamp to put it under a bushel. If you have received, either by experience or research, any special Light which is peculiar to you—spread it that it may be, as it should be, the common property of the Church of God, to the Glory of God!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3355

“Brothers. I believe you cannot preach of God without some men making mischief of it, even of just so simple a Truth as His Mercy. But when you come to His Sovereignty—a deep that can never be fathomed—how many have been drowned in it! I believe we ought to speak about it. I am not of those who say we should be silent upon it, but how many have been drowned in those deeps, willfully, because they have said, ‘Who has resisted His will? Why does He find fault? If it is to be, it is to be. If it will be, it will be.’”—Volume 62, Sermon #3521

“When men wish to speak of brightness they talk of the stars. They who are righteous are as the stars and they that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars forever and ever!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3343

“Beloved Brothers and Sisters, make your Covenant if you like, and fast if you please, and pray if you can without ceasing—the more you pray the better. But when a soul is hungry, it will not recover itself by bodily exercises, but by feeding!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3397“Without Christ, though you should heap up your charitable donations, endow your almshouses and hospitals, yes, though you should give your bodies to be burned, no merit would be imputed to you! All these things would profit you nothing! Without Christ, even if you might be raised on the wings of flaming zeal, or pursue your eager course with the enthusiasm of a martyr, you shall yet prove to be but the slave of your own passion and the victim of your own folly!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3472

“I want, dear Brother and Sisters, to leave this impression in your minds, that in the great business of life, whatever it is, while we do not sit still and fold our hands for lack of work, yet God works in us to will and to do of His own good pleasure.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3445
“It is a rule with Christ never to do for us what we can do for ourselves.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3491
“We cannot save a soul and are powerless apart from the Spirit of God, yet wherever the Spirit of God is, He fills men with energy! He makes them earnest and intensely earnest.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3518

“Dear Friend, never forget that God does not deal with you as an individual— He deals with you as in Christ. If you stood as an individual, you would perish, for you will be sure to fall. You are so weak and frail and apt to sin, that with the best resolutions and intentions, you would be sure to turn aside and, therefore, the blessed Father has put you in a safer place—He has put you in Christ!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3429

“Self-righteousness is the natural religion of every degraded heart. Only the Spirit of God can make a man really receive and acknowledge the Truth of God.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3408

“Alas, Brothers and Sisters, we often stop short in our self-examinations just when they might be of use to us, like the patient who tears off the plaster just when it begins to work, or ceases to receive the medicine precisely when it has reached a point in which it would be useful!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3391 “…the raw material for a great saint is often a great sinner.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3410

“The spirit of the Broad School robs us of everything like certainty. I should like to ask some great men of that order whether they believe that anything is taught in the Scriptures which it would be worthwhile for a person to die for—and whether the martyrs were not great fools for laying down their lives for mere opinions which might be right or might be wrong?”—Volume 59, Sermon #3381

“Do not get the idea that a certain quantity of Bible reading, particular times spent in repeating prayers, regular attendance at a place of worship and the systematic contribution of a guinea or so to the support of public worship and private charities will ensure the salvation of your souls! No, you must be born-again! And that you cannot be, for it is not possible that you could have been born-again if you are still living without Christ!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3472

“I do not doubt that there are many who are now depending for eternal life upon having gone to the ‘Sacrament of the Mass,’ and are expecting to enter Heaven because they have reposed their confidence in a man who was arrogant enough to call himself the exclusive priest of God. God save us from having our understanding defiled, for it must be before it can submit to the belief of such superstition as this!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3521

“Not all the devils in Hell could quench the feeblest spark of Grace that ever dropped into the heart of man! If God has given you faith as a grain of mustard seed, it will defy all earth and Hell, all time and eternity ever to destroy it!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3489
“Every sin-sick soul may have Christ, but as for you who are Pharisees and trusting in yourselves that you are righteous—if you know nothing about sin, you can know nothing about Christ. The way to be saved is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3446

“I think I may honestly and humbly say that I do try to speak as plainly as any man can speak—and care nothing about mighty fine words—and yet I do not doubt but that scores come into this house and go out of it, saying, “Well, I do not understand it!” How could they? They are under the power of sin which makes the plainest truth perplexing, and hides from their eyes that which the merest babe in Grace can plainly see!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3366

“When they prop you up with pillows, when they stand weeping round your expiring form, when the pulse grows faint and few, when you have to lift the veil and stand disembodied before the dreadful eyes of an angry God, how will you do without Christ?”—Volume 61, Sermon #3472

“Those of us who cannot preach with our mouths would do well to preach with our lives—which is the very best kind of preaching.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3335
“Jesus Christ…is a Sanctuary! He is the Holy Place of His people’s worship! Treasure that up! You may worship God anywhere if you get with Christ, but if you forget Christ, you can worship nowhere! ‘No man comes unto the Father but by Me,’ says Christ. You can never have an acceptable worship of the Most High except through Jesus Christ!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3522

“I have noticed that though the disciples often heard Christ preach, they never said, ‘Lord, teach us how to preach’—but when they heard Him pray—you recollect the passages—‘As He was praying in a certain place, the disciples said to Him, Lord, teach us how to pray.’”—Volume 61,
Sermon #3491

“Never, I pray you, think that men can understand the goodness of God till they see Christ Jesus! When they see Him Crucified, they discover how He pardons sin, but not till an Atonement is made—how He puts away the transgression, but not till His Law is fulfilled and made honorable by the suffering of the Only-Begotten.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3448

“I consider the confession of sins to a priest most degrading to that priest. To make his ear the common sewer of all the filth of a parish is horrible—and for any man to tell his sin at all to another is depraving to his own mind. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3428

“If there were but one, I would be glad. When God gives us scores we will be glad, and glad, and yet glad again! I went home very weary one day with seeing so many. The second day there were still more and I was more weary! I would like to die with such weariness, for it is such blessed work—this work of bringing in souls that are of the Lord’s planting, and of the Lord’s ripening, to the garner of His Church. Rejoice, then! Rejoice again! Rejoice with the converts!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3517

“Many and many a time has He [God] held back His servants when they were just on the edge of the fatal precipice, when they were about to take the deadly poison which would have eternally destroyed their souls! His mercy, in some Providence which they did not understand, has interposed.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3413

“Now, remember, we never make ourselves love Christ more by flogging ourselves for not loving Him more. We come to love those better whom we love by knowingthem better, not by talking to ourselves about the duty of loving them, for love and duty, somehow or other, do not work well together.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3398

“I would God that some of you who are lamenting over the burden of your sins and are pressed down by it, would look to the Son of God pouring out His life and would trust Him, for then your sins would be gone in a moment!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3362

“I may be addressing some who are members of a newly-organized Church. Dear Brothers and Sisters, do not despise the day of small things! Rest assured that God does not save by numbers, and that results are not in the Spiritual Kingdom in proportion to numbers!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3489

“God won’t save the world without men—He will use instruments until Christ comes! And while you pray for it, pray for yourselves, that each one of you may be in earnest, for, other things being equal, God will bless that people most who work most for Him, pray most to Him, give most to Him, sacrifice most and are most obedient to His commands. God make us such!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3518

“He [Jesus] did not die for those good people who have not any sin. He had nothing to do with those good people who are so righteous that they can get to Heaven their own way. Christ died for the guilty, the lost, the worthless. He comes like a physician to the sick—like one who gives sustenance to the perishing poor. Oh, read His life, [in the Bible] for this will help you to come to Him!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3351

“God generally pays His people back in their own coin. If we sin against Him, somebody very soon sins against us—in the same way, too. ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3473
“In this world we see too much of salvation without Christ—I mean we meet with many who believe that they are saved because they have been baptized, or confirmed, or passed through the ceremonies of the church to which they belong. ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3449
“I think there is such a harmony between the feeling of Christians and the purposes of God that you and I can never tell where these two unite, or where they separate. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3428
“This is a triumph of the Gospel when men give up what they prize and when they are willing to suffer great loss in order to get rid of great sin!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3518

“It is for the Christian Church to suffer and to suffer on in confidence and in faith, and to make the world see that the anvil will outlast a thousand sets of hammers and will triumph when they are all broken to dust! You, dear Friends, especially will find it to be your wisest, as well as the most Christian course, to bear everything that is put upon you and to make no return except by being more kind and more generous than ever towards those who are most unkind to you!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3373

“What a mercy it is that Jesus Christ does not believe our actions, for they very often say, ‘Jesus, we do not love You.’”—Volume 60, Sermon #3398

“If your conversion is an instance of the preacher’s power, you need to be converted again! If your salvation is the result of your own power, it is a miserable deception from which may you be delivered! Every man who is saved must be operated upon by the might of God the Holy Spirit—every jot and tittle of true regeneration is the Spirit’s work!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3367

“The proper study of mankind is God, but in order to get to God one must know something about man!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3491

“Are we indifferent, or are incredulous, or what manner of men are we that one can talk and another can listen to so startling a fact, to so astounding a revelation without a thrilling emotion, a faltering tongue and tingling ears? Throughout eternity this will be a ceaseless wonder in Heaven, that the Creator should stoop to bear the creature’s sin will never cease to be a mystery of Mercy that challenges endless admiration! ”—Volume 62, Sermon #3523

“Know yourself and you are on the road to knowing Christ, for the knowledge of self will humble you, will make you feel your need of Jesus and may, in the hands of God the Holy Spirit, lead you to the finding of the Savior!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3391

“To meditate upon the attributes of God is one means of seeking knowledge, but to be conformed to His image is quite another way of understanding Him. Not till God makes you like Himself can you know what He is! In proportion, then, as we grow in Grace, and bring forth the fruits of the Spirit more abundantly, we shall be more and more admitted into the secret of the Lord. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3428

“Though it was so costly a provision, it was the most suitable that could be devised! Who else could have borne our sins but God? No mere man could possibly have stood as the substitute for millions of the human race! He might, if innocent, himself, suffer for one, and so save one, but unless Deity should lend its unutterable perfections, it was not possible for human nature to sustain the weight of human guilt!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3523

“Do all things for Christ, but let the stimulating motive be that Christ has done all things for you! There is not even a little thing that is for you to do to complete the work of Christ.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3445

“I shudder as the procession passes before my mind’s eye, of ministers, deacons, Elders and influential professors, who have gone through that backdoor. What to say, I know not. My soul is bowed down. “O God, I had gone there myself, had You not delivered me!” I think you must all feel the same if you know anything of the corruptions of your own heart. Even you, my venerable Brothers and Sisters, who have been preserved so many years in the wilderness, if it were not for the Grace of God, you, too, concerning faith, had made shipwreck—and so have perished, even in the harbor’s mouth!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3474

“It really seems as if men would suffer anything for their sins rather than give them up. It is not always the pleasure of sin which seems to fascinate, but the very bitterness of sin seems sweet to some.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3494

“It was for the love of His enemies, the love of those who hated and despised Him and nailed Him to the Cross—it was for this transcendent, unparalleled love that Christ came to earth! He deserves to be great and I am sure that if you do not think that Jesus Christ is great, it is because you do not know Him.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3382

“We ought not to give sleep to our eyes until we have asked to be taught of God! To be ignorant about the things of ordinary daily life is not wisdom, but to be ignorant about eternal life is stark madness!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3348
“Praise the Grace that has held you till now! Keep in remembrance the patience of God in enduring with you, the power of God in restraining you, the love of God in instructing you, and the goodness of God in keeping you to this day.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3347
“All the history of an elect child of God, even before conversion, will be found to be full of traces of the preventing goodness of the Lord.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3413

“Oh, believe me, my heart is full when I think of sinners saved by simply telling the story of the Cross! This is a joy that the miser does not know of when he gloats over his treasure—a joy which the warrior knows not of, even when he rides in triumph through the streets—a joy which earth could not produce—from all her mines and all her fountains—the joy of bringing souls to Jesus Christ, their Savior!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3517
“Try yourselves constantly and ask the Lord to search you, and come afresh to the blood of Jesus lest you should be mistaken! There was an Apostle who turned out to be a Judas—many a minister has been a deceiver! Many a Church member and many a Church officer, too, has been nothing but a whitewashed sepulcher full of bones and rottenness! Take care, dear Hearer, lest your lot should be the same. ”—Volume 59, Sermon #3337

“When a man’s highest motive is himself, what a dark and selfish nature he has! But when his highest motive is his God, what brightness of light will shine upon all.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3391
“It is a grand thing for a Christian to be like a pillar of iron against evil, but it is a mark of reprobation to become like an iron pillar against God and against His Truth—and some men do become such.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3366

“I can never forget my mother’s teaching. On a Sunday night, when we were at home, she would have us around the table and explain the Scriptures as we read, and then pray—and one night she left an impression on my mind that never will be erased, when she said, ‘I have told you, my dear children, the way of salvation, and if you perish you will perish justly. I shall have to say, “Amen,” to your condemnation if you are condemned.’ And I could not bear that! Anybody else might say, ‘Amen,’ but not my mother!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3489

“The world has its popular music—why should not we stir up some soul-inspiring melodies? Soldiers go to battle with martial airs—let us go to our battle with the songs of Zion! When the sailors are tugging and pulling at the rope and weighing the anchor, they send up a cheery shout and they work better for it, too. Christian Friends, while you work, lighten the toil with sacred song! Serve God with gladness!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3474

“You may whet your appetite for logic, but you cannot, with your heart, believe unto righteousness while you occupy your thoughts, your tongues, or your pens wrangling about Calvinism and Arminianism, sublapsarianism and supra-lapsarianism, or any of the endless controversies of the schoolmen and sectarians! ”—Volume 62, Sermon #3524

“I love the high Doctrines of the Covenant of Grace, I must confess, most devoutly and devotedly. But of this I am quite certain, that all the counsels of the Father concerning His people, and all the benefits He has conferred on His people were bestowed in the Person of His Well-Beloved Son! Still, I know of no greater pest under Heaven than high Doctrine preached or believed in as an abstract system of divinity or a blind fatalism by those who have not their heart set upon the One Mediator whom God appointed, the blessed Redeemer whom He has accepted as our Representative. ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3448

“…any man who supposes that Christ did not love His people before the world began, or that He will not love them when the world has ceased to be, may well hear Jesus say, ‘Have I been so long with you, and yet have you not known me, My Friend Arminius?’”—Volume 60, Sermon #3430

“This is just the way with men, willful, wayward, headstrong—but when they get the Grace of God, they bend their shoulders to Christ’s yoke and they become tame and gentle. Because they are happy in God’s love, they are patient in the ills of this life. ”—Volume 62, Sermon #3525

“The Lord can save any man, woman or child and He can save me! Jesus Christ of Nazareth is mighty to save and I will rely on Him. If any poor heart shall reason thus, its logic will be sound and unanswerable. Mercy to one is an argument for mercy to another, for there is no difference, but the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3367

“Oh, if the devil would come in the shape of a devil, he would do little mischief, but he assumes the fashion of an angel of light, and there it is that he causes us so much sin and sorrow.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3495

“Better to go to Heaven doubting, than to Hell presuming! Better to enter into life crippled and maimed, than having two eyes and hands, and feet, to be cast into the destroying fire! We cannot say too much in praise of assurance—and we cannot speak too much against presumption. Dread that! Shun it with all your might!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3362 A gospel with no Gospel has great power of dispersion, but it has little power of attraction—but the Gospel of Jesus Christ soon draws a multitude together and, “the right hand of the Lord is exalted.””—Volume 59, Sermon #3361

“If faith is the eye of the soul, without which we cannot see our Lord savingly, surely love is the very heart of the soul and there is no spiritual life if love is absent! I will not say that love is the first Grace, for faithfirst discovers that Christ loves us, and then we love Him because He first loved us.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3524
“Temporal mercies betoken the freeness of the Divine bounty, but they are never bestowed as the earnest of God’s special love. Such inferior gifts He often lavishes in abundance upon those who are not His people. Spiritual blessings He reserves for His own redeemed, regenerate family! Their value is enhanced by their significance, because they are proofs of His eternal love towards us.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3474

“Oh, that we might always recognize that Christ is the Temple of God, and Christ is the Sacrifice!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3496

“Brothers and Sisters, it is very, very delightful to think that if I preach a sermon for Christ it is accepted, but I want you to think that if you housewives are about the house, doing your business there for your husband and children, you are just as much accepted there as I am when I am preaching! That Prayer Meeting was very acceptable. Yes, and I know how acceptable it was when you sat up that night with a sick man. It was done for Jesus’ sake. The man who addresses thousands is accepted, but he that sits down and talks, even to a little child, is just as much accepted, and accepted in the same way too, for it is only ‘in the Beloved’ that either the big or the little can be at all!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3429

“I know Jesus was very sad when on earth, but yet I have sometimes thought that of all the men that ever lived, Jesus was the happiest Man, even in His sorrows, for it is not possible for a heart to be so full of love to others—to be so benevolent—and not to be happy! To love makes even suffering, in a certain sense, sweets for the object of loves. ‘The joy that was set before Him’ made our Savior ‘endure the Cross,’ but not with a common endurance. He so endured it that He ‘despised the shame’ and though it was shame, and it broke His health, yet it was shame on which, in the majesty of His love, He trampled with a sacred joy!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3517

“Salvation is of Free Grace, and is, from the very necessity of its nature, gratis. You cannot merit it! You cannot earn it! It is not of the will of man, nor of blood, nor of birth, but, ‘He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy, and He will have compassion on whom He will have compassion.’”—Volume 61, Sermon #3449

“ The Father delights in youand looks upon you with doting love—like as a father takes pleasure in his child, so does He rejoice over you. And Jesus delights in you. He saw in you the recompense of His agonies, the purchase of His blood, the partakers of His Glory. And the Holy Spirit delights in you. He has formed your heart anew and made you a temple for Him to dwell in and, therefore, He watches you with jealous care.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3474

“I will mention some valuable guards of life and character. One is the habit of secret prayer. Private prayer should be regularly offered, at least in the morning and in the evening. We cannot do without set seasons for drawing near to God. To look into the face of man without having first seen the face of God is very dangerous—to go out into the world without locking up the heart and giving God the key is to leave it open to all sorts of spiritual vagrants!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3381

“‘Do you love Me?’ Why, the question means, Are you a Christian? Are you a disciple? Are you saved? For if any man loves wife, or child, or house more than Christ, he is not worthy of Him! Christ must have from every one of His disciples, the heart’s warmest affection! And where that is not freely accorded, depend upon it, there is no true faith and, consequently, no salvation, no spiritual life.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3524

“Do you recognize your mission, dear Friends? Do we all understand it?—that, as truly as Christ was the Messenger of the Father, so every Believer is the messenger of Christ! You are sent into this world to do an errand, not for yourselves, but for Your Master! Are You doing it?”—Volume 62, Sermon #3499

“Now, instead of going roundabout to find preparations for Christ by way of reformation, come to Him as you are, for He will give you all the fitness that you think you ought to bring. He has got it all. Christ did not come to save the righteous, but sinners, just as a physician does not present himself to heal those who are whole, but to heal those who are sick.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3413

“Now the most of this I daresay is not applicable to the most of you. You know I have been thinking, while preaching, that you might say I had not been preaching except to some one or two that were here. Well, I will tell you my excuse. ‘What man of you, if he has an hundred sheep, if he loses one, does not leave the ninety and nine, and go after that which is gone astray?’ After that ‘gone-astray one’ I have gone! And my Master, too! Amen.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3525

“Do not be afraid of rejoicing in that Doctrine of the safety of the saints. Depend upon it, though some have used it to their own destruction and their end shall be terrible for having perverted the Truth of God to make it a cloak for sin, yet the children of God have always found that when they are most happy they can be most active! When they feel most safe they are most grateful and when they are most grateful they are most courageous and the most self-sacrificing! Do not be afraid of knowing that you are safe in Christ, for if your thoughts are troubled about your eternal security, you will not be able to give the integrity of your manhood and womanhood to the cause of God.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3356

“God is never indifferent towards sin. If, therefore, a man is not in a state in which God can justify him, he is in a state in which God must condemn him! If you are not just before God, you are condemned at this very moment. You are not executed, it is true, but the condemnation has gone forth against you and the sign that it is so is your unbelief, for, ‘He that believes not is condemned already, because he has not believed on the Son of God.’”—Volume 60, Sermon #3392

“It takes as much Divine Energy to make a saint as to create a world and, therefore, God rejoices in every one of His elect as being the work of His hands—the very choice design of His heart.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3474
“No man shall go to Heaven while he lives in and favors any one sin. A man may sin and be saved, but he cannot love sin and be saved. ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3449
“Surely, Brothers and Sisters, we would not wince so much at our afflictions if we did but know the Master better! From the hand of the Lord we would accept them, and we would bow to the will of the Lord in bearing them.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3430

“I am afraid that the most of us do not pray as we should, but if we want to prevail, like Jacob, we must remember that Jacob wrestled with the Angel and then he prevailed. Weeping, which reveals the soul’s wrestling, will often do what nothing else can in bringing us great benedictions.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3373

“You imagine that you love Christ. Have you fed His lambs? Have you fed His sheep? Have you given that proof which our Savior imperatively requires of you? What are you doing for Him now? It is poor love that spends itself in professions and never comes to any practical result!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3524

“That harvest which does not come of plowing is one which will never fill a barn—and that salvation which does not come from a sense of sin will never come to much.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3504
“All Christ belongs to each one of God’s people! You have got a burden to yourself, but you have also got God to yourself—think of that!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3355

“The best book of Church history from which to gather ritual, true ritual, is the Acts of the Apostles. And when the Christian Church shall go back to that, instead of enquiring about what the primitive Christians did in the second or third century, she will come much nearer to the knowledge of what she ought to do!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3411

“Christian, delight yourself in the Lord, and you shall have the desire of your heart!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3474

“Come to Christ. Bring nothing with you. Come as you are, empty-handed, penniless and poor. The rivers of milk and wells of wine are all with Him. He is the banquet giver, and the Banquet, too. To trust Him is to live. To look to Him, alone, for salvation is to find salvation in that look!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3449

“For your Master’s work, you must be prepared to forsake all and yield yourself up to Him unreservedly! You are not true to Christ, nor fit to put your hand to His plow, if you pull that hand back because it involves any sacrifice, however heavy. ”—Volume 62, Sermon #3526

“If it should ever be your wretched lot to be a member of a Church that has been distracted by schism and discord, you will confess that, perhaps of all things in Christian experience, there is nothing that humbles the soul more, nothing that wounds the heart more and that does more mischief to the inner life than personal jealousies and the party divisions they occasion!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3365

“It is clear that in times of trouble godly men and women are at a premium!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3340
“‘Groans that cannot be uttered’ are prayers that cannot be refused! There may be most strength in the passionof the soul when there is least order in the expressionof the soul.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3500

“As for you who do not love my Lord and Master, what can I do but pray for you, that His great love may now overcome your ignorance and aversion—until, having first been loved of Him, you love Him in return? Jesus Christ would have you trust Him! Faith is the first Grace you need. Oh, come and depend upon Him who did hang upon the Cross! When you rest in Him, your soul is saved and, being saved, it shall become your constant joy to love Him who loved you and gave Himself for you! Amen.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3524

“Perhaps you are doing a little, but can you not do more? Is there not some fresh thing that you can do for Jesus? Can you not get new crowns for His head, Beloved? Let us give Him fresh praise and if there is any fresh branch of usefulness, any new mode of serving Him which we have not yet tried, let us ask for Grace to try it now!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3474
“There is no possibility of your having an everlasting life here. You don’t desire it if you are Christians! Neither could you have it if you did desire it—a time will come when you must depart.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3414

“They say that we speak dreadful things about the wrath to come, but I am sure that we understate the case. What must the tender, loving, gracious Jesus have meant by the words, ‘Gather the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them’”?”—Volume 60, Sermon #3393

“I think I saw the other day in a window, concerning a certain statesman whom I love to honor, that he would be a better statesman if he were a worse man. I think not so, but still David, if he had been a better man, would have been a worse Psalmist, for even the faults of his character, inasmuch as they bring him down to our poor level, qualify him to write according to the feelings of our hearts and the emotions of our spirits.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3431

“The true way in which to come to Christ is to believe Him, to trust Him. If any man trusts in Christ to save him, he has come to Him!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3351

“The Church needs some few conspicuous specimens of self-denying holiness, and perhaps those few, like standard-bearers lifting up the ensign, would attract many others—and the Church might lift herself up from the low level of our poor, weak, beggarly profession! We might then serve Jesus a little after the manner that He deserves to be served, and surrender ourselves to Him more after the fashion of His surrendering Himself for us!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3526

“Brothers and Sisters, the very best work which we ever do on earth is to adore. You are blessed in prayer, but you are seven times blessed in praise!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3501
“Oh, it is delightful to think of going up yonder if for nothing else than knowing more of Christ understanding more of Divine Love, drinking deeper into the mystery of godliness through which God was manifest in the flesh!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3412

“One Doctrine of God’s Word balances another. He who is altogether and only a Calvinist probably only knows half the Truth of God, but he who is willing to take the other side, as far as it is true, and to believe all he finds in the Word of God, will get the whole pearl. ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3449

“I have no doubt that there are many professors of religion who are living without the Law of God. I mean that they are living reputable, respectable Christian lives and they, themselves, believe they are converted, but they are alive without the Law. That is, there is mingled with their faith in Christ some sort of trust in themselves.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3475

“Speaking personally, my happiest times are spent with my Brothers and Sisters in Christ in the high festivals, when the multitude keep holy day. Draw a circle around my pulpit and you have hit upon the spot where I am nearest Heaven!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3341

“They who hate Christ very soon hate God. They get rid of the Christ of the Gospel, and they soon get rid of God out of Creation, too, and there is no coming to the Father in any way or fashion except by Christ. He has gone to the Father, but He is also the way to the Father!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3510

“One-heartedness in a Christian is a great point. “Unite my heart to fear Your name” is a prayer which every Christian should always pray. “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” A double-hearted Christian—what shall I say of him? He is like the eye which when it is single, fills the body with light, but if it has lost its singleness, it causes the body to be in darkness—and if the light that is in us is darkness, how great is that darkness! ”—Volume 62, Sermon #3527

“Household devotion and the pulpit are, under God, the stone walls of Protestantism! And my prayer is that these may not be broken down.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3381

“We may often smile and sing about death, and long for evening to approach, that we may rest with God, but it is at the same time a most solemn thing. The best way to deal with it is to die daily, to go down to Jordan’s brink and bathe every morning in that death stream, till death shall be as familiar as life, till you shall come to think of it with daily expectation!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3414

“They have called the Master of the house, Beelzebub! What, now, can they call the men of His household? They must find some lighter name for us! Be encouraged then, you feeble bands of trembling Christians, encouraged in all your sufferings and griefs for Christ’s sake, for as He yet rose from the dead and led captivity captive, even so shall the feeblest of His followers!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3431

“Dear Brothers, those of us who believe that we are called to be ministers for Christ are, above all the rest of the Church, bound to devote ourselves to one thing. “This one thing I do.” If other men have two things to do, we, by our call and office, if we are not liars in professing to be of God, and traitors to our office, are bound to do but one thing—and that is to free ourselves from the blood of all men that we may stand before God as His honest servants.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3527

“If I knew that someone was about to defraud you of your estate, and that unless you were diligent about it you would lose all your property, I think I should say to you, ‘Bestir yourself.’ If I knew that some deadly disease had begun to prey on your constitution and that, if neglected, it would soon gain an ascendancy with which it were hard to grapple, I think I would say, ‘Go to the physician. Do not delay, for bodily health is very precious.’ But, dear Friend, if your estate is precious, much more your soul! And if the health of this poor clay ought to be looked to, much more the welfare of your soul—the welfare of your soul forever!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3450

“There is one thing that adoration does—it helps us to see—and when you close your eyes in adoration, you see more than when you have them open in any other way!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3501

“The joys of this life with which God blesses us ought to make us increase in Grace and gratitude, ought to be a sufficient motive for the very highest form of consecration, but, as a rule, we are only driven to Christ by a storm—the most of us, I mean. There are blessed and favored exceptions, but most of us need the rod, must have it and do not seem to learn obedience except through chastening—the chastening of the Lord!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3368

“Oh, that when our days below come to a close, when we hear the Master’s call and feel the symptoms of approaching death, we may not be dismayed or frightened! God grant that we may take leave of this mortal life with peaceful confidence and holy calm! Should our exit be slow and painful, may we be steadfast in faith and full of patience! Or should it be otherwise, sudden and unexpected, may we be no less prepared and ready!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3526

“There is no sharper instrument with which to lance the soul than the broken Law of God! There is no harrow that can tear the soul like that harrow of the Ten Commandments. There is no arrow that can go forth and slay the soul’s self-satisfaction as God’s Commandments do when we see that they are holy, just, good—and that we have broken every one of them—broken them a thousand times, and that every breach of the Law is calling out for vengeance against us!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3475

“We are nothing without Christ—but with Him we are full of honor. Oh, to be among those by whom the world is preserved, the excellent of the earth in whom the saints delight! God forbid we should be among the base and worthless tares!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3393
“In the agonies of Jesus, in the shame and spitting, in the woes and anguish that He endured, we read the sinfulness of sin, written as in capital letters, that even the half-blind might see! Oh, Sin, murderer of Christ, you are ‘exceedingly sinful!’”—Volume 59, Sermon #3374

“If, indeed, God has made such a Covenant with me, then I am saved. I rest upon Christ whom God has said He has set forth to be a Covenant for the people—a Leader and Commander to the people. My dear Friends, are you all trusting in Christ alone? Is He all your salvation? Is He all your desire? I think that is one of the ways by which to discover the true sons of Zion from those that are not so, by seeing whether Christ is all their salvation!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3356

“As you love God, He will certainly deliver you from all the powers of earth and Hell.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3433

“Do you need any promise fuller than that which the Bible has in it now, or any invitation more gracious than that which the Gospel gives to you now? ‘Today is the accepted time: today is the day of salvation.’ I pray you, my lingering Friend, linger no longer! Oh, how I wish I could put my hands in yours and lead you to the Savior! But I cannot. I will, however, pray Him to lead you this very night!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3450

“To be afraid to die must be because we do not understand it, for if Believers know that to die is but to enter into the arms of Jesus Christ, surely they will be able to sing bravely!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3362

“They are never likely to seek a Savior while they are in this condition, for until a man’s mind is thoroughly made up that he must be saved by Christ or perish, he will never go to Christ. A divided heart about our personal condition before God is a deadly sign.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3527

“I wish some persons could have much clearer notions than they have about who it is that saves. If salvation comes of man—well, say so! And if sinners save themselves by all manner of means, give them the credit, the glory, the praise of it! But if it is God who saves, then let Him have the sole and perfect honor for it! ‘Salvation is of the Lord.” Sinner, you should not try to save yourself! You cannot do it! If you could, why did Christ come to save you? Your salvation does not rest in your hands. ‘It is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy.’”—Volume 59, Sermon #3366
“None keep the law so well as those who do not hope to be saved by it, but who, renouncing all confidence in their own works, and accepting the righteousness which is of God by faith in Christ Jesus, are moved by gratitude to a height of consecration and a purity of obedience which mere legalism can never know!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3502

“Man in all matters of religion and in all his dealings with God, is proud, but it is amazing how apparently humble men will be when they worship false gods. They will cut themselves with knives and roll themselves in the mire. We have known some votaries to kneel before the representation of the Virgin Mary and lick the very pavement with their tongues by way of penance—and perform the most degrading rites in honor of their false gods.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3369

“From the first moment in which sin is pardoned, to the last moment in which we are here on earth, it should always be our delight to sing to our Well-Beloved a song.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3476
“God’s zeal will not leave a single jot or tittle of the Covenant of His Grace unfulfilled. He has lifted His hand. He has sworn by Himself that Christ shall see of the travail of His soul—and the zeal of God will carry this out.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3432
“When Sovereign Grace has renewed and changed them, you may easily distinguish the Lord’s sheep from the world’s goats. ”—Volume 62, Sermon #3528

“Here is a man next door to a worm and yet next door to God—born but yesterday and yet his existence will go on perpetually with God, for man shall not die! So momentous, and yet so insignificant! So magnificent, and yet so minute is the measure of my days!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3414

“It seems to us that its simplicity is a part of its grandeur—that it is more God-like, to give us a Gospel which can be spoken in few words by simple men, than to give us something involved and intertwisted—the meaning of which we would never be able to guess!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3451

“When people say, ‘It is quite enough for me go be wearied with the sermons of the Sunday. I do not want to go out to Prayer Meetings, lectures and so forth’—then it is clear that they have no appetite for the Word of God—and surely this is a bad sign. If you have a bit of wall built to protect the Sunday, and then six times the distance left without a fence, I believe that Satan’s cattle will get in and do no end of mischief!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3381

“It does not seem that even with Christ for a Teacher, we would learn much without the Holy Spirit. The greatest blessing, after all, is not the bodily Presence of the Savior, though we learn something from that, but it is the indwelling and the teaching of the Holy Spirit which we most of all need!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3510

“I am so glad to hear as a regular thing that the departed ones from my own dear Church have such joy in being harvested. Glory be to God, our people die well!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3393
“There is such a thing as thanks feeling—feeling thankful—and this ought to be the general, universal spirit of the Christian.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3476

“You know how apt the legal preacher is to whip his hearers with—“Do this!” And, “Do that.” You know how certain Calvinists whip their hearers with, “If you have felt this,” and, “If you have experienced that,” you may be saved. But the Lord Himself always makes His people, when they come fully to confide in Him, to lie down in a good fold and to feed in a fat pasture!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3528

“Some think it is a simple work to preach, and child’s play to sit and listen. When the great trumpet peals and the dead are awakened, they will think very differently! They will reckon that speech was never put to so noble a purpose as when it was used to bring men to reconciliation with their Maker, and that ears were never used to so good an end as when they were used attentively to hear what God the Lord would speak when He would bid the rebel come to Him and find mercy!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3357

“…we thank God that we have a simple Gospel to preach to you, because there are so many in this world who need saving quite as much as the wisest, but who could not be saved if the Gospel were not simple.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3451
“It is a faith which producesworks which saves us. The works do not save us. And a faith which doesnotproduce works is a faith that will only deceive—and cannot lead us into Heaven. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3434

“Is there ever a day in the year, or ever a moment in the day, in which the Christian ought not to be grateful?”—Volume 61, Sermon #3476“When a congregation hears the Word and tramples it under foot, what marvel if God takes the candlestick out of the place in His anger? But does He break the candlestick? No, He moves it to another place! Others get the benefit of the Light which those despised had it aforetime. Great God of Wonders, we bless You that even when Your anger burns, Your mercy brightly shines. Amidst the thunder and the storm, soft showers are rained in silver drops to make glad the earth!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3529

“All your iniquities shall be forgiven you—though you have blasphemed and have even committed murder, there is pardon for you if you hate those sins and leave them—and Christ will help you to hate them if you trust Him! He will give you Grace to quit them, but if you hug those sins, you may prate about faith in Christ, and you may lie about experience in Grace, but to such things as real faith and true experience, you are and must be utter strangers unless sin, with stern resolution, is given up—not so much as one sin hugged, or indulged, or loved. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3415

“So let the Church of God always feel that she has never come to the place where she can say, ‘Rest and be thankful.’ ‘Higher, higher, higher, higher,’ must still be her motto! If her missions have conquered one continent, they must invade another! If half the world has been converted, there would be no rest to us till the other half were converted likewise. ‘It is done as You have commanded, and still there is room—room for more work, because there is room for more guests at Your feast.’”—Volume 62, Sermon #3529

“Humility is sober thinking. Pride is drunken thinking. He who thinks more of himself than he should, is intoxicated with conceit—but he that judges aright and is, therefore, humble—thinks soberly. God give us to be very sober in our thoughts of ourselves.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3517

“Obedience is not perceived until it is tried, and faith is not known to be firm and strong until it is put to the test and exercised.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3344

“In the matter of service, it is not for us to allot you your work, but what can you do? Now, what will you do tonight? ‘Oh, give me till the morning,’ says one. No! No! We have not an hour that we can afford to waste! Let us serve God today—we will leave tomorrow to care for itself. Now is the accepted time for service, as well as salvation!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3355

“How some of you would spring up from your seats tonight if all of a sudden you got the information that you had been condemned by the courts of your country! But when I say that you have been condemned by the Court of Heaven, this glides across your conscience like drops of water, or oil over a marble slab!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3392

“We may say of this Doctrine of the Cross, as David did of Goliath’s sword, ‘There is none like it. It is suitable in all places, wherever we may be found.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3451
“I do not know a more miserable spirit than an envious one! Nothing can be more un-Christian than to be angry with my fellow man because he happens to have more of outward good, and of inward excellence, too, perhaps, than I may happen to have.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3375
“We must preach in the street, or at the market, or on the village green! We must take the Word to the people, if they will not come to the Word.“Go out, go out,” says the Savior. This is a word that should ring loudly in the ears of many Christians.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3529

“We have heard some very wise people say that prayer is no doubt beneficial to those who offer it, but to suppose that it has any effect upon the mind of God is absurd. Do you not see, Brothers and Sisters, that they think us all idiots! They must do so, for do you suppose that any but an idiot would go on praying at all if he did not believe that it had some effect upon the mind of God and that it prevailed with God?”—Volume 62, Sermon #3510

“If any of you are ready to give up your Sunday school work, or whatever it is you are engaged in, oh, say not so! God is so zealous that He will not let the good cause fail.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3432
“If you pray that you may not grieve the Spirit of God, nor cause Him to depart from you, your daily anxiety shall bring its results and you shall be happy.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3348
“The most of the persons whom the Lord Jesus thought upon in the days of His flesh were unknown to fame and, for my part, I judge that the happiest persons are those who pass through life unknown of men, but known of God!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3345

“Oh, I wish that our whole life might be a Psalm—that every day might be a stanza of a mighty poem! That so from the day of our spiritual birth until we enter Heaven we might be pouring forth sacred minstrelsy in every thought, word and action of our lives. Let us give Him thankfulness and thanks-living.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3476
“If a man likes to laugh, and wishes to scoff, he can find folly in Infinite Wisdom. No, he can, if he has eyes that are full enough of lies, discover faults even in the Immaculate God, Himself!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3530

“When your faculties shall have been expanded to the heavenly size [in Heaven] and you shall be elevated to become the peer of the angelic host, even then you shall feel that the love of God surpasses your powers of knowledge and comprehension!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3339
“Alas, there are always men who can excuse their sins by the sins of God’s people. They eat up the sins of God’s people as they eat up bread—they make a sweet morsel of it!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3415
“Nothing is known of God till we know Him by experience—nothing that is of value. All that the ear learns of God from another’s teaching is shallow and superficial. Your heart must know God by its own deep communing.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3433

“A Christian cursing is a very awkward spectacle. Even the Pope, when he takes to cursing, as at least the former one used to do very liberally, seems as if he could hardly be the vicar of God on earth! Our work is to bless the sons of men. ‘Bless and curse not.’”—Volume 62, Sermon #3517

“The prayer of the Apostles is a suitable prayer for ministers, ‘Lord increase our faith,’ for if our faith is not increased, we cannot expect that the faith of the multitude will be!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3452
“The lowest of the low, when hearing the Word, often accept what the so-called respectable despise.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3529

“We don’t sing enough, my Brothers and Sisters! How often do I stir you up about the matter of prayer, but perhaps I might be just as earnest about the matter of praise! Do we sing as much as the birds do? Yet what have birds to sing about, compared with us? Do you think we sing as much as the angels do? Yet they were never redeemed by the blood of Christ!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3476

“I have never regretted—and I never shall regret—the day on which I walked to the little river Lark, in Cambridgeshire, and was there buried with Christ in Baptism! In this I acted contrary to the opinions of all my friends whom I respected and esteemed—but as I had read the Greek Testament for myself, I felt bound to be immersed upon the profession of my faith, and so I was. By that act I said to the world, ‘I am dead to you, and buried to you in Christ , and I hope henceforth to live in newness of life.’”—Volume 59, Sermon #3381

“Enoch, also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied concerning the coming of the Lord. And his prophecy, though, very early, was so clear that the Jew, who almost closes the Book of Inspiration, quotes it—feeling, I suppose, that he could not use words mode expressive than those which came from that ancient Prophet. ”—Volume 62, Sermon #3531

“God makes the preacher whom He sends to be the source of so much good, or the channel of so much good, for by his preaching comes the hearing, and by the hearing comes the believing—and out of the believing come the calling upon the name and the salvation!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3522

“Our death will cause no jar in our life-music! It will involve no pause, or even discord—it is part of a program—the crowning of our whole history!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3393
“Brothers and Sisters, be much in the sacred and holy palace of gratitude! You cannot have anything that will more strengthen you for service than holy thankfulness to God for His favors.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3366
“It is wrong to tell a man he must repent before he may trust Christ, but it is right to tell him that, having trusted Christ, it is not possible for him to remain impenitent. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3434

“I prayed for you just now—the Lord knows how sincerely I prayed—that we might all meet in Heaven. We never shall, unless we all believe in Jesus, for He is the one Door—if we will not enter by Him, we cannot enter—there is no stealing or climbing our way there.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3351

“If unbelief raises difficulties, ‘The Lord is risen’ is the cure for them all!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3452
“What time you are afraid of dying, trust in the living Savior, for in Him are life and immortality!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3362

“I pray God for this Church, that she may not be found guilty at the coming of Christ of not having gone out after the poor. Encourage them to come to this house at all times, whenever you can. I do not know where we are to put any more, but there is Thursday evening, and there is Monday evening, and there is room then. Oh, bring in whomever you can, for perhaps when the Gospel is preached, God may bless it to them. Let us not be deficient in this.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3529

“There are some who save a little corner for something else besides Christ. Beloved, it must come to this—if you and I are ever saved, that Christ as He is revealed in the Covenant of Grace must be all our salvation! He must be made unto us of God, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption! Christ is ALL!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3356

“Oh, if a minister gets to Heaven, it will be a wonder! His responsibilities are so great. ‘Who is sufficient for these things?’ It will be a marvelous display of mercy if any of us shall be able to say at last, ‘I am clear of the blood of all men,’ for we have not only our own blood, but the blood of others to look to in this matter.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3531

“If you have to put up with far less money, yet if you have an opportunity of hearing the Gospel, and mixing with God’s people, be not in a haste to throw away your golden privileges for the sake of those poor brazen gains which are pitiful in comparison with spiritual wealth!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3375

“I believe that a Christian minister had better, once and for all, as soon as ever he sets out earnestly preaching the Gospel, make up his mind to give up his reputation. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3415

“God has chosen unto Himself a people. We are told that their number is a number that no man can number. Well now, those who are saved are not so very many. They are a great many more than some bigots would like to believe, but they are a great many fewer than some enthusiasts would imagine!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3529

“If you are not saved, you will have to live forever in misery! Can you understand that? You are endowed with an immortality from which it is impossible for you to escape! In that respect, by that wondrous gift, God has put you on an elevated position and I pray that you may look at it as such—may, by His Grace, not fling yourselves away, nor trifle with yourselves, nor do the devil’s bidding—but seek Him who has promised in His Word, that they that seek Him shall find Him!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3346

“We may sometimes thank God not only by feeling thankfulness and living thankfulness, and speaking our thanks, but by that silent blessing of Him which consists in patient suffering and accepting the evil as well as the good from Jehovah’s hand. That is often better thanksgiving than the noblest Psalm that the tongue could utter. To bow down before Him and say, ‘Not my will, but Yours be done,’ is to render Him a homage equal to the hallelujahs of cherubim and seraphim. To feel not only resigned, but acquiescent—willing to be anything or nothing according as the Lord would have it—this is in truth to sing to our Well-Beloved a song!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3476

“The Christian’s life is a life of dependence upon God. He always has to go to Him. There is never an hour in which he could do without his God.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3433
“‘Christ is risen’ is the cure for wounded affections when the wound rankles through unbelief. ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3452

“There will always be those who, not caring to enjoy, themselves, the blessings of the Great Shepherd’s reign, will sneer at all those who would. Let us accept their sneers as the only tribute they can render to Christ, and as true a proof of His excellence and His glory as the admiration of His followers!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3394

“Questions will be asked tonight by some, ‘When will that day come?’ to which I would answer, it were better for us to be prepared for it, come when it may, than to be anxious to fix its date! We can give you no information, because ‘of that day and of that hour knows no man—no, not even the angels of Heaven.’”—Volume 62, Sermon #3531

“If you want an image of human nature, you will find it in the rottenness of Lazarus when he had been dead four days! The Gospel comes to give life to the dead! It comes to deal out everlasting life to those who have lost it and could never have obtained it except as a gift from Heaven. Now, is not this humbling to the high looks of men?”—Volume 59, Sermon #3369

“You hear much about the free will of man. Hear a little about the free will of God! You would think, from the talk of some, that God was man’s debtor and must do according to the will of man. But it is not so. He is a Sovereign, and gives His Grace to whom He chooses, and He would have us know that it is according to the good pleasure of His will.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3525

“It is said of Luther that he never feared any man and yet he declares that he never preached a sermon without his knees knocking together because he trembled lest he should be guilty of the blood of any of his hearers.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3357
“Dare to be different! Resolve to keep close to Christ! Make a stern determination to permit nothing in your life, however gainful or pleasurable, if it would dishonor the name of Jesus!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3381

“And I shall close that list by saying in that day God will have no mercy for false professors. He will have no mercy upon preachers who could talk glibly, but whose lives were not consistent with their own teaching. What a condemnation shall await me if I am not found in Christ after having preached so continuously to so many thousands! Oh, whatever a man shall be in Hell, may God grant he may never be an unfaithful minister of Christ, condemned out of his own mouth!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3531

“I know there are hundreds and thousands of people in this country who would be greatly troubled in their minds if they did not go to church or chapel twice on Sundays—and they get comfort in this because their conscience is dead!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3454

“The swan is said to sing her dying song—a myth, I doubt not, but the Christian is God’s swan, and he sings sweetest at the last. Like old Simeon, he becomes a poet at the last and pours out his soul before God! And I would we each desired, if we are spared to old age, to let our last days be perfumed with thanksgiving, and to bless and magnify the Lord, while yet we linger where mortal ears may hear the strain!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3476

“We eat bread and drink wine, not out of any foolish superstition that these can be transmuted into the very flesh and blood of Jesus Christ—a superstition which would be a disgrace to a Bushman—a superstition which is a disgrace to those who hold it in this enlightened land, and not a disgrace only, but a vast sin—a black delusion which is given to them that they may believe a lie—whereby they involve themselves in the doom of Hell!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3338

“If you have believed, but have never repented of your sins, then beware of your believing!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3434

“If there were time tonight, I would make an inventory of all the Truths of Scripture and say after each one, ‘If you know these things, happy are you if you do them’ [JOHN 13:17]. If you know it to be a privilege to be united with God’s people, come and join the Church! If you know that Jesus bids you be baptized and come to His Table to remember Him, I pray you be not disobedient, even to what you may think to be His least commandment!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3348

“It is the lot of those who are faithful to Christ to find even good men sometimes turning against them. But what of that? They are responsible to their Master, not to their fellow servants. Yet it is a hard thing when any come to be ashamed of you—ashamed of you, though you know that you have done right.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3531

“Hear it, then, all you people, and let everyone that hears hail the gracious fact—be you saints or sinners, be you saved already, or thirsty for the knowledge of salvation—the thought that Christ’s errand was not to aggrandize Himself, but to benefit us, must be welcome! He does not come to be served, but to serve.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3532

“Oh, I charge you, go back to that blessed day when those blind eyes were opened and when that dead heart began to feel the Divine Light! Oh, then it was you said, “He is my God.” You did not come to Him and ask Him to be your God, but He who gave Himself to you in the Eternal Covenant before the world was, in the fullness of time, gave Himself to you by His effectual Grace, making you willing to accept Him and to kiss His silver scepter! Yes, you have been changed from an enemy into a friend!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3365

“The great power of unbelief receives its antidote in the blessed and well-ascertained fact that Jesus is risen. ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3452

“This is a day in which the stern regulations of the Puritans are cast overboard and, perhaps, rightly so, some of them—but let us not go to the opposite extreme, but rather when we feel that anything comes to be a temptation to us, let us away with it and away with it without a moment’s hesitation—off with the right foot, the right foot, and out with the right eye!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3415

“Let us never think that the Gospel needs to be rendered attractive by some additions of our own! It is like a sword that cuts just as well without the diamonds in the hilt, for the cut of it lies not in the handle, but in the sword itself. The Gospel will cut and clear its own way.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3394

“Let us wake up to a sense of the dire reality of transgression—it is a frightful fact, not a foolish fancy. ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3477

“There is no freedom except in perfect subjection to the will of God! When every thought is brought into captivity to the mind of God, then every thought is free. You have heard much of the freedom of the will. There is no freedom of the will till Grace has bound the will in fetters of Divine Affection! Then is it free, and not till then.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3539
“The dying thief rejoiced to see in his day the fountain which Jesus had opened! Why should not I see it too, and have a washing from that precious One who comes to serve the vilest and the meanest of the sons of men? Behold! Behold and wonder! Behold and love! Behold and trust! Jesus comes from the right hand of God to the manger, to the Cross, to the sepulcher, not to be served, but that He might serve the sons of men!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3532

“We must grow in humility! It was remarked by an excellent Divine that growing souls think themselves nothing, but that grown saints think themselves lessthan nothing, and I suppose that when they are fully grown they fail to find language in which to express their sense of insignificance!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3369

“It is a wonderful mercy—a mercy which some of my dear Friends now present would prize very much if they could have it—it is a wonderful mercy, I say, to live in the midst of godly people! Contrast it to the living with the ungodly!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3375
“The general principles of the promises of God may be appropriated by those to whom they are appropriate.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3435

“It may be, certainly it may be, that the Lord will speedily come, but it does not seem to me at all likely that He will. We are to live anticipating His coming, as servants who know they will have to give an account when He does come. That is the practical bearing of the Doctrine upon our life, but there are many prophecies yet to be fulfilled which seem to show that He is not coming just now.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3382

“There is more history made in the closet than in the cabinet of the ministry. There is a greater power at the back of the throne than the carnal eye can see, and that power is the cry of God’s children.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3540
“In all companies, on all occasions and under all circumstances, be faithful to your Master—deny Him not, but openly avow Him before the sons of men!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3533

“It is very strange how God makes liars tell the truth. The priests do not pretend to offer you any hope, for what do they tell you? Do they ever say that these ceremonies will take you to Heaven? Not they! It seems as if God would not let Satan fabricate the lie, perfectly, for He has left a weak part in it. Where does the best believer in outward ceremonies go? Ask the priest, and he will tell you that He goes to “purgatory!’”—Volume 61, Sermon #3454

“The Jewish Rabbi, the Greek philosopher, the ecclesiastical father, and the modern theological thinker are meteors that dissolve into mist! They make void the Word of God through their traditions or their conjectures. Flee away from the nebulous forms and noxious fumes of their old traditions and new discoveries! Believe what Jesus said, His Apostles taught, and what you have had revealed to you in His own pure Word! Christ is the true Light of God! ”—Volume 62, Sermon #3534

“Not to speak of what God has done would be ingratitude. It might have a semblance of humility, but in reality it would be disloyalty to the Most High. Paul, therefore, did not hesitate to speak of his converts at Thessalonica and of their good character—and of the good fruit which they had borne and the way in which they had spread abroad the Gospel. He did not boast—he gave God the glory of it, but he did speak of what had been done.”—Volume 63, Sermon #3551

“All the way to Heaven is only two steps—the first is to step out of yourselves and the second is to step into Christ. First to have done with all that you can do and secondly, to ask for all that Christ has done.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3351
“So, aswe learn and grow in Grace, we are sure to grow in prayer! If we do not increase in prayerfulness, we may take it as a sign that we are not advancing in the Divine life. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3416

“All the saints’ praises have this about them—that they are all harmonious. I do not say that their voicesare. Here and there, there is a Brother who sings very earnestly through his nose and very often puts out the rest that are round about him! But it does not matter about the sound of the voice to the ear of man—it is the sound of the heartto the ear of God!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3476

“He loads us with benefits on the Sabbath. But then we have our Monday mercies and our Tuesday mercies, too—and right on to the close of Saturday night, the Lord continues to heap on His mercies, one after another, that He may make us feel that we shall sooner weary with thanking Him than He will weary in giving us cause for thankfulness.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3493

“‘I live in the twilight of Christianity,’ said Voltaire, and he unwittingly spoke a truth. He thought that it was the twilight of the evening, but it was the twilight of the mornin, for Jesus still shines brighter and brighter—the true Light of God before which the lamps of superstition and priestcraft must pale their ineffectual fires! This is what the Savior meant—He was the true Light.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3534“Brothers and Sisters, I commend you to the picture of the eagle fluttering and thus setting an example to its little ones. You may also see before your eyes the great Incarnate God teaching you how to mount above the trials and temptations of this mortal life and living, even on earth, a celestial life!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3335

“Find me a Christian whose conversation is full of rich savor, whose judgment is tempered with charity, one whose fervent zeal is blended with the meekness of wisdom, and I will guarantee you, as a rule, he has seen much affliction!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3435

“Wait upon God for guidance as to any change in life you may determine, and if the two things are equal—to remain where you are, or to move elsewhere—choose to stay where you are, for the chances are, speaking according to man’s judgment, in its favor. Reason seems to say that as it is unwise for the bird to wander from her nest, so it is not desirable for you to wander from your place. ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3453

“We are immortal until our work is done. And amidst infectious or contagious diseases, if we are called to go there, we may sit as easily as though in balmy air. It is not ours to preserve our life by neglecting our duty—it is better to die in service than live in idleness—better to glorify God and depart, than rot above ground in neglecting what He would have us to do!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3493

“I believe those persons who think they do not feel their need are those who do really feel their need the most. There is no sense of need so great as when a man feels that he does not feel and thinks that he does not apprehend the depth of his own need, for then he is evidently alive to his true condition!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3533

“Have you been into your prayer chamber lately, pleading with God, and have you felt as if you could not pray? We often pray best when we think that we are praying worst! When there is the most anguish, sighing and crying in prayer, there is most of the very essence of prayer.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3398

“Take heed how you hear, because it is not a little thing, nor an easy thing, to listen to the Gospel of Jesus!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3357

“Sometimes, even when prayer fails, praise will do it. It seems to gird up the loins. It pours a holy anointing oil upon the head and upon the spirit. It gives us a joy of the Lord which is always our strength. Sometimes, if you begin to sing in a dull frame, you can sing yourself up the ladder. Singing will often make the heart rise.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3476

“‘Savior, You have promised to save those that believe! I believe, therefore you have saved me!’ I know some think this is presumption, but surely it is worse than presumption not to believe God! and it is true humility to take God at His word and to believe Him.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3362

“Though we believe in the efficacy of prayer, at times we believe so feebly that when the answer comes, as come it does, we are astounded and filled with amazement! We can scarcely think of it as a purpose of God—it seems rather to us like a happy coincidence. Surely this adds greatly to the sin of unbelief!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3495

“That deep, awful solicitude which makes you fear because you do not feel, and makes you groan because you cannot grieve, is not to be despised, for it is an experience often associated with gracious operations of the Spirit of God!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3533
“And if we can copy this great High Priest of our profession who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself—if we can copy Him so as to be neither faint in our minds, nor turn from our Master’s work—we shall triumph even as He overcame!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3344
“If you love Christ, you cannot help serving Him! If you believe in Him, there is such potency in what you believe, such power in the Grace which comes with believing, that you mustserve Christ! And if you serve Him not, you are not His!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3434

“When experience and patience have produced in us unstaggering faith in God, what a blessed life we lead! But the unbelieving heir of Heaven, the man of little faith and little confidence in God—he is blown about by every wind and every difficulty staggers him—he is ready to weep under every trial!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3375

“We have heard of sermons being preached before this and that honorable company, but preaching sermonsbeforepeople is not God’s way! We must preach sermons atthe people, directly tothem, to show that it is not the waving of a sword in the air like a juggler’s sport, but it is the getting of the sword right into the conscience and the heart! This, I take it, is the true mission of every minister of Christ.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3455

“Never let us attempt to come to God by anything but the blood! All other ways to God, except through the blood of Jesus, are presumptuous. All other fire that we may put upon the altar, except this, is strange fire, and the Lord’s anger will go forth against us.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3395
“Our Lord Jesus Christ did not come into this world merely to be an example, or merely to reveal the Godhead to the sons of men. He came to make a Substitutionary Sacrifice. He came to give His soul as a ransom! If you do not believe this Doctrine, you do not believe Christianity. The very pith and marrow, the very sum and substance of the mission of Jesus Christ is His coming to give His life that He might stand in the place of those for whom He died.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3532

“If the Lord were pleased to give us a sign, or if He told us to ask for a sign, we would be quite right in attaching a high importance thereto, but for us to doubt a plain promise and, therefore, ask for a sign, is to sin against the Lord!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3495

“Yes, we sound it forth as with a trumpet, that wherever there is an iniquity there must be a penalty, for sin must be punished! The good order of the universe requires it! The justice of God demands it! the Book of God threatens it! The hand of God continually executes it! The supposition that because God is merciful, He will, therefore, overlook sin, is as delusive as it is dangerous! It is one of Satan’s lies.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3477

“Oh, it were a good thing to be made a shame, a blessed thing to be a butt, a jest, a jeer, a byword—if Christ were but lifted up thereby!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3382

“…the hand that drew back the black curtain that hid the face of God was always the hand of the Crucified—and whenever men came to see anything of the marvelous love and goodness of God, they always beheld it in connection with the Messiah, the Anointed One yet to come.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3436

“I am sure that the sweetness of prayer attracts and draws the Believer. Even as birds are drawn with baits towards the snare, so towards the holy exercise of prayer we are drawn by the sweet attractions it has. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3416

“And now, beloved Believer, as you first lived by receiving Grace, you can only grow in that life by still receiving it! Do not come to this table [Lord’s supper] and say, ‘What can I bring?’ No, but come and say, ‘What can I take away?’ Do not say, ‘Am I worthy? That question never ought to be asked. You are not worthy! But come, unworthy as you are, and take what Jesus has provided for unworthy sinners!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3338

“Remember the last words of the text, [1 Sam 22:2] ‘And David became a captain over them.’ Whoever, then, comes to Christ must submit to Christ’s rules. What are they? One of the first is that you should be nothing at allandthat King Jesus should be everything. Will you submit to that—that you shall have no honor, that you shall take to yourselves no credit, that you shall never lean on your own strength or wisdom—but you shall take Him to be made of God unto you wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption? I hope you will not kick at that.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3533

“God’s love to His people is not a thing of yesterday! He loved them before the world was made and He will love them when the world has ceased to be. ‘It was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.’”—Volume 62, Sermon #3531

“I think when a man remains in service at one place for only about two years, he has need to question whether he was called into the ministry at all. God does not generally plant trees in His vineyard that need shifting every two years. God’s trees are full of sap, the cedars of Lebanon which He has planted. They can stand on the bare mountain’s brow and see the ages of mortals swept away into the tomb. ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3453

“But be assured, O Sinner, that if you build your hope on any theory which denies that debt must be paid, that crime must be avenged, that sin must be punished—you are misjudging the Law of God by which you must be judged!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3477
“I think I could as soon doubt that the Deity of Christ is declared as doubt that the Baptism of Believers is enjoined, for the one thing appears to me to be as plainly revealed in Scripture as the other!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3533

“All the knowledge with which a man can cram his brain cannot secure him in his daily needs until he transfers it from his brain to his right hand and sets to work with it! If you would get God’s blessings, then, in nature or in Grace, carry out the Divine Laws into immediate and energetic practice!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3348

“There are some who are comforted much by the belief that Christ will come and they shall not die. I do not profess to be among the number. I would as soon die as not, and rather, I think, if I might have my choice, for herein would be a greater conformity to the sufferings of Christ, in actually passing through the grave and rising again, than will fall to the lot of those who do not die.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3493 “A man cannot really believe that Jesus Christ has taken away his sin by such sufferings as those of the Cross, and yet trifle with sin! A man is a liar who says, ‘I believe that yonder bleeding Savior suffered on account of my sins,’ and yet holds good fellowship with the very sins that put Christ to death!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3434

“It [faith] works by making us love Christ for what He has done for us. It works by making us love God, so that we say, “Lord, what is Your will, for we wish to submit to it”? And this makes us cheerful, happy and resigned. It works, in fact, by making us love the Lord Jesus Christ. If you do not love Jesus, then your faith is no faith, for the very sound of His name is precious to those who have true faith!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3454

“This is the cardinal virtue of philosophers—they extinguish one another! Their fine spun theories do not often survive the fleeting generation that admires them! A fresh race starts fresh theories of unbelief, which live their day, like ephemera, and then expire.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3534

“There is a wonderful power in humiliation…There is not one word in the Bible against a humble soul. There is not one curse against a sinner who feels his need and comes empty-handed! Come, poor needy one, poor helpless one, you ruined sinner, without any hope of yourself, you bankrupt sinner, come!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3369

“God never began to love His people. Before Adam fell. Before man was made, or the mountains were brought forth. Before the blue heavens were stretched abroad, there were thoughts of love in His heart towards us! He began to create, He began actually to redeem—but He never began to love. It is eternal or “everlasting” love which glows in the bosom of God towards every one of His chosen people!”—Volume 63, Sermon #3561

“Young men, members of this Church, I want you to b thoroughly initiated into this Doctrine of Redemption. Understand it clearly, and then contend for it manfully, I pray you. If once you give up this fortress, you will be exposed to the most dismal skepticism—no, you will be open to stark atheism!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3477

“No good is learned by idlers in idle company. Idle men together kindle a fire that burns like the flames of Hell.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3532

“Does the plowman plow all day for a little bit of oats or barley, and will not you plow all day for souls that shall live forever, if saved, to adore the Grace of God, or shall live forever, if unsaved, in outer darkness and woe? Oh, by the terrors of the wrath to come and the glory that is to be revealed, gird up your loins and plow all day!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3383

“We have friends who have been dazed by the light of “public opinion”—a very bright light is that. And we have known some decent scholars who have been enraptured with “the light of the 19^th Century”—a wonderful luminary, indeed, but slightly darkened by the follies, frauds and crimes which every day’s newspaper reveals! We have had the light of knowledge which lauded Aristotle, and made the heathen author supply a textbook for Christian colleges!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3534

“The ordinary wear and tear of spiritual life requires renewal. Besides that, we are often the subjects of sinful decline. Backsliding is too common a complaint among Christians. We can ascend to the top of the mountain and dwell with God, but our foot soon begins to descend. There is a gravitation towards sinfulness in the best of men. Oh, that it were not so, but we are very conscious that it is so and, therefore, we need to have the renewal. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3417

“Brothers, let us who are in the ministry, then, as far as possible, cling to our churches and to our fields of labor, remembering that ‘as a bird that wanders from her nest, so is a man that wanders from his place.’”—Volume 61, Sermon #3453
“In those times, Beloved, [Paul’s day] there must be made a distinction between men’s gospel and God’s Gospel, for nowadays man’s gospel is popular enough.”—Volume 63, Sermon #3551

“Beloved, never look man in the face till you have seen the face of God! Oh, lock up your hearts every morning by prayer and give God the key, so that no evil may get in while you are out of doors. Oh, you do not know how some members of this Church grieve us by their inconsistency! I would sooner bury you than that you should sin so as to grieve God’s Spirit and cause the enemy to blaspheme. The Lord has kept many, many of you with garments white and unspotted, but if you want our hearts to break, profess to be Christians, and then go into sin. ”—Volume 62, Sermon #3535

“If any man would see God unto perfection, let him behold yon bleeding Man! If he would see God’s love, let him behold the Son of God, Incarnate, suffering in the sinner’s place! If he would see God’s justice, let him behold the Only-Begotten of the Father, pierced with every arrow out of Heaven’s quiver, wounded in every part and particle of His spirit and His body, that He may bear the curse for guilty men!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3477
“God’s people know what perfect satisfaction means. When God reveals His love to them and Christ draws near in the fullness of His Grace, then they would not change places with all the kings of the earth!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3533

“Time may rob us of our health. The world may rob us of our wealth. Sickness may deprive us of a thousand comforts, but there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord! Our inheritance cannot be alienated—it is where neither moth nor rust can corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3365

“The heart’s blood of Jesus is, as it were, the establishment of His last will and testament. Jesus, the great Testator, has died, has made an end of sin and His blood is the great seal of His testament and makes it valid to us.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3395
“We are in a wrong state of mind if we are not in a thankful state of mind. Depend upon it, there is something wrong with you if you cannot praise God.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3493

“Money circulated is a medium of public benefit, while money hoarded is a means of private discomfort! A man is but a muckraker who is forever seeking to scrape everything to himself. A miser is bound to be miserable. Before high Heaven, he is an object to make the angels weep!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3536

“The perseverance of the Christian is not ensured by the Christian’s resolve to persevere unto the end, nor by the Christian’s own power, nor by any plans which the Christian can adopt! That perseverance is secured by the promise of Christ, by the energy of the Spirit, by the watchfulness of God and by the faithfulness of God to His own Covenant!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3375

“We call no man, master, upon earth, for One is our Master, and that One is Christ. No man is Rabbi in the Church, but He is our Rabboni, our Teacher, and all other teachers are thieves and robbers if they teach on their own authority.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3436
“A prayer without penitence is a prayer without acceptance. If no tear has fallen upon it, it is withered. You must come to God as a sinner through a Savior, but by no other way.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3340
“Those who refuse to see God in Christ, presently become callous to the evidence of the eternal power and Godhead anywhere!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3477

“It is very little to love our own relatives, though there are some who do not do even that. But to love our enemies is the mark of a true Christian—to be prepared to bear and to forbear, to endure, but never to inflict, to be reviled, but not to answer, not to rebuke, but to heap coals of fire upon the head of our foes by endeavoring to do all that we can for the good of those who do us ill. ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3454

“Oh, my Sisters and my Brothers, the best of all preaching, because the most simple and unostentatious, is to be found in the ordinary communion you hold with your fellow creatures when, with a good conversation, you avail yourselves of all the occurrences and opportunities of daily life! In your families the sweetness of your temper, the gentleness of your manners and the purity of your actions should bear witness that you have been with Jesus and learned of Him.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3534

“Oh, how we ought to love God, who has made us near!—a people near unto Him. How ought heavenly things and holy things to engross our attention! How joyously we ought to live, too, for with such high favors as these it would be ungrateful to be unhappy!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3496

“And when Paul had thus named the deed which the Savior did and labeled it with the title of, ‘the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,’ he follows it up by mentioning the heights from which the Savior descended—‘ whothough He was rich’ (2Cor: 8:9)It has been well observed that this little sentence is a clear proof that our Savior had an existence beforeHe was born into this world—that, in fact, He was Divine—for it is said that, ‘He was rich, and that He became poor.’ Now, He never was rich in this life—never!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3380

“It is not possible that the Gospel should have shined on those eyes without either giving light or increasing the blindness. I do not believe that any man has regularly sat under the sound of a Gospel ministry for three months without being either sensibly hardened or manifestly softened by it.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3357

“You aged folk—there are some such here—shall I have to remind any of you that one thing is necessary—yes, most necessary to you? Death has already put his bony palm upon your head and frozen your hair to the whiteness of that winter in which all your strength must fail, and all your beauty fade. Oh, if youhave no Savior!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3536

“I dread beyond measure that any one of us should have a name to live when we are dead, for an ordinary sinner who makes no profession may be converted, but it is extremely rare that a sinner who makes a profession of being what he is not is ever converted!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3434 “When we preach to sinners, never think that we mean the riff-raff in the streets. The Gospel, which saves a sinner, is a message from God to YOU! Think of your own sins and the evil of your own heart!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3455

“Our sorrows are not worth a thought when once compared with His! Sit down under the shadow of the Cross and you will find a cooler shade than that of a great rock in a weary land.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3395
“Beloved, the richest joy that earth and Heaven could know springs from the crystal fount of Jesus’ side! Heaven was never so glad as when He ascended up on high.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3477
“Brothers and Sisters, how assured every one of us may be of our safety if we are, indeed, Believers in Christ, for if we are made near by love and friendship to our God, He cannot leave us!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3496
“There is no going to Heaven unless you undergo a change which shall make you entirely new, and make all things entirely new to you.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3536
“Many of your doubts and fears come from unbelief, or of Satan, or of the flesh and are not of God at all! Blame Him not for what He does not send and does not wish you to suffer!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3383

“When the eagle has satisfied his hunger, he is strong again and when you and I have fed upon the Word of God—especially upon the Incarnate Word of God—when we have been privileged to eat His flesh and drink His blood, as spiritual men know how, ah, then again, our youth has been renewed!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3417

“Give us Christ and we will make no hard terms about darkness, or light! Only let us be with Him and it is enough. ‘Forever with the Lord’ is only another word for glory everlasting!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3370
“God views all men as guilty and, finding them guilty, He yet chooses unto Himself a people in whom His Grace shall be resplendent! Therefore do not conclude that He will pass you by because you are poor and needy.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3345

“The foundation stone of the Church is the Person of Christ. The Doctrine of Atonement is the interpretation of His work on the earth. If any man believes in the Atonement of Christ and trusts himself to its fact and its issues, he is a Christian. He that believes not in our Redeemer’s wondrous passion, and His complete satisfaction to the justice of God, may call himself what he likes, and assert his profession by what name he pleases—he is not a Christian!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3477

“Do not, I pray you, be content with mere reformation. Were you before a drunk, and are you now a teetotaler! Good—very good! Yet, good as it is, it will not save your soul!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3536
“The Gospel and the essence of that Gospel, which is the blood of Jesus Christ—it is this which is an Omnipotent leverage to uplift the filth, debauchery and poverty of this city into life, into light, and into holiness!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3496
“At all times of the world’s history, when things appear to have gone to pieces and Satan seems to rule the hour, do not let us despair, but be quite sure that, somehow or other, the Light of God will come out of darkness and good out of evil!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3363
“There is no living comfortably, there is no living with the peace and joy of the Holy Spirit in the heart if we at once wander from the simplicity of our confidence in Christ!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3453

Oh, how glorious a thing it is to feel, when the light air is all around me and I know that if I fall I would perish, that yet I cannot fall, for God’s wings bear me up! And to feel that though there are hosts of enemies able to destroy me if they can get at me, yet they cannot, for they must first get through God, Himself, before they can get to the weak soul who hangs upon Jesus and rests alone in Him!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3335

“All nations, with one accord, have agreed to honor ambassadors. Strange, then, that all nations and all people should have conspired to disho- nor the ambassadors ofGod!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3497

“Oh, Sirs, it is well enough to say that a Christian should be consistent, but if you are not honest in your business, how does your belief help you? It is well enough to say that a Christian should be godly, but if you are godless in your families—if family prayer is neglected and private prayer given up—what is the use of your beliefs, what the use of your perfect creeds?”—Volume 59, Sermon #3348
“If God had more gratitude from us when we are well, He would help us to continue in good health, but He knows that we need to be sick, sometimes, to make us know the value of health and, therefore, He sends us to the bed of sickness that we may learn a lesson of gratitude.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3375

“Oh, Christians, never be satisfied with being merely saved!...Saved from the deep which threatened to swallow you up, rejoice that you are preserved from death, but resolve that the life vouchsafed to you shall be active, earnest, vigorous, fruitful in every good and work!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3536

“Mere exhortations to propriety are of no avail. You may preach ever so eloquently on sobriety without rescuing a single drunk! You may eulogize chastity to the admiration of the lascivious. You may extol honesty in the midst of knaves and thieves who will praise your fair speech. Precept has no regenerative power! People do not get good by having goodness preached at them!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3477

“Deliverance from the power of sin is as much the work of God as deliverance from the guilt of sin! Where we look for justification, there must we also look for sanctification, for as we are justified through Jesus Christ, we must expect to receive sanctification from a heavenly source also.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3366

“If in doubt, this should be the test of the Doctrine—does it glorify Christ? This should be the test of all our opinions—do they glorify Christ? For nothing is fit to be within the walls of Zion but that which bows down before Zion’s King!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3436
“Disobedience of God must be punished by God with indignation that does not relent and pain that knows no abatement!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3397
“Believe me, there is no solid joy, no seraphic rapture, no hallowed peace this side of Heaven, except by living close under the shadow of the Cross, and nestling in the wounds of Jesus!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3453
“Oh, there have been a few times in my ministry when I could, with flowing eyes, beseech you to be reconciled to God, but these dry eyes of mine are not so often fountains of tears as I could wish!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3497
“Until you hear the bolts of damnation fast closed upon you, and you are shut up in Hell, doubt not the right of petition, or the prevalence of your earnest plea! There is an ear to hear in Heaven as long as there is a heart to plead on earth.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3537

“Life is nourished, not so much by bread, as by God’s decree that bread should nourish us, for, “man shall not live by bread, alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God shall man live.” So the ordinances do not feed your soul, it is God IN the ordinances! It is not the sacramental bread and wine. it is not Baptism. It is not coming up to listen to a poor mortal like ourselves. It is not even private prayer—it is God IN the prayer, God IN the preacher, God IN the ordinance, so that you not only have everything fromGod, but that which satisfies and renews you is God Himself!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3417

“Beware of the high places—they are very slippery! There is not all the enjoyment that you may think to be gathered in retirement and in ease, but, on the contrary, luxury often puffs up, and abundance makes the heart to swell with vanity! If any of you are prospered in this world, oh, watch, lest you be mindful to return to the place from where you came out. ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3478

“It is the duty of the Christian pastor, if he would make full proof of his ministry, to warn men of the results of sin—to tell them that there is a judgment—that for every idle word they speak they will have to account. We ought continually to declare that for every transgression there shall be a recompense of reward. ”—Volume 62, Sermon #3498

“The mass of mankind who pretend to be religious, suppose this Bible to be written to all sorts of good people, but not particularly to themselves. And there are they who think that the commands of Christ are very proper to be read, and to be heard, and to be proclaimed—but they do not look upon them as being binding on themselves.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3437

“In the old pictures they put a halo around the head of the saints. But, in fact, that halo encircles their hearts and penetrates every member of their bodies. The halo of disinterested consecration to Christ should not be about their brows, alone, to adorn their portraits, for it encompassed their entire being, their spirit, soul and body! It environed them, their whole being. ‘This one thing I do,’ was the slogan of early saints. Let it be your slogan.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3536

“You do not love Christ if you do not love sinners! He came into the world to seek and to save them, and if you do not try to bring them to Him, you do not know Christ! How dwells the love of God in you, if you have never cared for poor dying men? ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3454 “The coming here meant [Matthew 11:28] is coming by the mind, approaching with the heart—a thing of the inner nature, a spiritual thing! To come to Christ, then, is just this—in one word it is to accept Him as your Savior…”—Volume 59, Sermon #3352

“If you want to go back to sin, to carnality, to a love of the world, to your old condition, you never need to be prevented from doing so by lack of opportunities!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3478

“Some of my Brothers do not care to preach eternal wrath and its terrors. This is a cruel mercy, for they ruin souls by hiding from them their ruin! If they need try to sew without a needle, I cannot help it, but I do not mean to be so foolish myself! My needle may be old-fashioned, but it is sharp and when it carries with it the silken thread of the Gospel, I am sure good work is done by it!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3383

“All the burdens that may devolve upon you through the toils of life, the calamities of the world, or the visitations of Providence, cannot equal the load of sin—for this is a burden that oppresses the conscience, crushes the heart and paralyzes every faculty of the soul.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3537

“Thus, you see, in the bread and the wine, in the bread and wine separated, in the bread broken and the wine poured out, in the two emblems put on a table— and in these two being so partaken of that they become united with the fabric of our body—we set forth the whole mystery of the death of Jesus Christ to ourselves. May the Spirit of God help us to truly do this!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3338

“No big words of ready talkers, no polished periods, no gift of prayer will ever be so acceptable to the Lord Jesus Christ as the simple piety that graces the fireside, that adorns the private and the public life of the Believer. ‘You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.’ Practically to prove that Jesus Christ is your Lord is the highest service that you can, any of you, render to Him!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3437

“If we mourn our imperfections and lack of spotless holiness, our very sighing and crying are proofs of heavenly life and salvation! The heart is clean, and the course of the soul is heavenward when the heart can never be satisfied with anything short of perfect holiness.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3370

“He [God] would bring Peter to repentance and He bade a rooster to crow. It was a strange preacher, but it was as good as a dean of a cathedral to the Apostle! Means may seem to be absolutely ridiculous, yet God makes use of the things that are not, as though they were!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3498

“There have been many messages like circulars from God to us, but the Gospel, faithfully preached, is a private and personal communication.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3455

“A Negro, who was noted for his great earnestness in prayer, was once asked how it was that, whenever he prayed, he seemed to be so earnest, and he said, ‘Because I always have an errand when I go to the King! I always have an errand. I go to Him knowing that I need something, and I ask Him for it, and I stop till He gives it to me. And if He does not give it to me, I ask Him again and again, for I know what I am doing.’”—Volume 62, Sermon #3537

“Depend upon it, faith that is never tried is not faith! It must, sooner or later, be tested. God does not create useless things. He intends that the faith which He gives should have its test, and should glorify His name.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3478

“Oh, Brothers and Sisters, this world seems so little when we think of the world to come! Now, you who have been envious of the rich, you little think how soon they will be as poor as you! You who have sometimes thought how richly you were favored—think how fame is nothing but a breath—and how soon it is gone!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3346

“Next to having Christ, a real longing after Him is one of the most precious gifts of the Holy Spirit.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3339

“Oh, may it be a blessed night to some of you while you are here! Pray for it, people of God! ‘The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.’ Let your prayer go up that souls here may so hear the Word of the Gospel of salvation as being a great message from God and, therefore, may hear it with all their hearts and so listen to it that it may be salvation unto them according to the Master’s promise, ‘Incline your ears and come unto Me: hear and your souls shall live.’”—Volume 59, Sermon #3357

“Brothers and Sisters, we bless God that the day is coming whenweshallloveHimbestofa. This tenement of our body is falling away by degrees. These fetters of the flesh are rusting off. We shall soon be free and when the emancipated spirit shall see Him without a veil to hide Him, then shall our love to Him be perfected!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3398
“Do not stint yourself! Enlarge your desire! Open your mouth wide and He will fill it! He gives you carte blanche—ask for what you will! He puts it before you, ‘Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He will give you the desire of your heart.’ So may it be to us, according to our faith, and His shall be the glory!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3537

“I commend to Him in my earnest prayer some of you who are very familiar with my voice and to whom it is as useless as familiar! You will never be brought to Christ by me! I fear God will never give me your souls! For these many years have I labored for them, and they have not been given me. Well, good Master, call them by some other means, only bring then and grant that this very night their conscience may be awakened by thoughts which You, Yourself, shall suggest, and they may come to You.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3498

“What will be your eternal doom if you pass out of this world as soon you must, without being sprinkled with the blood of Christ and forgiven your iniquities? Jesus knows the terrors of the world to come! He describes the torments of Hell. He sees your danger. He warns you. He pities you—He sends His messengers to counsel you. He bids me say to the very chief of sinners, ‘Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.’ ‘Only return unto Me and confess your iniquity, and I will have mercy upon you,’ says the Lord. May God grant that the compassion of Christ may be seen in your case.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3438

“By this you shall know whether you are Christ’s or not—when you have opportunity to return[to your sin]—if you don’t return, that shall prove you are His.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3478

“But, dear Friends, since it is so desirable to be ready to depart, it cannot be inexpedient sometimes to talk about it—and on my part the more so, because there is a proneness in all our minds to start aside from that grave topic which, as God shall help us, shall be our subject this evening—preparation for the great hereafter!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3538

“You may praise the Lord, you know, by singing—and what a delightful employment that is! I sometimes wish we all knew how to sing. It is very well for us to sing our best, but that best might be a great deal better. Our Moravian friends can, nearly all of them, sing, and if you were to go to their settlement you would find all of them able to join in the sacred song. It is miserable work where there are two or three fellows in white surplices who get up to praise. God, or where there is a big machine out of which the music is brought. I suppose the Lord does have mercy upon such folly, but how there can be anything like spiritual worship coming from a box of pipes I cannot understand!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3375

“You cannot get a harvest if you are afraid of disturbing the soil, nor can you save souls if you never warn them of Hell fire. We must tell the sinner what God has revealed about sin, righteousness and judgment to come.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3383
“There must be something very rotten in the state of the man’s life who loves not some seasons of solitude. Some of us are less alone when we are alone, and most at home even when others count themselves abroad.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3493

“My having the faith which works by love implies that I am a new creature! Now some of you have been puzzling yourselves about whether you have been born-again, whether you are new creatures. Have you got the faith that works by love? If so, you are a new creature, for you never saw a man in a natural state who had faith that works by love!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3454

“My manner must be hurried and should it seem feeble, Brothers and Sisters, I cannot help it. If you get fellowship with Christ, I care little for the merits of my sermon, or the perils of your criticism. One thing, alone, I crave, “Let Him kiss us with the kisses of His mouth”—then shall my soul be well content, and so will yours be also! ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3480

“According to this Book, we are dead by nature in trespasses and sins—not some of us, but all of us—the best as well as the worst! We are all dead in trespasses and sins. Shall dead men sit at the feasts of the Eternal God? Shall there be corpses at the celestial banquets? Shall the pure air of the New Jerusalem be defiled with the putrefaction of iniquity? It must not, it cannot be. We must be quickened—we must be taken from the corruption of our old nature into the incorruption of the new nature, receiving the incorruptible Seed which lives and abides forever.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3538

“I give myself up to Christ and to Christ’s religion. I do not mind speaking upon politics when they touch upon Christianity. I do not mind helping on the common cause of philanthropy, or any work for the good of my follow men—but to no work do I give myself with my whole heart and spirit but to that of spreading abroad the knowledge of Christ’s name!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3411 “Unrepented sin is unforgivable sin. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3418

“Brothers and Sisters, the Grace of God has not come into us merely to keep us away from some few notable vices, but to deliver us altogether from the power of darkness! And if I can sometimes go into sin—just occasionally by way of pleasure—it proves that I am a stranger to the deliverance which Jesus Christ gives to His really called and regenerated people!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3366
“The ground of a Christian’s faith is not moved in the least degree by the time of his spiritual day, or the state of wealth in his experience. Could we sit forever on the top of Tabor, we would be no safer than if we were made to dwell always in the Valley of Humiliation, longing for brighter days. Christ! Christ! Christ! In Him we are safe!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3370

“The Grace of God constrains men to become Christians, but yet only constrains them consistently with the laws of their mind! The freedom of the will is as great a truth as is the Predestination of God. The Grace of God, without violating our wills, makes men willing in the day of God’s power—and they give themselves to Jesus Christ. You cannot be a Christian against your will!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3411

“I know every Christian here, if he could state his experience, would tell you that the Word of God never came with power to his soul until it came right to him as though he were the only sinner, and the Gospel were meant for him above all others.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3498

“When Mohamed would charm the world into the belief that he was the Prophet of God, the Heaven he pictured was not at all the Heaven of holiness and spirituality. His was a Heaven of unbridled sensualism, where all the passions were to be enjoyed without let or hindrance for endless years! Such a Heaven that sinful men would like—therefore, such the Heaven that Mohamed painted for them, and promised to them!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3538

“Jesus would not have them [His disciples] so spiritually-minded as to forget that the poor have flesh and blood that require sustenance—and they need to eat and to drink, to be housed and clothed—the Christian’s charity must not lie in words only, but in deeds.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3438

“Be not disheartened, my Beloved in the Lord! I tell you, whether you are able to believe it or not, that if your heart is this night cold as the center of an iceberg, yet if Christ shall come to you, your soul shall be as coals of juniper that have a most vehement flame!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3480

“The history of faith is of small importance compared with the quality of faith!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3363

“There is no Heaven for him who has not been prepared for it by a work of Grace in his soul. So necessary is this preparation—a preparation forus, and a preparation inus. And if we ever have such a preparation, beyond all question me must have it on this sideofour death. It can only be obtained in this world. The moment one breathes his last, it is all fixed and settled.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3538

“Your church attendance and your chapel attendance have only increased your responsibilities if you have rejected the Savior!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3498
“As long as God exists, the love of God shall be shed abroad in us and our hearts shall continually love Him in return.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3398

“It is not for the minister of God to smooth the stones, or pare down any of the angles of the Gospel! He should be tender as a lamb, but yet bold as a lion. It is as much as his soul is worth to keep back a single word! He may have to answer for the blood of souls if he trims in the slightest particular.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3455

“When the thief was dying, he did not say, ‘John, pray for me.’ John was there. He did not look on the mother of Christ and say, ‘Holy Virgin, pray for me.’ He might have said it. He did not turn to any of the Apostles, or the holy company that were around the Cross. He knew which way to look and, turning his dying eyes to Him who suffered on the center Cross, he had no prayer but this, ‘Lord, remember me.’ ‘Tis all you need! Pray to God, and God alone, for from Him alone must mercy come to you! ”—Volume 62, Sermon #3539

“Oh, if people did but know how simple a thing believing is, surely they would believe! Alas, they do not know it, and it becomes all the more difficult to them because in itself it is so easy! The difficulty of believing lies in there being no difficulty in it!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3383

“If you believe Him, He will tell you that He came into the world to suffer for the sins of all who trust Him—that He actually did bear all the punishment which was due from the hand of God to all the sinners who will trust in Him—and that God is so rigidly just, severely righteous, yet infinitely gracious in the pardon of those who will trust in Christ!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3352

“The pardon of a sinner is granted at once! It will be given to any of you tonight who accept it—yes, and given you in such a way that you shall never lose it! Once forgiven, you shall be forgiven forever, and none of the consequences of sin shall be visited upon you. You shall be absolved unreservedly and eternally, so that when the heavens are on a blaze, and the Great White Throne is set up, and the last great assize is held, you may stand boldly before the Judgment Seat and fear no accusation, for the forgiveness which God, Himself, vouchsafes, He will never revoke!”— “We cannot have a richer source of consolation than this, that they who have fallen asleep in Christ have not perished—they have not lost life, but they have gained the fullness of it!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3499

“‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’ The heart that is purified with the celestial flame of Divine Love is the heart that can see God!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3481

“The masses of priests are fictions, without the shadow of Divine Authority. “Purgatory,” or “Pick-Purse,” as old Latimer used to call it, is an invention for making fat larders for priests and monks! The Scriptures of the Truth of God give it no countenance. The Word of God says, “He that is holy, let him be holy still; he that is filthy, let him be filthy still.” Such as you are when death comes to you, such will judgment find you, and such will the eternal reward or the eternal punishment leave you, world without end!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3538

“He knew that we should be very forgetful—and He was moved with compassion with our forgetfulness when He instituted the blessed Supper, and we can sit around the Table and break bread, and pour forth the wine in remembrance of Him.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3438

“Now, suppose I am a great sinner. Well, let me seek to get nearer to God for that very reason, for there is great salvation provided for great sinners! I am very weak and unfit for the great service which He has imposed upon me—let me not, therefore, shun the service or shun my God, but reckon that the weaker I am, the more room there is for God to get the glory!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3407

“To have no conversions is a very dreadful thing, but to be at ease without seeing conversions is at all times more dreadful! I could bear a suspension in the increase of the Church, I think, with some degree of peace of mind if I found all the members distressed and disturbed about it!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3376

“All things considered, I know of no meditation that is likely to be more profitable than a frequent consideration of the rest which remains for the people of God.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3499

“The Lord thinks as much of one of His people as if there were nobody else for Him to think upon! Poor needy one, the Lord thinks upon you as intensely as if you were the only being now existing! The Lord is able to concentrate His whole mind upon any one point without dividing that mind—He has such an infinite capacity that each one of us may be the center of God’s thoughts—and yet He will not be forgetting any other beloved one!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3345

“To take away a heart of stone and give a heart of flesh is a miracle. Man cannot do it—if he attempts it—it shall be to his own shame and confusion. The Lord must make us anew!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3538

“Ah, there are those who will always repress anything like Divine enthusiasm and yet, mark you, the brightest ages of the Church have been those in which men consecrated to God have risen above the dictates of common prudence and have dared for Christ what others of a cooler temperament could have not dared!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3481

“It is a good old saying, “If your preaching is to go to the heart, it must come from the heart.” It must first have moved our souls before we can ever hope to move the souls of others!”—Volume 63, Sermon #3551

“Jesus Christ said, ‘I thirst,’ and in this He says to every sick girl, and every sick child, and every sick one throughout the world, ‘The Master, who is now in Heaven, but who once suffered on earth, despises not the tears of the sufferers, but has pity on them on their beds of sickness.’”—Volume 59, Sermon #3385

“The withholding of any part of a sermon which should have been delivered, should he [the preacher] refrain himself lest he offend anyone, may bring down upon him a condemnation that he knows not how to escape—and he may have throughout eternity to bewail that he had God’s message and did not deliver it!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3455

“Jesus Christ has consecrated the world by His Presence and wherever man chooses to worship, there is a house for God.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3399
“From first to last, Jesus Christ has to be the Author and the Finisher of our salvation, or it never would have been begun, and it never would have been completed!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3538

“There is no place more terrible to be lost than from the shadow of a pulpit! The more plain the Gospel, the more sure your ruin if you reject it! The more earnest the ministry that comes to you with its notes of warning and invitation, the more horrible your overthrow if your ears refuse the words of Jehovah’s love! Tonight, I pray you—and I think I speak in God’s name—cast in your lot with Christ and with God’s people!”— “Whether there will be a necessity for eating and drinking in Heaven, we will not say, for we are not told, but anyhow it is met by the text, “The Lamb that is in the midst of the Throne shall feed them”—if they need food—“and lead them to living fountains of water” if they need to drink.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3499

“Nothing will endure even the test of time, but the Spirit’s own work upon the heart and conscience! Anything that comes of man, and not of God, will as surely disappear as the smoke of the chimney when the wind blows it away, or as the hoar frost of the morning when the sun has fully risen with his fervent heat.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3439

“There is a poverty which the poets love—it dwells in a thatched cottage whose porch is overgrown with woodbine. Perhaps if the poets had rheumatism through the wind blowing through the decaying walls, they might not sing of it quite so sweetly. But in London we have a poverty that has neither porch nor woodbine—poverty that has no cottage, but a single room where scarcely the decencies of life can be preserved. Beloved, it you have to suffer from this gloom, remember that the Son of Man had not where to lay His head.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3370

“Think, Beloved, of what fitness for Heaven is. To be fit for Heaven a man must be perfect! Go, you who think you can prepare yourselves—be perfect for a day! The vanity of your own mind, the provocation of this treacherous world, and the subtle temptation of the devil would make short work of your empty pretensions! You would be blown about like chaff. Creature perfection, indeed! Was ever anything so absurd? Men have boasted of attaining it, but their very boasts have proved that they possessed it not!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3538

“I wish that some who have been professors for years had as clear a faith as the thief—but they are too often confused between Law and Gospel, works and Grace—while this poor felon trusted in nothing but the Savior and His mercy. Blessed be God for clear faith! I rejoice to see it in such a case as this, so suddenly worked and yet so perfect—so outspoken, so intelligent, so thoroughly restful!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3363

“We do not find ministers often preaching about this Eternal Purpose, but we do find the Apostle Paul often writing about it. And the saints of old were accustomed to dwell upon it with very much delight.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3439

“By your enjoyments in the past, my Brothers and Sisters—by those ravishing moments when your souls have burned within you with intense delight—ask Him to come to you again! Beseech Him to favor you tonight with this refreshment. And mark you, that prayer need not be a selfish one, for all the strength that is gained in communion with Christ will afterwards be spent in the service of Christ!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3481

“It is from the good will of God that every good thing which comes to us takes its rise. Election is according to the pleasure of His good will. He chose us because He would choose us—because He had a good will towards us. Redemption springs from that good will. What else but good will could give the Savior to such unworthy ones as we were?”—Volume 62, Sermon #3540

“Nearness to Christ is an education. Get near to Jesus and you will find that the Corpus Christi is the true college! He who knows the body of Christ has got the body of theology, the body of divinity—the true theology of the Word of God.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3456
“There is no faculty I know of that might not be cheerfully surrendered if the surrender of it would deprive us of sin!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3499

“Why, do not even some of you come merely because it is the custom to go somewhere, or because it looks respectable, as if the Lord’s own worship were to follow and honor the fashion of the day? This is all mischievous and rotten as a motive. If I did not think it were some good to me to come to worship, or that it was my duty to God to do it, do you think I would do it to please my neighbors? No! Let my neighbors please themselves! The honest, upright man in these things remembers that religion is a personalthing and that to be the mere slave of fashion and custom of others is sinful degradation!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3357

“Our preservation in that life, our growth in it and all the blessings with which God loads that life to make it blessed—all these are fruits of His good will! You cannot find a single blessing that comes to us by the way of merit. We may say of every blessing, it is according to His loving kindness and His tender mercies.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3540

“So we will say that the first essential of a truly healthy Christianity is to love Christ! And the second is to love Christ! And the third is to love Christ!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3481

“Glory be to God, the privileges of the Covenant of Grace are not only matters of hope and surmise, but they are matters of faith, conviction and assurance!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3418
“As long as a Church is satisfied to be barren, she shall be barren! But when she cries out in the anguish of her spirit, then shall Jehovah remember her. He hears the cries of His people, but when she will not cry and is at ease in desolate circumstances, then the desolation shall continue and the sorrows be multiplied!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3376

“If Divine Grace has kindled a fire in you, it is that your fellow men may burn with the same flame! If the eternal fount has filled you with living water, it is that out of the midst of you should flow rivers of living water! You are blessed that you may bless—whom have you blessed?”—Volume 59, Sermon #3367

“If you are in the mood of Thomas, perhaps you may be insisting upon some signs and wonders, as he did. Know you that the Master can give you His own sign, unfold His own wonder and bestow upon you such a blessing that your heart shall scarcely have room enough to receive it! His tenderness and His care baffle all our thoughts and expectations!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3541

“We cannot fully exhibit the spirit of Jesus Christ till we have learned that we must carry out in every place, and in every sphere, the spirit of His religion.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3399
“The blood of Jesus applied, the Presence of Jesus enjoyed, and the Love of God fully revealed—these are the causes of the bliss of the saved in Heaven!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3499
“The Truth, as we learn it in the Word of God, is most uncomplimentary to man—it rolls him in the very dust, ranks him with the worms, makes nothing of him—yes, less than nothing!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3457

“Every word which God has spoken to His people by way of promise is as true today as when it was first uttered by the Prophet who was originally sent with it. And if this world should exist through tens of thousands of years, every promise will still have the raven locks of its youth about it.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3439

“Pray often, Beloved, for sin will tempt often. Cry mightily, for Satan will tempt mightily. Innumerable snares will he place in your path—let your countless entreaties outnumber his devices. ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3482
“You are not to expect the Lord Jesus to speak with you in any other way than by the written Word applied to the soul by the Holy Spirit. Look for no new revelation! Drive out the very idea as deceptive!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3336

“Think not lightly of sin and its punishment, lest you come to think lightly of Christ and what He suffered to redeem you from your guilt! The cry, ‘I thirst,’ is part of the Substitutionary work which Christ performed when He thirsted, because, otherwise, sinners would have thirsted forever and have been denied all the pleasure, joy and peace of Heaven.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3385

“As you cut that loaf of bread, each slice of it is flavored with His good will. When you put on your garments tomorrow morning, though they are those in which you exercise your toilsome labors, yet are they tokens of God’s good will as much as those coats of skins which God gave to our first parents! Yes, Beloved, sitting here tonight, this air we breathe, the power to breathe it and the health which enabled us to come up to the House of Prayer, and this House, itself, and the ears with which we hear the words, and the good tidings which are given us to hear—all these are of His good will, and are the sweeter because we recognize the favor of God in them!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3540

“I believe that any Christian Church that becomes divided in feeling, so that the members have no true love, one to another, that lack of unity is an act of horrible supplication! It does as much as say, ‘Depart from us, You Spirit of unity! You only dwell where there is love—we will not have love! We will break Your rest—get away from us!’”—Volume 60, Sermon #3407

“Jesus is gone from us into Heaven, but He continues to reign and rule in our midst by His Vicegerent, the Holy Spirit! Let us honor Him. Let us rely upon Him. Let us earnestly seek Him. Let it be ours to declare Him, those of us who have to speak, and yours to receive Him, those of you who have to hear!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3519

“I do not believe any Christian works too hard, and, as a rule, if those who kill themselves in Christ’s service were buried in a cemetery by themselves, it would be a long while before it would get filled. Work hard for Christ.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3499

“Thomas was the first Divine who ever taught the Deity of Christ from His wounds! Nor has every Divine since then been able to see the Deity of Christ in His wounded Humanity risen from the dead. This Thomas did. He declared the proper Humanity of Christ when he touched Him and he declared His proper Deity when he avowed Him to be both Lord and God!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3541
“The simplest Sunday school child reading through the Old Testament can see that the Christ of the New Testament is He of whom the Seers and the Prophets spoke in vision by the power of the Spirit! But here was human nature left to itself with the Book in its hand, and totally unable to decipher the evidences or recognize the Messiah!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3457

“Sin, indeed, will only become more exceedingly sinful the more we strive to bridle it, unless we cry unto the Strong for strength!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3352
“As many as are led by the Spirit, they are the sons of God, and all who are the sons of God are led by the Spirit of God! ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3483
“Men little know the ways in which the Almighty can find them out and bring the evidence that convicts out of the devices that were intended to cover their sin!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3500
“Intense feeling commonly finds expression in few words. Silence is sometimes more thrilling than speech. ‘My Lord and my God’ is the breathing of a contrite heart relieved in having found the Grace it needs!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3541

“You cannot help a man if you know nothing about him and, therefore, the Lord sends you into many a thick wood and dark valley that you may meet with His own redeemed in their wanderings. If you did not know the wilderness, how could you act as a guide through it? So it is for usefulness that God calls us there—and as Jesus went there to save, let us learn from Him the great Grace of self-sacrifice!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3370

“We are in the habit of calling the Bible, ‘the Word of God.’ I suppose that is accurate enough, but the Word of God is not the Bible—it is Jesus Christ.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3439

“There are thousands of prayers that are insults to Heaven, but where the Spirit of God is really at work, the man who wants to be pure, prays sincerely, and cries mightily to God for purity! And nor will he be content to tolerate anything—either in his disposition or in his daily life—which would be inconsistent with the perfect holiness of God.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3482

“Sin is not remitted by reformation. Though you should suddenly become immaculate as angels (not that such a thing is possible to you, for the Ethiopian cannot change his skin, nor the leopard his spots), your reformations could make no atonement to God for the sins that are past in the days that you have transgressed against Him. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3418

“Were your imagination to stretch her wings and soar ever so far beyond the narrow bounds of space, she would weary long before she reached the fullness of God which dwells bodily in our Lord Jesus Christ!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3385

“What though with mingled cruelty and rage men attack the Gospel of Christ, they strive in vain to thwart the Divine Decree! In ways mysterious and unknown to us, the Lord asserts His own supremacy. He reigns even where the rulers conspire and the people rebel against Him! ”—Volume 62, Sermon #3542

“If there is obedience to the Light of God received, that obedience is a fruit of the Holy Spirit! Not merely the knowledge and the acquiescence in the knowledge of God’s will, but the power to carry out that will comes from Him, and from Him only!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3483

“If a man could live a thousand years, the sins of his first year would be as fresh in the memory of the Almighty as those of the last. Eternity itself will never wash out a sin! Flow on, you ages, but the scarlet spot is on the sand. Flow on, still, in mighty streams, but the damning spot is still there. Neither time nor eternity can cleanse it. Only one thing can remove sin. The lapse of time cannot. Let not any of you be so foolish as to hope it will.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3500

“…it is because ministers say so little about the consecration of their substance to God’s cause that this most important part of true piety is often treated with levity—and with some even by disgust!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3442
“I suppose priests are human, though I sometimes question it. Surely, if ever a man comes to be near akin to a devil, it must be when he assumes to be a priest, and to have the power to open and to shut the gates of Heaven and Hell!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3457

“Brothers and Sisters, we ought to talk more about God’s wondrous works aswefindtheminHolyScripture. Do you read them? Alas, in how many a case the Bible is the least read book in the house! I am inclined to think that although there may be more Bibles in England than any other book, there is less of Bible reading than anything else in literature!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3399
“The very essence of obedience to God lies in the heart, so the heart must be set upon obedience! It must be a sincere, willing, cheerful obedience, or else it is not a genuine submission to the Almighty.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3482 “God instructs His people to mount aloft by stirring up their nests.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3335

“The good will of Him that dwelt in the bush is a greater blessing than all the blessings in the world—what if I say in Heaven, itself?..You remember how the old Puritan put it? He had been rich and then was brought to poverty, and he said he didn’t find much difference, for, he said, when he was rich, he found God in all, and now that he was poor, he found all in God! Perhaps the latter is the higher state of the two.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3540

“Let me ask whether you ever laid to heart the teeming millions of the heathen populations who are dying without a Savior? If you do this, and if all of us do it, it cannot be long before God shall look upon the earth and send a shower of Divine Grace, for that anxiety in Christian hearts is the sound of the coming of abundance of rain [of revival]!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3376

“And still, Beloved, He [the Holy Spirit] is in the Church and we have fellowship with Him! We commune with Him! We can bear our witness that He makes intercession for us with groans that cannot be uttered, that He helps our infirmities and performs for us a thousand offices of love which make us feel, experimentally and consciously, that the agent of such things is a very Person!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3519

“No man ever goes wrong who is guided by the Spirit, and no man ever attains unto true holiness but as the result of the work of the Holy Spirit upon his understanding and his whole character.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3483
“The world still clamors, “Crucify!” Go forth, you sons of God, and proclaim the coronation of the Christ who once wore the crown of thorns!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3457
“A drop of Grace gives more honor than a world of fame. One spark of love of Christ is more ennobling to your heart into which it falls than though it were all ablaze with the stars and orders of all the knighthoods of the kingdom!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3540
“It seems to me as if the Lamb of God, slain from before the foundation of the world, had in the purpose of God, from the foundation of the world, covered all His people’s sins. Therefore, we are accepted in the Beloved, and dear to the Father’s heart.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3500

“If you could once get the love of God shed abroad in your heart, you would be flavored by it—and when it is once shed abroad there it will be there to all eternity! There will be no fear of its being taken away from us when it is once fully poured out in all its glorious efficacy into our hearts.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3339

“Never think of the Church of God as if she were in danger. If you do, you will be like Uzza—you will put forth your hand to steady the Ark and provoke the Lord to anger against you!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3439
“I do not believe in a perfect sanctification which allows a man to lay up so much treasure on earth, while so many works for the Lord Jesus need his help.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3482

“Jesus Christ, Himself, cannot save us apart from His blood. It is a supposition which only folly has ever made but we must refute even the hypothesis of folly when it affirms that the example of Christ can put away human sin, that the Holy life of Jesus Christ has put the race on such a good footing with God that now He can forgive its faults and its transgression. Not so! Not the holiness of Jesus! Not the life of Jesus! Not the death of Jesus, but the BLOOD of Jesus only, for “Without shedding of blood there is no remission.” ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3418

“The soul full of joy takes a still higher step when it clothes itself with praise. Such a heart takes to itself no glory, for it is dressed in gratitude and so hides itself. Nothing is seen of the flesh and its self-exaltation, since the garment of praise hides the pride of man. ”—Volume 59, Sermon #3349

“Note well the promise, ‘Your eyes shall see the King in His beauty.’ Does not this suggest to us that the King has been seen, though not in His beauty? He was seen on earth as the Prophet foretold, ‘despised and rejected of men, a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief.’ And as seen then, we are told there is no beauty that we should desire Him. There was a time when many were astonished at Him. His visage was more marred than any man, and His form more than the sons of men—that was in the day of His humiliation.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3542

“With regard to our Lord’s death, there are some who hang up pictures on the wall—they think the use of the crucifix and so on to be proper. I find no teaching of that kind in the Word of God! I do find that too often such things lead to idolatry.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3501 “If any man would know the will of God by the Spirit, let him come to the Word that is written here—let him search this to know what is God’s mind, for, ‘holy men of old spoke as they were moved by the Spirit.’ We are not to expect new Revelation! The old is perfect and complete. There is a curse pronounced upon whoever should add to it or take from it. Let us accept it as the complete mind of God, so far, at any rate, as He sees fit to reveal it to us. The Holy Spirit speaks to us through the Word!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3483

“The love of God makes poor men truly rich, little men supremely great, the despised to be honorable and the nothing to be lifted up among the mighty! I wish you, then, Beloved, God’s condescending love to ennoble you—‘the good will of Him that dwelt in the bush’ [Deuteronomy 33:16].”—Volume 62, Sermon #3540

“God loves us to believe Him and to plead earnestly with Him, for even if He does not think it best to grant our request, He will be pleased for us to go on to number two and, with full submission cry, ‘Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.’”—Volume 59, Sermon #3370
“‘Other sheep have I,’ said Christ, ‘who are not of this fold: them also must I bring,’ and, therefore, do we preach, because they must be brought!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3358

“As to those who are satisfied that they are perfect in spirit, soul and body, we wait for their last testament—to see what their wills look like when they die! A man who is perfect before the Lord lays out his substance for God’s cause, depend on that! He does not merely attend conferences, and talk of good things, of spirituality of mind and sanctification by faith, and all those glittering subjects, but he lives for Jesus in some practical work and gives himself up—and his substance, too—for the honor of the Redeemer’s name and the diffusion of the glorious Gospel!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3482

“It is not every knock at Mercy’s gate that will open it—he who would prevail must handle the knocker well and dash it down again, and again, and again! As the old Puritan says, ‘Cold prayers ask for a denial, but it is red-hot prayers which prevail.’”—Volume 59, Sermon #3344
“God grant us a refreshing season at the Communion Table—may we have the company of the King, Himself!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3457
“It is the preacher’s business to set forth Christ Crucified—evidently crucified among you. The three ways that God has ordained of representing the death of Christ are the Word read, the Word preached, and this blessed ordinance of the Supper of the Lord.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3501

“A shepherd’s beauty lies much in his simple garb. A mother’s beauty—very much of it is to be seen as she appears in the center of a happy and lovely family. So, beyond all doubt, the beauty of Christ will be most conspicuous when all His saints are with Him!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3542

“Some Christian people never talk thoroughly good Gospel talk unless somebody is present in whose esteem it is likely to raise them, or until they get into such company as they suppose will relish it—and then they feel compelled to accommodate themselves to the occasion.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3399

“Get near to God—acquaint yourself with Him and be at peace! The remedy for all trouble is dwelling near to God!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3444

“Yes, within these mortal bodies does the Godhead dwell! He has made our bodies to be the temples of the Holy Spirit. And what a favor is this, for this indwelling is the witness of the Spirit within us, the perpetual seal of Divine Grace. God has put into us a new life, a life like His own—He has created in us a superior principle, unknown to flesh and blood, for we are not born-again of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of the will of God! A supernatural life has been implanted in us which cannot die because it is born of God!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3341

“Nothing can be more un-Christian than for a Christian to despise a Jew! Nothing is more unlike the spirit of our Master than when you laugh at the Jew and speak of him with contempt. Remember that the King of kings was a Jew!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3386

“Now it has been a matter of fact that when the Jesuit missionaries went to China and converted a great many to what they called ‘the Christian faith,’ they never mentioned the fact that Christ died. For years they concealed it, lest the people should be shocked! Now we, on the other hand, put that first and foremost! We have no other Christianity than this—that Christ died and rose again—and we cannot come to the Lord’s Table without showing it.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3501

“Unholy creatures will never see a holy God! It is not possible! Oh, Sinners, what do you think of this? You must be changed! You must be cleansed! You must be converted! The Holy Spirit must regenerate you! You must be born-again! Otherwise you cannot walk uprightly or stand in the Presence of the King in His beauty.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3542
“It is a blessing to be a member of a kind, loving, happy family—but it is an unspeakable blessing to be a member of the family of Christ and adopted into the family of God!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3371

“Yes, you that seek to be justified by your good works, you may pant, and strive, and wear out your lives in energetic failures, but success is entirely impossible! You cannot thus, while you are what you are, produce a righteousness that God can accept, seeing that you have already sinned.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3458

“Living in sin is the germ of living forever in Hell! Believing in Jesus is the root of rejoicing forever in glorious immortality!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3346
“Silence is the thaw of the soul, though it is the frost of the mouth—and when the soul flows most freely, it feels the inadequacy of the narrow channel of the lips for its great water floods.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3363

“A man that gets money by squeezing others, by oppressing the poor by hard bargains, shall not enjoy the Beatific Vision. If you buy and sell, and get gain by lying, by false pretences, by tricks of trade—yes, even by the customs that are commonly allowed, though they would look fraudulent if thoroughly exposed—you shall have no inheritance in the Kingdom of God!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3542

“We have heard of some in these days who are always preaching a GlorifiedChrist. We wish them such success as their ministry is likely to bring, but for us, we preach a Crucified Christ—‘Christ and Him Crucified,’ for it is here, after all, that the salvation of the sinner lies! Christ Glorified is precious enough—oh, how unspeakably precious to a soul that is saved!—but first and foremost to a dying world it is Christ upon the Cross that we have to declare!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3501

“Oh, how wise it is to say that when we are making plans and promises, ‘If God wills.’ [Acts 18:21] The short way is to put a little ‘D.V.,’ which means that you are ashamed to say, ‘If God wills.’”—Volume 61, Sermon #3447

“May we see—as we have seen it in this Church—may we see it renewed among us—may we see it in every part of Christendom, in every Church in London, in every Church throughout the whole British Empire, in America and wherever there are Believers—a deep and awful anxiety for souls that will not let Believers be quiet, but will give them to exercise an incessant pleading with God which will stir up His strength and cause Him to make bare His arm!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3376

“May our prayers spring out of our Scriptural studies—may our acquaintance with the Word be such that we shall be qualified to pray a Daniel prayer!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3484
“The righteous have their troubles. ‘Many are the afflictions of the righteous.’ But there is a sacred art which Jesus teaches, which enables the Christian to rejoice in tribulation and to triumph in the midst of distress!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3352

“‘Come unto Me’ is the whole Gospel. ‘Come unto Me.’ Mix nothing with it. Acknowledge no other obedience. Obey Christ and Him, alone. Come unto Me. You cannot go in two opposite directions. Let your tottering footsteps bend their way to Him alone. Mix anything with Him, and the possibility of your salvation is gone. ”—Volume 62, Sermon #3502

“Do you think when the ungodly man repeats a prayer, and his heart is absent, that God accepts the prayer? I tell you that that prayer is in itself a sin and a great provocation against the Most High!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3458

“’What is the latest news,’ said a certain squire to a companion, accustomed to hunt with him, who had come up to the Metropolis—‘what is the latest news you have heard in London?’ ‘The latest news, and the best news I have ever heard,’ was the quick reply, ‘is that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.’ ‘Tom,” he said, ‘I do think you are mad!’ ‘William,’ said Tom, ‘I know youare. I only wish you were cured of your insanity as, by the Grace of God, I have been!’”—Volume 62, Sermon #3542

“Growth in faith is desirable and it is so, first of all, because unbelief is a very great sin and where there is little faith there is evidently lurking unbelief and, consequently, sin—and no true Christian would like to be easy while he is daily committing sin. It is not possible for us to be weak in faith without transgressing. Weak faith may bring us a blessing, but weakness in faith is an evil—and to indulge weakness in faith and not to struggle out of it would only be a willful increase of guilt!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3384

“Christian people should be acquainted with the history of the Church—if not with the Church of the past, certainly with the Church of today. We make ourselves acquainted with the position of the Prussian army and we will buy new maps about once a week to see all the places and the towns. Should not Christians make themselves acquainted with the position of Christ’s army and revise their maps to see how the Kingdom of God is progressing in England, in the United States, on the Continent, or in the mission stations throughout the world?”—Volume 61, Sermon #3484
“It is a depth of Grace that He who made the Heaven and the earth and who is infinitely great and glorious, should condescend to come into anything like such a relation as this with His poor creatures whom He has made and whose breath is in their nostrils. Oh, what a stoop—from the highest loftiness of Glory—to call Himself a Husband to a worm!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3419

“Remember, you cannot have a half of Christ. You cannot have Him as your Redeemer, but not as your Ruler! You must take Him as He is. He is a Savior, but He saves His people from their sins. Now, if you have ever seen Christ as your Savior, you have seen beauty in Him. He is lovely in your eyes, for the loveliest sight in the world to a sinner is His Savior!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3542

“All the glory of Redemption is greater than ever there could have been of dishonor to God by sin! I believe that God is more honored by the world having sinned, and having been restored by Christ, than He could have been if there had never been sin upon this planet and if a perfectly sinless race had tenanted its bounds!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3400

“One would suppose that when the Apostles first went out to preach, if the religion of the Romish Church is that of the Scripture, they would have needed, each of them, a wagon to carry with them the various paraphernalia necessary for the celebration of their services!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3501

“I love that old Saxon word, ‘merry.’ Some are frightened at it. I heard somebody the other day account it quite wicked to say, ‘A merry Christmas.’ Oh, that we had merry days all the year round, especially if we could make merry with such merriment as this [Luke 15:24]! Do begin to be merry. ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3449

“Is not this the message we are told to circulate, ‘He that believes and is baptized shall be saved’? Should you not, therefore, avow your faith and confess your Lord in Baptism?…This seems to me, as I read the Word of God, to have been the course with all the early Christians. They believed and were baptized. They did not postpone or procrastinate, but no sooner were they Christians than they confessed their Christianity in Baptism”—Volume 62, Sermon #3543

“Oh, some of you ungodly ones have tried to pray, but you have not bowed yourselves. Proud prayers may knock their heads on mercy’s lintel, but they can never pass through the portal! You cannot expect anything of God unless you put yourself in the right place, that is, as a beggar at His footstool—then will He hear you, but not until then.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3484

“You had Grace at first with which to struggle against the envying and every other sin. You are now alarmed because the warfare of your spirit is so protracted. ‘He gives more Grace’ to continue the struggle! As long as there is one passion in your soul that dares to rise, there will be Grace in your soul to answer!—Volume 61, Sermon #3459

“He [Christ] needed not our love to make Him rich! There was love enough in God for Him and if He had willed it, He could have made a thousand races of nobler creatures than ourselves, all of whom would have loved Him with the deepest love!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3380
“You must, as a Christian, be all a Christian, or nothing of a Christian! There is no such thing as dividing between God and the devil, between righteousness and sin. The surrender must be without reserve and without limit.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3411

“Christ is supreme. You will either have to submit to His scepter willingly, or else to be broken by His iron rod like a potter’s vessel! Which shall it be? You must either bow or be broken—make your choice. You must bend or break! God help you to wisely resolve and gratefully relent.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3502

“There may be in the house where you live no lover of Jesus except yourself. Take care that your conversation makes the rest know that you have been with Jesus and have learned of Him!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3543
“There is one thing, however, which we would say to mourners pressed down with guilt—whatever heaviness you feel, it is no greater heaviness than sin ought to bring upon a man, for it is an awful thing to have sinned against God.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3349
“The real battle between the Papists and the Protestants turns on this—are men saved by works, or are they saved by Grace?”—Volume 60, Sermon #3408

“The followers of Christ in these days seem to me to have forgotten a great part of Christianity. How many of you would go tomorrow into a court of law and, if you were called upon to do it, would take an oath, whereas if there is anything taught in Scripture, it is expressly taught that you are not to swear at all, neither by Heaven, nor by earth, nor by any other oath! If Christ ever delivered a plain precept, it is this—and yet all denominations of Christians seem to have cast it to the winds with the exception of the Society of Friends.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3386“It is a great fault of some people in public prayer when they repeat the name, ‘O Lord, O Lord, O Lord,’ so often—it often amounts to taking God’s name in vain and is, indeed, a vain repetition! But when the reiteration of that sacred name comes out of the soul, then it is no vain repetition—then it cannot be repeated too often and is not open to anything like the criticism which I used just now.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3484

“If we see our neighbor sin and rebuke him not when the opportunity offers, we become partakers in his sin. Remember this—on such occasions it is our bounden duty to speak on God’s behalf!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3543

“All outward, external religion, in which the heart does not join, so far from being received by the Most High with approbation, must be viewed by Him with utter abhorrence. How is it possible, then, for a man who loves not God to be accepted before the King of Kings?”—Volume 61, Sermon #3458

“We are never so weak as when we think we are strong, and never so strong as when we know we are weak and look out of ourselves to our God!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3371

“I believe that it will be the growing wonder in eternity to find out how precious a Christ, how powerful, how Immutable—in a word, how Divine a Christ He is in whom we have trusted! Only the Infinite can understand the Infinite. ‘God only knows the love of God,’ and only the Father understands the Son.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3502

“The Church has now got all the conversions that she is qualified to get. God always gives every Church as big a blessing as it is fit to have—and if it qualifies itself for more—it shall have more! God treats His Churches as parents treat their sons. They give them but little money when they are children—a penny will do—but when they get to be young men, they shall have yet more. We have but little because we are fit to possess and use but little. We are not faithful in what is given to us—and if the one talent often lies wrapped in a napkin, how can we expect to have five or ten entrusted to us?”—Volume 59, Sermon #3376

“Merely to do what is absolutely necessary for salvation is a mean, selfish thing! To be always thinking about whether this or that is necessary to your being saved—is this how you would show your allegiance to the Savior? Should the self-denial of our blessed Lord and Master be requited with the selfishness of followers who are always muttering, ‘ Cui bono? What profit can I make of his service?’”—Volume 62, Sermon #3543

“‘Whoever offers praise glorifies Me,’ says the Lord. Man is made on purpose to glorify God. It is his chief end. Then his chief end is comely to him. If he answers his end, he is comely to Him who made him, and inasmuch as our chief end is to glorify God, praise becomes comely to the upright.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3460

“It is a great mercy to be taught the ways of God, to understand His way, to understand the practical part of it, the statutes. To be made holy is a high honor, a great privilege. When you are seeking great favors of God, ask for great holiness!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3455
“God cannot dwell with us if sin is petted and loved. Sin must be detested and loathed.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3400

“And if you seek the conversion of others, especially remember that it is words fromGod’s mouth rather than words from your mouththat will effect it. Ask the Master, for He knows how to draw the bow when you cannot. You might draw it at a venture, but He can draw at a certainty, so
that the arrows shall surely pierce between the joints of the armor. Here is a prayer for every man and woman that has to speak for Jesus—‘Open
my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise.’”—Volume 62, Sermon #3543

“The rewards of Grace are of Grace. They are not legal rewards given to us because we deserve them. As one says, Christ first gives His servants Grace to serve Him, and then rewards them as if they had served Him in their own strength, though their service, indeed, is His work in them rather than their work for Him! It is a gift then.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3358

“‘Neither knows any man the Father, save the Son.’ Christ knows the Father—no one else knows Him, save the Son. There is none other that can approach God. It is Christ for your Savior, or no Savior at all! Salvation is in no other and if you will not have Christ, neither can you have salvation!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3502

“Cold prayers ask God to deny them—only importunate prayers will be replied to!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3484

“The Holy Spirit comes to teach all the Truth of God [John 14:26] and I beg yet again, for the fourth time, to reiterate that all Truth must be necessary for you and for me, or else the Spirit of God would not have come to teach it to us, and that while we may give more prominent importance to the greater and more vital Truths, yet there is not one Truth in Scripture to which we are allowed to say, ‘Be still! Be quiet—we do not need you.’”—Volume 59, Sermon #3353
“You must go where Jesus leads—go, therefore, willingly, cheerfully, trustingly and even joyfully, for it is a triumph to a Christian to bear the cross after Jesus—and to be crucified and buried with Him were a high honor to any child of God. Go on, then, for Christ leads the way!”—Volume 63, Sermon #3545

“Ah, I know some of you have felt the power of the Gospel, for you went home and prayed, perhaps dozens of times—after hearing the sermon! You have gone up to your chambers and you have begun to pray, but the next morning you have forgotten. Your goodness has been like the morning dew and has melted when the heat of the day’s cares have come upon it.”—Volume 63, Sermon #3551

“Sinner, you cannot serve God—you are too sinful! Your heart too evil—your service too impure! But still, God’s claim upon you for a perfectly holy life has not ceased. It has not lost its power, nor bated one jot or tittle of its just and righteous force.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3458
“God is never more glorified than He is by the believing confidence of His people when difficulties seem to come in the way.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3462

“I have never been able to hope for perfection in the flesh, but I believe that every Christian ought to strain after even perfection itself. I am afraid we have fixed the standard of what a Christian may be a deal too low—of what a Christian should be it would not be possible to fix the standard too high! ”—Volume 62, Sermon #3504

“I believe some of the expressions that Martin Luther used in prayer, if I were to use them, would be little short of blasphemy, but as Martin Luther used them, I believe they were deeply devout and acceptable with God because he knew how to come close to God.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3484

“Now you and I, and each of us, have a service to perform. We were redeemed and with a price that we might serve the Lord. We are a royal priesthood, a peculiar people. We have a priesthood to fulfill. All God’s children, all God’s servants are priest and kings, and they have a rule to discharge, and a priesthood to fulfill.”—Volume 63, Sermon #3545

“God always loves His people, but His people do not always know it. Because of their sins, they do not always enjoy it. Oh, what a blessing it is when the Holy Spirit sheds abroad the love of God in the soul—when we can say, ‘Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.’”—Volume 59, Sermon #3371

“Salvation is the great necessity of the human race. We need to be saved from the consequences of the Fall, from the results of our own transgressions, from the penalties due to our guilt, the indwelling power of sin and the domination of our corrupt nature. ”—Volume 63, Sermon #3546
“Other things must, of course, come across the mind and, for a while, engross it, but the first free thought off the Believer should be of the Glorious One who loved him from before the world—and will love him when the world has passed away!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3419

“As soon as you become a Christian, you cannot hate anybody. To be angry without a cause is a sin to you as soon as you are a Believer in Christ! Unless you are a fearful hypocrite, you then forgive every man his offenses and you continue to forgive your brethren even unto 70 times seven, once you become the sincere disciple of Jesus.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3386

“A faith that never had a tear in its eye, or a blush on its cheek, is not the faith of God’s elect! He who never felt the burden of sin, never felt the sweetness of being delivered from it! This poor thief is as clear in the avowal of his own guilt as in his witness to the Redeemer’s innocence! Reader, could we say the same of you?”—Volume 59, Sermon #3363

“There are some plants of which they say that the more you tread upon them, the more they will spread, and certainly it is the case with the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. As long as there is a sun in the heavens, and a moon to gladden the night, so shall the Kingdom of Christ endure!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3465

“Oh, it is a crying sin that men will not only go to Hell, themselves, but they must drag their children with them! ”—Volume 62, Sermon #3505
“True assurance of faith is a humble thing, a comforting thing, a sanctifying thing—and it should, therefore, be the desire of all faithful hearts.”—Volume 63, Sermon #3546

“Get a promise and spread it before the Lord, and say, ‘O Lord, You have said it—do it!’ God loves to be believed in. He loves you to think He means what He says. He is a practical God. His word has power in it and He does not like us to treat His promises as some of us do, as if they were waste paper, as if they were things to be read for the encouragement of our enthusiasm, but not to be used as matters of real practical truth!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3484
“It has been laid down by some theologians as being almost a self-evident Truth that God will require no more of a man than he can do—but this, by every thoughtful mind—will be soon discovered to be a self-evident lie instead of being true—for God’s Law is not changed by our being changed! Whatever God demanded of man when he was perfect, He demands the same thing of him now that he is imperfect!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3458

“Love has an impetuous force about it. Many waters cannot quench it, neither can the floods drown it. What love we owe to Him who died, that when we die we may live again, who rose that we might rise and made a pathway to the skies that we might follow Him, even to His Throne.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3346 “Did you ever really hate sin until you learned to love Christ?”—Volume 60, Sermon #3400

“I do not look upon the Church of God as so many pious men and women at work by themselves, but I see God working by them, working in them, working through them! They are the workers to the eye, but no further. It is God who works in them to will and to do of His own good pleasure!”—Volume 63, Sermon #3545

“Tradition says that he sawed the Prophet Isaiah in half for daring to reprove him! But it is not from tradition, but from Revelation, we learn that he [Manasseh] made Jerusalem to swim with blood from one end to the other, putting to death all those who would not go in his ways and follow his devices!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3505

“The Holy Spirit has been given to us. It is a thing that we are to pray for, that the Holy Spirit may be poured out, but the Holy Spirit ispoured out, was given to the whole Church on the day of Pentecost in order that He might abide with us forever!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3376
“I am sure we cannot expect our children to grow up a godly seed if there is no family prayer! Are your family prayers, then, what they ought to be?”—Volume 61, Sermon #3484
“It is consistent with the full enjoyment of salvation to loathe yourself. This is the strange paradox of the Christian faith. He who justifies himself is condemned—he who condemns himself is justified. ”—Volume 62, Sermon #3506
“I would that the Church of God would now recollect that assuredly God is going ahead of her in all her service at this moment. The world is prepared for the Gospel if we were but willing to present the Gospel to the world.”—Volume 63, Sermon #3545
“We never come to Christ till Christ comes to us. ‘Draw me—I will run after You.’ That is the order. It is not, ‘We will run after You, Lord—draw us.’”—Volume 61, Sermon #3461
“If you have not tasted God’s love, you do not know what life, true life, means. The richest, the most celestial, the most transporting joy that mortal mind can know is a full assurance of the love of God!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3371
“Beware of getting spiritually rich in yourself! Nothing is so near akin to soul-poverty as this!”—Volume 63, Sermon #3546
“Let the supreme aim of life be not business, not the family, not personal pleasure, but our God! Let all be secondary and subordinate to Him. Set Him on high in your spirit and let everything contribute to His service and Kingdom. ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3419

“It is a wonder of Divine Grace that the Lord should ever have loved us at all, for there is nothing in our nature that is lovely. Through our fall there is everything in us to be hated by His pure and holy mind, but nothing to esteem—and the best of the best, when they are at their best, are poor creatures.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3336

“Christ is to be your peace—not your communion with God, nor your high and holy experiences. All these are very precious and I wish we could always be on Tabor’s brow. It were well for us if, like, Enoch, we always walked with God, but still, our communion must never be looked upon as the ground of our peace with God. It is Christ and Christ, alone, that is our peace!”—Volume 59, Sermon #3386

“Do not write much about them, [past sins] if at all. It is best to do with them as Noah’s sons did with their father’s nakedness, go back and cast a mantle over all. God has forgiven them. Remember them only that you may repent and that you may bless His name, but never mention them without loathing them—utterly loathing them as if they were disgusting to your spirit and you could not speak of them without the blush mantling on your cheek!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3506

“What joy it is, then, to think that He went ahead of us and how obediently, no, triumphantly, may we follow Him, even to death itself! Here, then, is the blessed fact, in suffering, or service. or departure, Christ goes ahead of us!”—Volume 63, Sermon #3545“You and I often lose the sweetness of communion with Christ, I doubt not, throughunbelief. We think so lightly of unbelief, as though it were an infirmity and not a sin, whereas of all evils, it is the chief! What can be more displeasing to the tender heart of Jesus than ungenerous thoughts concerning Him? ”—Volume 61, Sermon #3485

“Those tongues that confess sins are the best tongues to sing with! That tongue which has been salted with the brine of penitence is fitted to be sweet with the honey of praise.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3470
“Unanswered prayer should be to every Christian a search warrant—he should begin to examine himself to see whether there is not something harbored within which is contrary to the will of God.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3344

“We have heard say of our friends in America that in some of their churches the choir is so much esteemed and so highly esteemed by itself, that if the congregation were to sing, they would almost frown upon them to put them out of tune, and that there is very little sound of the congregation’s singing heard compared with those half a dozen perhaps as wicked singers as the music halls could find, stuck up there to glorify God by insulting Him!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3460

“Oh, Beloved, Christ often gets great triumph among the rolls of men from the deep trials of His people, out of which He does rescue them and shall not you and I be well content that He should stand back and hide His face and even seem to be an enemy to us, if, out of all this, His glory shall spring? ”—Volume 60, Sermon #3420

“Beware of thinking that you are increased in goods. You are near to bankruptcy when you thus make account of your possessions. I counsel you, therefore, to still bow your knee and cry unto the great Savior, ‘Lord, save me, or I perish!’ That prayer should never be in advance of the most advanced Christian!”—Volume 63, Sermon #3546

“God, in conversion, makes us new men. We are not altered, improved, or mended, but a new life is given us—we become new creations in Christ Jesus!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3506
“How could He walk with you while you were casting into His ear a foul suspicion against His truthfulness and His love? Faith is the hand which holds the Savior and will not let Him go! Unbelief opens the door and bids Him go.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3485
“If the Christian were fully equipped to know and understand the Divine mind without the teaching of the Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit would not have been given.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3353
“He who notices God’s mercy will never be without a mercy to notice.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3349
“I believe in free agency, but I never yet met with a Christian who was able to say that he came to Christ of his own free will without being drawn by the Spirit of God! Whatever our doctrinal view may be, the experimental fact is the same in every case.”—Volume 59, Sermon #3362

“Never did salvation spring from the devices of this poor heart. In vain do you seek to obtain it by any religious ceremonies, or by any bodily exercises. The source and fountain of salvation are only to be found in the eternal purpose of God! In the Covenant of God it was resolved, in the Wisdom of God it was planned, in the great Redemption of God it was effected and by the Spirit of God it is applied! Jonah went to a strange college to learn this masterpiece of sound theology, that salvation is of the Lord.”—Volume 63, Sermon #3546

“But as one Truth of God is always to be taken in its relation to another Truth and not to be isolated from its natural kindred, it is a delightful consideration that God, in His absolute Sovereignty, never does violence to any of His other attributes and, above all,never does violenceto the Covenant. The Covenant still surrounds the Sovereignty and practically hedges it within its bounds!”—Volume 60, Sermon #3412
“Now, to this hour, this is the mark of the true Christian. This is to be of the elect. This is the very badge and symbol of the faithful—they see Jesus.”—Volume 60, Sermon #3401
“Brothers and Sisters, it is good to loathe ourselves, for it makes us have sympathy with others.”—Volume 62, Sermon #3506

“If your religion is only a pretense. If your heart is black, though your face is bright. If you have filthiness in the well, though in the bucket there may be a little clean water, you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity! The pure, truthful, holy God abhors hypocrisy!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3486

“Oh, for Grace to shake off the sorrow that makes some hearts sit still!”—Volume 61, Sermon #3461“We do not expect that God will make fresh Revelations to us. We are far from believing that voices heard or visions seen, or supposed to be seen, or dreams, can give any satisfactory evidence of the Divine Love to any man. I am ashamed of such ministers as would encourage their hearers in the conviction that their fancies are to be taken as assurances from God!”—Volume 63, Sermon #3546

“What is the use of fit words, fine sentences, fluent speech? These seem to me full often to be such deceitful acquirements that I would gladly dispense with them, if I might stammer out my soul’s desires and feel myself to be all the more sincere because I lacked expression to clothe my thought! Oh, no—the Lord does not require your long addresses! A groan, a sigh, a sob that seems to swell in your soul and become too big to find a way of escape—that is prayer!”—Volume 62, Sermon #3519

“But how can we pray forHim? [Christ] Why, that He may have the reward of His sufferings and see of the travail of His soul—that His Kingdom may come and that His name may be dear in the hearts of men.”—Volume 61, Sermon #3465

“Christian, your God’s love to you is always the same. He cannot love you more! He will not love you less! Never, when afflictions multiply, when terrors frighten you or when your distresses abound, does God’s love falter or flag. Let the rod fall ever so heavily upon you, the hand that moves, like the heart that prompts the stroke, is full of love! Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His Grace. Whether He brings you down into the depths of misery, or lifts you up into the seventh Heaven of delight, His faithful love never varies or fluctuates—it is everlasting in its continuity!”—Volume 63, Sermon #3561