Dumb Singers

Dumb Singers

"Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing:
for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert."—Isaiah 35:6.

What a difference grace makes whenever it enters the heart! We find here the blind, but they are not blind in one sense; grace has touched their eyes, and the eyes of the blind are opened. Men are said to be deaf; but they are not deaf after grace has operated upon them: the ears of the deaf are unstopped. They have been lame before; but when once the Omnipotent influence has come upon them, they leap like a hart. And the dumb, so far from being dumb, have a change that must be radical, for its effects are surprising. The tongue of the dumb not simply speaks, but it sings. Grace makes a great difference in a man when it enters into him. How vain, then, are the boasts and professions of some persons who assert themselves to be the children of God, and yet live in sin! There is no perceivable difference in their conduct; they are just what they used to be before their pretended conversion; they are not changed in their acts, even in the least degree, and yet they do most positively affirm that they are the called and living children of God. Let such know that their professions are lies, that falsehood is the only groundwork that they have for their hopes; for, wherever the grace of God is, it makes a difference. A graceless man is not like a gracious man; and a gracious man is not like a graceless one; we are "new creatures in Christ Jesus." When God looks upon us with the eye of love, in conversion and regeneration, he makes us as opposite from what we were before as light is from darkness—as heaven itself is from hell. God works in man a change so great that no reformation can even so much as thoroughly imitate it. It is an entire change—a change of the will, of the being, of the desires, of the hates, of the dislikings, and of the likings. In every respect the man becomes new when divine grace enters into his heart. And yet thou sayest of thyself, "I am converted," and remainest what thou wast! I tell thee once again to thy face, thou sayest an empty thing; thou hast no ground for saying it. If grace permits thee to sin as thou wast wont to do, then that grace is no grace at all. That grace were not worth the having which permits a man to be, after he receives it, what he was before. No, we must ever hold fast to the great doctrine of sanctification. Where God really justifies he really sanctifies too; and where there is a remission of sin, there is also the forsaking of it. Where God hath blotted out transgression, he also removeth the love of it, and maketh us seek after holiness, and walk in the ways of the Lord. We think we might fairly infer this from the text as a prelude to the observations we have to make concerning it. And now we shall want you, first of all, to notice the sort of people God has chosen to sing his praises, and to sing them eternally. Then, in the second place, I shall enter into a more full description of the dumb people here described. Then shall I try to notice certain special times and seasons when those dumb people sing more sweetly than at others.

I. First, then, "The tongue of the dumb shall sing." We make this the first point.

Note the persons whom God has chosen to sing his songs for ever. There is no difference, by nature, between the elect and others; those who are now glorified in heaven, and walk the golden streets clad with robes of purity, were by nature as unholy and defiled, and as far from original righteousness, as those who, by their own rejection of Christ, and by their love of sin, have brought themselves into the pit of eternal torment, as a punishment for their crimes. The only reason why there is a difference between those who are in heaven and those who are in hell, rests with divine grace. It is of divine grace alone. Those in heaven must inevitably have been cast away had not everlasting mercy stretched out its hand and redeemed them. They were by nature not one whit superior to others. They would as certainly have rejected Christ, and have trodden under foot the blood of Jesus as did those that were cast away, if grace, free grace, had not prevented them from committing this sin. The reason why they are Christians is not because they did naturally will to be so, nor because they did by nature desire to know Christ, or to be found of him: but they are now saints simply because Christ made them so. He gave them the desire to be saved; he put into them the will to seek after God: he helped them in their seekings, and afterwards brought them to feel the peace of God, which is the fruit of justification. But, by nature, they were just the same as others; and if there is any difference, we are obliged to say that the difference lies on the wrong side of the question. In very many cases, we who now "rejoice in the hope of the glory of God," were the worst of men.

There are some here that now bless God for their redemption, who once cursed him; who implored, as frequently as they dared to do, with oaths and swearing, that the curse of God might rest upon their fellows and upon themselves. Many of the Lord's anointed were once the very castaways of Satan; the sweepings of society; the refuse of the earth; those whom no man cared for. They were called outcasts, whom God hath now called desired ones, seeing he hath loved them. I am led to these thoughts from the fact that we are told here that those who sing were dumb. Their singing does not come naturally from themselves; they were not born songsters. No, they were dumb ones, these whom God would have to sing his praises. It does not say the tongue of the stammerer, or the tongue of the blasphemer, or the tongue of the slanderer, but the tongue of the dumb, of those who have gone farthest from any thought of singing; of those who have no power or will to sing: the tongue of such as these shall yet be made to sing God's praises. Strange choice that God has made; strange, for its graciousness; strangely manifesting the sovereignty of his will! God would build for himself a palace in heaven of living stones. Where did he get them? Did he go to the quarries of Paros? Hath he brought forth the richest and the purest marble from the quarries of perfection? No, ye saints, look to "the hole of the pit whence ye were digged," and to the quarry whence ye were hewn! Ye were full of sin; so far from being stones that were white with purity, ye were black with defilement, to all appearance utterly unfit to be made stones in the spiritual temple, which should be the dwelling-place of the Most High. And yet he chose you to be trophies of his grace and of his power to save. When Solomon built for himself a palace, he built it of cedar; but when God would build for himself a dwelling for ever, he cut not down the goodly cedars, but he dwelt in a bush, and hath preserved it as his memorial for ever, "The God that dwelt in the bush." Goldsmiths make exquisite forms from precious material; they fashion the bracelet and the ring from gold; God maketh his precious things out of base material; and from the black pebbles of the defiling brooks he hath taken up stones, which he hath set in the golden ring of his immutable love, to make them gems to sparkle on his finger for ever. He hath not selected the best, but, apparently, the worst of men to be the monuments of his grace; and when he would have a choir in heaven that should with tongues harmonious sing his praises—when he would have a chorus that should for ever chant the hallelujahs louder than the noise of many waters, and like great thunders, he did not send mercy down to seek earth's songsters and cull from us those who have the sweetest voices; he said, "Go, Mercy, and find out the dumb, and touch their lips, and make them sing." The virgin tongues that never sang my praise before, that have been silent erst till now, shall break forth in rhapsodies sublime, and they shall lead the song; even angels shall but attend behind, and catch the notes from the lips of those who once were dumb. The tongue of the dumb shall sing his praises hereafter in strains of purity hitherto unknown.

Oh! what a fountain of consolation this opens for you and for me! Ay, beloved, if God did not choose the base things of this world, he would never have chosen us; if he had respect unto the countenance of men, if God were a respecter of persons, where had you and I been this day? We had never been instances of his love and mercy. No, as we look upon ourselves now, and remember what we once were, we are often obliged to say:—

"Depths of mercy, can there be Mercy still reserved for me?"

How many times we have sung at the Lord's table—the sacramental supper of our Master:—

"Why was I made to hear thy voice, And enter while there's room, While others make a wretched choice, And rather starve than come?"

And we have joined in singing:—

"'Twas the same love that spread the feast, That sweetly forced us in;

Else we had still refused to taste, And perished in our sin."

Grace is always grace, but it never seems so gracious as when we see it brought to our unworthy selves. You are obliged to confess that it is of grace then, and cast away the thoughts that it was of your foreseen faith, or of your foreseen good works, that the Lord chose you. We are obliged to come to this. We feel and know that it must have been of mercy, free mercy, sweet mercy alone. We were not capable of doing good works without his grace preventing us before good works, and without his grace also in good works enabling us to do them; and therefore they never could have been the motive to divine love, nor the reason why it flowed towards us. O ye unworthy ones! ye saints that feel your deep natural depravity, and mourn over your ruin by the fall of Adam, lift up your hearts to God! He hath delivered you from all impediments which Adam cast upon you; your tongue is loosed, it is loose now; Adam made it dumb, but God hath loosed it; your eyes that were blinded by Adam's fall are opened now; he hath lifted you from the miry clay. What Adam lost for us Christ hath regained for us; he hath plucked us out of the pit, and "set us upon a rock, and established our goings, and hath put a new song in our mouth, even praise for evermore." Yes, "the tongue of the dumb shall sing."

Just another hint here before I leave this point. How this ought to give you encouragement in seeking to do good to others! Why, my brethren, I can never think any man too far gone for divine mercy since I know that God saved me. Whenever I have felt desponding about any of my hearers who have for a long time persevered in guilt, I have only had to reach down my own biography from the shelves of my memory, and just think what I too was till grace redeemed me, and brought me to my Saviour's feet; and then I have said, "It will be no wonder if that man is saved; after what he hath done for me I can believe anything of my Master. If he hath blotted out my transgressions, if he hath clean melted away my sin, then I can never despair of any of my fellow creatures. I may despair for myself, but I cannot for them." Remember, they may be dumb now, but he can make them sing. Your son John is a sad reprobate; keep on praying for him, mother; God can change his heart. Your daughter's heart seems hard as adamant; he who makes the dumb sing can make rocks melt. Believe in God for your children as well as for yourselves—trust him; take their cases before the throne; rely upon him that he can do it, and believe that in answer to earnest prayer he also will do it. And if you have neighbours that are full of the pestilence of sin, whose vices come up before you as a stench in your nostrils, yet fear not to carry the gospel to them; though they be harlots, drunkards, swearers, be not afraid to tell them of the Saviour's dying love. He makes the dumb sing; he does not ask even a voice of them to begin with; they are dumb, and he does not ask of them even the power of speech, but he gives them the power. Oh if you have neighbours who are profaners of the Sabbath, haters of God, unwilling to come to the house of God, despising Christ; if you find them as far gone as you can find them, recollect he maketh the dumb sing, and therefore he can make them live. He wants no goodness in them to begin with; all he wants is just the rough, raw material—unhewn, uncut, unpolished. And he does not want even good material; bad as the material may be, he can make it into something inestimably precious, something that is worthy of the Saviour's blood. Go on—fear not; if the dumb can sing, then surely you can never say that any man need be a castaway.

II. Now I am to enter into some rather more lucid description of these dumb people. Who are they?

Well, sometimes I get a good thought out of Cruden's Concordance. I believe that it is about the best commentary on the Bible for ordinary uses, and I like to study it. As I opened it at this passage, I found Master Cruden describing different kinds of dumb people. He says there are four or five different sorts, but I shall name only four of them. The first sort of dumb people he mentions are those that cannot speak; the second sort are those that will not speak; the third sort are those that dare not speak; and the fourth sort are those that have nothing to say, and therefore are dumb. The first sort of people who shall sing are those who cannot speak—that is the usual acceptation of the word dumb—the others are, of course, only figurative applications of the term. We call a man dumb when through physical infirmity he cannot speak. Now, spiritually, the man who is still in his trespasses and sins is dumb, and I will prove that. He is dead, and there is none so dumb as a dead man. "Shall the dead arise and praise thee? Shall thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave, or thy faithfulness in destruction?" The word of God assures us that men are spiritually dead: it follows then that they must be spiritually dumb. They cannot sing God's praises; they know him not, and therefore they cannot exalt his glorious name. They cannot confess their sins. Though they may utter the mere words of confession, they cannot really confess, for they do not know the evil of sin, nor have they been taught to feel what a bitter thing it is, nor do they know themselves as sinners. And as "no man can call Jesus Lord, except by the Holy Ghost," these people cannot do so truly. Perhaps, it may be, they can talk well of the doctrines, but they cannot converse about them out of the fulness of their hearts, as living and vital principles which they know by any kind of spiritual instinct or experience. They cannot join in the songs, nor can they take part in the conversation of a Christian. If they sit down with the saints, perhaps they have culled a few phrases from the garden of the Lord, which they use and apply to certain things which they do not know anything about. They talk a language the meaning of which they do not comprehend—like Milton's daughters reading a language to their father which they did not understand. So far as the essence of the matter is concerned, they are dumb. But, all hail sovereign grace! "The tongue of the dumb shall sing." God will have his darlings made what they should be. They are dumb by nature, but he will not leave them so; they cannot now sing his praises, but they shall do it; they will not now confess their sins, but he will bring them on their knees yet, and make them pour out their hearts before him. They cannot now talk the brogue of Canaan, or speak the language of Zion, but they shall do it soon. Grace, omnipotent grace, will have its way with them. They shall be taught to pray; their eyes shall be made to flow with tears of penitence; and then, after that, their lips shall be made to sing to the praise of sovereign grace.

I need not dwell upon this point, because I address many here that were dumb once, who can bless God that they can now sing. And does it not sometimes seem to you, beloved, a very strange thing that you are what you are? I should think it must be the strangest thing in the world for a dumb man to speak, because he has no idea how a man feels when he is speaking—he has no notion of the thing at all. Like a man blind from his birth, he has no idea what kind of a thing sight can be. We have heard of a blind man who supposed that the colour of scarlet must be very much like the sound of a trumpet—he had no other way of comparing it. So the dumb man has no notion of the way to talk. Do you not think that it is a strange thing that you are what you are? You said once, "I will never be one of those canting Methodists. Do you think I shall ever make a profession of religion? What! I attend a prayer-meeting? No." And ye went along the streets in all your gaiety of mirth, and said, "What! I become a little child, and give up my mind to simple faith, and not reason at all! What! am I to give up all argument about things that pertain to the life to come, and simply take them for granted because God has said them? Nay, that never can be!" I will be bound to say it will be a wonder to you as long as you are here on earth that you are the children of God; and even in heaven itself the greatest wonder to your mind will be, that you were brought to know and taught to love the Saviour ere you saw the goodly land or walked the golden streets. But there is a sort of dumb people that will not speak. They are mentioned by Isaiah. He said of preachers in his day, they were "dumb dogs that would not hark." Bless God, we are not now quite so much inundated by this kind of dumb folk as we used to be. We have had to mourn, in years gone by, that we could look from parish to parish and find nobody but a dumb dog in the parish church, and in the pulpits of dissenters there was full often a painful lack of positive gospel. Full many who might have spoken with a little earnestness let the people slumber under them, instead of preaching the word with true fidelity, as those who would have to give account to God. My grandfather used to tell a story of a person who once resided near him, and called himself a preacher of the gospel. He was visited by a poor woman, who asked him what was the meaning of the "new birth?" To which he replied, "My good woman, what do you come to me about that for? Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, did not know; he was a wise man, and how do you think I should?" So she had to go away with only that answer. Time was when such an answer might have been given by a great many who were reckoned to be the authorised teachers of religion, but knew nothing at all about the matter. They understood a great deal more about foxhunting than about preaching, and more about farming their land than about the spiritual husbandry of God's church. Bless God, there are not so many of that sort now; God grant the race may become thoroughly extinct. Oh that every pulpit and every place of worship might be filled with a man who has got a tongue of fire and a heart of flame, and shuns not to declare the whole council of God, neither seeking the smile of men, nor dreading their frown. We have this promise that it shall be so—"The tongue of the dumb shall sing." And, ah! they do sing well, too, when God makes them sing. You remember Rowland Hill's story in "The Village Dialogues," about Mr. Merriman. Mr. Merriman was a sad scapegrace of a preacher; he was to be always seen at fair and revel, but seldom to be found in his pulpit when he should have been there, until he was converted, and then he began to preach with tears running down his face, and it was not long before the church began to be crowded! The squire would not go and hear any of that stuff, and locked up his pew; and Mr. Merriman had a little ladder made outside the door, as he did not wish to break the door open, and the people used to sit on the steps, up one side and down the other, so that it made twice as much room as there was before. No preachers are more thoroughly pronounced than those who were once dumb. If the Lord opens their mouths they will think they cannot preach often enough and earnestly enough to make up for wasted time and the mischief they did before. Chalmers himself might never have been so eloquent a preacher had he not been for a long time a dumb dog. He preached morality, he said, till he made all his parish immoral; he kept on urging the people to keep God's law, till he made them break it; but when he turned round and began to preach God's gospel, then the dumb began to sing. Oh, may God bring this about in every one of us! If we are dumb as professed ministers, may he open our mouths, and force us to speak forth his word, lest at the last day the blood of our hearers' souls should be found upon our skirts, and we should be cast away as unfaithful stewards of the gospel of Christ.

I will now introduce you to a third sort of dumb people. They are dumb because they dare not speak; and they are good people, blessed souls. Here is one of them: "I was dumb with silence; I opened not my mouth, because thou didst it." And it is so blessed to be dumb in that fashion. The Lord's servant will often have to be dumb under trials and troubles. When Satan tempts him to repine, he will put his finger to his lip and say, "Hush murmuring, be still; shall a living man complain of the punishment of his sins? "Even the child of God will imitate or emulate Job when he sat down for seven days and nights and said not a word, for he felt that his trouble was heavy, and his words were light, therefore he could say nothing. It had been as well if Job had kept his mouth shut for the next few days; he would not have said so much amiss as he did in many things that he uttered. Oh! there are times when you and I, beloved, are obliged to keep the bridle on our tongue, lest we should murmur against God. We are in evil company, perhaps; our spirits are hot within us, and we want to take vengeance .for the Lord; we are like the friends of David, who wanted to give Shimei a taste of summary justice. "Let us take off this dead dog's head," we say: and then our Jesus tells us to put our sword into its scabbard, "the servant of the Lord must not strive." How often have we been dumb. And sometimes when there have been slanders against our character, and men have calumniated us, oh, how our fingers have itched to retort upon them. We have wanted to see who was the stronger of the two. But we have said, "No: our Master did not answer, and he left us an example that we should follow his steps." The chief priests accused him of many things, but he "answered them not a word." Well, we have found it hard sometimes to be dumb, like the sheep when it is brought to the shearer, or the lamb when it is in the slaughter-house. Upon our beds in sickness we have tried to quench every murmuring word; we have not let a sentence of repining or an impatient expression escape our lips which we could possibly avoid, but, notwithstanding all our resolution, we have found it no easy matter to restrain ourselves, and to keep silence. It is blessed work when we are enabled to do it. Now, ye who have been dumb under great weights of sorrow; ye whose songs have been suspended, because ye durst not open your lips lest sighs should usurp the place of praise,—come, listen to this promise: "the tongue of the dumb shall sing." You are, it may be, in the deepest trouble now, and obliged to be silent; well, you shall sing yet for all that. Though like Jonah, you are in the whale's belly, carried down, as he called it, to the lowest hell; though the weeds are wrapped about your head, and the earth with her bars is about you for ever, yet you "shall look again towards his holy temple." Though you have hung your harp upon the willows—bless God you have not broken it—you will have use for it by-and-by—you shall take it from its resting-place, and

"Loud to the praise of sovereign grace Bid every string awake,"

If you cannot cheer the darkness with "songs in the night," yet he shall "compass you about with songs of deliverance;" if you cannot sing his praises now, yet ye shall do so by-and-by, when grace shall fill your hearts, or when delivering mercy shall fire your tongues. Your better days are yet to come. But, blessed be God, we are not always to be silent with affliction. The saints have known joy unspeakably great in the midst of trial intolerably hot. Their murmuring has been silenced, and their thanksgiving has become vocal. An old Puritan said, "God's people are like birds; they sing best in cages." Another observes that "God's people sing sweetest when in the deepest trouble." Said old Master Brooks, "The deeper the flood was on earth the higher the ark went up towards heaven." So it is with the child of God if he lives close to his Master. Troubles are called weights. A weight, you know, generally cloggeth and keepeth down to the earth; but there are conditions according to the laws of mechanics, by which you can make a weight lift you; and so it is possible to make your troubles lift you above the world instead of making them sink you beneath your level. Ah! we thank our God, he has sometimes opened our mouth when we were dumb through ingratitude, and did not praise him. He has opened our mouth by a trial; for a thousand mercies we did not bless him, till a sharp affliction has quickened our memory.

We have one more kind of dumb people. There are those who have nothing to say, therefore they are dumb. I will give you an instance; Solomon says in the Proverbs—"Open thy mouth for the dumb;" and he shows by the context that he means those who in the court of judgment have nothing to plead for themselves, and have to stand dumb before the bar. Like that man of old, who, when the king came in to see the guests, had not on a wedding garment; and when the king said, "Friend, how earnest thou in hither?" he stood speechless; speechless, not because he could not speak, but because he had nothing to say. Have not you and I been dumb, and are we not now, when we attempt to stand on law terms with God, when we forget that Jesus Christ and his blood and righteousness are our full acquittal? What answer can we give when the commandments are laid bare before us, and the demands of God's law are brought home to our conscience? There was a time with each of us, it was not long ago with some here present, when we stood before Moses' seat and heard the commandments read, and we were asked—"Sinner, canst thou claim to have kept those commandments?" and we were dumb. Then we were asked—"Sinner, canst thou give any atonement for the breach of those commandments?" and we were dumb. We were asked—"Sinner, canst thou, by a future obedience, wipe out thy past sin?" We knew it was impossible, and we were dumb. We were asked—"Canst thou endure the penalty? canst thou bear to swelter for ever in the flames of hell; canst thou suffer everlasting torments; canst thou dwell with everlasting burnings, and abide with eternal fires?" and we were dumb. We were asked the question—"Prisoner at the bar, hast thou any reason to plead why thou shouldst not be condemned?" and we were dumb with convictions of our deserts and terror at our doom. And we were asked—"Prisoner, hast thou any helper; hast thou anyone that can deliver thee?" and we were dumb, for we had no wisdom or device, nor did an answer rise to our lips. Ay, but blessed be God, "the tongue of the dumb shall sing." And shall I tell you what we can sing? Why, we can sing this anthem: "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" "not God, for he hath justified." "Who is he that condemneth?" not Christ, "He hath died, yea rather, hath risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, and maketh intercession for us." We who had not a word to say for ourselves, can now speak fluently, having received knowledge of salvation through the remission of our sins. Has God made you dumb? has he taken away all your self-righteousness? Then, as truly as ever he has shut your mouth, he will open it. If God has killed your self-righteousness, he will give you a better righteousness. If he has knocked down all your refuges of lies, he will build you up a good refuge. He has not come to destroy you; he has shut your mouth for a season to fill it with his praise hereafter. Be of good cheer: look to Jesus; cast thine eye to the cross; put thy confidence in him: and then thou who thinkest thyself a castaway, even thou, poor weeping Mary, shall yet sing of redeeming mercy and undying love.

IV. To conclude, let me just notice the occasions when the tongue of these dumb people sings the best. When does the tongue of the dumb sing? Why, I think it sings always, little or much. If it is once set at liberty, it will never leave off singing. Some people say this world is a howling wilderness; well, they make it so. If you choose to distress yourselves and disturb other people, I cannot help it. I shall prefer the matter of my text—"Then shall the tongue of the dumb," not howl, but "sing." Yes, they do sing always, little or much; sometimes it is in a low hush-note; sometimes they have to go rather deep in the bass, but there are other times when they can mount to the highest notes of all. They have special times of singing. They first begin to sing, when they lose their burden at the foot of the cross; that is a time of singing. You know how John Bunyan describes it. He says when poor Pilgrim lost his burden at the cross, he gave three great leaps; and went on his way singing. We have not forgotten those three great leaps; we have leaped many times since then with joy and gratitude, but we think we never leaped so high as we did at the time when we saw our sins all gone, and our transgressions covered up in the tomb of the Saviour. By the way, let me tell you a little story about John Bunyan's allegory. I am a great lover of John Bunyan, but I do not believe that his teaching is always infallible; for I met with a story the other day which I think a very good one. There was a young man in Edinburgh who wished to be a missionary. He was a sensible young man; he thought—"Well, if I am to be a missionary, there is no need for me to transport myself far away from home; I may as well be a missionary in Edinburgh." There's a hint to some of you ladies who give away tracts in your district, and never give your servant Mary one. Well, this young man started, and determined to speak to the first person he met. He met one of the old fishwives: those of us who have seen them can never forget them; they are extraordinary women indeed. So, stepping up to her, he said, "Here you are, coming with your burden on your back; let me ask you if you have got another burden, a spiritual burden?" "What!" she said; "do you mean that burden in John Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress?' Because if you do, young man, I have got rid of that many years ago, before you were born. But I went a better way to work than the pilgrim did. The evangelist that John Bunyan talks about was one of your parsons that do not preach the gospel; for he said, "keep that light in thine eye and run to the wicket-gate." Why man alive! that was not the place for him to run to. He should have said, 'Do you see that cross? Run there at once!' But instead of that, he sent the poor pilgrim to the wicket-gate first; and much good he got by going there!—he got tumbling into the slough, and was like to have been killed by it." "But did you," he asked, "go through any slough of despond?" "Yes, young man, I did; but I found it a great deal easier going through with my burden off than with it on my back." The old woman was quite right. We must not say to the sinner, "Now, sinner, if thou wilt be saved go to the baptismal pool—go to the wicket-gate—go to the church—do this or that." No, the cross should be right in front of the wicket-gate, and we should say to the sinner, "Throw thyself there, and thou art safe. But thou art not safe till thou canst cast off thy burden, and lie at the foot of the cross, and find peace in Jesus." Well, that is a singing time with God's children! And after that, do God's people sing? Yes, they have sweet singing times in their hours of communion. Oh! the music of that word "communion," when it is heard in the soul, communion with Jesus, fellowship with Jesus, whether in his sufferings or in his glories! These are singing times, when the heart is lifted up to feel its oneness to Christ, and its vital union with him, and is enabled to "rejoice in hope of the glory of God." Have you not had some precious singing times, too, at the Lord's table? Ah! when the bread has been broken, and the wine poured out, how often have I had sweet refreshment when the people have all joined in singing—

"Gethsemane, can I forget, Or there the conflict see, Thine agony and bloody sweat, And not remember thee?

"When to the cross I turn my eyes, And rest on Calvary, Oh! Lamb of God, my sacrifice, I must remember thee."

But lastly, my dear friends, the best singing time we shall have will be when you and I come to die. Ah! there are some of you that shall prove this as it is fabled of the swan. The ancients said the swan never sang in his lifetime, but always sang just when he died. Now, there are many of God's desponding children who seem to go all their life under a cloud, but they get a swan's song before they die. The river of your life comes running down perhaps black and miry with troubles, and when it begins to touch the white foam of the sea, there comes a little glistening in its waters. So, beloved, though we may have been very much disspirited by reason of the burden of the way, when we get to the last, we shall find sweet songs. Are you afraid of dying? Oh! never be afraid of that; be afraid of living. Living is the only thing that can do you any mischief; dying never can hurt a Christian. Afraid of the grave? It is like the bath of Esther, in which she lay for a time, to purify herself with spices, that she might be fit for her lord. You are afraid of dying, you say, because of the pains of death. Nay, they are the pains of life—of life struggling to continue. Death has no pain; death itself is but one gentle sigh—the fetter is broken, and the spirit fled. The best moment of a Christian's life is his last one, because it is the one that is nearest heaven; and then at is that he begins to strike the key-note of the song which he shall sing to all eternity. Oh! what a song will that be! It is poor music we make now, when we join the song—perhaps we are almost ashamed to sing; but up there our voices shall be clear and good; and there

"Loudest of the crowd we'll sing, While heaven's resounding mansions ring With shouts of sovereign grace."

The thought struck me the other day, that the Lord will have in heaven some of these very big sinners that have gone further astray than anybody that ever lived, the most extraordinary extravaganzas of vice, just to make the melody complete by singing some of those soprano notes which you and I, because we have not gone so far astray, will never be able to utter. I wonder whether one has stepped in hither, whom God has selected to take some of those alto notes in the scale of praise? Perhaps there is one such here. Oh! how will such a one sing, if grace—free grace— shall rescue him, deliver him from going down into the pit, and in redeeming mercy change his heart, renew a right spirit within him, and so completely mould his character anew that he shall become a proof, an evidence, an illustration of the Father's personal love to his soul, of the power of Christ's blood to cleanse, of the sanctifying operations of the Holy Ghost. Such an one will sing because he must. The spiritual instinct within him will be impatient of all restraints. For such fruits of ministry I labour and strive according to his working which worketh in me mightily. For what is our hope or joy or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming?