092. Now Began I To Labour To Call Again Time That Was Past.

XCII ‘Now Began I To Labour To Call Again Time That Was Past.’ AND now began I to labour to call again time that was past, wishing a thousand times, twice told, that the day was yet to come when I should be tempted to such and such a sin! Concluding with great indignation how I would rather have been torn in pieces than have been found a consenter thereto. But, alas! these thoughts, and wishings, and resolvings, were now too late to help me. Oh! thought I, that it was with me as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me! Upon another time I was somewhat inclining to a consumption, insomuch that I thought I could not live. Now began I afresh to give myself to a serious consideration after my state and condition for the future. But I had no sooner begun to do that, than there came flocking into my mind an innumerable company of my sins and transgressions; amongst which these were at this time most to my affliction, namely, my deadness, my dullness, and my coldness in holy duties; my wanderings of heart, my wearisomeness in all good things, my want of love to God, to His ways, and to His people. At the apprehension of these things my sickness was doubled upon me; for, now, I was sick in my inward man, and my soul was clogged with guilt. Now was I very greatly pinched between these two considerations: — Live I may not. Die I dare not. Now I sunk and fell in my spirit, and was about giving up all for lost. But, as I was walking up and down the house, as a man in a most woful state, that word of God took hold of my heart — Ye are justified freely by His Grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. And, O, what a turn that made upon me! Now was I as one awakened out of a troublesome dream; and, listening to this heavenly sentence, I was as if I heard it thus expounded to me: Sinner, thou thinkest that, because of thy sins and infirmities, I cannot save thy soul; but, behold My Son is by Me; and upon Him I look, and not on thee; and I will deal with thee according as I am pleased with Him.

‘At this I was greatly lightened in my mind, and was made to understand that God could justify a sinner at any time. It was but His looking upon Christ, and then imputing His benefits to us, and the work was forthwith done. Now was I got on high; now I saw myself within the arms of grace and mercy; and, though I was before afraid to think of a dying hour, yet now I cried, Let me die! Now death was lovely and beautiful in my eyes; for I saw that we shall never live indeed till we be gone to the other world. At this time I saw more in these words — Heirs of God, than ever I shall be able to express while I live in this world. Heirs of God! God Himself the Inheritance and the Portion of His saints!’ So far John Bunyan in his Grace Abounding. And now for some of the lessons to ourselves out of all that. As we see in a thousand Scripture cases, and as we see in John Bunyan’s case, and as too many of us see only too well in our own case, a very bitter remorse is the first result of our going back on our past life of sin. I do not need to labour to prove that for it is written on every page of Holy Scripture. Grace Abounding is full of it, and our own awakened consciences are equally full of it. But blessed be God both Holy Scripture, and Bunyan’s autobiography, and our own experience, all have this testimony also to give on this subject; this blessed testimony that by the grace of God, and by our own godly sincerity in calling to mind and in keeping in mind our past sins, some most blessed fruits are to be reaped even out of our past life. Speaking of the sinful past of the Church of Israel, God said in never-to-be-forgotten words:

‘I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope. And I will say to them which were not my people, Thou art my people, and they shall say, Thou art my God.’ And all that is there said of the awakened and returning Church is said of every awakened and returning sinner, as I shall now proceed to show. In whatever way and from whatever quarter it comes to us there is no more becoming and no more blessed mind in any man in this world than a penitential mind. Every several and individual man among us has his own special reasons for possessing a penitential mind. But no mortal man can look down into his own heart and back into his own life without immediately and henceforth having his head made waters and his eyes a fountain of tears. No mortal man, with his eyes opened can set his past life before his present face without having all John Bunyan’s remorses and repentances awakened within him. Aye and many men among us will have many very bitter remorses, and many very black despairs awakened within them that the young tinker miraculously escaped. On such a matter as this I like to fortify myself and to gratify you with the words of some of the great Puritan divines when I can find the appropriate words in any of those unequalled masters in these matters. ‘God,’ says one of those experts in the matters of God and the soul,

‘God gives a penitential mind not only presently after the sins are committed, but He continues and increases that mind long after those sins have for many years been confessed and pardoned, both in our own consciences and in heaven. In the secret experience of the soul the old guilt with a new contrition on account of it will return again and again. Thus Job for the sins of his youth, for which, questionless, he had often humbled himself, and of which he had every assurance of pardon; yet God did, from time to time, write bitter things against His servant, many years after, and made him still to possess his old sins, as himself speaks. In our presumption and stupidity we think that the lapse of years somehow wears out both the guilt of our long past sins, as well as weakens God’s demand for a broken heart on account of them. But that is not so. That is very far from being so. Great sins forgiven must never be for a single day forgotten.’ And this way of God’s working gives us some of the most golden passages of our whole golden Bibles; as every penitent reader of the Bible knows in his happy experience. As thus:

‘I will establish my covenant with thee; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord; that thou mayest remember, and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord God.’ And again, in the same prophet:

‘Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you… Then shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall loathe yourselves, in your own sight, for your iniquities and for your abominations.’ And thus it is brought about that an always-remembered past is a perfect storehouse of penitential and evangelical graces to every forgiven and accepted sinner. Every such sinner goes back continually and brings up out of his past the one sacrifice that best pleases God; that is to say, an ever-broken and an ever-contrite heart. In paragraph after paragraph of this profoundly spiritual and thrillingly experimental book, John Bunyan testifies to us how he ‘laboured’ to call again time that was past, and then in his most rapturous words he tells us also how great was his reward for all that labour. Like Israel of old, he got his vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope.

Then again, though you would not think it at first sight, an often-visited past, as a matter of fact, comes to be a great impulse and a great assistance to justifying faith. Before faith begins its work in the soul a bad past causes an absolutely paralysing terror in the soul. But after God’s gift of faith to the soul and after faith has begun its divine work in the soul nothing helps faith forward like self-despair and a great and a growing and a godly sorrow. Faith thrives best in a heart wholly empty and for ever empty of all self-righteousness and all self-defence and all self-help and all self-hope. And nothing so prostrates the sinner before the cross of Christ and before the throne of grace as an oft-visited past; oft visited and always taken again to heart. Look at the great experimental psalms; look at the great experimental hymns; look at the great experimental autobiographies, with Grace Abounding standing at their head, and they will all tell you that nothing so casts the soul upon Christ alone for salvation as a sinful and an oft-visited past. The great experimental divine to whom I have already referred, tells us that he always preached his best sermon after a turn on the Sabbath morning up and down among the sins of his past life. And I, for one, wholly believe him.

Again, evangelical humility is by far the most becoming, as it is by far the most Christ-like, of all our evangelical and spiritual graces. And the most inward and the most spiritual and the most exquisitely beautiful humility comes up into the sinner’s heart and life out of his evil past, aggravated as his evil past is by his still evil present. It was his ever-present remembrance of his past life that made the Apostle Paul such a pattern of Christian humility. Paul bore in his deepest soul the painful scars of his past life down to his dying day. And it was that, far more than the thorn in his flesh, that made him so like his Master in his Master’s favourite grace of humility and meekness of heart. And even after he was Paul the aged he came back on the sins of his youth with a deeper pain and with a more burning shame than ever before. His past life sank into his spirit more and more the older he became and the holier and the more heavenly-minded he became. And wherever you find a proud and a puffed-up man, a man jealous of his good name and his high place among his fellows; wherever you find a noisy, disputatious, self-asserting, egotistical man, that temper of his does not prove that he has not a bad past, but it proves to demonstration that he never visits his bad past. And on the other hand, wherever you find a man whose mouth is in the dust, however you praise him, or however you blame him, you may be quite sure where the loom works that weaves the garment of humility with which he is always found to be clothed.

Then again such are the enriching vineyards that God gives us from thence that from our own past lives we learn this also: to be sympathetic, and patient, and kind, and hopeful toward the sinners who are sinning all around us to-day, as we ourselves at one time sinned. We recollect the strength of our own temptations, as also the feeble fight we made against them. Like John Bunyan we wish a thousand times twice told that the days of our temptations were yet to come. And the poignancy of that too late wish makes us watch over and warn and help in every possible way, those men around us whose hour and power of temptation are so strong upon them at the present moment. Our Lord Himself was made the merciful and faithful High Priest that He is by being tempted in all points like as we are. And, He still remembers in the skies His tears and agonies and cries. And his best servants are like their merciful Master in that. In the skies of their pardon and their peace they still remember the days of their temptations and their transgressions. And having been forgiven their ten thousand talents they take their fellow-sinner by the hand and tell him what God has done to redeem and to deliver their own lost souls. And thus it is that when you see a hard man, and an implacable man, and a cruel man, and a man without sympathy and fellow-feeling, and a man who takes his fellow-sinner by the throat, depend upon it that man’s ten thousand talents are still standing against him and the tormentors’ scourging hands are still awaiting him. The great experimental divine that I have drawn upon twice to-night already has this also:

‘Our Master,’ he says, ‘gives His servants a lady’s hand for binding up burdened consciences and broken hearts, by the way He unburdens their own consciences, and binds up their own broken hearts.’

Till they are able to open and to hold out doors of hope to all other men, even as Christ opened and held out a door of hope to them.

Now this is the last Sabbath night of an old and an evil year. And therefore it is the best night in all the year in which to labour to call again the past year and all the years that are past. Every man and every woman here tonight, aye, and every child, has their own past known to God and to themselves alone. And God, to whom we all belong, and to whom all our past and all our present and all our future belongs — He comes to us tonight requiring of us that which is past between Him and us. He demands that we shall go over and tell both to Him and to ourselves just what our past life has been. What our childhood was and our youth; what were the many doors of His goodness and His grace that He opened to us as our lives opened: our home life, our school life, our college life, our office life, our workshop life. What company we chose and frequented, and what marks for good or for evil our company made upon us; the first good book we remember reading, and the good effect it had upon us; our first bad book, and the bad effect it had upon us; the first corrupting word that fell on our young heart, and the first remorse we felt for our first sin. John Bunyan was brought up to curse and to swear, even as a child; to break the Sabbath day; and to rise in the morning and to lie down at night, without God in the world. But as soon as he came to himself he laboured all his after days, to call again those times that were past; wishing a thousand times, twice told, that those days of temptation were yet to come. Take an hour or two of the same godly labour to-night. For this is fit and fruitful labour for the evening of the Lord’s own day. And He will come Himself and will help you with that labour and will reward you with great wages for it. O all men and women with such a past! Will you cast all this of Holy Scripture and of Grace Abounding behind your back? Will you go on into another year risking and defying all God’s anger when He offers you to-night all His grace? Surely you will not so destroy yourselves! Would this not be for ever a grand night to you to look back upon if the handwriting that stands so black against you was to-night for ever blotted out, and all your past life of sin cast to-night into the depths of the sea? Why should not this be said over you also before you sleep to-night; even this;

‘I will sprinkle clean water upon you also, and you shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And, from this night, you shall be my people, and I will be your God’?

O! labour to-night before you sleep that all that may be true of you, and that it may all belong to you from this night forward and for ever. And, then, this will be a night to be remembered by John Bunyan, and by you, and by me, both on earth and in heaven. Amen.