Psalms 29

Psalms 29:4

The Majestic Voice June 22, 1856 by C. H. (1834-1892) “The voice of the Lord is full of majesty."— Psalms 29:4 . All God’s works praise him, whether they be magnificent or minute, they all discover the wisdom, the power, and the benevolence of their Creator. “All thy works praise thee, O God.” But there are some of his more majestic works which sing the song of praise louder than others. There are some of his doings, upon which there seems to be graven in larger letters than usual the name of God. Such are the lofty mountains, which worship God with uncovered heads both night and day; such are the rolling seas, too mighty to be managed by man, but held in check by God, and such, especially, are the thunders and the lightnings. The lightnings are the glances of the eyes of God, and the thunders are the utterings of his voice. The thunder has been usually attributed to God more especially, though philosophers assure us that it is to be accounted for by natural causes. We believe them, but we prefer, ourselves, to look to the first great cause, and we are content with that old and universal belief, that the thunder is the voice of God. It is marvellous what effect the thunder has had upon all kinds of men.

In reading an ode of Horace the other day, I found him in the first two verses, singing like a true Ithurean, that he despised God, and intended to live merrily; but by-and-bye he hears the thunder, and acknowledging that there is a Jehovah, who lives on high, he trembles before him. The most wicked of men have been obliged to acknowledge that there must be a Creator, when they have heard that marvellous voice of his sounding through the sky. Men of the stoutest nerve and the boldest blasphemy have become the weakest of all creatures, when God has in some degree manifested himself in the mighty whirlwind, or in the storm. “He breaketh the cedars of Lebanon;” he bringeth down the stout hearts; he layeth down the mighty, and he obliges those who never acknowledged him to reverence him when they hear his voice. The Christian will acknowledge the thunder to be the voice of God, from the fact, that if he be in the right frame of mind, it always suggest to him holy thoughts. I do not know how it may be with you, but I scarce ever hear the rolling thunder, but I begin to forget earth and look upwards to my God. I am unconscious of any feeling of terror or pain; it is rather a feeling of delight that I experience, for I like to sing that verse— “The God that rules on high, And thunders when he please, That rides upon the stormy sky And manages the seas; This awful God is ours, Our Father and our love, He shall send down his heavenly powers To carry us above.” He is our God, and I like to sing that, and think of it: but there is something so terrible in the tone of that voice when God is speaking, something so terrific to other men, and humbling to the Christian, that he is obliged to sink very low in his own estimation; then he looks up to God, and cries, “infinite Jehovah, spare a worm, crush not an unworthy wretch. I know it is thy voice; I reverence thee with solemn awe; I prostrate myself before thy throne; thou art my God, and beside thee there is none else.” It might well have occurred to a Jewish mind to have called the thunder the voice of God, when he considered the loudness of it, when all other voices are hushed; even if they be the loudest voices mortals can utter, or the most mighty sounds; yet are they but indistinct whispers, compared with the voice of God in the thunder; and indeed, they are entirely lost when God speaks from his throne, and makes even the deaf hear, and those who are unwilling to acknowledge him hear his voice. But we need not stop to prove, that the thunder is the voice of God, from any natural feeling of man; we have Scripture to back us up, and therefore we shall do our best to appeal to that. In the first place, there is a passage in the book of Exodus where I would refer you; where, in the margin, we are told that the thunder is the voice of God.

In the 9th chapter and the 28th verse, Pharaoh says, “Entreat the Lord (for it is enough) that there be no more mighty thunderings and hail.” The original Hebrew has it, and my margin has it, and the margin of all you who are wise enough to have marginal Bibles—“Voices of God.” “Let there be no more voices of God and hail.” So that it is not a mere illusion, but we are really warranted by Scripture, in saying, that “the thunder is the voice of God lifted up in the sky.” Now, for another proof; to what shall we refer you unless we send you to the book of Job? In his 37th chapter, 3rd verse, he says, “he directeth it under the whole heaven, and his lightning unto the ends of the earth. After it a voice roareth: he thundereth with the voice of his excellency: and he will not stay them when his voice is heard. God thundereth marvellously with his voice; great things doeth he, which we cannot comprehend.” And so he says in the 40th chapter, at the 9th verse, “Hast thou an arm like God? or canst thou thunder with a voice like him?” I am glad, in this age, when men are seeking to forget God, and put him entirely out of the creation, and trying to put laws in the place of God, as if laws could govern a universe without some one to execute those laws, and put power and force into them—I am glad, I say, to be able to bear testimony to something which men cannot deny to be caused immediately by God the mighty One himself. There is one striking proof I would offer to you, that the thunder is the voice of God; and that is the fact, that when God spake on Sinai, and gave forth his law, his voice is then described, if not in the first passage, yet in the reference to it, as being great thunders. “There were thunders and lightnings, exceedingly loud and long.” God spoke then, and he spoke so terribly in thunder, that the people requested that they might hear that voice no more. And I must refer you to one passage in the New Testament, which will bear me out thoroughly in describing the thunder to be, indeed, the voice of God; and that is in the 11th chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, where Jesus lifted up his voice to heaven at the tomb of Lazarus, and asked his Father to answer him; and then a voice came from heaven, and they that stood by said, “that it thundered;” it was the voice of God which was then heard, and they ascribed it to the thunder. Here is a remarkable proof when God’s voice has been heard on any remarkable occasion, it has always been accompanied by the sound of thunder, or, rather, has been the sound of thunder itself. Well, now, leaving these considerations altogether, we come to make some remarks, not upon the voice of God in the thunder, but upon the voice of God as elsewhere heard; for it is not only heard there naturally, but there are spiritual voices and other voices of the Most High. “The voice of the Lord is full of majesty.” God has spoken in various ways to man, in order that man might not think him a God so engrossed with himself that he does not observe his creatures. It has graciously pleased the Divine Being, sometimes to look upon man, at other times to stretch out his hand to man, sometimes to reveal himself in mortal appearance to man, and frequently to speak to man.

At sundry times he has spoken absolutely without the use of means—by his own voice, as for instance, when he spoke from Sinai’s blazing mountain-top, or when he spoke to Samuel in his bed, and said unto him several times, “Samuel, Samuel;” or when he spoke to Elijah, and Elijah said, “he heard the whirlwind, and he saw the fire;” and after that there was “a still small voice.” He has spoken immediately from heaven by his own lips on one or two occasions in the life of Christ. He spoke to him at the waters of Jordan, when he said, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” He spoke to him on another occasion, to which we have already referred. He spoke—it was God that spoke, though it was Jesus Christ—he spoke to Saul, when on his way to Damascus, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” He has spoken several times immediately by his own voice, without the intervention of means at all; at other seasons, God has been pleased to speak to men by angels. He has, as it were, written the message, and sent it down by his messenger from on high: he hath told to man many wonders and secrets by the lips of those glorious beings, who are flaming spirits of his, that do his pleasure. As frequently, perhaps, God has spoken to men in dreams, in visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon them. Then, when the natural ear hath been closed, he hath opened the ear of the spirit, and he hath taught truths which, otherwise, men could never have known.

More frequently still, God hath spoken to men by men. From the days of Noah even until now, God has raised up his prophets, by whose lips he hath spoken.

It was not Jeremiah who uttered that lament which we read, but it was Jehovah, the God in Jeremiah, speaking through the natural organs of his voice. It was not Isaiah who foresaw the future, and foretold the doom of nations, it was God in Isaiah thus speaking. And so with every prophet of the Lord now living, and every minister whom God hath raised up to speak: when we speak with power and efficacy, and unction, it is not we that speak, but it is the Spirit of our Father who dwelleth in us. God speaks through men; and now also, we know that God speaks through his own written Word of Inspiration. When we turn to the page of Scripture, we must not look upon these words as being in any degree the words of men, but as being the words of God. And though they be silent, yet do they speak; and though they cause no noise, yet, verily, “their sound hath gone forth throughout all the world, and their noise unto the ends of the earth.” And yet, again, God even now speaks himself by the use of means; he does not make man speak, he does not make the Bible speak merely of itself, but he speaks through the Bible, and through the man, and there be times when the Spirit of God speaks in the heart of man without the use of means.

I believe there be many secret impulses, many solemn thoughts, many mysterious directions given to us without a single word having been uttered, but by the simple motions of God’s Spirit in the heart. This thing I know, that when I have neither heard nor read, I have yet felt the voice of God within me, and the Spirit hath, himself, revealed some dark mystery, opened some secret, guided me into some truth, given me some direction, led me in some path, or in some other way hath immediately spoken to me himself; and I believe it is so with every man at conversion; with every Christian, as he is carried on through his daily life, and especially as he nears the shores of the grave—that God, the Everlasting One, speaks himself to his soul, with a voice that he cannot resist, although he may have resisted the mere voice of man.

The voice of the Lord is still heard, even as it was heard aforetime. Glory be to his name! And now, my beloved, I come to the doctrine, “The voice of the Lord is full of majesty.” First of all, essentially , “The voice of the Lord” must be “full of majesty;” secondly, constantly , “the voice of the Lord is full of majesty;” thirdly, efficaciously , in all it does, “The voice of the Lord is full of majesty.” I. First, then, “THE VOICE OF THE LORD IS FULL OF MAJESTY.” Ay, and so it should be. Should not that voice be full of majesty which comes from Majesty? Is not God the King of kings, and the Ruler of the whole earth? Should he, then, speak with a voice below his own dignity? Should not the king speak with the voice of a king? Should not a mighty monarch speak with a monarch’s tongue?

And surely, if God be God, and if he be the Master of all worlds, and the Emperor of the universe, he must, when he speaks, speak with the monarch’s tongue and with a majestic voice. The very nature of God requires that all he does should be God-like. His looks are looks divine; his thoughts are thoughts divine; and should not his words be words divine, since they come from him? Verily, from the very essence of God, we might infer that his voice would be full of majesty. But what do we mean by a voice having majesty? I take it that no man’s voice can have majesty in it unless it is true; a lie, if it should be spoken in the noblest language, would never be majestic; a falsehood, if it be uttered by the most eloquent lips, would be a mean and paltry thing, however it might be spoken; and an untruth, wherever uttered, and by whomsoever, is not majestic; it never can be truth, and truth only can ever have majesty about it; and because God’s word are pure truth, unalloyed with the least degree of error, therefore does it come to pass that his words are full of majesty. Whatever I hear my Father say in Scripture, whatever he speaks to me by the ministry, or by his Spirit, if he speaks it, there is not the slightest alloy of untruth about it. I may receive it just as it is. “My faith may on his promise live, May on his promise die.” I need not reason about it; it is enough for me to take it and believe it, because he has said it. I need not try to prove it to the worldling: if I were to prove it, he would believe it none the better; if the voice of God’s majesty doth not convince him, sure the voice of my reasoning never can.

I need not stand and cut and divide between the voice of God and the other; I know it must be true, if he has said it; and therefore I will believe all that I believe God has said, believing that his voice is full of majesty. Then, again, when we speak of a majestical voice, we mean by it, that it is a commanding voice . A man may speak truth, and yet there may be but little majesty in what he says, because he speaks it in a tone that never can command attention and catch the ear of his fellow creatures. in fact, there are some men, expounders of truth, who had better hold their tongues, for they do truth an injury. We know full many who affect to preach God’s truth, who go out to battle, who take the lance in their hands to defend the honor of Christ, but who wield the lance so ill, and who have so little of God’s Spirit, that they do but disgrace his holy name, and it would have been better had they remained at home. Oh! beloved, God’s voice, when he speaks, is always a commanding voice. Let the monarch arise in the midst of his creatures; they may have been conversing with each other before; but hush! his majesty is about to speak. It is so with the majesty of God; if he should speak in heaven the angels would hush their hallelujahs, and suspend the notes of their golden harps, to hear him; and when he speaks on earth, it is at all times becoming in all his creatures to hush their rebellious passions, and make the voice of their reason be silent.

When God speaks, either from the pulpit or from his Word, I hold it to be my duty to keep silence. Even while we sing the glories of our God, our soul stands trembling; but when he speaks forth his own glories, who is he that dares to reply?

Who is he that shall life up his voice against the majesty of heaven? There is something so majestic in the voice of God, that when he speaks, it commands silence everywhere, and bids men hear. But there is something very powerful in the voice of God, and that is the reason why it has majesty in it. When God speaks, he speaks not weakly, but with a voice full of power. We poor creatures, at times, are clothed by God with that might, and when we speak grace comes pouring from our lips; but there are oftentimes seasons when we meet with small success; we talk and talk, and have not our Master’s feet behind us, nor our Master’s spirit within us, and therefore but little is done. It is not so with God: he never wasted a word yet; never spoke a solitary word in vain. Whatever he intended he had but to speak and it was accomplished. Once he said, “Let there be light,” and instantly light was. So he said in past eternity that Christ should be his first elect, and Christ was his first elect.

He decreed out salvation; he spake the word, and it was done. He sent his Son to redeem, and proclaimed to his elect justification in him. And his voice was a powerful voice, for it did justify us. Any other man’s voice could not pardon sin; none but the voice of the monarch can speak pardon to the subject; and God’s is a majestic voice, for he has only to speak, and our pardon is at once signed, sealed, and ratified. God is not magniloquent in his words; he does not speak big, sounding words, without meaning. The simplest word he utters may have little meaning to man, but it has a power and meaning in it equal to the omnipotence of God.

There is a majesty about the voice of God which might suffice to nerve my soul to fight the dragon; to say, “Where is thy boasted victory, death? Where is the monster’s sting?” That one promise hath majesty enough in it to make the dwarf a giant, and the weakling one of the mighties of the Most High.

It has might enough in it to feed a whole host in the wilderness; to guide a whole company through the mazes of mortal life; majesty enough to divide the Jordan, to open the gates of heaven, and admit the ransomed in. Beloved, I cannot tell you how it is that God’s voice is so majestic, except from the fact, that he is so mighty himself, and that his words are like him. But just one thought more concerning the voice of God being essentially majestic; and I must trouble you to remember that, if you forget everything else that I have said. In some sense Jesus Christ may be called the voice of God, for you know he is called the Word of God frequently in Scripture; and I am sure this Word of God “is full of majesty.” The voice and the word are very much the same thing. God speaks: it is his Son. His Son is the Word; the Word is his Son, and the voice is his Son. Ah! truly the voice, the Word of God, “is full of majesty.” Angels! ye can tell what majesty sublime invested his blest person when he reigned at his Father’s right hand; ye can tell what were the brightnesses which he laid aside to become incarnate; ye can tell how sparkling was that crown, how mighty was that sceptre, how glorious were those robes bedecked with stars. Spirits! ye who saw him when he stripped himself of all his glories, ye can tell what was his majesty. And oh! ye glorified, ye who saw him ascend up on high, leading captivity captive—ye beloved songsters, who bow before him, and unceasingly sing his love! ye can tell how full of majesty he is.

High above all principalities and powers ye see him sit; angels are but servants at his feet; and the mightiest monarchs like creeping worms beneath his throne. High there, where God alone reigns, beyond the ken of angels or the gaze of immortal spirits—there he sits, not majestic merely, but full of majesty. Christian! adore your Saviour; adore the Son of God; reverence him, and remember at all seasons and times, how little so ever you may be, your Saviour, with whom you are allied, the Word of God, is essentially full of majesty. II. Now the second point, IT IS FULL OF MAJESTY. God’s voice, like man’s voice, has its various tones and degrees of loudness; but it is full of majesty, constantly so—whatever tone he uses, it is always full of majesty. Sometimes God speaks to man with a harsh voice, threatening him for sin; and then there is majesty in that harshness. When man is angry with his fellows, and he speaks harshly and severely, there is little majesty in that; but when the just God is angry with sinful mortals, and he says, “I will by no means spare the guilty;” “I, the Lord, am a jealous God;” when he declares himself to be exceedingly wroth, and asks who can stand before the fury of his countenance—when the rocks are cast down by him—there is a majesty in that terrific voice of his. Then he adopts another voice.

Sometimes it is a gentle didactic voice, teaching us what he would have us learn. And then how full of majesty it is! He explains, he expounds, he declares: he tells us what we are to believe; and what a majesty there is in his voice then! Men may explain God’s Word, and have no majesty in what they say; but when God teaches what his people are to hold to be truth, what majesty there is in it! So much majesty, that if any man take away from the words that are written in this Book, God shall take away his name out of the book of life and out of the holy city—so much majesty, that to seek to mend the Bible is a proof of a blasphemous heart, that to seek to alter one word of Scripture is a proof of alienation from the God of Israel. At another time God uses another voice—a sweet consoling voice.

And oh! ye mourners that have ever heard God’s comforting voice, is not that full of majesty! There is nothing of the mere trifling that sometimes we employ to comfort poor sick souls.

Mothers will often talk to those who are sick in some gentle strain; but somehow it appears to be affected, and is, therefore, not full of majesty; but when God speaks to comfort, he uses his majestic words. “The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.” Oh! is there not majesty in this sweet voice? “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I never forget thee.” How sweet, but yet how majestic! We cannot avoid being comforted by it if God speaks it to our souls. Sometimes God’s voice is a reproving voice; and then it is full of majesty. “The ox knoweth his owner,” he says, “and the ass his master’s crib; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider;” and he speaks reprovingly, as if he had a controversy with them, and calls the mountains and the hills to hear his reproof of them on account of sin; “I have nourished and brought up children, but they have rebelled against me.” But God’s reproving voice is always full of majesty. At other times it is a voice of command to his children, when he appears to them and says, “Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward,” And how majestic are God’s commands, how mighty is his voice, when he tells us what to do! Some of you have a very poor estimation of what God’s voice is. God tells you to be baptized in honor of your Lord and Master; he speaks to you, and he tells you to come round his table, and to remember his dying sufferings; but you do not think much of it: it seems to be lost upon you.

But let me tell you, that God’s voice of command is as full of majesty, and ought to be as much regarded by his people as his word of promise or his word of doctrine. Whenever he speaks there is a majesty about his voice, whatever tone he may adopt.

Ah! beloved, and there are times coming when God will speak words which will be evidently full of majesty—when he will speak and say, “Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment.” There will be majesty in that voice; for Hades shall then be unlocked, and the gates of the grave sawn in twain; the spirits of the dead shall again be clothed with flesh, and the dry bones shall be made alive once more. And he will speak by-and-bye, and summon all men to stand before his bar; and there will be majesty in his voice then, when he shall say, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you;” and oh! dread thought, there will be tremendous majesty in his voice, when he shall exclaim, “Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” Again. God’s voice is full of majesty in all the different degrees of its loudness . Even in calling there is a difference in the loudness of God’s voice; many of you were called gently to Christ, and you did not seem to hear the thunders of Sinai, like many of God’s people; but whether the voice be loud or soft, it is always full of majesty. And in all its mediums it is full of majesty. God has sometimes chosen the poor to speak his wisdom by. If I go and hear a countryman or an untaught man preach, who makes many mistakes in grammar, yet if it is God’s word that he preaches, it “is full of majesty.” And sometimes, when a little child has repeated a text, we have not noticed the child, by reason of the majesty of the voice. In fact, the meaner the instrument employed, the greater the majesty in the voice itself. I have noticed a tendency in many to despise their poorer brethren, members of smaller churches, where there is a more humble minister than one they are in the habit of hearing; but this is all wrong, for God’s voice is full of majesty; and he can as well speak by one as the other. III.

In the last place, I must briefly refer to the majesty of God’s voice WHEN IT IS IN ITS EFFECTS—when it is spoken home to the heart of man. Just look at the Psalm, and let me briefly refer to the facts here mentioned. I shall not understand them naturally, though, doubtless, they were so intended by David, but I shall understand them spiritually. As Dr. Hawker remarks, “Doubtless they were intended to set out gracious operations, as well as natural ones.” First, the voice if the Lord is a breaking voice. “The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars.” The proudest and most stubborn sinner is broken before him when he speaks. I believe that even the spirit of Voltaire, stubborn as that spirit was, and hard as a millstone, would have been broken in a single instant, if God had but spoken to him; the hardest heart I have here needs only one syllable from God to break it in a moment. I might hammer away to all eternity, but I could not do it; but “the voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.” In the next place it is a moving voice, an overcoming voice. “He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn.” Who would ever think of a mountain moving? It stands so fast and firm.

But God’s voice, like his voice in Zerubbabel, speaks to that mountain, and says, “Who art thou, great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain.” There is not a mountain standing in this world that God cannot move away by his voice, whether it be the mountains of Rome, or the mountain of the false prophet, or the mountains of colossal systems of heresy, or infidelity, or idolatry. God has only to speak the word, and the idols shall fall from their thrones, and the firm mountains of priest-craft shall skip like a calf. In the next place, the voice of God is a dividing voice. “The voice of the Lord divideth the flames of fire;” or, as it should be, “The voice of the Lord cutteth out with flames of fire.” You saw the lightning on Friday, and you remarked then, when God’s voice was heard, that the flash seemed to part the cloud and divide the sky. Just so with God’s word. Where God’s word is faithfully preached, and his voice is spiritually heard, it is always a dividing voice. You bring all kinds of different characters into a chapel, and God’s word splits them all in twain. It is in this place God divides you. The son of God holds his throne, and sits in judgment here.

It divides men from men; it divides sinners from their sins; it divides sinners from their righteousness; it splits through clouds and darkness; it divides our troubles, breaks a way for us to heaven. In fact, there is nothing that the voice of God cannot divide. It is a dividing voice. And then, again, the voice of the Lord is such a loud voice, that it is said to shake the wilderness. “The Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh.” Stand in the middle of a wilderness or a desert, and conceive if you would make anything hear; but when God speaks, his voice ringeth through the wilderness, and startleth the desert itself. Minister of God! you have only to speak God’s voice, and you will be heard; if you have only half-a-dozen to hear you, you will be heard further than you know of. None of us can preach a gospel sermon, but it is heard and talked of more than we imagine. Yea, there is not a pious conversation with a poor woman but may be carried all over the world, and produce the most wonderful effects. Nobody can tell how loud is God’s voice, and how far it may be heard. “Lift up thy voice; lift it up; be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God.” And your voice may be ever so weak, and your ability ever so little: only lift it up, and God Almighty, by his grace, may make the very wilderness to shake, yea, he may make the very wilderness of Kadesh to tremble. And then in the 9th verse there is another idea, which I must not pass over, although I might have preferred to do so, possibly. “The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve.” By this I understand what the ancients believed—that so affrighted were the hinds by the noise of the thunder, that the period of calving was often hastened on, and frequently prematurely. It is just so with God’s voice.

If a man has in him a desire towards Christ, the voice of God makes him bring forth that desire, to the joy and rejoicing of his soul. And very frequently, when a man has a bad design towards God, God has only to speak, and his design becomes abortive. It is brought forth, as it were, before its time, and falls like an untimely fruit to the ground. Whatever man has within him, God can make it come out of him in a single moment: if he has a desire towards God, God can bring forth that desire, and he can bring forth the soul, and make it alive; and if it be a desire against God, God can frustrate that desire, kill it, overwhelm it, and overthrow it; for “the voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve.” And in the next place, the voice of God is a discovering voice . It “discovereth the forests.” The trees were your former hiding-place; but in the forest, however thick it may be, there doth the lightning gleam; and under the mighty trees, however thick their covering, the voice of the Lord is heard. God’s voice is a discovering voice. You hypocrites! you get hiding yourselves under the trees of the forest; but God’s voice thundereth after you when it speaks. Some of you get hiding under ceremonies, good lives, resolutions, and hopes; but God’s voice will discover the forests; and recollect, there will be a day with some of you, when you will hide yourselves, or seek to do it, under rocks and mountains, or in the deepest parts of the forests; but when he sits upon his throne, the voice of the Lord will discover the forests.

Ye may stand under the old oak, or creep within its trunk, and feel that there you are hidden; but his eyes like balls of fire, shall see you through and through, and his voice, like a voice of thunder, shall say, “Come forth, culprit; come forth, man; I can see thee; ‘Mine eye can pierce the shades, and find thy soul as soon In midnight’s darkness as in blazing noon.’ Come forth, come forth!” And vain then will be thy disguises, vain thy subterfuges. “The voice of the Lord discovereth the forests.” Oh! I would to God that he would speak to some of you this morning, and discover your souls! I wish he would discover to you your lost and hopeless condition; that you are damned without Christ, every one of you! Oh that he would discover to you how horrible is your position, considered apart from the Saviour; discover to you the fallacy of all your legal hope, and of all your experiences, if they are not experiences allied to Christ! I pray that he would discover to you that all your good works will come tumbling on your head at last, if you build them for a house, and that you must stand surrounded by no covering, but unveiled before the God who discovers the forests. I would have preached to you this morning; but I cannot. Yet, perhaps, amidst the multitude of my words there may be some still small voice of God, which shall reach your heart. And if the rest of you should despise it, what of that? The voice of God will be as full of majesty in the reprobate as in the elect; and if ye be cast away into hell, God shall get as much glory from the voice which ye heard and which ye despised, as he does from his voice which the elect heard, and at which they trembled and fled to God.

Do not think that your damnation will rob God of any of his honor. Why, sirs, he can be as much glorified in your destruction as in your salvation. You are but little creatures in the account of his glory. He can magnify himself anyhow. Oh! humble yourselves, therefore, before God; bow down yourselves before his love and his mercy; and hear now what the plan of salvation is, whereby God brings out his elect. It is this: “He that believeth,” in that voice, that Word, that Son of his; “He that believeth,"—not merely he that hopeth; “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be damned.” Ah! hearers, if I could leap out of my body, and could lay aside the infirmities of my spirit, methinks that then I might preach to you; but I know right well that even then it must be God that speaks; and therefore I leave the words.

My God! My God!

Save these my people; for Jesus’ precious name’s sake. Amen and Amen. Jesus Hiding Himself by Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892) This updated and revised manuscript is copyrighted ã 1999 by Tony Capoccia. All rights reserved. ‘You hid Your face, and I was troubled.’— Psalms 30:7 ‘Why dost thou shade thy lovely face? oh, why Doth that eclipsing hand so long deny The sunshine of thy soul?enlivening eye? ‘Without that light, what light remains in me? Thou art my life, my way, my light; in thee I live, I move, and by thy beams I see. ‘Thou art my life; if thou but turn away, My life’s a thousand deaths: thou art my way; Without thee, Lord, I travel not, but stray. ‘My light thou art; without thy glorious sight, Mine eyes are darkened with perpetual night. My God thou art my way, my life, my light.’ QUARLES. The Lord Jesus will never remove his love from any one of the objects of his choice. The names of his redeemed are written on his hands and graven on his side; they are designed for eternal bliss, and his hand and his heart are jointly resolved to bring them to that blessed consummation. The lowliest lamb of the blood?bought flock shall be preserved securely by the ‘strength of Israel’ unto the day of his appearing, and shall, through every season of tribulation and distress, continue to be beloved of the Lord. Yet this does not prevent the great Shepherd from hiding himself for a season, when his people are rebellious. Though the Redeemer’s grace shall never be utterly removed, yet there shall be partial withdrawals of his presence, whereby our joys shall be dimmed, and our evidences darkened.

He will sometimes say, ‘I will return again to my place till they acknowledge their offenses,’ which they have committed against me; and at other seasons, for a trial of their faith, he will ‘for a mere moment’ hide himself from them. In proportion as the Master’s presence is delightful, his absence is mournful. Dark is the night which is caused by the setting of such a sun. No blow of Providence can ever wound so sorely as this. A destroyed crop is nothing compared with an absent Redeemer; yes, sickness and the approach of death are preferable to the departure of Emmanuel. Skin for skin, yes, all that a man has he will give for his life; and more than that would the sin-cere disciple be prepared to surrender for a re-newal of his Lord’s presence. ‘Oh, that I were as in months past, as in the days when God watched over me; when His lamp shone upon my head, and when by His light I walked through darkness!’ Such will be the sorrowful com-plaint of the spirit when groping its way through the darkness of desertion. ‘God’s hiding himself, though but for trial’s sake, will so trouble a Christian that he will quickly be a burden to himself, and fear round about, as it is said of Pashhur. . It will make him weary of the night, and weary of the day; weary of his own house, and weary of God’s house; weary of mirth, and account it madness; weary of riches and honours; yea, if it continue long, it will make him weary of life itself, and wish for death.’ [Lockyer on Christ’s Communion] The effect is always deplorable during the time of its duration, but the cause of it is not always the same. There are various reasons for apparent desertions; we will enter upon that interesting subject in the next chapter, and in the present meditation we shall chiefly consider the ill effects of the absence of Christ We would carefully distinguish between those withdrawals which are evidences of an offence given to our Lord, and those which are designed to be trials of our faith. Our experience under different varieties of forsakings will vary, and the following remarks, although primarily applicable to all desertions, are only intended in their detail to refer to those which are brought about by our transgressions; and even then it is not to be imagined that each case will exhibit every point which we shall now observe.

Here we especially refer to those hidings of God’s countenance which are brought upon us as a fatherly chastisement. And we do not here dwell upon the ultimate and blessed effects of the temporary forsakings of God, but are only to be understood to refer to the ills which, during the time, beset the soul. Holy men may be left to walk in darkness. ‘Sometimes Christians are guilty of acting a part which is offensive to their dear Saviour, and therefore he withdraws from them. Darkness spreads itself over them, thick clouds interpose between him and their souls, and they see not his smiling face. This was the case with the Church when she was inclined unto carnal ease, rather than to rise and give her Beloved entrance. He quickened her desires after the enjoyment of his company, by an effectual touch upon her heart; but he withdrew, departed, and left her to be-wail her folly in her sinful neglect. Upon this her bowels were troubled: she arose and sought him; but she found him not. It is just with him to hide himself from us, if we are indifferent about the enjoyments of his delightful presence, and give us occasion to confess our ingratitude to him, by the loss we sustain in consequence of it. His love in itself passes under no vicissitude; it is always the same; that is our security; but the manifestation of it to our souls, from which our peace, comfort and joy spring, may be interrupted through our negligence, sloth, and sin.

A sense of it, when it is so, may well break our hearts; for there is no ingratitude in the world like it.’ [Brine]. We would not be understood to teach that God punishes his people for sin in a legal sense; this would be a slur upon his justice; for, seeing that he has fully punished their sin in Christ, to inflict any penalty upon them would be demanding a double punishment for one offence, which would be unjust. Let the chastisements be understood in a paternal sense as correctives, and the truth is gained. Sin will be chastened in the elect. ‘You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities’ . If we walk contrary to him, he will walk contrary to us. The promise of communion is only attached to obedience. ‘He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him’ .

Now if we walk scandalously, and indulge in known sin, no wonder the Lord withdraws himself from us. The joy of his salvation must not rest with his erring ones, though the salva-tion itself is always theirs.

Alas for us, that our corruption should so frequently mar our communion! Many times between conversion and the rest of eternity, the Christian, through sin, will have to walk through a salt land, not inhabited, and find the Songs of Solomon hushed by the wail of the Lamentations. Yet we would gladly believe that there are some who have but little cause to write their history in black letters, for their life has been one continued calm com-munion, with only here and there a hurried interruption. We are far from believing that the despondency, coldness, and misery produced by a loss of the visible love of Christ ought to make up any considerable part of the biography of a Christian. That they do so in many cases, we readily admit, but that it should be so, we can never allow. Those men who glory in what they proudly call a deep experience—by which they mean great wanderings from the path which Enoch trod when he walked with God, -are very prone to exalt the infirmities of the Lord’s people into infallible and admirable proofs of grace. To them an absent Christ is fine stock in trade for a sermon on their own superlative wisdom; and a heart which mourns abundantly, but loves most scantily, is to them what per-fection is to the Arminian.

As if the weeds of the field were precious plants because they will grow in good soil; as if the freckles on the face of beauty were to be imitated by all who desire to attain to loveliness; or as if the rocks in the sea were the very cause of its fullness. The deepest experience in the world is that which deals only with the Lord Jesus Christ, and is so sick of man, and of all within him, and so con-fident in the Lord Jesus, that it casts the whole weight of the sin and sinfulness of the soul entirely upon the Redeemer, and so rejoicing in his all?sufficiency, looks above the needs and woes of its own evil and ruined nature, to the completion of the new man in Christ Jesus.

That eminent preacher, the late Rowland Hill, has well said, ‘I do not like Christians to live always complaining; but I do not mind how much they complain if they carry their corrup-tions to Jesus.’ This is forgotten by many; but those who are careful to practise it will have many reasons for gladness. Blessed be God, the green pastures and the still waters, the shepherd’s staff and pleasant company, are objects which are quite as familiar to the believer’s mind as the howling wilderness and the brandished rod— ‘The men of grace have found Glory began below; Celestial fruits on earthly ground, From faith and hope do grow.’ Yet, to the believer’s grief, seasons of absence do occur, and those, alas, too frequently. It is our business, as the Holy Spirit shall enable us, very briefly to consider the subject of apparent desertion on account of sin, and may he make it useful to us. We shall now proceed to review the troubles which attend the suspended communion. The effects of the withdrawal of the face of Jesus are the outward signs shadowing forth the secret sickness of the heart, which such a con-dition necessarily engenders. Although it is not fatal, yet is it exceedingly hurtful to miss the company of the Lord. As plants do not thrive when the light is kept from them, but become blanched and unhealthy, so souls de-prived of the light of God’s countenance are unable to maintain the verdure of their piety or the strength of their graces, What a loss is a lost Christ! During this unhappy season the believer’s evi-dences are eclipsed; he is in grievous doubt concerning his own condition before God; his faith has become weak, his hope nearly buried, and his love cold and lethargic. The graces which, like planetary stars, once shone on him with light and radiance, are now dark and cheerless, for the sun has departed, the source of their light is concealed in clouds. Evidences without Christ are like unlit candles, which give no light; like fig trees with only leaves, devoid of fruit; like purses with-out gold, and like barns without wheat: they have great capabilities of comfort, but without Jesus they are emptiness itself. Evi-dences are like conduit pipes—they are some-times the channels of living water, but if the supply from the fountainhead is cut off from them, their waters utterly fail.

That man will die of thirst who has no better spring to look to than an empty pitcher of evidences. Ishmael would have perished in the wilderness if his only hope had been in the bottle which his mother brought out with her from the tent of Abraham; and assuredly without direct sup-plies from the gracious hands of the Lord Jesus, the saints would soon be in an ill plight. Unless the God of our graces is ever at the root of them, they will prove like Jonah’s gourd, which withered away when he was most in need of it. In this condition we shall find ourselves, if we lose the presence of the Lord Jesus; we shall be racked with fears, and tormented with doubts, without possessing that sovereign tonic with which in better days our sorrows have been allayed. We shall find all the usual sources of our consolation dried up, and it will be in vain for us to expect a single drop from them. Ahab sent Obadiah on an idle errand, when in the time of great drought he said, ‘Go into the land to all the springs of water and to all the brooks; perhaps we may find grass to keep the horses and mules alive, so that we will not have to kill any livestock;’ for it was the presence and prayer of Elijah which alone could procure the rain to supply their needs; and if we, when we have lost our Master’s closeness, seek to obtain comfort in past experiences and timeworn evidences, we shall have to weep with bitter tears because of a dis-appointed hope.

We must regain the closeness of Christ, if we want to restore the lustre of our assurance. An absent Saviour and joyous confidence are seldom to be spoken of together. We know, however, that some professors can maintain a confident bearing when the presence of the Lord is withheld; they are as content without him as with him, and as happy under his frown as when in the sunshine of his smile.

Between the outward appearances of strong faith and strong delusion there is frequently so little difference that the presumptuous boaster is often as highly esteemed as the assured be-liever: nevertheless in their inner nature there is an essential distinction. Faith believes on Jesus when his comfortable promise is not granted; but it does not render the soul indifferent to the sweetness of his company. Faith says, ‘I believe Him when I do not feel his love manifested towards me, but my very per-suasion of his faithfulness makes me pant for the light of his countenance;’ but vain presumption exclaims, ‘Away with evidences and manifestations, I am a vessel of mercy, and therefore I am secure; why should I trouble myself about grace or graces? I have made up my mind that all is right, and I will not break my slumbers despite whoever may seek to alarm me.’ Happy is the man whose faith can see in the thick darkness, and whose soul can live in the year of drought; but that man is not far from a curse who slights the fellowship of the Lord, and esteems his smile to be a vain thing. It is an ill sign if any of us are in a contented state when we are forsaken of the Lord; it is not faith, but wicked indifference, which makes us careless concerning communion with Him. And yet how often have we had cause to lament our lack of concern; how frequently have we groaned because we could not weep as we ought for the return of our husband who had hidden himself from us! When enveloped in the mists of desertion, we lose all those pleasant visions of the future which once were the jewels in the crown of our life. We have no climbings to the top of Pisgah; no prospects of the better land; no pledge of pure delight; no foretastes of the riches of glory, and no assurance of our title to the goodly land beyond Jordan. It is as much as we can do to preserve ourselves from despair; we cannot aspire to any confidence of future glory.

It is a contested point with us whether we are not ripening for hell. We fear that we never knew a Saviour’s love, but have been all along deceivers and deceived; the pit of hell yawns before us, and we are in great straits to maintain so much as a bare hope of escape from it. We had once despised others for what we thought to be foolish doubts, but now that we ourselves are ready to slip with our feet, we think far more of the lamps which we despised when we were at ease, and would be willing to change places with them if we might have as good an opinion of our own sincerity as we have of theirs. We would give anything for half a grain of hope, and would be well content to be the lowliest of the sheep, if we might only have a glimpse of the Shepherd. The native buoyancy of spirit which distinguishes the heir of heaven is in a great measure removed by the departure of the Lord. The be-liever is spiritually a man who can float in the deepest waters, and mount above the highest bil-lows; he is able, when in a right condition, to keep his head above all the floodwaters which may invade his peace: but see his Lord depart, and he sinks in deep mire, where there is no standing—all the waves and the billows have covered him. Troubles which were light as a feather to him, are now like mountains of lead; he is afraid of every dog that snarls at him, and trembles at every shadow. He who in his better days could cut down an acre of enemies with a single stroke, is afraid at the approach of a single adversary. He whose heart was fixed so that he was not afraid of evil tidings, is now alarmed at every report.

Once he could hurl defiance to earth and hell with it, and could laugh at persecution, slander, and reproach, but he is now as timid as a deer, and trembles at every phantom that threatens him. His daily cares, which once he loved to cast upon the Lord, and counted only as the small dust of the balance are now borne upon the shoulders of his own anxiety, and are an intolerably oppressive load. He was once clothed in impervious armour, and was not afraid of sword or spear; but now that he has lost his Master’s presence, such is his nakedness that every thorn pierces him, and every briar fetches blood from him; yes, his spirit is pierced through and through with anxious thoughts which once would have been his scorn. How the mighty are fallen; how the princes are taken in a net, and the nobles cast down as the mire of the street! He who could do all things can now do nothing; and he who could rejoice in deep distress is now mourning in the midst of blessings. He is like a chariot without wheels or horses, a harp without strings, a river without water, and a sail without wind.

No songs and music now; his harp is hanging on the willows. It is vain to ask of him for a song, for ‘the chief musician with his stringed instruments’ has ceased to lead the choir.

Can the spouse be happy when she has grieved her bridegroom and lost his company? No; she will go weeping through every street of the city, until she can again embrace him; her joy shall cease until again she shall behold his countenance. It is frequently an effect of divine withdrawal that the mind becomes grovelling, and earthly. Covetousness and love of riches attain a sad preponderance. The Lord will hide himself if we love the world; and, on the other hand, his absence, which is intended for far other pur-poses, will sometimes, through the infirmity of our nature, increase the evil which it is intended to cure. When the Lord Jesus is present in the soul, and is beheld by it, ambition, covetousness, and worldliness flee quickly; for his apparent glory is such that earthly objects fade away like the stars in noonday; but when he is gone, they will show their false glitter, as the stars, however small, will shine at midnight. Find a Christian whose soul cleaves to the dust, and who cares for the things of this life, and you have found one who has had but little manifest fellowship with Jesus. As sure as we continually undervalue the Saviour’s company, we shall set too high an estimate upon the things of this life, and then bitterness and disappointment are at the door. At this juncture, moreover, the great enemy of souls is particularly busy; our distress is his opportunity, and he is not backward in availing himself of it. Now that Zion’s Captain has re-moved his royal presence, the evil one concludes that he may deal with the soul using the strategies of his own malicious heart.

Accordingly, with many a roar and hideous yell, he seeks to frighten the saint; and if this is not sufficient, he lifts his arm of terror and hurls his fiery dart. As lions prowl by night, so does he seek his prey in the darkness. The saint is now more than usually beneath his power; every wound from the venom filled dart festers and gangrenes more easily than at other times; while to the ear of the troubled one the howlings of Satan seem to be a thousand times louder than he had ever heard before. Doubts of our calling, our election, and adoption, fly into our souls like the flies that flew into Pharaoh’s palace, and all the while the grim fiend covers us with a darkness that may be felt. Had he attacked us in our hours of communion, we would soon have made him feel the metal of our swords; but our arm is trembling, and our strokes are like blows from the hand of a child, exciting his laughter rather than his fear. Oh for the days when we put to flight the armies of the aliens! would to God we could again put on strength, and by the arm of the Lord overthrow the hosts of hell!

Like Samson we sigh for the hair in which our great strength lies; and when the shouts of the vaunting Philistines are in our ears, we cry for the strength which once laid our enemies into ‘heaps upon heaps’ by the thousands. We must again enjoy the manifest presence of the Lord, or we shall have hard work to lift up a flag against the enemy. It is not an unusual circumstance to find sin return to the conscience at this critical season. ‘Now the heart, disclosed, betrays All its hid disorders; Enmity to God’s right ways, Blasphemies and murders, Malice, envy, lust, and pride, Thoughts obscene and filthy; Sores corrupt and putrefied, No part sound or healthy. All things to promote our fall, Show a mighty fitness; Satan will accuse withal, And the conscience witness; Foes within, and foes without, Wrath, and law, and terrors; Rash presumption, timid doubt, Coldness, deadness, errors.’ [Hart] When Israel had the sea before them, and the mountains on either hand, their old masters thought it a fit time to pursue them; and now that the believer is in great straits, his former sins rise up to afflict him and cause him renewed sorrow: then our sins become more formidable to us than they were at our first repentance; when we were in Egypt we did not see the Egyptians on horses and in chariots—they only appeared as our task-masters with their whips; but now we see them clad in armour, as mighty ones, full of wrath, bearing the instruments of death.

The pangs of sin, when the Lord forsakes us, are frequently as vehement as at first conversion, and in some cases far more so; for a conviction of having grieved a Saviour whose love we have once known, and whose faithfulness we have proved, will cause grief of a far more poignant character than any other sort of conviction. Men who have been in a room full of light, think that the darkness is more dense than it is con-sidered to be by those who have long walked in it; so pardoned men think more of the evil of sin than those who never saw the light. The deserted soul has little or no liberty in prayer: he pursues the habit from a sense of duty, but it yields him no delight. In prayer the spirit is dull and lethargic, and after it the soul feels no more refreshment than is afforded to the weary by a sleep disturbed with dreams and broken with terrors. He is unable to enter into the spirit of worship; it is rather an attempt at devotion than the attainment of it. As when the bird with a broken wing strives to fly, and rises a little distance, but speedily falls to the ground, where it painfully limps and flaps its useless wing—so does the believer strive to pray, but fails to reach the height of his desires, and sorrowfully gropes his way with anguishing attempts to soar on high. A pious man once said, ‘Often when in prayer I feel as if I held between my palms the fatherly heart of God and the bloody hand of the Lord Jesus; for I remind the one of his divine love and inconceivable mercies, and I grasp the other by his promise, and strive to hold him fast and say, “I will not let thee go except thou bless me.”’ [ Genesis 32:26 ]. But when left by the Lord such blessed nearness of access is impossible; there is no answer of peace, no token for good, no message of love. The ladder is there, but no angels are ascending and descend-ing upon it; the key of prayer is in the hand, but it turns uselessly within the lock.

Prayer without the Lord’s presence is like a bow with-out a string, or an arrow without a head. The Bible, too, that great granary of the finest wheat, becomes a place of emptiness, where hunger looks in vain for food: in reading it, the distressed soul will think it to be all threatenings and no promises; he will see the terrors written in capitals, and the consolations printed in a type so small as to be almost illegible. Read the Word he must, for it has become as necessary as his food; but enjoy it he cannot, for its savour has departed. As well as we might try to read in the dark, there will be no joy from the Holy Scripture, unless Christ shall pour his gracious light upon the page. As the richest field yields no harvest without rain, so the book of revela-tion brings forth no comfort without the dew of the Spirit. Our interaction with Christian friends, once so enriching, is rendered profitless, or at best its only usefulness is to reveal our poverty by enabling us to compare our own condition with that of other saints. We cannot min-ister to their edification, nor do we feel that their company is affording us its usual enjoy-ment; and it may be that we will turn away from them, longing to see His face whose absence we deplore. This barrenness spreads over all the ordinances of the Lord’s house, and renders them all unprofitable. When Christ is with the Christian, the means of grace are like flowers in the sunshine, smelling fragrantly and smiling beautifully; but without Christ they are like flowers by night, their fountains of fragrance are sealed by the darkness. The songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, and her solemn feasts as mournful as her days of fast-ing.

The sacred supper which, when Christ is at the table, is a feast of fat things, without Him is as an empty vine. The holy convoca-tion without him is as the gatherings in the marketplace, and the preaching of his Word as the shoutings in the streets. We hear, but the out-er ear is the only part affected; we sing, but ‘Hosannas languish on our tongues, And our devotion dies.’ We even attempt to preach (if this is our call-ing), but we speak in heavy chains, full of grievous bondage. We pant for God’s house, and then, after we have entered it, we are only the worse for it. We have thirsted for the well, and having reached it we find it empty. Very probably we will grow highly critical, and blame the ministry and the church when the blame lies only within ourselves. We shall begin to complain, censure, criticise, and blame. I would to God that any who are now doing so would pause and inquire the reason of their unhappy dis-position. Hear the reproof administered by one of the giants of puritanical times: ‘You come oft-times to Wisdom’s home, and though she prepare you all spiritual dainties, yet you can relish nothing but some by?things, that lie about the dish rather for ornament than for food.

And would you know the reason of this? It is because Christ is not with your spirits. If Christ were with you, you would feed on every dish at Wisdom’s table, on promises, yea, and on threatenings too. “To the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet,” saith Solomon. All that is good and wholesome goes down well where Christ is with the spirit.’ [Lockyer] Oh, for the Master’s smile to impart a relish to his delicacies! Weakness is the unavoidable result of the Lord’s displeasure. ‘The joy of the Lord is our strength,’ and if this is lacking then we necessarily become faint. ‘His presence is life,’ and the removal of it shakes us to our very foundation. Duty is toilsome labour, unless Christ make it a delight. ‘Without me you can do nothing,’ said the Redeemer; and truly we have found it so. The boldness of lion?like courage, the firmness of rooted decision, the confidence of un-flinching faith, the seal of quenchless love, the vigour of undying devotion, the sweetness of sanctified fellowship—all hang for support upon the one pillar of the Saviour’s presence, and if this is removed then they fail. There are many precious clusters, but they all grow on one bough, and if that is broken they fall with it. Though we are flourishing like the green bay tree, yet the sharpness of such a winter will leave us leafless and bare.

Then ‘the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines; though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food.’ ‘Instead of a sweet smell there will be a stench; instead of a sash, a rope; instead of well-set hair, baldness; instead of a rich robe, a girding of sackcloth; and branding instead of beauty’ It is then that we shall cry with Saul, ‘I am deeply distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God has departed from me and does not answer me anymore, neither by prophets nor by dreams’ . It is good for us that he is not completely gone forever, but will turn again lest we perish. Not to weary ourselves upon this mournful topic, we may sum up the manifest effects of a loss of the manifest favour of Christ in one sad list—misery of spirit, faintness in hope, coldness in worship, slackness in duty, dullness in prayer, barrenness in meditation, worldliness of mind, strife of conscience, attacks from Satan, and weakness in resisting the enemy. The withdrawing of Divine presence work in man does him much ruin. Good Lord, deliver us from all grieving of your Spirit, from all offending of the Saviour, from all with-drawing of your visible favour, and loss of your presence. And if at any time we have erred, and have lost the light of your countenance, O Lord, help us still to believe your grace and trust in the merits of your Son, through whom we address you. Amen. TO THE READER SINNER, if the consequences of the temporary departure of God is so terrible, what must it be to be shut out from him forever? If the passing cloud of his seeming anger scatters such grievous rain upon the beloved sons of God, how terrible will be the continual shower of God’s unchanging wrath which will fall on the head of rebellious sinners forever and ever! Ah, and we do not need to look as far as the future!

How pitiable is your condition NOW! How great is the danger which you are exposed to every day! How can you eat or drink, or sleep or work, while the eternal God is your enemy? He whose wrath makes the devils roar in agony is not a God to be trifled with! Beware! his frown is death; it is more than that—it is hell. If you knew the misery of the saint when his Lord deserts him only for a small moment, it would be enough to amaze you. Then what must it be to endure it throughout eternity? Sinner, you are hurrying to hell, pay attention where you are at!

Do not damn yourself, there are cheaper ways of playing the fool than that. Go and dress yourself in motley clothes, and become the mimicking fool, at whom men laugh, but do not make laughter for fiends forever. Carry coals on your head, or dash your head against the wall, to prove that you are mad, but do not ‘kick against the goads;’ do not commit suicide upon your own soul for the mere sake of indulging your thoughtlessness. Be wise, lest being often reproved, having hardened your neck, you should suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.