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ChristOur Substitute
A Sermon Delivered on Sabbath Evening, April 15th, 1860, by the
REV. C.H. SPURGEON
At New Park Street, Southwark
"For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."2 Corinthians 5:21.
Sometime ago an excellent lady sought an interview
with me, with the object as she said, of enlisting my sympathy upon the question of
"Anti-Capital Punishment." I heard the excellent reasons she urged against
hanging men who had committed murder, and though they did not convince me, I did not seek
to answer hem. She proposed that when a man committed murder, he should be confined for
life. My remark was, that a great many men who had been confined half their lives were not
a bit the better for it, and as for her belief that they would necessarily be brought to
repentance, I was afraid it was but a dream. "Ah," she said, good soul as she
was, "that is because we have been all wrong about punishments. We punish people
because we think they deserve to be punished. Now, we ought to show them," said she,
"that we love them; that we only punish them to make them better." "Indeed,
madam," I said, "I have heard that theory a great many times, and I have seen
much fine writing upon the matter, but I am no believer in it. The design of punishment
should be amendment, but the ground of punishment lies in the positive guilt of the
offender. I believe that when a man does wrong, he ought to be punished for it, and that
there is a guilt in sin which justly merits punishment." "Oh no; she could not
see that. Sin was a very wrong thing, but punishment was not a proper idea. She thought
that people were treated too cruelly in prison, and that they ought to be taught that we
love them. If they were treated kindly in prison, and tenderly dealt with, they would grow
so much better, she was sure." With a view of interpreting her own theory, I said,
"I suppose, then, you would give criminals all sorts of indulgences in prison. Some
great vagabond who has committed burglary dozens of timesI suppose you would let him
sit in an easy chair in the evening before a nice fire, and mix him a glass of spirits and
water, and give him his pope, and make him happy, to show him how much we love him."
"Well, no, she would not give him the spirits, but, still, all the rest would do him
good." I thought that was a delightful picture certainly. It seemed to me to be the
most prolific method of cultivating rogues which ingenuity could invent. I imagine that
you could row any number of thieves in that way; for it would be a special means of
propagating all manner of roguery and wickedness. These very delightful theories to such a
simple mind as mine, were the source of much amusement, the idea of fondling villains, and
treating heir crimes as if they were the tumbles and falls of children, made me laugh
heartily. I fancied I saw the government resigning its functions to these excellent
persons, and the grand results of their marvellously kind experiments. The sword of the
magistrate transformed into a gruel-spoon, and the jail become a sweet retreat for injured
reputations.
Little however, did I think I should live
to see this kind of stuff taught in pulpits; I had no idea that there would come out a
divinity, which would bring down God's moral government from he solemn aspect in which
Scripture reveals it, to a namby-pamby sentimentalism, which adores a Deity destitute of
every masculline virtue. But we never know to-day what may occur to-morrow. We have lived
to see a certain sort of menthank God they are not Baptiststhough I am sorry
to say there are a great many Baptists who are beginning to follow in their trailwho
seek to teach now-a-days, that God is a universal Father, and that our ideas of his
dealing with the impenitent as a Judge, and not as a Father, are remnants of antiquated
error. Sin, according to these men, is a disorder rather than an offence, an error rather
than a crime. Love is the only attribute they can discern, and the full-orbed Deity they
have not known. Some of these men push their way very far into the bogs and mire of
falsehood, until they inform us that eternal punishment is ridiculed as a dream. In fact,
books now appear, which teach us that there is no such thing as the Vicarious Sacrifice of
our Lord Jesus Christ. They use the word Atonement it is true, but in regard to its
meaning, they have removed the ancient landmark. They acknowledge that the Father has
shown his great love to poor sinful man by sending his Son, but not that God was
inflexibly just in the exhibition of his mercy, not that he punished Christ on the behalf
of his people, nor that indeed God ever will punish anybody I his wrath, or that there is
such a thing as justice apart from discipline. Even sin and hell are but old
words employed henceforth in a new and altered sense. Those are old-fashioned notions, and
we poor souls who go on talking about election and imputed righteousness, are behind our
time. Ay, and the gentlemen who bring out books on this subject, applaud Mr. Maurice, and
Professor Scott, and the like, but are too cowardly to follow them, and boldly propound
these sentiments. These are the new men whom God has sent down from heaven, to tell us
that the apostle Paul was all wrong, that our faith is vain, that we have been quite
mistaken, that there was no need for propitiating blood to wash away our sins; that the
fact was, our sins needed discipline, but penal vengeance and righteous wrath are quite
out of the question. When I thus speak, I am free to confess that such ideas are not
boldly taught by a certain individual whose volume excites these remarks, but as he puffs
the books of gross perverters of the truth, I am compelled to believe that he endorses
such theology.
Well, brethren, I am happy to say that
sort of stuff has not gained entrance into this pulpit. I dare say the worms will eat the
wood before there will be anything of that sort sounded in his place; and may these bones
be picked by vultures, and this flesh be rent in sunder by lions, and may every nerve in
this body suffer pangs and tortures, ere these lips shall give utterance to any such
doctrines or sentiments. We are content to remain among the vulgar souls who believe the
old doctrines of grace. We are wolling still to be behind in the great march of intellect,
and stand by that unmoving cross, which, like the pole star, never advances, because it
never stirs, but always abides in its place, the guide of the soul to heaven, the one
foundation other than which no man can lay, and without building upon which, no man shall
ever see the face of God and live.
Thus much have I said upon a matter which
just now is exciting controversy. It has been my high privilege to be associated with six
of our ablest brethren in the ministry, in a letter of protest against the countenance
which a certain newspaper seemed willing to lend to this modern heresy. We trust it may be
the means, in the hands of God, of helping to check that downward marchthat
wandering from truth which seems by some singular infatuation, to have unsettled the minds
of some brethren in our denomination. Now I come to address you upon the opic which is
most continually assailed by those who preach another gospel "which is not
anotherbut there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of
Christ," namely, the doctrine of the substitution of Christ on our behalf, his actual
atonement for our sins, and our positive and actual justification through his sufferings
and righteousness. It seems to me that until language can mean the very reverse of what it
says, until by some strange logic, God's Word can be contradicted and can be made to
belief itself, the doctrine of substitution can never be rooted out of the words
which I have selected for my text "He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no
sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."
First, then, the sinlessness of the
substitute; secondly, the reality of the imputation of sin to him; and thirdly,
the glorious reality of the imputation of righteousness to us.
I. First, THE SINLESSNESS OF THE
SUBSTITUTE.
The doctrine of Holy Scripture is this,
that inasmuch as man could not keep God's law, having fallen in Adam, Christ came and
fulfilled the law on the behalf of his people; and that inasmuch as man had already broken
the divine law and incurred the penalty of the wrath of God, Christ came and suffered in
the room, place, and stead of his elect ones, that so by his enduring the full vials of
wrath, they might be emptied out and not a drop might ever fall upon the heads of his
blood-bought people. Now, you will readily perceive that if one is to be a substitute for
another before God, either to work out a righteousness or to suffer a penalty, that
substitute must himself be free from sin. If he hath sin of his own, all that he can
suffer will but be the due reward of his own iniquity. If he hath himself transgressed, he
cannot suffer for another, because all his sufferings are already due on his own personal
account. On the other and, it is quite clear that none but a perfect man could ever work
out a spotless righteousness for us, and keep the law in our stead, for if he hath
dishonoured the commandment in his thought, there must be a corresponding flaw in his
service. If the warp and woof be speckled, how shall he bring forth the robe of milk-white
purity, and wrap it about our loins? He must be a spotless one who shall become the
representative of his people, either to give them a passive or active righteousness,
either to offer a satisfaction as the penalty of their sins, or a righteousness as the
fulfilment of God's demand.
It is satisfactory for us to know, and to
believe beyond a doubt, that our Lord Jesus was without sin. Of course, in his divine
nature he could not know iniquity; and as for his human nature, it never knew the original
taint of depravity. He was of the seed of the woman, but not of the tainted and infected
see of Adam. Overshadowed as was the virgin by the Holy Ghost, no corruption entered into
his nativity. That holy thing which was born of her was neither conceived in sin nor
shapen in iniquity. He was brought into this world immaculate. He was immaculately
conceived and immaculately born. In him that natural black blood which we have inherited
from Adam never dwelt. His heart was upright within him; his soul was without any bias to
evil; his imagination had never been darkened. He had no infatuated mind. There was no
tendency whatever in him that to do that which was good, holy, and honourable. And as he
did not share in the original depravity, so he did not share in the imputed sin of Adam
which we have inheritednot, I mean, in himself personally, though he took the
consequences of that, as he stood as our representative. The sin of Adam had never passed
over the head of the second Adam. All that were in the loins of Adam sinned in him when he
touched the fruit; but Jesus was not in the loins of Adam. Though he might be conceived of
as being in the womb of the woman"a new thing which the Lord created in the
earth,"he lay not in Adam when he sinned, and consequently no guilt from Adam,
either of depravity of nature, or of distance from God, ever fell upon Jesus as the result
of anything that Adam did. I mean upon Jesus as considered in himself though he
certainly took the sin of Adam as he was the representative of his people.
Again, as in his nature he was free from
the corruption and condemnation of the sin of Adam, so also in his life, no sin ever
corrupted his way. His eye never flashed with unhallowed anger; his lip never uttered a
treacherous or deceitful word; his heat never harboured an evil imagination. Never did he
wander after lust; no covetousness ever so much as glanced into his soul. He was
"holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners." From the beginning of his
life to the end, you cannot put your finger even upon a mistake, much less upon a wilful
error. So perfect was he, that no virtue seems to preponderate, or by an opposing quality
give a bias to the scale of absolute rectitude. John is distinguished for his love, Peter
for his courage; but Jesus Christ is distinguished for neither one above the another,
because he possesses all in such sublime unison, such heavenly harmony, that no one virtue
stands out above the rest. He is meek, but he is courageous. He is loving, but he is
decided; he is bold as a lion, yet he is quiet and peaceful as a lamb. He was like that
fine flour which was offered before God in the burnt offering; a flour without grit, so
smooth, that when you rubbed it, it was soft and pure, no particles could be discerned: so
was his character fully ground, fully compounded. There was not one feature in his moral
countenance which had undue preponderance above the other; but he was replete in
everything that was virtuous and good. Tempted he was, it is true, but sinned he never.
The whirlwind came from he wilderness, and smote upon the four corners of that house, but
it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock. The rains descended, heaven afflicted him;
the winds blew, the mysterious agency of hell assailed him; the floods came, all earth was
in arms against him, but yet he stood firm in the midst of all. Never once did he even
seem to bend before the tempest; but buffetting the fury of the blast, bearing all the
temptations that could ever happen to man, which summed themselves up and consummated
their fury on him, he stood to the end, without a single flaw in his life, or a stain upon
his spotless robe. Let us rejoice, then, in this, my beloved brothers and sisters, that we
have such a substituteone who is fit and proper to stand in our place, and to suffer
in our stead, seeing he has no need to offer a sacrifice for himself; no need to cry for
himself, "Father, I have sinned;" no need to bend the knee of the penitent and
confess his own iniquities, for he is without spot or blemish, the perfect lamb of God's
passover.
I would have you carefully notice the
particular expression of the text, for it struck me as being very beautiful and
significant,"who knew no sin." It does not merely say did
none, but knew none. Sin was no acquaintance of his; he was acquainted with grief,
but no acquaintance of sin. He had to walk in the midst of its most frequented haunts, but
did not know it; not that he was ignorant of its nature, or did not know its penalty, but
he did not know it; he was a stranger to it, he never gave it the wink or nod of
familiar recognition. Of course he knew what sin was, for he was ver God, but with the sin
he had no communion, no fellowship, no brotherhood. He was a perfect stranger in the
presence of sin; he was a foreigner; he was not an inhabitant of that land where sin is
acknowledge. He passed through the wilderness of suffering, but into the wilderness of sin
he could never go. "He knew no sin;" mark that expression and treasure it
up, and when you are thinking of your substitute, and see him hang bleeding upon the
cross, think that you see written in those lines of blood written along his blessed body,
"He knew no sin." Mingled with the redness of his bloodthat Rose of
Sharon; behold the purity of his nature, the Lily of the Valley"He knew no
sin."
II. Let us pass on to notice the second
and most important point; THE ACTUAL SUBSTITUTION OF CHRIST, AND THE REAL IMPUTATION OF
SIN TO HIM. "He made him to be sin for us."
Here be careful to observe who
transferred the sin. God the Father laid on Jesus the iniquities of us all. Man could not
make Christ sin. Man could not transfer his guilt to another. It is not for us to say
whether Christ could or could not have made himself sin for us; that certain it is, he did
not take this priesthood upon himself, but he was called of God, as was Aaron. The
Redeemer's vicarious position is warranted, nay ordained by divine authority. "He
hath made him to be sin for us." I must now beg you to notice how very explicit the
term is. Some of our expositors will have it that the word here used must mean
"sin-offering." "He made him to be a sin-offering for us." I thought
it well to look to my Greek Testament to see whether it could be so. Of course we all know
that the word here translated "sin," is very often translated
"sin-offering," but it is always useful, when you have a disputed passage, to
look it through, and see whether in this case the word would bear such a meaning. These
commentators say it means a sin-offering,well, I will read it: "He hath made
him to be a sin-offering for us who knew no sin-offering." Does not that
strike you as being ridiculous? But they are precisely the same words; and if it be fair
to translate it "sin-offering" in one place, it must, in all reason, be fair to
translate it so in the other. The fact it, while in some passages it may be rendered
"sin-offering," in this passage it cannot be so, because it would be to run
counter to all honesty to translate the same word in the same sentence two different ways.
No; we must take hem as they stand. "He hath made him to be sin for us," not
merely an offering, but sin for us.
My predecessor, Dr. Gill, edited the works of Tobias Crisp, but Tobias Crisp went further than Dr. Gill or any of us can approve; for in one place Crisp calls Christ a sinner, though he does not mean that he ever sinned himself. He actually calls Christ a transgressor, and justifies himself by that passage, "He was numbered with the transgressors." Martin Luther is reputed to have broadly said that, although Jesus Christ was sinless, yet he was the greatest sinner that ever lived, because all the sins of his people lay upon him. Now, such expressions I think to be unguarded, if not profane. Certainly Christian men should take care that they use not language which, by the ignorant and uninstructed, may be translated to mean what they never intended to teach. The fact is, brethren, that in no sense whatevertake that as I say itin no sense whatever can Jesus Christ ever be conceived of as having been guilty. He knew no sin." Not only was he not guilty of any sin which he committed himself, but he was not guilty of our sins. No guilt can possibly attach to a man who has not been guilty. He must have had complicity in the deed itself, or else no guilt can possibly be laid on him. Jesus Christ stands in the midst of all the divine thunders, and suffers all the punishment, but not a drop of sin ever stained him. In no sense is he ever a guilty man, but always is he an accepted and a holy one. What, then, is the meaning of that very forcible expression f my text? We must interpret Scriptural modes of expression by the verbage of the speakers. We know that our Master once said himself, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood;" he did not mean that the cup was the covenant. He said, "Take, eat, this is my body"no one of us conceives that the bread is the literal flesh and blood of Christ. We take that bread as if it were the body, and it actually represents it. Now, we are to read a passage like this, according to the analogy of faith. Jesus Christ was made by his Father sin for us, that is, he was treated as if he had himself been sin. He was not sin; he was not sinful; he was not guilty; but, he was treated by his Father, as if he had not only been sinful, but as if he had been sin itself. That is a strong expression used here. Not only hath he made him to be the substitute for sin, but to be sin. God looked on Christ as if Christ had been sin; not as if he had taken up the sins of his people, or as if they were laid on him, though that were true, but as if he himself had positively been that noxiousthat God-hatingthat soul-damning thing, called sin. When the Judge of all the earth said, "Where is Sin?" Christ presented himself. He stood before his Father as if he had been the accumulation of all human guilt; as if he himself were that thing which God cannot endure, but which he must drive from his presence for ever. And now see how this making of Jesus to be sin was enacted to the fullest extent. The righteous Lord looked on Christ as being sin, and therefore Christ must be taken without the camp. Sin cannot be borne in God's Zion, cannot be allowed to dwell in God's Jerusalem; it must be taken without the camp, it is a leprous thing, put it away. Cast out from fellowship, from love, from pity, sin must ever be. Take him away, take him away, ye crowd! Hurry him through the streets and bear him to Calvary. Take him without the campas was the beast which was offered for sin without the camp, so must Christ be, who was made sin for us. And now, God looks on him as being sin, and sin must bear punishment. Christ is punished. The most fearful of deaths is exacted at his hand, and God has no pity for him. How should he have pity on sin? God hates it. No tongue can tell, no soul can divine the terrible hatred of God to that which is evil, and he treats Christ as if he were sin. He prays, but heaven shuts out his prayer; he cries for water, but heaven and earth refuse to wet his lips except with vinegar. He turns his eye to heaven, he sees nothing there. How should he? God cannot look on sin, and sin can have no claim on God: "My God, my God," he cries, "why hast thou forsaken me?" O solemn necessity, how could God do anything with sin but forsake it? How could iniquity have fellowship with God? Shall divine smiles rest on sin? Nay, nay, it must not be. Therefore is it that he who is made sin must bemoan desertion and terror. God cannot touch him, cannot dwell with him, cannot come near him. He is abhorred, cast away; it hath pleased the Father to bruise him; he hath put him to grief. At last he dies. God will not keep him in lifehow should he? Is it not the meetest thing in the world that sin should be buried? "Bury it out of my sight, hide this corruption," and lo! Jesus, as if he were sin, is put away out of the sight of God and man as a thing obnoxious. I do not know whether I have clearly uttered what I want to state, but what a rim picture that is, to conceive of sin gathered up into one massmurder, lust and rapine, and adultery, and all manner of crime, all piled together in one hideous heap. We ourselves, brethren, impure though we be, could not bear this; how much less should God with his pure and holy eyes bear with that mass of sin, and yet there it is, and God looked upon Christ as if he were that mass of sin. He was not sin, but he looked upon him as made sin for us. He stands in our place, assumes our guilt, takes on him our iniquity, and God treats him as if he had been sin. Now, my dear brothers and sisters, let us just lift up our hearts with gratitude for a few moments. Here we are to-night; we know that we are guilty, but our sins have all been punished years ago. Before my soul believed in Christ, the punishment of my sin had all been endured. We are not to think that Christ's blood derives its efficacy from our faith. Fact precedes faith. Christ hath redeemed us; faith discovers his; but it was a fact of that finished sacrifice. Though still defiled by sin, yet who can lay anything to he charge of the man whose guilt is gone, lifted bodily from off him, and put upon Christ? How can any punishment fall on that man who ceases to possess sins, because his sin has eighteen hundred years ago been cast upon Christ, and Christ has suffered in his place and stead? Oh, glorious triumph of faith to be able to say, whenever I feel the guilt of sin, whenever conscience pricks me, "Yes, it is true, but my Lord is answerable for it all, for he has taken it all upon himself, and suffered in my room, and place, and stead." How precious when I see my debts, to be able to say, "Yes, but the blood of Christ, God's dear Son, hath cleansed me from all sin!" How precious, not only to see my sin dying when I believe, but to know that it was dead, it was gone, it ceased to e, eighteen hundred years ago. All the sins that you and I have ever committed, or ever shall commit, if we be heirs of mercy, and children of God, are all dead things.
"Our Jesus nailed them to his
cross,
And sung the triumph when he rose."
These cannot rise in judgment to
condemn us; they have all been slain, shrouded, buried; they are removed from us as far as
the east is from the west, because "He hath made him to be sinf or us who knew no
sin."
III. You see then the reality of the
imputation of sin to Christ from the amazing doctrine that Christ is made sin for us. But
now notice the concluding thought, upon which I must dwell a moment, but it must be ver
briefly, for two reasons, my time has gone, and my strength has gone too. "THAT WE
MIGHT BE MADE THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD IN HIM." Now, here I beg you to notice, that
it does not simply say that we might be made righteous, but "that we might be
made the righteousness of God in him;" as if righteousness, that lovely,
glorious, God-honouring, God-delighting thingas if we were actually made that.
God looks on his people as being abstract righteousness, not nly righteous, but
righteousness. To be righteous, is as if a man should have a box covered with gold, the
box would then be golden; but to be righteousness is to have a box of solid gold.
To be a righteous man is to have righteousness cast over me; but to be made righteousness,
that is to be made solid essential righteousness in the sight of God. Well now, this is a
glorious fact and a most wonderful privilege, that we poor sinners are made "the
righteousness of God in him." God sees no sin in any one of his people, no iniquity
in Jacob, when he looks upon them in Christ. In themselves he sees nothing but filth and
abomination, in Christ nothing but purity and righteousness. Is it not, and must it not
ever be to the Christian, one of his most delightful privileges to know that altogether
apart from anything that we have ever done, or can do, God looks upon his people as being
righteous, nay, as being righteousness, and that despite all of the sins they have ever
committed, they are accepted in him as if they had been Christ, while Christ was punished
for hem as if he had been sin. Why, when I stand in my own place, I am lost and ruined; my
place is the place where Judas stood, the place where the devil lies in everlasting shame.
But when I stand in Christ's placeand I fail to stand where faith has put me till I
stand therewhen I stand in Christ's place, the Father's everlastingly beloved one,
the Father's accepted one, him whom the Father delighteth to honourwhen I stand
there, I stand where faith hath a right to put me, and I am in the most joyous spot that a
creature of God can occupy. Oh, Christian, get thee up, get thee up into the high
mountain, and stand where thy Saviour stands, for that is thy place. Lie not there on the
dunghill of fallen humanity, that is not thy place now; Christ has once taken it on thy
behoof. "He made him to be sin for us." Thy place is yonder there, above the
starry hosts, where he hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly
places in him. Not there, at the day of judgment, where the wicked shriek for shelter, and
beg for the hills to cover hem, but there, where Jesus sits upon his thronethere is
thy place, my soul. He will make thee to sit upon his throne, even as he has overcome, and
has sat down with his Father upon his throne. Oh! That I could mount to the heights of
this argument to-night; it needs a seraphic preacher to picture the saint in Christ, robed
in Christ's righteousness, wearing Christ's nature, bearing Christ's palm of victory,
sitting on Christ's throne, wearing Christ's crown. And yet this is our privilege! He wore
my crown, the crown of thorns; I wear his crown, the crown of glory. He wore my dress,
nay, rather, he wore my nakedness when he died upon the cross; I wear his robes, the royal
robes of the King of kings. He bore my shame; I bear his honour. He endured my sufferings
to this end that my joy may be full, and that his joy may be fulfilled in me. He laid in
the grave that I might rise from the dead and that I may dwell in him, and all this he
comes again to give me, to make it sure to me and to all hat love his appearing, to show
that all his people shall enter into their inheritance.
Now, my brothers and sisters, Mr.
Maurice, McLeod, Campbell, and their great admirer, Mr. Brown, may go on with their
preaching as long as they like, but they will never make a convert of a man who knows what
the vitality of religion is; for he who knows what substitution means, he who knows what
it is to stand where Christ stands, will never care to occupy the ground on which Mr.
Maurice stands. He who has ever been made to sit together with Christ, and once to enjoy
the real preciousness of a transfer of Christ's righteousness to him and his sin to
Christ, that man has eaten the bread of heaven, and will never renounce it for husks. No,
my brethren, we could lay down our lives for this truth rather than give it up. No, we
cannot by any means turn aside from this glorious stability of faith, and for this good
reason, that there is nothing for us in the doctrine which these men teach. It may suit
intellectual gentlefolk, I dare say it does; but it will not suit us. We are poor sinners
and nothing at all, and if Christ is not our all in all, there is nothing for us. I have
often thought the best answer for all these new ideas is, that the true gospel was always
preached to the poor;"The poor have the gospel preached to hem."I am
sure that the poor will never learn the gospel of these new divines, for they
cannot make head or tail of it, nor the rich either; for after you have read through one
of their volumes, you have not the least idea of what the book is about, until you have
read it through eight or nine times, and then you begin to think you are a very stupid
being for ever having read such inflated heresy, for it sours your temper and makes you
feel angry, to see the precious truths of God trodden under foot. Some of us must stand
out against these attacks on truth, although we love not controversy. We rejoice in the
liberty of our fellow-men, and would have them proclaim their convictions; but if they
touch these precious things, they touch the apple of our eye. We can allow a thousand
opinions in the world, but that which infringes upon the precious doctrine of a covenant
salvation, through the imputed righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ,against that
we must, and will, enter our hearty and solemn protest, as long as God spares us. Take
away once from us those glorious doctrines, and where are we brethren? We may lay us down
and die, for nothing remains that is worth living for. We have come to the valley of the
shadow of death, when we find these doctrines to e untrue. If these things which I speak
to you to-night be not the verities of Christ; if they be not true, there is no comfort
left for any poor man under God's sky, and it were better for us never to have been born.
I may say what Jonathan Edwards says at the end of his book, "If any man could
disprove the doctrines of the gospel, he should then sit down and weep to think they were
not true, for," says he, "it would be the most dreadful calamity that could
happen to the world, to have a glimpse of such truths, and then for them to melt away in
the thin air of fiction, as having no substantiality in them." Stand up for the truth
of Christ; I would not have you be bigotted, but I would have you be decided. Do not give
countenance to any of this trash and error, which is going abroad, but stand firm. Be not
turned away from your stedfastness by any pretence of intellectuality and high philosophy,
but earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to he saints, and hold fast the form of
sound words which you have heard of us, and have been taught, even as ye have read in this
sacred Book, which is the way of everlasting life.
Thus then, beloved, without gathering up my strength for the fray, or attempting to analyse the subtleties of those who would pervert the simple gospel, I speak out my mind and utter the kindlings of my heart among you. Little enough will ye reck, over whom the Holy Ghost hath given me the oversight, what the grievous wolves may design, if ye keep within the fold. Break not the sacred bounds wherein God hath enclosed his Church. He hath encircled us in the arms of covenant love. He hath united us in indissoluble bonds to the Lord Jesus. He hath fortified us with the assurance that the Holy Spirit shall guide us into all truth. God grant that those beyond the pale of visible fellowship with us in this eternal gospel may see their danger and escape from he fowler's snare!
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