THE WAY OF SALVATION

XIII. ALL THINGS CONSPIRE FOR EVIL TO THE SINNER.

"Woe unto the wicked! It shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him." -- Isaiah 3:11.

"When the wicked spring as the grass, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish; it is that they shall be destroyed for ever." -- Psalms 42:7.

"To me belongeth vengeance, and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste." -- Deut. 32:35.

"Whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not." -- II Pet. 2:3.

FROM the bare reading of these passages you will see that they present a direct contrast to the great truth of our morning discourse, in that it was shown that all things work together for good to those that love God. In this our text leads to the opposite truth in regard to the sinner. All things conspire together for their ruin. All tends to complete and aggravate their destruction.

This awful truth is taught throughout the Bible in a great variety of forms. I have read to you a few of the passages which affirm it; I might read many others, but it cannot be necessary.

Obligation is imposed on moral agents by the light of truth. To know truth respecting duty is the condition of obligation. When moral agents are able to understand it, then the value of the good to be sought measures the obligation to seek it. All are bound to be benevolent,

in other words, to seek the good of all beings. To know that any beings need some particular form of good, and that under existing circumstances you are capable of securing to them this good, imposes on you the obligation to secure it, which obligation is the greater by how much the greater is the good in question. Hence, as knowledge increases, so does guilt increase. The more you know of your duty and of the interests that depend upon faithfully doing it, the greater your guilt if you refuse to do it. On the supposition that the moral agent remains in sin, refusing to do known duty, then, the more his knowledge increases, the greater must be his guilt.

As all events are to be made public under God's moral government, it is for his own interest, as well as for the interest of his creatures, that he should apprise them fully of his character and of the principles of his government; and, to make all clear to finite minds, it is important that he should spread out before them somewhat fully the details of his moral administration, so as to leave nothing involved in darkness or doubt, on any important subject, to any honest mind. It seems essential to the well-working of God's moral government that he should, at least ultimately, illustrate his own acts so fully as to leave no ground of cavil, that every mouth may be stopped, and every candid mind in the universe be satisfied in regard to all his works and to every point in his vast administration.

Who can doubt that the great governor of the universe will vindicate his own conduct? Who can suppose that he will leave one dark point unexplained?

Hence, as all events are to be made known, both for the vindication of God's character and for the instruction of all moral agents, it follows that the destruction of the wicked will be aggravated by every accession of light to their minds. Every new revelation of God's works or ways which is made to them must conspire, (1) to enlighten their minds, and (2), by consequence, to deepen their guilt and enhance and aggravate their doom.

This is, beyond question, the truth in respect to the sinner's relation to God and to his government. It presents the subject, however, in an abstract form. Let us therefore proceed to notice some of the particulars, which illustrate this truth.

Men will be held responsible for mercies abused. Hence those things which most please sinners, and which they call their good things, are charged to their account, and they must be held to the strictest accountability for their use or abuse of all their good things. The sinner is charged in God's book with every breath he breathes, with every meal he eats -- with every draught of God's water that he drinks -- with every day's health that he enjoys, and with every night's rest. He is, indeed, welcome to all these good things, if he uses them as he ought to; but if he will use these blessings in the devil's service, he must give account thereof to God. Why should he not? The Bible most abundantly teaches this truth. It assumes that wicked men rob God, and that for this guilt they must be held to a strict account.

If these are facts, then sinners are getting deeply in debt. As a man who in his business never pays but runs himself more and more deeply in debt, so sinners are constantly swelling their black account with their great Benefactor. The rain and the sunshine he sends them; the food and the friends he grants them, every one of these things, used in sin and for sin, spent on their lusts and with an ungrateful heart towards the Giver, must all pass on to his book of account to be settled in the great reckoning day.

Everything, therefore, that now pleases the sinner so much will swell the mass of things that shall agonise him at the judgment-day and throughout his eternal existence. Why do not sinners consider that a day of reckoning will come, and that one of the most fearful things then to be canvassed will be the long catalogue of abused mercies? These things are good in themselves, yet it is better you should never have had them, than that you should pervert them to purposes of sin and self-indulgence and ingratitude. Ah, it were better for you that you should never have been born, than that you should pervert the powers God gives you, to make yourself a guilty rebel against your Maker. Better that you should never have health than that you should use it in sin. Many of you bless yourselves that you live while others die; but if you abuse life, it were better that you had died long ago -- yea, better that you had never been born. Take heed how you deem yourself fortunate for having so much health; you cannot afford to have any health at all, if you abuse it in sin, and lay up a fearful account to render for every hour's comfort. How can you afford to live, while every hour's life swells your fearful debt, and makes you worse and worse a bankrupt, on the great books of the final day!

Not only all these countless mercies, but all the particulars embraced under them and connected with them, are to come into your account. All will prove a great curse to you if selfishly abused.

The same principle applies to the entire course of God's discipline towards you, embracing the various rebukes of his providence. The Lord, for purposes of discipline, may smite your property or your person. He may give wings to your riches and a blight on your strength. Losses may checker the scene of your long prosperity, or by pain and weakness the Lord may seek to impress your soul with a sense of dependence on an almighty arm. All these are measures taken for your good, but if you will not improve them, they will only work out your deeper ruin. There is a sinner who has been brought down to the verge of the grave by sickness. His Heavenly Father sought by this means to induce serious thoughts and true repentance, but he sought in vain. The heart was made no better by this affliction. The sick man recovered through divine mercy, and he blessed himself for his restored health, but it cannot be said that he blessed his great benefactor. He blessed himself, and thought of his good fortune, but Oh! how much better for him to have gone quick to his grave, than that he should rise from his sick-bed only to have a harder heart and a blacker account to settle through all eternity with his insulted Benefactor.

Perhaps the deluded man said to himself on his recovery, Now God has punished me all I deserve, and I have no more punishment to fear for my sins. Far otherwise! He has not been punished at all. These trials on earth are only chastisements, intended for moral discipline. God sent them as the most hopeful means for doing you good, but you have utterly resisted and defeated his intention; you have only converted into a curse what your Father sent upon you for a blessing.

How marvelous that wicked men should suppose that these light afflictions are the proper punishment of sin! No; these are only God's means of discipline, employed here in this life for the good of men's souls. Instead of being themselves the retribution due for sin, they are only the guarantees sent on beforehand by the Great King, involving his pledge that he will punish sin unless he can secure repentance. They imply God's holy abhorrence of sin; they are the incipient manifestations of the great truth that he can never overlook transgression. What! sinner, do you think God can by any means, and under any circumstances, fail to notice your sin? If he could, then you might find him neglecting the means of moral discipline. But if, on the contrary, you find him ever wakeful to the work of discipline, you may know that, this failing of its object, there is another kind of notice to be taken of sin.

Suppose a father should chasten his son with a grief that seemed to tear his very heart and deeply wound his spirit, but all is in vain; would not even you affirm that such a son ought to be punished, and much the more, for the pains his father has taken to save him, and for the wicked stubbornness that would not be subdued to love and duty? See that mother, wearied and worn; she has chastened her daughter, but it avails nothing; the deep agony of her heart is crushing her to the grave, and her soul weeps over the cruel abuse of a wayward daughter; now tell me, shall all of this stubbornness and abuse towards a faithful and fond mother be passed over, and not be heeded?

So, sinner, of all the things for which you deserve to be punished, this is the chief. God has taken so much pains to bless you; his very heart has been moved to the centre of his being, and once and again he has cried out, "How can I give thee up?" And now, all effort and painstaking having failed, shall no account be made of the stubbornness and guilt which have frustrated the toil of infinite love?

That sickness which your Heavenly Father sent upon you did not reclaim you from your sins. Ah! it will cost you too much to abuse not only God's mercies, but his chastisements also. To your surprise, and sorrow too, you will find that God has not done all this for your good, that, when abused and resisted by you, it should go for nothing. You have not seen the end of these things yet. You came up from your sick-bed, did you? Yes. And then forgot all your sick-bed vows and solemn promises of amendment? Yes! And, on you went, in your sin, till you became tenfold more hardened than ever! Ah! you cannot afford to be thus chastised, and to have it all result in waxing worse and worse, and in becoming only the more ripe for perdition.

All your infirmities and all your sins; also the sins of those who live near you so that you can see the course of God's dealings with them; indeed, the whole history of sin in the universe so far as known to you, all conspire to heighten your responsibility and aggravate the guilt of your sin. For all these things serve to show you the real evil and wrong of sin; they serve to reveal God's hatred of sin, and to assure you that he must and will punish it. Both the good and the evil deeds of all the moral beings in the universe, so far as you can know them, have an important bearing upon your responsibilities as a moral agent, because, they affect the amount of your knowledge of sin and of God, and hence of your own personal duty.

I am aware that sinners are prone to overlook this fact. They often say, We are held responsible only for our own sins, and not for the sins of others; but mark! the sins of others increase your knowledge both of God and of duty, and hence increase your moral responsibility and heighten your guilt, if in the face of so much knowledge you still persist in sinning. The good and the evil of all beings within your knowledge serve to augment your responsibility. These things are continually pouring light on your mind. So, also, does the entire course of your own history and experience as a sinner under God's government. You cannot eat or drink, rise up or lie down, you can be nowhere, and can do nothing, without having a continual stream of influence poured upon you, which heightens your responsibility because it increases the knowledge of God, of sin, and of duty, under which and against which you sin. All your religious privileges belong to the same class, and bear pre-eminently upon the point of your moral responsibility and consequent guilt. Did you ever own a Bible? Has some kind Christian friend given you a copy of that blessed Book? Your own Bible! You might read it at your pleasure. It is God's own message from heaven to your soul. But oh, how you have slighted it! Other friends have sent you messages and letters, but you have treated none of them so! You have always at least read their letters, and have commonly treated their expressed wishes with due respect. But you have insulted God by treating his letters with almost total neglect! Oh, what will that neglected Bible testify against you! Perhaps your mother gave it to you. Her careful hand laid if safely in your trunk when you prepared to leave the home of your childhood. God was in that mother's hand, and through it he placed a copy of his word under your eye, and threw on you a double responsibility to heed it well. You said then, "I am glad that I have got a Bible." So am I, if you use it well. If you study candidly its precepts and heed them in the fear of God, 'tis all well; but if not, all will go ill with you, and that neglected Bible will follow you up to the judgment, forecasting your doom and crying out, Anathema! ANATHEMA!! let the despiser of God's word be ANATHEMA, for ever!

And you know this would be only simple justice! You can see that it ought to be so!

REMARKS.

1. I said in the morning that all things work together for good to the Christian, and that ultimately, when he comes to see how all things have had this result, he will regret nothing he has ever done, although he may greatly blame himself for all his sins. It is often the case that Christians here learn lessons of deep experience under their sins. They are deeply affected when they see how God overrules even their sins for good to themselves and to others.

But nothing of this sort happens to sinners. They are not of those that love God, and they have no reason to expect that God will make all things work together for their good. Hence they must both blame themselves and also regret everything they have ever done. They must feel both self-blame and regret that they ever had a Bible; that they ever had a friend; that they ever had health; that they ever had existence! Alas, they will say, alas, that I was ever born! Alas, that I lived so long! Alas, that I ever had one mercy from God to abuse so guiltily! Woe is me that I had a pious mother! Ten thousand woes on my guilty soul that God ever sent me his gospel! Ah me! how have I treasured up wrath against the day of wrath!

2. Sinners have never any good reasons for joy.

You recollect the seventy-third Psalm. The Psalmist had been struck with the fact that the wicked were so prosperous and so happy. It puzzled him sorely. For a long time he could not understand it, and was thereby thrown into great perplexity. But when he went in God's sanctuary, then he says, "I understood their end. Surely thou didst set them in slippery places; thou castedst them down into destruction." Let the sinner only see his own case in the light shed from God's word in his sanctuary, and he too will understand that he has no occasion for joy. He will see how insane are all his rejoicings. What! and shall he rejoice in that which will only work out his deeper damnation? Can any but an insane mind do this?

Some one of our children may be prosperous, but yet in sin. If so, he is only abusing the blessings God sends him, and surely this can be no matter of joy either to him or to his parents. He cannot afford to have any of these blessings to use in sin! Ah no! for he must pay for them at last in the bitterness of eternal yet unavailing regret. If you therefore have unconverted children, or if I have, we have no occasion for joy in them, however prosperous they may be.

3. Sinners procure this result to themselves. It all comes, sinners, from your own wickedness -- from your own voluntary and persistent impenitence and unbelief. If you would turn about and love God, all would be well for you. But if you will abuse his grace and reject his authority, all is wrong and all will work ill to your soul.

In a spirit not the most honest, you may say, Why did God give me existence at all? He knew how I should abuse it, and only bring a curse on myself and curse my own existence.

You ask such questions as these, perhaps, and yet you know how impious they are in their implications against your Maker! You ask, Why did God give me existence? That you might use it to his glory and to your own perfect blessedness. But you reply, What? when he knew how I should only curse myself by sin instead of blessing myself by holy obedience? Yes, certainly; none the less so because of his foreknowledge of your course. Has God's knowledge of the course you would take at all lessened or changed your moral responsibility -- the perfect freeness of your choices -- the radical, essential guilt of your sin?

God gave you voluntary powers, that, on your own responsibility, you might use them for your own welfare. He gave you his Son, and in him an offered salvation, that you might lay hold of everlasting life. He gave you a Bible, that you might read it and become wise unto salvation. He gave you these and a thousand other blessings, that they might be improved, and certainly you do not need to be told that, if you will not improve them, you have no right to complain of God.

4. Sinners need not be stumbled by any calamities whatever which befall God's real children. A Christian is sick? Well, what of that? Is not the Saviour's arm all round about him? But he is going to die? Well, what of that? Is not heaven just before him, and his God with him all through the dark valley of the river of death? He is going to lose all his property, is he? What then? He has got no real property except God, for, long ago, his heart made choice of God for its portion for ever.

Sinners often talk as if they were troubled to see so many calamities befalling the people of God. Let them not trouble themselves about this matter. The Lord knoweth them that are his, and they shall never lack his constant care.

5. All events that transpire in this world or the next will only make the great gulf fixed between saints and sinners the deeper and the broader -- will only make the saints more holy and more happy, the sinners more sinful and more wretched. The widening space between them in character and in relations to God's throne will of necessity constitute a gulf which none can ever pass over.

6. What an infinite folly is it to judge of things only by their relations to this life! to feel and to think of them only in view of this narrow and limited relation! Looking at things in this light only, we could not rejoice in the Christian's case; we could not pronounce him happy because he has the Almighty God for his friend. Viewing things from such a standpoint of observation, we should find everything dark and perplexing. But in the light of God's sanctuary all comes out clear. See those political, money-making men, scrambling after power or wealth: suppose they get it -- what then? The more they get, so much the more have they to answer for; so much the deeper will their responsibilities, if not honestly met, sink them in perdition. Christians, therefore, have never any reason to envy sinners for their earthly prosperity. If they are ever tempted to do so, let them go into the sanctuary; there shall they learn the sinner's awful end. Coming forth from the house of God, they will say:

"Now I'm convinced the Lord is kind

To men of heart sincere,

Yet once my foolish heart repined,

And bordered on despair.

"I grieved to see the wicked thrive,

And spoke with angry breath,

How pleasant and profane they live,

How peaceful is their death!'"

But having searched God's word, he sings:

"There, as in some prophetic glass,

I saw the sinner sit,

High mounted on a slippery place,

Beside a fiery pit.

"I heard the wretch profanely boast,

Till at thy frown he fell;

His honors in a dream were lost,

And he awoke in hell."

One of our texts affirms, "Their feet shall slide in due time, and the things that shall come upon them make haste." Another declares, "Their judgment now of a long time lingereth not and their damnation slumbereth not." "Sudden destruction cometh upon them, as pangs upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape."

7. God's conduct in all this is just and righteous altogether. Who can object because God holds the sinner responsible for the Bible he gives him, or for the existence with which he has endowed him? Dare you say or even think that God does wrong to hold you responsible for the Bible, for the Sabbath, for the gospel, and for all the knowledge of duty which he has placed within your reach? Is he not bound, by the eternal laws of right, to hold all his creatures responsible according to the measure of the blessings he has conferred upon them? Could his moral kingdom be safe on any other principle of administration? Would the holy beings around his throne endure any deviation from these eternally and intrinsically righteous principles? Do you not see for yourself, that if you persist in abusing his mercies, God will bring you to account, and must do it, or cease to be a righteous God? It were a mal-arrangement and a mal-administration, if God were to deviate at all from the principle of holding every moral agent to the strictest accountability for all his moral conduct, according to the light he has enjoyed.

How long, sinner, have you lived? During all these years, what have you done? How have you used your life up to this hour? Is it not time that you should pause and take an observation?

In the past-pages of my own personal history I can see where God summoned me to answer these solemn questions. I had spent all my early life in new settlements, had enjoyed only the most scanty means of religious instruction, had never heard a prayer in my father's house, yet one night I most vividly remember I lay a long time awake, and I asked myself, how old am I? How have I lived up to this hour? What have I done towards determining the future condition of my existence? These were questions I had never heard before; but God put them home to my soul in a way that made my flesh quiver and my bones quake. I had spent half my life -- for I looked then upon the age of forty as the limit of my earthly days; I had lived out half my life, yet what had I done for God or for my own eternal well-being?

Have you, sinner, ever taken such a reckoning? Sailing along unknown seas in the voyage of life, have you ever paused to take in sails, get out your instruments, and take your bearing? Have you ever stopped, as every wise mariner does, to get out your instruments on some fair, sunny day, to find where you are, and which way you must steer to gain the haven of peace and rest? Oh, some of you have never made one careful, thorough observation to find your course and your actual position! The fair, sunny days God gives you, you are too reckless to improve for so needful a purpose. O sinner, there are fearful rocks of damnation close under your heel. The darkness of the tempest is gathering fast upon you; soon you will feel the mountain waves tossing your frail bark, and the storm-blast will howl through your shrouds to shriek the requiem of a lost spirit! How will the vivid lightnings gleam down your masts, and the thunders break in peals like the judgment trump!

Ah, sinner, why did you not take your observation before your bark made these rocks of damnation, and before the storm-king was out in his fearfullest terrors, to dash your soul upon the breakers of final ruin? How can you afford to live in such mad recklessness of your soul's well-being? How can you afford to live content in sin amid such perils of damnation? Oh, to think of your case! When I pass you in the streets, sometimes I rejoice in your joy, for you seem to be happy; but more often I weep, for I see you in your sins, treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath. Yes; here you are in your sins, getting an education, doing the very thing which, above all other things, must augment your responsibility and aggravate your guilt, if you will not repent. Ah, you cannot afford to live so! Dear youth, how can you afford to go to the judgment with all the heightened responsibility of an educated sinner? Why will you make your very existence, and all the mercies with which God has blessed this existence, a living and eternal curse?

It need not be so. You may change the whole current of your future destiny. It may be done by simply changing the current of your present life -- by simply giving your heart to God and your whole being to his service. Will you do this? How many times have I been called to decide this question! and, alas, called only in vain! Oh, come now, and make one thorough observation! See where you are and what is before you. And will you refuse to do a thing so reasonable? Ah, what a dark night is coming on! How will the dreadful tempest roar and howl around your miserable soul -- the tempest of divine wrath that must break on the head of the despiser of saving mercy!

And must you be thrust into prison, and not be released, till you have paid the uttermost farthing? Must the doom of the damned be your eternal portion? It will be if so you choose. "They, that hate me," saith the voice of offered mercy, "love death."

8. What a contrast is here! All things work for good to the saint. Although he weeps along his pathway of life with mingled tears of penitence and joy, yet soon he passes beyond all his pains and trials. Up, up, he soars, high above all sorrow, high aloft from this vale of tears. But the sinner dances along, gaily laughing and sporting his way -- God calling, rebuking, and entreating; saints weeping in grief over his madness and his impending doom; all creation in agony for him, but he dashes on. See, mark the contrast! Note how it widens continually. Saints ascend upward, mounting up, up; but sinners descend, going down, down, along the sides of the pit, amid the wailings of eternal despair.

Do you say, Enough, enough, I have heard enough; you have said enough; I am persuaded, and I am ready to come; I will no more abuse my Saviour -- no longer slight his offered love? Come, then, you prodigal, come back to your Father's house! for there is bread enough and to spare, and you need not perish with hunger. Come back with your free-hearted confessions of folly and guilt! Come, and beg for a pittance of the crumbs that fall from his table! Now is the day and the hour of mercy -- now is the accepted time!

Need I press again on your attention the wide and awful contrast between saints and sinners? They live together here; the same roof shelters them; the same table spreads for them their daily bread; the same sun rises and pours its blaze of light and joy over all; the same clouds come freighted with the waters of summer, and distil their precious drops for all; but Oh! how unlike is the scene that lies beneath! Underneath the surface God marks in one a heart of gratitude and penitence; and in another a soul tainted with selfishness and mad upon its lusts and its idols. Of course the one must go up, up, rising in the perfection of its holy character; and the other down, down, sinking under the depraving influence of its own headstrong appetites and its will, opposed to God and goodness.

And where will be the end of these courses? You know full well. You have no need to know better than you do.

The fatal thing with you, O sinner, is that you don't make up your mind to do known duty! I thought I should, you say, but I did not. I half resolve, but fail to do it. Scores of precious opportunities you have let slip, and each one left you only the more hardened. One opportunity came and waited on you -- you were not ready to embrace it, and it passed away; another came and tarried -- then rose up and went its way; and yet another and another; and what shall be the end of these things? Satan loves to beguile you; and he it is who is playing this game with you, seducing you to delay till each and every opportunity shall have gone past, hopelessly and for ever. Will you let him ruin your soul? You see his hand, winding his fatal chain about your neck; Oh, how long can you be quiet under this operation! How long will you consent to be led captive by Satan at his will, when you know his object is to plunge your soul quick into the depths of hell!

THE WAY OF SALVATION

XIV. GOD HAS NO PLEASURE IN THE SINNER'S DEATH.

"Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?" -- Ezekiel 33:11.

IN discussing these words it will be important to consider,

I. WHAT THE DEATH SPOKEN OF IS NOT;

II. WHAT IT IS;

III. WHY GOD HAS NO PLEASURE IN IT;

IV. WHY HE DOES NOT PREVENT IT;

V. THE ONLY POSSIBLE WAY TO ESCAPE IT.

I. What the death of a sinner is NOT.

Manifestly this death cannot be merely the death of the body; for all will die this death, whether they turn to God or not, and whether they live a spiritual life or not. The righteous are as really and as much exposed to natural death as the wicked. But the death spoken of in the text is one which may be escaped by turning from one's wicked ways to obedience.

The death spoken of cannot be spiritual, or a state of sinfulness; for God represents them as being already in this state. They are now in sinful ways from which he entreats them to turn. But the death spoken of is prospective. God does not ask, Why are ye dead? but, Why will ye die?

II. What the death of a sinner IS.

Positively, the death spoken of must be the opposite of the life here referred to. This life cannot be natural life; for all, both saint and sinner, are conceived of as being alike in natural life. Of course, the life must be salvation -- eternal life -- that blessedness which saints enjoy in the favour and love of God, begun here, prolonged for ever hereafter. Now, if such be the life alluded to, the death, being in contrast with it, must be eternal death; the misery experienced by all God's enemies. As the life referred to here is not a mere state of existence, but a state of positive blessedness; so the death placed over against it cannot be annihilation, the natural opposite of mere existence, but must be misery, the natural opposite, of blessedness.

These remarks must suffice on this point, it being one on which no rational doubt can exist.

III. Why has God no pleasure in the sinner's death.

A few days since, you may recollect, I preached a funeral sermon, to show that the death of saints is precious in God's sight. Their death is to him an event of deep interest. But the sinner's death is not so. Here is death in which God has no pleasure. He gives us his own solemn word, nay more, his oath, that he takes no pleasure at all in the death of the wicked. We are now to consider why.

1. The death of saints in which God takes a special interest is only the death of the body; but the death of the wicked is the death of both soul and body together. Both together are involved in misery and ruin. By this I do not mean that either is annihilated. The body, we know, is not annihilated at death: its constituent elements only change their chemical relations; but do not by any means cease to exist. There is no more reason to suppose the soul experiences annihilation, than that the body does. Indeed, there is no reason whatever for supposing that annihilation ever can be the lot of either soul or body. I was amazed to hear some of the Adventists maintain that the threatened death of the wicked is nothing but annihilation, for nothing could be more obvious than that this position of theirs utterly lacked all foundation either in Scripture or reason.

2. God has no pleasure in the sinner's death, because he is a moral being, and it is contrary to the nature of moral beings to delight in suffering for its own sake. To all moral beings happiness is intrinsically good, and unhappiness is intrinsically evil, and must be from the very constitution of moral beings. Hence unhappiness can never be a source of pleasure, in itself considered. The view of it as endured by others cannot be deemed a good by any moral being, for its own sake, and considered simply as misery, for the reason that it is what it is, misery and not happiness, the very constitution of a moral being demanding that happiness shall be held as the only good, and misery as intrinsically evil. Even Satan, with all his malignity against God, can never enjoy the sight any more than the endurance of misery, for its own sake. How much more must this be true of God! Selfishness may wickedly trample down the rights and happiness of others; but, yet, good to itself, and not misery to others, is its direct object. The consequent misery to others will in its time react upon selfish beings with terrible vengeance, harrowing up their souls with the bitterest torture. It is in the very nature of selfishness and sin to accumulate the resources for its own torment, just as benevolence accumulates the means of its own blessedness; and the reason in both cases lies fixed in the changeless nature of moral beings. The selfish cannot enjoy evil-doing: let them try ever so much, for it is not in their nature as moral beings to enjoy misery. If it were, they might make a heaven of hell itself. But, as it is, their selfish attempts to wrest away other's good will cause misery first to others, and next, ultimately and eternally, to themselves. Sin must be its own tormentor. Neither the sight nor the infliction of misery can ever in itself beget happiness. The nature of all moral beings forbids it.

3. God cannot have pleasure in the sinner's death, because his character forbids it. God is not only by nature a moral agent, but he is in character a good moral agent -- a being of infinite benevolence. Hence he cannot delight in misery anywhere, for its own sake, and in view of its own nature. The sight of misery endured is always distressing to a benevolent being, in itself considered. He can acquiesce in it and tolerate its afflictions only when circumstances make it necessary as a means for a greater good. In such a case, he might truly say, I have no pleasure in their suffering.

So with God in regard to the sinner's death. Since he is purely and perfectly benevolent, it is contrary to his character that he should find pleasure in the misery of his creatures. Love desires evermore the happiness of all beings, and is from its very nature disposed to secure the highest possible degree of it. God pities the self-ruined sinner; never rejoices in his dreadful doom, for its own sake.

4. It must be that God regards the death of the sinner, viewed in itself, as a great evil. In its own nature it is an evil of the very greatest magnitude. No finite mind can begin to conceive how great and dreadful this evil is. It needs the sweep of an infinite mind to measure its length and breadth, its depth and its height. None other than the mind of a God can grasp its limitless dimensions, or measure its boundless magnitude. To his mind, therefore, the death of the sinner must appear an immensely great evil.

5. God can have no pleasure in the death of sinners, because it is a state in which he can wisely show them no more favour. Their relations to his government become such that he is constrained to debar them from all mercy and from all good. Unmingled retribution must now take its course. Mercy has had its day; simple justice must henceforth have unimpeded exercise. So long as the wicked were in this world of probation, God took pleasure in showing them all the favours he wisely could, for it is always in his heart to bless the guiltiest as far as he consistently can; and he seeks to constrain the sinner by his mercies to turn from his sins. But when the sinner has murdered all his probation-time and used up all his mercies upon his lusts, he passes away to another state unknown to Mercy. There he can have not one drop of water to cool his tongue. There his prayers to Father Abraham will be utterly unavailing. On all these points, the account given us by Jesus Christ himself of the rich man and Lazarus is most full and explicit. Whatever else this account teaches or does not teach, one thing is made plain by it; namely, that God finds it necessary to refuse the least favour to sinners in hell. "Thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things;" thou hast had them all, and there are no more to be given. Not so much as one drop of water is left for the lost sinner in hell. He begs for this smallest favour, but begs in vain. How dreadful this fact! The lost sinner is in such relations to God that God is compelled to restrain himself from giving him one drop of water. Even infinite benevolence cannot give so small a favour as this.

Now it is plain that a God of love can have no pleasure in being brought into such a position as this. He took the greatest pleasure in bestowing good upon even the sinner, so long as he wisely could. It was his happiness to send his rain on the just and on the unjust; but when the dreaded hour at last came, and God, as the great executive magistrate of the universe, was compelled to cut down the guilty sinner and show his own eternal abhorrence of sin, then he could no longer show the sinner the least mercy. This removing the sinner beyond the range of mercy is a thing in which, considered by itself, God can have no pleasure. The same is true of all benevolent beings.

It is remarkable to see how earnestly God repels the slander upon him of taking pleasure in the sinner's death. The Jews in Ezekiel's time went so far as to use the proverb, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." The Most High solemnly rebukes his people for this slander; protests his own innocence of the implied charge, and finally closes with the explicit averment, "For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth; wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye" (Ezek. 18:2, 32). So also, in our text, he takes his solemn oath, and, since he could swear by no greater, he swears by himself. "As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked." Therefore let no sinner seek to throw the blame of his own ruin off from himself and upon his Maker. No slander could be more groundless or more foul.

6. Another reason still is that when sinners have outlived their probation and are cut off in their sins, their depravity will be thenceforward unrestrained. How shocking it must be to the pure and holy God to see his creatures giving themselves up to utter and unrestrained depravity -- to see them giving boundless scope to the most odious and horrible rebellion! The book of Revelation speaks of the wicked, under God's punitive judgments, as "gnawing their tongues for pain, and blaspheming the God of heaven because of their pains and of their sores, and yet repenting not of their deeds." Their condition amid the dread realities of hell will not reform them; nay, so far from this, it will only drive them to desperation, and in the utter desperateness of their depraved hearts, they will break out in most horrid blasphemies. Oh, how will sinners damn themselves to a deeper and still deeper damnation What an unutterable state of depravity will hell be when sin takes its ample, unimpeded course, and has a whole eternity in which to range and ripen, and develop its horrid spirit and terrible tendencies! No wonder that God can take no pleasure in such a world as that.

In that world the sufferings of the wicked will be unmitigated. Here, although their depravity is great, nay, even total, yet so many restraints are upon them that many of them appear quite respectably among their fellow-beings. They are induced to conform outwardly to the rules of good society. Consequently in this world they enjoy many comforts, and ordinarily they have an ample supply for their physical wants. The common pleasures of society, of earthly friendships and relationships, fall to their lot. Consequently they are by no means so miserable as they might be. Indeed, they are often wont to think themselves quite happy. And they do doubtless have a sort of feverish enjoyment, poor enough at best, as the portion of the human soul, yet vastly unlike that dreadful state in which every source of enjoyment shall be utterly cut off. There shall be gnawing desire, but no gratification; pressing want, but no supply; no employment but groans, and sighs, and such developments of their depravity as bring their own torturing punishment with them. If the Bible had said nothing about their case, we might yet know that they must be purely and utterly miserable; for what source of happiness can remain to them in all the realms of nature, or in all the universe of God? Here they manage to get some good because God is sparing them to give them space to repent, and is trying them, if so be he may subdue their hearts by his love; but when they have abused all this good till God can bestow it no longer, what shall remain then? When death shall have smitten their last pleasure, where are they?

IV. Why God does not prevent the death of sinners.

But it is time that we should ask, Why does not God prevent the death of the wicked? If he takes no pleasure in it, why should he suffer it to be?

1. You are aware that men have often inferred from God's benevolence that he will not suffer the wicked to be lost. But who has any right to infer this? How does it appear that benevolence cannot inflict a lesser evil for the sake of preventing a greater? Who can prove it unwise for God to create beings and suffer them to continue their existence, although they may sin -- yes, may sin, despite of any power which God can wisely use to prevent it? That is, for the question resolves itself into this, who can prove that, on the whole, more evil than good must result from the existence of a sinning race of moral agents? Who can show that it may not be indefinitely better to have such a race with all the attendant results than not to have created them, or having created them to establish a government so different from the present as would have prevented it?

But if a God of infinite wisdom and love might give existence to a race who could and should sin, then surely it is no marvel that he should punish them. Indeed, the only marvel is that he should ever do otherwise than punish -- should ever pardon. Pardon, not punishment, is the strange thing. Revelation apart, who could ever infer rationally that God would pardon one sinner? From what data could man infer it? The wisest sinners that have ever lived have made the inference that God could save none. They have seen that God is a moral governor, and hence cannot be pleased with sinners. Hence they inferred, and most reasonably too, that he can save none. How could they have made any other rational inference without the aid of revelation?

2. God does not prevent the death of the wicked, for the good reason that he cannot wisely do it. Some are shocked at this remark; but why should they be? for what God himself says on this subject most surely implies that he cannot wisely prevent the sinner's death. He solemnly avers that he has no pleasure in it, and plainly implies that it is in itself an unpleasant and undesirable thing. If so, then he would prevent it if he wisely could. He says to sinners, "Turn ye, for why will ye die?" implying that he is grieved that they should die, and also that their own turning is the only means of preventing so dreadful a doom. No language could imply more plainly that he cannot and will not do himself what he commands and exhorts them to do.

To the same purpose he says again, "What could I have done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it?" Does not this forcibly imply that God could not do more to secure holiness and save from hell than he actually had done? Now it should be well considered that what God could not do wisely to save sinners, he could not do at all without sinning. There is no middle course between acting wisely and sinning. For God to act otherwise than with wisdom must be wrong.

3. God could not have prevented their destruction by refusing to create them. Many ask, Why did God create men if he knew they would sin? The answer is, he could not forbear to create without himself sinning. He saw it would be wise to create moral agents who would sin, and some of whom would be lost; and how could he act other than wisely without for ever condemning himself for wrong-doing? If God has ever in any instance acted unwisely, it has not been in his case, as sometimes in ours, through ignorance. No; there never can be in his case this vindication for acting unwisely. If God in any case does more or less than infinite wisdom dictates, he cannot but know it, and cannot but regard it as sin.

Now, therefore, if wisdom dictated the creation of the beings who would become wicked, God could not forbear to create, without personal sin; nay, could not forbear, without absolute self-ruin! Do we think it a small matter that God should sin? Then we have not yet begun to take right views of the subject. For God to sin would be to lose his own self-respect -- destroy his own peace and blessedness -- unfit himself either to enjoy his own character and works, or to govern his universe.

4. God could not wisely have done more than he has done for the sinner's salvation; He has all along done all that infinite wisdom has demanded. To have done more or other at any moment would have been sin. And who does not see that it must be a far less evil for God to suffer moral agents to sin than to take himself any course which is sinful? If either God or his creatures must be ruined by sin, let it be the sinner, and not God. It is infinitely better that God should suffer the sinner to ruin himself than suffer himself to be ruined. By so much the more is this true because the ruin of God by his own sinning would inevitably involve the ruin of the whole universe, a calamity the magnitude of which defies all our comprehension.

We should never lose sight of the great truth that God always acts considerately and wisely. If he creates moral agents who become sinners, he does it wisely, following evermore the dictates of his intelligence and of his benevolence. It is plain that God could not wisely abridge the liberty of moral agents, nor indeed could he save them, even if he should, for the very idea of the salvation of a moral agent implies his own voluntary turning from sin. None but moral agents can have salvation from sin and from hell; the existence of moral beings involves a moral government over them, and over them as moral beings, which is the same thing as to say, that they must have the liberty of free voluntary action. If, therefore, God would have a moral government, he must let it have scope, and meet the results, be they what they may. I do not mean that he must preclude himself from throwing in moral influences to affect their action; but I do mean that their liberty of moral action must not be abridged. His interposing influences must ever more be of a moral, and not of a physical or compulsory nature.

I have said that God acts wisely, and cannot act otherwise. I mean this in its fullest extent. It is always true. At every hour and moment of each sinner's existence God could truly say, What could I have done more for thee that I have not done? The sinner may misapprehend the case, and may suppose that God might do, or might have done more; but God makes no mistakes; God never misapprehends the real facts of the case.

5. God cannot save men without their concurrence in the nature of the case, they could not be holy without their own concurrence; how, then, could they be happy without it? Being constituted moral agents, and made subjects of moral government, it must be in every point of view impossible to save them unless they will turn from their sins. God's government must remain moral, and hence he can do nothing inconsistent with its moral nature. If, then, God works upon the sinner by means of his providence and his spirit, to the utmost extent he wisely can, and all in vain, there remains nothing more which, as a moral governor, he can do to save him.

6. Another reason why God does not prevent the death of the wicked is that he regards it as a less evil than to interpose in any way possible to himself, to save them. If they would turn under such influences as he can wisely use, he would rejoice; but he is already going to the utmost limit of his discretion, and how can he go farther? Sooner than go farther, he would let ten thousand worlds go to ruin. Who can find fault with him for this? Who can blame the all-wise God for following the dictates of his own wisdom? If he should in any single particular deviate from his own sense of propriety and from his own judgment of what is best for the universe, how dreadful the consequences! Perhaps we are not wont to consider that there are bounds beyond which God cannot go, and beyond which he never does go. These bounds are always ascertained by Infinite Wisdom. They have their foundation in the nature of moral agents, and in the exigencies of God's vast government. Who but God himself can decide how long he can safely bear with a lingering, self-hardening sinner? and how far he can wisely go in the strivings of his Spirit, and in the favouring arrangements of his providence?

This view of the case is not only in accordance with the Bible, but is inferred irresistibly from the known attributes of God. Some of you may ask, How does it appear that God does as much as he can for the good of each sinner? I answer, We all know that God is a good and not a wicked being. He is moreover a moral agent, possessing attributes of mind and heart of which our own are a copy, for we were made in the image of God. Of course when we speak of God as a good being, we may, nay, we must, reason by analogy drawn from other good beings. If we are good men, we shall of course seek to prevent all possible evil and produce all possible good. This is necessarily implied in our being good men.

Now what is implied in God's being good? That he consecrates himself to the good of being. Goodness in God implies that he is all awake to prevent all mischief he wisely can, and secure all the good he wisely can. We know intuitively that if he is a moral agent as we are; if he has a conscience as we have; if he has moreover a good heart, he will evermore do all he wisely can both to prevent evil and produce good.

7. Yet another reason is that, although the evil of the sinner's death is great, yet he can make a good use of it. He can overrule it for important good to others and to various interests in his kingdom. The sufferings of the wicked may be in themselves a very great evil; yet God can bring those sufferings into such relations to his government, and can make them so useful in their influence on other beings, that the good results become in his mind a sort of compensation for the evil, so that, on the whole, he may see it wise to admit sin with all its results, rather than exclude it by any means possible to himself.

V. The only possible way to escape the sinner's death.

We may now see that the only possible way in which the sinner's death can be avoided, is for the sinner himself to turn from his evil ways and live. The sinner need not look for God to change the policy of his government. He need not expect God to pardon sin without the sinner's repentance and the sinner's faith in Christ. He need not wait for some other name than that of Jesus given among men, whereby they may be saved, or for any other mode in which the sinner may avail himself of that name. God's government being what it is, repentance and faith in Jesus Christ are natural and necessary means of the sinner's salvation. He might as well ask Jehovah to come down from his throne, as ask him to do anything more or anything different from what he is doing to save sinners. The sinner, therefore, who would be saved, must meet Jehovah's own revealed conditions.

REMARKS.

1. The goodness of God is really no encouragement to those who continue in sin. Hear the rebuke given by the Psalmist, "Why boastest thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man? The goodness of God endureth continually." Why should you be proud of mischief? Know thou that God is good; and a good God is terrible to the wicked.

I am often amazed to hear persons talk as if the goodness of God afforded some security to those who live in sin. Some of you may be resting on this assumption. But how is this? If the goodness of God has hitherto prevented his using such means as have actually saved you from sin, how can you know but it may likewise prevent his saving you from hell? God has been good all along; but you are yet in sin. If his goodness has not stopped your sinning, how can you hope it will prevent your suffering? If his goodness has not availed to secure your conversion under the most favourable circumstances which even infinite love could arrange, how can you hope it will save you without your being converted? How can you venture on the assumption that God will recede from his ground, and since you will not come to his terms, he will come to yours? Suppose you that goodness and wisdom will ever do this?

It may be that you have not duly estimated the fact that God is immutable -- always good, and always having the same sort of goodness. If then his goodness has not prevented your sinning, and your suffering too, in this world; if all the efforts which goodness has been continually putting forth have hitherto failed, how can you infer that the same goodness may not fail hereafter? Especially when he assures you that now is the accepted time, and now his day of salvation? If his goodness cannot arrest you in your course of sin, in the most favouring hour, how can you hope it will arrest you from going straight down to hell? What can you find either in the Bible or out of the Bible to warrant such an inference as that of your salvation from the goodness of God?

One thing you may certainly know to be fact. God has been always as good as he is now, or as he ever will be. Yet he has created this world; it has fallen into sin; He has visited it with many and sore judgments and much suffering for its sins; has declared that he will send every sinner to hell who will not turn from his evil ways, and has done all he wisely could to make you believe it. And now, can you rationally infer from God's goodness, that you, as a sinner, have no hell to fear? Ah, no, sinner, NO. You are moving on fast through the only period of your existence in which salvation is possible; you cannot arrest your progress towards the grave; you can never change the course of God's government towards sinners. God is too good to suffer any sinner to triumph over justice, or to subvert his own throne.

2. The goodness of God is not the security of the impenitent sinner's salvation, but the guarantee of his damnation. Sinners know this. They are not afraid of God because they think him wicked, but because they think him good, and dread the consequences of his goodness. What sinner ever feared injustice from God? Not one. Their fear is that God will deal with them as they deserve. Not without reason is it that they fear his goodness and his justice. These are the very qualities in his character which they have to fear; just as they fear good men and the best men most, not because they are bad men, but because they are good men.

3. The death of the wicked is not inconsistent with God's happiness. I have heard persons say that they never could be happy even in heaven, if they knew that any of their own friends or relatives were in hell; and they seem to wonder how God can be happy while he knows that sinners are in hell. The reason why God will not be unhappy is that he will have the eternal consciousness of having himself done right, and of not being in any sense or degree to blame for the death of the wicked. When the smoke of their torments shall go up for ever and ever, his consciousness will for ever affirm, No blood of theirs is on my raiment. With this consciousness God need not be unhappy in the sinner's eternal death.

4. God will have the eternal consciousness of having laid himself out to the utmost to save sinners. He knows that he has gone to the very verge of propriety, just as far as he wisely could, at every successive step in their course through a life of sin to their eternal death. What a satisfaction that must be, to such a mind as his, to be able to say, "What could I have done more to my vineyard that I have not done" in it? It is no fault of mine that when I looked for it to bring forth grapes, it brought forth wild grapes, fit only for burning.

In this view of the case it is easy to see that God will be content with having done the best thing he could do. Conscious of this, he will be satisfied, and will have no occasion to wish that he had been more than infinite, or to regret in any respect that he has not done more or better than he has.

He will be well satisfied, on the whole, with all the results of all he has done. He will indeed see that the misery of the wicked is, as viewed in itself, a great and almost infinite evil; but when all the results are considered, he will be satisfied. For, it should be considered, God had foreseen all these results. They do not break upon him by surprise. He did not commence a plan with which he should be, in its development, dissatisfied. He foresaw all the evils incidental to his plan -- all the sin, and all the suffering consequent upon sinning. In full view of all, he asked himself, Shall I be satisfied with these results? He did not go forward without making up his mind that this course was, on the whole, altogether wise and good. Hence the evils which are to be developed in the sinner's death are not new to him. They do not break forth suddenly upon him, so as to embarrass his movements and turn him aside from his course. By no means. Right onward move his eternal counsels, as certain as his own existence. What infinite wisdom has devised, infinite power will execute. God never can lack the necessary firmness to do the very best thing in the best way.

These results, therefore, do not interfere at all with the happiness of God. The death of the sinner may be in itself a very great evil, and yet God sees that, on the whole, taking all results into view, he has the best of reasons to be satisfied with his own plan, and with all that he has himself done in its execution. He will be satisfied with the results as a whole, although there may be things connected with it which are in themselves to be regretted.

5. Again, the death of the wicked will not be inconsistent with the happiness of heaven. Persons have often said that they could not be happy in heaven if they knew the wicked were in hell. Some of you may have thought so; but why? Are you a great deal better than God? Are you more benevolent or more wise than God is? Suppose you stand on the shore and you see a ship in the offing beating hard against a dreadful storm, and laden with precious human lives. You see their signals of distress; ah, you can even hear their shrieks and cries for help, and in your inmost soul you feel that you would save them all if you could. No doubt you would. God has the power to do it, but yet he lets that noble ship strike the breakers! You would have saved them; but are you therefore better than God? No; the reason why your course differs from God's course in the matter is that you are not so good and not so wise as he. If you were as benevolent as he, you would act as he does.

But with your short vision of results, it would fill you with great anguish to see a ship's crew and passengers all dash upon the dreadful rocks and go to the bottom. Yet God can look calmly on, and trace the whole course of the dreadful calamity, satisfied that all shall be well in the end.

When saints reach heaven they will have more confidence in God than many people have now. They will see more than they do now, and will have indefinitely more confidence in the wisdom of what they cannot see. It will then appear plain to them that they have the same reason for being happy in all the results of moral government that God has. They will begin to see these results as they have never done before. With enlarged views they will see most clearly that God has done right, perfectly and infinitely right. Oh, how their minds will be eternally solemnised by a view of hell! What a spectacle! What could make more solemn impressions of the fearfulness of sin, and of the firmness that prevails for ever in the counsels of Jehovah! I have sometimes been greatly edified by seeing how Christians have borne the loss of friends dying in their sins. For a long time I could not understand this, and was greatly stumbled to conceive how Christians could be reconciled to such a trial. Is it stupidity, said I to myself, or is it unbelief? Subsequent reflection, however, and observation, showed that it was neither. I saw how they might be happy in God, confiding in his wisdom and love. I no more suppose that heaven will be unhappy because of their vision of hell, than I suppose a virtuous community would be in seeing a man punished who was bent upon their ruin. Suppose there were in this community a man full of all mischief, a child of the devil, reckless of law and right, periling and even taking life, whenever excited passion maddened him to the deed; suppose this man seized, convicted, and shut up in state's prison, or even suppose him to be hung: you see it, and you say, This is in itself a great evil, but, in view of all the results, you would say, Amen. Better that the guilty wretch should suffer as he deserves, than that society should be broken up, other lives be destroyed, and an evil vastly greater than one man's death be done.

Now if in this world you may be brought to acquiesce in condign punishment brought upon the guilty, how much more so in the future world! There we shall see that their case is hopeless; that nothing more could be done wisely to save them; that they forced their way down to hell in full view of Calvary, despite of the tenderest entreaties and the most affecting invitations; then we shall see that nothing remained but for God to shut them up in the state's prison of the universe!

Persons sometimes say, Oh! if my relatives, my husband, or my children must go to hell, I never can be reconciled with God's doings, never, NEVER! I never can be happy in heaven myself and see them in hell! What! Do you say to God, You may send anybody else's children to hell if you please, but spare mine? All this will have passed away if you ever reach heaven. There God's friends are my friends, and God's enemies are my enemies, have only one question to ask there, is he a friend of God, or is he an enemy? All these distinctions about self and self's friends, or self's children, will then have vanished for ever away. Does that pious mother think now that she could not be happy to see her own son sent to hell? Once in heaven, or even once fitted for heaven, your soul will rest calmly in God, sinking down sweetly into his will, and rejoicing that he never does, and never can do, otherwise than right.

6. But we must revert to the exhortation in our text. God says to each sinner, "Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die?" Many sinners in this house have continued long in sin, expecting God to do something more than he has yet done, and indeed enough to save them; but will he? Do you know that he will? How do you know that he will? All this time, while you have been waiting for him, he has been waiting for you. He has come to you by all his servants, rising up early and sending them, saying, "Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?" This, you will observe, assumes that you are bent on your own death, and that you act as if you thought yourselves to have good reasons for choosing death. Your God asks to know what those reasons are. He tells you most solemnly that you need not die because he wants to have you, or because he has any pleasure at all in your death; nor because any one else -- unless it be Satan -- wants to have you die. No; if you have reasons they must be your own, and God asks you what they are. Now go home and ask yourself what they are. Press home to your own heart this question, put to you by your Maker, Why will ye die? Take your pen and write the reasons down, for you may have occasion enough to review them in the coming years and ages of your existence. Then write them down. I should like to know what they are, and it might be of use to yourself to study them more attentively than you have been wont to do. You will do well to write them all out fully, so that your own mind can measure them, and weigh them, and estimate soberly their real value. Won't you do this? Do it seriously, in the stillness and solitude of your own chamber; write them all down; get upon your knees and spread them out before God.

Say, Lord, thou hast put this question to me, "Why wilt thou die?" Here is the answer. Lord, it is because thou hast no mercy on sinners. It is because thou hast done nothing to save me. Because I can't help going on in my sins. Because I can't repent and can't believe.

But stop, sinner, read this over again before God. Is there a word of truth in all you have written? Will it stand the test of even your own conscience? Will it bear to come before your Maker? Can it be of any use to you to "deny the Lord that bought you," and "make God a liar" to his very face in contempt of his own solemn oath?

THE WAY OF SALVATION

XV. THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.

"There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day; and there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table; moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores.

"And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died, and was buried: and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried, and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he, is comforted, and thou art tormented. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed; so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.

"Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house: for I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham; but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." -- Luke 16:19-31.

A PARABLE is a little anecdote or a case of supposed history, designed to illustrate some truth. A simple and striking mode of illustration -- it makes no attempt at reasoning; indeed, it takes the place of all reasoning by at once revealing truth to the mind. In general, parables assume certain truths -- a thing which they have an ample right to do, for some truths need no proof, and in other cases a teacher may speak from his perfect knowledge, and in such a case, there can be no reason for demanding that he stop to prove all he asserts.

In the case of parables it is often interesting to notice what truths they do assume. This is especially true of the parables of Christ; for none were ever more rich by virtue both of the truths directly taught and also by virtue of the truths they assume. I may also remark here that truths are taught in Christ's parables both directly and incidentally. Some one great truth is the leading object of the illustration, yet other truths of the highest importance may be taught incidentally, not being embraced in his direct design.

The passage which I have read to you this morning is probably a parable, though not distinctly affirmed to be so. The nature of the case seems to show this, although these very circumstances might have all actually occurred in fact and in the same order as here related.

In discussing the passage, I propose,

I. TO NOTICE SOME TRUTHS THAT ARE ASSUMED IN IT;

II. TO PRESENT SOME THAT ARE INTENTIONALLY TAUGHT.

I. Truths that are assumed by the story.

1. Christ assumes in this passage the direct opposite of annihilation. He assumes that men are not annihilated at death, nor indeed ever. For he speaks of things that take place immediately after death. The men who lived on earth live beyond death, and receive according to the things they have done here in the body. It was no part of his direct object to affirm this doctrine; yet his statements imply it. Being himself the Great Teacher, it is not without reason that he should assume the fundamental truths that pertain to man's future existence under God's moral government.

2. He assumes that the state into which both good and bad men pass at death is one of real and intense consciousness. This of course denies the assumption that this state is an unconscious one. You are aware that some do not hold to annihilation, yet hold to unconsciousness in the intermediate state between death and the resurrection. This doctrine, whether applied to saints or sinners, is entirely set aside by our Saviour's teachings in this narrative.

3. He assumes that the righteous and the wicked recognise each other after death. The rich man knew both Abraham and Lazarus. Abraham knew him. They all respectively knew each other. The statements represent the colloquy to have been held between the rich man and Abraham. Abraham, though long since in heaven, knew both this rich man and Lazarus. It was not our Lord's design directly to affirm this, yet he obviously implies it.

4. It is also assumed that they are acquainted with each other's state and history. All these matters were entirely familiar to their minds.

5. It is fully assumed that at death the righteous go immediately to a state of bliss and the wicked to a place of torment. This lies out undeniably on the face of the passage.

II. The truths distinctly and directly taught in this passage.

1. That at death angels conduct the righteous to their place of blessedness. It is expressly said of Lazarus that he was carried by angels into Abraham's bosom. Dogs were his companions here up to his death: angels immediately thereafter. When the dogs could minister to his wants no longer, angels stepped in and took his case in charge. They bore him away to the home of the blessed.

We may infer that this is the common employment of angels. Paul in Hebrews i. 12 strengthens this position, in his question, "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?"

2. Saints after death are sensible of no want. They have nothing left to desire. They are sensible of wanting nothing that can be needful to their highest happiness. In this life they may have had their cup filled with bitterest grief; but at death, this cup is removed for ever away, and quite another cup is placed to their lips for ever. Lazarus had his evil things in this world; poverty, pain, sores, and want were his portion here; but, after death, he knew these things no more at all. They passed away for ever.

3. On the other hand, sinners after death are full of want, and have no good at all. The rich man asked for only the very smallest favour. He had fared sumptuously every day; but now he is reduced so low he can only beg for one drop of water to cool his tongue.

He asks for only so much as might adhere to the tip of one's finger when taken from the water. You have seen persons lie under a burning fever -- prostrate, parched, can't say a word, can only beckon for water -- water -- one drop to cool their burning tongue. See the man dying; he tries to move a little, towards the water; ah, he fails; he sinks back in his bed for the last time, and the burning fever has used up all his strength. You who have suffered from fever know what this means to have a consuming fire shut up within you. Here mark, the Great Teacher makes the rich man cry out, "Send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame." Why did he not ask for an ocean of water, or a pail-full at least, or a pitcher-full? Why restrict himself to the least drop? Plainly he knew himself to be placed beyond all good. He knew this was the utmost he could ask, and even this is denied him! What could our Lord have designed but to teach this? How irresistibly is this taught and with what overpowering force! What remarkable facts are these! How obviously and how forcibly is the truth taught here that saints at death pass into a state all joyful, but the wicked into one of unutterable torment!

4. We learn the state of mind in which the wicked are. This man asks for only the very slightest mitigation. He says not one word about Pardon; this he knows to be impossible. How small the boon he dares to ask! How very small, if he could have had it, would have been the boon of one small drop of water on a tongue tormented in flame. Yet he does not dare to ask for anything beyond this; nor even this of God! He knew and he most deeply felt that he had cast off God, and God in turn had cast off him. He could not think of speaking to God. He could venture to speak only to Abraham; and this solitary Bible case of prayer to saints in heaven surely affords no very plausible foundation for the Romish practice. This rich man had not the least hope of release from his woe. He did not ask so great a boon as this. Deep in his soul he felt that such a request was for ever precluded.

It is remarkable, too, that, though the boon he did ask was so trifling and his need so great, yet even this pittance was denied him. Abraham gave him plainly to understand that this was impossible. Son, said he, remember that thou in thy lifetime hast received thy good things; thou hast had thine all; there are no more for thee to enjoy!

5. Besides this, there is a great gulf fixed -- parting for ever the saved from the damned: we cannot go to you if we would; you cannot come to us, however much you may desire it. Most plainly does Christ teach in this representation that the state of both the righteous and the wicked is fixed, fixed for ever, and for ever changeless. There can be no passage open, therefore, as some would fain have it, from one world to the other. They who are in heaven can never get to hell to help the suffering ones there if they would; and, on the other hand, the miserable in hell can never get to heaven. What less than this could the Saviour have intended to teach that each class enter at death upon another state which is to each alike unchangeable? The righteous cannot pass the great gulf to hell; the wicked cannot pass it to heaven. Once heaven's gate was open to even the sinner on his repentance. Now it is open to him no more. He has passed away from the world where his moral state can be changed. He has entered on one where no change can reach him any more at all for ever.

6. The wicked dread to have their friends come to them in this place of torment. You see this feeling most distinctly manifested in this parable. The reason of the feeling is obvious. They are still human beings, and therefore it can be no joy to them to have their earthly friends come into their place of woe. They have human feelings. They know they can look for no alleviation of their own woe from the presence of their friends. They know that if those friends come there as they did they can never escape; therefore they beg that those friends may never come. Therefore this rich man prays that Abraham would send Lazarus to his five brethren, to testify to them, lest they also come into that place of torment

7. The state of mind that rejects the Bible would reject any testimony that could be given. This is plainly taught here, and can be proved. It can be proved that the testimony of one who should rise from the dead is no better or stronger than that of the Bible. Paul said he had been caught up to the third heaven, but men would not believe him. Or take the case of Lazarus, raised beyond all question from the dead. We are not told what he taught, nor is it said that his instructions made any special impressions on the living unbelievers of that generation. Those of you who have read the history of William Tennant, a co-labourer with Whitfield and Edwards, know how he apparently died; how after death he went to heaven; how he, too, like Paul, saw there unspeakable things which no man could utter; how he returned again, and lived several years as one who had seen the glories of heaven; but was this stronger evidence than the Bible itself? Did it surpass in strength of demonstration the teachings of Moses and of the prophets? Yet more, did it surpass the force and evidence with which Jesus spake, and also his apostles? No, verily. When unbelief has taken possession of the mind, you may pile miracle on miracle; men will not believe it. Suppose ever so many should rise from the dead. Men who reject the Bible would not believe their testimony. They would insist either that they had not been really dead, or that, if they had been, they did not bring back a reliable report from that other country. They would make a thousand objections, as they do now against the Bible, and with much more plausibility then than now. Now, they only know their objections are really unfounded; then they would have more plausible objections to make, and would be sure to give them credit enough to refuse to repent under their teachings. They would not be persuaded even then.

8. The estimation in which God holds men may not be learned from their outward circumstances. His favour cannot be inferred from the trappings of wealth; nor is it precluded by any amount of poverty. These external things neither prove nor disprove God's approbation of the hearts and the life of men.

9. The righteous need not envy rich sinners. Lazarus did not envy the rich man. He saw that he was petted for his great wealth, but Lazarus pitied rather than envied him. He doubtless understood that this man was having his good things in this world. So good men, if they have faith, understand that those rich and wicked men are receiving all their good things in this world; therefore are far from being objects of envy.

10. The former poverty of the righteous poor will give a keener relish to the joys of heaven. Think of the abject poverty of this, man wandering about with no home, no place even to lay his head. So multitudes in Eastern countries may be seen lying around the city walls like the swine of the streets. I saw them in Malta when I was there, and in Sicily also. They had no home to go to, no resources against a sick or stormy day. So Lazarus lived; and it was from such a life and such scenes that he was transferred to the royal palace of Jehovah. Take the case of some poor beggar lying helpless outside the palace-walls of Queen Victoria. Suppose him suddenly taken up and exalted to the highest honours of the palace itself. How would his joy intoxicate his brain -- too much for flesh and blood to bear! So poor saints passing from the dunghill on earth to the golden palaces of heaven. It is well they lose their nerves in the change, for surely nerves of flesh could not bear so great a change. See Lazarus, sick and sore, perhaps putrid, licked by dogs; but he reached at length the crisis of his sorrows, and all suddenly the mortal coil drops, and his spirit takes wings -- angels receive him; he soars away, and heaven opens wide its gates of pearl to make him welcome! Sometimes when I have stood and seen the Christian die -- have seen him struggle and pant and gasp and pass away, I have said, What a wonderful change is this! See how that eye grows glassy and dark; then it closes; it sees no more of earth, but all suddenly it opens on the glories of the upper world, to be closed no more for ever!

11. But to have the luxuries of this life superseded by the poverty and woe of hell -- how awful! This rich man had royal wealth. We are told that he fared sumptuously every day -- not only on special occasions, but every day! Every day, too, he was clad in purple and fine linen; but now how wonderful the contrast!

Nothing is said of the burial of Lazarus; perhaps he had none worth noticing; but this man had a funeral. It was a noticeable fact. Perhaps thousands gathered round his remains to do him honour -- but where is he? Lifting up his eyes in hell, being in torments! What a change! From his table and his palace, to hell! Lazarus passed from his sores and beggary to heaven; the rich man, from his pomp and pride and feasting, to hell. As the great poverty of Lazarus, so set off in contrast with heaven, must have given great edge and keenness to the joys of that world, so, on the reverse scale, how dreadful the contrast which this rich man experienced!

If we always get clearer and stronger views by contrast, surely we have a picture drawn here that is adapted to teach us awful truth and force it home on the soul with telling power.

12. If it be true that angels convey saints to heaven, as we are taught both here and elsewhere in God's word, then it is not irrational to suppose that what many saints say in their dying hours of the things they see, is strictly true. Gathering darkness clouds the senses, and the mind becomes greatly spiritual, as their looks plainly show. Those looks -- the eye, the countenance, the melting whisper, these tell the story better than any words can do it; indeed, no words can describe those looks -- no language can paint what you can stand by and see and hear -- a peace so deep and so divine; this shows that the soul is almost in heaven. In all ages it has been common for some dying saints to hear music which they supposed to be of heaven, and to see angels near and around them. With eyes that see what others cannot see, they recognise their attending angels, as already come. "Don't you hear that music?" say they. "Don't you see those shinning ones? they come, they come!" But attending friends are yet too carnal to see such objects and to hear such sounds; for it is the mind, and not the body, that has eyes. It is the mind that sees, and not the body. No doubt, in such cases, they do really see angelic forms and hear angelic voices. The Bible says, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." How gloriously do these closing scenes illustrate this truth!

13. If this be true of saints, then doubtless wicked spirits are allowed to drag the wicked down from their dying beds to hell. Nor is it unreasonable to suppose that they, too, really see awful shapes and hear dreadful sounds. "Who is that weeping and wailing? Did I not hear a groan? Is there not some one weeping as if in awful agony? Oh, that awful thing! take him away, take him away! He will seize me and drag me down; take him away, away!"

So the wicked are sometimes affected in their dying moments. There is no good reason to doubt that these objects seen and sounds heard, by saints and sinners in their last earthly moments, are realities. You who have read Dr. Nelson's book on infidelity cannot but have noticed especially what he says of the experience of persons near death. These things passed under his observation chiefly while he was a physician, and while yet an infidel himself. Dying sinners would cry out, "Oh, that awful creature! take him away, away! why don't you take him away?" Ye who know Dr. Nelson, must have known that he did not say these things at random. He did not admit them without evidence, or state them without due consideration.

14. We are left to infer the character of this rich man from his worldly-mindedness. Christ did not seem to deem it necessary to state that he was a wicked man, but left this to be inferred from his self-indulgent life. He needed only to say of him that he lived for self-gratification; that he used his wealth for himself only, and not for the good of man, or for the glory of God. This explained his character sufficiently.

People act very much in this world as if they supposed poverty would disqualify them for heaven. They would seem to hold the exact opposite of the truth. Christ said, "How hardly shall a rich man enter into the kingdom of heaven"; and yet, who seems to have the least fear of losing heaven by means of the snare of wealth? How wonderful is the course that men pursue, and indeed a great many Christian men are pursuing! A Christian mother, writing to me from New York, said, "All, even Christians, are giving themselves up to making money, MONEY, MONEY! They are wholly given up to stocks, and banks, and getting rich." There is a great deal of this spirit all over the country, and even here. But look at it in the light of this parable and of our Saviour's assumption in regard to the character of this rich man, and what a fearful state is this to live and to die in.

15. What can Universalists say or believe when they read such passages as this? What miserable shifts they must make to interpret these words! I recollect when I tried and wanted to be Universalist, and for this purpose went to their meetings and heard their arguments, I said to myself, "For very shame, I could never use such arguments; no, not for the shame of admitting and avowing such absurdities!" What can be more absurd than to resort to such sophistry and special pleading to set aside statements so clear and direct to the point as these in this chapter.

God is giving to all sinners -- to you sinners in this place -- a great many rich gifts. What use are you making of them? What are you doing with these gifts? What are you doing with these things which God comes down each day to bring to you? Are you cavilling, to prevent Christ from saving you if you can? Many act as if they meant to avoid being saved if by any means they can. You act just like reprobates. But I must explain myself. I often meet with persons whose spirit makes me believe they are reprobates. You know that all things are eternally present to the mind of God. He saw how these sinners would treat the gospel. He saw they would repel and hate Christ -- would not love his service nor accept the offers of his great salvation. He saw all this in his past eternity; therefore He reprobated them; therefore He gave them over to their own hearts' lusts. Those things which God saw in the depths of his eternity, we only see as they boil up upon the surface of actual present life. You see them resist the Spirit; you see them cavil and fight against God's truth; you know they are fighting against God. So strongly does the conviction fasten on the minds of Christians in some cases, that they cannot pray for those who they are assured are reprobates. Said a very pious woman, "For ten years, I have not prayed for that son." Why? She saw that he was set against God, and she could not pray for him. It is indeed an awful thing to find such cases in Christian families. Nobody can tell the agony of a parent's heart to see a son setting at naught all the claims and all the mercies of God, and working his dismal way obstinately down to the depths of an eternal hell. Some of you before me today, know that you have children who give awful evidence of being reprobate!

Hear that man across the street sighing as he moves along. What is the matter? He is in agony for a hardened, reprobate son.

You call at a neighbour's door; you ring the bell; the mother comes. You see the tear in her eye; she can scarcely speak. What is the matter? She has a son, and she fears he is a reprobate. All his conduct heightens the awful fear that he is given over of God.

But let those who have not gone so far, take warning. Some of those whom you have mocked and reviled, you may by-and-by see in glory. They may be in Abraham's bosom, and you afar off! You may cry to them for help, but all in vain. Will they rush to your help? No. You see your father, your mother, afar off in that spirit land, you think they will fly to succour you, and bring you at least one drop of water, they used to do so many a time when you were in pain. Ah! many a time has that mother watched over your suffering frame, and rushed to your relief; but will she do so now? "My son, hear this: there is no passing from this place to that. You once lived in my house and lay in my bosom, but I cannot bring you one drop of water now!" And has it come to this? Must it come to this? Ah, yes, it must come to this!

Christian parents, one word to you. Suppose you conceive of this as your case. You see one of your children crying, "Oh, give me one drop of water to cool my burning tongue!" I know what Universalists would say to this. They say, "Can a parent be happy, and see this? And do you think a parent is more compassionate than God?"

But in that hour of retribution, those Christian parents will say even of the sons and daughters they have borne, "Let them perish, they are the enemies of God and of his kingdom! Let them perish, since they would not have salvation! They must perish, for God's throne must stand, and ought to stand, though all the race go down to hell!"

THE WAY OF SALVATION

XVI. THE WANTS OF MAN AND THEIR SUPPLY.

"He began to be in want." -- Luke 15:14.

"Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." -- Matthew 5:6.

THE parable of the prodigal son is intended to illustrate the case of the sinner, coming to himself, opening his eyes to his true condition, and feeling himself destitute, empty, and wretched.

Man, as he stands revealed to himself in consciousness, is a wonderful being. By the earliest teachings of consciousness he finds himself to be a duality, consisting of body and soul. Farther revelations made in consciousness show him to be in some respects a triunity. For example, he has three classes of mental attributes: sensibility, intellect, and will. Still further, and yet more important in its bearings, he finds himself a tri-unity, inasmuch as he has three sides to his nature, one related to the material universe around him; another to all objects of thought and knowledge; and still another, related to God, and to duty.

1. He has first a body, and, through this, peculiar relations to the world he lives in. He has appetites for food, and numerous wants that terminate on the physical universe. These wants crave their appropriate supplies, and cannot be satisfied with anything else. In the order of time, these are earliest developed. They are few in number, that is, they may be,and those which are real are so. This class alone cease at death. Yet while they exist, they must be supplied.

Another fact deserving notice in reference to this class of wants is that man immediately assumes the existence of the objects to which his physical wants are correlated. The infant assumes this by instinct. There is no need that you should prove to man that these objects exist. He assumes this, and has only to inquire where they may be found. By a necessity of his nature he assumes their existence, and sets himself forthwith to search for them.

2. In the next place, let it be noticed that man has also an intellectual nature. He is made capable of knowledge, and has also an intense desire to know. These are real wants of his being. God has provided for their supply in the illimitable ocean of truth which invests him on every side. God has also breathed into his soul a spirit of inquiry, and acting out its deep impulses, he must inquire into the truth and reason of things. It is curious to notice the difference between children and other animals. If you had never seen an infant before, and were to study his developments for the first time, you would be forcibly struck with these remarkable traits. The little one begins to notice, and to look inquiringly, almost as soon as it begins to look at all. See him fix his eyes upon his little hands, as if he would ask, What are these? He looks into his mother's eye as if he would ask a thousand questions, long before he can utter a word. But you can find no such manifestations of thought and inquiry in the kitten and the lamb. Give them enough to eat and scope for rest and play, and they are satisfied. They will never seem to ask you the reasons of things. Nay more, you cannot awaken within them a spirit of inquiry by any appliances you can employ. It is not in them, and you cannot get it in.

But the infant is a philosopher by birth. He has intellectual wants lying in his very nature, and he cannot be satisfied without their supply. He must know the reasons of things. This is the true idea of philosophy. The lower animals will lie down perfectly satisfied without knowing the reasons of things, or anything more about things than just suffices to meet their animal wants. But man, even from infancy, has wants pressing upon him in this direction, and he rouses himself, like a lion from his lair, to grasp the good his inner being craves in this direction. He cannot be satisfied without. He finds himself related to the whole universe of matter, and oh, what a world is opened to him for inquiry and knowledge! How naturally he looks up and abroad! It is not easy for the horse or the ox to look up. Their eye is prone; but man's is outward and upward. Man is made for inquiry.

It is this spirit of inquiry which leads so many young people to this place. They come here to get knowledge. How they hang on our lips, and press on us for the reasons of things, as if they could not be satisfied till they have penetrated to the bottom of every subject.

Men assume that there is an explanation of everything. They assume that these innate demands for knowledge were created, not to be denied -- not to remain ungratified, but to be gratified. Hence they grasp after knowledge, searching for it as for silver, and as if they deemed it more to be desired than gold, yea, than much fine gold. What young man or young woman has not felt such curiosity excited, as to extort the cry, I must know: I must find out the facts on this subject, and the reasons of the facts besides!

3. Thirdly, man has yet another side to his nature -- the moral and spiritual department, correlated to God, to his attributes and law, and to great questions of duty and destiny. Man learns from consciousness that he has such a side to his being -- such a department in his nature. Hence he inquires after God. He raises questions about right and wrong, and asks to know the nature of virtue and vice. Often he finds in himself a great uneasiness of which he cannot well divine the cause. It puts him upon pressing these inquiries into his responsibilities and his mission in this state of his existence.

Let it now be especially observed that man instinctively assumes the existence of those things which stand related to each of these three sides of his nature. The infant begins to feel after his food with no thought of question as to the fact of there being food provided for his wants. When intelligence opens, the same assumption is made, that there are verities to be known, and the reasons why these things are so rather than otherwise. In like manner, when the eyes of the moral man begin to open, he assumes his own immortality, and assumes also the existence of a God. This is, indeed, the true account of his knowledge of this truth. Some have supposed that the idea of God in the human mind is wholly a thing of education. It is so in the same sense in which much of our intellectual knowledge is. There are many things about God which we need to learn from his word and from his works. But no man needs to have it demonstrated to him that there is a God, any more than a child needs to have it proved that there is food provided for him in the physical world, or the adult, that there are things to be known. The great cardinal truths pertaining to the existence of God, accountability, and duty, are assumed as readily and surely as men assume that there are truths correlated to their intelligence, or supplies in nature for their animal wants. It is of no use to say that some men are atheists, and therefore this doctrine cannot be true. Some men have, by speculation, befooled themselves into the belief (so they say) that there is no physical universe. But they believe in its existence none the less, and crave the good it proffers, and cannot live without it. Each one of these philosophers, although he may deny the existence of any physical universe, and declare there is no such thing as matter, yet expects his dinner at the appointed hour, and needs it for his comfort full as much as if he had not denied the existence of any such thing. So these atheists only know there is a God, although they say, "in their heart," there is none.

It is vastly difficult for any man to feel at ease while he is resisting the constitutional demands of any department of his nature. "Alas!" said a young and ambitious lawyer, who was driving his business and his books and his briefs, "alas!" said he, "what is the matter with me! I try to study, and cannot. I try to be happy, but I am not. What do I want? Wherein is the lack that, with all I have, yet leaves me so wretched?"

It was this strain of inquiry which led him to see that he needed God for his portion, and could not find a paradise without him.

Men need not wait for the proof of their immortality, or for proof of the necessity of virtue as a means for happiness. They know these things by a spontaneity of their moral nature. They know that holiness is a great want of their moral nature. How plainly do they see and know that they need such a being as God, to love and to obey, to trust and to adore!

I appeal to these students. If you have cultivated the habit of self-study, you have learned that you cannot find out yourself without finding God. Tracing out the problems of your own existence reveals to you your Maker. An irresistible conviction will force itself upon you that there is a God, and that you have everything to hope from his favour, and everything to fear from his frown. A view of yourself and of your own spiritual wants will show you that nothing else can supply your need but God. Have you not already found that the more you study, and the more you cultivate the habit of reflection, the less you can make yourself happy without God? Most of you find it impossible to enjoy yourselves in sin as you were wont to do before you gave yourselves to thought and reflection. The higher you ascend in the grade of moral and intellectual culture, the more intensely will you feel the want of moral culture and moral enjoyments. It is impossible for you to rise as a man without feeling a growing demand for the presence and influence of God as your Father and Friend.

Commonly, as the human mind opens to surrounding objects, and as its powers successively develop themselves, attention is first turned to physical wants, and next to intellectual. In one or the other of these pursuits, or in both, man is wont to become so engrossed as mainly to overlook the moral side of his nature. Yet the wants of his moral being will develop themselves, often in such a way at first as to make him exceedingly wretched, while yet he does not see what ails him, and quite fails to comprehend the reason of his unhappiness. No amount of knowledge or purely mental culture can make him happy. On the contrary, the more he knows the more he wants, and the more intensely dissatisfied he becomes with himself.

The objects that supply his bodily wants are at hand. He meets them on every side, and in abundance. So, also, pushing his efforts for this end, he finds ample materials for supplying his intellectual wants. He finds enough for mind to feed upon -- enough to exercise his faculties, and interest him in studious thought and earnest research.

So, also, with his moral and spiritual wants. These have their correlated objects. God is all around him. In the kingdoms of nature he sees the handiwork of an intelligent, designing Maker; and in the ways of providence, he cannot help seeing the agency of a kind and beneficent Father. As his natural eye gives him the material world, so his spiritual eye would give him God in everything were it not for the blinding influence of a bad heart. This fearfully darkens his vision to those great spiritual truths he so much needs to know. While he might be advancing hour by hour in the knowledge of God and of spiritual truth, going down into the great depths of sympathy with God, he finds, instead, a fearful conflict between his depraved impulses and his conscience, under the influence of which, truth gains but a slow access to his soul. Moreover, the moral side of his nature being latest developed, he often becomes so engrossed with sensual or intellectual pursuits, that he scarce has any power left for effective thought upon moral subjects. How fearfully some give way to worldly interests and claims, and others also to intellectual pursuits, some of you must know but too well.

Yet those moral wants you have neglected will some day arise and make their demands heard. It is well if they assume this urgency while yet their supply is possible. The prodigal son was a case of one who felt the pressure of these wants. He said, "I must go home to my father." David entered on record his testimony, "My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is." "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God?" The mind thus becomes deeply conscious of cravings and aspirations which have God for their object, and which nothing but God can supply. If you examine the nature of these wants, you find them in part social. The mind craves communion with other minds. It thirsts for society, and wisely concludes that no society, no fellowship with other minds, can in any wise compare with communion with God. Perhaps he has tried the fellowship of mortals, and found it still unsatisfying. Hence he craves the richer, far richer, fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. He longs to rise above communion with the finite to hold communion with the Infinite. Weary of drawing instructions from erring man, he thirsts for the pure fountains of knowledge as they flow from the Infinite Intelligence. Conscious that he must himself exist for ever, he craves the acquaintance and sympathy of his eternal Maker and Father. As he comes to know something of his great and glorious Friend, he feels that he needs an eternity in which to study God in his multiform and wonderful works and ways. And when he comes to breathe the atmosphere of purity which invests the glorious Presence, how intensely does he long for deliverance from all moral corruption! Oh, how does his soul thirst for an ever-growing conformity to God! The language of holy men on the sacred page is exceedingly strong on these points, as we may see from David's Psalms and Paul's Epistles. The latter declares, "Yea, doubtless, I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ and be found in him." No one can read these strong utterances of feeling, desire, and purpose, without seeing that the mind may develop itself with amazing intensity in this direction. There is scope and occasion for its utmost energies and aspirations.

REMARKS.

1. He must be wretched who neglects to supply his physical wants. He must pay the stem penalty of his neglect, as he will soon learn to his sorrow. Each organ of the body needs its appropriate development, exercise, and nutriment. He who should disregard the laws of his constitution in respect to the proper supply of these constitutional demands will find, ere long, that the penalty of such neglect is fearful and sure.

In like manner, if he stultifies himself and takes no pains to inquire after truth and knowledge; if he never troubles himself to know, and denies to his intellectual nature all its just demands, he must be far more wretched than a brute can be. But let a man neglect all spiritual culture and training, he becomes far more wretched still. Physical demands cease with the death of the body; the spiritual must continue during his entire existence, stretching on and still on for ever, an probably for ever increasing.

2. How cruel for a man to consider himself as merely a brute! Giving himself up to a grovelling life, regardless of his spiritual nature and even of his intellectual nature also, what a wretch he must be! Ye who are students know how to pity and how to despise him! You can understand what he loses, for you know what satisfaction is taken in finding out the reasons of things. But see the mere animal who never looks abroad, never raises an inquiry. Why does he not set himself to study and think? Why not cast his thoughts abroad for knowledge? Why does he live a fool and a dunce, when he might be a man?

3. How cruel to treat anybody else as a mere animal! This is the most cruel thing you can do towards a fellow-being. You deny the existence of those great qualities which constitute him a man. You feed him as you would a horse, withholding all aliment for his intelligent mind. You feed him and your horse, each for the same reason; you want to keep him in working order to serve your selfish purposes. You regard all knowledge beyond what your horse needs as only so much injury to him. Holding your slave as his master, do you send him to school? Never. Do you teach him to read? Never. Do you provide him any means of instruction? No. In the same manner you shut down the gate upon his moral nature. You close up the windows of his soul and keep it as utterly dark as possible to the light of heaven. You tighten the thumb-screws down on every inlet of knowledge, so that he shall never know that he is anything more or other than a beast! Is not this horrible? What, then, shall we say of the man who does just this upon himself!

4. The more a man develops his intellectual faculties, yet neglects moral culture, the more miserable he becomes. It is striking to see how wretched the most highly cultivated men become. During all the latter years of his life, Daniel Webster was never seen sober, but he was wretched. While in his senses, his mind was deep in sorrow. Look in upon Congress and see there the great men of our land and of other lands; not a man of them is happy without piety and sound moral culture. Go and ask Byron if his gigantic mind and almost superhuman genius made him an angel of bliss. Ask him if he found this world a paradise. Perhaps no man ever cursed his fellow-beings more intensely, or enjoyed less in their society, than he. All such men, with high intellectual culture, make themselves wretched because they leave their moral powers in a state of utter wreck and distortion. There is no escape from this result. High intellectual culture must inevitably develop the idea and the claims of God. Let them turn their inquiries which way they will, they find God, and must feel more or less convicted of obligation to love and obey them. Repelling these obligations, it is impossible that they can be otherwise than wretched. I alluded to the case of a young lawyer who asked, "What makes me so unhappy? I feel myself thoroughly wretched, and surely I can see no reason for it." The secret was this: all his life long he had neglected God; his studies had more and more brought God to view, and his sensibilities, under the action of conscience, had become exceedingly acute. How could he be otherwise than wretched! He might not see the reason of his unhappy state; yet, if he had well considered the laws of his moral nature, he would have found the reason lying there. Many of you begin to find the same results in your experience, and you must realise them more and more if you remain alienated in heart from God while yet your intelligence is more and more revealing God and his rightful claims on your heart.

5. Neglecters of God are not well aware either of the cause or the degree of their wretchedness. The wants of their physical nature are all met. They are fed and clad, and have every comfort that their physical system craves. Their social wants, too, are met. They have friends and society. They have also cultivated taste and any desired amount of objects for its gratification. There is a library and books in plenty. There are works of art from the masters in every profession. What more could they need? Yet they are wretched. What is the matter? How many thousand times has this inquiry been made, What can be the matter with me? I have everything heart can wish, or the eye desire, books, teachers, unbounded sources of information, yet I am unhappy; what does ail me?

I can tell you what. There is another side of your nature, more important than all the rest, and more craving, yet you shut off all its demands, and deny its claims. You have a conscience, yet you resist its monitions. You have desires correlated to God, yet you deny them their appropriate gratification. No fact is more ennobling to human nature than this, that man has desires correlated to God even as he has to his fellowmen, so that he can no more be happy without God than he can be without the sympathy and society of man. We all understand this law of human nature. We see man thirsting for companionship with his fellow-man, longing for society, and we cannot fail to see and to say that man is so constructed in his very nature that he must have society. Deprive him of it and he is wretched. Now the striking fact is that man has an equally strong demand in his very constitution for sympathy and fellowship with God. Unless this too be supplied, he cannot be happy.

Suppose you were to meet a man as ignorant of his physical wants as most men are of their spiritual. He does not understand that he must have food for his stomach, clothes for his body, heat to warm him in the winter frosts. Ah! you would see the reason of his misery? Strange he does not know enough to supply his wants!

Or suppose him equally ignorant of his intellectual wants. He starves his soul of knowledge. Lean and barren, he seems to be panting for something higher and better, yet unaware both of the nature of this craving and of the proper source of supply. How easily could you tell him that "for the soul to be without knowledge is not good"!

So there is also a moral side to man's nature, and he can never be supremely happy till he becomes morally perfect. He struggles to get out of his moral agony; feels as if he should die if he cannot get out from under this moral load. Who has not felt this loathing of his abominable self, because he did not and would not search after God! Never did any man long for food or water more intensely than the man who suffers himself to attend to the inner voice of his moral being, and thirsts after God.

6. Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst, for when they cry unto God to be filled, he will fill them. Let them cry unto God for bread and water; does he not hear their cry? Ah, verily, he hears the young ravens when they cry, and the young lions when they roar and suffer hunger; and the infant voices of his intelligent creation are not less sure to come up into his car. Does he not love to supply these wants which grow out of the nature he gave them? Indeed he does. He spread out the fair earth and its rich fields of lovely green. He meant to fill the earth with supplies for man and beast, yea, for every living thing.

In like manner, of the mental wants of his intelligent creatures, he loves to meet these with open hand; loves to excite the spirit of inquiry and then supply to us the means of gratification. The things we need to know he loves to teach us.

But our moral and spiritual wants, he is infinitely more ready to supply. Does not your inner heart say, Verily, this must be so? It is so. No sooner does the soul go forth after God, than he is near -- ineffably near. It is wonderful to see how soon God is found when once the soul begins in true earnest to inquire after him. Is it not striking that God should so love to reveal himself, and should take such pains to insinuate himself into our confidence, and, as it were, work himself into universal communion and contact with our whole souls, so as to fill every moral want of our being? In view of this desire and effort on his part, and in view also of the means provided and promised for this result, we can see why God should command us to "be filled with the Spirit." Such infinite supplies provided, and such earnest desire manifested on the part of God to have us appropriate these supplies to their utmost extent; it is as if an ocean of water were suspended above our heads, and we have only to lift the valve and let down these ocean waters upon our needy souls. There is the promise, let down like a silken cord; what have we to do but to take hold of it and pull down infinite blessings!

7. Until man feels his spiritual wants, he will resist all attempts you may make to bring him to God. Hence the necessity of touching the mainspring of danger, of arousing his fears, and developing his moral sensibility. Hence the need of appeals to his conscience and to his sense of danger. Until you can make his moral nature sensitive, and rouse up his dark and dead soul to moral feelings, there is no hope for him. But when you can touch this side of his nature, and quicken him to feeling, and even to agony, under the lash of conscience, and make him really appreciate his wants, then he begins to feel his wants, and to ask how they can be met and supplied. This is the true secret of promoting revivals. You must go around among these dark, insensible minds, and pour in light upon this side of their nature. You must wake them up to earnest thought -- you must rouse up the man's conscience and soul till he shall cry out after God and his salvation.

I always have strong hopes of students; for although they sometimes get wise in their own conceits, and sometimes render themselves ridiculous by their low ambition, yet, taken as a class, there is great hope of them. If suitable means are used, very many of them will be converted. Probably no class of students ever passed through college, the right means of instruction and influence being used with them, without deeply feeling the power of truth, and many of them becoming converted. They must, almost of necessity, feel every blow that is struck; every truth, brought home clearly through their intelligence upon their conscience, wakens a response, and impels the soul to cry out after God. Hence I have strong hopes of you. Yet many of you, I know, are not now converted. God grant you may be soon! I hope the hearts of this Christian people will reach your case in strong effectual prayer. You can indeed resist every effort made to save you, if you will; you can reject Christ, however earnest his entreaties or tender his loving kindness; but you cannot change your nature so that it shall be happy in rebellion against God and his truth; you cannot hush the rebukes of an abused conscience for ever; these wants of your inner being must be met, or what will become of you? Your bodily wants will soon cease; and you need not care much therefore for them. Your intellectual pleasures, also, must ere long come to an end; for how can they pass over with you into the realm of outer darkness, where are weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth! Doubtless that is a state not of light, and truth, and joy in pursuit of knowledge; but of delusions, and errors, and of knowledge agonising its possessor with keenest pangs for ever and ever! I do not believe sinners will have any intellectual pleasure in hell. It cannot be possible that they will enjoy any knowledge they will have there, or any means of attaining knowledge. The very idea is precluded by the relations that conscience must sustain to everything they know. All possible knowledge must have some bearing upon God, duty, and their moral relations, and hence must serve only to harrow up their sensibilities with keenest anguish. Oh, how will they gnash their teeth and gnaw their tongues in direst woe for ever! "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked!" More and more deeply dissatisfied to all eternity! execrating and cursing their insane selves for the madness of rejecting God and his gospel when they might have had both, now it only remains for them to wail in bitterness and anguish, lifting up their unavailing cries, to which the thunders of Jehovah's curse respond in everlasting echoes, "Woe to the wicked; it shall be ill with him; for the reward of his hands shall be given him."

O sinner, will you yet press on into the very jaws of such a hell!