When I was speaking to five thousand children in Glasgow some years ago, I took a spool of thread and said to one of the largest boys:
"Do you believe I can bind you with that thread?"
He laughed at the idea. I wound the thread around him a few times, and he broke it with a single jerk. Then I wound the thread around and around, and by and by I said:
"Now get free if you can."
He couldn't move head or foot. If you are slave to some vile habit, you must either slay that habit, or it will slay you.
There is one thing I have noticed as I have traveled in different countries; I never yet have known the Spirit of God to work where the Lord's people were divided.Unity is one thing that we must have if we are to have the Holy Spirit of God to work in our midst.
If a church is divided, the members should immediately seek unity. Let the believers come together and get the difficulty out of the way. If the minister of a church cannot unite the people, if those that were dissatisfied will not fall in, it would be better for that minister to retire. I think there are a good many ministers in this country who are losing their time; they have lost, some of them, months and years; they have not seen any fruit, and they will not see any fruit, because they have a divided church. Such a church cannot grow in divine things. The Spirit of God doesn't work where there is division, and what we want to-day is the spirit of unity amongst God's children, so that the Lord may work.
You have looked at the windows of a grand church erected at the cost of many thousands of dollars. From the outside they did not seem very beautiful; but get inside, when the rays of the sun are striking upon the stained glass, and you begin to understand what others have told you of their magnificence. So it is when you have come into personal contact with Christ. You find Him to be the very Savior and friend you need. You will see in Him what you have never seen before.
We must study the Bible thoroughly, and hunt it through, as it were, for some great truth.
If a friend were to see me searching about a building, and were to come up, and say, "Moody, what are you looking for? Have you lost something?" and I were to say, "No, I haven't lost anything; I'm not looking foranything particular," I fancy he would just let me go on by myself, and think me very foolish. But if I were to say, "Yes, I have lost a dollar," why, then, I might expect him to help me to find it.
Read the Bible, my friends, as if you were seeking for something of value. It is a good deal better to take a single chapter, and spend a month on it, than to read the Bible at random for a month.
McCheyne, the Scotch preacher, once said to some friends, "Do you think Christ will come to-night?"
One after another they said, "I think not."
When all had given this answer, he solemnly repeated this text, "The Son of Man cometh at an hourwhen ye think not."
If a Christian is unsound in patience or unsound in love, we take no notice of it; but let him be unsound in faith, and off goes his head. I do hate to see a minister or professing Christian mean and peevish to his wife, and yet be as polite as a dancing-master to other women. I tell you he is not fit to preach the Word of God. I don't want to have anything to do with him. The home was established before the church, and he sadly needs more home piety.
The Persians had an annual festival when they slew all the serpents and venomous creatures they could find; but they allowed them to swarm as fast and freely as ever until the festival came round once more. It was poor policy. Sins, like serpents, breed quickly, and need to be constantly watched.
I heard once of a man who went to England from the Continent, and brought letters with him to eminent physicians from the Emperor. The letters said:
"This man is a personal friend of mine, and we are afraid he is going to lose his reason. Do all you can for him."
The doctor asked him if he had lost any dear friend in his own country, or any position of importance, or what it was that was weighing on his mind.
The young man said: "No; but my father and grandfather and myself were brought up infidels, and for the last two or three years this thought has been haunting me, 'Where shall I spend eternity?' And the thought of it follows me day and night."
The doctor said, "You have come to the wrong physician, but I will tell you of One who can cure you"; and he told him of Christ, and read to him the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, "With His stripes we are healed."
The young man said, "Doctor, do you believe that?"
The doctor told him he did, and prayed and wrestled with him, and at last the clear light of Calvary shone on his soul. He had settled the question in his own mind at last, where he would spend eternity.
I ask you, sinner, to settle if now. It is for you to decide. Shall it be with the saints and martyrs and prophets, or in the dark caverns of hell, amidst blackness and darkness forever? Make haste to be wise; for "how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?"
I remember, when we were in London, they found one old woman who was eighty-five years old, and not aChristian. After the worker had prayed, she made a prayer herself:
"O Lord, I thank Thee for going out of Thy way to find me."
He is all the time going out of His way to find the lost.
I was once preaching on the text, "Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." No sooner had I read it than a man stood right up in the audience and said:
"I don't believe it."
I said: "My friend, that doesn't change the fact. Truth is truth, whether you believe it or not; and a lie is a lie, whether you believe it or not."
He didn't want to believe it. When the meeting broke up, an officer was at the door to arrest him. He was tried and sent to the penitentiary for twelve months for stealing. I really believe that when he got into his cell, he believed that he had to reap what he sowed.
Once I heard of a little sick child, whose mother was seriously ill; and so, in order that she might have quiet, and that the sick child might be no trouble to her, the little one was taken away to a friend's house, and placed in charge of a kind lady for a time. The mother grew worse, and at length died. The father said:
"We'll not trouble the child about it; she is too young to remember her mother; just let her remain where she is until the funeral is over."
This was done, and in a few days the little girl was brought back to the house. No mention was made of her mother, or of what had occurred; but no sooner wasshe taken to the house than she ran first into one room, then into another, into the parlor, the dining-room, and all over the house, and then away into a little room where her mother used to go to pray alone.
"Where is mother?" she cried. "I want mother!"
And when they were compelled to tell her what had happened, she cried out:
"Take me away, take me away; I don't want to be here without mother."
It was the mother made it home to her. And so it is in heaven. It is not so much the white robes, the golden crown, or the harps of gold, but it is the society we shall meet there. Who, then, are there? What company shall we have when we get there? Jesus is there, the Holy Father is there, the Spirit is there—our Father, our elder Brother, our Comforter.
I never yet knew a man converted just in the time and manner he expected to be. I have heard people say, "Well, if ever I am converted, it won't be in a Methodist church; you won't catch me there." I never knew a man say that but, at last, if converted at all, it was in a Methodist church.
In Scotland a man was converted at one of our meetings—an employer. He was very anxious that all his employés should be reached, and he used to send them one by one to the meetings. But there was one employé that wouldn't come. We are all more or less troubled with stubbornness; and the moment this man found that his employer wanted him to go to the meetings, he made up his mind he wouldn't go. If he was going to be converted, he said, he was going to be converted by some ordained minister; he was not going to any meeting that was conducted by unordained Americans. He believed in conversion, but he was going to be converted the regular way. He believed in the regular Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and that was the place for him to be converted.
The employer tried every way he could to get him to attend the meetings, but he wouldn't come.
After we left that town and went away up to Inverness, the employer had some business up there, and he sent this employé to attend to it, in the hope that he would attend some of our meetings.
One night, as I was preaching on the bank of a river, I happened to take for my text the words of Naaman: "I thought; I thought." I was trying to take men's thoughts up and to show the difference between their thoughts and God's thoughts. This man happened to be walking along the bank of the river. He saw a great crowd, and heard some one talking, and he wondered to himself what that man was talking about. He didn't know who was there, so he drew up to the crowd, and listened. He heard the sermon, and became convicted and converted right there. Then he inquired who was the preacher, and he found out it was the very man that he said he would not hear—the man he disliked. The very man he had been talking against was the very man God used to convert him.
I was once preaching in Chicago, and a woman who was nearly out of her mind came to me. You know there are some people who mock at religious meetings, and say that religion drives people mad. It issinthatdrives people mad. It is the want of Christ that sinks people into despair.
This was the woman's story:
She had a family of children. One of her neighbors had died, and her husband had brought home a little child. She said, "I don't want the child," but her husband said, "You must take it and look after it." She said she had enough to do with her own, and she told her husband to take that child away. But he would not. She confessed that she tried to starve the child; but it lingered on. One night it cried all night; I suppose it wanted food. At last she took the clothes and threw them over the child and smothered it. No one saw her; no one knew anything about it. The child was buried. Years had passed away, and she said:
"I hear the voice of that child day and night. It has driven me nearly mad."
No one saw the act; but God saw it, and this retribution followed it. History is full of these things. You need not go to the Bible to find it out.
I was greatly amazed not long ago, in talking to a man who thought he was a Christian, to find that once in a while, when he got angry, he would swear. I said: "My friend, I don't see how you can tear down with one hand what you are trying to build up with the other. I don't see how you can profess to be a child of God and let those words come out of your lips."
He replied: "Mr. Moody, if you knew me, you would understand. I have a very quick temper. I inherited it from my father and mother, and it is uncontrollable but my swearing comes only from the lips."
When God said, "I will not hold him guiltless that takes My name in vain," He meant what He said, and I don't believe any one can be a true child of God who takes the name of God in vain.
I tell you the true sheep know a true shepherd. I got up in Scotland once and quoted a passage of Scripture a little different from what it was in the Bible, and an old woman crept up and said:
"Mr. Moody, you said——."
I might make forty misquotations in an ordinary audience, and no one would tell me about them. Like two lawyers: one said in court that the other didn't know the Lord's Prayer. The other said he did:
"Now I lay me down to sleep."
"Well," the first said, "I give it up. I did not think you knew it."
Didn't either one of them know it, you see.
Dr. Arnot, one of the greatest Scotch divines, was in this country before he died. His mother died when he was a little boy only three weeks old, and there was a large family of Arnots. I suppose they missed the tenderness and love of the mother. They got the impression that their father was very stern and rigid, and that he had a great many laws and rules.
One rule was, that the children should never climb trees. When the neighbors found out that the Arnot children could not climb trees, they began to tell them about the wonderful things they could see from the tops of the trees. Well, tell a boy of twelve years that he mustn't climb a tree, and he will get up that tree someway. And so the Arnot children were all the time teasing their father to let them climb the tree; but the old sire said:
"No."
One day he was busy reading his paper, and the boys said:
"Father is reading his paper. Let's slip down into the lot and climb a tree."
One of the little fellows stood on the top of the fence to see that father did not catch them. When his brother got up on the first branch, he said:
"What do you see?"
"Why! I don't see anything."
"Then go higher; you haven't got high enough."
So up he went higher, and again the little boy asked:
"Well, what do you see now?"
"I don't see anything."
"You aren't high enough; go higher."
And the little fellow went up as high as he could go, but he slipped, and down he came, and broke his leg. Willie said he tried to get him into the house, but he couldn't do it. He had to tell his father all about it. He said he was scared nearly out of his wits. He thought his father would be very angry. But his father just threw aside the paper, and started for the lot. When he got there, he picked the boy up in his arms, and brought him up to the house. Then he sent for the doctor. And Willie said he got a new view of that father. He found out the reason why that father was so stern. He said the moment that boy got hurt, no mother could have been more loving and gentle.
My dear friends, there is not one commandment that has been given us which has not been for our highestand best interest. There isn't a commandment that hasn't come from the loving heart of God, and what He wants is to have us give up that which is going to mar our happiness in this life, and in the life to come.
When I was out on the Pacific coast, in California, some years ago, I was the guest of a man that had a large vineyard and a large orchard. One day he said to me:
"Moody, while you are my guest I want you to make yourself perfectly at home, and if there is anything in the orchard or in the vineyard you would like, help yourself."
Well, when I wanted an orange, I did not go to an orange tree and pray the oranges to fall into my pocket; but I walked up to a tree, reached out my hand, and took the oranges. He said "Take," and I took.
God says, "There is my Son; take Him as your Saviour. The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life."
There was a shop-girl in Chicago, a few years ago. One day she could not have bought five dollars' worth of anything; the next day she could go and buy a thousand dollar's worth of whatever she wanted.
What made the difference?
Why, she had married a rich husband; that was all. She had received him, and of course all he had became hers. And so we can have all, if we only receive Christ.
Some years ago, in one of the mining districts of England, a young man attended one of our meetings andrefused to go from the place till he had found peace in the Savior. The next day he went down into the pit, and the coal fell in upon him. When they took him out, he was broken and mangled, and had only two or three minutes of life left in him. His friends gathered about him, saw his lips moving, and, bending down to catch his words, heard him say:
"It was a good thing I settled it last night."
Settle it now, my friends, once for all. Begin now to confess your sins, and pray the Lord to remember you. He will make you an heir of His kingdom, if you will accept the gift of salvation.
God doesn't ask us to rejoice over nothing; He gives us ground for our joy. What would you think of a man who seemed very happy to-day and full of joy, and couldn't tell you what made him so? Suppose I should meet a man on the street, and he was so full of joy that he should get hold of both my hands and say:
"Bless the Lord, I am so full of joy!"
"What makes you so full of joy?"
"Well, I don't know."
"You don't know!"
"No, I don't; but I am so joyful that I just want to get out of the flesh."
"What makes you feel so joyful?"
"Well, I don't know."
Would we not think such a person unreasonable? But there are a great many people who want to feel that they are Christians before they are Christians; they want the Christian's experience before they become Christians; they want to have the joy of the Lord beforethey receive Jesus Christ. But this is not the Gospel order. He brings joy when He comes, and we cannot have joy apart from Him. He is the author of it, and we find our joy in Him.
When I was in England in 1892, I met a gentleman who claimed that they were ahead of us in the respect they had for the law. "We hang our murderers," he said, "but there isn't one out of twenty in your country that is hung."
I said, "You are greatly mistaken, for they walk about these two countries unhung."
"What do you mean?"
"I will tell you what I mean," I said; "the man that comes into my house and runs a dagger into my heart for my money is a prince compared with a son that takes five years to kill me and the wife of my bosom. A young man who comes home night after night drunk, and when his mother remonstrates, curses her gray hairs, and kills her by inches, is the blackest kind of a murderer."
You can soon tell where a man's treasure is by his talk. If it is in heaven, he will not be long with you before he's talking about heaven; his heart is there, and so his speech isn't long in running there, too. If his heart is in money, he will soon have you deep in talk about mines, speculation, stocks, bank rate, and so on. If his heart is in lands, it won't be long before he's talking about real estate, improvements, houses, and so on. Always the same, wherever a man's heart is, there his tongue will be sure to go.
Some one in England said, if you see a man's goods and furniture come down by the luggage train, you're pretty sure he'll be down by the next passenger train; he won't be long after; he'll follow his goods. And so it is with heaven; if your treasure is on before you, you'll be wanting to follow it; you'll be glad to be on the road thither as soon as possible.
Two Americans who were crossing the Atlantic met on Sunday night to sing hymns in the cabin. As they sang the hymn, "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," one of them heard an exceedingly rich and beautiful voice behind him. He looked around, and although he did not know the face he thought that he recognized the voice. So when the music ceased he turned around and asked the man if he had not been in the Civil War. The man replied that he had been a Confederate soldier.
"Were you at such a place on such a night?" asked the first.
"Yes," he said, "and a curious thing happened that night; this hymn recalled it to my mind. I was on sentry duty on the edge of a wood. It was a dark night and very cold, and I was a little frightened because the enemy were supposed to be very near at hand. I felt very homesick and miserable, and about midnight, when everything was very still, I was beginning to feel very weary and thought that I would comfort myself by praying and singing a hymn. I remember singing this hymn—
'All my trust on Thee is stayed,All my help from Thee I bring.Cover my defenceless headWith the shadow of Thy wing.'
'All my trust on Thee is stayed,All my help from Thee I bring.Cover my defenceless headWith the shadow of Thy wing.'
"After I had sung those words a strange peace came down upon me, and through the long night I remember having felt no more fear."
"Now," said the other man, "listen to my story. I was a Union soldier, and was in the wood that night with a party of scouts. I saw you standing up, although I didn't see your face, and my men had their rifles focused upon you waiting the word to fire, but when you sang out—
'Cover my defenceless headWith the shadow of Thy wing.'
'Cover my defenceless headWith the shadow of Thy wing.'
I said, 'Boys, put down your rifles; we will go home.' I couldn't kill you after that."
When I was in Dublin some years ago I got up to go to an early meeting, and found the servants had not opened the front door; so I pulled back a bolt, but I could not get the door open. Then I turned a key, but the door would not open. Then I found there was another bolt at the top and another bolt at the bottom. Still the door would not open. Then I found there was a bar, and then I found a night-lock. In all I found five or six different fastenings.
I am afraid that door represents every sinner's heart. The door of his heart is double-locked, double-bolted, and double-barred. Oh, my friends, pull back the bolts, and let the King of glory in!
There are a great many different ways of doing good. A lady once visited a hospital, and noticed with what pleasure the patients would smell and look at the flowers sent to them. Said she:
"If I had known that a bunch of flowers would do so much good, I would have sent some from home."
As soon as she got home, she sent some flowers out of her garden. It was a little thing—a bouquet of flowers. It might be a very insignificant work—very small; but if it was done in the right spirit, God accepted it. A cup of water given in His name is accepted as given to Himself. Nothing that is done for God is small.
It is said that Tennyson once asked an old Christian woman if there was any news.
"Why, Mr. Tennyson," she replied, "there's only one piece of news that I know, and that is—Christ died for all men."
"That is old news, and good news, and new news," Tennyson responded.
There is a legend that the Apostle John was much distressed over the fall of a young convert. He summoned Satan before him, and reproached him for ruining so good a youth.
"I found your good youth on my ground," said Satan; "so I took him."
The only safe course is to avoid temptation altogether.
There are two who are bidding for your soul and mine—the Lord Jesus and Satan.
Satan bids, and he offers that which he cannot give. He is a liar, and has been from the foundation of the world. I pity the man who is living on the promises of the devil. He will never satisfy. But the Lord Jesus isable to give all that He offers. And what does He offer? He offers peace and joy and comfort that the world knows not of. He offers eternal life in the kingdom of God. He offers a seat in His mansions. We are to sit with Him upon His throne.
May God help you to make a right choice! Make up your mind you will not rest until the great question of eternity is settled, until you have crossed the borderland, and pressed into the kingdom of God.
I knew an old lady that marked in the margin of her Bible, opposite the promises. T. P.; T. for "tried," and P. for "proven." What we want is to try the Bible and see if it is not true.
Out in the Western country, in the autumn, when men go hunting, and there has not been any rain for months, sometimes the prairie grass catches fire, and there comes up a very strong wind, and the flames just roll along twenty feet high, and travel at the rate of thirty or forty miles an hour, consuming man and beast. When the hunters see it coming, what do they do? They know they cannot run as fast as the fire can run. Not the fleetest horse can escape. They just take a match and light the grass around them, and let the flames sweep, and then they get into the burnt district and stand safe. They hear the flames roar as they come along, they see death coming toward them, but they do not fear, they do not tremble, because the fire has swept over the place where they are, and there is no danger. There is nothing for the fire to burn.
There is one mountain that the wrath of God hasswept over—that is, Mount Calvary; and the fire spent its fury upon the bosom of the Son of God. Take your stand by the cross, and you will be safe for time and eternity.
A good many people are afraid of doing anything out of the regular lines—of doing anything out of order. Now, you will find perfect order in a cemetery. You will find perfect order where there is death. Where there is life you will find something out of order.
"Pa," said a little boy as he climbed to his father's knee, and looked into his face as earnestly as if he understood the importance of the subject, "pa, is your soul insured?"
"What are you thinking about, my son?" replied the agitated father. "Why do you ask that question?"
"Why, pa, I heard Uncle George say that you had your house insured, and your life insured; but he didn't believe you had thought of your soul, and he was afraid you would lose it; won't you get it insured right away?"
The father leaned his head on his hand, and was silent. He owned broad acres of land that were covered with a bountiful produce; his barns were even now filled with plenty, his buildings were all well covered by insurance; and as if that would not suffice for the maintenance of his wife and only child in case of his decease, he had, the day before, taken a life-policy for a large amount; yet not one thought had he given to his own immortal soul. On that which was to waste away and become part and parcel of its native dust he had spared no pains; but for that which was to live on and on throughthe long ages of eternity he had made no provision. "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"
I have been twice at the point of death. I was drowning once, and just as I was going down the third time I was rescued. In the twinkling of an eye my whole life came flashing across my mind. I cannot tell you how it was. I cannot tell you how a whole life can be crowded into a second of time; but everything I had done from my earliest childhood—it all came flashing across my mind. And I believe that when God touches the secret spring of memory, every one of our sins will come back, and if they have not been blotted out by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, they will haunt us as eternal ages roll on.
We talk about our forgetting, but we cannot forget if God says "Remember." We talk about the recording angel keeping the record of our life. I have an idea that when we get to heaven, or into eternity, we will find that recording angel has been ourselves. God will make every one of us keep our own record; these memories will keep the record, and when God shall say, "Son, remember," it will all flash across our mind. It won't be God who will condemn us; it will be ourselves. We shall condemn ourselves, and we shall stand before God speechless.
There is a man in prison. He has been there five years. Ask that man what makes the prison so terrible to him. Ask him if it is the walls and the iron gates—ask him if it is his hard work, and he will tell youno; he will tell you what makes the prison so terrible to him ismemory; and I have an idea that if we got down into the lost world, we would find that is what makes hell so terrible—the remembrance that they once heard the Gospel, that they once had Christ offered to them, that they once had the privilege of being saved, but they made light of the Gospel, they neglected salvation, they rejected the offer of mercy, and now if they would accept it they could not.
A friend of mine was going back to Scotland, and he heard a couple of these little modern philosophers discussing the Bible. One said: "The Bible says that Balaam's ass spoke. Now, I am a scientific man, and I have taken the pains to examine an ass's mouth, and it is so formed that it couldn't speak."
He was going to toss the whole Bible over because Balaam's ass couldn't speak.
My friend said he stood it just as long as he could, and finally he said:
"Ah, man, you make an ass, and I will make him speak."
The idea that the God who made the ass couldn't speak through his mouth! Did you ever hear such stuff? And yet this was one of your modern philosophers!
If you want real peace and rest to your soul, keep separate from the world.
I remember when I was a boy in Northfield, right near the old red schoolhouse there was an apple-tree that bore the earliest apples of any tree in town. They had a law in that town that fruit on a tree overhangingthe street belonged to the public, and any fruit on the other side of the fence belonged to the property-holders. Half that apple-tree was over in the street, and it got more old brooms and brickbats and handles than any other tree in town. We boys used to watch to see when an apple was getting red. I never got a ripe apple from that tree in my life, and I don't believe any one else ever did. You never went by that tree that you didn't see a lot of broom-handles and clubs up there.
Now, take a lot of Christians who want to live right on the line, with one foot in the world and one foot in the church. They get more clubs than any one else. The world clubs them. They say, "I don't believe in that man's religion." And the church clubs them. They get clubs both sides. It is a good deal better to keep just as far from the line as you can if you want power.
A friend of mine said he had a beautiful canary bird; he thought it was the sweetest singer they had ever had. Spring came on, and he felt it was a pity to keep the poor bird in the house, so he put it under a tree right in front of his house. He said before he knew it a lot of these little English sparrows got under that tree (and you know they cannot sing any more than I can, and I don't know one note from another), and went, "Chirp, chirp, chirp." Before he knew it, that little canary had lost all its sweet notes. It had got into bad company.
After he found out that he had made a mistake, he took the bird into the house, but it kept up that "Chirp, chirp, chirp." He bought another bird, but the canary nearly ruined it. He said that bird never got back its sweet notes.
Now, don't you know lots of Christian people who had a fine testimony several years ago, but they have lost their witness, and all they do now is talk, talk, talk, talk? Why? Because they are out of communion with God, and have lost their witness.
Some one tells of an incident that happened in a New England town the other day. All the boys were sleighing. A big sleigh—we call it a "pung" up there—was being driven through the streets by an old man who looked like Santa Claus. He was calling out to the small boys to hitch on, for a pung is like a 'bus, it always holds one more.
There were already about twenty rollicking boys hitched on, when one little fellow dropped off behind. He tried, but couldn't catch up again, and pretty soon he began to look out for another chance for a ride. A man's sleigh was standing near by, and the boy began to eye the man. When the man in the sleigh started off, the little fellow hitched on behind, and the man grabbed his whip and struck him directly in the eye. It looked as if the eye had been put out, but it wasn't.
Now, that's the way we go through this world. Some say, "Hitch on, hitch on"; others, "Cut behind, cut behind." The hitch-on people fill the churches, and the cut-behind ones empty them.
A friend of mine was in Syria, and he found a shepherd that kept up the old custom of naming his sheep. My friend said he wouldn't believe that the sheep knew him when he called them by name. So he said to the shepherd:
"I wish you would just call one or two."
The shepherd said, "Carl."
The sheep stopped eating and looked up.
The shepherd called out, "Come here."
The sheep came, and stood looking up into his face.
He called another, and another, and there they stood looking up at the shepherd.
"How can you tell them apart?"
"Oh, there are no two alike. See, that sheep toes in a little; this sheep is a little bit squint-eyed; that sheep has a black spot on its nose."
My friend found that he knew every one of his sheep by their failings. He didn't have a perfect one in his flock.
I suppose that is the way the Lord knows you and me. There is a man that is covetous; he wants to grasp the whole world. He wants a shepherd to keep down that spirit. There is a woman down there who has an awful tongue; she keeps the whole neighborhood stirred up. There is a woman over there who is deceitful, terribly so. She needs the care of a shepherd to keep her from deceit, for she will ruin all her children; they will all turn out just like their mother. There is a father over there who wouldn't swear for all the world before his children, but sometimes he gets provoked in his business and swears before he knows it. Doesn't he need a shepherd's care? I would like to know if there is a man or woman on earth who doesn't need the care of a shepherd. Haven't we all got failings? If you really want to know what your failings are, you can find some one who can point them out. God would never have sent Christ into the world if we didn't need His care. We are as weak and foolish as sheep.
A man was always telling his servant that he was going to do a great thing for him. "I am going to remember you in my will."
Sambo got his expectations up very high. When the man came to die, it was found that all he had willed Sambo was to be buried in the family lot. That was the big thing, you know. Sambo said he wished he had given him ten dollars, and let the lot go.
If you want to show kindness to a person, show it to him while you are living. I heard a man say that he didn't want people to throw bouquets to him after he was dead, and say, "There, smell them."
Now, this is the time for action. I have got so tired and sick of this splitting hairs over theology. Man, let us go out and get the fallen up. Lift them up toward God and heaven. We want a practical kind of Christianity.
Very often a man will hear a hundred good things in a sermon, but there may be one thing that strikes him as a little out of place, and he will go home and sit down at the table and talk right out before his children and magnify that one wrong thing, and not say a word about the hundred good things that were said. That is what people do who criticise.
I remember blaming my mother for sending me to church on the Sabbath. On one occasion the preacher had to send some one into the gallery to wake me up. I thought it was hard to have to work in the field all the week, and then be obliged to go to church and hear asermon I didn't understand. I thought I wouldn't go to church any more when I got away from home; but I had got so in the habit of going that I couldn't stay away. After one or two Sabbaths, back again to the house of God I went. There I first found Christ, and I have often said since:
"Mother, I thank you for making me go to the house of God when I didn't want to go."
"It is easy to go when the time comes. There are no ropes thrown out to pull us ashore; there are no ladders let down to pull us up. Christ comes and takes us by the hand, and says:
"'You have had enough of this. Come up higher!'
"Do you hurt a lily when you pluck it? Is there any rudeness when Jesus touches the cheek, and the red rose of health whitens into the lily of immortal purity and gladness?"—Talmage.
How many men fold their arms and say:
"If I am one of the elect, I will be saved, and if I ain't, I won't. No use of your bothering about it."
Why don't some of these merchants say: "If God is going to make me a successful merchant in Chicago, I will be one whether I like it or not, and if He isn't I won't."
If you are sick, and a doctor prescribes for you, don't take the medicine—throw it out the door. It does not matter, for if God has decreed you are going to die, you will; if He hasn't, you will get better. If you use that argument you may as well not walk home from thistabernacle. If God has said you'll get home, you'll get home—you'll fly through the air.
I have an idea that the Lord Jesus saw how men were going to stumble over this doctrine, so after He had been thirty or forty years in heaven He came down and spoke to John. One Lord's day in Patmos, He said to him:
"Write these things to the churches."
John kept on writing. His pen flew very fast. And then the Lord, when it was nearly finished, said, "John, before you close the book, put in one more invitation. 'The Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst, come. AndWHOSOEVER WILL, let him take the water of life freely.'"
Dr. Talmage tells the story that one day while he was bothering his theological professor with questions about the mysteries of the Bible, the latter turned on him and said:
"Mr. Talmage, you will have to let God know some things you don't."
I sometimes think if an angel were to wing its way to heaven, and tell them that there was one little child here on earth—it might be a shoeless, coatless street Arab—with no one to lead it to the cross of Christ, and if God were to call the angels round His throne and ask them to go and spend—aye, fifty years, in teaching that child, there would not be an angel in heaven but would respond gladly to the appeal. We should see even Gabriel saying, "Let me go and win that soul to Christ." We should see Paul buckling on his old armor again, andsaying, "Let me go back again to earth, that I may have the joy of leading that little one to his Saviour."
Ah! we need rousing; there is too much apathy amongst professing Christians. Let us pray God that He may send His Holy Spirit to inspire us with fresh energy and zeal to do His work.
It is the privilege of every child of God to know that he is saved, and yet I find ever so many people living in Doubting Castle. Why, it issalvation by doubtsnowadays, instead ofby faith;there are so few that dare to say, "I know that my Redeemer liveth; I know in whom I have believed." We find most Christians nowadays shivering and trembling from head to foot—they do not know whether they are saved or not.
Bishop Ryle has very well likened faith to a root whose flower is assurance. To have the latter, he says, it is necessary that there must first be the hidden source of faith.
Faith is the simplest and most universal experience in the world. Call it by whatever name you may, confidence, trust, or belief, it is inseparable from the human race. The first sign of a dawning intelligence in the mind is the exercise of the infant's faith toward those it knows, and its fear toward those it does not know. We cannot even remember when we first began to have faith.
I was preaching in Chicago to a hall full of women one Sunday afternoon, and after the meeting was over a lady came to me and said she wanted to talk to me. She said she would accept Christ, and after some conversation she went home. I looked for her for a whole week, but didn't see her until the following Sunday afternoon. She came and sat down right in front of me, and her face had such a sad expression. She seemed to have entered into the misery, instead of the joy, of the Lord.
After the meeting was over I went to her and asked her what the trouble was.
She said, "Oh, Mr. Moody, this has been the most miserable week of my life."
I asked her if there was any one with whom she had had trouble and whom she could not forgive.
She said, "No, not that I know of."
"Well, did you tell your friends about having found the Saviour?"
"Indeed I didn't. I have been all the week trying to keep it from them."
"Well," I said, "that is the reason why you have no peace."
She wanted to take the crown, but did not want the cross. My friends, you must go by the way of Calvary. If you ever get peace and joy you must get it at the foot of the cross.
"Why," she said, "if I should go home and tell my infidel husband that I had found Christ, I don't know what he would do. I think he would turn me out."
"Well," I said, "go out."
She went away, promising that she would tell him, timid and pale, but she did not want another wretched week. She was bound to have peace.
The next night I gave a lecture to men only, and in the hall there were eight thousand men and one solitary woman. When I got through and went into the inquiry meeting I found this lady with her husband. She introduced him to me (he was a doctor and a very influential man), and said:
"He wants to become a Christian."
I took my Bible and told him all about Christ, and he accepted Him. I said to her after it was all over:
"It turned out quite differently from what you expected, didn't it?"
"Yes," she replied; "I was never so scared in my life. I expected he would do something dreadful, but it has turned out so well."
She took God's way, and got the joy and peace she sought.
A lady came to me once and said, "Mr. Moody, I wish you would tell me how I can become a Christian." The tears were rolling down her cheeks, and she was in a very favorable mood. "But," she said, "I don't want to be one of your kind."
"Well," I asked, "have I got any peculiar kind? What is the matter with my Christianity?"
"Well," she said, "my father was a doctor, and had a large practice, and he used to get so tired that he used to take us to the theater. There was a large family of girls, and we had tickets for the theaters three or four times a week. I suppose we were there a good deal oftener than we were in church. I am married to a lawyer, and he has a large practice. He gets so tired that he takes us out to the theater," and she said, "I am far better acquainted with the theater and theater people than with the church and church people, and I don't want to give up the theater."
"Well," I said, "did you ever hear me say anythingabout theaters? There have been reporters here every day for all the different papers, and they are giving my sermons verbatim in one paper. Have you ever seen anything in the sermons against the theaters?"
She said, "No."
"Well," I said, "I have seen you in the audience every afternoon for several weeks, and have you heard me say anything against theaters?"
No, she hadn't.
"Well," I said, "what made you bring them up?"
"Why, I supposed you didn't believe in theaters."
"What made you think that?"
"Why," she said, "do you ever go?"
"No."
"Why don't you go?"
"Because I have got something better. I would sooner go out into the street and eat dirt than do some of the things I used to do before I became a Christian."
"Why!" she said; "I don't understand."
"Never mind," I said. "When Jesus Christ has the preëminence, you will understand it all. He didn't come down here and say we shouldn't go here and we shouldn't go there, and lay down a lot of rules, but He laid down great principles. Now, He says if you love Him you will take delight in pleasing Him." And I began to preach Christ to her. The tears started again. She said:
"I tell you, Mr. Moody, that sermon on the indwelling Christ yesterday afternoon just broke my heart. I admire Him, and I want to be a Christian, but I don't want to give up the theaters."
I said, "Please don't mention them again. I don't want to talk about theaters. I want to talk to youabout Christ." So I took my Bible, and I read to her about Christ.
But she said again, "Mr. Moody, can I go to the theater if I become a Christian?"
"Yes," I said, "you can go to the theater just as much as you like if you are a real, true Christian, and can go with His blessing."
"Well," she said, "I am glad you are not so narrow-minded as some."
She felt quite relieved to think that she could go to the theaters and be a Christian. But I said:
"If you can go to the theater for the glory of God, keep on going; only be sure that you go for the glory of God. If you are a Christian you will be glad to do whatever will please Him."
I really think she became a Christian that day. The burden had gone, there was joy; but just as she was leaving me at the door she said:
"I am not going to give up the theater."
In a few days she came back to me and said: "Mr. Moody, I understand all about that theater business now. I went the other night. There was a large party at our house, and my husband wanted us to go, and we went; but when the curtain lifted everything looked so different. I said to my husband, 'This is no place for me; this is horrible. I am not going to stay here, I am going home.' He said, 'Don't make a fool of yourself. Every one has heard that you have been converted in the Moody meetings, and if you go out it will be all through fashionable society. I beg of you don't make a fool of yourself by getting up and going out.' But I said, 'I have been making a fool of myself all of my life.'"
Now, the theater hadn't changed, but she had gotsomething better, and she was going to overcome the world. "They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit." When Christ has the first place in your heart you are going to get victory. Just do whatever you know will please Him. The great objection I have to these things is that they get the mastery, and become a hindrance to spiritual growth.
I want to say to young ladies, perhaps you have a godless father or mother, or a skeptical brother, who is going down through drink, and perhaps there is no one who can reach them but you. How many times a godly, pure young lady has taken the light into some darkened home! Many a home might be lit up with the Gospel if the mothers and daughters would only speak the word.
The last time Mr. Sankey and myself were in Edinburgh, there were a father, two sisters, and a brother, who used every morning to take the morning paper and pick my sermon to pieces. They were indignant to think that the Edinburgh people should be carried away with such preaching. One day one of the sisters was going by the hall, and she thought she would drop in and see what class of people went there. She happened to take a seat by a godly lady, who said to her:
"I hope you are interested in this work,"
She tossed her head and said: "Indeed I am not. I am disgusted with everything I have seen and heard."
"Well," said the lady, "perhaps you came prejudiced."
"Yes, and the meeting has not removed any of it, but has rather increased it."
"I have received a great deal of good from them."
"There is nothing here for me. I don't see how an intellectual person can be interested."
To make a long story short, she got the young lady to promise to come back. When the meeting broke up, just a little of the prejudice had worn away. She promised to come back again the next day, and then she attended three or four more meetings, and became quite interested. She said nothing to her family, until finally the burden became too heavy, and she told them. They laughed at her, and made her the butt of their ridicule.
One day the two sisters were together, and the other said, "Now what have you got at those meetings that you didn't have in the first place?"
"I have a peace that I never knew of before. I am at peace with God, myself, and all the world." Did you ever have a little war of your own with your neighbors, in your own family? And she said: "I have self-control. You know, sister, if you had said half the mean things before I was converted that you have said since, I would have been angry and answered back, but if you remember correctly, I haven't answered once since I have been converted."
The sister said, "You certainly have something that I have not."
The other told her it was for her, too, and she brought the sister to the meetings, where she found peace.
Like Martha and Mary, they had a brother but he was a member of the University of Edinburgh. He be converted? He go to these meetings? It might do for women, but not for him! One night they came home and told him that a chum of his own, a member of the university, had stood up and confessed Christ, and whenhe sat down his brother got up and confessed; and so with the third one.
When the young man heard it, he said: "Do you mean to tell me that he has been converted?"
"Yes."
"Well," he said, "there must be something in it."
He put on his hat and coat, and went to see his friend Black. Black got him down to the meetings, and he was converted.
We went through to Glasgow, and had not been there six weeks when news came that that young man had been stricken down, and had died. When he was dying he called his father to his bedside and said:
"Wasn't it a good thing that my sisters went to those meetings? Won't you meet me in heaven, father?"
"Yes, my son, I am so glad you are a Christian; that is the only comfort that I have in losing you. I will become a Christian, and will meet you again."
I tell this to encourage some sister to go home and carry the message of salvation. It may be that your brother may be taken away in a few months.
A wild and prodigal young man, who was running a headlong career to ruin came into one of our meetings in Chicago. Whilst endeavoring to bring him to Christ, I quoted this verse to him: "Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out."
I asked him: "Do you believe Christ said that?"
"I suppose He did."
"Suppose He did! do you believe it?"
"I hope so."
"Hope so! do you believe it? You do your work,and the Lord will do His. Just come as you are, and throw yourself upon His bosom, and He will not cast you out."
This man thought it was too simple and easy.
At last light seemed to break in upon him, and he seemed to find comfort from it. It was past midnight before he got down on his knees, but down he went, and was converted. I said:
"Now, don't think you are going to get out of the devil's territory without trouble. The devil will come to you to-morrow morning and say it was all feeling; that you only imagined you were accepted by God. When he does, don't fight him with your own opinions, but fight him with John vi. 37: 'Him that cometh to Me I will in nowise cast out.' Let that be 'the sword of the Spirit.'"
I don't believe that any man ever starts to go to Christ but the devil strives somehow or other to meet him and trip him up. And even after he has come to Christ, the devil tries to assail him with doubts, and make him believe there is something wrong in it.
The struggle came sooner than I thought in this man's case. When he was on his way home the devil assailed him. He used this text, but the devil put this thought into his mind:
"How do you know Christ ever said that after all? Perhaps the translators made a mistake."
Into darkness he went again. He was in trouble till about two in the morning. At last he came to this conclusion. Said he:
"I will believe it anyway; and when I get to heaven, if it isn't true, I will just tell the LordIdidn't make the mistake—the translators made it."
An Eastern allegory runs thus: A merchant, going abroad for a time, gave respectively to two of his friends two sacks of wheat each, to take care of against his return. Years passed. When he came back, he applied for them again.
The first took him into a storehouse, and showed him his sacks; but they were mildewed and worthless.
The other led him out into the open country, and pointed to field after field of waving wheat, the produce of the two sacks given him.
Said the merchant: "You have been a faithful friend. Give me two sacks of that wheat; the rest shall be thine."
Let us put to good use the talents God has given us.
I once heard of two men who were under the influence of liquor. They came down at night to where their boat was tied. They wanted to return home, so they got in and began to row. They pulled away hard all night, wondering why they never got to the other side of the bay. When the gray dawn of morning broke, behold! they had never loosed the mooring line or raised the anchor!
That's just the way with many who are striving to enter the kingdom of heaven. They cannot believe, because they are tied to this world. Cut the cord! Confess and forsake your sins! Cut the cord! Set yourselves free from the clogging weight of earthly things, and you will soon rise heavenward.
A friend of mine was once taken by an old man to see his riches. He took him to a splendid mansion, andsaid, "This is all mine." He pointed to a little town, "That is mine; it is called by my name." He pointed to a rolling prairie, "That is all mine; the sun never shone on a finer prairie than that, so fruitful and rich, and it's all mine." In another direction he showed him fertile farms extending for thirty miles, "These are all mine." He took him into his grand house, showed him his beautiful pictures, his costly gold plate, his jewels, and still he said, "These are all mine. This grand hall I have built; it is called by my name; there is my insignia on it. And yet I was once a poor boy. I have made it all myself."
My friend looked at him. "Well, you've all this on earth; but what have you got up there?"
"Up where?" said the old man.
"Up in heaven."
"Well, I'm afraid I haven't got much up there."
"Ah," said my friend, "but you've got to die, to leave this world; what will you take with you of all these things? You will die a beggar; for all these riches count as nothing in the kingdom of heaven. You will be a pauper; for you have no inheritance with the saints above." The poor old man (he was poor enough in reality, though rich in all the world's goods) burst into tears. He had no hope for the future. In four months' time he was dead; and where is he now? He lived and died without God, and without hope in this world or the next.
When a man has broken his arm, the surgeon must find out the exact spot where the fracture is. He feels along and presses gently with his fingers.
"Is it there?"
"No,"
"Is it there?"
"No."
Presently, when the surgeon touches another spot, "Ouch!" says the man.
He has found the broken part, and it hurts.
It is one thing to hear a man preach down other people's sins. Men will say, "That is splendid," and will want all their friends to go and hear the preacher. But let him touch on their individual sin, and declare, as Nathan did to David, "Thou art the man," and they say, "I do not like that." The preacher has touched a sore place.
I like to think of Christ as a burden bearer.
A minister was one day moving his library upstairs. As he was going up with a load of books, his little boy came in, and was very anxious to help his father. So his father just told him to go and get an armful, and bring them upstairs. When the father came back, he met the little fellow about half-way up, tugging away at the biggest book in the library. He couldn't manage to carry it up. It was too big. So he sat down and cried.
His father found him, and just took him in his arms, book and all, and carried him upstairs. So Christ will carry you and all your burdens, if you will but let Him.
They were going to have a great celebration at the opening of a saloon and billiard hall in Chicago, in the northern part of the city, where I lived. It was to be a gateway to death and to hell, one of the worst places inChicago. As a joke they sent me an invitation to go to the opening. I took the invitation, and went down and saw the two men who had the saloon, and I said:
"Is that a genuine invitation?"
They said it was.
"Thank you," I said; "I will be around, and if there is anything here I don't like I may have something to say about it."
They said, "You are not going topreach, are you?"
"I may."
"We don't want you. We won't let you in."
"How are you going to keep me out?" I asked. "There is the invitation."
"We will put a policeman at the door."
"What is the policeman going to do with that invitation?"
"We won't let you in."
"Well," I said, "I will be there."
I gave them a good scare, and then I said, "I will compromise the matter; if you two men will get down here and let me pray with you, I will let you off."
I got those two rum-sellers down on their knees, one on one side of me and the other on the other side, and I prayed God to save their souls and smite their business. One of them had a Christian mother, and he seemed to have some conscience left. After I had prayed, I said:
"How can you do this business? How can you throw this place open to ruin the young men of Chicago?"
Within three months the whole thing smashed up, and one of them was converted shortly after. I have never been invited to a saloon since.
At our church in Chicago I was closing the meeting one day, when a young soldier got up and entreated the people to decide for Christ at once. He said he had just come from a dark scene. A comrade of his, who had enlisted with him, had a father who was always entreating him to become a Christian, and in reply he always said he would when the war was over. At last he was wounded, and was put into the hospital, but got worse, and was gradually sinking. One day, a few hours before he died, a letter came from his sister, but he was too far gone to read it. It was such an earnest letter! The comrade read it to him, but he did not seem to understand it, he was so weak, till it came to the last sentence, which said:
"Oh, my dear brother, when you get this letter, will you not accept your sister's Savior?"
The dying man sprang up from his cot, and said, "What do you say? what do you say?" And then, falling back on his pillow, feebly exclaimed, "It is too late! It is too late!"
My dear friends, thank God it is nottoo latefor you to-day. The Master is still calling you. Let every one of us, young and old, rich and poor, come to Christ at once, and He will put all our sins away. Don't wait any longer for feeling, but obey at once. You can believe, you can trust, you can lay hold on eternal life, if you will. Will you not do it now?