"For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of G.o.d after the inward man: but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"
Blessed be G.o.d, he could add: "I thank G.o.d through Jesus Christ our Lord."
The issue that G.o.d has placed before us is clear-cut: "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of G.o.d abideth on him." There is no middle course--"he that believeth"--"he that believeth not." He leaves us to choose, and the responsibility rests upon ourselves.
It may cost you many a sacrifice, and wrench many a heart-string to choose aright, but I plead with you to take the decisive step now.
The salvation of your soul outweighs all other considerations. Will you imperil your eternity for the sake of some present gain or pleasure? Bow your head and say: "Heavenly Father, I now choose to come unto Thee as a poor, suppliant sinner. I believe on Thy Son, whom Thou didst send to be my Savior; and trusting in the merits of His blood, which was shed as a propitiation for my sins, I rest in the a.s.surance of sins forgiven."
There is hope for the vilest sinner. Wherever weeds grow, there is the possibility of good seed growing. The greater your need, the more welcome will you be to Jesus. The proud and the self-confident He knoweth afar off, but the faintest whisper of the contrite sinner commands His attention.
Our Lord gave us a simple test to help us in our choice. He said, "Every tree is known by its fruit. A good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit, neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit."
Many of us have not the time or ability to unravel intricate arguments, or grasp profound doctrines. Certain phases of truth are often inaccessible to the ordinary mind. But the test Christ gave is short and practical, and within the reach of any one of us.
"Have you ever heard the gospel?" asked a missionary of a Chinaman, whom he had not seen in his mission before.
"No," he replied, "but I have seen it. I know a man who used to be the terror of his neighborhood. He was a bad opium smoker and dangerous as a wild beast; but he became wholly changed. He is now gentle and good and has left off opium."
Apply this test to infidelity. What are its fruits? Crime follows in its track. Society becomes disorganized. Chast.i.ty, honesty and the other virtues are undermined. The whole life is blighted.
The following brief extract from a letter written in an english prison, is a tremendous arraignment of that system of belief which does not acknowledge G.o.d:
"I am one of thirteen infidels. Where are my friends? Four have been hanged. One became a Christian. Six have been sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, and one is now confined in a cell just over my head, sentenced to imprisonment for life."
With all reverence we may apply this text to our Lord Himself. We have His own authority for it. On one occasion when the jews cavilled at His actions, He said: "The works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me." On another occasion they gathered round Him and asked, "How long dost thou hold us in suspense? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly." Jesus answered: "I told you, and ye believed not. The works that I do in my Father"s name, they bear witness of me. * * * If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though you believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in Him." Well might the ruler Nicodemus say, "Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from G.o.d: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except G.o.d be with him." And Peter: "Ye men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of G.o.d among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which G.o.d did by Him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves know."
What are the fruits of extravagance, of pride, of covetousness? And on the other hand, of prayer, of fearing G.o.d and doing His commandments? What are the fruits of heathenism? Look at Africa and China and India and the islands of the seas with their G.o.ds of wood and stone. What must be the intelligence and moral sense of people who will worship such things?
Even the best of non-Christian religions must always prove a failure. It cannot be denied that many of the highest virtues are enjoined in the writings of heathen philosophers. How could it be otherwise? Morality is universal as humanity, and it is only to be expected that here and there some thinker should pierce beyond the average and read deeper into the foundation-truths of ethics. This fact only proves, in my mind, the intimate connection between the human and the divine. Christianity never claimed to introduce a brand-new system of morality.
Referring to another matter, Christ said: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill." And so the fulness and perfection of His own system could not fail to embrace many principles that had already appeared in heathen morality. But in the hands of our Savior they became broader and brighter and fuller of power and meaning.
Will these non-Christian religions bear the test? Stoicism was perhaps the n.o.blest of the Greek philosophies, but it rapidly developed into utter cynicism, and culminated in the a.s.serted impossibility of attaining to virtue. Epicureanism started out fairly well, but its founder was not dead before it earned for itself the opprobrious epithet that it was a doctrine worthy only of swine. Look at Buddhism, with its filthy ceremonies and cruel tortures. All these systems exhibit a conflict between theory and practice. They failed in their object, because they approached the difficulty on the wrong side. They trimmed away at the branch, not recognizing that the tree was rotten at heart.
Christianity alone will stand the test of raising man out of the pit. And how does it propose to do it? Not by minimizing the danger and need. It says: "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores." It demands as _the first necessity_ a new birth, regeneration by the Holy Spirit. "Ye must be born again." It does not place sanctification before justification, but having first imparted life from above, it throws around the redeemed sinner the love of Christ and the fellowship and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
A converted Chinaman once said: "I was down in a deep pit, half sunk in the mire, crying for some one to help me out. As I looked up I saw a venerable, grayhaired man looking down at me.
""My son," he said, "this is a dreadful place."
"Yes," I answered, "I fell into it; can"t you help me out?"
"My son," was his reply, "I am Confucius. If you had read my books and followed what they taught, you would never have been here."
"Yes, father," I said, "but can"t you help me out?"
As I looked he was gone. Soon I saw another form approaching, and another man bent over me, this time with closed eyes and folded arms. He seemed to be looking to some far-off place.
"My son," Buddha said, "just close your eyes and fold your arms, and forget all about yourself. Get into a state of rest. Don"t think about anything that can disturb. Get so still that nothing can move you. Then, my child, you will be in such delicious rest as I am."
"Yes, father," I answered, "I will when I am above ground. Can"t you help me out?" But Buddha, too, was gone.
I was just beginning to sink into despair when I saw another figure above me, different from the others. There were marks of suffering on His face. I cried out to Him:
"O, Father! can you help me?"
"My child," He said, "what is the matter?"
Before I could answer Him, He was down in the mire by my side. He folded His arms about me and lifted me up; then He fed me and rested me. When I was well He did not say: Now, don"t do that again, but He said: "We will walk on together now"; and we have been walking together until this day."
This was a poor Chinaman"s way of telling of the compa.s.sionate love and help of the Lord Jesus.
I was reading, some time ago, of a young man who had just come out of a saloon, and had mounted his horse. As a certain deacon pa.s.sed on his way to church, he followed and said,
"Deacon, can you tell me how far it is to h.e.l.l?"
The deacon"s heart was pained to think that a young man like that should talk so lightly; he pa.s.sed on and said nothing. When he came round the corner to the church, he found that the horse had thrown that young man, and he was dead. So you may be nearer the Judgment than you think.
When I was in Switzerland many years ago, I learned some solemn lessons about the suddenness with which death may overtake us. I saw several places where land-slides had occurred, completely destroying whole villages; or where avalanches had swept down the mountain sides, leaving destruction in their wake. A terrible calamity happened in the year 1806 to a village, called Goldau, situated in a fertile valley at the foot of the Rossberg mountain. The season had been unusually wet, and this had made the crops all the more abundant.
Early one morning a young peasant, pa.s.sing the cottage of an old man whom he knew, saw him sitting at the door in the full rays of the sun.
"Good morning, neighbor," said he; "we are likely to have a fine day."
"Time we should have a fine day," growled the old man; "it has been wet enough lately."
"Have you heard the report?" said the other. "Those who were up the earliest this morning declare they saw the top of old Rossberg move."
"Indeed! like enough," said the old man. "Mark my words, and I have often said it before; I shan"t live to see it, but those who are now young will not live to be as old as I am before the top of yonder mountain lies at its foot."
"I hope it will not be in my day," said the young man; and he pa.s.sed on, little thinking how near the prediction was to a fulfilment, and that the ripening fields of corn and the abundant cl.u.s.ters of luscious grapes would never be gathered; but so it was.
The springs of water in the mountain had been overcharged by the excessive rains, and these, in forcing their way to the surface and toward the valley below, had loosened the ma.s.ses of rounded rock which had been cemented together by a kind of clay, of which material the upper part of the mountain was formed. These huge ma.s.ses at length gave way and fell headlong into the valley, burying the entire village and about eight hundred of its inhabitants beneath their weight.
But what became of the old man? Alas! he did not escape. He believed the mountain would fall, but he did not think the fall was so near.
He was sitting in his cottage, composedly smoking his pipe, when the young man came hastily back, and crying out:
"_The mountain is falling!_"
The old man composedly rose from his seat, looked out at his door, and saying:
"I shall have time to fill my pipe again," went back into his house.
The young man was saved. The old man perished before he had left his cottage, it and its owner were crushed, and swept to the bottom of the valley.
I was in the north of England, in 1881, when a fearful storm swept over that part of the country. A friend of mine, who was a minister at Eyemouth, had a great many of the fishermen of the place in his congregation. It had been very stormy weather, and the fishermen had been detained in the harbor for a week. One day, however, the sun shone out in a clear blue sky; it seemed as if the storm had pa.s.sed away, and the boats started out for the fishing-ground. Forty-one boats left the harbor that day. Before they started, the harbor -master hoisted the storm signal, and warned them of the coming tempest. He begged of them not to go; but they disregarded his warning, and away they went. They saw no sign of the coming storm.
In a few hours, however, it swept down on that coast, and very few of those fishermen returned. There were five or six men in each boat, and nearly all were lost in that dreadful gale. In the church of which my friend was pastor, I believe there were three male members left.
Those men were ushered into eternity because they did not give heed to the warning. I lift up the storm-signal now, and warn you to escape from the coming judgment!