Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCharles Spurgeon Collection: Spurgeon - C.H. - Quotes: Volume 3
TOPIC: Spurgeon - C.H. - Quotes (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: Volume 3
Other Subjects in this Topic:
CHARLES H. SPURGEON
Volume Three
The Song of Death
There are some that are like what is fabled of the swan. The
ancients said the swan never sang in his life-time, but always sang
just when he died. Now, there are many of God's desponding
children, who seem to go all their life under a cloud; but they get a
swan's song before they die. The river of their life comes running
down, perhaps black and miry with troubles, and when it begins
to touch the white foam of the sea there comes a little glistening in
its waters. So, beloved, though we may have been very much
discouraged because of the burden of the way, when we get to the
end we shall have sweet songs. Are you afraid of dying? Oh!
Never be afraid of that; be afraid of living. Living is the only thing
which can do an mischief; dying never can hurt a Christian.
Afraid of the grave? It is like the has of Esther, in which she lay
for a time, to purify herself with spices, that she might be fit for
her Lord. The grave fits the body for heaven. There it lies—and
corruption, earth, and worms, only refine and purify our flesh. Do
not be afraid of dying; it does not take any time at all. All that
death is, is emancipation, deliverance, heaven's bliss to a child of
God. Never fear it; it will be a singing time. You are afraid of
dying, you say, because of the pains of death. No, they are pains of
life-of life struggling to continue. Death has no pain; death itself is
only one gentle sigh—the chain is broken, and the spirit is set free.
The best moment of a Christian's life is his last one because it is
the one that is nearest heaven; and then it is that he begins to
strike the keynote of the song which he shall sing for all eternity.
The Mysterious Spirit of the Living God
It may be, that during a sermon two men are listening to the same
truth; one of them hears as attentively as the other and
remembers as much of it; the other is melted to tears or moved
with solemn thoughts; but the one though equally attentive, sees
nothing in the sermon, except, maybe, certain important truths
well set forth; as for the other, his heart is broken within him and
his soul is melted. Ask me how is it that the same truth has an
effect upon the one, and not upon his fellow—I reply, because the
mysterious Spirit of the Living God goes with the truth to one
heart and not to the other. The one only feels the force of truth,
and that may be strong enough to make him tremble, like Felix;
but the other feels the Spirit going with the truth, and that renews
the man, regenerates him, and causes him to pass into that
condition, that gracious condition which is called the state of
salvation. This change takes place instantaneously. It is as
miraculous a change as any miracle of which we read in
Scripture. It is supremely supernatural. It may be mimicked, but
no imitation of it can be true and real. Men may pretend to be
regenerated without the Spirit, but regenerated they cannot be. It
is change so marvelous that the highest attempts of man can never
reach it. We may reason as long as we please, but we cannot
reason ourselves into regeneration; we may meditate until our
hairs are gray with study; but we cannot meditate ourselves into
the new birth. That is worked in us by the sovereign will of God
alone.
No man can serve two masters.
Mark Anthony yoked two lions to his chariot; but there are two
lions no man has ever yoked together—the lion of the tribe of
Judah, and the lion of the pit. These can never go together. Two
opinions you may hold in politics, perhaps, but then you will be
despised by everyone, unless you are of one opinion or the other,
and act as an independent man. But two opinions in the matter of
soul-religion you cannot hold. If God be God, serve him, and do it
thoroughly; but if this world is God, serve it, and make no
profession of religion. If you are a worldling, and think the things
of the world are the best, serve them; devote yourself to them, do
not be kept back by conscience; ignore your conscience, and run
into sin. But remember, if the Lord is your God, you cannot have
Baal too; you must have one thing or the other. "No man can
serve two masters." If God is served, he will be a master; and if
the devil be served, he will not be long before he will be a master;
and "you cannot serve two masters." Oh! Be wise, and do not
think that the two can be mingled together.
If God is God
If God is really worthy of our worship, and you really think so, I
demand that you either follow him, or else deny that he is God at
all. Now, professor of Christianity, if you say that Christ's gospel
is the gospel, if you believe in the divinity of the gospel, and put
your trust in Christ, I demand that you follow the gospel, not
merely because it will be to your advantage, but because the
gospel is divine. If you make a profession of being a child of God,
if you are a believer, and think and believe religion is the best, the
service of God the most desirable, then I do not come to plead
with you because of any advantage you would get by being holy; it
is on this ground that I put it, that the Lord is God; and if he is
God, it is your business to serve him. If his gospel is true, and you
believe it to be true, it is your duty to carry it out. If you say,
Christ is not the Son of God, carry out your Jewish or your infidel
convictions, and see whether it will end well. If you do not believe
Christ to be the Son of God, if you are a Muslim, be consistent,
carry out your Muslim convictions, and see whether it will end
well. But, take heed, take heed! If however, you say God is God,
and Christ is the Savior, and the gospel is true; I demand of you,
only on this account, that you carry it out.
Not Far from Home
O Children of God! Death has lost its sting, because the devil's
power over it is destroyed. Then cease being afraid of dying. You
know what death is—look him in the face, and tell him you are
not afraid of him. Ask grace from God, that by an intimate
knowledge and a firm belief of the master's death, you may be
strengthened for that dreaded hour. And mark me, if you so live
you may be able to think of death with pleasure, and to welcome it
when it comes with intense delight. It is sweet to die—to lie upon
the bosom of Christ, and have one's soul kissed out of one's body
by the lips of divine affection. And you that have lost friends, or
that may be bereaved, do not sorrow as those that are without
hope; for remember the power of the devil is taken away. What a
sweet thought the death of Christ brings us concerning those who
are departed! They are gone, my brethren; but do you know how
far they have gone? The distance between the glorified spirits in
heaven and the militant saints on earth seems great; but it is not
so. We are not far from home.
"One gentle sigh the spirit breaks,
We scarce can say 'tis gone,
Before the ransomed spirit takes
Its station near the throne."
We measure distance by time. We are apt to say that a certain
place is so many hours from us. If it is a hundred miles away and
there is no railroad we think it a long way; if there is a railway, we
think we can be there in no time. But how near must we say
heaven is? For it is just one sigh and we get there. Why, my
brethren, our departed friends are only in the upper room, as it
were, of the same house; they have not gone far off; they are
upstairs, and we are down below.
Be careful of your pleasures
It is said that where the most beautiful cacti grow, there the
venomous serpents are to be found at the root of every plant. And
it is so with sin. Your fairest pleasures will harbor your grossest
sins. Take care; take care of your pleasures. Cleopatra's asp was
introduced in a basket of flowers; so are our sins often brought to
us in the flowers of our pleasures.
Love your Creator
God, the Almighty, though he might use instruments, was
nevertheless the sole creator of man. Though he is pleased to
bring us into the world by the agency of our pregenitors, yet is he
as much our Creator as he was the Creator of Adam, when he
formed him out of clay and made him. Look at this marvelous
body of your—see how God put the bones together, so as to be of
the greatest service and use to you. See how he has arranged your
nerves and blood-vessels—mark the marvelous machinery which
he has employed to keep you in life! O thing of an hour! Will you
not love him that made you? It is impossible that you can think of
him who formed you in his hand, and molded you by his will, and
yet you will not love him who has fashioned you?
Think again of the end
You may think you can live fine without Christ, but you cannot
afford to die without him. You can stand very securely at present,
but death will shake your confidence. Your tree may be fair now,
but when the wind comes, if it has no roots in the Rock of Ages,
down it must come. You may think your worldly pleasures good,
but they will then turn bitter as wormwood in your taste; worse
than gall shall be the sweetest of your drinks, when you shall come
to the bottom of your poisoned bowl.
The Blood-stained Page
No inferior hand has sketched even so much as the most minute
parts of providence. It was all, from its Alpha to its Omega, from
its divine preface to its solemn conclusion, marked out, designed,
sketched and planned by the mind of the all-wise, all-knowing
God. Therefore, not even Christ's death was exempt from it. He
who wings an angel and guides a sparrow, he that protects the
hairs of our head from falling prematurely to the ground, was not
likely, when he took notice of such little things, to omit in his
solemn decrees the greatest wonder of earth's miracles, the death
of Christ. No! the blood-stained page of that book, the page which
makes both past and future glorious with golden words, that
blood-stained page, I say, was as much written by Jehovah as any
other.
Like the Swift Ships
You may easily conceive how swiftly the mariner flies from a
threatening storm, or seeks the port where he will find his home.
You have sometimes seen how the ship cuts through the billows,
leaving a white furrow behind her, and causing the sea to boil
around her. Such is life, says Job, "like the swift ships," when the
sails are filled by the wind, and the vessel dashes on, dividing a
passage through the crowded water. Swift are the ships, but
swifter far is life. The wind of time bears me along. I cannot stop
its motion; I may direct it with the rudder of God's Holy Spirit; I
may, it is true, take in some small sails of sin, which might hurry
my days on faster than otherwise they would go; but nevertheless,
like a swift ship, my life must speed on its way until it reaches its
haven. Where is that haven to be? Shall it be found in the land of
bitterness and barrenness, that dreary region of the lost? Or shall
it be that sweet haven of eternal peace, where not a troubling
wave can ruffle the quiet glory of my spirit? Wherever the haven
is to be, that truth is the same, we are "like the swift ships."
Focus on Christ
There is one great event, which every day attracts more
admiration than do the sun, and moon, and stars, when they
march in their courses. That event is, the death of our Lord Jesus
Christ. To it the eyes of all the saints who lived before the
Christian era were always directed; and backwards, through the
thousand years of history, the eye of modern saints are looking.
Upon Christ, the angels in heaven perpetually gaze. "Which
things the angels desire to look into," said the apostle. Upon
Christ, the myriad eyes of the redeemed are perpetually fixed;
and thousands of pilgrims, through this world of tears, have no
higher object for their faith, and no better desire for their vision,
than to see Christ as he is in heaven, and in communion to behold
his person. Beloved, we shall have many with us, while we turn
our face to the Mount of Calvary. We shall not be solitary
spectators of the fearful tragedy or our Savior's death—we shall
but dart our eyes to that place which is the focus of heaven's joy
and delight, the cross of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Means of Grace
Happy is the nation which is blessed with the means of grace. No
man was ever saved by the means of grace apart from the Holy
Spirit. You may hear the sermons of the man whom God delights
to honor; you may select from all your divines the writings of the
man whom God did bless with a double portion of his Holy Spirit;
you may attend every meeting for prayer; you may turn over the
pages of his blessed book; but in all this, there is no life for the
soul apart from the breath of the Divine Spirit. Use these means,
we exhort you to use them, and use them diligently; but remember
that in none of these means is there anything that can benefit you
unless God the Holy Spirit shall own and crown them. These are
like the conduit pipes of the market place; when the fountain-head
flows with the water then they are full, and we do derive a
blessing from them; but if the stream is held back, if the fountain
head does cease to give forth its current, then these are wells
without water, clouds without rain; and you may go to ordinances
as an Arab turns to his skin bottle when it is dry, and with your
parched lips you may suck the wind and drink the whirlwind, but
receive neither comfort, nor blessing, nor instruction, from the
means of grace.
The Little Things
If little things have done great things, let us try to do great things
also. You do not know, you atoms, but that your destiny is
sublime. Try and make it so by faith; and the least of you may be
mighty through the strength of God. Oh for grace to trust God,
and there is no telling what you can do. Worms, you are nothing,
but you have eaten princes; worms, you are nothing, but you have
devoured the roots of cedars, and laid them level with the earth;
worms, you are nothing, but you have piled rocks in the deep,
deep sea, and wrecked mighty navies; worms, you have eaten
through the keel of the proudest ship that ever sailed the ocean. If
you have done this yourselves, what can't we do? Your strength
lies in your mouths; our strength lies in ours too. We will use our
mouths in prayer, and in constant adoration, and we shall
conquer yet, for God is with us, and victory is sure.
Sin of Presumption
It would be presumption for any man to climb to the top of the
spire of a church, and stand upon his head. "Well, but he might
come down safe it he were skilled in it." Yes, but it is
presumptuous. I would no more think of paying any money to
watch a man ascend in a balloon, than I would to watch a poor
wretch cut his own throat. I would no more think of standing and
gazing at any man who puts his life in a position of peril, than I
would of paying a man to blow his brains out. I think such things,
if not murders, are murderous. There is suicide in men's risking
themselves in that way; and if there is suicide in the risk of the
body, how much more in the case of a man who puts his own soul
in jeopardy just because he thinks he has strength of mind enough
to prevent its being ruined and destroyed. Sir, your sin is a sin of
presumption; it is a great and grievous one; it is one of the master
pieces of iniquity.
A Penny's Worth of Righteousness
While you have a rag of your own you shall never have Christ;
while you have a penny's worth of your own righteousness, you
shall never have him; but when you are nothing, Christ is yours;
when you have nothing of yourself to trust in, Jesus Christ in the
gospel is your complete Savior; he bids me tell you he came to
seek and to save people just like you.
The Grace of Election!
There is no difference, by nature, between the elect and others—
those who are now glorified in heaven, and who walk the golden
streets, dressed in robes of purity, were by nature as unholy and
defiled, and as far from original righteousness, as those who, by
their own rejection of Christ, and by their love of sin, have
brought themselves into the pit of eternal torment, as a
punishment for their iniquities. The only reason why there is a
difference between those who are in heaven and those who are in
hell, rests with divine grace, and with divine grace alone. Those in
heaven must inevitably have been cast away, had not everlasting
mercy stretched out its hand and redeemed them. They were by
nature not one bit superior to others. They would as certainly
have rejected Christ, and have trodden under foot the blood of
Jesus, as did those who were cast away, if grace—free grace—had
not prevented them from committing this sin. The reason why
they are Christians is not because they naturally willed to be one,
nor because they did by nature desire to know Christ, or to be
found of him; but they are now saints simply because God made
them so. He gave them the desire to be saved; he put into them the
will to seek after him; he helped them in their seekings, and
afterward brought them to feel that peace which is the fruit of
justification. But by nature they were just the same as others; and
if there is any difference, we are obliged to say that the difference
does not lie in their favor. In very many cases, we who now
"rejoice in hope of the glory of God" were the very worst of men!
There are multitudes that now bless God for their redemption
who once cursed him; who implored, as frequently as they dare to
do, with oaths and swearing, that the curse of God might rest
upon their fellow men and upon themselves. Many of the Lord's
anointed were once the very castaways of Satan, the sweepings of
society, the refuse of the earth, those whom no man cares for, who
were called outcasts, but whom God has now called desired ones,
seeing he has loved them.
Trust God
Doubt the Eternal, distrust the Omnipotent? O traitorous fear!
Do you think that the arm which created the heavens, and
sustains the earth, shall ever be weak? Shall the brow which
eternal ages have rolled over without scathing it, will eventually
be furrowed by old age? What! Shall the Eternal fail you? God is
too wise to error, too good to be unkind; stop doubting him, and
begin to trust him, for in so doing, you will put a crown on his
head, but in doubting him you trample his crown beneath your
feet.
Ringing the Bell in Heaven!
Keep prayer going; don't neglect your prayer meetings.
Christmas Evans gives us a good idea about prayer. He says,
"Prayer is the rope in the belfry; we pull it, and it rings the bell
up in heaven." And so it is. Be sure that you keep that bell going.
Pull it well. Come up to prayer meetings. Keep on pulling it; and
though the bell is up so high that you cannot hear it ring, depend
upon it, it can be heard in the tower of heaven, and is ringing
before the throne of God, who will give you answers of peace
according to your faith. May your faith be large and plentiful, and
so will your answers be!
Never say Never
There is enough tinder in the heart of the best men in the world to
light a fire that shall burn to the lowest hell, unless God should
quench the sparks as they fall. There is enough corruption,
depravity, and wickedness in the heart of the most holy man that
is now alive to damn his soul to all eternity, if free and sovereign
grace does not prevent it. O Christian! You have need to pray this
prayer. But I think I hear you saying, "Is your servant a dog that
I should do this thing? So said Hazeal, when the prophet told him
that he would slay his master; but he went home, and took a wet
cloth and spread it over his master's face and choked him, and did
the next day the sin which he abhorred before. Do not think it is
enough to abhor sin; you may yet fall into it. Do not say, "I never
can be drunken, for I have such an abhorrence of drunkenness;"
you may fall where you are most secure. Do not say, "I can never
blaspheme God, for I have never done so in my life;" take care,
you may yet swear most profanely. Job might have said, "I will
never curse the day of my birth;" but he lived to do it. He was a
patient man; he might have said, "I will never murmur; though
he slay me yet will I trust in him;" and yet he lived to wish that
the day were darkness wherein he was brought forth. Do not
boast then, O Christian! By faith you stands. "Let him that thinks
he stands take heed lest he fall."
Tiresome Prayer
We never read that Joshua's hand was weary with wielding the
sword, but Moses' hand was weary with holding the rod. The
more spiritual the duty, the more apt we are to tire of it. We could
stand and preach all day; but we could not pray all day. We could
go forth to see the sick all day, but we could not be in our closets
all day one- half so easily. To spend a night with God in prayer
would be far more difficult than to spend a night with man in
preaching. Oh! Take care, Church of Christ, that you do not cease
your prayers!
Our Works
You cannot get to heaven by your works. You might as well seek
to reach the stars on a treadmill, as to go to heaven by works; for
as you take one step, you will always be where you were before. If
you cannot be perfect, God will not save you by works.
God's Sovereignty
The worm is not to complain, because God did not make it an
angel, and the fish that swims the sea must not complain because
it has no wings to fly into the highest heavens. God had a right to
make his creatures just as He pleased, and though men and
women may dispute His right, He will hold and keep it intact
against all comers. He protects His right and makes proud men
and women acknowledge it, in all His gifts He continually reminds
us of His sovereignty.
The God of the Present
Don't you know that God is an eternal self-existent Being; that to
say He loves now, is, in fact, to say He always did love, since with
God there is no past, and can be no future. What we call past,
present, and future, He wraps up in one eternal now. And if you
say He loves you now, you say He loved you yesterday; He loved
you in eternity past; and He will love you forever; for now with
God is past, present, and future.
Man's Strength
Those who go off to fight, boasting that they can do it, will return
with their banners trailed in the dust and with their armor
stained with defeat; for God will not go with the man or woman
who goes in their own strength.
Think of God
Let your mind think on the great doctrines of the Godhead—
consider the existence of God from before the creation of the
world; See Him who is, and was, and is to come, the Almighty; let
your soul comprehend as much as it can of the Infinite and
Eternal God, and I am sure, if you have minds at all, they will
shrink with awe. The lofty archangel himself bows before his
Master's throne; and we will cast ourselves into the dust when we
feel what lowly nothings, what insignificant specks we are when
compared with our completely magnificent Creator.
God's Gifts
Faith is the gift of God. Does my earthly, natural father love me
because he fed me, and because he clothed me? No, he clothed and
fed me because he loved me, for his love was prior to his gift. His
gifts did not cause him to love me, because he loved me before he
gave them. And if any man or woman says, "God loves me
because I can do this or that for him," they talk nonsense.
Peace and Joy
Peace is the flowing of the brook, but joy is the rushing of the
waterfall when the brook is filled and bursts its banks, and gushes
down upon the rocks.
The Lasting Works of Man
Many men and women have said of their works, "They will last
forever;" but how disappointed they have been! In the age
following the flood, they made the bricks and built the Tower of
Babel, and they thought, "This will last forever." But God
confused their language; they never finished it. By His sovereignty
he scattered the men and women and left the tower as a
monument to their folly. Pharaoh and the Egyptian monarchs
built their pyramids, and they said, "They will stand forever,"
and yes it is true that they still stand today; but the time is
approaching when age will devour even these great monuments.
So it is with all the proudest works of man, whether they have
been his temples or his kingdoms, he has written "everlasting" on
them; but God has ordained their end, and they have passed
away. The most stable things have vanished like shadows and
bubbles of the moment, quickly destroyed at God's command.
Where is Babylon? Where are the cities of Persia? Where are the
high places of Edom? Where are the temples of the heroes of
Greece? Where are the vast armies of the Roman Emperors?
Have they not all passed away? And though in their pride they
said, "This kingdom is an everlasting one; this queen of the seven
hills (Rome) will be called the eternal city," its pride is dimmed;
and she who sat alone, and said, "I will not be a widow, but
instead a queen forever," she has fallen, has fallen, and in a little
while she will sink like a millstone in the flood, her name being a
curse and a byword, and her site the habitation of wild animals.
Man calls his works eternal—God calls them transitory; man
conceives that they are built of rock—God says, "They are built of
sand, or worse than that—they are built of air." Man says he
erects them for eternity—God blows on them for a second, and
where are they? Like the fragments of a vision, they are passed
and gone forever.
God's Spirit and Man's Spirit
God's Holy Spirit and man's sin cannot live together peacefully;
they may both be in the same heart, but they cannot both reign
there, nor can they both be quiet there; for "the sinful nature
desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is
contrary to the sinful nature;" they cannot rest, instead there will
be a perpetual warring in the soul, so that the Christian will have
to cry out, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from
this body of death?" But in due time—the Spirit will drive out all
sin, and will present us blameless before the throne of his Majesty
with great joy.
Heresy
The boasted power of man's reason has not changed in the last
one hundred and fifty years! It has piled up one thing, and then
on another day it has laughed at its own handiwork, demolished
its own castle, and constructed another one, and the next day a
third. It has a thousand dresses. Once it came out dressed like a
fool with its bells, heralded by Voltaire; then it came out a
bragging bully, like Tom Paine; then it changed its course, and
assumed another shape, until finally, we have it in the base,
perverted secularism of the present day, which looks only at the
earth, keeps its nose on the ground, and like the animal, thinks
this world is enough; or looks for another world by seeking this
one. Why, before one hair on his head will turn gray, the last
secularist will have passed away; before many of us are fifty years
of age, a new heresy will come. They will have altered their name,
assumed a fresh shape, put on a new form of evil, but still their
nature will be the same; opposing Christ, and endeavoring to
blaspheme His truths. On all their systems of religion, or nonreligion—
for that is a system too—it may be written "Transient;
fading as the flower, fleeting as the meteor, frail and unreal as a
vapor." But of Christ's religion, it will be said, "His name will
endure forever."
Worldly Flavors
You know, when we have been taking some kind of medicine, and
our mouth has been impregnated with a strong flavor, whatever
we eat acquires that taste. You have got your mouth out of taste
by taking in some of the world's delicacies; you have some of the
powder of the pastries of Sodom hanging on your lips that spoils
the glorious flavor of your meditation on Jesus. In fact, it prevents
you from meditating on Christ at all. It is only a hearing of the
meditation with your ear; not a receiving of it with your hearts.
Warning of Judgment
Warn the boater before he enters the current, and then, if he is
swept down the rapids, he destroys himself. Warn the man before
he drinks the cup of poison, tell him it is deadly—and then, if he
drinks it, his death lies at his own door. And so, let us warn you
before you depart this life; let us preach to you while your bones
are still full of marrow, and the sinews of your joints are still
fastened.
The Man Without the Spirit
Friend, you don't have the Holy Spirit. You are nothing better—
whatever you are, or whatever you may be—than the fall of Adam
left you. That is to say, you are a fallen creature, having only
capacities to live here in sin and to live forever in torment; but
you don't have the capacity to live in heaven at all, for you do not
have the Holy Spirit; and therefore you are unable to know or
enjoy spiritual things. And mark this, a man may be in this state,
and be a carnal man, and yet he may have all the virtues that
could grace a Christian; but with all these, if he doesn't have the
Holy Spirit, he has not advanced an inch further than where
Adam's fall left him—that is, condemned and under the curse.
Yes, and he may practice religion with all his might—he may
share in the Lord's Supper and be baptized, and may be the most
devout person in church; but if he does not have the Holy Spirit
he has not moved a solitary inch from where he was, for he is still
"a slave to sin," a lost soul. Further, he may pick up religious
phrases until he talks very fast about religion; he may read
biographies until he seems to be a deeply taught child of God; he
may be able to write an article on the deep experience of a
believer; but if this experience is not his own, if he has not
received it by the Holy Spirit of the living God, he is still nothing
more than a carnal man, and heaven is to him a place to which
there is no entrance.
Further, he might go so far as to become a minister of the gospel,
and a successful minister too, and God may bless the word that he
preaches to the salvation of sinners, but unless he has received the
Holy Spirit, even if he is as eloquent as Apollos, and as earnest as
Paul, he is nothing more than a mere man, without a capacity for
spiritual things.
No, to top it all, he might even have the power of working
miracles, as Judas had—he might even be received into the
Church as a believer, as was Simon Magus, and after all that,
though he had cast out devils, though he had healed the sick,
though he had worked miracles, he might have the gates of heaven
shut in his face, if he had not received the Holy Spirit. For this is
the most important thing, without which all others are in vain—
the receiving of the Holy Spirit of the living God.
Alone with Christ
Some persons say they cannot bear to spend one hour in quiet
solitude; they have nothing to do, nothing to think about. Surely
no Christian will ever talk like that, for if I can but give him one
word to think of—Christ—let him dwell on that forever; let me
give him the word Jesus, and only let him try to think it over, and
he will find that an hour is not enough, and that eternity is not
half enough time to utter our glorious Savior's praise.
Showers of Blessings
When God sends rain upon the church, He "sends showers of
blessings." There are some ministers who think, that if there is a
shower on their church, God will send a shower of work. Yes, but
if He does, He will send a shower of comfort. Others think that
God will send a shower of gospel truth. Yes, but if He sends that,
He will send a shower of gospel holiness. For all God's blessings
go together. They are like the sweet sister graces that danced hand
in hand. God sends showers of blessings. If He gives comforting
grace, He will also give converting grace; if He makes the trumpet
of judgment blow for the bankrupt sinner, He will also make it
sound a shout of joy for the sinner that is pardoned and forgiven.
He will send "showers of blessings"
The Outpouring of the Spirit
The hour is coming, and has now come, when the Holy Spirit will
be poured out again in such a wonderful manner, that many will
go here and there to increase knowledge—the knowledge of the
Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the surface of the
great deep; when His kingdom will come, and His will, will be
done on earth, even as it is in heaven. We are not going to be
dragging on forever like Pharaoh, without wheels on his chariot.
My heart exults, and my eyes flash with the thought that very
likely I will live to see the outpouring of the Spirit; when "the sons
and the daughters of God again will prophesy, and the young men
will see visions, and the old men will dream dreams." Perhaps
there will be no miraculous gifts for they will not be required; but
yet there will be such a miraculous amount of holiness, such an
extraordinary fervor of prayer, such a real communion with God,
and so much vital religion, and such a spread of the doctrines of
the cross, that every one will see that truly the Holy Spirit is
poured out like water, and the rains are descending from above.
For that let us pray; let us continually work for it, and seek it of
God.