THEY WILL COME.

If Jesus Christ were to stand on this platform tonight, what would many people do with Him? "oh," some say, "we would make Him King," I do not believe it. They would crucify Him again, if they had the opportunity. If He were to come tonight and say, "Here I am, I love thee, wilt thou be saved by Me?" Not one of you would consent if you were left to your own free will. If He should look upon you with those eyes, before whose power the lion would have couched, if He spoke with that voice which poured forth a downpour of eloquence like a stream of nectar rolling down from the cliffs above, not a single person would come to be His disciple. No, it takes the power of The Spirit to make men come to Jesus Christ. He himself said, "no one can come unto Me unless The Father Who sent Me draweth him." Yes! we want that, and here we have it. They will come! they will come!
You may laugh, you may despise us, but Jesus Christ did not die for nothing. If some of you reject Him, there are some who will not. If there are some who are not saved, others will be. Christ will see His seed, He shall lengthen His days, and the pleasure of The Lord shall prosper in His hands. Some think that Christ died for some who will be lost, I could never understand that doctrine. If Jesus my surety, bore my griefs and carried my sorrows, then I believe that I am as secure as the angels in heaven. God cannot ask for payment twice. If Christ paid my debt for me,will I have to pay it again? never.

Free from sin I walk at large

The Saviour's blood my full discharge,

At His dear feet content I lay,

A sinner saved, and homage pay.

They will come! they will come! And nothing in heaven, nor on earth,nor in hell can stop them from coming.

And now thou chiefest of sinners, listen for a moment while I call you to Jesus. There is one person here tonight who thinks of himself as the worst soul that ever lived. There is one who says to himself, "I do not deserve to be called to Christ, I am sure!" Soul! I call you! you lost, most wretched outcast, this night, by authority given me by God, I call you to come to my Saviour.

Some time ago, when I went to the county court to see what they were doing, I heard a man's name called out, and immediately the man said, "make way! make way!, they are calling me!" And up he came. Now, I call the chief of sinners tonight, and let him say, "make way! make way! doubts, make way! fears, make way! sins, Jesus calls me, and if He calls me, that is enough."

I will to His gracious feet approach

Whose scepter mercy gives.

I can but perish if I go

I am resolved to try,

for if I stay away I know,

I must forever die.

OUT OF HIS BELLY.

"He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of the midst of him shall flow rivers of living waters."

Those operations of the Spirit of God, of which I am afraid some christians are almost ignorant, are of wonderous power. The text says, " he that believeth on me, out of the midst of him shall flow rivers of living water." THESE OPERATIONS ARE OF MARVELOUS POWER. Do you understand my text? Do river of living waters flow out from you?

NOTICE first that this is to be an inward work, the rivers of living water are to flow out of the midst of the man. The words are according to our version, "out of his belly," that is from his heart and soul. The rivers do not flow out of his mouth, the promised power is not oratory. We have had plenty of words, floods of words, but this is heart work. The source of the rivers is found in the inner life. It is an inward work at it's fountain head. It is not a work of talent and ability, and show, and glitter, and glare, it is altogether an inward work. The life-flood is to come out of the man's inmost self, out of the bowels and essential being of the man. Homage is shown too generally to outward form and external observance, those these soon lose their interest and power, but when the Spirit of God rests within a man it exercises a home rule within him and he gives great attention to what an old divine was wont to call "the home department." Alas, many neglect the realm within which is the chief province under our care. O my brother in Christ, if you would be useful, begin with yourself. It is out of your very soul that the blessing is to come. It cannot come out of you if it is not in you, and it cannot be in you unless God the Holy Ghost places it there.

HUMILITY.

What is humility of mind? Humility is to make a right estimate of one's self. It is not humility for a man to think less of himself than he ought, though it might rather puzzle him to do that. Some people, when they know they can do a thing, tell you they cannot, but surely you would not call that humility? A man is asked to take part in some good work, " no," he says, " I have no ability," but if you were to say so of him he would be offended at you. It is not humility for a man to stand up and depreciate himself and say he cannot do this, that, or the other, when he knows that it is untrue. If God gives a man a talent, do you think the man does not know it? If a man has ten talents, he has no right to be dishonest to his Maker and to say " Lord, thou hast only given me five." It is not humility to underrate your endowments. Humility is to think of yourself,if you can, as God thinks of you. It is to feel that if we have talents, God has given them to us, and let it be seen that, like freight in a vessel, they tend to sink us low. the more we have, the lower we ought to lie. Humility is not to say, "I have not this gift," but it is to say "I have the gift, and I must use it for my Master's glory. I do not seek any honour for myself, for what have I that I have not recieved?" Humility is to feel that we have no power in ourselves, but that it all comes from God. Humility is to lean upon our Beloved, saying, " I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me" This is in fact to annihilate self and to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ as being our all in all.

PARDONED

BLESSED IS HE WHOSE TRANSGRESSION IS FORGIVEN,WHOSE SIN IS COVERED

Psalm 32 is very instructive. The experience of one man is instructive to another. We learn the way in which we should walk by observing the footsteps of the flock. The psalm begins with a blessing. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. I think I hear a sort of sigh of relief, as if the man had been burdened with a load of guilt, and now at last his sin is put way, and his sigh has more solemn joy in it than if it had been a song. Beloved you must know the bitterness of sin before you can know the blessedness of forgiveness, and you must have such a sight of sin as shall break your heart before you can understand the blessedness of the divine covering, that sacred coverlet that hides sin effectually, blots it out, and even makes it cease to be. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Would you not think so, dear burdened heart, if it ever came to your lot? I hope it will be so tonight. Do we not think so, who remember the day when almighty mercy forgave us our transgressions, and covered our sins? Indeed we do. This is one of the greatest joys out of heaven. Perhaps, for a sort of still soft melody, with much of the minor in it, this is the sweetest music in the whole book, blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Now the psalmist must put the same truth in another form. He loves to reduplicate, to repeat again and again a truth which is very precious to him. Blessed is the man unto whom The Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. Here are two reasons for the man's joyfulness, sin is not laid to his charge, and he is no longer deceitful, he no longer tries to palliate and to excuse his sin, he makes a clean breast of it, and God in a higher sense gives him a clean breast. He acknowledges the justice of God, and God displays His infinite mercy to him.

SPURGEONICS.

AFFLICTION.....The Lord gets His best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.

COMMUNION.....One hour with Christ is worth an eternity of all earth's joys, and communion with Him is the best, the surest, and the most ecstatic foretaste of the bliss of heaven.

FAMILY PRAYER.....and the pulpit are the bulwarks of protestantism! depend upon it, when family piety goes down, the life of godliness will become very low. In Europe, at any rate, seeing that the christian faith began with one converted household, we ought to seek after the conversion of all our families, and to maintain within our own homes the good and holy practice of family worship.

PREACHING....."Often, when I come in at the door and my eyes fall on this vast congregation, I feel a tremour go through me to think that I should have to speak to you all and be, in some measure, accountable for your future state. Unless I preach the gospel faithfully and with all my heart, your blood will be required at my hands. Do not therefore wonder that when I am weak and sick, I feel my head swim when I stand up to speak to you, and my heart is often faint within me. But I do have this joy at the back of it all, God does set many sinners free in this place!"

OPEN WIDE.....Open your mouth wide in prayer, " I cannot " says one, well if you open your mouth God will fill it with prayer, and then, when you have prayed the prayer that He has given you, He will fill it with answers! God gives the prayer as well as the answer to prayer! Only open your mouth and, as it were, make a vacuum for God to fill. God loves to look for emptiness where He may stow away His grace

STRENGTH THROUGH WEAKNESS.....The way to grow strong in Christ is to become weak in yourself. God pours no power into man's heart until man's power is all poured out. The christian's life is one of daily dependence on the grace and strength of God.

WHERE CHRIST IS..... "Phlip was a searcher after Christ in the place where Christ loves to be, in the pages of scripture, and you must be the same, if you desire to find Jesus!"

PRINCE OF PREACHERS

FAITH, THE MARK OF SONSHIP.

Faith is the mark of sonship in all who have it, whoever they may be, for "ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus."gal.3v26. If you are believing in Jesus, whether you are male or female, Jew or gentile, bond or free, you are the child of God. If you have only believed in Christ of late, and have but for the past few weeks been able to rest in His great salvation, yet beloved, now you are the child of God. It is not an after priviledge, granted to assurance or growth in grace, it is an early blessing and belongs to him who has the smallest degree of faith and is no more than a babe in grace. If a person be a believer in Jesus Christ their name is in the register-book of the great family above, for, "ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus." But if you have no faith, no matter what zeal, no matter what works, no matter what knowledge, no matter what pretensions to holiness you may possess, you are nothing, and your religion is vain. Without faith in Christ you are a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal for without faith it is impossible to please God. Faith then wherever it is found, is the infallible token of a child of God, and it's absence is fatal to the claim.
This according to the apostle is further illustrated by our baptism, for in baptism, if there is faith in the soul, there is an open putting on of The Lord Jesus. " For as many of you as have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ."gal3v27. In baptism you professed to be dead to the world and you were therefore buried into the name of Jesus, and the meaning of that burial, if it had any right meaning for you, was that you professed your self henceforth to be dead to everything but Christ, and henceforth your life was to be in Him, and you were to be as one raised from the dead to newness of life. Of course the outward form avails nothing to the unbeliever, but to the one who is in Christ it is a most instructive ordinance. The spirit and essence of the ordinance lie in the soul's entering into the symbol, in the person's knowing not alone the baptism into water, but the baptism into The Holy Ghost and into fire, and as many of you as know that inward mystic baptism into Christ know also that hencforth you have put on Christ and are covered by Him as a man is by his garment. Henceforth you are one with Him, you wear His name, you live in Him, you are saved by Him, you are altogether His. Now, if you are one with Christ, since He is a son, you are a son also. God seeth you not in yourself but in Christ, and that which belongeth unto Christ belongeth also unto you, for if you be Christ's then are you Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. As the Roman youth when he came of age put on the toga, and was admitted to the rights of citizenship, so the putting on of Christ is the token of our admission into the position of sons of God. Thus we are actually admitted to the enjoyment of our glorious heritage. Every blessing of the covenant of grace belongs to those who are Christ's, and every believer is in that list.