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Reformatted by Katie Stewart
The following 25 sermons represent
ten percent of the sermons that C. G. Finney published in the periodical,
"The
Oberlin Evangelist"
-- http://WhatSaithTheScripture.com/Fellowship/Finney.Oberlin.Evangelist.html
--, 1839-1862. They were selected by Professor Cowles, who wrote
down many of Finney's sermons, because he felt that they best exemplified
the Gospel message in a concise presentation. The modern reader will
find that Finney appeals to the heart by requiring his readers to think.
"Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your
sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red
like crimson, they shall be as wool" (Isaiah 1:18). Finney depended
upon the Holy Spirit to press home the logic of his case so that his readers
would have to yield. "Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall
be much required" (Luke 12:48). --Tom Stewart, WStS
"President Finney
had the rare ability
of so interpreting the divine plan of salvation
as at once to instruct the theologian
and to bring its moving thoughts to bear with all their power
upon the hearts of the common people."
--G. Frederick Wright, 1891
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Table of Contents
PREFACE
SERMON I - The
Rule By Which The Guilt Of Sin Is Estimated
SERMON II - The
Self-Hardening Sinner's Doom
SERMON III - The
Loss When A Soul Is Lost
SERMON IV - God's
Anger Against The Wicked
SERMON V - Men
Invited To Reason Together With God
SERMON VI - Conscience
And The Bible In Harmony
SERMON VII - Salvation
Difficult To The Christian, Impossible To The Sinner
SERMON VIII - The
Salvation Of Sinners Impossible
SERMON IX - Any
One Form Of Sin Persisted In Is Fatal To The Soul
SERMON X - The
Wrath Of God Against Those Who Withstand His Truth
SERMON XI - The
Doom Of Those Who Neglect So Great Salvation
SERMON XII - All
Things For Good To Those That Love God
SERMON XIII - All
Things Conspire For Evil To The Sinner
SERMON XIV - God
Has No Pleasure In The Sinner's Death
SERMON XV - The
Rich Man And Lazarus
SERMON XVI - The
Wants Of Man And Their Supply
SERMON XVII - On
Believing With The Heart
SERMON XVIII - On
Being Holy
SERMON XIX - On
Self-Denial
SERMON XX - On
Following Christ
SERMON XXI - Conditions
Of Prevailing Prayer
SERMON XXII - An
Approving Heart, Confidence In Prayer
SERMON XXIII - On
Prayer
SERMON XXIV - On
Prayer For The Holy Spirit
SERMON XXV - Afflictions
Of The Righteous And The Wicked Contrasted
PREFACE.
THE continued interest manifested by the Christian
public in the sermons of President Finney, which were first published
now nearly sixty years ago, bears testimony to the vigour of his reasoning
and to the grace and unction of his expression. During this century at
least, he has had no equal as an interpreter and preacher of the Gospel.
The audiences which he moved and guided to the acceptance of the truth,
always included many persons of the highest intellectual order. So clear
was his conception of the truth, that he was unable to utter an obscure
sentence. So profound was his conviction of the justice and love of God,
and of the unreasonableness and folly of sin, that he could not but speak
with inspiring eloquence when beseeching men to be reconciled to their
Lord and Saviour.
Many of the sermons collected in this volume we remember to have heard
from the preacher's own lips. It is, of course, impossible through the
medium of the printed page to reproduce all the marvelous power attending
the sermons in their original delivery. But Professor Cowles was a sympathetic
reporter, and had long practice in writing out the discourses of the great
preacher he so much admired, and thus was able to present a remarkably
correct report. As an additional guarantee of faithful representation,
the reports were read by Professor Cowles to President Finney before their
original publication in the Oberlin Evangelist, and so have upon them
the stamp of the preacher's own approval.
The sermons of the present volume were selected by Professor Cowles and
arranged for publication before his death, and they are now given to the
public under the conviction that they present with unrivalled clearness,
phases of truth in need of special emphasis at the present time, and that
they have permanent value both as models for the preacher and as sound
philosophical discussions of many of the central themes of the Gospel.
President Finney had the rare ability of so interpreting the divine plan
of salvation as at once to instruct the theologian and to bring its moving
thoughts to bear with all their power upon the hearts of the common people.
We rejoice in the larger circulation which the present form of publication
will give to this selection of sermons. Through the columns of the Oberlin
Evangelist they reached a highly appreciative circle of readers in their
day. It augurs well that in their present form they are likely to reach
many thousands more, and to have a larger share in moulding the theological
thought of the present generation.
G. FREDERICK WRIGHT.
Oberlin, Ohio, September, 1891
THE WAY OF SALVATION Sermon Collection
taken from "The Oberlin Evangelist"
SERMON I. Back to Top
THE RULE BY WHICH THE GUILT OF SIN IS ESTIMATED.
February 4, 1846
by Charles Grandison Finney
President of Oberlin College
Text.--Acts 17:30-31: "And the times of this ignorance God winked
at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent: because He hath appointed
a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness, by that
Man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men,
in that He hath raised Him from the dead."
I recently preached a sermon on impenitence in
which I dwelt at length on the guilt which attaches to sin committed against
great light. I purpose now to discuss this point still farther.
The text declares that God will judge the world in righteousness. I shall
not at this time dwell on the fact that God will judge the world, nor
upon the fact that this judgment will be in righteousness; but shall endeavor
to ascertain what is the rule by which our guilt is to be measured; or
in other words what is implied in judging the world in righteousness.
What is the righteous rule by which guilt is measured, and consequently
the just punishment of the sinner allotted?
In pursuing this subject, I shall deem it important:
I. To state briefly what the conditions of
moral obligation are; and
II. Come directly to the main point, the rule by which guilt is measured.
I. State briefly what the conditions of moral obligation are.
- 1. Moral obligation has respect to the ultimate
intention of the mind. The end had in view, and not the mere external
act must evermore be that to which law pertains and of which guilt is
predicated. Surely guilt cannot be predicated on the outward act merely,
apart from intention: for if the outward act be not according to the
intention as in the case of accidents, we never think of imputing guilt;
and if it be according to the intention, we always, when we act rationally,
ascribe the guilt to the intention and not to the mere hand or tongue,
which became the mind's organ in its wickedness.
This is a principle, which everybody admits when
they understand it. The thing itself lies among the intuitive affirmations
of every child's mind. No sooner has a child the first idea of right
and wrong, but he will excuse himself from blame by saying that he did
not mean to do it, and he knows full well, that if this excuse be true,
it is valid and good as an excuse; and moreover he knows that you and
everybody else both know this and must admit it. This sentiment thus
pervades the minds of all men and none can intelligently deny it.
- 2. Having premised so much, I am prepared to
remark that the first condition of moral obligation is the possession
of the requisite powers of moral agency. There must be intelligence
enough to understand in some measure the value of the end to be chosen
or not chosen, else there can be no responsible choice. There must be
some degree of sensibility to good sought, or evil shunned; else there
never would be any action put forth, or effort made; and there must
also be the power of choice between possible courses to be chosen. These
are all most manifestly requisites for moral choice, or in other words
for responsible moral action and obligation.
- 3. It is essential to moral obligation that
the mind should know in some measure, what it ought to intend.
It must have some apprehension of the value of
the end to be chosen, else there can be no responsible choice of that
end, or responsible neglect to choose it. Everybody must see this, for
if the individual when asked, why he did not choose a given end, could
answer truly, "I did not know that the end was valuable and worthy
of choice," all men would deem this a valid acquittal from moral
delinquency.
- 4. Supposing the individual to know what he
ought to choose; then his obligation to choose it does not grow out
of the fact of God's requiring it, but lies in the value of the end
to be chosen. I have said that he must perceive the end to be chosen,
and in some measure understand its value. This is plain. And this apprehension
of its value is that which binds him to choose it. In other words, the
moral law which enjoins love, or good willing must be subjectively present
to his mind. His mind must have a perception of good which he can will
to others, in connection with which a sense of obligation to will it
springs up, and this constitutes moral obligation.
These are substantially the conditions of moral
obligation; the requisite mental powers for moral action; and a knowledge
of the intrinsic value of the good of being.
Before leaving this topic, let me remark that very probably, no two
creatures in the moral universe may have precisely the same degree of
intelligence respecting the value of the end they ought to choose; yet
shall moral obligation rest upon all these diverse degrees of knowledge,
proportioned evermore in degree to the measure of this knowledge which
any mind possesses. God alone has infinite and changeless knowledge
on this point.
II. I come now to speak of the rule by which
the guilt of refusing to will or intend according to the law of God must
be measured.
- 1. Negatively, guilt is not to be measured by
the fact that God who commands is an infinite being. The measure of
guilt has sometimes been made to turn on this fact, and has been accounted
infinite because God whose commands it violates is infinite. But this
doctrine is inadmissible. It lies fatally open to this objection, that
by it all sin is made to be equally guilty, because all sin is equally
committed against an infinite being. But both the Bible and every man's
intuitive reason proclaim that all sins are not equally guilty. Hence
the measure or rule of their guilt cannot be in the fact of their commission
against an infinite being.
- 2. Guilt cannot be measured by the fact that
God's authority against which sin is committed is infinite. Authority
is the right to command. No one denies that this in God is infinite.
But this fact cannot constitute the measure of guilt, for precisely
the reason just given--namely, that then all sin becomes equally guilty,
being all committed against infinite authority; which conclusion is
false, and therefore the premises are also.
- 3. The degree of guilt cannot be estimated by
the fact that all sin is committed against an infinitely holy and good
being; for reasons of the same kind as just given.
- 4. Nor from the value of the law of which sin
is a transgression; for though all admit that the law is infinitely
good and valuable, yet since it is always equally so, all sin by this
rule must be equally guilty--a conclusion which being false, vitiates
and sets aside our premises.
- 5. The rule cannot lie in the value of that
which the law requires us to will, intend or choose, considered apart
from the mind's perception of the value; for the intrinsic value of
this end is always the same, so that this rule too as the preceding
would bring us to the conclusion that all sins are equally guilty.
- 6. Guilt is not to be measured by the tendency
of sin. All sin tends to one result--unmingled evil. No created being
can tell what sins have the most direct and powerful tendency to produce
evil; since all sin tends to produce evil and only evil continually.
Every modification of sin may for ought we know tend with equal directness
to the same result--evil, and nothing but evil.
- 7. Guilt cannot be measured by the design or
ultimate intention of the sinner. It does indeed lie in his design and
in nothing else; yet you cannot determine the amount of it by merely
knowing his design; for this design is always substantially the same
thing--it is always self-gratification in some form, and nothing else.
I endeavored to show this in my last sermon on impenitence, and we need
to get this idea thoroughly into our minds. The general design of the
sinner being always self-gratification, and it making very little if
any difference in his guilt what form of self-gratification he chooses,
it follows that the measure of guilt cannot be sought here, and must
therefore be sought elsewhere.
- 8. But it is time I should state, positively,
that guilt is always to be estimated by the degree of light under which
the sinful intention is formed, or in other words, it is to be measured
by the mind's knowledge or perception of the value of that end which
the law requires to be chosen. This end is the highest well being of
God and of the universe. This is of infinite value; and in some sense
every moral agent must know it to be of infinite value, and yet individuals
may differ indefinitely in respect to the degree of clearness with which
this great end is apprehended by the mind. Choosing this end--the highest
well-being of God and of the universe always implies the rejection of
self-interest as an end; and on the other hand, the choice of self-interest
or self-gratification as an end always and necessarily implies the rejection
of the highest well-being of God and of the universe as an end. The
choice of either implies the rejection of its opposite.
Now the sinfulness of a selfish choice consists
not merely in its choice of good to self, but in its implying a rejection
of the highest well-being of God and of the universe as a supreme and
ultimate end. If selfishness did not imply the apprehension and rejection
of other and higher interests as an end, it would not imply any guilt
at all. The value of the interests rejected is that in which the guilt
consists. In other words the guilt consists in rejecting the infinitely
valuable well-being of God and of the universe for the sake of selfish
gratification.
Now it is plain that the amount of guilt is as the mind's apprehension
of the value of the interests rejected. In some sense as I have said,
every moral agent has and must of necessity have the idea that the interests
of God and of the universe are of infinite value. He has this idea developed
so clearly that every sin he commits deserves endless punishment, and
yet the degree of his guilt may be greatly enhanced by additional light,
so that he may deserve punishment not only endless in duration but indefinitely
great in degree. Nor is there any contradiction in this. If the sinner
cannot affirm that there is any limit to the value of the interests
he refuses to will and to pursue, he cannot of course affirm that there
is any limit to his guilt and desert of punishment. This is true and
must be true of every sin and of every sinner; and yet as light increases
and the mind gains a clearer apprehension of the infinite value of the
highest well-being of God and of the universe, just in that proportion
does the guilt of sin increase. Hence the measure of knowledge possessed
of duty and its motives, is always and unalterably the rule by which
guilt is to be measured.
The proof of this is two-fold.
- (1.) The scriptures assume and affirm it.
The text affords a plain instance. The apostle
alludes to those past ages when the heathen nations had no written
revelation of God, and remarks that "those times of ignorance
God winked at." This does not mean that God connived at their
sin because of their darkness, but does mean that He passed over it
with comparatively slight notice, regarding it as sin of far less
aggravation than those which men would now commit if they turned away
when God commanded them all to repent. True sin is never absolutely
a light thing; but comparatively, some sins incur small guilt when
compared with the great guilt of other sins. This is implied in our
text.
I next cite James 4:17. "To him that knoweth to do good, and
doeth it not, to him it is sin." This plainly implies that knowledge
is indispensable to moral obligation; and even more than this is implied;
namely, that guilt of any sinner is always equal to the amount of
his knowledge on the subject. It always corresponds to the mind's
perception of the value of the end which should have been chosen,
but is rejected. If a man knows he ought in any given case to do good,
and yet does not do it, to him this is sin--the sin plainly lying
in the fact of not doing good when he knew he could do it, and being
measured as to its guilt by the degree of that knowledge.
John 9:41. "Jesus said unto them, if ye were blind, ye should
have no sin: but now ye say, we see; therefore your sin remaineth."
Here Christ asserts that men without knowledge would be without sin;
and that men who have knowledge, and sin notwithstanding, are held
guilty. This plainly affirms that the presence of light or knowledge
is requisite to the existence of sin, and obviously implies that the
amount of knowledge possessed is the measure of the guilt of sin.
It is remarkable that the Bible everywhere assumes first truths. It
does not stop to prove them, or even assert them--it always assumes
their truth, and seems to assume that every one knows and will admit
them. As I have been recently writing on moral government and studying
the Bible as to its teachings on this class of subjects, I have been
often struck with this remarkable fact.
John 15:22, 24. "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they
had not had sin: but now they have no cloak for their sins. He that
hateth Me, hateth My Father also. If I had not done among them the
works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have
they both seen and hated both Me and My Father." Christ holds
the same doctrine here as in the last passage cited, light essential
to constitute sin, and the degree of light, constituting the measure
of its aggravation. Let it be observed, however, that Christ probably
did not mean to affirm in the absolute sense that if He had not come,
the Jews would have had no sin; for they would have had some light
if He had not come. He speaks as I suppose comparatively. Their sin
if He had not come would have been so much less as to justify His
strong language.
Luke 12: 47-48. "And that servant which knew his Lord's will,
and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall
be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not and did commit things
worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever
much is given, of him shall be much required; and to whom men have
committed much, of him they will ask the more."
Here we have the doctrine laid down and the truth assumed that men
shall be punished according to knowledge. To whom much light is given,
of him shall much obedience be required. This is precisely the principle
that God requires of men according to the light they have.
1 Tim. 1:13. "Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor,
and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in
unbelief." Paul had done things intrinsically as bad as well
they could be; yet his guilt was far less because he did them under
the darkness of unbelief; hence he obtained mercy, when otherwise,
he might not. The plain assumption is that his ignorance abated from
the malignity of his sin, and favored his obtaining mercy.
In another passage, (Acts 26:9) Paul says of himself--"I verily
thought with myself, that I ought to do many things contrary to the
name of Jesus of Nazareth." This had everything to do with the
degree of his guilt in rejecting the Messiah, and also with his obtaining
pardon.
Luke 23:34. "Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they
know not what they do." This passage presents to us the suffering
Jesus, surrounded with Roman soldiers and malicious scribes and priests,
yet pouring out His prayer for them, and making the only plea in their
behalf which could be made--"for they know not what they do."
This does not imply that they had no guilt, for if that were true
they would not have needed forgiveness; but it did imply that their
guilt was greatly palliated by their ignorance. If they had known
Him to be Messiah, their guilt might have been unpardonable.
Matt. 11:20-24. "Then began He to upbraid the cities wherein
most of His mighty works were done, because they repented not. Woe
unto thee Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works
which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would
have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you
it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment
than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven,
shalt be brought down to hell; for if the mighty works which have
been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained
until this day. But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable
for the land of Sodom, in the day of judgment, than for thee."
Buy why does Christ thus upbraid these cities? Why denounce so fearful
a woe on Chorazin and Capernaum? Because most of His mighty works
had been wrought there. His oft-repeated miracles which proved Him
the Messiah had been wrought before their eyes. Among them He had
taught daily, and in their synagogues every Sabbath day. They had
great light--hence their great--their unsurpassed guilt. Not even
the men of Sodom had guilt to compare with theirs. The city most exalted,
even as it were to heaven, must be brought down to the deepest hell.
Guilt and punishment, evermore, according to light enjoyed but resisted.
Luke 11:47-51. "Woe unto you! for ye build the sepulchers of
the prophets, and your fathers killed them. Truly ye bear witness
that ye allow the deeds of your fathers; for they indeed killed them,
and ye build their sepulchers. Therefore also said the wisdom of God,
I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall
slay and persecute: that the blood of all the prophets, which was
shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation.
From the blood of Abel, unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished
between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you it shall be
required of this generation." Now here, I ask, on what principle
was it that all the blood of martyred prophets ever since the world
began was required of that generation? Because they deserved it; for
God does no such thing as injustice. It never was known that He punished
any people or any individual beyond their desert.
But why and how did they deserve this fearful and augmented visitation
of the wrath of God for past centuries of persecution?
The answer is two-fold: they sinned against accumulated light: and
they virtually endorsed all the persecuting deeds of their fathers,
and concurred most heartily in their guilt. They had all the oracles
of God. The whole history of the nation lay in their hands. They knew
the blameless and holy character of those prophets who had been martyred;
they could read the guilt of their persecutors and murderers. Yet
under all this light, themselves go straight on and perpetrate deeds
of the same sort, but of far deeper malignity.
Again, in doing this they virtually endorse all that their fathers
did. Their conduct towards the Man of Nazareth, put into words would
read thus--"The holy men whom God sent to teach and rebuke our
fathers, they maliciously traduced and put to death; they did right,
and we will do the same thing towards Christ." Now it was not
possible for them to give a more decided sanction to the bloody deeds
of their fathers. They underwrote for every crime--assume upon their
own consciences all the guilt of their fathers. In intention, they
do those deeds over again. They say, "if we had lived then we
should have done and sanctioned all they did."
On the same principle the accumulated guilt of all the blood and miseries
of Slavery since the world began rests on this nation now. The guilt
involved in every pang, every tear, every blood-drop forced out by
the knotted scourge--all lies at the door of this generation. Why?
Because the history of all the past is before the pro-slavery men
of this generation, and they endorse the whole by persisting in the
practice of the same system and of the same wrongs. No generation
before us ever had the light on the evils and the wrongs of Slavery
that we have; hence the guilt exceeds that of any former generation
of slave-holders; and, moreover, knowing all the cruel wrongs and
miseries of the system from the history of the past, every persisting
slave-holder endorses all the crimes and assumes all the guilt involved
in the system and evolved out of it since the world began.
Romans 7:13. "Was then that which is good made death unto me?
God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, worketh death in me
by that which is good, that sin by the commandment might become exceeding
sinful." The last clause of this verse brings out clearly the
principle that under the light which the commandment, that is, the
law, affords, sin becomes exceeding guilty. This is the very principle,
which, we have seen, is so clearly taught and implied in numerous
passages of Scripture.
The diligent reader of the Bible knows that these are only a part
of the texts which teach the same doctrine: we need not adduce any
more.
- (2.) I remark that this is the rule and the
only just rule by which the guilt of sin can be measured. If I had
time to turn the subject over and over--time to take up every other
conceivable supposition, I could show that none of them can possibly
be true. No supposition can abide a close examination except this,
that the rule or measure of guilt is the mind's knowledge pertaining
to the value of the end to be chosen.
There can be no other criterion by which guilt
can be measured. It is the value of the end chosen which constitutes
sin guilty, and the mind's estimate of that value measures its own
guilt. This is true according to the Bible as we have seen; and every
man needs only consult his own consciousness faithfully and he will
see that it is equally affirmed by the mind's own intuition to be
right.
A few inferences may be drawn from our doctrine.
- 1. Guilt is not to be measured by the nature
of the intention; for sinful intention is always a unit--always
one and the same thing--being nothing more nor less than self-gratification.
- 2. Nor can it be measured by the particular
type of self-gratification which the mind may prefer. No matter
which of his numerous appetites or propensities the man may choose
to indulge--whether for food, for strong drink--for power, pleasure,
or gain--it is the same thing in the end--self-gratification, and
nothing else. For the sake of this he sacrifices every other conflicting
interest, and herein lies his guilt. Yet since he tramples on the
greater good of others with equal recklessness, whatever type of
self-gratification he prefers, it is plain that we cannot find in
this type any true measure of his guilt.
- 3. Nor again is the guilt to be decided
by the amount of evil which the sin may bring into the universe.
An agent not enlightened may introduce great evil and yet no guilt
attach to this agent. This is true of evil often done by brute animals.
It is true of the mischiefs effected by alcohol. In fact it matters
not how much or how little evil may result from the misdeeds of
a moral agent, you cannot determine the amount of his guilt from
this circumstance. God may overrule the greatest sin so that but
little evil shall result from it, or He may leave its tendencies
uncounteracted so that great evils shall result from the least sin.
Who can tell how much or how little overruling agency may interpose
between any sin great or small and its legitimate results?
Satan sinned in betraying Judas, and Judas
sinned in betraying Christ. Yet God so overruled these sins that
most blessed results to the universe followed from Christ's betrayal
and consequent death. Shall the sins of Satan and Judas be estimated
by the evils actually resulting from them? If it should appear that
the good immensely overbalanced the evil, does their sin thereby
become holiness--meritorious holiness? Is their guilt at all the
less for God's wisdom and love in overruling it for good?
It is not therefore the amount of resulting good or evil which determines
the amount of guilt, but is the degree of light enjoyed, under which
the sin is committed.
- 4. Nor again can guilt be measured by the
common opinions of men. Men associated in society are wont to form
among themselves a sort of public sentiment which becomes a standard
for estimating guilt; yet how often is it erroneous? Christ warns
us against adopting this standard, and also against ever judging
according to the outward appearance. Who does not know that the
common opinions of men are exceedingly incorrect? It is indeed wonderful
to see how far they diverge in all directions from the Bible standard.
- 5. The amount of guilt can be determined
as I have said only by the degree in which those ideas are developed
which throw light upon obligation. Just here sin lies, in resisting
the light and acting in opposition to it, and therefore the degree
of light should naturally measure the amount of guilt incurred.
REMARKS.
1. We see from this subject the principle on which many passages of scripture
are to be explained. It might seem strange that Christ should charge the
blood of all the martyred prophets of past ages on that generation. But
the subject before us reveals the principle upon which this is done and
ought to be done.
Whatever of apparent mystery may attach to the fact declared in our text--"The
times of this ignorance God winked at"--finds in our subject an adequate
explanation. Does it seem strange that for ages God should pass over almost
without apparent notice the monstrous and reeking abominations of the
Heathen world? The reason is found in their ignorance. Therefore God winks
at those odious and cruel idolatries. For all, taken together, are a trifle
compared with the guilt of a single generation of enlightened men.
2. One sinner may be in such circumstances as to have more light and knowledge
than the whole Heathen world. Alas! how little the Heathen know! How little
compared with what is known by sinners in this land, even by very young
sinners!
Let me call up and question some impenitent sinner of Oberlin. It matters
but little who--let it be any Sabbath School child.
What do you know about God?
I know that He is infinitely great and good. But the Heathen thinks some
of his gods are both mean and mischievous--wicked as can be and the very
patrons of wickedness among men.
What do you know about salvation? I know that God so loved the world as
to give His only begotten Son to die that whosoever would believe on Him
might live forever. O, the Heathen never heard of that. They would faint
away methinks in amazement if they should hear and really believe the
startling, glorious fact. And that Sabbath School child knows that God
gives His Spirit to convince of sin. He has perhaps often been sensible
of the presence and power of the Spirit. But the Heathen know nothing
of this.
You too know that you are immortal--that beyond death there is still a
conscious unchanging state of existence, blissful or wretched according
to the deeds done here. But the Heathen have no just ideas on this subject.
It is to them as if all were a blank.
The amount of it then is that you know everything--the Heathen almost
nothing. You know all you need to know to be saved, to be useful--to honor
God and serve your generation according to His will. The Heathen sit in
deep darkness, wedded to their abominations, groping, yet finding nothing.
As your light therefore, so is your guilt immeasurably greater than theirs.
Be it so that their idolatries are monstrous--your guilt in your impenitence
under the light you have is vastly more so. See that Heathen mother dragging
her shrieking child and tumbling it into the Ganges? See her rush with
another to throw him into the burning arms of Moloch. Mark; see that pile
of wood flashing, lifting up its lurid flames toward heaven. Those men
are dragging a dead husband--they heave his senseless corpse on to that
burning pile. There comes the widow--her hair disheveled and flying--gaily
festooned for such a sacrifice; she dances on; she rends the air with
her howls and her wailings; she shrinks and yet she does not shrink--she
leaps on the pile, and the din of music with the yell of spectators buries
her shrieks of agony; she is gone! O, my blood curdles and runs cold in
my veins; my hair stands on end; I am horrified with such scenes--but
what shall we say of their guilt? Ah yes--what do they know of God--of
worship--of the claims of God upon their heart and life? Ah, you may well
spare your censure of the Heathen for their fearful orgies of cruelty
and lust, and give it where light has been enjoyed and resisted.
3. You see then that often a sinner in some of our congregations may know
more than all the Heathen world know. If this be true, what follows from
it as to the amount of his comparative guilt? This, inevitably, that such
a sinner deserves a direr and deeper damnation than all the Heathen world!
This conclusion may seem startling; but how can we escape from it? We
cannot escape. It is as plain as any mathematical demonstration. This
is the principle asserted by Christ when He said--"That servant which
knew his Lord's will and prepared not himself, neither did according to
His will shall be beaten with many stripes; but he that knew not and did
commit things worthy of stripes; shall be beaten with few stripes."
How solemn and how pungent the application of this doctrine would be in
this congregation! I could call out many a sinner in this place and show
him that beyond question his guilt is greater than that of all the Heathen
world. Yet how few ever estimated their own guilt thus.
Not long since an ungodly young man, trained in this country, wrote back
from the Sandwich Islands a glowing and perhaps a just description of
their horrible abominations, moralizing on their monstrous enormities
and thanking God that he had been born and taught in a Christian land.
Indeed! He might well have spared this censure of the dark-minded Heathen!
His own guilt in remaining an impenitent sinner under all the light of
Christian America was greater than the whole aggregate guilt of all those
Islands.
So we may all well spare our expressions of abhorrence at the guilty abominations
of idolatry. You are often perhaps saying in your heart--Why does God
endure these horrid abominations another day? See that rolling car of
Juggernaut. Its wheels move axle deep in the gushing blood and crushed
bones of its deluded worshipers! And yet God looks on and no red bolt
leaps from His right hand to smite such wickedness. They are indeed guilty;
but O how small their guilt compared with the guilt of those who know
their duty perfectly, yet never do it! God sees their horrible abominations,
yet does He wink at them because they are done in so much ignorance.
But see that impenitent sinner. Convicted of his sin under the clear gospel
light that shines all around him, he is driven to pray. He knows he ought
to repent, and almost thinks he wants to, and will try. Yet still he clings
to his sins, and will not give up his heart to God. Still he holds his
heart in a state of impenitence. Now mark here; his sin in thus withholding
his heart from God under so much light, involves greater guilt than all
the abominations of the heathen world. Put together the guilt of all those
widows who immolate themselves on the funeral pile--of those who hurl
their children into the Ganges, or into the burning arms of Moloch--all
does not begin to approach the guilt of that convicted sinner's prayer
who comes before God under the pressure of his conscience, and prays a
heartless prayer, determined all the while to withhold his heart from
God. O, why does this sinner thus tempt God, and thus abuse His love,
and thus trample on His known authority? O, that moment of impenitence,
while his prayers are forced by conscience from his burning lips, and
yet he will not yield the controversy with his Maker--that moment involves
direr guilt than rests on all the Heathen world together! He knows more
than they all, yet sins despite of all his knowledge. The many stripes
belong to him--the few to them.
4. This leads me to remark again, that the Christian world may very well
spare their revilings and condemnations of the Heathen. Of all the portions
of earth's population, Christendom is infinitely the most guilty--Christendom,
where the gospel peals from ten thousand pulpits--where its praises are
sung by a thousand choirs, but where many thousand hearts that know God
and duty, refuse either to reverence the one or perform the other! All
the abominations of the Heathen world are a mere trifle compared with
the guilt of Christendom. We may look down upon the filth and meanness
and degradation of a Heathen people, and feel a most polite disgust at
the spectacle--and far be it from me, to excuse these degrading, filthy
or cruel practices; but how small their light and consequently their guilt
compared with our own! We therefore ask the Christian world to turn away
from the spectacle of Heathen degradation, and look nearer home, upon
the spectacle of Christian guilt! Let us look upon ourselves.
5. Again, let us fear not to say what you must all see to be true, that
the nominal church is the most guilty part of Christendom. It cannot for
a moment be questioned, that the church has more light than any other
portion; therefore has she more guilt. Of course I speak of the nominal
church--not the real church whom He has pardoned and cleansed from her
sins. But in the nominal church, think of the sins that live and riot
in their corruption. See that backslider. He has tasted the waters of
life. He has been greatly enlightened. Perhaps he has really known the
Lord by true faith--and then see, he turns away to beg the husks of earthly
pleasure! He turns his back on the bleeding Lamb! Now, put together all
the guilt of every Heathen soul that has gone to hell--of every soul that
has gone from a state of utter moral darkness, and your guilt, backsliding
Christian, is greater than all theirs!
Do you, therefore say--may God then, have mercy on my soul? So say we
all; but we must add, if it be possible; for who can say that such guilt
as yours can be forgiven! Can Christ pray for you as he prayed for His
murderers--"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?"
Can He plead in your behalf, that you know not what you are doing? Awful!
Awful!! Where is the sounding line that shall measure the ocean-depth
of your guilt!
6. Again, if our children remain in sin, we may cease to congratulate
ourselves that they were not born in Heathenism or slavery! How often
have I done this! How often, as I have looked upon my sons and daughters,
have I thanked God that they were not born to be thrown into the burning
arms of a Moloch, or to be crushed under the wheels of Juggernaut! But
if they will live in sin, we must suspend our self-congratulations for
their having Christian light and privileges. If they will not repent,
it were infinitely better for them to have been born in the thickest Pagan
darkness--better to have been thrown in their tender years into the Ganges,
or into the fires which idolatry kindles--better be anything else, or
suffer anything earthly, than have the gospel's light only to shut it
out and go to hell despite of its admonitions.
Let us not, then be hasty in congratulating ourselves, as if this great
light enjoyed by us and by our children, were of course a certain good
to them; but this we may do--we may rejoice that God will honor Himself--His
mercy if He can, and His justice if He must. God will be honored, and
we may glory in this. But oh, the sinner, the sinner! Who can measure
the depth of his guilt, or the terror of his final doom! It will be more
tolerable for all the heathen world together than for you.
7. It is time that we all understood this subject fully, and appreciated
all its bearings. It is no doubt true, that however moral our children
may be, they are more guilty than any other sinners under heaven, if they
live in sin, and will not yield to the light under which they live. We
may be perhaps congratulating ourselves on their fair morality; but if
we saw their case in all its real bearings, our souls would groan with
agony--our bowels would be all liquid with anguish--our very hearts within
us would heave as if volcanic fires were kindled there--so deep a sense
should we have of their fearful guilt and of the awful doom they incur
in denying the Lord that bought them, and setting at naught a known salvation.
O, if we ever pray, we should pour out our prayers for our offspring as
if nothing could ever satisfy us or stay our importunity, but the blessings
of a full salvation realized in their souls.
Let the mind contemplate the guilt of these children. I could not find
a Sabbath school child, perhaps not one in all Christendom who could not
tell me more of God's salvation than all the Heathen world know. That
dear little boy who comes from his Sabbath school knows all about the
gospel. He is almost ready to be converted, but not quite ready; yet that
little boy, if he knows his duty, and yet will not do it, is covered with
more guilt than all the Heathen world together. Yes, that boy, who goes
alone and prays, yet holds back his heart from God, and then his mother
comes and prays over him, and pours her tears on his head, and his little
heart almost melts, and he seems on the very point of giving up his whole
heart to the Savior; yet if he will not do it, he commits more sin in
that refusal than all the sin of all the Heathen world--his guilt is more
than the guilt of all the murders, all the drownings of children and burnings
of widows, and deeds of cruelty and violence in all the heathen world.
All this combination of guilt shall not be equal to the guilt of the lad
who knows his duty, but will not yield his heart to its righteous claims.
8. "The Heathen," says an apostle, "sin without law, and
shall therefore perish without law." In their final doom they will
be cast away from God; this will be perhaps about all. The bitter reflection,
"I had the light of the gospel and would not yield to it--I knew
all my duty, yet did it not"--this cannot be a part of their eternal
doom. This is reserved for those who gather themselves into our sanctuaries
and around our family altars, yet will not serve their own Infinite Father.
9. One more remark. Suppose I should call out a sinner by name--one of
the sinners of this congregation, a son of pious parents, and should call
up the father also. I might say, Is this your son" Yes. What testimony
can you bear about this son of yours? I have endeavored to teach him all
the ways of the Lord. Son, what can you say? I know my duty. I have heard
it a thousand times. I know I ought to repent, but I never would.
O, if we understood this matter in all its bearings, it would fill every
bosom with consternation and grief. How would our bowels burn and heave
as a volcano. There would be one universal outcry of anguish and terror
at the awful guilt and fearful doom of such a sinner!
Young man, are you going away this day in your sins? Then, what angel
can compute your guilt? O, how long has Jesus held out His hands, yes,
His bleeding hands, and besought you to look and live! A thousand times,
and in countless varied ways has He called, but you have refused; stretched
out His hands, and you have not regarded. O, why will you not repent?
Why not say at once; It is enough that I have sinned so long. I cannot
live so any longer! O, sinner, why will you live so? Would you go down
to hell--ah, to the deepest hell--where, if we would find you, we must
work our way down a thousand years through ranks of lost spirits less
guilty than you, ere we could reach the fearful depth to which you have
sunk! O, sinner, what a hell is that which can adequately punish such
guilt as thine!
continued / THE WAY OF SALVATION Sermon
Collection
taken from "The Oberlin Evangelist"
SERMON II. Back to Top
THE SELF-HARDENING SINNER'S DOOM.
May 9, 1849
by Charles Grandison Finney
President of Oberlin College
Text.--Pro. 29:1: "He that, being often reproved, hardeneth his neck,
shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy."
In discussing this subject I will consider:
I. When and how persons are reproved
II. God's design in reproving sinners
III. What it is to harden the neck
IV. What is intended by the sinner's being suddenly destroyed, and
V. What is implied in its being without remedy
I. When and how persons are reproved.
God's reproof of sinners may properly be considered as embracing three
distinct departments; namely, reproof by means of His word, by means of
His providence, and through His Spirit. My limits will allow me to make
only a few suggestions under each of these heads.
- 1. God reproves the sinner by His word whenever
He in any way presents truth to his mind through His word, which shows
the sinner His sins, which reveals to him duties that he is not performing.
Any such revelation of duties not done, and of sins positively committed
is reproof from God. Suppose you are a parent, and you point out to
your child some neglect of duty. You by this act reprove your child.
There may be connected with this some degree of threatening explicitly
announced, or there may not be; in either case it is reproof for it
must always be understood that threatening is involved. Hence if you
call the attention of your child to anything in his conduct which displeases
you, this very act is reproof. So when God by the revealed truth of
His word calls the sinner's attention to the fact of sin, He virtually
reproves him, and this is God's intention in calling his mind to the
fact of his sin.
- 2. By God's providence sinners are reproved,
when their selfish projects are defeated. Sinful men are continually
planning selfish schemes, and God often through His providence frustrates
those schemes; and does so for the very purpose of reproving their projectors.
He could not rebuke them in a more emphatic way than this.
Sinners often form ambitious projects. The student
seeks for himself a great name as a scholar; in other spheres, men seek
the renown of the warrior, or the civilian--their aspiration being to
enroll their names high above their fellows on the pillar of fame; but
God in His providence blasts their hopes, frustrates their plans, and
would fain make them see that they had better by far get their names
written in the Lamb's book of Life. So He blots out their name on Ambition's
scroll as fast as they can write it there; as if He would show them
their folly, and allure them to write it where no power can ever erase
it.
Again, it often happens that men by means of their selfishness become
involved in difficulty; perhaps by a selfish use of their property,
or by a selfish indulgence of their tongues; and God springs His net
upon them, and suddenly they are taken, and find themselves suddenly
brought up to think of their ways, and to experience the mischiefs of
their selfish schemes. How often do we see this! Men make haste to be
rich, and start some grasping scheme of selfishness for this purpose;
but God suddenly springs His net upon them--blasts their schemes, and
sets them to thinking whether there be not a "God in heaven who
minds the affairs of men."
Another man finds himself entangled in lawsuits, and his property melts
away like an April snow; and another pushes into some hazardous speculation--till
the frown of the Almighty rebukes his folly.
As men have a thousand ways to develop their selfishness, so God has
a thousand ways to head them back in their schemes and suggest forcibly
to their minds that "this their way is their folly." In all
such cases men ought to regard themselves as taken in the net of God's
providence. God meets them in the narrow way of their selfishness, to
talk with them about the vanity and folly of their course.
Everything which is adapted to arrest the attention of men in their
sins may be regarded as a providential reproof. Thus, when God comes
among sinners and cuts down some of their companions in iniquity, how
solemn often are those dispensations! Often have I had opportunity to
notice these effects. Often have I seen how solemn the minds of sinners
become under these reproofs of the Almighty. Their feelings become tender;
their sensibilities to truth are strongly excited. Who can fail to see
that such events are designed to arrest the attention, and to rebuke
and reprove them in their course of sin?
Every obstacle which God in His providence interposes in your way of
selfishness, is His reproof. You can regard it in no other light.
God sometimes reproves sinners in a way which may be deemed more pungent
than any other. I allude to that way which the Bible describes as heaping
coals of fire on an enemy's head. A man abuses you; and in retaliation,
you do him all the good in your power. Glorious retaliation! How it
pours the scorching lava on his head! Now God often does this very thing
with sinners. They sin against Him most abusively and most outrageously;
and what does He do? How does He retaliate upon them? Only by pouring
out upon them a yet richer flood of mercies! He pours new blessings
into their lap till it runs over. He prospers their efforts for property;
enlarges their families like a flock, and smiles on everything to which
they put their hand. O how strangely do these mercies contrast with
the sinner's abuse of his great Benefactor!
I can recollect some cases of this sort in my own experience, when the
deep consciousness of guilt made me apprehend some great judgments from
God. But just then, God seemed in a most remarkable manner to reveal
His kindness and His love, and to show the great meekness of His heart.
O what a rebuke of my sins was this! Could anything else so break my
heart all to pieces? Who does not know the power of kindness to melt
the heart?
So God rebukes the sinner for his sins, and seeks to subdue his hard
heart by manifested love.
Often sickness is to be regarded as a rebuke from God. When persons
for selfish purposes abuse their health and God snatches it away, He
in a most forcible way rebukes them for their madness.
Sometimes He brings the lives of men into great peril, so that there
shall be but a step between them and death; as if He would give this
movement of His providence a voice of trumpet-power to forewarn them
of their coming doom. So various and striking are the ways of God's
providence in which He reproves men for their sins.
- 3. God also reproves men by His Spirit. According
to our Savior's teachings, the Spirit shall "reprove the world
of sin, of righteousness and of judgment." Hence when sinners are
specially convicted of sin they should know that God has come in His
own person to reprove them. His Spirit comes to their very hearts, and
makes impressions of truth and duty there--revealing to the sinner his
own heart, and showing him how utterly at variance it is with a heart
full of divine love.
Again, I have no doubt that in the present as
in former days God reproves men of their sins by means of dreams. If
all the reliable cases of this sort which have occurred since the Bible
was completed were recorded, I doubt not they would fill many volumes.
I am aware that some suppose this mode of divine operation upon the
human mind has long ago ceased; but I think otherwise. It may have ceased
to be a medium of revealing new truth--doubtless it has; but it has
not ceased to be employed as a means of impressing and enforcing truth
already revealed. Sometimes the great realities of the coming judgment
and of the world of doom are brought out and impressed upon the mind
with overwhelming force by means of dreams. When this is the case, who
shall say that the hand of the Lord is not in it?
A striking instance of a dream in which the hand of the Lord may be
seen, is related by President Edwards. One of his neighbors, an intemperate
man, dreamed that he died and went to hell. I will not attempt to relate
here the circumstances that according to his dream occurred there. Suffice
it to say that he obtained permission to return to earth on probation
for one year, and was told distinctly that if he did not reform within
one year, he must come back again. Upon this he awaked, under most solemn
impressions of the dreadful realities of the sinner's hell. That very
morning he went to see his pastor, Pres. Edwards, who said to him--"This
is a solemn warning from God to your soul. You must give heed to it
and forsake your sins, or you are a ruined man for eternity." The
man made very solemn promises. When he had retired, Edwards opened his
journal and made an entry of the principal facts; the dream, the conversation,
and of course the date of these events. The inebriate reformed and ran
well for a time; attended church and seemed serious; but long before
the year came around, he relapsed, returned to his cups, and ultimately,
in a fit of intoxication opened a chamber door in a shop which led down
an outside stairway--pitched headlong and broke his neck. Pres. Edwards
turned to his journal and found that the one year from the date of his
dream came round that very night, and the man's appointed time was up!
Now it is no doubt true that in general, dreams are under the control
of physical law, and follow, though with much irregularity, the strain
of our waking revelries; and for this reason many persons will not believe
the hand of the Lord ever works in them; yet their inference is by no
means legitimate; for God certainly can put His hand upon the mind dreaming
as well as upon the mind waking, and multitudes of instances in point
show that He sometimes does.
Again, God reproves the sinner whenever His Spirit awakens in the mind
a sense of the great danger of living in sin. I have often known sinners
greatly affected with the thought of this danger--the terrible danger
of passing along through life in sin, exposed every hour to an eternal
and remediless hell.
Now these solemn impressions are God's kind warnings, impressed on the
soul because He loves the sinner's well-being, and would fain save him
if He wisely can.
- 4. Often God's Spirit gives sinners a most impressive
view of the shortness of time. He makes them feel that this general
truth applies in all its power to themselves--that their own time is
short, and that they in all probability have not long to live. I am
aware that this impression sometimes originates in one's state of health;
but I also know that sometimes there is good reason to recognize God's
own special hand in it; and that men sometimes ascribe to nervous depression
of spirits what should be ascribed directly to God Himself.
Again, God often makes the impression that the
present is the sinner's last opportunity to secure salvation. I know
not how many such cases have fallen under my own observation, cases
in which sinners have been made to feel deeply that this is to be the
very last offer of mercy, and these the very last strivings of the Spirit.
My observation has taught me in such cases, to expect that the result
will verify the warning--that this is none other than God's voice, and
that God does not lie to man, but teaches most solemn and impressive
truth. O how does it become every sinner to listen and heed such timely
warnings!
Again, God's Spirit reproves sinners through their particular friends,
or through gospel ministers. The affectionate admonitions of a brother
or a sister, a parent or a child--a husband, or a wife, how often have
these been the vehicle through which God has spoken to the soul! His
minister also, God often employs for this purpose, so directing their
minds that they in fact present to the sinner the very truth which fits
his case, and he says, "It must be that somebody has told the minister
all about my thoughts and feelings. Who can it be? I have never told
anybody half so much of my heart as he has preached today." Now
in such cases you may be safe in ascribing the fitting truth to the
guiding hand of the divine Spirit. God is making use of His servant
to reprove the sinner.
In all such cases as I have now been adducing,
the reproofs administered should be ascribed to the Spirit of the Lord.
In the same manner as God often in various ways administers consolation
to penitent souls; so does He administer reproof to the impenitent. He
has a thousand modes of making His voice audible to the sinner's conscience,
and in His wisdom He always selects such as He deems best adapted to produce
the desired result.
II. The design of God in reproving sinners.
- 1. One thing aimed at is to press them with
the means of reform. A benevolent God sincerely desires their salvation
and honestly does all He wisely can to secure this desired result. Hence
His oft repeated reproofs and warnings. He will at least leave them
without excuse. They shall never have it to say--"Oh, if we had
only been forewarned of danger in those precious hours and years in
which salvation was possible!" God designedly forestalls such exclamations
by taking away all occasion, and putting in their mouths a very different
one--"How have I hated instruction and my heart despised reproof!"
- 2. For this purpose God forewarns the sinner
in season. Take the case of the man who dreamed of going down to hell.
This dream was a loud and timely warning, adapted as well perhaps as
any warning could be to induce reform and real repentance. It effectually
took away all excuse or apology for persisting in his sins.
- 3. God designs by these reproofs to prepare
men for the solemn judgment. It is in His heart to do them good--secure
their seasonable--that is, their present, immediate repentance, so that
they may meet their God in peace at last. His benevolence prompts Him
to this course and He pursues it with all His heart.
- 4. It is no doubt equally true that the great
God designs to be ready Himself for the final judgment--to meet every
sinner there. He foresees that it will be important for Him there to
show how He has dealt with each sinner--how often and how faithfully
He has acted towards them the part of a kind Father. For this end every
reproof ever given to a sinner will come in place. That dream recorded
by Pres. Edwards will then be found recorded also by an angel's pen--to
be revealed before all worlds then and there! This is one step in the
process of parental efforts for reclaiming one sinner. The admonition
so faithfully given by Pres. Edwards is another. All will go to show
that truly God has been "long suffering towards sinners because
He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to
repentance."
Thus will God in these providential warnings
glorify Himself by exhibiting His true character and conduct. Nothing
more is ever needful in order to glorify God than that His true character
and conduct should be known as it is. The developments brought out at
the judgment-day will thus reveal God, and of course will enhance His
glory.
- 5. It is also interesting to see how God makes
one warning create another. One providential event, sent as a judgment
upon one sinner, multiplies its warning voice many fold as it falls
upon the ears of hosts of other sinners. God cuts down one out of a
class of hoary sinners, or of sinners in middle life, or in youth, and
the event speaks in notes of solemn warning to hundreds. At Rome N.Y.,
several years ago a great revival occurred, the power of which rocked
and rent the stout hearts of many sinners, as the forest trees are rocked
and rent by a tornado; but with it came some awful judgments revealing
another form of the mighty hand of God. There were in that place a small
class of hard drinkers who seemed determined to resist every call from
God to repent. On the Sabbaths they would get together for drinking
and reveling. On one of these occasions, one of their number suddenly
fell down dead. Mr. Gillett, pastor of the church in that place, hastened
to the spot, found the fallen man yet warm, but actually dead; and turning
to the surrounding company of his associates, said, "There--who
of you can doubt that this man has gone right down into hell!"
This case made a deep and thrilling impression.
- 6. Another man, a famous apostate from a profession
of religion, greatly opposed the revival. All at once God smote him
with madness, and in his insane ravings he sought to take his own life.
Men by turns had to watch him and restrain him by violence from committing
suicide. Ere long he died a most horrid death--an awful warning to hardened
apostates of their impending doom! So God tries to reform and save guilty
men.
Again, God would manifest the utter madness,
recklessness and folly of sinners. How striking it will appear in the
judgment to see such a multitude of cases of reproof brought out to
light, and then in connection to see the folly and madness of sinners
in resisting so many reproofs! What a gazing-stock will sinners then
be to the gathered myriads of intelligent beings! I have sometimes thought
this will be the greatest wonder of the universe, to see the men who
have displayed such perfect and long-continued infatuation in resisting
so much love and so many kind and most heart-affecting appeals and reproofs!
There they will stand monuments of the voluntary infatuation of a self-willed
sinner! The intelligent universe will gaze at them as if they were the
embodiment of all that is wondrous in madness and folly!
III. What is it to harden the neck?
The figure is taken from the effect of the yoke on the bullock. Under
constant pressure and friction the skin becomes callous, and past feeling.
So with the sinner's conscience. His will has resisted truth until his
constant opposition has hardened his moral sensibility, and his will rests
in the attitude of rebellion against God. His mind is now fixed; reproofs
which have heretofore chafed his sensibilities no longer reach them; friction
and resistance have hardened his heart till he is past feeling. No dispensations
of providence alarm him; no voice from God disturbs him; under all appeals
to his reason or conscience his will is doggedly fixed; his moral feelings
are insensible.
In this state, one might well say, the neck is hardened. The figure is
pertinent. Who has not seen cases of this sort? Cases of men who have
become so hardened that every reproof passes by them as if it touched
them not--as if their moral sensibility had ceased to be any sensibility
at all. I was struck the other day in conversing with a man of seventy-five,
with his apparent insensibility to religious considerations. Are you a
Christian, said I? "No; I don't know anything about them things--what
you call Christians. I never murdered anybody, and I guess I have been
as honest as most folks in my way."
But are you prepared to enter heaven--to go into another state of existence,
and meet God face to face? "O, I don't believe anything about them
things. If I only live about right, that's enough for me." I could
make no impression on such a mind as his; but God will make such men know
something about these things by and by. They will change their tone ere
long!
You sometimes see men in this condition who have given their intelligence
up to embrace error, and have of free choice put darkness for light, and
light for darkness; have stultified themselves in their own iniquities,
and have said to evil, "Be thou my good." These have a seared
conscience and a hard heart; their neck is an iron sinew, and they are
fixed and fully set never to yield to God's most reasonable demands.
What then shall God do with such men? The text tells us. They "shall
be suddenly destroyed, and that without remedy." This leads me to
inquire.
IV. What is meant by being suddenly destroyed?
- 1. It implies their being cut off unexpectedly,
in such an hour as they think not. We often speak of things as coming
suddenly not because they come early in life, but because they fall
upon men all suddenly and without being at all anticipated. In this
sense the term suddenly seems to be used in our text. When some awful
stroke of God's providence falls suddenly among us, smiting down some
sinner in his sins, we say--What a sudden death! What an awful dispensation!
So the Bible says, while they cry "Peace and safety, then sudden
destruction cometh upon them, and they shall not escape." No forewarning
is given; no herald with trumpet-call proclaims the coming of that death-shaft;
but all suddenly it cuts the air and strikes its blow! It has no need
to strike another! Noiseless as the falling dew it comes; with velvet
step it enters his bed-chamber; in such forms as no skill or power of
man can baffle, it makes its approaches; death raises his bony arm--poises
that never-erring shaft--in a moment, where is the victim? Gone; but
where? The Bible says, he is "suddenly destroyed." Does this
mean that he is borne up as on a chariot of fire to heaven? Where the
wicked men of Sodom and Gomorrah--"set forth as an ensample"
of the doom of the wicked--caught away up to heaven in mounting columns
of fire and brimstone? If that had been, methinks all heaven would have
fainted at the sight! Or were the people of the old world, who had all
corrupted their way before God, and who were so full of violence and
bloodshed that God could not endure them on earth--were they all swept
by the flood into heaven, while poor Noah, scorned by the men of his
generation, must toil many long years to prepare him an ark to save
himself and family from being also destroyed into heaven?
- 2. What infinite trifling is this with God's
words! To say that the sinner's destruction is only taking him by the
shortest route and the quickest way into heaven! Does God say or mean
this? No! If it had been His purpose to deceive men, He could not have
taken a more direct and certain method than this, of calling the taking
of men suddenly to heaven, destruction! No, this mode of using language
belongs to Satan and not to God. We should never confound the broad
distinction between the God of truth and the Father of lies!
V. What is meant when this destruction is said
to be "without remedy?"
- 1. That this destruction can not be arrested.
It comes with resistless and overwhelming power, and seems to mock all
efforts made to withstand its progress. A most striking exemplification
of this appeared in the dreadful Cholera which swept over many of our
cities some years ago. I was then in New York city--an eye-witness and
more than an eye-witness of its terrific power. My own system experienced
its withering shock. A man of the strongest constitution occupied a
room adjacent to mine; was attacked the same hour that I was, and within
a few hours was a corpse. Its powerful sweep was appalling. You might
as well put forth your hand to stay the tornado in its rush of power
as think to withstand this messenger of the Almighty. So with those
forms of destruction which come at God's behest to whelm the hardened
sinner in destruction. They come with the strides and the momentum of
Omnipotence. The awful hand of God is in them, and who can stand before
Him when once His wrath is moved?
Many other forms of disease, as well as the Cholera
evince the terror of Jehovah's arm. The strong man is bowed low; his
physician sits by his bed-side, powerless for help; disease mocks all
efforts to withstand its progress; human skill can only sit by and chronicle
its triumph. God is working, and none but a God could resist.
- 2. The very language shows that the principle
idea of the writer is that this destruction is endless. It is destruction--the
utter ruin of all good--the blighting and withering of all happiness
forever. No rescue shall be possible; recovery is hopeless; it is a
grave beyond which dawns no resurrection. The destruction wrecks all
hope in the common ruin, and in its very terms precludes the idea of
remedy. Can you conceive of another element of terror, not already involved
and developed in this most dire of all forms of destruction?
REMARKS.
1. We see how to account for the sudden deaths of the wicked that occur
often, and what we are to think of them. Some such deaths have occurred
here which were exceedingly striking to me. Here we have seen young men,
sons of pious parents, children of many prayers and many warnings; but
they waxed hard under reproof; and their days were soon numbered. Away
they go--and we see them no more. There was one young man who came here
to study. He had been warned and prayed for. Perhaps the Lord saw that
there was no hope in any farther effort. His sickness I can never forget;
nor his horror as death drew on apace. Away he passed from the world of
hope and mercy. I will not attempt to follow him, nor would presume to
know his final doom; but one thing I know--his companions in sin received
in his death a most solemn and awful warning.
2. The danger of wicked men is in proportion to the light they have. Men
of great light are much the more likely to be cut off in early life. Of
this we have seen some very striking instances in this place. Some young
men have been raised here--were here when I came to the place, and then,
in the tender years of childhood and youth they saw their companions converted,
and were often affectionately warned themselves. But they seemed to resist
every warning and come quick to maturity in moral insensibility. I need
not give their names; you knew them once; where are they now? It is not
for me to tell where they are; but I can tell where they are not. They
are not grown up to bless the church and the world; they did not choose
such a course and such an end to their life. They are not here among us;
No! the places that knew them once shall know them no more forever. You
may call for them in our College halls; in the sad-hearted families where
once they might be found; they respond to no call--till the blast of the
final trumpet. They knew their duty but too well, and but too soon they
apparently settled the question that they would not do it.
That old man of almost four score of whom I spoke was not brought up in
any Oberlin. His birth place was in the dark places of the earth--in Canada--where
he learned neither to read nor to write. There are children here not ten
years old who have forty times as much knowledge on all religious subjects
as he. He has lived to become hoary in sin; these children, brought up
here need expect no such thing. Tell me where you can find an old man
who has been brought up on the midst of great light, who yet lives long
and waxes more and more hard in sin and guilt. Usually such men as have
great light in their youth will not live out half their days.
3. It is benevolent in God to make His providential judgments in cutting
down hardened sinners a means of warning others. Often this is the most
impressive warning God can give men. In some cases it is so terrible that
sinners have not dared to attend the funeral of their smitten associates.
They have seemed afraid to go near the awful scene--so manifest has it
been that God's hand is there. In many instances within my personal knowledge
the hand of God has cut down in a most horrible manner, men who were opposing
revivals. I cannot now dwell upon these cases.
4. We may learn to expect the terrible destruction of those who under
great light, are hardening themselves in sin. I have learned when I see
persons passing through great trials to keep my eye on them and see if
they reform. If they do not I expect to see them ere long cut down as
hopeless cumberers of the ground. Being often reproved yet still hardening
their neck, they speedily meet their doom according to the principle of
God's government announced in our text.
5. Reproof administered either soon subdues, or rapidly ripens for destruction.
This ripening process goes on rapidly in proportion to the pressure with
which God follows them with frequent and solemn reproofs. When you see
God following the sinner close with frequent reproofs, plying him with
one dispensation after another, and all in vain, you may expect the lifted
bolt to smite him next and speedily.
6. The nearer destruction is to men, the less as a general thing they
fear or expect it. When you hear them cry, "Peace and safety, then
sudden destruction" is at hand and they shall not escape. Just at
the time when you are saying--"I never enjoyed better health"--just
then when you are blessing yourself in the prospect of securing your favorite
objects, then sudden destruction comes down like an Alpine avalanche,
and there is neither time to escape nor strength to resist. How often
do you hear it said--Alas! it was so unexpected, so sudden--who would
have thought this blow was coming! Just when we least of all expect it,
it fell with fatal power.
7. Sinners who live under great light are living very fast. Those who
are rapidly acquiring knowledge of duty, standing in a focal center of
blazing light, with every thing to arouse their attention--they, unless
they yield to this light, must soon live out the short months of their
probation. They must soon be converted, or soon pass the point of hope--the
point within which it is morally possible that they shall be renewed.
Men may under some circumstances live to the age of seventy and never
get so much light as they can in a few days or weeks in some situations.
Under one set of circumstances a sinner might get more light--commit more
sin and become more hardened in a twelve month than he would under other
circumstances in a life of four score years. Under the former circumstances
he lives fast. A sabbath school child might in this point of view die
an hundred years old. The accumulations of a hundred years of sin and
guilt and hardness might in his case be made in one short year. Where
light is blazing as it has blazed here; where children have line upon
line as they are wont to have here, how rapidly they live! How soon do
they fill up the allotted years of probation for the reason that the great
business of probation is driven through with prodigiously accelerated
rapidity! O how suddenly will your destruction come, unless you speedily
repent! Of all places on earth, this should be the last to be chosen to
live in, unless you mean to repent. I would as soon go to the very door
of hell and pitch my tent to dwell there, as to come here to live unless
I purposed to serve God. Yet many parents bring or send their children
here to be educated--in hope often that they will be converted too; and
this is well; so would I; but by all means, ply them with truth and press
them with appeals and entreaties, and give them no rest, till they embrace
the great salvation. Let these parents see to it that their children are
really converted. If they pass along without being converted, do you not
expect they will soon break away and plunge into some of the dark mazes
of error? Who does not know that this is the natural result of resisting
great light? "Because they receive not the love of the truth that
they may be saved, God shall send them strong delusion that they may believe
a lie, and all be damned who believed not the truth but had pleasure in
unrighteousness." O how they go on with rapid strides down to the
depths of hell! You scarce can say they're here, before they are gone.
And the knell of their early graves proclaims, "He that being often
reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed and that without
remedy."
continued / THE WAY OF SALVATION Sermon
Collection
taken from "The Oberlin Evangelist"
SERMON III. Back to Top
THE LOSS WHEN A SOUL IS LOST.
July 2, 1851
by Charles Grandison Finney
President of Oberlin College
Text.--Mark 8:36, 37: "For what shall
it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"
Ours is an inquisitive world, and the present especially
is an inquisitive age. Particularly is this inquisitiveness developed
in perpetual inquiries upon matters of loss and gain. Almost universally
this class of questions agitates the public mind often tasking its powers
to the utmost. Almost the whole race seem all on fire to know how they
can avoid loss and secure gain. Assuredly therefore, this being the great
question which men interest themselves to ask, it cannot be out of place
for God to propose such a question as the text presents, nor for His servants
to take it from His lips and press it upon the attention and the consciences
of His hearers.
And let me here say it must be specially proper to propose it to the young
men who are seeking good, and studying questions of profit and gain. Your
souls thirst for happiness. How much, then, does it become you to ask
whether these questions from the lips of your Redeemer may not give you
a priceless clue to the secret of all real and permanent good.
The question concisely expressed, is -- What is a fair equivalent for
the soul? For what consideration could a man afford to lose his soul?
To bring the subject fully before your minds, let me
I. Direct your attention to the worth of the
soul;
II. To the danger of losing it;
III. To the conditions of saving it.
Admitted truths:
1. Whenever ministers enter the pulpit to preach, they always take many
things for granted. All do this more or less; all must do it if they would
preach with any effectiveness to the heart; and it is right that they
should. This is true not of the gospel minister only, but of every teacher.
Every teacher assumes that his pupils exist; and that they know this truth;
also that he exists himself.
2. Many other truths are assumed by the preacher. We must always begin
somewhere. Generally we begin as the Bible does. The Bible assumes the
truths of natural theology, and proceeds in its teachings as if all men
knew at least these truths.
3. This congregation professes to be Christian, and I may therefore assume
that at least nominally it is so. I shall not therefore address you as
a heathen people, or as atheists, or even Universalists.
4. There are certain great truths admitted by almost all Christians; for
example, that the soul is immortal. This is admitted so generally, I shall
assume that you all admit it. You admit it to be true of both the righteous
and the wicked. You admit that the bible teaches this, and I shall not
therefore attempt to prove it.
5. It must also be admitted that from the very nature of mind, its capacities
both of intellect and sensibility, will be always increasing. This increase
is obviously a law of mind in this world, although from the connection
of mind with matter, old age and disease seem to form an exception. This
is indeed an exception to the common law, yet one which plainly results
from the influence of physical frailty, and can therefore have no existence
in a state where no physical frailty is experienced. It must be admitted
that the exception does not result from any law of mind, but purely from
a present law of matter.
6. The common law of mental progress is exceedingly apparent. Put your
eye on the new-born infant. It knows nothing. It begins with the slightest
perception, it may be of some visible object, or of the taste of its food.
From a starting point almost imperceptible it goes on, making its hourly
accessions of knowledge and consequent expansion of powers, till, like
a Newton, it can fathom the sublime problems of the great law of the physical
universe.
7. It is generally admitted that the capacities of men in the future state
for either happiness or misery will be full -- absolutely full. That coming
state must be in respect to enjoyment, not mixed like the present, but
simple; -- unalloyed bliss, or unalleviated woe. Hence the soul must actually
enjoy or suffer to the utmost limit of its capacity. You all admit this;
or if not all, the exceptions are few and I am not aware of any among
you.
8. Let us not forget to connect with this idea of progression the idea
of eternity. It is not only progress, but eternal progress. This is involved
in the immortality of the soul. No doctrine is more plainly taught and
more universally implied in the Bible; none is more amply confirmed by
testimony drawn from the nature of the soul itself. It stands among the
truths admitted by almost everyone who bears even nominally the Christian
name.
Now what follow from these admitted truths?
I. The worth of the soul.
- 1. If men are always to progress in knowledge
and capacity, then a period will arrive in which the least intelligence
will be able to say -- I know more now than all the created universe
knew when I was born. This must be true. Its truth follows by necessity
from the truths we have admitted.
But even this is not all. For when he has reached
this point of acquisition in knowledge, he has only begun. Eternity
is yet before him. The time will come when he will know ten thousand
times as much as all the universe did when he was born; nay not merely
ten thousand times as much, but myriads of myriads of times as much.
The time will arrive in the lapse of eternal ages when, if all the present
created universe were tasked to the utmost to conceive or estimate how
much this one intelligence can know, they would fall entirely short
of reaching the mighty conception. And even this is only a mere beginning,
for this vast intelligence is not a whit nearer the terminus of his
progression than when he was one day old. To be sure all the universe
have kept pace with him. They have all moved along together, under a
law of progress common to them all. Each one can say the same and as
much as he. The attainments of each and of all will forever fall short
of infinite, although they are always indefinitely increasing.
- 2. Look at the happiness of the righteous. Always
increasing; evermore swelling its deep and gushing tides, with no limit
to their growth and no end to their progression. Who does not know that
this must be so? Look at the little infant. It seems to have but the
least possible capacity, and this is developed at first only in its
physical powers. All the earliest germs of sensation and emotion pertain
to the body alone. The little one is hungry and cries; then is nursed
and is quiet; it opens its little eye and beholds the light and is pleased;
by and by it comes to know its mother's presence and to love that beaming
look of fondness and those soothing tones of love. Here opens to that
infant mind a new source of happiness; progress -- progress is the established
law of our mental and sentient being. By and by that child late an infant,
is a pupil in school and then a youth in college. On and still onward
is his progress in knowledge.
- 3. Nor let us lose sight of the fact that the
same law of progress obtains also in the department of the sensibility.
A uniform relation is then maintained between man's intellectual and
sentient faculties. Knowledge increasing gives scope for increased joys
or sorrows. Thus the mind progresses through all the stages of its earthly
existence, new knowledge continually opening new sources of enjoyment
or suffering. Mark how much that man or woman is capable of enjoying,
compared with the capacity of his or her period of infancy. Now he may
be bowed down under an overwhelming weight of sorrow, or he may be lifted
up in ecstasies of joy unspeakable and full of glory. And this progress,
we should remark, is often made despite of very unfavorable circumstances.
The law of progress acts with a positive energy that no ordinary circumstances
can resist.
- 4. But let us now look into the next world --
the next state of our existence. Knowledge sustains still the same relation
to the sensibility; what you know there serves no less than it did here
to augment your bliss or aggravate your woe. All the powers of your
being sustain the same mutual relation as ever. Just think then how
vast the joys and sorrows of that coming state! Mark how they tower
high above all that is experiences in this brief state! This is no poetry.
It is more than poetry -- infinitely more!! It is too obviously and
certainly true to admit of the least question. Its truth results from
admissions you make and doctrines you hold as a Christian congregation
-- admissions and doctrines common to all who are not atheists -- common
to all who observe the laws of our present existence and who admit that
these laws will follow our existence into our future state of being.
- (1). Following out these admitted truths
to their necessary results, we see that the time must come in the
lapse of eternal ages when each saint can say -- I now enjoy more
in a given time than all the saints in the universe did when I first
entered heaven. For as with knowledge, so with happiness. It must
of course come under the same law of progress. Its measure must
sustain its established correlation to the amount of our knowledge,
so that as the one stretches onward and still onward with no limit
to its progress, so also does the other. As therefore the time will
come when no created mind can estimate the knowledge attained by
the now feeblest intelligence, so will it also come when no capacity
can estimate the measure of its happiness. The Bible says, God is
able to do exceeding abundantly above all we are able to ask or
even to think. This will have its striking fulfillment in the future
heights of bliss and glory to which He will raise His redeemed people.
O, who can measure these heights of bliss and glory! Yet when you
have fixed your eye upon their towering loftiness at any period
along the track of endless ages, you have it to say then and there
-- This man's happiness is only begun. He has only just entered
upon his everlasting progress in knowledge and in bliss. And still
so vast are his capacities at this remote period of his existence
that if we could look into their amazing length and breadth and
depth, and measure their magnitude, we should sink like dead men
at the sight. See him drawing draughts of joy from God's own eternal
fountains! Will he ever cease to quaff those draughts of joy? Never.
Can they ever grow less? Nay; they must of necessity be forever
increasing.
- (2). Now see also the progress of the wicked.
They too are moving onward. The law of progress cannot be arrested
by any amount of sinning. Onward still their minds are progressing;
more and more capacious for knowledge and of course for sin and
suffering. And O! What then! What follows from these established
laws of the human mind and of human existence? Let your reflections
trace out the fearful results which accrue from these laws of eternal
progression. When we get into the midst of these things, the mind
becomes exhausted and overpowered; it sinks down and cries out with
crushing emotion -- O what an eternity is this for the sinner, lost
forever!! O look upon that sinner after he has passed along through
millions of ages of his unceasing progress in knowledge and in growing
capacities for sin and suffering. Hear him. He says, hell knew but
little of sin and suffering when I came here, compared with what
I suffer now! They all then sinned and suffered but little, even
taken in the vast aggregate, compared with what I sin and suffer
in my own single being now! Alas, I seem to have all hell in my
own bosom! I sin and suffer enough with my vastly augmented powers
to make an awful hell even if these agonies were equally distributed
among myriads of my fellow beings. How awful!! Sin, misery and ruin
enough to make one awful hell, locked up in the agonized bosom of
a single sinner!
If this were only poetry I should be glad,
but all is true, and so much more is true that no language can express
it; no modes of computation and no forms of estimate can reach its
appalling magnitude. So much is true that to see the thousandth part
of it must set your soul all a fire!
- (3). Take any sinner here -- any young man
or woman from this congregation. Follow him onward from this hour
through a life of sinning, a death of darkness and horror, and then
onward still as he falls in the agonies of the second death and moves
onward age after age in the unceasing progress of a human mind expanding
its intelligence, learning more and more of the God the sinner hates,
and only hating Him forever the more, and only making himself the
more immeasurably wretched by sinning with bitterer hate, and suffering
with still enlarged capacities as the eternal years roll on! O young
man! you will one day be able to say -- All that hell knew of suffering
before I came here is nothing compared with what I now suffer! All
is nothing to the aggregate of my sins and of my sufferings. And all
I now endure is only a beginning. My miseries have only begun. This
soul of mine has only begun to know how to suffer the real sufferings
of the damned. Its keen sensitiveness to agony has only begun to develop
itself. Yet at some period in the flow of those endless years of progression
in sorrow, each one will say -- If all the universe at the moment
of my death, had taxed their minds to the utmost to conceive the guilt
and miseries that wring my heart, they could not even have begun to
reach the appalling estimate!
Would to God this were only poetry! Alas, that
it should be among the best established truths in the universe of
realities! Young man, there is no axiom in mathematics more true than
this. No problem you ever solved in algebra brought out its result
with more certainty; no proposition of Euclid ever carried you more
unerringly to its conclusion than our reasoning upon these known and
changeless laws of mind in their progression onward through the endless
cycles of eternity. Go onward and still onward; you must yet say --
after ever so many periods of largest conception, I have only just
begun. I am only entering the vestibule of this world of woe -- only
counting off the first moments as it were of the eternal cycles of
my existence!
To pursue this train of thought in its details seems utterly impossible!
How the mind sinks beneath the overpowering view! O, the worth of
the soul, progressing forever under a law as fixed as and as enduring
as Jehovah's throne! The worth of a soul that must make progress in
knowledge, and consequently in its capacities for bliss and for holiness,
or for sin and for woe -- who can estimate it to the last fraction!
Tell me, ye young men of mathematical genius -- ye professors in this
science of certainties -- ye who think you have some knowledge of
fixed truths and some skill in educing them from first principles;
tell me, are these things poetry? You know they are eternal truth;
you know they are verities that which none in the universe can be
more sure. "What, then, shall it profit a man if he shall gain
the whole world and lose his own soul?"
II. But what must be said of the danger of losing
the soul?
- 1. This danger is exceedingly great, because
men have only to neglect the soul and it is surely lost. It does not
require attention and labor. You can lose your soul without the least
possible effort made specially for this purpose. You need not go about
to commit sin in order to ensure the ruin of your soul hopelessly and
forever. You need only neglect its salvation and it is surely lost.
You need only be as negligent as you have been heretofore. It is only
necessary that you slide along in the same thoughtless, reckless manner
as in your past days and the end will be "sudden destruction and
that without remedy." As says the apostle; "How shall we escape
if we neglect so great salvation?" There is none other name under
heaven given among man whereby ye can be saved. And there is no salvation
through this name but by a living faith which works by love and makes
the heart pure form sin.
- 2. Men will lose their souls if they mistake
the conditions of salvation. For these conditions require intelligent
effort, and to misunderstand them makes it certain that your efforts
will not be made intelligently, even if any sort of effort is made at
all. There is therefore, most imminent danger in this quarter.
- Again, there is the more danger because men
are so little inclined to inform themselves respecting those truths
which relate to the conditions of salvation. It is a most astounding
fact that in matters so deeply interesting to everyone who is to be
saved or lost, no man should incline to search after the requisite knowledge
of the way to be saved.
- 3. There is also the more danger because men
are surrounded with temptations to neglect the soul's salvation. It
is the policy of Satan to surround men with as many temptations as possible
to neglect this great subject. He gives them everything else to do;
sets their wits at work to kill time and devise amusing and diverting
occupations, and stave off all serious thought into some unknown future.
Nothing delights or employs him more than to draw the sinner in and
hold him fast in the snare of his infernal devises.
Again, there is the more ground to fear because
you are in so much danger of practicing deception upon yourself, especially
this deception -- that you can better attend to the saving of your soul
at some other time. This is Satan's master-piece of deception. It has
fixed the doom of damnation upon myriads of souls.
- 4. If I had time to enter upon these various
dangers and expand them at length in view of the awfulness of losing
the soul, how startling would be the fearful facts of the case! If all
these countless dangers were seen in their real magnitude, and especially
if they were seen in their bearings upon the loss of a soul, methinks
it would rouse all mankind into excitement almost to madness in securing
the salvation of their souls. How could they refrain from crying out
in the very streets and within the very walls of their bedchambers --
What shall I do to be saved form such a hell? The danger is real although
due sensibility to it is so rare. We have it from the lips of one that
knew -- "Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction and many
there be that go in thereat." And no fact is more open to observation
than this. Everybody sees it; all may know it.
III. What are the conditions of saving the soul?
Here let it well be considered that the conditions are none of them arbitrary.
All are naturally necessary. Each one is revealed as a condition because
in the nature of the case it is and must be. God requires it as a condition
because He cannot save the soul without it. For example, you must be sanctified
and become holy in heart and life. Why? Not because God sees fit arbitrarily
to impose such a condition, but because it is impossible you should be
happy without it; because it is impossible you should enjoy heaven without
holiness.
So also you must be sanctified by faith in Christ, and saved in all respects
by this faith, for the simple reason that no other agency can sanctify
and save. There is none other name given among men whereby ye can be saved.
No other Redeemer exists to be believed in; no other power but that of
faith in such a Redeemer ever yet reached the heart to subdue it to submission,
penitence, and love.
REMARKS.
1. There is nothing more wonderful and strange than the tendency of the
human mind to neglect reflection and serious thought upon the value of
the soul. The entire orthodox world admit the truths upon which we started,
and admit substantially those other truths which are necessarily connected
with them. Now it is most astounding that these truths should be dropped
out of mind -- their bearings forgotten, and all their relations be overlooked
as if they had no value, as if they were indeed only fictions and not
facts. They are forgotten by parents, so that few indeed think of the
bearings of these truths upon their children's well-being for eternity;
they are forgotten by husbands and by wives, so that in these relations
of life little is said, little felt, little done, for each other's salvation.
In fact these great truths have come to be less regarded than almost anyone
of the ten thousand things of this world. The least of these worldly matters
is practically treated as of more value than the soul. Must there not
be a strange delirium upon the human mind?
2. Nothing is so important to the Christian Church and to the world as
that the Church should direct her attention to those great things till
they arouse her whole soul -- till they awaken from spiritual lethargy
every member of Christ's nominal church on earth. The primitive Christians
of apostolic times pondered these truths until their hearts were on fire
and they could not wish to do less than to lay themselves out for the
salvation of the world. The same engrossing and soul-stirring attention
to these great truths is needed to awaken the churches of the present
day.
3. As these great truths of the soul are neglected, worldly things magnify
themselves in apparent importance. If men do not dwell upon eternity,
time comes to be their only reality. If they do not dwell upon the great
spiritual truths that relate to the eternal world, to heaven and to hell,
if they do not pour their minds out upon these truths, the trifles of
time will assume the chief importance. Men will become worldly-minded.
Their minds become contracted in the scope of their views to the narrow
circle of their earthly relations, and they come to live as if there were
no God, no heaven, no hell.
4. You may see the nature of worldly-mindedness. It is real insanity.
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