Part 5

A man who is thirsty stands before a fountain. "No," he says, "I will never touch a drop of moisture as long as I live. Cannot I get my thirst quenched in my own way?" We tell him, no; he must drink or die. He says, "I will never drink; but it is a hard thing that I must therefore die. It is a bigoted, cruel thing to tell me so." He is wrong. His thirst is the inevitable result of neglecting a law of nature. You, too, must believe or die; why refuse to obey the command? Drink, man, drink! Take Christ and live. There is the way of salvation, and to enter you must trust Christ; but there is nothing hard in the fact that you must perish if you will not trust the Saviour. Here is a man out at sea; he has a chart, and that chart, if well studied, will, with the help of the compass, guide him to his journey's end. The pole-star gleams out amidst the cloud-rifts, and that, too, will help him. "No," says he, "I will have nothing to do with your stars; I do not believe in the North Pole. I shall not attend to that little thing inside the box; one needle is as good as another needle. I have no faith in your chart, and I will have nothing to do with it. The art of navigation is only a lot of nonsense, got up by people on purpose to make money, and I will not be gulled by it." The man never reaches port, and he says it is a very hard thing--a very hard thing. I do not think so. Some of you say, "I am not going to read the Scriptures; I am not going to listen to your talk about Jesus Christ: I do not believe in such things." Then Jesus says, "He that believeth not shall be damned." "That's very hard," say you. But it is not so. It is not more hard than the fact that if you reject the compass and the pole-star you will not reach your port. There is no help for it; it must be so.

You say you will have nothing to do with Jesus and his blood, and you pooh-pooh all religion. You will find it hard to laugh these matters down when you come to die, when the clammy sweat must be wiped from your brow, and your heart beats against your ribs as if it wanted to leap out and fly away from God. O soul! you will find then, that those Sundays, and those services, and this old Book, are something more and better than you thought they were, and you will wonder that you were so simple as to neglect any true help to salvation. Above all, what woe it will be to have neglected Christ, that Pole-star which alone can guide the mariner to the haven of rest!

Where do you live?

You live, perhaps, on the other side of the river, and you have to cross a bridge before you can get home. You have been so silly as to nurse the notion that you do not believe in bridges, nor in boats, nor in the existence of such a thing as water. You say, "I am not going over any of your bridges, and I shall not get into any of your boats. I do not believe that there is a river, or that there is any such stuff as water." You are going home, and soon you come to the old bridge; but you will not cross it. Yonder is a boat; but you are determined that you will not get into it. There is the river, and you resolve that you will not cross it in the usual way; and yet you think it is very hard that you cannot get home. Surely something has destroyed your reasoning powers, for you would not think it so hard if you were in your senses. If a man will not do the thing that is necessary to a certain end, how can he expect to gain that end? You have taken poison, and the physician brings an antidote, and says, "Take it quickly, or you will die; but if you take it quickly, I will guarantee that the poison will be neutralized." But you say, "No, doctor, I do not believe in antidotes. Let everything take its course; let every tub stand on its own bottom; I will have nothing to do with your remedy. Besides, I do not believe that there is any remedy for the poison I have taken; and, what is more, I don't care whether there is or not."

Well, sir, you will die; and when the coroner's inquest is held on your body, the verdict will be, 'Served him right!' So will it be with you if, having heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, you say, "I am too much of an advanced man to have anything to do with that old-fashioned notion of substitution. I shall not attend to the preacher's talk about sacrifice and blood-shedding." Then, when you perish, the verdict given by your conscience, which will sit upon the King's quest at last, will run thus, "_Suicide: he destroyed his own soul_." So says the old Book--"O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself!" Reader, I implore thee, do not so.

TO THOSE WHO HAVE BELIEVED.

Friends, if now you have begun to trust the Lord, trust him out and out. Let your faith be the most real and practical thing in your whole life. Don't trust the Lord in mere sentiment about a few great spiritual things; but trust him for everything, for ever, both for time and eternity, for body and for soul. See how the Lord hangeth the world upon nothing but his own word! It has neither prop nor pillar. Yon great arch of heaven stands without a buttress or a wooden centre. The Lord can and will bear all the strain that faith can ever put upon him. The greatest troubles are easy to his power, and the darkest mysteries are clear to his wisdom. Trust God up to the hilt. Lean, and lean hard; yes, lean all your weight, and every other weight upon the Mighty God of Jacob.

The future you can safely leave with the Lord, who ever liveth and never changeth. The past is now in your Saviour's hand, and you shall never be condemned for it, whatever it may have been, for the Lord has cast your iniquities into the midst of the sea. Believe at this moment in your present privileges. YOU ARE SAVED. If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus, you have passed from death unto life, and YOU ARE SAVED. In the old slave days a lady brought her black servant on board an English ship, and she laughingly said to the Captain, "I suppose if I and Aunt Chloe were to go to England she would be free?" "Madam," said the Captain, "she is _now_ free. The moment she came on board a British vessel she was free." When the negro woman knew this, she did not leave the ship--not she. It was not _the hope of liberty_ that made her bold, but _the fact of liberty_. So you are not now merely hoping for eternal life, but "_He that believeth in him hath everlasting life_." Accept this as a fact revealed in the sacred Word, and begin to rejoice accordingly. Do not reason about it, or call it in question; believe it, and leap for joy.

I want my reader, upon believing in the Lord Jesus, to believe for _eternal_ salvation. Do not be content with the notion that you can receive a new birth which will die out, a heavenly life which will expire, a pardon which will be recalled. The Lord Jesus gives to his sheep _eternal_ life, and do not be at rest until you have it. Now, if it be eternal, how can it die out? Be saved out and out, for eternity. There is "a living and incorruptible seed, which liveth and abideth for ever"; do not be put off with a temporary change, a sort of grace which will only bloom to fade. You are now starting on the railway of grace--_take a ticket all the way through_. I have no commission to preach to you salvation for a time: the gospel I am bidden to set before you is, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved." He shall be saved from sin, from going back to sin, from turning aside to the broad road. May the Holy Spirit lead you to believe for nothing less than that. "Do you mean," says one, "that I am to believe if I once trust Christ I shall be saved whatever sin I may choose to commit?" I have never said anything of the kind. I have described true salvation as a thorough change of heart of so radical a kind that it will alter your tastes and desires; and I say that if you have such a change wrought in you by the Holy Spirit, it will be permanent; for the Lord's work is not like the cheap work of the present day, which soon goes to pieces. Trust the Lord to keep you, however long you may live, and however much you may be tempted; and "according to your faith, so be it unto you." Believe in Jesus for _everlasting_ life.

Oh, that you may also trust the Lord for all the sufferings of this present time! In the world you will have tribulation; learn by faith to know that all things work together for good, and then submit yourself to the Lord's will. Look at the sheep when it is being shorn. If it lies quite still, the shears will not hurt it; if it struggles, or even shrinks, it may be pricked. Submit yourselves under the hand of God, and affliction will lose its sharpness. Self-will and repining cause us a hundred times more grief than our afflictions themselves. So believe your Lord as to be certain that his will must be far better than yours, and therefore you not only submit to it, but even rejoice in it.

Trust the Lord Jesus in the matter of _sanctification_. Certain friends appear to think that the Lord Jesus cannot sanctify them wholly, spirit, soul, and body. Hence they willingly give way to such and such sins under the notion that there is no help for it, but that they must pay tribute to the devil as long as they live in that particular form. Do not basely bow your neck in bondage to any sin, but strike hard for liberty. Be it anger, or unbelief, or sloth, or any other form of iniquity, we are able, by divine grace, to drive out the Canaanite, and, what is more, we must drive him out. No virtue is impossible to him that believeth in Jesus, and no sin need have victory over him. Indeed, it is written, "Sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace." Believe for high degrees of joy in the Lord, and likeness to Jesus, and advance to take full possession of these precious things; for as thou believest, so shall it be unto thee. "All things are possible to him that believeth"; and he who is the chief of sinners may yet be not a whit behind the greatest of saints.

Often realize the joy of heaven. This is grand faith; and yet it is no more than we ought to have. Within a very short time the man who believes in the Lord Jesus shall be with him where he is. This head will wear a crown; these eyes shall see the King in his beauty; these ears shall hear his own dear voice; this soul shall be in glory; and this poor body shall be raised from the dead and joined in incorruption to the perfected soul! Glory, glory, glory! And so near, so sure. Let us at once rehearse the music and anticipate the bliss!

But cries one, "We are not there yet." No: but faith fills us with delight in the blessed prospect, and meanwhile it sustains us on the road. Reader, I long that you may be a firm believer in the Lord alone. I want you to get wholly upon the rock, and not keep a foot on the sand. In this mortal life _trust God for all things_; and trust him alone. This is the way to live. I know it by experience. God's bare arm is quite enough to lean upon. I will give you a bit of the experience of an old labouring man I once knew. He feared God above many, and was very deeply taught of the Spirit. My picture will show you what kind of a man he was--great at hedging and ditching; but greater at simple trust. Here is how he described faith:--"It was a bitter winter, and I had no work, and no bread in the house. The children were crying. The snow was deep, and my way was dark. My old master told me I might have a bit of wood when I wanted it; so I thought a bit of fire would warm the poor children, and I went out with my chopper to get some fuel. I was standing near a deep ditch full of snow, which had drifted into it many feet deep--in fact, I did not know how deep. While aiming a blow at a bit of wood my bill-hook slipped out of my hand, and went right down into the snow, where I could not hope to find it. Standing there with no food, no fire, and the chopper gone, something seemed to say to me, 'Will Richardson, can you trust God now?' and my very soul said, 'That I can.'" This is true faith--the faith which trusts the Lord when the bill-hook is gone: the faith which believes God when all outward appearances give him the lie; the faith which is happy with God alone when all friends turn their backs upon you. Dear reader, may you and I have this precious faith, this real faith, this God-honouring faith! The Lord's truth deserves it; his love claims it, his faithfulness constrains it. Happy is he who has it! He is the man whom the Lord loves, and the world shall be made to know it before all is finished.

After all, the very best faith is an everyday faith: the faith which deals with bread and water, coats and stockings, children and cattle, house-rent and weather. The super-fine confectionery religion which is only available on Sundays, and in drawing-room meetings and Bible readings, will never take a soul to heaven till life becomes one long Conference, and there are seven Sabbaths in a week. Faith is doing her very best when for many years she plods on, month by month, trusting the Lord about the sick husband, the failing daughter, the declining business, the unconverted friend, and such-like things.

Faith also helps us to use the world as not abusing it. It is good at hard work, and at daily duty. It is not an angelic thing for skies and stars, but a human grace, at home in kitchens and workshops. It is a sort of maid-of-all-work, and is at home at every kind of labour, and in every rank of life. It is a grace for every day, all the year round. Holy confidence in God is never out of work. Faith's ware is so valued at the heavenly court that she always has one fine piece of work or another on the wheel or in the furnace. Men dream that heroes are only to be made on special occasions, once or twice in a century; but in truth the finest heroes are home-spun, and are more often hidden in obscurity than platformed by public observation. Trust in the living God is the bullion out of which heroism is coined. Perseverance in well-doing is one of the fields in which faith grows not flowers, but the wheat of her harvest. Plodding on in hard work, bringing up a family on a few shillings a week, bearing constant pain with patience, and so forth--these are the feats of valour through which God is glorified by the rank and file of his believing people.

Reader, you and I will be of one mind in this: we will not pine to be great, but we will be eager to be good. For this we will rely upon the Lord our God, whose we are, and whom we serve. We will ask to be made holy throughout every day of the week. We will pray to our God as much about our daily business as about our soul's salvation. We will trust him concerning our farm, and our turnips and our cows as well as concerning our spiritual privileges and our hope of heaven. The Lord Jehovah is our household God; Jesus is our brother born for adversity; and the Holy Spirit is our Comforter in every hour of trial. We have not an unapproachable God: he hears, he pities, he helps. Let us trust him without a break, without a doubt, without a hesitation. The life of faith is life within God's wicket-gate. If we have hitherto stood trembling outside in the wide world of unbelief, may the Holy Spirit enable us now to take the great decisive step, and say, once for all, "Lord, I believe: help thou mine unbelief!"

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