the conversion of my hearers, such as I cannot describe. I would count it a high privilege if I might sleep in death this morning, if that death could redeem your souls from hell. But why is it that we can feelOh that we felt more!-why is it that we can weep when you do not? What is your soul to us compared with what it must be to you? If we warn you and you perish, your blood will not be required at our hand; it is only if we are cold and indifferent, that we shall be held responsible; but when we have poured out our heart unto you, when we have stretched out our arms, and like a loving mother with a child, have sought to bring you to the arms of Jesus, we have done all that we can do, we must leave the rest with God. But how is it, why is it that you can trifle? It is your own salvation, not mine; it is your own eternal state; it is you that will lie for ever in the pit, or joyously climb to heaven; it is you sinner, yourself, not your neighbour, not the person that is sitting next to you, but you, standing there in the crowd, or you yonder-each of you personally. Oh! why should we be earnest and you be dull? God forgive you this sin, and forbid you to trifle longer.

But lastly, you will find God to be in earnest when he comes to punish you; when he lets loose his terrors on you, you shall find it no sport; when the arrow which is to-day fitted to the string shall be let fly, ye shall find it to be no babe's toy; when the sword which has been long in furbishing, and which is bathed in heaven, shall begin to cut, ye may say to it, "Oh, sword, when wilt thou rest, when wilt thou be quiet;" but it will know no rest, for it will be awfully and solemnly in earnest with you, punishing you for your sins. Would now that one could awake you; would that every heart here felt the need of whole heartedness towards God; but you will not mind it, you will go away, and I shall be unto you as one that playeth a tune upon a goodly instrument, and it will all be forgotten. There was a tear just now-perhaps rather a tear of sympathy excited by earnestness than a tear from your own hearts, for your own case, but you will go away and forget it all, and you will come again and forget it again; and we shall go on praying with you, and preaching to you, but you will forget it; and one day it will be said, "So-and-so is dead, he died without a hope;" and though it will be some consolation, yet what a sad one for the minister to be able to say, "Well, as in the sight of God, I did all I could, I did warn, teach, exhort, and plead with him." Oh! how much better if God shall bless the Word to you, and we shall hear you tell that he took you up out of the horrible pit and out of the miry clay, and set your feet upon a rock and established your goings. "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." Faith in Christ is the great way of salvation. Trust Jesus, trust him with all thy heart, and thou art saved this morning, and thy sins are gone; and when thou art saved thyself, I pray thee forget not what I have tried to instil this morning-that if we serve God with all our heart we shall prosper in his ways; and that we cannot expect to see his blessing upon anything that we do, unless we do it as unto the Lord and not unto men.

THREEFOLD SANCTIFICATION.

A Sermon

DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 9TH, 1862, BY
REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"Sanctified by God the Father."--Jude 1.

"Sanctified in Christ Jesus."-1 Corinthians i. 2.

"Through sanctification of the Spirit."-1 Peter i. 2.

MARK, beloved, the union of the Three Divine Persons in all their gracious acts. We believe that there is one God, and although we rejoice to recognize the Trinity, yet it is ever most distinctly a Trinity in Unity, Our watch-word still is-"Hear O Israel, the LORD our God is one LORD." How unwisely do those young believers talk, who make preferences in the Persons of the Trinity; who think of Christ as if he were the embodiment of everything that is lovely and gracious, while the Father they regard as severely just, but destitute of kindness; and how foolish are those who magnify the decree of the Father, or the atonement of the Son, so as to depreciate the work of the Spirit. In deeds of grace none of the Persons of the Trinity act apart from the rest. They are as united in their deeds as in their essence. In their love towards the chosen they are one, and in the actions which flow from that great central source they are still undivided. Specially I would have you notice this in the case of sanctification. While we may without the slightest mistake speak of sanctification as the work of the Spirit, yet we must take heed that we do not view it as if the Father and the Son had no part therein. It is correct to speak of sanctification as the work of the Father, of the Spirit, and of the Son. Still doth Jehovah say, "Let us make man in our own image after our likeness," and thus we are "his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."

My brethren, I beg you to notice and carefully consider the value which God sets upon real holiness, since the Three Persons are represented as co-working to produce a Church without "spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing." Those men who despise holiness of heart are in direct conflict with God. Holiness is the architectural plan upon which God buildeth up his living temple. We read in Scripture of the "beauties of holiness;" nothing is beautiful before God but that which is holy. All the glory of Lucifer, that son of the morning, could not screen him from divine abhorrence when he had defiled himself by sin. "Holy, Holy, Holy," the continual cry of cherubim is the loftiest Nos. 434-35. Penny Pulpit, 3,662-63.

song that creature can offer, and the noblest that the Divine Being can accept. See then, He counteth holiness to be his choice treasure. It is as the seal upon his heart, and as the signet upon his right hand. He could as soon cease to be as cease to be holy, and sooner renounce the sovereignty of the world than tolerate anything in his presence contrary to purity, righteousness, and holiness. I pray you, ye who profess to be followers of Christ, set a high value upon purity of life and godliness of conversation. Value the blood of Christ as the foundation of your hope, but never speak disparagingly of the work of the Spirit which is your meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light; yea, rather, prize it; prize it so heartily that you dread the very appearance of evil. Prize it so that in your most ordinary actions you may be "a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, shewing forth the praises of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvellous light."

My design was to have entered at large upon the doctrine of sanctification this morning. I intended to use the word "sanctification" in the mode in which it is understood among theologians; for you must know that the term "sanctification" has a far narrower meaning in bodies of divinity than it has in Scripture; but in studying the subject I found myself lost in its ever widening extent, so that I concluded to attempt less in the hope of efficiently doing more. On some future occasion we will enter at length into the Spirit's work, but now I only call attention to the fact that sanctification is treated in Scripture in various ways. I think we may do some service in illuminating the understanding of believers, if we shall this morning draw their attention not to the theological but to the Scriptural uses of the term "sanctification," and show that, in God's holy Word, it has a much wider meaning than is accorded to it by systematic divines. It has been well said that the Book of God, like the works of God, is not systematically arranged. How different is the freedom of nature from the orderly precision of the scientific museum! If you visit the British Museum you see all the animals there placed in cases according to their respective orders. You go into God's world and find dog and sheep, horse and cow, lion and vulture, elephant and ostrich, roaming abroad as if no zoology had ever ventured to arrange them in classes. The various rocks are not laid in order as the geologist draws them in his books, nor are the stars marked off according to their magnitudes. The order of Nature is variety. Science does but arrange and classify, so as to assist the memory. So systematic divines, when they come to deal with God's Word, find Scriptural truths put, not in order for the class-room, but for common life. The systematic divine is as useful as the analytical chemist, or the anatomist, but still the Bible is not arranged as a body of divinity. It is a hand-book to heaven; it is a guide to eternity, meant for the man at the plough, as much as for the scholar at his table. It is a primer for babes, as well as a classic for sages. It is the humble, ignorant man's book, and though there are depths in it in which the elephant may swim, yet there are shallows where the lamb may wade. We bless God that he has not given us a body of divinity in which we might lose ourselves, but that he has given us his own Word, put into the very best practical form for our daily use and edification.

It is a recognised truth among us, that the Old Testament very often helps us to understand the New, while the New also expounds the Old. With God's Word self interpretation is the best. "Diamond cut diamond" is a rule with a goldsmith; so must it be with a Scriptural student. They who would know best God's Word must study it in its own light. Now, in the Old Testament we find the word "sanctify" very frequently indeed, and it is used there in three senses. Let me call your attention to the first one. The word "sanctify" in the Old Testament frequently has the meaning of setting apart. It means the taking of something which was common before, which might legitimately have been put to ordinary uses, and setting it apart for God's service alone. It was then called sanctified or holy. Take, for instance, the passage in the 13th chapter of Exodus at the 2nd verse. "Sanctify unto me all the firstborn." On account of the destruction of the firstborn of Egypt, God claimed the first-born of men and the first-born of cattle to be his. The tribe of Levi was set apart to be the representatives of the first-born, to stand before the Lord to minister day and night in his tabernacle and in his temple, hence those who were thus set apart to be priests and Levites were said to be sanctified. There is an earlier use of the term in the 2nd chapter of Genesis, at the 3rd verse. It is said, "And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." It had been an ordinary portion of time before, but he set it apart for his own service, that on the seventh day man should do no work for himself, but rest and serve his Maker. So in Leviticus xxvii. 14, you read, " And when a man shall sanctify his house to be holy unto the Lord," &c., which was meant as a direction to devout Jews who set apart a house or field to be God's; intending that either the produce of the field or the occupation of the house should be wholly given either to God's priests or Levites, or in some other way set apart to holy uses. Now, nothing was done to the house; there were no ceremonies; we do not read that it was cleansed or washed or sprinkled with blood; but the mere fact that it was set apart for God was considered to be a sanctification. So in the most notable of instances in the Book of Exodus xxix. 44, we read that God said "I will sanctify the tabernacle of the congregation, and the altar," by which plainly enough was meant that he would set it apart to be his house, the special place of his abode, where between the wings of the cherubim the bright light of the Shekinah might shine forth, the glorious evidence that the Lord God dwelt in the midst of his people. To the same effect are such as the following. The sanctification of the altar, instruments and vessels, in Numbers vii. 1, the setting apart of Eleazer the son of Abinadab, to keep the ark of the Lord while it was at Kirjathjearim, 1 Samuel vii. 1, and the establishment of cities of refuge in Joshua xx. 7, where in the original we find that the word rendered" appointed" is the same which elsewhere is translated "sanctified." It plainly appears from the Old Testament that the word "sanctify" sometimes has the meaning simply and only of setting apart for holy uses. This explains a text in John x. 36, "Say ye of him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, thou blasphemest,' because I said I am the Son of God?" Jesus Christ there speaks of himself as "sanctified" by his Father.

Now he was not purged from sin, for he had none. Immaculately conceived, gloriously preserved from all touch or stain of evil, he needed no sanctifying work of the Spirit within him to purge him from dross or corruption. All that is here intended is that he was set apart. So in that notable and well known passage in John xvii. 19, "And for their sakes I sanctify myself that they also might be sanctified through the truth;" by which again he meant only that he gave up himself specially to God's service, to be occupied only with his Father's business. He could say, "It is my meat and my drink to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work." Brethren, you understand now the text in Jude, "Sanctified by God the Father." Surely it means that God the Father has specially set apart his people or sanctified them. Not that God the Father works operatively in the believer's heart, although Paul tells us it is God that worketh in us to will and to dothat belongs immediately and effectively to the Holy Spirit-but He in the decree of election separated unto himself a people who were to be sanctified to himself for ever and ever; He by the gift of his Son for them redeemed them from among men that they might be holy; and He by continually sending forth the Spirit fulfils his divine purpose that they should be a separate people sanctified from all the rest of mankind. In this sense every Christian is perfectly sanctified already. We may speak of believers as those who are sanctified by God the Father, that is to say, they are set apart. They were set apart before they were created, they were legally set apart by the purchase of Christ, they are manifestly and visibly set apart by the effectual calling of the Spirit of grace. They are, I say, in this sense at all periods sanctified; and speaking of the work as it concerns God the Father, they are completely sanctified unto the Lord for ever.

Is not this doctrine clear enough to you all? Leave the doctrine a moment, and let us look at it practically. Brothers and sisters, have we ever realized this truth as we ought to do? When a vessel, cup, altar, or instrument was set apart for divine worship, it was never used for common purposes again. No man but the priest might drink out of the golden cup; the altar might not be trifled with; God's brazen laver was not for ordinary ablution; even the tongs upon the altar and the snuffers for the lamps were never to be profaned for any common purpose whatsoever. What a suggestive and solemn fact is this! If you and I be sanctified by God the Father, we ought never to be used for any purpose but for God. "What," say you, "not for ourselves?" My brethren, not for ourselves. Ye are not your own; ye are bought with a price. "But must we not work and earn our own bread?" Verily ye must, but still not with that as your object. You must still be "diligent in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." Remember, if ye be servants, ye are to serve not with eye service as men pleasers, but serving the Lord. If any man shall say "I have an occupation in which I cannot serve the Lord," leave it, you have no right in it; but I think there is no calling in which man can be found, certainly no lawful calling, in which he may not be able to say, "Whether I eat or drink, or whatsoever I do, I do all to the glory of God." The Christian is no more a common man than was the altar a common place. It is as great a sacrilege for the believer to live unto himself, or to live unto the