only say a few words, is that which is called by deep writers and experienced believers on this point, the absorbing love of Christ. How shall I tell you what this is? I cannot, except I quote Wesley's words "Oh, love divine, how sweet thou art! When shall I find my willing heart All taken up with thee." "I thirst"-can you get as far as that? "I faint"-that is a high state, indeed! "I die"-that is the top. "I thirst, I faint, I die to prove "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," said the Apostle Paul, and that is where we must get, when the man ceases to feel himself the "I," and only recognises himself as part of Christ. It is our individuality that we really have to get rid of in this matter; it is our selfish separateness, I mean. We need to feel that we are a part of Christ, a member of his body, flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone; that we have no more desire to act, or think, or feel according to anything that is here, but to send our hearts up to the great heart of Christ in heaven, only tarrying here whilst our souls are walking the golden streets with Christ. I do not know if I might be bold enough to say, "Blessed is the man who shall be able to attain to the state when that which thinketh is the head of Christ, and that which feeleth is the heart of Christ, when the great seat of all the sensations, spiritually, is in Christ and not in himself, and he himself is," "Plunged into the Godhead's sea The Brahmins believe that the highest perfection is to be absorbed into God, and there is a certain truth in it, though not as they mean it. When we are lost in God we are highest, and when it is not we, but Christ, and we have come to be with him, and his heart is ours, and his love, and soul, and wish are ours, then it is that we comprehend the height, and depth, and length, and breadth, and know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. Now, I have not said much to-night to the ungodly; but if I could make any of you feel your mouths a-watering after Christ by what I have said, I should be pleased indeed. Oh, if you did but know the sweetness of the love of Christ, you would not be careless about it. "His worth, if all the nations knew, Sure the whole world would love him too." Blind bat's eyes are those that cannot see beauty in Christ! Hard, stony hearts, that cannot feel any love to him! What do you say, sinner? Do you say, "O that I knew Christ's love! O that I knew his love to me!" Sinner, he hath sent me to thee to-night to preach to thee his gospel; and this is his gospel, though not the gospel which some preach, for I have heard some finish their sermons thus-"Go home and pray; go home and do your best to find Christ." All this is good enough advice, but it is not the gospel. The gospel is-"Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. To believe in Christ is to trust in him; that is all it is-to trust in him. "But I must repent," saith one. Repentance is a change of mind, and is a blessed fruit of faith, and comes with faith. That repentance which cometh before faith is no true repentance, for it is a repentance that needs to be repented of. Where there is no faith it is impossible to please God. That repentance which has no faith in it must be displeasing to God, and needeth to be repenteth of. The first business you have, sinner, is not to feel anything, but to put your trust in Christ. Your business is not to try to make yourselves fit to come to Christ, but to come to him just as you are. You are to trust Christ, and to trust him now. "Oh, but I am a black sinner!" Come and be washed. "Oh, but I am a naked sinner." Come and be clothed. "But I am lost." Oh, sirs, the Master has come to seek and to save that which is löst. You are not to find yourselves first, and then think he will come and find you. He is come to seek for you. Hark! while the trumpet sounds in the street without meaning, I would sound the gospel trumpet here. Come and welcome! Come just as you are! To come is to trust, and simply to fall flat at the foot of the cross, and say, " Jesus, I trust to thee to save me." That done you are saved, and your sin is gone. He took it and was punished for it; you are righteous in God's sight, for his righteousness is yours, and you are saved. Christ, the head, is your representative; you are delivered; Christ has broken the neck of your foe, and you are emancipated in the very moment when you believe. Some persons dislike instantaneous conversions. Let them read the Bible and see what sorts of conversion there are there. There is Saul of Tarsus, there is the Philippian jailer; there are the three thousand on the day of Pentecost: these are all instantaneous conversions. There is a man over there, near the door, who came in here, perhaps, he did not know what for, or to listen to some strange, out-of-the-way-matter. That man, if Christ shall meet with him to-night, and lead him in the way of his grace, may go out of this chapel as much saved as if it were seven years ago when he first believed on Jesus, for "The moment a sinner believes he is saved; it is all done; the work is finished, and there is no need that anything else should be done. The robe of righteousness has been completed; there is not a stitch to be added to it. Sinner, this is the glory of the gospel. Trust Jesus, and thou art saved, and saved for ever, beyond the reach of destruction. May God meet with some soul here, tonight, and especially may he now stir up you, his people, to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. THE STONY HEART REMOVED. A Sermon DELIVERED ON SUNDAY EVENING, MAY 25TH, 1862, BY AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh."-Ezekiel xxxvi. 26. THE fall of man was utter and entire. Some things when they have become dilapidated may be repaired; but the old house of mankind is so thoroughly decayed that it must be pulled down even to its foundation, and a new house must be erected. To attempt mere improvement is to anticipate a certain failure. Manhood is like an old garment that is rent and rotten; he that would mend it with new cloth doth but make the rent worse. Manhood is like one of the old skin bottles of the Orientals; he who would put the new wine into it shall find that the bottles will burst, and his wine will be lost. Old shoes and clouted might be good enough for Gibeonites; but we are so thoroughly outworn that we must be made new, or thrown upon the dunghill. It is a wonder of wonders that such a thing is possible. If a tree loses its branch, a new branch may spring out; if you cut into the bark and mark the letters of your name, in process of time the bark may heal its own wound, and the mark may be erased. But who could give a new heart to the tree? Who could put new sap into it? By what possibility could you change its inner structure? If the core were smitten with death, what power but the divine could ever restore it to life? If a man has injured his bones, the fractured parts soon send forth a healing liquid, and the bone is by-and-bye restored to its former strength, if a man hath youth on his side. But if a man's heart were rotten, how could that be cured? If the heart were a putrid ulcer, if the very vitals of the man were rotten, what human surgery, what marvellous medicine could touch a defect so radical as this? Well did our hymn say: "Can aught beneath a power divine The stubborn will subdue? 'Tis thine, eternal Spirit, thine, To form the heart anew. To chase the shades of death away A beam of heaven, a vital ray, 'Tis thine alone to give." But while such a thing would be impossible apart from God, it is certain that God can do it. Oh, how the Master delighteth to undertake impossibilities! To do what others can do were but like unto man; but to accomplish that which is impossible to the creature is a mighty and noble proof of the dignity of the Creator. He delighteth to undertake strange things; to bring light out of darkness; order out of confusion; to send life into the dead; to heal the leprosy; to work marvels of grace, and mercy, and wisdom, and peace-these, I say, God delighteth to do; and so, while the thing is impossible to us, it is possible to him. And more, its impossibility to us commends it to him, and makes him the more willing to undertake it, that he may thus glorify his great name. According to the Word of God, man's heart is by nature like a stone; but God, through his grace, removes the stony heart and gives a heart of flesh. It is this prodigy of love, this miracle of grace, which is to engage our attention to-night. I trust we shall speak now, not of something that has happened to others only, but of a great wonder which has been wrought in ourselves. I trust we shall talk experimentally, and hear personally, and feel that we have an interest in these splendid deeds of divine love. Two things we shall talk of to-night. First, the stony heart and its dangers; secondly, the heart of flesh and its privileges. I. Some few words upon THE STONY HEART AND ITS DANGERS. Why is the heart of man compared to a stone at all? 1. First, because, like a stone it is cold. Few persons like to be always treading upon cold stones in their houses, and hence we floor our habitations; and it is thought to be a part of the hardship of the prisoner if he has nothing to sit down or rest upon but the cold, cold stone. You may heat a stone for a little season if you thrust it into the fire, but for how short a time will it retain its heat; and though it glowed just now, how very soon it loses all its warmth and returns again to its native coldness. Such is the heart of man. It is warm enough towards sin; it it grows hot as coals of juniper, towards its own lusts; but naturally the heart is as cold as ice towards the things of God. You may think you have heated it for a little season under a powerful exhortation, or in presence of a solemn judgment, but how soon it returns to its natural state! We have heard of one who, seeing a large congregation all weeping under a sermon, said, "What a wonderful thing to see so many weeping under the truth!" and another added, "But there is a greater wonder than that to see how they leave off weeping as soon as the sermon is over, concerning those things which ought to make them weep always and constantly." Ah, dear friends, no warmth of eloquence can ever warm the stony heart of man into a glow of love to Jesus; nay, no force of entreaty can get so much as a spark of gratitude out of the flinty heart of man. Though your hearts renewed by grace should be like a flaming furnace, yet you cannot warm your neighbour's heart with the divine heat; he will think you a fool for being so enthusiastic; he will turn upon his heel and think you a madman to be so concerned about matters that seem so trivial to him: the warmth that is in your heart you cannot communicate to him, for he is not, while unconverted, capable of receiving it. The heart of man, like marble, is stone-cold. 2. Then, again, like a stone, it is hard. You get the hard stone, especially some sorts of stone which have been hewn from granite-beds, and you may hammer as you will, but you shall make no impression. The heart of man is compared in Scripture to the nether millstone, and in another place it is even compared to the adamant stone; it is harder than the diamond; it cannot be cut; it cannot be broken; it cannot be moved. I have seen the great hammer of the law, which is ten times more ponderous than Nasmyth's great steam hammer, come down upon a man's heart, and the heart has never shown the slightest signs of shrinking. We have seen a hundred powerful shots sent against it, we have marked the great battery of the law with its ten great pieces o ordnance all fired against the heart of man, but man's heart has been harder even than the sheathing of the iron-clad ships, and the great shots of the law have dropped harmlessly against a man's consciencehe did not, he would not feel. What razor-edged sentence can cut your hearts? What needle-warning can prick your consciences? Alas, all means are unavailing! No arguments have power to move a soul so steeled, so thoroughly stony, hard, and impenetrable. Some of you now present, have given more than enough evidence of the hardness of your hearts. Sickness has befallen you, death has come in at your windows, affliction has come up against you, but like Pharaoh, you have said, "Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice? I will not bow my neck, neither will I do his will. I am my own master, and I will have my own pleasure and my own way. I will not yield to God." O rocks of iron and hills of brass, ye are softer than the proud heart of man! 3. Again, a stone is dead. You can find no feeling in it. Talk to it; it will shed no tears of pity, though you recount to it the saddest tales; no smiles will gladden it, though you should tell it the most happy story. It is dead; there is no consciousness in it; prick it and it will not bleed; stab it and it cannot die, for it is dead already. You cannot make it wince, or start, or show any signs of sensibility. Now, though man's heart is not like this as to natural things, yet spiritually this is just its condition. You cannot make it show one spiritual emotion. "Ye are dead in trespasses and sins," powerless, lifeless, without feeling, without emotion. Transient emotions towards good men have, even as the surface of a slab is wet after a shower, but real vital emotions of good they cannot know, for the showers of heaven reach not the interior of the stone. Melancthon may preach, but old Adam is too dead for him to quicken him. Ye may go down into the grave where the long sleep has fallen on humanity, and ye may seek to revive it, but there is no power in human tongue to revive the dead. Man is like the deaf adder which will not be charmed, charm we never so wisely. Tears are lost on him; threatenings are but as the whistlings of the wind, the preachings of the law, and even of Christ crucified-all these are null and void and fall hopelessly to the ground, so long as the man's heart continues what it is by nature-dead, and hard, and cold. 4. Those three adjectives might be sufficient to give a full description, for if we add two more we shall but in some degree repeat ourselves. Man's heart is like a stone because it is not easily to be softened. Lay a stone in water as long as you will and you shall not find it |