I have thus enlarged upon my text; and now, two or three minutes only, upon the next. "O taste and see that the Lord is good!"

Dear Christian friends, I have spoken to you of this taste; but among us this morning, in the galleries, and down below here, there is a goodly sprinkle of men who do not know Christ. They have come up to this house of prayer, not that they might know Christ, but that they might see a vast congregation, and amuse themselves by novelty. Ah! how many come with this miserable object. Well, let them come for whatever they like, we are glad to see them, for being in the way, God may meet with them. Now, to such of you who are not believers in Christ, and have never tasted that he is gracious, we say this," O taste and see;" by which we mean, experience is necessary. Taste and see; you cannot see without tasting. If you would know whether religion is a good and happy thing, try it. It is not rubbing the bread upon the cheek; it is tasting. You must have an inward sense of the things of God. "My son, give me thine heart." "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Let thy heart believe in Jesus. Be not content with ceremonies; rest not satisfied with outward morality. Only that which reaches the core will really affect the fruit of the tree. We must make the fountain pure, or else our filtering the stream is all in vain. "Taste and see." Dear hearers, I cannot insist too earnestly upon this. Get an inward religion; vital godliness; which goeth into the secret parts of the belly and dwelleth in the inner man. Nothing but tasting can save your souls. And then we say, "Taste and see," we are quite sure that if you will taste you shall see that the Lord is good. I bear my willing witness that Christ maketh a man blessed; that religion is a happy thing, and that "her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." But you do not believe me. Then taste and see for yourselves."Seek ye the Lord while he may be found: call ye upon him while he is near." May the Spirit of God lead you to give your heart to Jesus, and you will find that the true religion of Jesus is a good thing for you; a good thing for you, young woman; a good thing for you, young man; good for the trader; good for the gentleman; good for the artizan; good for every one of you. We feel very earnest that you should do this, and therefore we say, "O taste and see that the Lord is good!" Do not despise our invitation! We beseech you, by the mercies of God, to give your hearts to Jesus. From our very souls, as though we pleaded for our own lives, we would beseech you. Give the things of God a patient consideration. Believe in Jesus; this is to taste. Trust Christ; this is to "taste and see that the Lord is good." Ay, I know you will turn on your heel, and say that religion is a good thing for Sundays, but you do not see anything in it for every-day life. Ah! sirs, it is for want of knowing better. If you would but taste and see, you would regret that you had not tasted before, and you would rejoice and bless the Lord that you were brought to taste at the last. But you say, "May I taste?" Oh, yes; grace is free; Christ is free. If thou wilt come, poor sinner, there is none to push thee back. If God has made thee willing to take Christ, depend upon it Christ was always willing to take thee, for where God puts a renewed will into man, it is the image of his own eternal will. If thou

desirest Christ, trust him this morning. This is the way to escape from hell and fly to heaven. Art thou black? The fountain is open-wash. Art thou hungry? The door is not shut; it stands open all day; come then and eat. "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." If any of you should repent of trusting Christ come and blame me. Find my Master in your hearts, and if he be not a good and precious Saviour to you, if he do not feed your soul with gladness, keep you from sin, and bring you at last to heaven, come and tell me I am found a false witness unto Christ! From the depths of my soul I say it, I would sooner be a Christian than an emperor; sooner have Christ than a crown; and sooner bear his cross than sit upon the throne of a Cæsar. Soul, taste and see that he is good. "But I am not fit to taste," saith one. Well, but who is fit to eat? A hungry man? Art thou hungry? Eat. "Oh, but my hands are black." Never mind; it is not hand-work here, it is mouth-work. "Oh, but I am afraid I have no taste, and that if I did receive Christ into my heart, I should not taste his sweetness." Mark, the taste is in him and not in your mouth. Come and take him as he is. A little child, however weak, can be fed; put up thy mouth, thou weak and foolish sinner, weary and heavy laden as thou art, and by receiving Christ into thy soul's mouth, thou shalt find him good, and thou shalt go thy way rejoicing. Hearken diligently unto the Lord, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. It will be an awful thing to feed on the wind for ever, and roll the morsels of hell beneath your tongue to all eternity, but this must be your portion unless ye taste of Christ.

May he add his own blessing to his own glory. Amen.

FAITH AND REPENTANCE INSEPARABLE.

A Sermon

DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, JULY 13TH, 1862, BY
REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"Repent ye, and believe the gospel.”—Mark i. 15.

OUR Lord Jesus Christ commences his ministry by announcing its leading commands. He cometh up from the wilderness newly anointed, like the bridegroom from his chamber; his love notes are repentance and faith. He cometh forth fully prepared for his office, having been in the desert, "tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin;" his loins are girded like a strong man to run a race. He preacheth with all the earnestness of a new zeal, combined with all the wisdom of a long preparation; in the beauty of holiness from the womb of the morning he glittereth with the dew of his youth. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for Messias speaketh in the greatness of his strength. He crieth unto the sons of men, "Repent ye, and believe the gospel." Let us give our ears to these words which, like their author, are full of grace and truth. Before us we have the sum and substance of Jesus Christ's whole teaching-the Alpha and Omega of his entire ministry; and coming from the lips of such an one, at such a time, with such peculiar power, let us give the most earnest heed, and may God help us to obey them from our inmost hearts.

I. I shall commence by remarking that the gospel which Christ preached was, very plainly, a command. "Repent ye, and believe the gospel." Our Lord does condescend to reason. Often his ministry graciously acted out the old text, "Come, now, and let us reason together; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as wool." He does persuade men by telling and forcible arguments, which should lead them to seek the salvation of their souls. He does invite men, and oh, how lovingly he woos them to be wise. "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." He does entreat men; he condescendeth to become, as it were, a beggar to his own sinful creatures, beseeching them to come to him. Indeed, he maketh this to be the duty of his ministers, "As though God did beseech you by us, we pray you, in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God." Yet, remember, though he condescendeth to reason, to persuade, to invite, and to beseech, still his gospel hath in it all the dignity and force of a command; and if we would preach it in these days as Christ did, we must proclaim it as a

command from God, attended with a divine sanction, and not to be neglected save at the infinite peril of the soul. When the feast was spread upon the table for the marriage-supper, there was an invitation, but it had all the obligation of a command, since those who rejected it were utterly destroyed as despisers of their king. When the builders reject Christ, he becomes a stone of stumbling to the disobedient;" but how could they disobey if there were no command? The gospel contemplates, I say, invitations, entreaties, and beseechings, but it also takes the higher ground of authority. "Repent ye" is as much a command of God as "Thou shalt not steal. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ" has as fully a divine authority as "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength." Think not, O men, that the gospel is a thing left to your option to choose it or not! Dream not, O sinners, that ye may despise the Word from heaven and incur no guilt! Think not that ye may neglect it and no ill consequences shall follow! It is just this neglect and despising of yours which shall fill up the measure of your iniquity. It is this concerning which we cry aloud, "How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation!" God commands you to repent. The same God before whom Sinai was moved and was altogether on a smoke-that same God who proclaimed the law with sound of trumpet, with lightnings and with thunders, speaketh to us more gently, but still as divinely, through his only begotten Son, when he saith to us," Repent ye, and believe the gospel."

Why is this, dear friends; why has the Lord made it a command to us to believe in Christ? There is a blessed reason. Many souls would never venture to believe at all if it were not made penal to refuse to do so. For this is the difficulty with many awakened sinners: may I believe? Have I a right to believe? Am I permitted to trust Christ? Now this question is put aside, once for all, and should never irritate a broken heart again. You are commanded by God to do it, therefore you may do it. Every creature under heaven is commanded to believe in the Lord Jesus, and bow the knee at his name; every creature, wherever the Gospel comes, wherever the truth is preached, is commanded there and then to believe the gospel; and it is put in that shape, I say, lest any conscience-stricken sinner should question whether he may do it. Surely, you may do what God commands you to do. You may throw this in the devil's teeth-"I may do it; I am bidden to do it by him who hath authority, and I am threatened if I do not with eternal damnation from his presence, for he that believeth not shall be damned."" This gives the sinner such a blessed permit, that whatever he may be or may not be, whatever he may have felt or may not have felt, he has a warrant which he may use whenever he is led to approach the cross. However benighted and darkened you may be, however hard-hearted and callous you may be, you have still a warrant to look to Jesus in the words, "Look unto me and be ye saved all ye ends of the earth." He that commanded thee to believe will justify thee in believing; he cannot condemn thee for that which he himself bids thee do. But while there is this blessed reason for the gospel's being a command, there is yet another solemn and an awful one. It is that men may be without excuse in the day of

judgment; that no man may say at the last, "Lord, I did not know that I might believe in Christ; Lord, heaven's gate was shut in my face; I was told that I might not come, that I was not the man." "Nay," saith the Lord, with tones of thunder, "the times of man's ignorance I winked at, but in the gospel I commanded all men everywhere to repent; I sent my Son, and then I sent my apostles, and afterwards my ministers, and I bade them all make this the burden of their cry, Repent and be converted everyone of you;' and as Peter preached at Pentecost, so bade I them preach to thee. I bade them warn, exhort, and invite with all affection, but also to command with all authority, compelling you to come in, and inasmuch as you did not come at my command, you have added sin to sin; you have added the suicide of your own soul to all your other iniquities; and now, inasmuch as you did reject my Son, you shall have the portion of unbelievers, for he that believeth not shall be damned."" To all the nations of the earth, then, let us sound forth this decree from God. O men, Jehovah that made you, he who gives you the breath of your nostrils, he against whom you have offended, commands you this day to repent and believe the gospel. He gives his promise-"He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved;" and he adds the solemn threatening" He that believeth not shall be damned." I know some brethren will not like this, but that I cannot help. The slave of systems I will never be, for the Lord has loosed this iron bondage from my neck, and now I am the joyful servant of the truth which maketh free. Offend or please, as God shall help me, I will preach every truth as I learn it from the Word; and I know if there be anything written in the Bible at all it is written as with a sunbeam, that God in Christ commandeth men to repent, and believe the gospel. It is one of the saddest proofs of man's utter depravity that he will not obey this command, but that he will despise Christ, and so make his doom worse than the doom of Sodom and Gomorrah. Without the regenerating work of God the Holy Ghost, no man ever will be obedient to this command, but still it must be published for a witness against them if they reject it; and while publishing God's command with all simplicity, we may expect that he will divinely enforce it in the souls of those whom he has ordained unto eternal life.

II. While the gospel is a command, it is a two-fold command explaining itself. "Repent ye, and believe the gospel."

I know some very excellent brethren-would God there were more like them in zeal and love-who, in their zeal to preach up simple faith in Christ have felt a little difficulty about the matter of repentance; and I have known some of them who have tried to get over the difficulty by softening down the apparent hardness of the word repentance, by expounding it according to its more usual Greek equivalent, a word which occurs in the original of my text, and signifies "to change one's mind." Apparently they interpret repentance to be a somewhat slighter thing than we usually conceive it to be, a mere change of mind, in fact. Now, allow me to suggest to those dear brethren, that the Holy Ghost never preaches repentance as a trifle; and the change of mind or understanding of which the gospel speaks is a very deep and solemn work, and must not on any account be depreciated. Moreover, there is another