A RACE TO GLORY - Burns, William Chalmers

CHAPTER 1

“Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God” – Hebrews 12:1-2

The Christian life is often compared in Scripture to a warfare, in which contending parties fight till at length one is crowned with victory. Here we find it compared to a race, the comparison being taken from the
heathen games at which this mode of competition was usually practised in ancient times. All the language employed alludes to this, and gives directions for the running of the race to glory. No man can begin this
race until he has entered in by Christ, who is the door; no man can run till he be within the strait gate, but when once he has entered, a race opens before him, and this race is to be run by each believing soul seeking
salvation. At the end of the race, in olden times, was hung up the prize; and so in the heavenly race the prize of the inheritance is placed as the goal towards which we are to run. Let us not be ignorant as to who is to be the judge of the race. It will be God, the Judge of all, to whom we are already come by faith.But not only have we the command to run, we are likewise told that it is a race set before us. The moment a man begins to live again from the dead, that path opens to him; it opens up at once, clearly and evidently, in the providence of God. We do not require to go a single step out of the way to find the race we are to run, nor to look around us as for a hidden and obscure path. As soon as we become alive to God He gives us the heart to run in His ways; and our safety lies in ever watching and waiting for the work He would have us to do, ready to catch at all that He gives us, and to grasp at what lies nearest our hand. Now, there are some who run out of the race; and even among Christians some run so fast at first as to lose their breath, and can run no longer. Men do not run thus when in a race. They measure the distance with the eye, and if possible keep up their strength to the end, that it may not run out just when they are reaching the goal. Oh! what an awful thing would that be. How hideous to be in sight of heaven, with its glory almost bursting upon you and its prize almost within your reach, and yet to turn back and be lost forever! Does it not make one shudder to think of that?

Remember, again, that you are to run this race with patience. This is a needful caution, for it is hard for us patiently to persevere in the race of God’s appointing. It is often a cross to us to keep to the performance of
present duty, to remain quietly within our appointed spheres, giving ourselves up into the hands of the Master we serve, and entreating Him to choose a lot convenient for us. Some people are never contented
unless they are flaming in the eyes of the world, and making a noise in it. Ah! they forget that the concealed members are often the most useful ones. It would not do if a man’s body were all an eye, or all a foot, or all a
hand; each member has its proper place, and each part is useful in its own way.But, again, we are commanded to lay aside every weight. No man would be so foolish as to load himself with a weight before he began to run, nor to encumber himself unnecessarily with what might be
burdensome; but he would rather carefully weigh all he was to carry. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.” And if it be
so, my dear friends, shall we who are running to obtain the crown of everlasting life, give up our hearts to idols or to sin? – shall we entangle ourselves with the affairs of this life?We shall now mention one or two of those weights which must be laid aside by whomsoever would run
the race to glory. The first is the weight of unf or given sin. Oh! how many are trying to run with this weight of unpardoned sin upon them, and truly they run in vain. A poor chance that man would have in a race who
insisted on carrying with him a load beneath which he could scarcely move. Yet many attempt this hopeless task in the heavenly race. Do you remember what John Bunyan says in his Pilgrim’s Progress of poor
Christian, who began his journey with the heavy burden of his unforgiven transgressions upon his back – how hard the journey was to him then! But when he came to the spot WHERE THE CROSS WAS, ah! the
burden fell from off his shoulders into the gulf beneath, and how quickly, and joyfully, and lightly he went on in the narrow path that led him to eternal life. Whenever a sinner gets a believing view of Immanuel’s
Cross his guilt is sensibly removed, and with an unburdened soul he goes on his way rejoicing. No man can go a single step in God’s way without this.Among the many weights which oppress the believer, and which he is called to lay aside, it is the world which proves the sad drawback to most. Oh! the folly of cumbering ourselves with such a weight on such a
long journey! It will not do; the world must be cast aside in all its unlawful observances. Little need have we to add to the load we necessarily carry within us by any outward ones. Believer, is it possible that the indulgence of the creature, or any of its passing pleasures, is to outweigh, with you, the importance of the work which has been given you to do? to mortify and subdue – not to feed and excite – the flesh, with its
affections and lusts, living soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present evil world, bringing all our lawful affections also into subjection to Christ.

Another burden which must be cast off is that of sinful care. Cast all your cares on Him who careth for you, seeing that He knoweth all your wants better than you do yourselves. If persecutions and reproach
because of the Word arise, do not fear. You must expect that; and the time when the believer is so persecuted is often the very happiest time of his life. Why not be content to lose what the Lord of Glory never had?
Though you were to lose property, houses, and lands, you need not complain, for the Lord had not where to lay His head; and why should His servant murmur at losing anything which the Master, when on earth, did not possess? In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” How little do any of us know of “resisting unto blood, striving against sin!

Different ideas have been taken up of the exact meaning of the “sin which doth more easily beset us,” the more general supposition being that a man’s peculiar besetting sin is here alluded to; and that just as one
wearing a long garment in a race would thereby be entangled and hindered, so the sin which is most apt to surprise a believer into falling must be, with the greatest watchfulness, avoided and laid aside. True it is that every child of God must be conscious of some sin which he finds the most abundant in his heart – some sin which gives him constant trouble; and against such he would do well to strive, so that he may escape its
power. But the meaning we should be inclined specially to attach to the expression is rather that of inward depravity. Oh! how original sin besets a believer at each step. At every turn he takes, it reappears; every way
he looks, it meets him; wherever he goes, it overtakes him. It has been with him from the beginning; it will remain with him to the end. But how, you say, is original sin to be laid aside? In one sense it is impossible to
lay aside the depravity of the nature; it cannot be put off entirely now, but it can be laid aside in the way of being loathed, and abhorred, and detested as a filthy and abominable thing, on account of which you are a
very horror to yourselves. And then depravity must not reign – it does not reign – in any believer’s heart. It can be brought down in a very great degree, and it is possible for a man to pass through life without any
outward stain on his profession.We have alluded principally to the difficulties in the way of those who have entered on the Christian race;
let us now speak of one or two of the incitements to run so that we may obtain. “Therefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses.” The cloud of witnesses here spoken of refers, of
course, to those saints of old, named in the previous chapter as those who had all died in faith, and then were, and now are, inheriting the promises. Many have believed that they are here called witnesses in allusion to the spectators in whose presence the ancient games were performed – onlookers who watch the race to heaven, and rejoice in the believer’s victory over the world. Is not this a sweet encouragement, beloved friends? But what we should rather be inclined to suppose to be the meaning of the passage is, that the saints are called witnesses more because they are witnesses to God’s truth than witnesses merely of the
Christian warfare. They are witnesses to the Gospel – to God’s glorious and unchanging truth – witnesses to this, that Christ died, and that God hath given them the victory through Him that loved them. They are
called a cloud of witnesses because, being a multitude whom no man can number and taken from all peoples and tongues, they form one company, united in the Lamb. Oh! it is a bright, bright cloud, that cloud of
witnesses; bright, because all in it are clothed with the blood-washed robe of Immanuel’s righteousness; bright, because sanctified and purified by the spirit of divine light and glory; bright, because exposed eternally to the unclouded beaming of the Sun of Righteousness. And it is awitnessing cloud; it shines to tell of the faithfulness of the God of salvation, it witnesses to the love of Him who is the faithful and true Witness, and it testifies of the power of the renewing Spirit.

Believers, take encouragement from this; remember that its numbers were made up from the ranks of sinners like yourselves. And did anyone of them ever leave on earth an evil report of the God in whom he
trusted? Did any ever leave this report – that He was unfaithful, or that He was not true to His covenant? Ah, no! There was never yet a child of God, however weak and doubting, that did not, at the end of his
pilgrimage, raise his Ebenezer, and say “Hitherto the Lord hath helped me.” This is well worthy of note, and well fitted to strengthen the heart of the weakest amongst you. No believer, however persecuted, tried, and
downcast – however beaten down with fightings without, and well-nigh overwhelmed with fears within – leaves the world with only this testimony: that to him Jehovah has been a wilderness or a land of darkness. There was never one that did not add his voice to that of the cloud of witnesses above, and proclaim that He in whom he had believed was an unchanging and a faithful God. Each dying believer sets his seal, as he enters glory, to this – that God is true; and leaves behind him in the world an additional testimony to the evidence which the Church already has within itself, that whom He loves, He loves unto the end.And shall we who possess more of this evidence than believers in past times ever could have possessed, shall we begin to doubt Him? The light that shines upon the Gospel race today is brighter than it ever was before; the ground is better marked out; the path is better beaten. There are more believers at this hour than there ever were before; we mean, taking in all above and all beneath. Every day the number increases, every day it is greater than the last, because every day – by the power of the Divine Spirit – souls are added to Christ’s church and kingdom of such as shall be saved. And oh! if the Old Testament saints were strong in faith, giving glory to God; if they, with only the dim light of an expected Saviour, seen through the types and shadows of the Jewish temple, if they could so clearly behold that city which hath foundations, that, by the faith and sight of Him who is invisible, they could subdue kingdoms, work righteousness, obtain promises, stop the mouths of lions, quench the violence of fire, escape the edge of the sword, out of weakness be made strong – they who had never seen Immanuel evidently crucified before them – they who had never beheld the unveiled glory of the Lamb that was slain; what should be our faith and light and love, whose eyes have “beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth? Oh! if Enoch had
this testimony, in a day when there were perhaps but few believers on the earth, that he pleased God, how should we be serving Him unto all well-pleasing? If Enoch could walk with God in a day when there were
few companions to accompany him, and when, as it were, there were but few traces impressed on the narrow way, how closely should we walk with Him now, when the path to glory is marked by the footsteps of so many followers of the Lamb; now, when they all have left their testimonies behind them to the faithfulness of Him in whom they have believed!

Let us take shame to ourselves for this – we have had nothing yet to try our faith, so to speak; nothing to put our love to the proof. Believers, are you sinking under the good fight of faith? Ah! you don’t know yet what trials mean. You have not had trials of cruel mockings and scourgings yet, though no man knows how soon such things might come round; you have not been subject to bonds and imprisonments yet; nor been stoned, nor had to wander about, being destitute, afflicted, tormented; nor been forced to leave your homes for deserts and mountains, or for dens and caves of the earth. No, beloved; and yet those who suffered these things – even to being clad in sheepskins and goatskins, and being slain by the sword, or sawn asunder – they were just saved sinners, and nothing more. Though they were the men of whom the world was not worthy, they yet “received not the promise, God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect:” But they are perfect now. Yes, the Old Testament Church is made up now. The Old Testament Church is complete; it is above; it is a Church triumphant. And isn’t that encouraging? Not a soul belonging to it left wandering on this desert world! Is it not sweet to think that these Old Testament saints now shine a cloud of witnesses? Oh, yes! And since the saints of the old dispensation have been removed to the upper courts, thousands have entered into the glorious rest prepared and remaining for the people of God.

First did the Forerunner Himself enter in, and sit down on the right of the throne, having triumphed openly. Ay, and since then many a goodly company of apostles, and martyrs, and tried believers, having washed their robes and made them white in the Lamb’s blood, have followed to the heavens. And what is more, beloved, I am persuaded that in the cloud of \ witnesses there are not a few redeemed ones taken from amongst you. Some who, not very long ago, delighted to join with us here in the precious services of this sanctuary – some who sang with us the praises of the Lord, and bent with us around a throne of grace – now stand with palms in their hands around the throne of glory, saying “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain!” Yes, beloved, I believe it. “Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us
lay aside every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.” And then what follows? “Looking unto Jesus.” Precious command! This looking unto Jesus is
all the Gospel. It is precious to have the example and the victory of patriarchs, and apostles, and prophets, and martyrs to look to; but ah! that is but a small thing in comparison with the example we have in Jesus. Beloved friends, there’s not a step of the steepest path to life on which His foot has not left a divine impress; there is not a step of the race that isn’t marked with blood, that isn’t marked with glory. The Forerunner did not ascend up on high without leaving us an example that we should follow His steps.

Christ is set before those who are running the Christian race in three different characters – as enduring the Cross, as despising the shame, and as set down at the right hand of God. One of the first sights the soul gets
by faith of the Lord Jesus Christ is as enduring the Cross. He had a motive for so enduring – the joy of seeing sinners redeemed and saved by His blood. He looked back to the Old Testament Church already glorified,
and He looked forward to us – to everyone who by Him should be saved. In that hour He saw you, He saw me – He saw an elect world depending on Him for salvation, and so He endured the Cross. Who can tell
what a weight of wrath lay upon Him at that moment – more wrath than ever lay on any sinner, or on all the condemned; and yet, for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the Cross.

If He had not done that there would have been no Christian warfare – no race – no way – no goal at the end – no combat – no victory – no eternal life. There would have been no promises, my dear friends; there
would have been no commands – no threatenings. You have to thank the Cross of Christ even for commands and threatenings; thank Him that it is not an eternal sentence of woe that is gone forth; for, had Christ not
endured His Father’s wrath for sinners, there had been no need or room for threatening. Neither threatening nor command is now sent to the fallen angels; all they have to do is to drink of the cup of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. But for us, has Immanuel endured the Cross. He drank of the brook by the way, and now He hath lifted up the head. He hath ascended up on high leading captivity captive, and receiving gifts
for the rebellious sons of men.

The first view you need to get of Christ, dear fellow-sinner, is to behold Him as a Saviour, but the next is as “despising the shame.” None of His people follow Him closely, or follow Him long, without being in
some measure conformed to Him in this respect; and it is not an easy thing to despise shame, or even to bear shame. But when you are, for His sake, cast out by the world, look unto Jesus as bearing the reproach and
the shame for you. And oh! the believer’s happiest moments often are when he is loaded with the reproach of the Cross, for then he most clearly sees the great High Priest passed into the heavens, who sympathizes
with all his griefs. The sympathy of Immanuel! What a support; what a glorious consolation! Sympathy is always sweet when anything grieves you very much. If you are suffering, for instance, under a bereavement
in your family, and your friends come and show that they feel deeply for you, it consoles and soothes you. It alleviates your distress when their tears mingle with yours, and you feel that if anything could comfort you,
that would do it. But yet human sympathy is an empty thing. It cannot fill the blank, or heal the wound, or dry the tears of sorrow. But the sympathy of Jesus is not empty. Oh! beloved friends, it is precious, precious, precious! True, He is passed into the heavens, out of His people’s sight, but yet He is near to them. And that sympathy of His is no ideal thing; it is no imagined comfort. It is a sympathy worth the having, for it is deep – deep – deep as His godhead, and yet tender as His manhood. Some believers seem to feel as if His manhood had been lost in the glory of His divine nature; but His heart and His feelings and His sympathy are just as much those of a man as when He walked by the Sea of Galilee. The sympathy of Jesus is human sympathy – it feels for a fellow-man; and He feels for His own people, and counts all that is done to them as if it were done to Himself. He is a merciful and sympathizing High Priest; He knows their trials, and He remembers that they are dust.

This is just the reason why the very happiest moments of a believer – the moments when he has most actual joy and confidence – are often those in which his cup of anguish is well nigh running over, and when reproach and calumny and persecution have seemed to be striving which shall wound him most, just because at these moments the heavenly Sympathizer in all his sorrows has been more sensibly near to him,
pouring His divine consolations without measure into his soul. See to it, my dear friends, that you beware of trying to despise the shame, unless you be at the same time looking unto Jesus. Your heart will soon fail if
you cease to behold Him as the endurer of the Cross and despiser of the shame, who is now seated at the right hand of God.Weak believers, be encouraged by this – that the victory is gained. It is not to be fought for now; it is finished – it is complete; and our head is above. Christ is above, not only accepted of the Father, but set down forevermore at His right hand. Yes, He is enthroned above, far above all principalities and powers and every name that is named, and He does not forget for one moment the Church on earth, which He hath purchased with His own blood. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me,” was His language upon the earth; and “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” was His language from the highest heaven. Little does the world think how near He is to everyone of the least of these, His brethren. Little does the world think that whosoever toucheth one of them, toucheth, as it were, the apple of His eye. But what affecting proofs have we of this? Do you remember Stephen? Did Christ look on with indifference at Stephen’s martyrdom? Was He an unconcerned spectator when Stephen stood for His name’s sake in the midst of his enemies to die the death? Ah, no! Favoured Stephen! The persecuted multitude were doing their worst, and Stephen was about to die when he lifted up his eyes to heaven. And what did he see? Heaven opened. Was not that a sight worth seeing – an open heaven, a heaven prepared for him, opening to receive him? Beloved friends in Jesus, would not that be a sight worth dying for – an open heaven? I think an open grave wouldn’t frighten us if we saw at the back of it an open heaven; nor a burning stake, with an open heaven beyond it. But this was not all that Stephen saw, though, truly, of itself it would have been a glorious sight. Whom did the opening heavens reveal to Stephen? A redeeming Saviour; the author and the finisher of his faith; the glorified One! Yes, He was just going to put the finishing stroke upon Stephen’s faith; He was just going to make Stephen perfect, and to raise him to His throne. Was Jesus the same, of whom it is here said that He endured the Cross, despising the shame, and is now set down at the right hand of God? Yes; when His people suffer, He suffers too. He could not sit on His throne while a faithful martyr suffered. We are not called to die for Christ, but let us witness for Him, though it be in sackcloth and ashes; and we do not know that the day shall never come – even in our time – when men must lose their lives in this world if they would keep them unto life eternal. The martyr is likest to his Lord. Every believer is conformed in some degree to His image, but none are so fully conformed to it as those who die for His sake. Yes, the martyr, in living and in dying, is likest to his Lord. Perhaps no one ever died for Christ’s cause to whom He did not appear in His love.But do all obtain this view of an open heaven? Do you think that if the men who were stoning Stephen had seen heaven opened, they would have seen what he saw? Do you think if the kings and judges of the earth who set themselves together against the Lord and His anointed, saying “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us” – think you that to them the opening heavens would reveal
Christ standing at the right hand of God? Ah, no! they would see another sight. “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.” Oh! could men but see before them, when they are
going on in their rebellion, how the mighty God smiles at all their opposition. If you could see heaven opened, unbeliever, and Jesus, the crucified one, against whom you are fighting, sitting on the throne of
universal dominion, you, too, would see another sight from what Stephen saw. “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh.” Is there not one heart melting under the word to-night? Are you all determined,
without exception, to reject Christ, and to make the excuses of corrupt and deceived hearts? Is Christ not to find entrance into one soul tonight? It is with tears that we speak thus. Must we go unto Him that sent us
and say, “They will not come in”?

Must we leave this favoured city and turn unto others? Oh! beloved, you’ve got many a warning, many an invitation, many an entreaty in this place to come to Christ, and you have rejected them all – everyone,
everyone. Are you doing it still? Are you rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ, the Father’s unspeakable gift, again to-night? Is it possible? Know you not, then, what will be the end of them that obey not the Gospel? “That
they all might be damned who believed not the truth.” Yes, yes, brethren, fellow-sinners, it is the truth and no lie that we speak. If you reject Him to the end – it may be if you reject Him now – you will be damned.
Yes, and you will go down – down – down so fast that none can stop you, and so fast that you can’t stop yourselves, into the pit of eternal vengeance – to the devil and his angels. Oh! are we to leave you thus? Can
we leave you? Would to God that poor sinners were seeing their awful condition, and fleeing from the coming judgment! Brothers and sisters, it might well melt the coldest heart to come among you time after
time, and see you hardening under the preached Gospel, and well-nigh deserted by a striving Spirit, and piercing the heart of Immanuel by resisting His love. Truly, when we think of it and remember the days that
are gone by – the days of the right hand of the Most High – the countless warnings since – ah! but you must think of it too, or the compassion of fellow men will do you little good. Let conscience testify for God this
night. Are there not men and women here who have heard the Gospel so long that their ears are tired of listening to it, and who yet have never surrendered their hearts to Christ? You have a place forevery idol and
every lust, but you’ve no room for Christ – none; and you cannot plead ignorance.Are there no drunkards here? Yes, I believe it. There are men in this place who have been warned, and warned, and warned till ministers can warn no longer, of what their drunkenness will bring on – ruined body and soul. You know well what I am saying, sinner, and yet you go to the public-house wilfully and constantly to court destruction; ay, and come into the very House of God with the smell of drink upon you. What can we, then, say to you drunkards, or to you unclean, or to you Sabbath-breakers, or to you liars, or to you whose sins we cannot name? Know you not that no drunkard, or unclean person in heart or in life, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of God? Know you not that the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone?

Some of you go to the theatre, to get the knife put to your very souls, and to shorten, if possible, your path to hell; or you go and join in the dance and the song, and sing those pernicious ballads that fill the mind with
impurity and sin. And you go about as joyously as if no curse were hanging over your head, or as if no pit were ready to receive you. Is this going home to the hearts of any? Are there none who feel that they have
been actually persevering and delighting in sin in the very face of light, and of love, and of conscience? Charge yourselves with it. I charge you in the sight of God, who shall judge the quick and the dead, and before angels, ay, and before devils who have marked your downward progress with care and with fiendish joy. I charge you with it as you shall appear before the great white throne – young men, young women, answer to your names. Is that not true? Is it true? Do I speak thus that I may harrow up your feelings? No, but because we dare not leave you rejecting Christ, despising the Holy One, treasuring up unto yourselves wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of God’s righteous judgments. Will you not now give up your drinking and your songs, the theatre and the dance, or will you dance down to hell, where you will dwell with devils, among lost souls? Confess your guilt, dear young men. Will you not be any more found amid these scenes of vice and sin or on the race-ground – that encampment of Satan around your poor city? You will not be condemned for breaking the law, nor for Sabbath breaking, nor for drunkenness, but you will be condemned on this awful ground of rejecting Christ. Unbelief is the sin that will sink you into the lake of fire, from which nothing can save you but receiving Christ; and He is willing to receive you. If you but knew Him you would believe that. We proclaim to you again, in the name of Jehovah, that Jesus – His unspeakable gift, even Jesus Christ – is free to-night to each sinner within these walls, anyone who wills, whosoever will, let him come; let him accept it this moment. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ; believe, receive Him, and be saved. Does anyone say that he does not know what we mean by receiving Christ? My dear friends, there is nothing more simple. It just means that you are to open your hearts to Him – to act faith upon Him – to say, “Come quickly” – to cry, “Help thou mine unbelief!”

Do you not understand it yet? Take an illustration. Do you understand this – what it would be to possess a thing without having it in your hand; to possess a thing at a distance – a thing you had never seen? If a friend were to say to you that he had made over to you some particular object, would you not consider it as much your own before you saw it as after? If I met you in the street and said I had a book for you, had put your name on it, and that it was lying ready for you at home, and bid you come for it, then if you went from me and met anyone you would say, “I’ve got a book; the minister has given it to me – it’s mine”; and you would feel that, though the book were still at my lodging. Or if you had no shelter for the night, and I met you, and said “Come to my lodging to-night – there is room for you there,” and then you went into a house, and anyone asked if you had shelter for the night, you would say “Yes, I’ve got shelter; I’ve got it; I’m going to a house where I’ll get it.” And you say that without ever having seen the house, or knowing much about where it was, if only you had directions to find it. Or if a hungry man were told to come at a certain hour for food, he would say “I’ve got food,” though he had not seen it. And this is just what a sinner feels when he has accepted Christ as the gift of God. He feels his need of the Saviour. God says “Here is my beloved Son; I give unto you eternal life and all things in him.” And so the sinner says “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.” And then he feels, and says “Christ is mine – the Father hath given Him unto me; eternal
life is mine, and none can pluck me out of the Father’s hand.” Now, is not that blessed? Is it not simple?
Simple and free as air to every soul under heaven, and to every sinner in this house to-night, to be his to all eternity – a free gift. The very word gift implies freeness. Will you not accept it, and take the gift from the
Father’s hand? Cry to Him now and He will answer you. Do you say you are too vile? What! too much lost to be saved! Is that possible? Can it be? Beloved friends, have you no reason? By saying you are too vile you
just say this: “I cannot take God’s righteousness, because I’ve got no righteousness; I cannot take salvation from Christ, because I’m unsaved; I cannot pray, because I have not got what I need from God yet; I cannot
eat the Bread of life, because my hunger is not satisfied, nor drink the living water, because my thirst is raging still.

Apply that to the previous illustration. I meet a man wandering about, without house or home, and offer him a lodging. He says “Thank you, sir; but indeed I have no lodging, so I cannot take it.” I meet another,starving with hunger, and say “Here is bread; take it.” He says “Oh! I would be so thankful, but I have not a morsel of bread; I cannot take it, for I have none.” Or if one were dying of thirst, and you gave him drink, and he were to say “I cannot take it, for I have no water.” What should we say to them? “Man, how foolish you are. I don’t ask you to take lodging from me because you have lodging, but because you have none. I didn’t offer you bread because you have bread, or water because you have water. I offer you them because you have none; that is my very reason – my only reason.” Or if you went to a diseased man, and offered to run for a physician, and the sick man said “Oh! I can’t see the physician, because I’m not well!” I should say “Man, that’s why you need the physician – because you’re ill and dying, and will soon be gone unless he come to you.” But no man in his senses will meet you with reasoning like this. Never was such a thing heard of when temporal need and temporal mercies are in the question. It is left to the spiritually hungry to cast
their food from them, for no other reason than that they are too hungry to take it. It’s left to the sin-sick soul to shut its door on the physician who comes to heal and save it. Don’t imagine that we overdraw the picture.
For what else does the sinner virtually do, when he meets the offers of pardon with the sorrowful assurance that you need not speak to him of pardon, for he has never got pardon; that you need not offer him all things in Christ Jesus, because he has as yet got nothing from Him – no bread on which to feed a starving soul; refusing water because he is too thirsty to drink it; and when you ask him to cover his filthy rags with
Christ’s garment of salvation – as we now entreat every sinner within these walls to do, and as in Christ’s name, and as ambassadors of God, we now command you to do, saying “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (and,
sinners, oh! do it now) – he says “I can’t take this clothing, because I’m naked; I can’t take Christ’s garment, for I have none.” What does this mean? If you knew your own hearts, it just means this, “I am not willing to give Him my heart. ” Seek, beloved friends, to yield it up to Him this night. Wait on the Lord continually.

You say “I don’t see Him; I cannot behold Him.” Oh no! for He’s passed into the heavens; but He lives, He lives to save you and to fight for you, having gotten the victory. Join Him, and you will be on the winning side. It is a great encouragement to an army to go on fighting if they know they are to get the victory. How should it not encourage you to know that Immanuel has conquered, and is now set down on the right hand of God, and is offering salvation as a free gift – for it is as free in the nineteenth century as it was in the first. Oh! if I could but tell you how free it is. I know well that this is all foolishness and without meaning to the natural man, but still if God reveal it to your souls this night, it shall not be so to you. If you would accept of Christ, you would find this to be a new world to you. The sun would shine doubly upon you; the moon would shine upon you, as you go forth this night, as it never shone on you before. All
creation would be your friend, because its Creator’s smile would rest on you forever. Strange it is that such doubts and fears still harass us. Strange it is that you cannot behold the unclouded glory of the Eternal Sun. But it has always been so, and it is so still, although at this time there is more light upon the road than there ever was. Do you recollect how Bunyan expresses that when he speaks of the Slough of Despond? How the king’s servants had, at his command, been continually trying to fill it up with cart-loads of promises, and yet it had never been made firm ground. So is it with the path to glory. Successive generations have traced on it the marks of joy, and confidence, and hope, and of final triumph in the God of salvation, but still it is overshadowed with doubt, and uncertainty, and darkness, and shrouded by the fear of death. Yet lift your
eyes above the intervening mists; believe in God’s love; look unto Jesus! His merits and blood are a sure foundation. They are strong enough to bear any sinner here, and if you would come over and plant your
foot on them, you would find that there is a good foundation for the heavenly race, and one on which you may safely fight the good fight of faith, and overcome the enmity of Satan and the world!

A sore fight you will have with the world. How sharp-eyed it is to the sins of God’s people; how quickly are their failings detected, exposed, and cried down. The least slip in their hard race is marked and noted.
And when tempted by their enemies into an open sin, it is never lost on the sharp-sighted world; such an outcry is raised about hypocrisy and pretence that you never hear the last of it. And why does the world
expect God’s people to be so holy? How does it raise such a high standard for them, and marvel that men of like passions with itself should ever fall or stumble? Why does the world watch believers so narrowly? If one
of themselves sins openly, that is no wonder to them; they feel no surprise. They never expect to find a holy Atheist or a holy Deist; when they do wrong it is considered a very light matter, and quite natural. But ah! if a saint walk inconsistently – if but a single blemish be found on his profession or a stain upon his character – it is soon noticed. True, they have often too much room to speak thus of God’s people, but what does their anxiety to do so prove? Does it show that Christ is not worthy of confidence, or that He cannot keep His people holy? No! The world’s anxiety to find fault just proves that Jesus is a holy and an all sufficient
Saviour. Does it not prove that Jesus lives? It does, it does. Does it not prove that the Spirit is a sanctifying Spirit? It does, it does.Oh! brethren, I have often myself felt that when, through the prevalence of sin and the depth of unbelief, I have scarce been able to believe that Christ is living still. That very opposition of the world to Christ’s people – that very outcry that is raised when they sin – that eagerness that is so evident to lay any sin at a believer’s door, and to spread it and triumph in it, as if they had really got a victory through the man’s fall – I say, that very shout of joy that follows his fall – has convinced me and made me feel what a reality there must be in the being of Immanuel – what an almighty power in His arm, to save – what a boundless grace in His Spirit, to sanctify! If the very unbelieving and God-denying world expects that grace in His people which they would never look for in themselves or in the world around them, shall you, believers, think so lightly of the power of the Spirit of God, as not even to expect that from Him which the world expects all His people should possess? How it should also warn you to beware how you act! Remember that many eyes are upon you, and many snares are about your feet, and many hearts will triumph in your fall, and try to cast the shame and disgrace of it upon your great High Priest. Walk wisely then, and remember that if a saint in walking through the street do but cast a side-look at any vanity, it is treasured up and remembered, and charged
upon the spotless name and on the holy cause of Christ, who is your King.

You need not attempt to keep your garment white, or your profession unstained, in any other way than by looking unto Jesus. Look to Him continually, and do not fear what man can do unto you, nor that you
yourself will be left openly to disgrace your profession or bring reproach on Christ. When you do lose sight of Him do not despair. Remember that night when Christ sent the apostles out upon the sea, and let the
storm arise, and tried their faith by not going to them till the fourth watch. So has His Church since then been often left. Many, many a long night she has toiled and watched under the seeming frown of an absent
Saviour. Did she watch in vain? The morning dawned, and His love was revealed. You who feel as if you were seeking Him in vain, plead on till the fourth watch. He will come walking on the waters; and when He does come, do not refuse to recognize Him, as Peter did. Receive Him; open your hearts to Him that He may come and dwell there forevermore! [June 1907]