Christian Classics - A. M. Hills  

THE WHOSOEVER GOSPEL

By Aaron Merritt Hills

DEDICATION

To the hopeless, homeless prodigals who have wandered far from their Father's house, only to find soul-hunger and rags and shame; to those who have been led by Satan to believe that their blessed God has forgotten them, and does not care that they perish; to those with whom life has gone so hard that all moral ideals have faded out, and all prospects of heaven have vanished, till, in sheer despair, they do not knock at the Savior's door of mercy; and to all sinners of every age or race, or degree of guilt, respectable or outcast, moral or criminal -- this book is lovingly and prayerfully dedicated by

The Author.

INTRODUCTION

There are teachers and preachers, not a few, who deal chiefly in discouragements and condemnations. They measure the infinite mercy of God by the tapeline of their own littleness, and then report to the world that it is only a meager thing after all, and that but few can be saved. They go to musty creeds two or three hundred years old for their theology, instead of repairing to the everlasting Word -- the Fountain of saving truth. They teach that the atonement was limited to the few, and grace is an arbitrary, autocratic, and aristocratic affair, in spite of all God's assertions to the contrary. It seems as if such misguided men would rather proclaim the narrowing, soul-dwarfing traditions of men, than to blow the gospel trumpet and proclaim the world-wide grace of Him who "tasted death for every man," and who stands on pierced feet and stretches out pierced hands with ineffable love and compassion, and cries, "Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely."

This little book is designed to magnify this saving grace of the adorable Jesus, and to sound out the message of hope to sin-darkened, despairing souls. We are not of the number of those who join with the devil in heaping up obstacles and discouragements in the path of the sinner's return to the arms of a forgiving God. Pardon and peace, yea, and sanctifying grace, are all ready for the willing soul; and Jesus appeals by every motive that can move the troubled heart to come to Him and be saved.

We recently heard Bud Robinson, the incomparable Texan preacher, say that he got converted, and then he got sanctified; after that he was a candidate for election to glory. (I Peter 1:2.) The election took place in heaven. God the Father voted for him; God the Son voted for him; God the Spirit voted for him; the angels counted the votes, and declared him unanimously elected to glory.

Dear reader, in spite of all your past sins, you, too, by repentance of sin and faith in Jesus, through the cleansing blood, and the baptism with the Holy Spirit, can secure a unanimous election to eternal glory.

CONTENTS

1 The Crowning Promise (Revelation 22:17)

2 The Throbbing Heart (John 3:16)

3 The Triple Assurance (Joel 2:32; Acts 3:21; Romans 10:13)

4 The Two Great Necessities (John 3:3, 14, 15; Heb. 12:14)

1 THE CROWNING PROMISE

"And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." -- Revelation 22:17

Someone has told us that there are thirty-two thousand promises in the Word of God. So many encouragements to poor, sin-cursed mortals to come to God and seek mercy and find pardon and life. It seems that God was not satisfied with thirty-two thousand such encouragements, and in this last book in the Bible, and in the last chapter and in almost the last verse, He has seemed to compress all His love and gentleness and tenderness and longings into one verse, and tried to outdo Himself in giving a gracious, wooing invitation to man.

I want to call your attention to two truths assumed by the text, and three taught in the text. One of the strongest ways of asserting a thing is to assume it. For instance, if man had been writing the Bible he would have used a book larger than the Book of Genesis to prove that there is a God; but God made the Bible, and He did not stop a minute to prove His own existence. He simply said: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." There is not a line in the Bible to prove that God exists, any more than you would sit down to write to your child, and would say, "Dear Child, Your mother is alive." Now, this is a strong way of asserting a truth, by assuming it.

The first thing that is assumed in the text is, that man, by nature, is away from God, and is in perishing need of God and salvation. This great, urgent need of the soul is likened in the text to thirst. Most of us do not know anything about what thirst means. You live here by the side of this beautiful Ohio River, with its abundant waters, and you do not know what thirst is; but there are some people that do know what thirst means. The Bible was written in the neighborhood of great deserts, and men sometimes were in these deserts, and they knew what thirst meant. Sometimes there were great droughts, and the water failed. The cisterns were exhausted, and thirst meant something. Becalmed mariners on the deep know what thirst means. They say it is one of the most unutterable, agonizing sensations that the physical being can know. The tongue swells and becomes speechless; the limbs turn black; and men have been known in their agony to open their own veins and suck their own feverish blood in the vain attempt to quench their raging, maddening thirst.

That is the figure that God has used to represent the condition of man without God and salvation. Is that overdrawn language, or is it the accuracy of calm statement used by God Almighty? Beloved, I believe that is a plain, simple statement of the condition of the soul without God. I will tell you why I think so. Did you ever stop a single moment to reflect upon the strange, sad features of humanity? Its restlessness, its dissatisfaction, its manifest craving for something that the world can not give? Do you stand or sit, as I have done hundreds of times, and look into the faces of the people in the audience, and notice the stamp of care and restlessness on so many countenances? What is the trouble with humanity? Why is it that people are not satisfied? Why is it that the most adventurous voyager that ever sailed in unknown seas never found one lone little island, whose inhabitants were not vainly trying, somehow, to get right with God? No Grant or Stanley threading the black heart of benighted Africa ever came on one tribe or family who were not trying to propitiate offended deities, or, in their ignorant way, trying to get right with God. What is the trouble with humanity? It is the curse of sin upon it; and it can not be satisfied in a life of sin. All the blandishments of your luxurious civilization do not change the facts any. Men, with all their wealth, all their learning, all their power, all their ambitious achievements, are still discontented and dissatisfied without God.

O, but some one says, "I think if I just had money I would be satisfied." The average youth in Cincinnati to-night thinks that. I wish I had this room packed with young men who had that foolish dream that money could satisfy them. One day news went abroad in Wall Street, New York, that Jay Gould was in financial difficulties. One of his business friends went into his office to commiserate with him over his financial straits. The strange financier called the Wizard of Wall Street smiled, and said, "You think I am in trouble, do you?" and stepped back into his vault, and brought out an armful of securities and said, "Count them." The man counted and counted and counted securities until they footed up fifty-four million dollars worth of securities that Jay Gould could put his hand on in a moment's notice. And yet after that he had a great contest with his employees to lessen their wages, and he was as eager for money as when he was a surveyor working for eighteen dollars per month, and a good deal more so.

Two or three years ago Mr. Armour was reported to have sold ninety-three millions of dollars worth of meat in that year. Is he satisfied? He is still enlarging his great packing business, and reaching out and ever reaching out for more; like death itself, never satisfied. Take John D. Rockefeller. Is he satisfied? I sat at the table two or three years ago with a gentleman who said: "Twenty-three years ago Mr. Rockefeller and I were working at the same desk. Mr. Rockefeller got less than I did, and my wages at that time were seven hundred dollars per year." Two or three years ago I heard Senator Ingalls, of Kansas, say that Mr. Rockefeller was brought before a committee of the United States Senate, and put under oath and asked how much his income was. He said: "So far as I can judge, my income is ten or twelve million dollars a year, and how much more I do not know and do not care." I should not think it would be a matter for him to worry much about. About that time I was riding with a gentleman on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, and he said: "Mr. Rockefeller lives right there. He has two homes on Euclid Avenue." A banker in the city told me recently that, so far as he could estimate, Mr. Rockefeller's income was not less than twenty million dollars per year; fifty thousand dollars a day; two thousand dollars and more every hour that he wakes or sleeps! and yet, is he satisfied? You can not tap an oil territory on the globe that he does not want to gobble it up. He is even going outside of the oil business into the iron business, and reaching out and grasping to pull in more. What does that mean? Why, friends, it means this, that money, mere money, apart from sacred uses to which a consecrated man can put it, never did and never can satisfy a living soul.

O, but some young man says, "If I just had money, and power, and fame, I could be satisfied, I think!" Do you think so? Let me give you another illustration. We will take a very famous one, General Grant. You know the Nation took Grant from obscurity, and made him all that he was. Put him at the head of the greatest army that was ever marshaled on this planet since Christ came into the world, and he was the commander of more powerful armies than were ever marshaled under the command of any other leader. That was honor enough. After the war was over the Nation enriched him. Men gave him residences in this city, and property in that. One man gave him one hundred thousand dollars in a single gift. Then he was made President of the United States, a position for which he was never fitted, and then he was given a second term as President of the United States, a position he had not earned. Was he satisfied? You remember that after he had got all that, and probably as much as any American can ever get, and I hope more than any other American will ever get again, he reached out for that little third term bauble, and so tarnished the glory of his life, and showed to the world that Grant was not satisfied. By and by the shadows of his life were lengthening on the plains of Mount McGregor, and he was about to die; and what does this man do? He has been enriched a second time. But with all his honor and all his wealth he sends for a Methodist minister, and asks him to baptize him and give him the communion, for he wants to get Christ before he dies. And after the funeral Mrs. Grant made the most wonderful comment upon it all. She said: "With all our fame and with all our wealth and with all our power, we were never happier than when we were out West, and Colonel Grant was working for forty dollars per month." 0, young man, you who think forty dollars a month is nothing, and that if you could only have wealth and fame and power you would be satisfied, look at that picture, and learn this, that all this world's power and wealth and fame laid at the feet of any man would never satisfy him, Why not? The reason is that God never intended that the soul made in his image should be satisfied with any bauble of time.

Second. My text assumes that Jesus can satisfy. Jesus meets every want of the soul. God made us for Himself, and in Him we find the needs of the soul met, and in Him alone. Why is this? I will show you by an illustration. Suppose that you were starving and thirsty, actually starving to death, and you were down at Biltmore, N. C., where Cornelius Vanderbilt has twelve thousand acres of land made into a paradise on earth, and a seven-million-dollar palace, and suppose he should take you into that castle and say to you, "Here is a deed to this whole estate; I give it to you." You would say to him, "It is all very nice, sir; but I am starving to death. Please give me some food." Suppose, instead of giving you food, he should say: "Look at this art here on these walls. Look at this statuary. Look at these masterpieces of human skill. Do you not enjoy art? I give all these to you." You would look at it, and say: "Yes, sir; Mr. Vanderbilt, I enjoy art; but, please, sir, give me some food; I am starving to death." Suppose that, instead of giving you food, he should bring in Theodore Thomas's orchestra, and it should discourse to you the sweetest strains that ever ravished human ear, and he should say: "Listen to those strains. Have you a musical soul?" "0 yes," you might say, "I enjoy music; but, sir, give me some food. I am starving." And just as the twelve-thousand-acre paradise, and the palace, and the art, and the statuary, and the music could not feed your hungry stomach, because your stomach craved for its natural food; so all this world can not satisfy your soul, because it is not the natural food of one made in the image of God. You were made for God, and you must have God, or die of hunger and thirst. A Christian singer has put this into song:

"I tried the broken cisterns, Lord; But ah! their waters failed; Even as I stooped to drink they fled, And mocked me as I wailed. Now, none but Christ can satisfy, None other name for me; There is light and love and peace and joy, Lord Jesus, found in thee."

That is the reason why the soul thirsts and dies without God, and God can bring it supreme and eternal satisfaction.

Now, secondly, I come to what the text teaches. First, it teaches that there is a universal supply for this universal need. I know that men deny this truth. They try to hedge off salvation, and limit it by their creeds and their little petty interpretations of Scripture. They even dare to hammer to pieces God's sovereignty, and build little sectarian walls around the fountain of life. And they have dared to stand over it, and say this fountain of life is only for the elect; and if you are elect, come in; but the non-elect must stand back and perish. This is a private affair only for the elect, they say. But O, I plant my feet on this text, and say that one of God's eternal decrees is, "Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely." Jesus Christ "tasted death for every man." He has made atonement for all the world, and he invites every fallen son and daughter of Adam to come to the fountain and drink and live. O, I praise God for these sweeping universal "whosoevers" of God's Word ! That takes in me. That takes in everybody that will have it so. Wherever there is a soul burdened and a conscience troubled and a life blighted by conscious sin, there flows the fountain of life and there stands a herald of mercy, saying, "Whosoever will, let him drink and live."

The second truth that the text teaches is this: This salvation is FREE Glory to God! it is free in three senses. In the first place, it is free because it has already been bought and paid for. When you go down to a store and buy a parcel of goods, and then send your boy or your servant after it, if they take out their pocket-book to pay for the goods again, the honest merchant will say: "Take it right along, the goods have been paid for. You do not need to pay for them. Take them right along." So, my dear friends, when you go to get your salvation, remember that you were redeemed, not with silver or gold, not with corruptible things, but you were redeemed with the white coin of Jesus' tears and the red coin of His blood. He paid the dear price of your redemption, and you do not need to pay that price over again.

Second, this salvation is free again, in the sense that God does not ask anything for it. He asked a big price of His dear Son. It cost Him humiliation and shame, the bloody sweat of Gethsemane, and the agony and death of Calvary's cross; but it does not cost you anything. You do not need to pay penance; you do not need to perform works; you do not need to try to earn this great salvation by your poor, little, human doings. But O, that is one of the truths Satan hates; and he has tried to keep it away from the mind of man. That is the error of the whole Catholic Church. They have forgotten that salvation is free; and every poor Catholic is put on continual doings, doings, doings, to earn peace with God.

Look at Martin Luther. He has swooned away on the stone floor of his monastery cell. For days he has been starving himself to death to earn peace with God. He recovers from that, and is sent down to Rome; and there he is told that if he will just climb on his knees the staircase of Pilate, and say a prayer on each step, he will have an indulgence. And he is doing it, trying to earn salvation. He gets half way up, and God flashes some truth into his soul, "The just shall live by faith;" and he rises right up and walks down a free man, saved by faith, and the Reformation is begun.

Do you think that truth was remembered? No, it was not. Two hundred years more pass away. The truth is almost lost again. There is a holiness club over there in Oxford, England, composed of some beautiful young men, Whitefield and John Wesley and Charles Wesley; and they are doing over again the same thing that Luther did. That beautiful youth, Whitefield, is lying on the ground for hours, his arms spread out in the form of a cross, until his poor body grows weak and black with suffering, to earn salvation. He is eating coarse food, and wearing mean clothes, and in various ways torturing himself. He is growing sick, and for nine weeks he is sick unto death. One day a book is given him by Charles Wesley, and he reads in this book that a person can say his prayers, and can be baptized and go to communion, and still not be saved. In great agony of soul he holds the book up to God, and says, "If this is not salvation, show me what Christianity is, that my poor soul may not be damned at last." He reads a little further, that Christianity is a vital union of the soul by living faith with Jesus; and his soul reaches right out and grasps the great truth, and he is saved to become the seraphic preacher of the ages.

Three years pass away before Charles Wesley gets this blessing. Charles Wesley is at this time a graduate of Oxford, a scholar and a poet; and vet he has been trying to earn salvation. He is taught by a humble servant in his own household to see that salvation is obtained by faith in Jesus. As a lily opens to the sunlight on a June morning, his soul opens up to God by faith, and he steps into the kingdom. John Wesley gets saved four days later. Remember now that John Wesley has been a graduate of Oxford and a preacher for ten years, and he went as a missionary to America to convert the Georgia Indians. One time in agony of soul he wrote in his diary, "I came here to convert the Indians; but, alas ! who will convert me?" He is visiting the poorhouses and jails to save his soul. He is denying himself to save his soul. Poor man, he has got a soul on his hands: and for the life of him he does not know what to do with it. Four days after his brother Charles got into the kingdom -- I think it was the 23d of April, 1738, when John Wesley was thirty-five years of age -- this brilliant scholar was taught by a humble Moravian to take Christ by faith, and he at once steps over the line into the kingdom of God, and the second reformation is born.

Do you think the blessed doctrine of salvation by faith has been remembered? Beloved, plenty of Protestant people today are doing the same thing over again -- trying to get salvation by works. I will give you proof of it. I was laboring in the inquiry-room in Pittsburgh during a meeting of Moody's some ten or fifteen years ago, and he asked me to go and talk to a certain man in the inquiry-room. I sat down before him with my Bible in my hand, and said, "Well, brother, what is your trouble?" "O," he said, "I would like to be converted, but I can not be saved because I have no feeling." I said, "You do not need to have any feeling; you can get saved without feeling." He said: "I know better than that. Last winter I had a great deal of feeling, and I went to the altar every night for a week, and I was full of feeling; but I did not get saved; and how can I get saved now without any feeling?" I said: "Brother, you can. Feeling has nothing whatever to do with the subject. You ought to have feeling, and you can get down here on your knees and tell God that you have no feeling, and that you are ashamed of it; but that, feeling or no feeling, you want salvation." I talked with that man an hour, and taught him that we were not saved by feeling; and he suddenly dropped on his knees and gave himself to God without any feeling, and in five minutes he was a saved man. Then he had plenty of feeling. Now, what was he trying to do? He was trying to buy salvation by feeling bad. He was utterly discouraged because he could not feel. That is nothing but trying to buy salvation by feeling -- by groans and tears. But Jesus has bought it by his anguish, and you do not need to buy.

Third. This salvation is free in the sense that God will not take anything for it. You have got to take it as a free gift, or go without it. I can show you this by a very simple illustration, that is beautiful. There was in Europe a poor man who had a little dying girl in his home, who very much loved flowers. It was in the winter time; and he walked by the king's garden, and looked in and saw the beautiful flowers in the conservatory. He took out his little pocketbook, and told the gardener that his dying little girl was very fond of flowers, and he would like to buy her a little bouquet before she died. The gardener answered him harshly. The king's son heard it, and said: "Do not grieve the poor man that way. Cut a bunch of flowers, and give it to him." He did so, and the man, still thinking he had to pay for them, took out his little pocketbook and offered the money. The king's son stood back and looked at him in amazement, and said: "My dear sir, my father is a king. He does not sell flowers, he gives them away." I want to tell you all this evening that my Father in heaven is a KING, and he does not sell salvation to sinners. He GIVES it away, and if we are not willing to be humble enough to come as poor beggars, and ask for it and receive it as a gift, we will not get salvation. The only claim is your need and your helplessness, and God's willingness and God's love and God's provisions of grace. Go and ask and receive, that your joy may be full.

There is a third truth taught in the text, and that is that this salvation, so abundant in provision, so free that it is within reach of the humblest son and daughter of Adam, can only be received on some well-appointed conditions. What are they? The text says you must be willing. "WHOSOEVER WILL." It is never crowded upon anybody; it is never forced upon anybody. It is simply given to the man who is willing to take it on God's appointed conditions. What are they? Why, repentance of sin -- forsaking sin, faith in Jesus, and dedication to His service. Three simple conditions; but you must meet them, or you can not be saved! This salvation is so free and so abundant; and yet these conditions are unvarying and inexorable, and you must meet them, or lose the salvation of your soul.

Charles the Seventh of France starved to death. What did he starve to death for? Was there no bread in all France for the king? O yes, there was plenty of bread; but he starved to death because he was insane, and was not willing to eat. And, beloved, if you are so insanely in love with this world, that you refuse to eat the bread of life, then you have to die. That is all.

Some years ago the Duke of Clarence, the oldest son of Prince Albert of England, died. Why did that young man die, with only his father between him and Queen Victoria's crown, and the sovereignty of the greatest empire in the world? Why did that young man die? Not because there was no life for him, but because he would not comply with life's conditions. He loved cigarettes, and the royal physician said to him, "Your Royal Highness must stop smoking cigarettes, or you will die." He did not stop, and die he did. He refused to pay the price of self-denial for life and the crown of England. And I say to you that God holds up before you the priceless crown of eternal righteousness, and you must pay the price. And if you are not willing to meet God's conditions, then, with all this abundant salvation, provided for you and easily accessible, your soul must perish.

But some one says, "Why do you say, you must dedicate yourself to God's service? Why do you put that in as a condition of salvation? Very few preachers do it; why do you?" I will tell you why I do it. Because there are any quantity of people today who are dreaming that they can get saved and not enter God's service. I say to you that that is one of the devil's snares and delusions; and there is no salvation for the man who does not intend to immediately enter into the service of God. Joshua understood it when he said, "Choose you this day whom you will serve ;" and that man who says he can get saved and go on in the service of the devil as he did before, is a deluded soul.

Some years ago, over here in Kentucky, there was a man by the name of Sam Holmes, who committed a great crime. He had a friend by the name of Lucien Young, who was also an intimate friend of the famous Governor Blackburn, of Kentucky. One time Lucien Young went to the governor, and said, "We have always been friends since boyhood, have we not?" "Yes, Lucien, we have always been friends; we have never fallen out." "Well," said Lucien, "I would like to have you do a favor just for my sake." "What is it? If I can do it I will, for your sake." He said, "I want you to pardon out of the State prison my friend, Sam Holmes, for my sake." He said, "For your sake I will give you that pardon ;" and he wrote out the pardon, and Lucien Young took it and thanked him for it, and went to the State's prison. He got admitted to Sam Holmes' cell, and had a talk with him. In the course of the conversation he said, "What would you do if Governor Blackburn should pardon you?" He answered, "I would go straight to Lancaster and kill Judge Owsley for sentencing me." Lucien Young turned pale, said a few words, bade him good-bye, then passed out of the cell. After the cell-door was locked behind him, he turned and said, "Sam, here is a pardon that Governor Blackburn gave me to give you: but, sir, you can not have it." He tore it to pieces, and left the prison. Why did he not give it to him? Can you not see why he did not give it to him? He was a friend of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and a friend of the governor and of the judge, and if Sam Holmes could not come out of that prison and become a decent, law-abiding citizen, he should stay there.

Can you not see the application? The Lord Jesus Christ proposes to save you from your sins; but he does not propose to save you in your sins; and if you are not willing to leave sin, and enter at once with all your heart and soul into the service of Jesus Christ, you will have to remain in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity. You will have to remain a child of the devil. God is not giving his priceless salvation to the devil's children. May God help you understand this! We have got plenty of people in the city who think they are saved, because they have been baptized and they have joined the Church; but they are living the same old devilish life that they always lived. You can not be saved until you enlist under the banner of the cross, and start out to serve Jesus with all your soul. If you are willing to do that, you can, any of you, be saved tonight.

In closing, I want to turn your attention to this wondrous invitation. "The Spirit and the Bride say, Come." The Spirit is the Holy Spirit of God that inclined your heart to come to this meeting, and moves upon you to accept the offers of life. The Bride is the Church -- the Church militant here below, and the Church triumphant over there. Over there, it may be, is father or mother, or brother or sister, or possibly a child -- loved ones over there, and they are all saying to you, "Come, come, come. "Let him that heareth say, Come." Every convert living on the globe is invited to turn right around, and repeat the invitation, and say, "Come, come."

"And whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely." I once saw Mr. Moody give a most wonderful illustration of that truth. During the Moody meetings in Pittsburgh we held our services in the Great Central Rink, and then had to go several squares to get an inquiry room. There were several hundred in the inquiry-room one night; and there sat near Mr. Moody, so close that he could reach out his hand and touch him, a young man who had sat there two nights before, and had not got hold of the idea of faith. Suddenly Mr. Moody picked up a new, flexible, expensive Bible, and startled the young man by saying, "Young man, if you will take that Bible, I will give it to you." He looked up in blank amazement, and did not offer to take it. Mr. Moody repeated what he said, "Young man, I mean what I say; if you will take that Bible, I will give it to you." He put up his hand a little way to take it, but drew it back. He still could not believe that Mr. Moody meant what he said; but Mr. Moody insisted that he wanted to give it to him if he would only take it, and he reached out his hand and took it. "There," says Moody, "you have not understood the meaning of faith. I thought you would be here tonight, and I bought that Bible today and wrote my name in it, intending to give it to you; and just as I bought that Bible and offered it to you, so has God bought salvation by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, and he holds it out to you, and says, Whosoever will, let him TAKE it."

O, what a truth! But, beloved, remember what is back of that truth. If this wondrous salvation has been bought at such a price, and offered to us, and then we are not willing to take it as a free gift, we die, we OUGHT to die, WE MUST DIE, WE WILL DIE; and God, and angels, and men, and our own souls must say, "Amen, my damnation is just. I deserve to be lost. I would not take the blood-bought salvation that was offered by Jesus as a gift."

Do not look up in my face tonight, and say you are not thirsty, if you are out of Christ. Without him you are thirsty. If you should be taken sick on your way home, and you should summon a physician, and the doctor should come and tell you that you would die at midnight, you would be filled with a mortal fear. That fear is a token of thirst. That fear to meet your God shows that your heart is restless, and craving, and dissatisfied, and thirsty for spiritual experiences that you know you do not possess. There was a woman in New York City who came home to her palace after a night of worldly pleasure, and threw herself down upon her velvet carpet and moaned out, "O God, let me die, let me die!" There she was, blazing with diamonds and jewels, and robed like a queen, yet crying out for death. But it was not death that she was longing for, it was life; it was the Lord of life that she really wanted. And she reached out and took Jesus; and then she wanted to live for the glory of the Savior who had bought her.

O, you need this salvation! God longs to give it to you. No one is ruled out but the one who rules himself out, and refuses to accept the offer of eternal life. Only the man who pushes away the pierced hand laden with heavenly gifts, and pressing to thirsty lips the full cup of the water of life, will perish. He who does that, must hunger and thirst, and starve and die. Do not do it. "The Spirit and the Bride say, Come, and let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely."

2 THE THROBBING HEART

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life." -- John 3:16

I suppose as many people can repeat that verse as any other verse in the Word of God. I heard a gentleman say in a city in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where I was holding revival meetings some years ago, that that verse was the throbbing heart of the Bible. If one limb of a compass was put on that verse, and a circle was drawn around it, it would take in the whole Bible. Martin Luther said that verse was so important that it ought, if possible, to be written across the face of the skies in letters of gold, and be repeated by every believer every day of his life.

I. In discussing this marvelous and exceedingly well-known passage of Scripture to-night, I want to call your attention, in the first place, to the occasion which led to this gift. It was the sight of a world lost in trespasses and sin, alienated from God, and pouring like a Niagara tide into an abyss of ruin, that led God to give that wonderful gift -- a world hopelessly doomed and damned, without the infinite grace of God. There are people who look upon sin as if it was a trifle. They speak of sin as a little incidental thing like the whooping cough or measles that a child has to pass through; and when it gets through it will be the better off for it. But a profound thinker says: "Sin is the most expensive thing in the universe, either atoned for or unatoned for. If it is not atoned for, the expense of it must fall upon the sinner's head in his eternal damnation. If it is atoned for, the expense of it must fall upon God, the Governor of the universe. In any event, sin must make this universe forever serious.

II. Let us notice the gift and Giver. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." We can not illustrate this by anything we know in history. There is nothing like it. If Queen Victoria had given her son, Prince Albert, as an atonement for the Irish assassins who committed the cowardly Phoenix Park murder in Ireland, it would have been but a faint illustration. For Queen Victoria and Albert are not one, as God the Father and God the Son are One; and, besides, queens are not around doing that kind of thing. We do not find any perfect illustration, because no two human beings sustain the relationship to each other that God the Father and God the Son do in that mysterious unity of the Trinity. You see, in giving Jesus, God gave Himself. He took upon Himself the suffering and the atoning work, that He might meet the claims of public justice, and pave the way for an offer of salvation to guilty men.

There is one little illustration that comes down to us from ancient history that does throw some light on this theme. We read that Zalencus, the king of the Locrians, found that his government was being destroyed by adultery; and he made a law that if any one again committed adultery they should have both their eyes put out. His own son was the first man to break the law. Now, what should he do? His fatherly heart pleaded for mercy nor his boy. His kingly heart said, No, stand by the law and stand by the interests of the people, and by the virtue of the family and the home, and protect the interests committed to your trust. Now, he reflected, if I put out the eyes of my boy, they may call me cruel. And on the other hand, if I do not inflict the penalty, they will say I made a law without first considering its bearings. If I spare my boy, they will say I am partial, because it was my own son who broke the law; that I ignore the claims of justice; that I am false to my trust. What should he do? Well, this is what he did do. He first had one of his own eyes put out. Now he has made a half of an atonement, and he can turn around and offer to his boy a half of a pardon. Then he put one of his boy's eyes out. Now the claim of justice has been met. He has stood by the virtue of society; he has shown that he has the well-being of the Government at stake, and after the claims of the law have been fully met, he has had a chance to make an offer of partial pardon to his boy. Now, Jesus made a COMPLETE atonement. He took our place. He fully honored the public justice of the universe, as much as the infliction of the penalty on us would have done. And now he is free to turn around and offer pardon to all mankind. As the apostle Paul says in the third chapter of Romans, "God can now be just and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus." It was a wondrous atonement that removed the difficulties that stood in the way of our salvation.

III. Notice the motive that led to this. It was LOVE. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." And let me here say to you, beloved, that all love is measured by just one thing; and it is the only thing that can measure love in this universe. Love is measured by the sacrifice it will make. Dr. Joseph Parker, of London, says, "If love were represented by a straight line, sacrifice would be the last point in the line." No one loves you who will not sacrifice for you. While you were prosperous and well and everything was going your way, and you were riding on the top wave, people came around and patted you and called you a friend; but you had not the slightest evidence that they were friends to you. Let the tide turn; let prosperity leave you, and fortune take wings and fly away; let sickness come; let dishonor smite your name and blast your reputation, and then see who will stand by you and help you and put themselves out to do it. Then you will find out who loves you. That is the only test there is of love. Suppose some one should say to you, "Your mother does not love you;" what would you say about it? If you have such a mother as I had, you would say, "What, sir, my mother not love me! You do not know my mother. My mother cheerfully went down into the valley of the shadow of death to bring me into being; and when I was born she hovered over my cradle like a guardian angel. She let the roses fade from her cheek, and the hand of care drive the furrows across her brow; and there never was a day, if necessary, that my mother would not pour out her heart's blood for me. I tell you, my mother loves me." How do I know it? Because of the sacrifice a mother makes for her child. Now, make the application. Are you ever tempted to think that God does not love you? When things are not going as you would like to have them, or health fades away, or your home is bereaved and your heart is stricken and lonely, do you feel as if God had forsaken you, and does not love you? If that temptation ever assails you, come to this text, and stand upon Calvary's summit and look upon the tragedy enacted there, and say to yourself: "0, this is the measure of the love of God. God so loved my poor sinful soul that He gave His richest treasure, His only begotten Son, for me."

IV. Now, let us notice to whom this gift was given. There are people who like to narrow the plan of salvation to make it fit the measure of their little narrow minds. There are people who talk about provision being made in God's infinite love and grace for some few favored mortals, who, without any reason in themselves, had some special gift bestowed upon them to please an arbitrary God. They tell us that God gave His Son to die only for the elect. Can you believe that? Do you not know that that idea would paralyze faith itself, and defeat the very scheme of salvation? Suppose that the richest citizen in this city, whoever he may be, should will all his millions to some elect souls in Hamilton County, Ohio. Could you put in a claim at the Probate Court here under such a will as that? You could not prove that you were some of the elect souls, and if no other heirs could be found that could put in a better claim than that, the whole will would be null and void, and the property would revert to the State.

Suppose my text read, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that some elect souls might not perish." Do you not know there is not one of us that would dare to put in a claim on such a will as that? Such a text as that would paralyze the hope of the sinner, and defeat redemption by making faith impossible, and would consign us all to a hopeless doom. O, I thank God for that word "world" in the text, for it means all humanity. And again, I thank God for that precious word "whosoever" in my text. That means me.

Martin Luther said he would rather have that word "whosoever" in that text, than have his own name in it.

I certainly would. I will tell you why. If my name was in that text, how would I know I was that fellow? There may be a good many people by the name of A. M. Hills in the world somewhere. You know there are a good many Hills in the world. Hill is a very common name; but our family has carried the s. Some time ago I was raising money to build a church in Allegheny City. I was up in Connecticut, and I was getting letters with hundred-dollar checks in them, fine sums of money. One day I went to the post-office and called for my mail, and a letter was handed out to me for A. M. Hills, my initials exactly, and that characteristic s. Yet I opened that letter, and lo! and behold! it was for the advance agent of a theater! It was not for me at all. So, do you not see, if my name was in that text there would be no certainty at all that I was the man that might be saved. But when God says, "Whosoever believeth," I shout "Hallelujah to God! that gives me a chance to be saved." I put in my claim.

O, beloved, do not measure God's mercy and grace by some of these narrow, belittling creeds. Do not measure the infinite, transcendent, matchless ocean of God's love by some creed-maker's conception of it. God says, "Whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life."

V. That brings me to the fifth truth in my text, and that is this: Notice the effect of this atoning work of Jesus. It was not what a great many people think it was. I was talking with a Universalist once, and he said, "Jesus died for everybody, did he not?" "Yes, sir." "Well, then, why should not every one be saved?" I said, "O, that does not follow at all." That is the rash conclusion some people come to. But it does not follow at all that every one will be saved. My text does not say that God gave His only begotten Son that every son and daughter of Adam shall be saved. It says that God gave His only begotten Son that whosoever BELIEVETH." Now, this is what the atoning work of God did. It gave God a chance to offer salvation to every one. But the atoning work in itself did not save any one. I remark again, I want you to remember it, that the atoning work in itself did not save any one. "What!" you say. No, it did not. What did it do? It simply removed and set aside the difficulty that arose in the nature of God's law and government, and made it possible for God to OFFER SALVATION to every one. He makes the offer on conditions that are proper, and that seem wise to Him. The conditions are repentance from sin, faith in Jesus, and dedication of your life to God and His service. Those are the conditions; but if nobody complied with them, then nobody would be saved, even though Christ has died. Now, He says, "Whosoever complies with the conditions shall not perish, but have everlasting life." I charge you before God, do not insert some of your human notions into this text; but let it stand, let it stand as God puts it. Let us have no loose thinking here. It is, "Whosoever believeth," with all the things that accompany a heart belief, which certainly are repentance of sin and a hearty, cheerful entering into the service of the living God. That saves you from the fundamental and awful error of Universalism, and keeps you from that presumptuous hope that will be the doom of many a soul.

Now, I want to give you a few remarks in closing this discussion.

I. I want you to notice what is not the sinner s ground for hope. He can not claim any salvation, or have any hope of salvation in what he does, or ever did do, or ever can do. He is not saved by his works, or by his goodness, or his morality, or by his character, or rank, or strength, or social position. None of these things weigh an atom with God, and none of these things can, by any means, set aside the condemnation that is hanging over souls. So you see these things are not the ground of salvation.

2. What is the ground of salvation? Why, it is the atoning work of Jesus Christ that makes it possible for God to save a soul that will comply with His divinely-appointed conditions. Jesus has taken our place. He has honored the law in our stead; and now God sees fit to make the offer that "whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish." Therefore, whether you and I are saved or not, depends on whether we believe or not. O, I wish I could make that plain, and could drive it into the heart and thought and memory until it would never be taken from you. So many people are measuring their salvation by their feelings! "Well, brother, how are you today?" "I do not feel very good." Suppose you don't, what of it? That has nothing to do with salvation. You do not read in the Bible that you are saved by feeling. You are saved by Jesus Christ through faith, not feeling. Do you not know that feelings will vibrate and change. If the barometer is heavy, down go your feelings. It the sun rises bright and clear, and the air is health-giving, your feelings will go up. You are no better than you were the day before; because your feelings have gone up. that has nothing to do with your goodness. If you have some cooking in the morning that is not skillfully done. and the breakfast does not quite agree with you, down go your feelings. Have you, therefore, lost your salvation? No, not at all; but your feelings have gone down. There are people who are just going by their feelings, day after day, instead of walking with God by faith; and plenty of sanctified people are doing the same thing. They think, when the feeling has gone, that the Holy Ghost has left them, and they must have fallen out somewhere, and lost sanctification. This is a trick of the devil to cheat you out of salvation; but God says, "Whosoever BELIEVETH shall not perish, but have everlasting life."

One time during a battle Napoleon Bonaparte's horse took fright, and was running away, endangering his life. A private soldier in the ranks leaped out and caught the horse by the bridle, and held it until it was calmed. The great commander made the military salute, and said, "I thank you, Captain," and he was only a private soldier. But when Napoleon said, "I thank you, Captain," he took him at his word, and immediately asked, "Of what regiment?" Napoleon said, "Captain of the Guards." The soldier threw down his gun in faith, and went and joined himself to the Guards. Suppose some one had said to him, "What are you doing here?" and he had replied, "O, I feel like a captain, and that is why I am here." What would they have said? They would have said, "You would better feel like a private, and get back to the ranks, and be quick about it." But when they asked him what he was there for, he pointed to Napoleon, and said, "He said it;" and that settled it. How do you know you are a Christian tonight? Because you feel like it? That is no sign that you are. Tomorrow morning you may have no feeling at all; and then what? I know I am a Christian because HE SAID IT. He said that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that WHOSOEVER BELIEVETH should not perish, but have everlasting life; and there are not men enough in earth, or devils enough in hell, to make me believe that I do not believe in Jesus. That is something I know, for he said it, and that settles it.

I will give you another illustration to show you the folly of going by feelings. I want to drive this home. I have found that a great many young converts -- pardon me if I say especially among the Methodists -- who ordinarily have a great deal of feeling about the altar, and during the times of revivals, are tempted to depend upon feeling. I have found that the devil makes it a snare; and when the revival is over, and their feelings have gone, they think their religion has gone. And I have found more Methodist converts ready to backslide right there than any other body of Christians I ever met. Now, I want to show you the foolishness of this. President Fairchild was once traveling in Palestine, riding in a cavalcade across the country, and he chanced to be riding that forenoon by the side of a lady who belonged to that branch of God's Church that is given to paying a great deal of attention to feeling (I will not name the denomination now). That lady, that morning, was physically depressed, and she said: "I am so disappointed in my trip. I thought when I came to this dear land that was pressed by the feet of the angels and the prophets and the apostles, and by the feet of the dear Son of God, that I would have a great spiritual uplift to my soul. But I have never been so cold and backslidden in my life as now." By and by noon came, and they sat down to dinner, and as that was a wine-drinking country she drank some wine for dinner. In the afternoon when the wine began to act up went her feelings; and she clapped her bands, and exclaimed, "O, I never was so near to God in my life!" But there was no religion about it; it was merely the fuddle of the wine.

Now, you never can forget that illustration, and I want it to remain in your memories as long as you live -- the unutterable foolishness of measuring your religion by involuntary feelings. Is your heart still fixed to glorify God, feeling or no feeling? Is your purpose inflexible to do His will, and does your faith still hold to the eternal commands and promises of an infinite God? That is the question; and that settles it, whether you are a Christian or not.

During the war, Mr. Lincoln made a proclamation to emancipate all the slaves, and wherever our armies went the soldiers posted up bills that the slaves were freed. Most of those slaves couldn't read, and they would get other people to read the proclamation to them; and sometimes the masters would say to the slaves, "The boys are fooling you. Those Yanks are fooling you. You are not free." One time an old black Dinah said to a soldier: "Now, Masser, I want you to tell me, honest now, be I free or been't I? These soldiers tells me I'se free, and ole Masser tells me I ain't; and now tell me, Be I free or been't I?" Do you not see, she did not believe that She was free, and until she believed it she wasn't free. She was going right along serving the old master, because she did not believe that she was free. It is just so with all the slaves of Satan. Until you take God Almighty's promises to your heart, and just walk out in faith on His Word, and declare you are free in Jesus Christ, you will walk right along in the old bondage, the slave of the devil. But when you dare to walk out on the promise in John 3:16, you find, glory to God, that the chains fall, and Jesus is your master, and whom Jesus makes free, is free indeed; and you know the joy of salvation. But when you begin to doubt that experience and to doubt your Savior, away goes your joy, and away goes your hope, and away goes your religion. We walk by faith, and not by sight; and I almost wish that the very word feeling could be for a while dropped out of your religious vocabulary.

Some years ago there was a pardon put into the hands of the chaplain of the State prison of Illinois, to announce to the prisoners at the next chapel service that Reuben Johnson was free. Reuben Johnson was serving a life sentence, and had been in the State prison nineteen years; and at the next chapel service the chaplain rose and read out the notice, "Reuben Johnson, you are pardoned." Reuben Johnson, sitting in the midst of the audience, looked all around to see who it could be. He did not know it was a pardon for him; he thought it must be for some other man. Why, he was in for life; it couldn't be him. So you would not know that you could be saved by your own name in my text. He thought it might be some other Reuben Johnson; but the chaplain said, 'You, Reuben, you right down there, you are the man; you are pardoned." And after the service was over, and the usual signal was given to take lock-step and go back to the prison cells, he rose up from force of habit, and got into step with the others, and was marching to his cell. Some one pulled him out, and said, "Reuben Johnson, you are pardoned;" and if he had not believed that, he would have gone right back to his cell, to the old grind of prison servitude for life, And I want to tell you that my text is Jesus' proclamation and offer of pardon to every soul. The man that believes it will find the chains drop off, the despair gone, and the darkness gone; the hopelessness gone; and the light and peace and joy or salvation will come sweeping into his soul. Bless the Lord!

3. I call your attention now to what I have been teaching all along -- the result of this atoning work. You see what it was on God's side. It first showed God's hatred of sin. It showed God's infinite love and respect for His law. It showed His care for His government, and it showed His infinite, amazing love for the sinner. That is what it did on the Divine side.

Now, what did it do on man's side? Remember it did not remove the sinner's blameworthiness. He was the same guilty sinner that he ever was. It did not remove his deserving the punishment. What did it do? Why, it gave the sinner a substitute for the penalty. The law was, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." "The wages of sin is death." The substitute was, "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses, and having committed unto us the word of reconciliation." Now, this great atoning work of Jesus laid on the sinner the solemn responsibility of choosing between the penalty and the substitute, and brought mighty motives to bear upon the heart. That is what it did, and that is all it does in itself. Suppose a sinner refuses to accept the substitute? Then he is the same old sinner against God. The same law still stands, and the same penalty still impends over him. He is still a subject of doom. He must be punished just the same as if Jesus had not died. O wondrous truth! Solemn thought, awful thought!

Years ago out in Missouri during the Civil War there was a great deal of bushwhacking in one part of the country. The people who had rebelled against the Government got beyond lawful warfare. They would hide behind fences and hedges and walls, and shoot peaceable Union people on the highway as they went along. This went on until the Government had to say, "We will put a stop to that thing;" and they sent out and gathered in a great lot of these bushwhackers, and tried them by court-martial, and they were condemned to death. A row of them were standing up surrounded by soldiers ready to shoot them at the signal, when a young man stepped up to the commanding officer, and said: "Say, let me take the place of that man yonder. He has a family, and he will be missed. I have no family. I will take his place." The commanding officer said, "You may do it," not dreaming there was a man in the world that would do such a thing. But that youth stepped up to the line and took hold of the man, and pushed him out and took his place. A moment later the command was given, and that youth was shot dead, and the other man was saved. There is a monument over there in Missouri, they tell me, that was erected in memory of this young man, with this inscription on it, "Sacred to the memory of Willie Lear. He took my place."

Suppose that after Willie Lear had died for that bushwhacker he had still stood there and said, "I do not care if Willie Lear did die for me, I am the same as ever; I am the same rebel against the Government ;" what do you suppose they would have done to him? The commanding officer would doubtless have said: "You do not accept your substitute. Stand up there, sir; we will make an end of you quick." What do you suppose God will do, if the sinner does not accept the substitute? In infinite love God gave His precious Son; and when His Son was dying in unutterable agony, God the Father and His face from the unutterable scene. I believe there was as much agony of soul in the Father's heart in heaven as there was in Jesus' heart on earth. Now, Suppose that, after Jesus has taken the sinner's place and has died, the sinner says: "I do not care if Jesus did die for me. I will not accept the substitute, and I am the same rebel against God that I ever was, and I am going to continue to be." Do you not see the consequence? God would be obliged to take note of such conduct, and the thunderbolts of God's condemnation would fall on such a sinner's head in his eternal undoing.

4. I call your attention to another fact: That the atoning work does not lessen the sinner's guilt; but, unless he falls in with the plan of salvation, it deepens it. With all his sinning against such knowledge, such opportunity, such blood-bought privileges, he is a worse sinner than he would have been if Jesus had never died, and the Word of God had never been given.

I remember when this truth was first vividly called to my attention. It was when I was in college. President Finney was preaching a sermon in Oberlin. It was the time when New York was full of riotous life. There had been several riots there. It was just after the war, and the people in New Orleans seemed to be bent on violence and murder. I remember President Finney saying one Sunday morning, as he stood before that cultured college audience: "The worst people in the world are not where people suppose they are. The worst sinners in the world are not the bloodthirsty savages. They are not the riotous people in the slums of New York City. They are not the people down there in New Orleans, I verily believe, before God" -- and there was an awful hush on the audience -- "that the worst sinners in the world are living right here in Oberlin. The sinners who have heard this preaching, and had all this light, and all this knowledge, and all this opportunity, and then reject the Son of God!"

That is what Jesus said: "Woe unto you, Bethsaida and Capernaum; for it will be better for Tyre and Sidon and Sodom in the day of judgment than for you." God help us to understand this! It is an awful thing to know the sixteenth verse of the third chapter of John, and then remain a rebel sinner against God. It is an awful thing! May God's wooing grace incline you to-night to yield allegiance to His Son!

5. I close by calling your attention to this wonderful comparison in the text. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Can you measure those words? Can you tell what it means for a man to perish, PERISH, PERISH? To be shut out into outer darkness, away from God, away from the redeemed, away from heaven, away from hope, into endless despair, for ever and ever? You know the law of a falling body, that a stone will drop so many feet in one second, sixteen, I think; thirty-two the second; sixty-four the third; one hundred and twenty-eight the next, and so on, by a constant mathematical progression. Sometimes they measure depths in that way. They throw a stone, and then listen for the sound of its fall. They tell us there are chasms and abysses in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, that people go to the edge of, and hurl a stone off into the Stygian darkness, and then listen, and listen, and listen, and hold their watch and count the seconds, -- ten -- eleven -- twelve -- thirteen -- fourteen, -- and no sound ever comes back to report the awful depths. Cast thy plummet of your thought off into the black darkness of this awful word "perish." Can you tell me what it means? There is not a finite being in this universe that can tell what is before the soul that is eternally away from God. Take this other word, "eternal life!" Can you measure what that means? Can you look up into the glorious, towering heights of eternal joy, and love, and godliness, as the soul expands and grows and revels in the joys of the redeemed through the eternal ages, for ever and ever, and forever? There is not an angel before the throne that can tell what you and I may become in the growth of those eternal ages. But, O soul, you have got to have one or the other! One or the other! Soul, which shall it be? Will you reject the substitute and perish, or will you welcome Jesus to your heart as your Savior, and have eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord?

A single illustration, and I close. Mr. Moody tells us that he heard in England of a son who was an only child. He grew up to be a wayward man. This son, by his sin. broke his mother's heart, and took her to a premature grave. Yet every night, after his mother's burial, he went out to his sin and debauchery. One night the father asked him: "Son, will you not stay with me to-night? You have not stayed a night at home since your mother died, and you know your sin killed her." The son said, "No, I will not." "Well," said the dear father, "you are too old to be forcibly restrained; but I will throw myself down before the door, and if you go out tonight, you will have to walk over the prostrate form of your pleading, loving father." That son cursed him brutally, and trod right over him, and went out to his debauchery and sin. Beloved, the man that has the Gospel of John in his hands, and reads the sixteenth verse of the third chapter, knows what he is doing. If he goes on in sin he is simply going on over prayers, and tears, and pleadings; aye, and over, as it were, the prostrate form of the Son of God. Do not do it! Do not do it; but tonight accept the substitute, believe and live.

3 THE TRIPLE ASSURANCE

"And it shall be, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." -- Joel 2:32; Acts 11:21; Romans 10:13

There are some truths that God is satisfied with delivering once to the world; but this truth was so profoundly important that He gave it to us three times. It was first spoken by the mouth of the prophet Joel. Then it swept on down through the centuries to the time of Peter and the day of Pentecost; and years afterwards the Apostle Paul, writing to the Romans, and through them to the world, repeats this same truth. "And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved."

I first call your attention to the infinite certainty of this truth. IT SHALL COME TO PASS. Men often say it shall come to pass; but it does not. Even the mightiest of men fall short in their ability and potency, and are not able to bring their mighty sayings to pass. The matchless Hannibal said, "Rome shall be destroyed ;" and he marched a great army from Spain across France, and over the Alps, and down into the plains of Italy, and won some wondrous battles, conquering every general that was brought against him. He brought his soldiers to the very walls of Rome, and sold dwellings and palaces and squares in the city of Rome to the highest bidders in his army. For some reason, however, he did not move against the city itself to take it by siege, but moved out to Capua. Meantime Roman gold bribed his own countrymen at Carthage, and they turned traitors; and in his old age Hannibal was conquered.

George the Third of England said, "It shall come to pass that the Colonies of America shall be taxed without representation ;" and that mighty realm made war on thirteen feeble Colonies skirting the Atlantic coast, and living for the most part in the wilderness and on the frontier in sparsely-settled communities. Yet, after seven long years of war, George the Third had to withdraw from this country the soldiers who had not surrendered, and was compelled to acknowledge to the world his defeat; and he lost the most precious jewels of the English crown.

The mighty Napoleon Bonaparte, one of the mightiest generals who ever went to battle, said, "It shall come to pass that Russia shall be humbled;" and he marshaled the mightiest army he ever headed, and marched into Russia and took Moscow. For some unaccountable reason he tarried that autumn one month around Moscow. The Russians burnt it, that it might not afford him shelter. Then, after the fatal delay, he started to march back to France. But God Almighty sifted down six or eight feet of snow upon him, and those Russian Cossacks followed him like a pack of hungry wolves, pouncing down on his frost-bitten soldiers and dogging them from behind, by day and by night, week after week, until that whole army was cut off, and but a few hundreds got back to France to tell the story of their shame and their defeat.

Napoleon the Third said, "It shall come to pass that Germany shall suffer humiliation ;" and he made war upon Germany, hurled his troops against the Germans, who were all too well prepared to meet him; and in seven short months he lost his crown and kingdom at the battle of Sedan, and the dynasty of Napoleon was cut off forever.

But, beloved, it is not so when God says, "It shall come to pass." He has infinite power to back up His words, and though the heathen rage, and the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel against the Lord and against His anointed, and all hell lift itself up in malignant opposition, yet God's Word shall stand forever. "It shall come to pass that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved" to the glory of His own dear Son. O, it is a mighty truth that the sinner wants to lay hold of; that, when God speaks, He has omnipotent power back of His lightest word, and He can make it good, and it shall come to pass without fail. It has never failed during the ages, and never will fail until the last soul is redeemed. "It shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved."

Second. I want to call your attention to the infinite and impartial opportunity revealed in the text, "Whosoever." I am preaching these nights, you will remember, a "WHOSOEVER" GOSPEL; the delight of my soul, the joy of my life, to preach a "WHOSOEVER" GOSPEL to a sinning world. I would be sorry to be obliged to put any limitations into my sermons, or to preach any limited atonement, or any scrimp mercy, or any small display of love on the part of an infinite God. It would be so unlike God. Everything about Him is infinite, and why not His loving, and why not his plans for the redemption of the world, and why not His love? Why should not all comport with the infinity of Cod's own nature? The fathomless depths, the measureless reach of his infinite, matchless love!

Some people would have you believe, or at least their conduct seems to indicate that they think, that only nice, moral, respectable people can be saved. They will smile on the people that move in the elite circles of life, and run after a man whose wealth is counted by four or five or six ciphers. They will run after them and get them to attend "our" Church. They will tell what nice people they are, and how very refined they are, and they will say they will be a great acquisition to our Church. They will run after them, and they will run past five regiments of common people, and never give them a look, to get one of these rich people into "our Church," into "our set," into "our ecclesiastical swing."

But, beloved, there is nothing like that in God Almighty. He is after man as man, after every son and daughter of Adam, and every member of our fallen race. The vilest creature that crawls, like a worm, in the cesspools of city filth and corruption, is as dear to the heart of God, as the most refined and elegant person that you can find in the upper circles of city life. God is after man as man; and these incidental distinctions, that weigh so much with us, do not count at all with the blessed Lord. Glory be to His Name! He saves moral people; that is, once in a while he does, if they are not too conceited to let him; and he also saves the utterly broken, hopeless, downtrodden, if they will let him. They are a great deal more likely to let him save them than these proud upper circles are; for, from the very bitterness of their lives, they have found that the world can give them little. They look away from this unsatisfactory life up to the infinite realm and to the mansions that fade not away, which they hope to get by and by when they leave their earthly hovels of filth and wretchedness. The very low down. the offscourings of society, are far more likely to be saved than the upper circles; but God would gladly save every one. Glory to His Name!

There are highly respectable people, so respectable that they think they scarcely need to be born again. Indeed, they were so well born the first time, that they do not care anything about it. They go on and talk about their rank, and their ancestry, and the blue blood that flows in their veins; and they forget that their hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, however well born they may have been. Heaven does not come by natural inheritance. Bless the Lord! If it did, there would be small chance for most of us common folks. Jesus came down and ranked himself with the lowest classes. He came down to pillow His head, for the first time in this world, in a manger. Why, He was born lower down than I was. I was born in a pioneer's log hut in Michigan; yet it was a neat, comfortable house. But Jesus was born in a stable with the beasts of the stall; and so I, born in a hut on the frontier of Michigan, actually had a higher birth than my Lord did; and I do not know many people who have not had. You must remember, too, that the Bible reveals that there were three or four harlots in the ancestry of Jesus. You never heard Jesus boasting about his ancestry, did you? Jesus came to get under the lowest, that in lifting He might lift everything in humanity up.

There are also people who make a great deal of their education, and they are so conceited because they have spent a few years in college, and have learned a smattering of dead languages, and one or two modern ones, that you can hardly get near one of them. They go along through life looking askance at the poor, ignorant classes, for they think they are so low down and sunken in ignorance that they can not be saved. But God does not feel that way. He comes down to touch the poor, to teach the humble, to reach the lowly, to illumine with a heavenly radiance the minds of the most ignorant, and to flash the sunlight of his truth and joy and hope into the darkened souls of the people most densely benighted. O, it was so beautiful of God to look after the poor! It was so gracious in him to call the humble people around Him. It was so grand in Him not to invite the learned members of the Sanhedrin to be His disciples and His followers, but to go down to the Sea of Galilee and pick up some poor fishermen, some people that had never been to school, and did not know much about learning, and knew nothing about the upper walks of life. He came down to them, and said, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men;" and they became the grandest heralds of the cross, for the most part, that the world has ever seen.

Then some of us are so proud that we belong to the Caucasian race that we have a kind of despicable contempt for the darker-skinned families of the earth. O, this contemptible pride, this vile pride of petty little creatures, crawling around in the mire and filth of their sin-cursed humanity, and despising some other worm of the dust, because it carries a little different shade on its face!

Three weeks ago Sunday I spoke over in Kentucky to an audience, and there was there a dark-skinned sister who was a graduate of Michigan University, the greatest college in America, that last year turned out a graduating class of seven hundred and thirty-one. Yet that dark-skinned sister, a friend of mine, who heard me preach and got sanctified three weeks ago Sunday, was in a great religious meeting in Lexington a few years ago; and because she sat with some whiter sisters in that great public rink a policeman came and put her out of the building. There probably was not among all the cultured and elite in the city a woman that could have passed an examination with her before a Board of Educators. A Christian woman, a cultured woman, a woman with fine instincts, and fine sentiments, and fine feelings, could not go and sit down in an empty row of seats in a public building because it was not the right place in the house for people of her color. But, beloved, however we may feel about that, God does not have any such feelings. He tells us in the simplest language that "One is our Father in heaven, and all we are brethren;" -- and that "God hath made of one blood all the nations that do dwell upon the face of the earth."

Again, there are people of aristocratic lineage; the people that were born for the upper stations; born to be served by the multitude; born to look down with disdain, as many of them do, upon the common masses. But in the eye of God they are no dearer -- and no nearer, and no more eligible for the favors of His grace and riches of His love, and the inheritance bought by the blood of His Son, than the most common creature that walks the face of the earth. Dives in his palace, and Lazarus lying at his gate in poverty, the dogs licking his sores, and begging his bread, are alike precious to the heart of the living God; and they have a like claim to the inheritance purchased by the blood of His Son. Mary Magdalene had the same chance at grace, though possessed of seven devils, that Nicodemus had, cultured, rich, moral member of the Sanhedrin though he was; and the poor, dying thief on the cross had precisely the same chance to be saved that King Solomon had, sitting upon his throne, and living before the world in matchless splendor and glory. O, that is our God! Unlimited, impartial in His favors of grace, dying for all, and begging every poor, sin-sick, weary, sin-cursed soul to look unto Him and be saved! His words are, and they come down through the ages so sweet to our ear: "Look unto me and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth, for I am God, and beside Me there is none else." If there is a man that shall ever hear these words of mine, or shall ever read them from the printed page, I want to say to him, that if he feels, in his lost and undone condition, that he belongs to the "ends of the earth," then I tell him that God says, "Look unto Me, and be ye saved all ye ends of the earth." O, this is a blessed salvation! It is an impartial gospel we have to read and to preach. It is a wonderful gospel. I am not surprised that men leave other employments and honor and fame, to go about the world glorifying such a Savior, and preaching such a gospel to a fallen world.

Now, thirdly, observe the means of God's deliverance. "Whosoever shall CALL on the name of the Lord shall be saved." In other words, the choicest blessings of God that ever fall to finite beings are given away for the asking. "Ask and ye shall receive. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." One of God's infinite "shall be's" that come to pass.

Thank God, salvation is not bought! The most of the world is poor, hopelessly poor, even in the richest countries on the globe. In this country, rich as it is, the richest nation in the world, the aggregate property belonging to each individual is about one thousand dollars apiece; and when you remember that thirty-three thousand millionaires own far more than half of the entire country, you can see how little there is left for the rest of us. The great mass of the people, if they had to pay one hundred dollars a piece for salvation, would go to hell from sheer poverty. And if that is so with us, what about India, where fifteen million starved to death in the famine two years ago in their hopeless poverty? What about the millions in India and China, where hundreds of millions always live in unappeased hunger, and do not know what it is, from their cradle to their grave, to have a month's provisions laid up for them beforehand? What about them? What hope would there be for the poverty-stricken, hollow-cheeked, hollow-eyed, submerged class, the mass of this world, if salvation had to be bought? Blessed be God, Jesus bought it, and He turns around and gives it away to whosoever will call upon the name of the Lord. O! what a gospel this is, beloved, isn't it, that I am preaching? And I thank God that I am not making it up either; it is right here. It is in the Book; and I am not going beyond the bounds of my commission when I stand and throw out these words of life and hope to the sinking, drowning, poverty-stricken, sin-cursed multitudes all over the wide globe. It is God's message to their souls, and poverty need not keep them away from God.

I remark once more that this salvation is not earned by good behavior. If man had to earn it by his doings, what would any of us do that had sinned once, even once? If we should never commit another sin, and should live absolutely perfect before God after that one sin was committed, what then? All that after-life of righteousness would not have one particle of effect to obliterate the result of that one sin. That one sin, unatoned for and un-forgiven, would damn a soul, no matter what he did afterwards; and so we could not by any possibility earn salvation. If we could, what would we be doing? Why, we would be performing every conceivable, imaginable kind of worse than Catholic penance. Self-mortification, self-flagellation, and infliction of tortures, to make our peace with God and buy His redemptive favors. I read only this week of a missionary that saw a poor Hindu rolling over and over and over and over along a road in India. He had started away up near the Himalayan Mountains, and was rolling to Ceylon, fifteen hundred miles away; and he had actually rolled eight hundred miles over and over and over, thinking that when he accomplished that absurd and foolish thing he would be saved. Beloved, if we were today thinking that our doings would earn salvation, we would be rolled back to the darkness of heathenism. We would be sleeping on spikes like the Hindu; or we would be hanging ourselves in mid-air; or we would be holding our hands up over our heads with the fist clenched, until the nails grew through the hand and came out on the back side of it, as many of those Hindus have done; or we would be throwing our babes to the crocodiles or wild beasts; or we would be doing some other horrible, senseless, and damnable thing to get peace with God. But God does not tell us to do anything of the kind. O no; we are not to try to buy salvation, and we need not try to earn it, and we need not try to deserve it. All we need to do is to bow before God, and confess our sin, and confess our shame, and call on the name of the Lord.

There is another thing I am grateful for. It is not any particular kind of call, not any particular kind of prayer. It is not a profoundly eloquent prayer that can reach the ear of God. David had poetic genius, and he might have written, and did write, some very beautiful prayers; but they were usually prayers of thanksgiving and praise. But when David was bowed down deep in shame on account of sin, he did not try to compose eloquent prayers; he moaned out from the depths of a conscience-stricken heart, "Heal my soul, O God, for I am sick." That was not a long prayer. Almost any one could pray such a prayer as that.

That poor publican that prayed the prayer that sent him down to his house justified, stood back in an obscure corner of the temple, and in his troubled soul he would not so much as lift up his eyes unto heaven, but smote on his breast, crying, "God be merciful to me a sinner." That is the kind of prayer God will answer. Peter, when he was sinking, cried out in the earnestness of a desperate need, "Lord, save, or I perish." The poor, dying thief on the cross, as he hung in dying agony by the side of the crucified Lord, had more faith than any one perhaps in the world at that time. When they were all giving up hope, he saw something kingly and royal, and more than human, in the dying Jesus; and in faith he sobbed out, "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." He got an answer, and before the sun set he was with his Savior in glory. O, what provisions of grace! The Syrophoenician woman, when her soul got desperately in earnest, reduced her prayer to three words, with nothing else about them but the eloquence of earnestness, with nothing to touch God's heart but the plea of helplessness. Her prayer was, "Lord, help me," "Lord, help me." Who can not pray that much of a prayer? and that is all God asks. It is not the length of the prayer, nor the eloquence of the prayer, nor the fine language of the prayer; but it is the sigh of a sin-stricken and broken-hearted soul, pleading for Divine help and grace which is the kind of prayer that opens heaven.

I wish to say a few words here about what is involved in this praying; for there are a great many people who read many eloquent prayers, and they say, "Lord, have mercy on us miserable sinners," and they go right on living their miserable, sinning lives the whole week following. But I want to tell you that such prayers do not go as high as the roof. Let me show you what is involved in this prayer that opens heaven. First, genuine, heartfelt, sincere repentance of sin is involved in it. Repentance is turning away from sin, and giving it up. Repentance is feeling Divine abhorrence for guilt, as God feels toward it. "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, and He will abundantly pardon." But, beloved, God will not have mercy and will not pardon while a man clings to his unforsaken sins.

That is the trouble with what Godbey calls the "devil's Churches." The preachers do not tell them in straight out-and-out language that they have to forsake sin and walk with God. They smile on their worldliness; they smile on their wretched, wicked customs. They do not preach the religion of one hundred cents to the dollar, and sixteen ounces to the pound, and purity of heart, and holiness of life, and separation from the world. The people are going to Church, reading their liturgies and enjoying themselves, while their paid opera-singers are singing the praises of God for them, because they are too lazy to sing themselves; and they have a sweet, little sermon preached to them; a little, lavender-scented gospel; a little sermonette. And the result is, they are fanned and coddled and patted and flattered, and waited upon, and sent off to hell by a palace-car on the limited express. By the way, I heard a man say that a sermonette was a good thing for a Christianette who was going to a heavenette. But, for my part, I would rather have sermons an hour long, that are red-hot and crammed full of gospel, and have purity in the pulpit and in the pew, and have them all get to heaven together, sweeping through the gates, washed in the blood of the Lamb.

Well, this kind of prayer also involves heart-faith. There is so much of the devil's counterfeit in religion nowadays, and you have to explain every term you use, and get it down to the gospel bedrock of truth. Some people in this city will read in the Catechism that there is a Trinity in the Godhead, just as they read ancient history; and they say, "Yes, we believe that." They believe that just as they believe that Julius Caesar lived. They read in the Catechism that Jesus died for them. "Yes, they believe that," just as they believe that Julius Caesar was stabbed to death in the senate-house, and the one truth does not affect them any more than the other. There is not one thing in it that will shape the heart and move the soul to righteousness.

But the faith that pleases God, the faith implied in my text, is the kind of faith that would take a cursing, swearing, lying Peter, and make him a holy man. It is the kind of faith that would take the persecuting Saul. and transform him into the holy, gentle, Christlike Paul. It is the kind of faith that would take seven devils out of Mary Magdalene, and fill her with the Spirit of Jesus Christ. It is the kind of faith that would take publicans and harlots, and make them fit companions for Jesus Christ, of whom Jesus said, "He is not ashamed to call them brethren." That is the kind of faith -- the faith that does something in the heart and the life. But ninety-nine hundredths of the keepers of the houses of iniquity and sin all over this country are Church members, and they will tell you, "Why, I believe; yes, I believe, I believe." A little intellectual head belief, that never touched the springs of moral action; never lifted them up into the bosom of Jesus; did not bring them to repentance: to the forsaking of sin; to the walking with God; to the dedication of their lives to His service; but leaves them still in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity! Beloved, I am not preaching the devil's counterfeit conversion, or the devil's counterfeit prayers, or any form of the devil's counterfeit religion; but I am preaching the calling upon God for salvation that goes down to the depths of the soul, that brings Christ in, and casts the devil out, and brings victory and joy and hope and heaven to the soul. That is the kind of prayer you want to pray, and that is the kind of prayer that God answers, and he answers with an uttermost salvation.

Now, I come to the last truth of my text. Fourth, notice the kind of deliverance. He delivers from every form of sin that afflicts a child of God, and every form of evil, too. Why, God can bring temporal blessings in answer to prayer as much as is for our good. Deacon Edgerton, of the leading Congregational Church in St. Louis, for many years one of the most beneficent givers when he had money, one day got in a financial strait. He had to raise ten thousand dollars before noon or be bankrupt, and he had done everything, and pulled every string, and gone to every place, and sought every human helper, that he could know of, and could not get help. He hastened over to his pastor, and said: "Pastor, I am at the end of human help, so far as I can see. I must have help before noon, or become a bankrupt. Let us pray. And they knelt down in prayer, and at eleven o'clock, one hour before the ten thousand dollars was needed, a man from whom he never expected anything, brought him ten thousand dollars, and tided him over that crisis

Washington Allston was the first great painter this country ever produced. He went to England and painted some very fine paintings. I have seen one painting of his that they said was sold for ten thousand dollars. But somehow the pictures did not sell well for a time, and he had gone in debt at the stores to support his family, until the merchants had all refused to assist him. He was in awful straits. He was not a Christian. Most of the country at that time was in infidelity; very few Christians comparatively. Only one person in fourteen was a pro-fessed Christian at that time in this country. But he locked himself up one day in despair in his studio, and prayed this prayer: "O God, if there be a God, send some one to buy my pictures, that my wife and children ma'. not be obliged to starve for the want of bread." While he was praying there was a knock at the door, and a servant of Lord Stafford stood there, and he said, "Is your Angel Uriel sold?" "No, sir." "Well, here is a check for two thousand dollars for that picture from Lord Stafford," and the prayer was heard.

These are only some examples of what is occurring all around us. I could name to you people who come to these meetings who depend upon God for daily bread and for every little thing that comes to them; and one lady said: "It is so sweet to trust in God, and to see His wondrous deliverances. I never need a thing but what He brings it, and when the last thing is gone and the last money is gone, God always comes to the rescue." There was Spurgeon who ran an Orphanage, and sometimes they did not know where the breakfast was to come from. One night Spurgeon was telling God all about it. "Lord, what shall become of the dear children? You have put this work on my hands and on my heart, and there the children are, and we want some help." And while Spurgeon was praying that prayer, there was a man walking back and forth in the street, strangely impressed that he ought to go in and give the man in that house some money. He did not understand it; but he went in and gave a large sum of money, several hundred pounds, to Spurgeon, because God would not let him get by that house in the street of London until he did it. O, God has got His hand on things, and the people that learn to pray for the necessities of life get them! Most of us do not. We do not know how; we have not taken a full course in the school of prayer. We are only in the primer, when God wants us to go on into the higher languages of prayer, and into the philosophy of prayer, and into the political economy of prayer, and learn to pray down a mighty blessing from God when we need it. Look at Muller's life of trust. Running an Orphanage in England, and caring for the poor, and without any asking of other people for money, praying seven million dollars into his coffers to feed and educate orphans. A life of prayer and a life of trust! A life baptized with the Holy Spirit, and working wonders for God! Beloved, that is the way the most effective missionary work in the world is being run to day. Hudson Taylor is running a great missionary work in China, and has seven hundred missionaries under him, and he supports them, and he does not advertise it or ask for money; but the money comes, and the seven hundred missionaries have been supported. Well, there is something in prayer, isn't there?

Let us go on. It is a good thing to pray in national troubles. I remember how Washington, when his soldiers could be tracked across the snow at Yorktown by the blood from their bare feet, and he had a country that was in peril, was seen one day or night out in the bushes alone, kneeling in the snow of winter and pleading the wants of his country before God. You remember the darkest hours of the War of the Rebellion, when it seemed more than problematical whether the Nation could live; and you remember a guest was staying over night in the White House. He heard a sound in the night, and he opened his door and listened, and it was Abraham Lincoln kneeling in prayer, and he was praying in the most wondrous way. This guest walked into the room and knelt down by the side of Abraham Lincoln, as he poured out the agony of his soul, and told God he could not carry the burden of the great Nation, and God must help him and save this land to liberty and the cause of truth. O, it was then that the tide turned, and God brought deliverance. It pays to take things, large and small, to God in prayer.

God heals diseases in answer to prayer. This congregation does not need to hear this. You are taught that this is true; but through the reporters' work these words shall go forth, I know not where; and I want to put on record here my faith that the God that worked the miracles of healing in the olden days is living still, and the Jesus of Nazareth, though unseen, is treading the earth. He is coming to rebuke fever, and to drive away infirmities, and to make the physically sick well once more.

Let me give you some illustrations. When I was pastor in Allegheny City, there was a man who was a member of a Methodist Church only two squares from my Church. He was a Christian man; but there came over his lower limbs a creeping paralysis, and he doctored and doctored with many physicians. The last physician attended him six months; and finally he said. "Brother, do not waste another dollar on a physician, for you are hopelessly helpless in your lower limbs for life." About that time a lady was speaking in Christ Methodist Episcopal Church over in Pittsburgh about Divine healing. Some of his friends urged him to go there. He said I have no faith in it; but I will go over there and listen if you will get me there. He went over and listened; and somehow, as he heard the dear sister talk, God's Spirit opened the truth and increased the faith of the poor man, and he went home as best they could get him home that night. He got upstairs by the help of his wife and his crutches, and to his bed. He put his crutches in a corner, and then, lying helpless on the bed, he laid his case before God, and went to sleep. The next morning his wife got up as usual, and went down to get the breakfast; and while she was getting it he woke up, and the moment he awoke he knew he was healed. He leaped from his bed and dressed himself partially, and ran pell-mell down to the kitchen shouting, "Glory to God! Glory to God!" and scared his wife half out of her senses. She oughtn't to have been scared, a good Methodist you know; but she was. That is only one instance, and I could give you any quantity of instances that have come under my notice.

I was holding revival meetings in a town in Northern Ohio, and there was a woman who came to my meetings every day, and I went to her home for a meal to talk with her about her healings. The neighbors said I could believe every word she told me; it was wonderful. She said she had got doubled up with rheumatism until it took her half an hour to go ten rods to call on a neighbor. She could only step about three inches at a step, and she was nearly bent double. She doctored with the most famous physicians of the county, and they had all given her up. One day, when her boy was down town, she took the matter to God in prayer, and was healed. She was walking around the house when the boy came in, and he was so frightened that he got behind the stove, thinking it could not be his mother, and must be the devil or a ghost. "My son, you need not be afraid," she said, "it is your mother; and God has healed her."

A minister filled my pulpit one Sunday morning, and told me this at my dinner table. "I used to preach in Iowa; and I had the consumption, and the doctors had given me up to die, and I was so far gone that I could not speak except in a whisper. One Sunday the whole Church filed by my bedside to take their last look at their pastor, and bid me good-bye. I whispered the good-byes to all of them, expecting to be dead before another Sabbath. After it was all over and I was alone, God put this thought into my heart, "And they saw no man, but Jesus only;" and lying there all helpless, and feeling that I ought not to go away from my ministry and die in the middle of my life, I just looked in faith to Jesus, and rose up from that bed. The next Sunday I preached in my pulpit, and I have been preaching every Sunday since." O, beloved, God can do wonderful things! God can break the spell of physical sickness in answer to prayer.

At a camp-meeting in Kentucky last summer I too-k tea one evening with three ministers. One of them, Rev. E. J. T. -- of M____, told me he was sick twelve years with epilepsy. In his fearful convulsions he had often nearly died; and three times he had been laid out for dead. One Miss L____, of C____, prayed for him, and he was healed in two minutes. This story was corroborated by one of the other ministers.

When I was pastor of Olivet College Church, in Olivet, Michigan, Professor Joseph Esterbrook was a perpetual joy to my soul. He was a man of rare spiritual power, and the sweet odor of his piety made the religious atmosphere fragrant far and near. He was one of the best known Christian men in the State. This was the secret of it. About forty years before, he was dying with a cancer, which the whole medical faculty of Michigan University pronounced incurable. He then sought and obtained of the Lord a genuine baptism with the Holy Ghost. God not only cleansed his heart, but healed his body, and he lived just forty years. He had got near enough to Jesus of Nazareth to touch the hem of His garment, and virtue from the Son of man had gone into both his body and his soul. I have no theories on this subject; but I have seen so many cases divinely healed, that I know the Great Physician of Nazareth still lives; and for me to doubt that he can and does yet heal in answer to prayer would be a sin.

God can break the spell of physical appetites in answer to prayer. There are a great many sinners who say, "I am a drunkard, or I have got the tobacco habit on me; I can not break off." But there is no "can't" about it, if they will link their impotence to God's omnipotence, and let Him do the work for them. I tell you, if the bonds of appetite and passion will not break, when the soul touches God they do break. God can do it; He does do it. God does forgive the sinner, and cleanses his soul.

I have had gamblers converted in my meetings. I have had a lost woman converted in my meeting. It was the first night she heard me preach; and I magnified the grace of God, and said there was enough for everybody, and that no one could exhaust it; and she said to herself, if there is any such Savior and any such salvation as that, I will go and try Jesus tonight. She went to the inquiry room. She was never absent a single night after that during the series of meetings. Some time after, I heard from that same town, and that she had joined the Church, and was as sweet and good as any one. O, God can save everybody who will simply repent, and call and believe! "It shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved."

A year ago last winter I was preaching in Chicago. I saw people -- hardened sinners -- kneel on the stone floor in Chicago jail, and give themselves to Jesus. I saw the most profligate sinners kneel in the missions before the Lord, and seek and obtain salvation. I met two remarkable Christian men who were called the twin Toms, as they had both been rescued from the lowest depths four years before.

One of them, Tom Mackey, of Star of Hope Mission, started in life as a bareback-rider in a circus. Then he became a lightweight pugilist. Then he became a gambler; then a drunkard. Then he went about the country with a bulldog getting up dog-fights. He went lower and lower, till he became what they call in Chicago "a barrel-house bum." He picked up tobacco stubs in the streets, keeping one coat-pocket for wet stubs, and one for dry.

One day in a drunk he tried to kill his wife; and not succeeding, he started down Van Buren Street to drown himself in Lake Michigan. He passed by Pacific Garden Mission, and slept in his drunken stupor while the preacher preached. He waked up in time to hear the wonderful testimonies of the saved men. His heart was touched, and he lifted his hand, covered with a filthy, ragged sleeve, for prayer, and he was saved January 2, 1894. He went home and led his wife to Jesus; and since then they have been at the head of Star of Hope Mission. He has planted six missions, into which hundreds are converted yearly, and it is said that his converts already belt the globe.

The other man, up to forty years of age, was a notorious criminal, who had never earned an honest dollar. He had been an inmate of nearly all the famous prisons of this country and England. He got so low that he swept the walks in front of Chicago saloons for soup to keep from starving; and for three weeks he went to Pacific Garden, and sat up all night in a chair by the fire to keep from freezing. But he got converted in 1894, and now is associate editor of the Ram's Horn, one of the most effective Christian papers in the country.

I heard him speak in the mission, holding his babe in his arms. His wife told me that now he is a beautiful Christian man in his home, and all that he seems to be to the public. He said to me, "When I came to Christ I had nothing but a dirty shirt and a bundle of sins." He is author of the following hymn:

HE TOUCHED ME, AND THUS MADE ME WHOLE

1 To the feet of my Savior in trembling and fear, A penitent sinner I came; He saw, and in mercy he bade me draw near, All glory and praise to his name!

Chorus:

He touched me and thus made me whole, Bringing comfort and rest to my soul; O, glad, happy, all my sins rolled away, For he touched me and thus made me whole.

2 I knew not the tender compassion and love, That Jesus my Savior had shown; Though burdened with grief, his dear hand brought relief He healed me and called me his own.

3 "My grace is sufficient," I heard his dear voice. "O, come, and find rest for your soul; From sin you to save, I my life freely gave, I died that you might be made whole."

4 O, come my dear brother; he's waiting for you, Your sin-burdened heart to console; Your weary head rest on his dear loving breast, He suffered and died for your soul.

O, the wondrous grace that can take a poor jail-bird, steeped in guilt and lost to shame, and make him a Christian editor, and put such a song in his heart, even praise to our God! The text is true. Blessed be the name of the Lord! "It shall come to pass that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."

A physician in Portland says that one Sunday night he was leaning on his hand in his office, studying a very critical case: and while he was in that attitude, just at the eventide, there was a knock at the door, and a fallen girl from a house of sin right under the shadows of a church near by said, "Doctor, come; Nellie is worse." I hastened over to the side of the poor, dying girl, dying from sin; and she looked up into my face, and said, "Doctor, is there no help for me?" "No, Nellie, you are past human help. Shall I not call a minister to come and see you?" "O doctor, do not leave me. I want you to stay with me ;" and just then the organ broke out, and they sang a sweet, familiar hymn in the church near by, known to the girl in childhood. As the sound wafted through the open windows and to the dying girl's ear, she listened, and the tears began to trickle down her cheeks, and she said: "O, would God I was a little innocent girl again at my mother's knee! Doctor, pray for me." He said: "It seemed as if the weight of a thousand worlds came on me; and though I was not a Christian, I got down and told Jesus all about it, and begged Him to see the tears of penitence and have mercy on the sinning girl. A light came into her face, and the peace of God settled upon her countenance, and she expressed her hope. But pretty soon she became delirious, and I knew the end was near. She thought in her delirium that she was back again at mother's knee, and she was saying her infant prayer, and she prayed:

"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take, And this I ask for Jesus' sake.

"O Lord, bless papa and mamma and little Nellie. Amen!" He said: "I could almost hear the rustle of the angels' wings as they swept down into that room to carry the girl home, and she passed away with a radiant look of a redeemed child upon her face. But O," he said, "the prayer that brought peace to Nellie, brought an unutterable burden to my own soul; and I went to my office, in all my morality and good standing, and got down on my knees and prayed to Nellie's Savior, and asked Him to be my Savior, too." And he said: "There is a light coming into my heart in answer to that prayer, that is the beginning of the eternal day of heaven." Beloved, it is true. "It shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." O, call, CALL. Whatever be your need, in body or soul, call, CALL IN PENITENCE, CALL IN FAITH. Call. CALL, and God will make good his promise, and "it shall come to pass." You shall be saved.

4 THE TWO GREAT NECESSITIES

"Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born anew, he can not see the kingdom of God." -- John 3:3

"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth may in him have eternal life." -- John 3:14, 15.

"Follow after peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord." -- Hebrews 12:14

These passages of Scripture tell us of two things that are absolutely necessary to eternal life and admission to heaven. This is not my gospel; I am not called upon to make a Bible. It is my business to preach it. The Bible is made; and all that is included in my call is to preach it and live it. These passages show us that we must be born again, and we must be sanctified, or we can not enter into heaven; and they also tell us how we can be born again. "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth may in Him have eternal life." A great many people do not like to hear this gospel preached. Multitudes do not like to hear anything about regeneration, and a great many more people still do not like to hear that anything is necessary beyond regeneration. They would like to have sanctification put out of the Bible. They deny all necessity of holiness. They even go so far as to deny the possibility of leading a sanctified and holy life in this world; and it seems to me that when they do that, they come perilously near incurring that curse brought upon the man that takes anything from the Word of life, recorded over there in the last verses of the Bible. I did not make the Bible; the Bible is given me by the Lord; and I am glad that I am not so afloat that I have to make a Bible to suit myself. I take the one God has made, and that is what I preach unto you tonight.

Some people call this double gospel of conversion or regeneration and sanctification a new-fangled doctrine. Well, beloved, it is not as new as those people think it is. Let me show you it is not. Over in the fifteenth chapter of Genesis, the sixth verse, you read : "And Abram believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness." There was Abram's justification, the first blessing. He was converted, he was born again. But over in the seventeenth chapter of Genesis, the first verse, you read God says to Abram, "I am God Almighty; walk before me and be thou perfect," and there Abram got his call to the second blessing, which he accepted, and had his name changed, representing a change in the innermost character of his soul. His name was changed from Abram to Abraham; and, moreover, he had the rite of circumcision given to him, typical of the inbred cleansing of his heart.

You turn over to the story of Jacob, and you find Jacob met God at Bethel, and there he saw the angels of God ascending and descending the ladder, and there Jacob made his vow and gave himself to God. That was the beginning of his spiritual life. He called it Bethel, "none other than the house of God and the gate of heaven." But twenty or more years afterwards you find Jacob wrestling at Peniel. He meets God again, and he wrestles with the angel all night until break of day, and will not let him go until he gets the blessing. And he gets the second blessing, and his name is changed from Jacob the Supplanter to Israel, a Prince of God.

You turn over to Isaiah, and you find Isaiah was a beautiful servant of God, a lovely man in his religious life; a man whose bosom glowed with the fervors of piety. Cod's mouthpiece he was to a whole nation; and yet in the sixth chapter we read that one day he got a vision of God, and the cherubim and seraphim bowing before him, and veiling their faces with their wings, and crying out, "Holy! holy! holy is the Lord God Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory." And Isaiah was so profoundly impressed by that vision, that he fell before God and cried: "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." He was so profoundly impressed with the holiness of heaven and its Sovereign that he said to himself: "I am not fit for that place. I am not holy. Woe, woe is me!" And then an angel came with a live coal from off the altar, and touched his lips and said, "Thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is purged." That live coal of fire was a type of the Holy Spirit that came to Isaiah; and Isaiah's iniquity was taken away, and his sin was purged. His heart was cleansed, and then God said to him, "Whom shall I send?" and Isaiah replies, ""Here am I, send me." He is ready now to go on God's mission. He is ready to speak God's messages. He felt, as we sing nowadays, whether we feel it or not:

"I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord, Over mountain or plain or sea, I'll say what you want me to say, dear Lord; I'll be what you want me to be."

Isaiah was ready, because his heart had got the second blessing.

You turn over to the New Testament, and you find that Jesus had some disciples. They had followed Him three and a half years; they had forsaken all to follow Him. They had been commissioned to preach His gospel, and work miracles in His name. Do you tell me that God ever called a child of the devil to preach His gospel? I tell you, nay, nay. They were Christian men; they had given their hearts to God; they had turned from sin; they were followers of Jesus. Jesus said Himself that all had followed Him in the regeneration. He also said, `"Your names are written in heaven;" and He also said in His intercessory prayer, "These are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." We have infallible testimony that they were children of God; and yet they are not what God wants them to be. He wants them to have the second blessing; and so He tells them to tarry in Jerusalem until they are endued with power from on high, "`The promise of the Father, which, says he, ye shall receive not many days hence." We read in Acts, second chapter, that the Holy Ghost did come upon them, and they were new men in Christ Jesus. Their hearts were changed, for all inbred sin was taken out of them.

You turn over to Acts, eighth chapter, and you find that Deacon Philip went down to Samaria and preached to the people; and there were a great many converts, and they were baptized and joined the Church. Were they not Christians? But as soon as the apostles at Jerusalem heard of it, what did they do? They immediately sent Peter and John over to Samaria, post-haste, that they might go and instruct them about receiving the second blessing, the baptism of the Holy Ghost There is the second blessing again.

You turn over to Acts, tenth chapter, and you find there was Cornelius, a Centurion, a devout mar who feared God, who prayed always, who gave alms, and Peter himself testified, and said, "I perceive that whosoever feareth God and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him." Here was Cornelius, then, a man with all these characteristics. Why, if you had such a man in the Presbyterian Church, or Baptist Church, or Methodist Church here in the city, you would want to make him an elder, a deacon, a Sabbath School Superintendent, or something or other. You would put him in the best office in the Church. Such a grand man, walking with God, and giving alms and praying and fasting and fearing God! You would say, `"What more do you want?' Well, God wanted him to have something more; and He took the pains to give Cornelius a vision; and He gave Peter a vision, so that he would not hesitate about. going to a Gentile's house. And Peter goes and speaks to Cornelius; and while he is speaking the Holy Ghost falls; and we find Peter telling this wondrous incident years afterward in Jersusalem, saying that "God gave them the Holy Ghost even as He did unto us ... cleansing their hearts by faith."

You turn over to Acts, nineteenth chapter, and you find out that Apollos, a noted orator, has come to Ephesus and preached his best, and has organized a Church with twelve men. I suppose there were twenty-four women, if it was then as the Church is now, two women to one man. But we will assume that there were twenty-four women, twelve men anyway; and by and by Paul comes along, and the first question Paul asked was, "Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?" "The what?" "The Holy Ghost; have ye received the Holy Ghost?" "Why, we have not as much as heard whether there is a Holy Ghost or not." That is what is the trouble with the Churches today. Plenty of Churches today do not know that there is any Holy Ghost, and that they need to be sanctified by Him, and do need the second blessing. But some Churches are finding out so much, that they think they do not need the first blessing. However, the first thing Paul did was to instruct them, and see to it that they were baptized with the Holy Ghost.

So you see, beloved, that I am not preaching a newfangled doctrine. I am preaching a gospel as old as the days of the apostles; I am preaching a gospel as old as the days of Isaiah; I am preaching a gospel as old as the days of Father Jacob; and yea, two generations back of him, as old as Father Abram. This is no new gospel; but it is the living gospel of the infinite God, that fills the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. People do not like to hear it. I was talking one time with a banker's wife, and she said to me: "Mr. Hills, I think the time will come when you ministers will give up preaching the necessity of conversion, or regeneration, or the new birth, or whatever you call it. I do not see anything in it." Give it up? Yes, we will when we give up Jesus as the ultimate authority in matters of morals and religion. Give it up? Yes, we will, when we get too big and too conceited to preach the message which God Almighty has given us to preach. Give it up? Yes, we will, when we get so contemptible that we will fawn on bankers and bankers' wives for what such fawning will bring; but I want to say to you that as long as we are honest souls, sincere and manly men in the pulpit, we will preach the gospel as God has given it to us, whether men like to hear it or not. It is not my business to preach a gospel that every one wants to hear. It is my business to preach what people need to hear, and what they ought to hear, and what God has given me to preach; and that I propose to preach.

Now, I want to show you reasons why it is necessary to be born again and sanctified, and how the two blessings may be received.

First, I remark, man must be born again and cleansed by the sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost, because of what man is. Man, by nature, is not like God. He does not know God. He does not enjoy God. He does not enjoy God's truth; he does not enjoy God's people or God's Church. "What!" you say. "Those are pretty hard charges." I know it; and the worst thing about it is they are so awfully true. Why, beloved, do you not know if men liked God's Church all you would have to do would be to build churches and throw open the doors, and invite the public to come in, and they would throng in and crowd the churches. Do they do it? Do they do it? You go around to the churches of your city, and the mission halls tonight or tomorrow night, and see how large the audience is where God is preached, and do the same Sunday night; and then just ask yourself how crowded would the theaters be with the people, if they were free as the churches? Why is it that the theaters would be filled, and the churches of your city two-thirds empty? The reason is, people do not like God's truth, and they do not like God's people, and they do not like God's Church; but they do like sin, and to sinful places and sinful amusements they go. If people liked the Bible by nature, all you would have to do would be to print Bibles and throw them out broadcast over the earth, and people would read that Book as they would no novel that was ever printed; and as the truth unfolded to them, they would bow right down and worship the God that the Bible reveals. Do they do it? Plenty of families in the city have no Bible; and multitudes of people do not read the Book if they have one. The dust of neglect covers it so you could write your name on it. They read everything else -- the novel, the slush of the daily papers, good, bad, and indifferent; but the Bible is the neglected Book of books. God help us to understand that people do not enjoy the Bible by nature!

As I said a moment ago, people do not love God by nature. You think that is an awful charge; but is it not true? If they loved God, all you would have to do would be to make known God to the people, and at once they would fall down on their faces, as the angels do, and prayers would rise as sweet incense before the throne of God. Is that the way people treat God? Why, the city is full of people who have hurled their blasphemous oaths into God's ears all day; and they use the very breath God has given them to blaspheme His name. Multitudes would banish God from the universe, if they could do it. O, the world is bad, and men do not love God, and they are never going to love God until they are born again of the Holy Spirit!

I sometimes illustrate this truth in this way. There is in the British Museum a little vase about ten inches high, called the Portland vase. It is made of blue glass, and covered with transparent enamel, and carved to represent the marriage of the father of Achilles to the goddess Thetis. It was found by Alexander Severus in an Etruscan tomb; was taken out and emptied of the ashes of the dead, for that is what it contained, and it was refilled with the ashes of one of his dead, and sealed up in a magnificent sarcophagus, and there it was found in the sixteenth century, perfect as it was when it was made, one thousand years before Christ was born. It is one of the priceless gems of antiquity. No money would buy it today. In 1845 a group of people stood admiring that vase and talking about it, and a poor drunken wretch came along and hurled a rock at it, and shattered it into a number of pieces. He was hustled off to prison with the execrations of the civil authorities, and the best artists of the realm were brought together to see if they could restore that vase. They took transparent cement, and experimented by putting bit by bit together, and they believe they have restored it as it was. Now, that gives you my illustration. The human race was intended by God Almighty to bear His image, and reflect His likeness and His glory; and every one of us is expected to reflect back into God's face a perfect image of a perfect man. But Satan, drunk with envy at the Son of God, hurled his temptation at our race, and shattered the image of God in every human soul. There is just one Artist in the universe that can take the broken fragments of our sin-cursed, ruined nature, and restore it to the likeness of God; and that Artist is the Holy Ghost. Therefore God says, "Ye must be born of the Spirit and ye must be sanctified by the Spirit."

Second. I remark that we must be born again by the Spirit and sanctified by the Spirit before we can enjoy the kingdom of God because of what the kingdom is. If the kingdom of God were meat and drink, savage gluttons would be just fitted for it. That is what they would like. If it were a business realm, a schooling in Paris or New York or Chicago Stock Exchange would just fit a man for it. He would be trained by business to enjoy the kingdom. If it were a realm of art, then studying in the Vatican gallery amidst the masterpieces of the world would just fit a man for it. If it were a realm of science, then sitting at the feet of Darwin or Tyndall or Huxley would fit a man for it. But the apostle Paul says it is not meat or drink, and he might have added, nor business, nor art, nor science. What is it? "The kingdom of heaven is not meat and drink; but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost;" and until the soul is spiritual enough to enjoy righteousness and enjoy the Holy Ghost himself, he is not fit for heaven, and he could not by any possibility enjoy heaven.

Do you ever ask yourself what a gambler's heaven would be like? Why, a gambler's heaven would be a Monte Carlo or a Saratoga or a New Orleans gambling house, where men could ever play with loaded dice or marked cards, and fleece their victims, and gratify the gambler's passion. For that he will turn away from his manhood and his family and his home and all that man ought to hold dear and precious. He will leave it all to gratify that passion.

Did you ever ask yourself what a drunkard's heaven would be like? It would be one of your infernal saloons, where the man could forever hear the jingle of the saloon furnishings; where he could drink and drink and drink, and forever gratify the drunkard's quenchless thirst. For that he will take the food from his hungry children s stomachs. He will take the clothes from his wife's back, and the roof that shelters them from the winter's storm, and he will add to that his own manhood and health and wealth and reputation. He will stake it all on that appetite for drink. An infernal saloon is the heaven that man is fitting for. Did you ever ask yourself what an impure man's heaven would be like? An Oriental harem infinitely prolonged. That is all the vile leper is fitting for. But O, because our heaven that God reveals to us is not like these, but is a holy place for a holy people, therefore men full of impurity and the taint and curse of sin must be born anew, and made holy by the Holy Spirit, or they can never enter the heaven of God.

I remark, third, that man must have these changes that my text tells about before he can enter or see or enjoy the kingdom of God because of what God is. Because of what God is. Most people have a very low idea of heaven. They think heaven is a place, just a place; and the greatest joy in heaven will be meeting Mary or John who has gone over on the other side; but O, I told you a moment ago that heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people: and the greatest joy of heaven will not be meeting our loved ones over there, precious as that is; but it will be God himself. He is the glory of heaven, and He is the chief joy of heaven, and unless a soul can enjoy God himself, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Let me make this plain by some illustrations. I remember the last time my old grandfather visited my childhood home in Western Michigan, where I was born. He was a godly old man, a deacon of a Congregational Church in New York. He liked `to talk about religious things. He was more spiritual than my father, and his favorite theme of conversation was God and Jesus and heaven and things of that kind. I remember one day my father asked him, `"Well, father, what are you going to do when you get to heaven?" I shall never forget how the old man jumped from his chair, his white locks streaming back like a halo of glory, and he lifted his hands with his characteristic gesture, and looked up and said, "My son, my son, I will spend the first thousand years of eternity looking at the face of Jesus." There was a man getting ripe for heaven. It would be just heaven for him to stand and look at that face down which the blood-drops trickled from the thorn crown, a thousand years. Do you know what that means? If you do not, you need the work of the Holy Ghost on your heart.

When President Finney was holding revival-meetings in Central New York, at the time of his greatest usefulness, he was one night awakened from his sleep in the dead of the night. He rose up on his bed, and listened to see what it was that had awakened him. It was a godly woman praying in the next room, and he heard her say, ""O, the holiness of God!" and a second time, "O, the holiness of God!" and then a third time, "O, the holiness of God!" Her very soul was ravished in contemplation of the holiness of God. She was getting ready for heaven.

Twenty-five years ago a godly preacher by the name of Dr. Hawes, pastor for many years of the First Congregational Church of Hartford, Connecticut, lay dying. The ministers of the city gathered in to visit him; and as they stood around his bedside, one of them said to him, "Well, doctor, you are almost home; how does it seem to you now?" The dear old man looked up, the blessed old warrior of Israel, and said with blazing eyes: "O brethren, if there is anything in God's universe I love, it is the government and character of God; and whoever loves them is safe anywhere in God's universe." That old man was ready for glory.

Some few years ago, Charles Kingsley, a famous preacher and writer of England, lay dying. It was after midnight. The daughter was watching in the next room, the door open between, so that she could hear anything her father did, and know if he wanted anything. Along in the small hours of the morning she heard him say, "O, how beautiful is God!" She stepped on tiptoe softly into the other room to the bedside, and, lo, he was gone! On the border line between the two worlds he had caught a glimpse of the God whom he had loved so long; and his last exclamation of earth, and his first of heaven, was, "O, how beautiful is God!"

Do you know what these things mean? Beloved, as sure as you sit in those seats, if you do not know, the reason is your hearts have not yet been prepared by sovereign grace for the glories of the eternal world. God help you to search your hearts and know where you are tonight! Why, you can see it is as plain as can be, why we must have these changes. You could not put a soul in such a place of misery anywhere in the universe, as to put him near God when he is not ready to meet Him.

I will show you that by a simple illustration. When Wilberforce, the great philanthropist of England, who agitated for the suppression of the slave business, and finally stopped it throughout the British Empire, was living, he called with a friend one day on a sick and dying man. He noticed, as he was talking, that the sick man was very strangely agitated. He did not know why, and thinking it might perhaps be his presence, he said a few more words to him, and left the house. After he went away the dying man said, "O, I am so glad Wilberforce is gone; he told me I was going straight to hell." "Why," says the friend, "`he did not say anything of the kind to you. He was very gentle in his speech all the time. "I know he did not say it to me with his lips; but his life, his beautiful life, told me I was going straight to hell!" Friends, if that wicked man could not bear the presence of Wilberforce this side of death, how could he bear the presence of God on the other side? Why, there would be no hell so hot for that wicked man as to put him right up on the sea of glass before the great White Throne, in the blazing light of the Son of God. To my mind the most awful punishment of the doomed given in that Book is not "the lake of fire and brimstone," or ""the smoke of the torment that ascendeth for ever and ever," or "the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth;" that is all figurative language. The most awful picture of punishment, to my mind, is where the sinners are calling on the rocks and mountains to fall on them and hide them from the face of Him that sitteth upon the Throne and from the Lamb. Beloved, no man can enjoy the sight of God and live, until his nature is fitted by grace to do it. Now, you can see the meaning of my text. You can see why God has said it. These changes must take place in our souls, or we are not fit for heaven, and we never could enjoy it.

Now, notice, fourthly, how radical that change is. Birth is the starting point, and because we were started wrong we must all be started over again. We were conceived in iniquity and born in sin, and we have all got to be started over again. Some one asks, "Will not culture do?" Culture! culture! and some people spell it, or pronounce it as if it were spelled "culchab." Is it not enough to tone a man up a little here, and fix him up there? Will not that make him all right for heaven? There are thousands of people who think they are ready for heaven, because they are so sweetly "culchahed." And many people think if they were born in Boston, they are good enough and do not need to be born again! Is that the meaning of God's Word?

O beloved, let me show you how utterly futile that hope is. Darwin tells us that our pet cats are only little leopards, transformed by thousands of years of culture; but you see they have the carnivorous teeth, and the appetite for blood, and the same leopard nature yet; and all the generations of culture have not changed that a particle. I saw one day on the shore of Lake Michigan an eagle sitting near me in the edge of a town. I suppose it was a cultured eagle; but I noticed that the bird had the same curved beak and cruel talons. It was not a dove, if it was cultured; the eagle was there still, and culture did not change the inbred nature at all. And so, beloved, you can culture and culture the old man of depravity; but you will simply have cultured carnality as the result. You have not got a saint.

This truth is illustrated by the young men in our colleges. I know, from living seven years within college walls, that many college-bred men are as vile-hearted devils as ever walked the earth. They can read several languages, and swear and lie in several more; but yet they are as black as they need to be to sink into the infernal pit. Look at ancient Greece and Rome: were they not cultured? Their languages were so perfect that we send our children to college for years to study them. The old Greeks were so cultured that they had in some respects the best language that was ever spoken on the globe. Their very thought was philosophy, and their speech was poetry and eloquence; and yet, with all their culture they went down under the burden of their sins. Old Rome was outwardly imposing, and ruled the earth and was filled with orators and poets and historians and scholars; and yet, as one historian writes, "Rome, so outwardly imposing, was inwardly rotten to the core."

Are not the aristocrats in the West End of London cultured? They have all that Cambridge and Oxford and noble birth and foreign travel can give them. But some years ago, Mr. Stead, of the Pall Mall Gazette, got on the track of their wickedness, and published it in his paper. The story was so awful that all England began to rock and tremble as in the throes of a great earthquake. The very throne began to totter, for it was touching the princes of the blood-royal. Spurgeon went into his pulpit, and said, "If this wickedness is not stopped, the Lord will destroy modem London as he destroyed ancient Sodom." But what did they do? They simply imprisoned Mr. Stead for publishing it, and the wickedness still goes on. And yet I call your attention to this startling fact, that those people were Churchmen. They had been baptized and joined the Church, and they had partaken of the communion, and they were members of the fashionable Churches; but their hearts were as black as hell, which shows how little baptism and communion and Church membership can do to fit anybody for heaven. I do not ask you tonight whether you have been confirmed or not; I do not ask you it you have been baptized; I do not ask you if you are a member of the Church; but I do ask you in God's name, have you been regenerated and made clean by the Holy Ghost and by the blood of Christ? That is the vital question; for nothing else will meet the needs of the soul. O culture! how utterly futile it is to take out of the soul that polluted current of life that has flowed in the human race from Adam's day until now. No tribe, no race, no people on the globe have ever been changed by culture. Nothing but God's grace can do the work.

Several years ago there was an Englishman who came into possession of a little baby boa-constrictor seven inches long. He fondled it and fed it and caressed it and held it in his bosom, and it grew and grew and grew until it became a monster of its species, thirty-seven feet long. Then he performed with it night after night in the theaters of London. It would be the last and most thrilling act of every night's performance. The scenery would represent an Indian jungle, and the orchestra would strike up the weird strains of Indian music. A rustle would be heard behind the scenery, and this awful creature would stretch its huge length out on the platform. The master would step up to it, and it would perform, and at the last the great beast would coil around him, coil upon coil, and rear his horrid head above him, when the curtain would drop amid thunders of applause. This went on night after night, until the last night came, as last nights always will come to earthly things. The beast came out as usual, performed as usual. The master stepped up as usual, and it coiled around as usual; but the master was heard to utter a shriek, and the audience thought it was a part of the performance, and applauded louder than ever. But pretty soon their faces were blanched with horror, for the great beast was tightening his coil and crushing the master's bones one by one right before their eyes. The cultured beast was master at last. Beloved, you can sport with this old beast of depravity, and try your culture, and reject the Son of God, and fight Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit in your heart; but the day will come when that old beast of depravity will crush out of you every likeness to God and every hope of heaven. "Ye must be born again." God help you to see it!

I hasten on to remark, last, this precious truth in closing, that you not only must be born again, but you MAY be. O, if God had only told us we must be born again, we would have lost all hope of salvation! If he had just told us we must, and had not told us how we could be, it would have brought black despair to the race. But, glory to God! He told us how. Jesus looked at that cultured, rich, refined ruler, and said, "`Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a man be born again, he can not see the kingdom of God." Nicodemus threw up his hands and cried out, "How can these things be !" Jesus did not take it back; but He repeated it again, driving it home, and making him feel the mighty necessity of this new birth; and after that Jesus told him how he might be born again. ""And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth may in Him have eternal life." Glory to God! There is that blessed "WHOSOEVER" again that I have been preaching. The blessed ""WHOSOEVER," that takes in poor me, and gives me a chance with the rest of the world. I am so glad, and O, beloved, it is easy to get this new birth and this heart-cleansing, if you really want it. It does not take long if you really want it.

One time in New York City a burglar was going up Fifth Avenue to break into a house, and he passed by a religious meeting, heard the words of sacred song coming out. He stopped and listened. The Spirit of God came upon him, and before that service was out he walked up to the front, and astonished the audience by taking the burglar's tools out of his pocket, and laying them down on the altar. He said: "Friends, I came in here a burglar; but I go out of here to be a child of God and an honest man. O, it does not take long, when you want to get saved.

During Mr. Moody's first series of meetings in St. Louis, there was a man who got angry at a fellow-man, and swore he would shoot him at sight. He purchased a revolver, and started out to find him and shoot him. He went to all the man's usual places of resort and inquired for him, and found he had gone to the Moody meeting. He started for the Moody meeting, and glared around over the audience looking to see where that man was. The Spirit prompted him to listen to the truth; and before the meeting was over his heart was changed, and he walked up to Mr. Moody and took his revolver and gave it to him, and said, ""Mr. Moody, I came in here to kill a brother; but I have found my Elder Brother, Jesus Christ." Every night after that he brought, instead of a revolver, a New Testament, and went to the inquiry-room to lead others to Christ.

O, it does not take long! Do you suppose if a man really wants God, and is willing to receive God, it would take five years to find Him? He may not live five years. Five months? You may not live five months. Five weeks? Who is certain of five weeks? Five hours? No. Five minutes? If a man really wants this blessing of God, it would not take five seconds to get it, and I will prove it to you by an illustration. Dr. Josiah Strong told me this in his own study. He said: "I began my ministry in Cheyenne, Wyoming. There was a young man in my congregation, the son of a Presbyterian minister, who had been instructed in the ways of religion, but had never given his heart to God. A wealthy gentleman moved into the town, and invited this young man to his house to the evening meal. He sat down and talked with him in the study until time for the meal. They were invited out, and sat down at the table; and the man, supposing him to be a Christian, turned to him and said, "Will you please ask a blessing, sir?" Well, quick as a lightning-flash, the thought swept through his soul, "I always intended giving my heart to Christ some time, and why not now?" and, without a moment's hesitation, he dropped his head and asked the blessing -- a Christian man. You say, How do you know he was a Christian? From that hour, said his pastor, he was the most active lay Christian I ever knew. O, when a man's will yields to God, when he says, "Yes, dear Savior," he can have life and light. God intends salvation shall be accessible to any soul.

Just another incident now, and I close. Bear with me a moment. After the battle of Pittsburgh Landing, Moody was nursing dying soldiers. He had been at work all day until midnight, and had retired for a little sleep. As he was sleeping, some one awakened him, and said, "There is a poor, dying soldier that wants to see you. He rose up and went to the side of the cot of the poor, dying man, and said to him, "What is it you want?" He said, "I sent for you to help me die." "I can not help you to die," said Moody. "O, I thought you were a minister." "No, I am not; but if I were, I could not help you to die." "O, who can help me to die?" "No one but Jesus." "Then there is no hope for me, for I have been an awfully wicked man." Mr. Moody gave him some passages of Scripture, and knelt down and prayed with him; but still he did not get any light. Then he gave him some more passages of Scripture, and prayed with him a second time; but still he received no help. Then he bethought him, and put his hand in his pocket and drew out his Testament, and read to him that wonderful third chapter of John about the new birth. When he came along to the fourteenth verse, "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth may in him have eternal life." he said, "Is that there?" "Yes, sir." "Will you please read that again?" He read it a second time. The poor fellow said, "Pardon me, sir; but please read that once more." He read it a third time. "There that will do. That is enough." He shut his eyes. Pretty soon a smile came over his face, and his lips began to move, and Mr. Moody stooped down to listen, and he was repeating in a whisper, "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so -- must -- the -- Son -- of -- man -- be lifted up, that whosoever believeth may in Him have eternal life. "Lord, I believe, I believe," and a soul was gone to God.

Have you not heard enough tonight? Will you not believe on the blood? Beloved, believe in the atoning Savior. Will you not take the Spirit for what you need tonight? O, if you want to be born again, ask God to be your Savior, and if you are a Christian and want to be sanctified, open the door of your heart, and let the Holy Ghost, with His cleansing power, fill your soul.

TAKE ME AS I AM!

1 Jesus, my Lord, to thee I cry, Unless thou help me, I must die; O, bring thy free salvation nigh, And take me as I am!

Chorus:

Take me as I am, Take me as I am. O, bring thy free salvation nigh, And take me as I am!

2 Helpless I am and full of guilt, But yet for me thy blood was spilt, And thou canst make me what thou wilt, But take me as I am!

3 If thou hast work for me to do, Inspire my will, my heart renew, And work both in and by me, too, But take me as I am!

4 And when at last my work is done, The battle o'er, the vict'ry won, Still, still my cry shall be alone, O, take me as I am!

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