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<title>Blue Letter Bible: Text Commentaries</title>
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<h4 style="text-align: center">
A Sermon<br>
(No. 369)<br>
Delivered on Monday Afternoon, March 25th, 1861 by the<br>
Rev. C. H. SPURGEON,<br>
</h4>
<p class="scripture">
"And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not
to teach and preach Jesus Christ."— <a onClick="return mV('Act', 5, 42);">Act 5:42</a>
</p>
<p class="indent">
I DO not know whether there are any persons here present who
can contrive to put themselves into my present position, and to
feel my present feelings. If they can effect that, they will
give me credit for meaning what I say, when I declare that I
feel totally unable to preach. And, indeed, I think I shall
scarcely attempt a sermon, but rather give a sort of
declaration of the truths from which future sermons shall be
made. I will give you bullion rather than coin; the block from
the quarry, and not the statue from the chisel. It appears that
the one subject upon which men preached in the apostolic age
was <i>Jesus Christ.</i> The tendency of man, if left alone, is
continually to go further and further from God, and the Church
of God itself is no exception to the general rule. For the
first few years, during and after the apostolic era, Christ
Jesus was preached, but gradually the Church departed from the
central point, and began rather to preach ceremonials and
church offices than the person of their Lord. So has it been in
these modern times: we also have fallen into the same error, at
least to a degree, and have gone from preaching Christ to
preaching doctrines about Christ, inferences which may be drawn
from his life, or definitions which may be gathered from his
discourses. We are not content to stand like angels <i>in</i>
the sun; our fancies disturb our rest and must needs fly on the
sunbeams, further and further from the glorious source of
light. In the days of Paul it was not difficult at once, in one
word, to give the sum and substance of the current theology. It
was Christ Jesus. Had you asked anyone of those disciples what
he believed, he would have replied, "I believe Christ." If you
had requested him to show you his Body of Divinity, he would
have pointed upward, reminding you that divinity never had but
one body, the suffering and crucified human frame of Jesus
Christ, who ascended up on high. To them, Christ was not a
notion refined, but unsubstantial; not an historical personage
who had left only the savour of his character behind, but whose
person was dead; to them he was not a set of ideas, not a
creed, nor an incarnation of an abstract theory; but he was a
person, one whom some of them had seen, whose hands they had
handled, nay, one of whose flesh they had all been made to eat,
and of whose blood they had spiritually been made to drink.
Christ was substance to them, I fear he is too often but shadow
to us. He was a reality to their minds; to us—though,
perhaps, we would scarcely allow it in so many
words—rather a myth than a man; rather a person who was,
than he who was, and is, and is to come—the Almighty.
</p>
<p class="indent">
I would propose (and O may the Lord grant us grace to carry out
that proposition, from which no Christian can dissent), I would
propose that the subject of the ministry of this house, as long
as this platform shall stand, and as long as this house shall
be frequented by worshippers, shall be the person of Jesus
Christ. I am never ashamed to avow myself a Calvinist, although
I claim to be rather a Calvinist according to Calvin, than
after the modern debased fashion. I do not hesitate to take the
name of Baptist. You have there (pointing to the baptistery)
substantial evidence that I am not ashamed of that ordinance of
our Lord Jesus Christ; but if I am asked to say what is my
creed, I think I must reply: "It is Jesus Christ." My venerable
predecessor, Dr. Gill, has left a body of divinity admirable
and excellent in its way; but the body of divinity to which I
would pin and bind myself for ever, God helping me, is not his
system of divinity or any other human treatise, but Christ
Jesus, who is the sum and substance of the gospel; who is in
himself all theology, the incarnation of every precious truth,
the all-glorious personal embodiment of the way, the truth, and
the life.
</p>
<p class="indent">
This afternoon I will try to describe <i>the subject, Christ
Jesus;</i> then, secondly, to speak for a little while upon its
<i>comprehensiveness;</i> then to enlarge upon sundry of <i>its
excellencies;</i> and conclude by testing <i>its power.</i>
</p>
<p class="indent">
I. First, then, the SUBJECT.
</p>
<p class="indent">
They continued both to teach and preach <i>Jesus Christ.</i> To
preach Jesus Christ aright we must preach him in his
<i>infinite and indisputable Godhead.</i> We may be attacked by
philosophers, who will either make him no God at all, or one
constituted temporarily and, I must add, absurdly a God for a
season. We shall have at once upon us those who view Christ as
a prophet, as a great man, as an admirable exemplar; we shall
be assailed on all sides by those who choose rather to draw
their divinity from their own addled brains than from the
simplicity of Holy Writ; but what mattereth this? We must
reiterate again and again the absolute and proper deity of
Christ; for without this we are in the position of those
described by the prophet:—"Their tacklings are loosed,
they could not well strengthen their mast" and soon will our
enemies prevail against us, and the prey of a great spoil shall
be taken. Take away the divinity of Christ from the gospel, and
you have nothing whatever left upon which the anxious soul can
rest. Remove the Word who was in the beginning with God, and
who was God, and the Jachin and Boaz of the temple are
overturned. Without a divine Saviour, your gospel is a rope of
sand; a bubble; a something less substantial than a dream. If
Christ were not God, he was the basest of impostors. He was
either one of two things, very God of very God, or else an
arch-deceiver of the souls of men, for he made many of them
believe he was God, and brought upon himself the consequences
of what they called blasphemy; so that if he were not God, he
was the greatest deceiver that ever lived. But God he is; and
here, in this house, we must and will adore him. With the
multitude of his redeemed we <i>will</i> sing:
</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
"Jesus is worthy to receive,<br>
Honour and power <i>divine,</i><br>
And blessings more, than we can give<br>
Be <i>Lord</i> for ever thine."
</p>
<p class="indent">
To preach Christ, however, we must also preach <i>his true
humanity.</i> We must never make him to be less manlike because
he was perfectly divine. I love that hymn of Hart which
begins—
</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
"A man there was—a real man,<br>
Who once on Calvary died."
</p>
<p class="indent">
<i>"Real</i> man!" I think we do not often realize that manhood
of Christ; we do not see that he was bone of our bone, and
flesh of our flesh; feeling, thinking, acting, suffering,
doing, just like ourselves—one of our fellows, and only
above us because he is "exalted with the oil of gladness above
his fellows." We must have a human Christ, and we must have one
of real flesh and blood too; not of shadows or filmy fancies.
We must have one to whom we can talk, one with whom we can
walk, one
</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
"Who in his measure feels afresh<br>
What every member bears;"
</p>
<p>
who is so intimately connected with us in ties of blood, that
he is as with us one, the head of the family, first-born among
many brethren. I am never more glad than when I am preaching a
<i>personal</i> Christ. A doctrinal Christ, a practical Christ,
or an experimental Christ, as some good men make him to be
according to the temper of their minds, I do not feel to be
sufficient for the people of God. We want a <i>personal</i>
Christ. This has been a power to the Romish church—a power
which they have used for ill, but always a power; they have had
a personal Christ, but then it has either been a baby Christ in
his mother's arms, or else a dead Christ upon the cross. They
never reached the force of a real full-grown Christ, one who
not only lived and suffered, but who died and rose again, and
sits at the right hand of God, the Head of the Church, the one
ruler of men. Oh! we must bring out more and more clearly each
day the real personality of the Redeemer in his complex person.
Whatever we fail to preach, we must preach <i>him.</i> If we
are wrong in many points, if we be but right here, this will
save our ministry from the flames; but if we be wrong here,
however orthodox we may pretend to be, we cannot be right in
the rest unless we think rightly of him.
</p>
<p class="indent">
But, further, to preach Christ Jesus, it is absolutely
necessary we should preach him as <i>the only mediator between
God and man.</i> Admitting the efficacy of the intercession of
living saints for sinners, never for a moment denying that
every man is bound to make supplication for all ranks and
conditions of men, yet must we have it that the only mediator
in the heavens, and the only direct intercessor with God, is
the man Christ Jesus. Nay, we must not be content with making
him the only mediator; we must set aside all approach to God in
any way whatever, except by him. We must not only have him for
the priest, but we must have him for the altar, the victim, and
the offerer too. We must learn in full the meaning of that
precious text—"Christ is all." We must not see a part of
the types here and a part there, but all gathered up in him,
the one door of heaven, the one crimson way by which our souls
approach to God. We must not allow that approaches can be made
in human strength, by human learning, or by human effort; but
in him and through him, and by him, and in dependence upon him,
must all be done between God and man. We have no wings, my
brethren, with which to fly to heaven; our journey thither must
be on the rounds [rungs] of Jacob's ladder. We cannot approach
God by anything we have, or know, or do. Christ crucified, and
he alone, must lift us up to God.
</p>
<p class="indent">
And more, we must preach Christ in the solitariness of his
redemption work. We must not permit for a moment the fair white
linen of his righteousness to be stained by the patch-work of
our filthy rags. We must not submit that the precious blood of
his veins should be diluted by any offering of ours co-acting
therewith, for our salvation. He hath, by one sacrifice, for
ever put away sin. We shall never preach Christ unless we have
a real atonement. There be certain people nowadays who are
making the atonement, first a sort of compromise, and the next
step is to make the atonement a display of what ought to have
been, instead of the thing which should have been. Then, next,
there are some who make it to be a mere picture, an exhibition,
a shadow—a shadow, the substance of which they have not
seen. And the day will come, and there are sundry traces of it
here and there, in which in some churches the atonement shall
be utterly denied, and yet men shall call themselves
Christians, while they have broken themselves against the
corner-stone of the entire system. I have no kith nor kin, nor
friendship, nor Christian amity, with any man whatever who
claims to be a Christian and yet denies the atonement. There is
a limit to the charity of Christians, and there can be none
whatever entertained to the man who is dishonest enough to
occupy a Christian pulpit and to deny Christ. It is only in the
Christian church that such a thing can be tolerated. I appeal
to you. Was there ever known a Buddhist acknowledged in the
temple of Buddha who denied the basis doctrine of the sect? Was
there ever known a Mahomadan Imaum who was sanctioned in the
mosque while he cried down the Prophet? It remains for
Christian churches only to have in their midst men who can bear
the name of Christian, who can even venture to be Christian
teachers, while they slander the Deity of him who is the
Christian's God, and speak lightly of the efficacy of his blood
who is the Christian's atonement. May this deadly cancer be cut
out root and branch; and whatever tearing of the flesh there
may be, better cut it out with a jagged knife than suffer to
exist because no lancet is to be found to do it daintily. We
must have, then, Christ in the efficacy of his precious blood
as the only Redeemer of the souls of men, and as the only
mediator, who, without assistance of ours, has brought us to
God and made reconciliation through his blood.
</p>
<p class="indent">
Our ministry will scarcely be complete unless we preach
<i>Christ as the only lawgiver and Rabbi of the Church.</i>
When you put it down as a canon of your faith that the church
has right and power to decree rites and ceremonies, you have
robbed Christ at once of his proper position as the only
teacher of the church. Or when you claim the office of
controlling other men's consciences by the decree of the
church, or the vote of a synod, apart from the authority of
Christ, you have taken away from Christ that chair which he
occupies in the Christian church, as the teacher in the great
Christian school, as the Rabbi, and the only Rabbi, of our
faith. God forbid that we should hold a single truth except on
his authority. Let not our faith stand in the wisdom of man,
but in the power of God. You refer me to the writings of Doctor
this and Doctor the other: what are these? The words of Christ,
these are truth, and these are wisdom. You bring me authority
from the practice of a church three or four centuries removed
from the crucifixion as the proof of the existence of a certain
ceremony and the righteousness of certain ecclesiastical
offices. What is your proof worth? If Christ hath not specially
ordained it, and if he hath not commanded his people to obey
it, of what value is any rite whatever? We acknowledge Christ
as ordaining all things for his church, and presenting that
church with a finished code of laws, from which any deviation
is a sin, and to which any addition is a high crime. Any church
officer who is not ordained of Christ occupies an office which
he ought to resign. Any person who practices a ceremony for
which he has not scriptural authority should renounce it; and
any man who preaches a doctrine for which he has not Christ as
his certifier, should not demand for it the faith of men.
</p>
<p class="indent">
But I fear there are times coming when the minister will not be
true to his duty unless he goes further, and preaches Christ as
<i>the sole King of the Church.</i> There has been a
disposition on the part of the state, especially with regard to
the Free Church of Scotland, to exercise power and judgement
over church decrees. No king, no queen that ever lived, or can
live, has any authority whatever over the church of Christ. The
church has none to govern and rule over her but her Lord and
her King. The church can suffer, but she cannot yield; you may
break her confessors alive upon the wheel, but she, in her
uprightness, will neither bend nor bow. From the sentence of
our church there is no appeal whatever on earth. To the court
of heaven a man may appeal if the sentence of the church be
wrong, but to Caesar never. Neither the best nor the worst of
kings or queens may ever dare to put their finger upon the
prerogative of Christ as the head of the church. Up, church of
God! If once there be any laws of man passed to govern thee,
up, dash them in pieces! Let us each catch up the war cry, and
uplift the lion standard of the tribe of Judah; let us
challenge the kings of the earth and say, <i>"Who shall rouse
him up?"</i> The church is queen above all queens, and Christ
her only King. None have jurisdiction or power in the church of
Christ save Jesus Christ himself. If any of our acts violate
the civil laws, we are men and citizens, and we acknowledge the
right of a state to govern us as individuals. None of us wish
to be less subjects of the realm because we are kings and
priests unto God. But as members of Christian churches we
maintain that the excommunication of a Christian church can
never be reversed by the civil power, or by any state act, nor
are its censures to be examined, much less to be removed,
mitigated, or even judged. We must have, as Christ's church, a
full recognition of his imperial rights, and the day will come
when the state will not only tolerate us as a mere society, but
admit that as we profess to be the church of Christ, we have a
right by that very fact to be self-governing, and never to be
interfered with in any sense whatever, so far as our
ecclesiastical affairs are concerned.
</p>
<p class="indent">
Christ must be preached, then, and exalted in all these
respects, or else we have not preached a full Christ; but I go
one step further. We have not yet mounted to the full height of
our ministry unless we learn to preach <i>Christ as the King of
kings.</i> He has an absolute right to the entire dominion of
this world. The Christian minister, as ordained of God to
preach, has a perfect right in God's name to preach upon any
subject touching the Lord's kingdom, and to rebuke and exhort
even the greatest of men. Sometimes I have heard it said, when
we have canvassed the acts of an emperor or senator, "These are
politics;" but Christ is King of politics as well as theology.
"Oh! but"—say they—"what have you to do with what the
state does?" Why, just this: that Christ is the head of all
states, and while the state has no authority over the church,
yet Christ himself is King of kings, and Lord of lords. Oh,
that the church would put her diadem upon her head, and take
her right position! We are not slaves. The church of God is not
a grovelling corporation bound for ever to sit upon a dunghill;
never queen was so fair as she, and never robe so rich as the
purple which she wears. Arise, O Church! arise, the earth is
thine; claim it. Send out thy missionary, not as a petitioner
to creep at the feet of princes, but as an ambassador for God
to make peace between God and man. Send him out to claim the
possession which belongs to thee, and which God has given to
thee to be thine for ever and ever, by a right which kings may
dispute, but which one day every one of them shall acknowledge.
</p>
<p class="indent">
The fact is, we must bring <i>Christ himself</i> back into camp
once more. It is of little use having our true Jerusalem
swords, and the shields, and the banners, and the trumpets, and
the drums; we want the King himself in the midst of us. More
and more of a personal Christ is the great lack of the time. I
would not wish for less doctrine, less experience, or less
practice, but more of all this put into Christ, and Christ
preached as the sum and substance of it all.
</p>
<p class="indent">
II. But, secondly, I am now to speak, for a short time, upon
the COMPREHENSIVENESS OF THE SUBJECT which the text announces.
</p>
<p class="indent">
It is an old and trite saying that the ministers of the gospel
may be divided into three kinds—the doctrinal, the
experimental, and the practical. The saying is so often
repeated that very few would contradict it. But it betrays at
once, if it be true, the absence and lack of a something
essentially necessary for the church's success. Where is the
preacher of <i>Christ</i> out of these? I propound this, that
if a man be found a preacher of Christ, he is doctrinal,
experimental, and practical. The <i>doctrinal</i> preacher
generally has a limited range. He is useful, exceedingly
useful; God constitutes him a barrier against the innovations
of the times: he preaches upon his subjects so frequently that
he is well versed in them, and becomes one of the armed men
about the bed of Solomon. But suppose the doctrinal preacher
should have it all his own way, and there should be none others
at all, what would be the effect? See it in our Baptist
churches about one hundred and fifty years ago. They were all
<i>sound</i> and sound asleep. Those doctrines had preached
them into a lethargy, and had is not been for some few who
started up and proposed the missions for the heathen, and who
found but little sympathy at first, the church would have been
utterly inactive. Now, I would not be hard with any, but there
are some brethren still whose preaching might justly be summed
up as being doctrinal, nothing more than doctrinal, and what is
the effect of their ministry? Bitterness. They learn to contend
not only earnestly for the faith, but savagely for it.
Certainly we admire their earnestness, and we thank God for
their soundness, but we wish there were mingled with their
doctrine a somewhat else which might tone down their severity
and make them seek rather the unity and fellowship of the
saints than the division and discord which they labour to
create.
</p>
<p class="indent">
Again, I will refer you to the next class of preachers, the
<i>experimental.</i> How delightful it is to sit under an
experimental preacher! Perhaps of all ministries this one is
the most useful, he who preaches the doubts, the fears, the
joys, the ecstasies of the people of God. How often do the
saints see the footsteps of the flock, and then they find the
shepherd under an experimental minister! But do you know the
effect of an experimental minister, purely so, I mean, when all
else is put aside to make room for experience? There is one
school of divines always preaching the corruption of the human
heart. This is their style; <i>"Except thou be flayed alive by
the law; except thou art daily feeling the utter rottenness of
thine heart; except than art a stranger to full assurance, and
dost always doubt and fear; except thou abidest on the dunghill
and dost scrape thyself with a potsherd, thou art no child of
God."</i> Who told you that? This has been the preaching of
some experimental preachers, and the effect has been just this.
Men have come to think the deformities of God's people to be
their beauty. They are like certain courtiers of the reign of
Richard III, who is said by history to have had a hump upon his
back and his admirers stuffed their backs that they might have
a graceful hump too. And there be many who, because a minister
preaches of doubts and fears, feel they must doubt and fear
too; and then that which is both uncomfortable to themselves
and dishonouring to God comes to be the very mark of God's
people. This is the tendency of experimental preaching, however
judiciously managed, when ministers harp on that string and on
that alone; the tendency is either to preach the people into a
soft and savoury state, in which there is not a bit of
manliness or might, or else into that dead and rotten state in
which corruption outswells communion, and the savour is not the
perfume of the king's ointments, but the stench of a corrupt
and filthy heart.
</p>
<p class="indent">
Take also the <i>practical</i> preacher; who would say a word
against this good man? He stirs the people up, excites the
children of God to holy duties, promotes every excellent
object, and is in his way an admirable supplement to the two
other kinds of ministers. But sit under she practical preacher;
sit under him all the year round and listen to his people as
they come out. There is one who says, <i>"the same thing over
again—Do, do, do, nothing but do."</i> There is a poor
sinner yonder just gone down the front steps. Follow him, "Oh,"
says he, "I came here to find out what <i>Christ</i> could do
for me, and I have only been told what <i>I</i> must do for
myself" Now this it a great evil, and persons who sit under
such a ministry become lean, starvelling things. I would that
practical preachers would listen to our farmers, who always say
it is better to put the whip in the manger than upon the
horse's back. Let them feed the people with food convenient for
them, and they will be practical enough; but all practice and
no promise, all exhortation and no sound doctrine, will never
make the man of God perfect and zealous for good works.
</p>
<p class="indent">
But what am I driving at in bringing up these three sorts of
ministers? Why just this: to show you that there is one
minister who can preach all this, without the dangers of any
one of the others, but with the excellencies of the whole. And
who is he? Why, any man in the world who preaches Christ. If he
preaches Christ's person he must preach <i>doctrine.</i> If I
preach Christ I must preach him as the covenant head of his
people, and how far am I then from the doctrine of election? If
I preach Christ I must preach the efficacy of his blood, and
how far am I removed then from the great doctrine of an
effectual atonement? If I preach Christ I <i>must</i> preach
the love of his heart, and how can I deny the final
perseverance of the saints? If I preach the Lord Jesus as the
great Head and King, how far am I removed from divine
Sovereignty? Must I not, if I preach Christ personally, preach
his doctrines? I believe they are nothing but the natural
outgrowth of that great root thought, or root substance rather,
the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He who will preach Christ
fully will never be lax in doctrine. And what better
<i>experience</i> can you preach than in preaching Christ?
Would you preach the sufferings of the saints, preach
<i>his</i> agony and bloody sweat, his cross and passion; for
the true sufferings of the saints are in fellowship with him.
If you would preach their joys, preach <i>his</i> resurrection,
his ascension, and his advent; you are never far from the joys
of the saints when you are near to the joys of Christ; for did
not he say, <i>"My</i> joy shall be in them that their joy may
be full"? And what better <i>practice</i> can be preached than
preaching Christ? Of every virtue he is the pattern; of the
perfection of human character he is the very mirror; of
everything that is holy and of good report, he is the abiding
incarnation. He cannot fail, then, to be a good doctrinal,
experimental, practical preacher, who preaches Christ. Did you
ever know a congregation grow less spiritual by a minister
preaching Christ? Did you ever know them get full of doubts and
fears by preaching Christ? Did you ever hear of their getting
lax in sentiment by his preaching Christ? Did you ever hear a
whisper that men became unholy in their lives because they
heard too much about Christ? I think that all the excellencies
of all ministers may be gathered up into the teaching of the
man who can preach Christ every day in the week, while there
will not be any of the evils connected with the other forms of
preaching.
</p>
<p class="indent">
III. I shall now pass onto notice some of the surpassing
excellencies of the subject
</p>
<p class="indent">
First, he will always have a <i>blessed variety</i> in his
preaching. In Australia I have heard that the only change for
the backwoodsmen is to have one day damper [unleavened cake
baked in wood ashes), tea, and bread; the next day, bread,
damper, and tea; and the next day, tea, bread, and damper. The
only variety some ministers give, is one Sunday to have
depravity, election, and perseverance, and the next Sunday,
election, perseverance, and depravity. There are many strings
to the harp of the gospel. There are some brethren who are so
rightly charmed with five of the strings, which certainly have
very rich music in them, that they never meddle with any of the
other strings; the cobwebs hang on the rest, while these five
are pretty well worn out. It is always pretty much the same
thing from the first of January to the last of December. Their
organ has very few keys, and upon these they may make a very
blessed variety, but I think not a very extensive one. Any man
who preaches Christ will ensure variety in his preaching.
<i>He</i> is all manner of precious perfume, myrrh, and aloes,
and cassia. He is all sorts of music, he is everything that is
sweet to the ear; he is all manner of fruits; there is not one
dainty in him but many. This tree of life bears twelve manner
of fruits. He is all manner of raiment; he is golden raiment
for beauty, he is the warm raiment for comfort, he is the stout
raiment for harness in the day of battle. There are all things
in Christ, and he that hath Christ will have as great a variety
as there is to be found in the scenery of the world where are
no two rocks alike, and no two rivers wind in precisely the
same manner, and no two trees grow in precisely the same form.
Any other subject you may preach upon till your hearers feel
satiety; but with Christ for a subject, you may go on, and on,
and on, till the sermon swells into the eternal song, and you
begin to sing, "Unto him that loved us and washed us from our
sins in his own blood."
</p>
<p class="indent">
There is yet another excellence about this subject, namely,
<i>that it suits all sorts of people.</i> Are there rebels
present? Preach Christ; it will suit them. Are there pardoned
sinners present? What is better, to melt their hearts than the
blood of the Lord Jesus. Are there doubting Christians? What
can cheer them better than the name of Christ. Are there strong
believers? What is stronger meat than Jesus crucified? Are
there learned, polite, intellectual hearers? If they are not
satisfied with Christ, they ought to be. Are there poor,
ignorant, unlettered men? Jesus Christ is just the thing to
preach to them—a naked Christ to their simple ears. Jesus
Christ is a topic that will keep in all climates. Land in New
Zealand in the midst of uncivilised men, move off to another
post and stand in the midst of poetical Persia or fickle
France, the cross is adapted to all. We need not inquire into
the doctrinal opinion of our hearers. If they are high, I am
sure Christ will suit them. If they are low, if they be true
believers, I am sure Christ Jesus will suit <i>them.</i> No
Christians will reject such meat as this; only prepare it, and
with a hot heart serve it up on the table, and they will be
satisfied and feed to the full. So that there is adaptation as
well as variety in this subject.
</p>
<p class="indent">
IV. But more than this, I must add, and this will bring me to
my last point, for my time flies—there is a power about
this subject when it is preached with the demonstration of the
Spirit, which is not found in any other. My brethren, what
power there is in this subject to promote <i>the union</i> of
the people of God! There is a man there, he is almost a
Puseyite. "I do not like him," says one. Stop till I tell you
something more about him, and you will. There is another man
there, a Presbyterian—true blue; he cannot bear
Independency, or anything but Presbytery—a covenant man.
"Well," says one, "I like him a little better; but I do not
suppose we shall get on very well." Stop! I will tell you some
more about him. There is another man down there; he is a very
strong Calvinist. "Humph," says one, "I shall not admire
<i>him."</i> Stop, stop! Now, here are these three men; let us
hear what they say of each other. If they know nothing of each
other except what I have stated, the first time they meet there
will be a magnificent quarrel. There is yonder
clergyman—he will have little fraternity whatever with the
ultra-Evangelical; while the Presbyterian will reject them
both, for he abhors black prelacy. But, my dear brethren, all
three of you, we of this congregation will approve of you all,
and you will approve of one another when I have stated your
true character. That man yonder, whom I called almost a
Puseyite, was George Herbert. How he loved the doornails of the
church! I think he would scarce have had a spider killed that
had once crept across the church aisles. He was a thorough
churchman, to the very centre of the marrow of his bones; but
what a Christian! What a lover of his sweet Lord Jesus! You
know that hymn of his which I have so often quoted, and mean to
quote a hundred times more: "How sweetly doth my Master's
sound," and so forth. I hear a knock at the door. "Who is
that?" "Why, it is a very strong churchman." "Do not show him
in; I am at prayer; I cannot pray with him." "Oh, but it is
George Herbert!" "Oh, let him in, let him in! No man could I
pray better with than Mr. Herbert. Walk in, Mr. Herbert; we are
right glad to see you; you are our dear companion; your hymns
have made us glad."
</p>
<p class="indent">
But who was that second man, the Presbyterian, who would not
have liked George Herbert at all? Why, that was Samuel
Rutherford. What a seraphic spirit! What splendid metaphors he
uses about his sweet Lord Jesus! He has written all Song of
Solomon over without knowing it. He felt and proved it to be
divine. The Spirit in him re-dictated the song. Well now, I
think, we will introduce Mr. Rutherford and Mr. Herbert
together, and I am persuaded when they begin to speak about
their Master they will find each other next of kin; and I feel
sure that, by this time, Samuel Rutherford and George Herbert
have found each other out in heaven, and are sitting side by
side. Well, but then we mentioned another; who was that high
Calvinist? He was the man who was called the Leviathan of
Antinomians. That he was a leviathan I will grant, but that he
was an Antinomian is false. It was Dr. Hawker. Now, I am sure,
George Herbert would not have liked Dr. Hawker, and I am
certain that Dr. Hawker would not have liked George Herbert,
and I do not suppose that Samuel Rutherford would have had
anything to do with either of them. "No, no," he would say,
"your black prelacy I hate." But look at Hawker, there is a
sweet spirit; he cannot take up his pen but he dips it in
Christ, and begins to write about his Lord at once "Precious
Immanuel—precious Jesus." Those words in his morning and
evening portions are repeated again and again, and again. I
recollect hearing of Mr. Rowland Hill, that he said to a young
man who was at tea with him one night when he was about to
go:—"Where are you going to?" "Oh!" said he, "I am going
to hear Dr. Hawker, at St. George's in the Borough." "Oh, go
and hear him," he said; "he is a right good man, worth hearing.
But there is this difference between him and me; my preaching
is something like a pudding, with here and there a plum; but
Dr. Hawker's is all plum." And that was very near the mark,
because Dr. Hawker was all Christ. He was constantly preaching
of his Master; and even if he gave an invitation to a sinner,
it was generally put in this way: "What sayest thou? Wilt thou
go with <i>this man,</i> and be married and espoused unto
<i>him?</i> It was the preaching of a personal Christ that made
his ministry so full of marrow and fatness.
</p>
<p class="indent">
My dear friends, let a man stand up and exalt Christ, and we
are all agreed. I see before me this afternoon members of all
Christian denominations; but if Christ Jesus is not the topic
that suits you, why then I think we may question your
Christianity. The more Christ is preached, the more will the
Church prove, and exhibit, and assert, and maintain her unity;
but the less Christ is preached, and the more of Paul, and
Apollos, and Cephas, the more of strife and division, and the
less of true Christian fellowship.
</p>
<p class="indent">
We will only mention the power of the preaching of Christ
<i>upon the heart of sinners.</i> There is a person, now a
member of my church, whose conversion was owing to the reading
of that hymn:
</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
"Jesus, lover of my soul."
</p>
<p>
"Ah," said he "does Jesus love my soul? Then how vile I have
been to neglect him." There are scores whose conversion is
distinctly and directly traceable, not to doctrine—though
that is often useful—nor experience, nor practice, though
these are fruitful, but to the preaching of Christ. I think you
will find the most fertile sermons have always been the most
Christly sermons. This is a seed which seldom rots under the
clod. One may fall upon the stony ground, but it oftener
happens that the seed breaks the stone when it falls, and as
Christ is a root out of a dry ground, so this finds root for
itself even in dry, hard, stony hearts. We ought to preach the
law, we ought to thunder out the threatenings of God, but they
must never be the main topic. Christ, Christ, Christ, if we
would have men converted. Do you want to convince yonder
careless one? Tell him the story of the cross. Under God it
will arrest his attention and awaken his thoughts. Would you
subdue the carnal affections of yonder profligate? Preach the
love of Christ, and that new love shall uproot the old. Would
you bind up yonder broken heart? Bring forth Christ, for in him
there is a cordial for every fear. Christ is preached and we do
rejoice, yea, and will rejoice "for he is the power of God unto
salvation unto every one that believeth." Judge not, my dear
brethren, any man's ministry. The world has too often condemned
the man whom God intended to honour. Say not of such an one "He
can do no good, for his language is rough and rude." Say not of
another that his style is too often marred with flippancy. Say
not of a third that he is too erudite or soars too high. Every
man in his own order. If that man preach Christ, whether he be
Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, we wish him God speed; for God
will bless the Christ he preaches, and forgive the error which
mingled with his ministry. I must even frankly admit the truth
of many a criticism that has been uttered on my ministry, but I
know it has been successful, and under God it has been, because
I <i>have</i> sought to preach Christ. I say that without
boasting or egotism, because if I had not done so I had no
right so be a minister of Christ at all, and as I claim to be
God's minister, I will and must declare it, whatever I have not
preached, <i>I have preached Christ,</i> and into whatever
mistakes I have fallen, I have sought to point to his cross,
and say, "Behold the way to God." And if ye see others
preaching Christ, be not you their foe. Pray for them; bear
them in your arms before God; their errors may yet be outgrown,
if they preach Christ; but if not, I care not what their
excellency may be, the excellency shall die and expire like
sparks that go out in darkness. They have not the fuel of the
flame, for they have not Christ Jesus as the substance of their
ministry.
</p>
<p class="indent">
May I entreat, in closing, your earnest prayer, each one of
you, that in this house as well as in all the places of worship
round about, Christ may evermore be preached, and I may add my
own sincere desire that this place may become a hissing and the
abode of dragons, and this pulpit be burned with fire, or ever
any other gospel be preached here than that which we have
received of the holy apostles of God; and of which Jesus Christ
himself is the chief corner stone. Let me have your incessant
prayers. May God speed every minister of Christ. But where
there is so large a field of labour may I claim your earnest
and constant intercessions, that where Christ is lifted up, men
may be drawn to hear, and afterwards drawn to believe, that
they may find Christ the Saviour of our souls. "He that
believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved; he that believeth
not shall be damned." "Repent and be converted, every one of
you," said Peter. Yet again said Paul to the jailer, "Believe
in the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." God
give us grace to believe, and unto him be glory for ever and
ever. Amen.
</p>
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