 Chapter 8 of Life and Death This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Life and Death by Catherine Booth Chapter 8 Quench Not the Spirit 1 Thessalonians Chapter 5, Verse 19 Quench Not the Spirit These words imply the greatest wonder of human existence, the capacity in man to resist God. Truly, man is a wonderful being. And this is not surprising when we remember that he was made originally in the image of God, mentally as well as spiritually, although fallen, eclipsed, dwarfed it, yet the outline of man's make. His faculties, capacities, possibilities remain the same. Some theologians in their desire to exalt God very much debase and underestimate man, whereas the best way to glorify the Creator is to give him full credit for the excellency of his workmanship. God made man a wonderful being. Is it not written in your law, says the Savior, I said, ye are gods, and he adds, the scriptures cannot be broken. That is, there is a sense in which it is true, man is the sovereign of himself, no being, no power can coerce his will. He can resist all the moral forces of the universe, and it is this power which constitutes his greatness and his danger. There it is, an undeniable fact. He can resist all the persuasions and entreaties of his fellow man, either to good or evil. He can resist all the power of the devil, the demonic, the possessed with the legion, could not be kept back from Jesus when he willed to go to him, and we are exhorted to resist the devil, implying, of course, that we have power to do so. Man can also resist God, and absolutely refuse to obey and serve his maker, as did Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, and the Jews. Stephen charges it on the Jews. As the climax of their wickedness, that they had persistently resisted the strivings of the Spirit of God, as your fathers did, so did ye. You do always resist the Holy Ghost. God created man with this power, and he will not invade or ignore it. He saw it best on the whole to make man free, even though he would abuse his freedom, rather than to make him a slave, being bound to a certain result by the law of cause and effect. As the sun and stars, or the animals, and consequently having no power of virtue himself, nor of bringing any moral glory to his maker, God retains his power over man as a sovereign, not by coercing his will, but by rewarding or punishing him according to the use he makes of his freedom, according to his willing and acting. Every humane earthly government goes on the same principle. It does not put a subject in irons in order to prevent him from committing crime, thus destroying his freedom, and taking the responsibility of his action on itself. But it reigns over him in his freedom by punishing him when the crime is committed. Thus God reigns over man as a free agent, and thus only. And there is no text in the Bible, interpreted consistently with itself and with correlative passages, which represents God as reigning in any other way, other that is, than as a moral governor. Hence, when he wants to influence man in any given course, he condescends to reason with him and to offer to his consideration motives and consequences in order to induce him to choose as he desires. God doesn't take him by the collar, metaphorically speaking, and drive him in a given course with his will or without it, in the same way as he drives the sun and stars along. This would be a reflection on his own wisdom in having made him a free agent at first. God is always consistent with himself, and therefore he conforms all his treatment of man to the freedom of his nature. Hence, he persuades and strives with man by his Holy Spirit. We want to note first the object or purpose for which the Spirit strives with man. Of course, the very idea of strife between two parties supposes that they are at variance. There could be no strife if they were agreed. In this case, it proves that man is in a state of alienation and opposition to God, and consequently in a state of condemnation and death. Now, God wants to win man back from this lost condition to one of submission and salvation. This is his first great aim and purpose. This is what he wants with every unsaved man and woman in this hall, that you should get down and submit to him. He does not ask you to go to chapel or join the church or pray except to cry for pardon, but to get down and give up your heart to him to choose whom you will serve and do it at once, and then everything else will follow. God means salvation. Salvation for every man and woman here. Christ died for you. He wants to save you and sends you the Spirit to this end. I want you to note further that there is no salvation without the Spirit. Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit. He cannot enter into the kingdom of God. No man will seek God without the Spirit. Oh, that all men would seek him who have the strivings of the Spirit. How many millions would soon be saved. But we want to point out, in the second place, how men quench the Spirit. The Spirit strives first by convincing of sin. He is sent to convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. This he does by bringing the law of God to bear on the past life, showing the sinner the awful condemnation resting on him because of his past transgressions, also by revealing the innate alienation and rebellion of his heart. He turns, so to speak, his light on the sinner's soul and shows up the depravity and impurity within. God's way is always in keeping with the laws of man's nature. And we are so constituted that before we can be induced to change our course, we must be convinced that our present one is wrong. Now, the great aim of many sinners is to satisfy themselves that they are all right. Or, if wrong at all, not much wrong. Now God sees that there is no possibility of salvation until men see that they are all wrong. And therefore he strives, contends with them, neighbors to make them realize that they are guilty. His course within Fidel's is just this. He does not answer their quibbles, but thunders in their consciences. Guilty, guilty, an endanger of everlasting death. Alas, instead of yielding to these strivings, men quench them by stifling their convictions. And they do this by hiding them, refusing to give them expression in tears and prayers as the publican did. They keep silence, and none, but they who feel it, know what a hell is thus created in the soul. David said, When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring. This stifling of conviction is done to much greater extent than any of us imagine. Men think it is unmanly weak to confess their sins. They are ashamed to confess what all happened would be interested in hearing. There are some here who would have been convinced many a time from their childhood upwards. If you had yielded to these strivings, give an expression to your shame, sorrow, and remorse for your past sins, your hearts would have melted and gushed out in tender penitence towards God and man. But you damned up these feelings, silenced your conscience, and thus resisted the work of the Spirit on your heart. Beware. This is the process by which millions have filled up the measure of their iniquities. They stifle convictions by rushing into counter-excitements, such as inordinate devotion to business. Thousands will perish through unlawful absorption in lawful things. Drink. I heard of a man saying a short time ago that he got drunk every night for a fortnight in order to stifle his convictions of sin. Pleasure. I heard of a young lady not very long ago who said that she needed a ball three times a week to save her from getting melancholy about her soul, which meant, of course, to enable her to resist the Spirit of God. Others run headlong into sin. I knew a man who ran races for wages who became deeply convinced, who, when remonstrated with and implored to decide at once for God, answered, I will run another race if I do run into hell. Perhaps you say, oh, these were foolhardy and obstinate rebels. I have never done like that. No, but you have equally fought against the Spirit and stifled the convictions which he has begotten in your soul. Secondly, men resist the Spirit by absolutely and persistently refusing to consider the future to look at the consequences of a life of sin. The Spirit is continually explaining this. He reasons of righteousness and of judgment. God seeks to influence men by fear as well as by hope. It is quite rational for a man to abandon a course which he comes to see will end badly. And fear of this bad end is a right and proper motive to be used in deterring him from it. On this principle, the Spirit of God appeals to men's fears. He uses fear of retribution in this world, thundering in the sinner's conscience. Be sure your sin will find you out. Be not deceived. God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. I know a gentle man who is constantly in fear of some calamity. The sight of a coffin or a funeral puts him almost into hysterics. He lives in the constant dread of death. Why? Because his conscience is guilty. And forbodes coming retribution. The Spirit of God reproves and condemns him continually. I knew another man who, when he was playing cards, would see in letters of fire, traced on the backs of them, such texts as, the wicked shall be turned into hell, the smoke of their torment ascended up forever. And for a long time the Spirit thus followed him, warning and entreating, until, thank God, he yielded and got saved. Thus the Spirit follows many long months and years. Those who will not yield to love and will not be drawn, he seeks to alarm and drive, in the first instance, by their fears. And how do men act? One would think they would come at once from the broad road that leads to all this misery. But no, they try to banish these fears, to drown the thoughts of these possibilities, some in one way, some in another. According to their temperaments and circumstances, I heard of a man when I was preaching in Portsmouth, who was heard to say to a companion, after listening to the truth, come on, let's go and wash it off. Alas, how many wash it off, or, in other words, quench the Spirit. Suppose that a friend of yours in Australia were made acquainted with some terrible calamity about to fall on you and your family. And suppose he were to come all the way to England to warn you, and to try to avert the danger. But instead of welcoming him, listening to and being influenced by his counsel, he were to cold shoulder him, resent his interference, and shut him out of your dwelling. What would be the result? Would he not be grieved and offended, and leave you to perish? And yet this is exactly how you are treating the Spirit of God. But further, man quenched the Spirit by refusing to look at the blessedness of a life consecrated to God. The Spirit tries to influence man more by appealing to their hopes than to their fears. He sets before them, often in early childhood, the desirableness of pardon, peace, and purity, and the nobility of a life of influence for good and usefulness to others. With some minds these motives are more powerful than fears of suffering, death, or hell. So he dwells almost exclusively on them, trying to allure the soul through its hopes to accept of Christ and his salvation. Alas, with many this has been as ineffectual as the other, they will not yield. They cling on to some idle, to some forbidden indulgence. They refuse to be influenced. They resist and resist the Spirit until long grieved and resisted. He takes his sad flight. Forth, man quenched the Spirit by deliberate and willful refusal to yield when the judgment is enlightened. And the duty of present submission is fully admitted. The Savior said, I judge not according to outward appearance. No, because some who appear the least sinners in the sight of men are the greatest in the sight of God. The Pharisees, with their outside morality and knowledge of the law, were far greater sinners in the estimation of Christ than the publicans and harlots who thronged to hear him. Sin against light, against conviction and divine influence, is the climax of rebellion. This is the great condemnation that when light is come, men love darkness rather than light. The amount of light determines the amount of guilt. Woe unto thee, Bethesda. For if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which have been done in you, they had a great while ago repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not sinned. But now, they had not sinned. But now they have no cloak for their sin. O sinner, how often has he come and spoken to you? How often have you heard him distinctly say to you, son, daughter, give me thine heart? How often has he knocked at the door? But you deliberately said, no. You resisted and struggled against his influence. Your proud heart lifted itself up against him, who would have gathered you. But you would not. O, it is to be feared. There are many living around us who have quenched the spirit by determined opposition. And there are multitudes in hell who have lost their souls, their salvation, and their God, not through the commission of some great crime against society, or against themselves. But they have lost all and perished forever by deliberately and persistently, refusing to surrender themselves to God. This is the one sin which seals all other sins on the soul. All other sin can be forgiven, but this will not stoop to be forgiven. It will not let the soul come near enough to God to ask forgiveness. It makes salvation impossible while it is persisted in. This was the last drop which filled up the cup of the iniquities of those Jerusalem centers if, after all their hardness and impenitence, they would have received the testimony of Jesus and, even at the eleventh hour, the last hour of their day of grace, had ceased to resist the Holy Ghost. They might even have been saved. The Son of God Himself says it, but they would not. They willfully and determinedly resisted the Spirit until they drove Him finally away from their hearts and their city and wrung the sad, pathetic words from the lips of the Son of God as He wept over them, but now they are hid from thine eyes. Oh, Christian, where are your bowels of compassion that you can see souls all around you going on day after day, year after year, in enlightened headstrong rebellion against God and not weep? Alas, how few see or feel these terribly awful truths may the Holy Ghost reveal them to every one of us that we may never cease to persuade men and when we cannot turn them to say with the Prophet, if ye will not hear, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride and with a greater than he, oh, that thou hast known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong on to thy peace, but how they are hid from thine eyes, but I want to glance at the consequences of quenching the Spirit. Those who quench the Spirit have no concern about their souls. No desire after God, pardon or righteousness. There may be remorse, fear of death and of hell, but no desire. Desire after righteousness and God are produced alone by the Spirit. Man would be as destitute of it as Satan without the Holy Spirit. Hence, he was the first great gift procured for us by Christ and given to our race after the fall in the Covenant of Grace. David and all the prophets attribute all the good in man to the operation of the free Spirit of God. Now, this is the most important point for us to note. In order to prevent anyone making a mistake in judging of themselves or others, people who have quenched the Spirit do not often think so till death overtakes them. They are generally utterly indifferent. The want of all feeling on the subject of the soul's salvation is one of the signs of having quenched the Spirit. When a person begins to feel, it is a sign that the Spirit is striving. Have you any desire for pardon, righteousness or God? If so, you still have the Holy Spirit. O praise God. Will you submit now, this moment, and come to Jesus? If you will, though it be the eleventh hour with you, you shall be saved. For though we have no distinct revelation on the point, from two or three incidental passages, it seems highly probable that, when the Spirit departs, life soon ends. The great purpose for which God keeps sinners in existence is that he may save them. But when the Spirit is quenched, there is no more possibility of salvation. Therefore his purpose is frustrated. Such people must do much harm to others. So in pity to others, probably God takes them away. I trust it will never fall to the lot of any of you to watch such a one die. Much more do I hope that you may not die so yourself, and, oh, that there be no danger of such a terrible fate. Yield now. Now is the accepted time. You know not how much longer the Spirit may strive. You know not how nearly God's patience may be exhausted. You know not, but the refusal of this invitation may fill up the measure of your iniquities, and seal your doom forever. Oh, I beseech you, quench not the Spirit. End of Chapter 8 Chapter 9 of Life and Death This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Life and Death by Catherine Booth Chapter 9 The Need of Atonement Romans Chapter 3, Verse 26 That he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. We spoke last Thursday night especially on the misunderstanding of the scheme of redemption as having been the cause of the indifference of a great many, especially intelligent people, to the subject of religion. That false and contradictory theories thrust upon them had shocked and insulted their reason and repelled them from the subject altogether. We remarked that if the Gospel had been put in a straightforward, manly way, many would have been led to examine it. And that would have ultimately led to their salvation. But that it had been put in such contradictory ways so repugnant to the common sense and conscience of mankind, especially with respect to the character of God, that numbers had rejected it and that it was presented as a weak, effeminate thing, all the masculine side gone out of it. We said all would be agreed on one point. Namely, that men have generally the consciousness of being morally wrong amongst the numbers I have spoken to personally during these last 20 years on the concerns of their souls. I do not remember more than five or six that have maintained that they were perfectly right. Unregenerate people know they are wrong and admit it. They say, I know I am not what I ought to be or what I might be. There is a universal consciousness that we are gone away from the straight line of rectitude which every man's conscience tells him he ought to walk by. We said that God's scheme of redemption recognized this fact and that it came to us, meeting us just where we stood as fallen, free, moral agents that God had not ignored this fact, had not put a scheme before us which was not adapted to our present circumstances, had not required of us what was impossible to render in our present circumstances but that the scheme of redemption was a scheme adapted to us in the moral condition in which it found us. We remarked further that God did not require to make any change in the make of us. A scheme of theology has been thrust upon mankind which implies that God must alter human nature in order to save it. I do not mean altering it in its moral quality, making it righteous instead of sinful, but altering its constitution, raping us not as men and women, having all the capacities, propensities and affections of humanity that we must, so to speak, be reorganized before God can save us. If I understand the Gospel, it makes no such assumption and comes to us with no such requirements. It was humanity that fell and it was humanity that needed to be restored. It was man who fell and God proposes to restore man. We went on to remark that this scheme of redemption proposes to do just what we need, namely, to put us right again. It is an indispensable condition of a moral agents being happy, that he should be right. If we could be transplanted before the throne of God, retaining a sense of wrong in ourselves, feeling that we were out of harmony with the laws of the universe and with the mind and will of God, we should be as miserable as we should be in hell, because it is not the surroundings that make people happy, but the state of their hearts. And I fancy we should feel worse in the insufferable light of the glory land with a sense of moral impurity that we should in the darkness of hell itself. What a misunderstanding of the Gospel scheme there is at this point. How people separate what God has done for us outwardly through the sacrifice of His Son from what He does for us inwardly by the operation of His Spirit. And therefore there is an ocean abroad of a sort of make-believe religion as though God would count us righteous and deal with us as if we were righteous while He leaves us unrighteous. We tried last week to show that God would in the first instance justify us as unrighteous people. But that, at the same time, He would put His Holy Spirit within us and renew us in the spirit of our minds in short, transform us from sinners into saints. Now, we want to show how the Gospel does this. How does the Gospel thus restore us to harmony with ourselves, harmony with moral law, and harmony with God as God does everything by adapting the means to the end by adapting the Gospel to our needs. God, as it were, comes to me a guilty, fallen, moral agent and says, I want to pardon you to bring you back again not only to what you were before but a great deal in advance of that. I want to save you but there is one thing indispensable necessary before I can do this and that is, that I shall maintain the dignity and the righteousness of my law. I must vindicate the law which you have broken before I can pardon you. It is self-evident that before God can pardon and restore the sinner He must vindicate His own law that this was necessary in the nature of the case. I think persons often forget this when they talk about God not requiring an atonement as though it were a mere personal matter with God. They regard it as though it were an arbitrary arrangement on His part. They do not look at the nature of the case. They do not look at the surroundings at all the issues or they would not think that God could set at naught His law. To pardon the transgressor at the expense of righteousness would be a greater loss than gain. Take an illustration from Human Affairs. Here is a man who commits some serious breach of the law of this land. Now, there are two things to be considered. The value of law consists in its sanctity in the minds of those who are under it and in breaking the law there is a violation an outrage committed against the conscience of every being in this kingdom who respects and holds the law to be sacred. Here is a man who commits a diabolical murder. What is the feeling of the whole country? Every human being who has come to the age of reason cries out for an atonement. Something penal must be exacted suitable to the magnitude of the offense. You cannot pacify the public conscience without it. To pardon that transgressor without any atonement for the violation of the law would outrage universal conscience further than the crime itself. The conscience of every man and woman says that law must be appeased, vindicated, held up. Why? First, as a satisfaction to the sense of justice which has been outraged and secondly, as a safeguard that others shall not transgress. When the law ceases to have penalties it ceases to be law and becomes merely good advice or counsel. The very idea of law implies some penal consequences if it be broken and it ceases to be law when that idea goes out. Now, if God were to sustain any government at all in the universe, he must necessarily have a law. It could not be sustained otherwise and from all we know of the character of God of the workings of God in nature how he loves law and how law abiding he is in all his operations judging from all this there is no doubt that the one great moral law which he has written on the tables of our hearts written in his book and in his gospel operates in heaven and everywhere else where he reigns it is the great moral law of the universe one of God's creatures breaks it what is to be done Saint and broken and God has let him reap the penalty of his transgression but now man transgresses and God wants to save man why God wanted to save man in preference to angels I suppose we shall remain in the dark about in this world but depend upon it he had a reason and a good one thank his name that he wanted to save us but law was broken and what was to be done our sense of right had been shocked and grieved and we could not pronounce it righteous if God should pardon the transgressor without some amends being made to the law we could never make ourselves feel it to be right any more than you could feel it to be right for Queen Victoria to pardon that murderer without satisfaction being rendered to the law of this kingdom you would say monstrous injustice if this is going to be done we shall not be safe in our beds there must be something done to magnify and hold up that law in the estimation of the people or else we might as well have no law and just so with the moral law if God had pardoned the transgressor without an atonement I say then there would have ceased to be law and you could not have pacified the outraged consciences of moral beings in any part of the universe to whom the fact should be known and universal anarchy, confusion and rebellion might have ensued then what is to be done the law has been broken and yet God wanted to save the offender we answer the law must have compensation or the universe must be without law God must have an atonement which will not only satisfy his justice but that will appease and satisfy the outraged consciences of all moral beings he must have something that the angels will say yes that is enough he must have something that the devils will say yes we can say nothing against that and he must have something that the universal human conscience can appropriate as being sufficient to justify God in pardoning the guilty now who was there who could have offered such atonement man could not offer a ransom for his brother I question if there is in the eyes of God any more valuable being in the universe than man I do not know whether the angels are more valuable in the scale of being than man the probability seems to be the other way God created man in his own image man seems to have been the darling of the deity his delights were with him and the whole universe sang together at his creation and God has manifested his ordinary love for man by redeeming him while he has left the angels that fell to perish but supposing angels to be more valuable than man they were only finite created beings whereas the law which had been broken was infinite and eternal involving infinite and eternal consequences therefore they were incapable of rendering an equivalent if there had been another being in the universe capable of offering an atonement doubtless God would have spared his own son but there was not and therefore God spared him not but allowed him to undertake the work and the son voluntarily gave himself a sacrifice for us that he might redeem us from the curse of the law now when we come to look into this question of atonement does it look as unlikely and unreasonable as some people try to make it out I acknowledge the stupendous character of the sacrifice I acknowledge the wonderful stoop it was of the divine son to undertake it I think I appreciate his love and goodness as much as any but I feel as if, after all, we can understand a little about it we can see how natural it was that if the father and the son had created this favorite being man and had set their hearts on him as they evidently had and if Satan had thought to circumvent them by tempting man from his allegiance and working his eternal ruin it seems no such unlikely or unreasonable thing that as the deity held counsel and united to create man so the deity for seeing his fall should hold counsel and unite to redeem him and as no other being was found equal to the necessity of the case that the divine son should undertake it rather than this race which he had created should be lost and Satan allowed to triumph in having circumvented the divine purpose concerning it but it is more particularly on the manward side that I am looking at the atonement tonight take one illustration of the necessity of a sacrifice valuable enough to appease conscience it is a remarkable fact and what everyone who has worked in the Lord's Vineyard knows that it is the very last thing you can get a sinner to do to venture on the atonement great as it is when the Holy Ghost has opened the sinner's eyes to the enormity of sin quickened his conscience to perceive his condition before God it is only by the most persistent exhibition of the greatness and sufficiency of the atonement that you can get his conscience to take hold of it and appropriate and be pacified by it oh how wonderfully has God guarded the sanctity of his law by putting human conscience on its side such an awful thing does it look to be the awakened conscience that the law has been broken that it is the very last thing you can do to get the sinner to accept even the Son of God as a sufficient atonement I have often said as a last resort to sinners writhing in the agony of conviction and groaning under a retrospect of their lives and an apprehension or the consequences which their guilt has entailed was not the sacrifice enough when they have said oh you don't know how guilty you don't know how bad I have been I do not believe anybody was ever as bad as I have been I granted all but was not the sacrifice sufficient do you ever stop to think who was the sufferer he was the Son of God is not that enough I said to a lady only a few days ago if God accepted the sacrifice as enough to atone for your sins and to justify and vindicate his law will you not accept it will you not take the broken leading body of your savior as it were and look up into the face of God and say it is enough Lord he suffered enough to atone even for my sin oh it is a blessed thing when the sinner comes to that when the Holy Spirit exhibits before him the greatness and sufficiency of the atonement so that he accepts it and rests upon it then conscience is satisfied and the peace of God fills the soul account for it how you will there is a fear in the human conscience that somehow or other it is not safe for God to pardon offenders conscience cannot feel that he may do it consistently with his relation as God and we have to get conscience to comprehend that the Son has paid the ransom before the soul will venture on it the blood of bulls and goats the blood of men or angels would not have met the case then we can see the absolute necessity for an atonement who with any due estimate of his guilt dare presume on the pardon of God without one you may thank you dare but my friend when your eyes are opened to the importance and sanctity of the divine law your conscience will cry out for a sacrifice hence no matter how advanced in holiness every dying saint rests his soul on the blood of Christ millions have died ignoring every other claim or plea but the blood and in all cases of the conversion of infidels or atheists no matter how violent has been their opposition to the doctrine of a vicarious sacrifice they are compelled to take refuge under the cross and in no other way can their consciences find rest or peace conscience must have the assurance that God can be just and yet the justifier of the ungodly this necessity lies deep down in our own nature even the heathen feel it unwhom revelation has never dawned hence they offer the fruit of their body for the sin of their soul and inflict on themselves unheard of tortures and cruelties they feel that they are transgressors and that they need something wherewith to appease justice and so they try to make atonement for themselves this necessity is so universal in man that those systems of religion which have not recognized and met it have made but little headway in the world and must ultimately with all others who fail to meet the innate crying needs of the soul dwindle and die sinner the sacrifice of Christ meets your deepest need God has not blinked the fact of your uttermost guilt he has looked the subject all round and met the whole case by letting his son the eternal word offer a sacrifice which heaven earth and hell pronounced to be enough now you may safely venture your guilty soul and the virtue of that blood and the divine benevolence can consistently run to meet you at the cross God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself will you come and meet him in his own appointed method once more I beseech you in Christ's stead be ye reconciled to God lay down your weapons of rebellion give up your suspicion and mistrust accept the offering which your father has accepted for you and be at one with him the Lord help you amen think, oh Jesus for what reason thou endurest earth's spite and treason nor me lose in that dread season seeking me thy born feet hasted on the cross thy soul death tasted let not all thy toils be wasted Lord from heaven, thy glorious mansion see me weep in deep contrition weep and yield in full submission End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of Life and Death This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Life and Death by Catherine Booth Chapter 10 His Wrath Revelation Chapter 6 Verse 17 For the great day of His wrath is come and who shall be able to stunt There have been some terrible days of wrath in the past history of this world that was a day of wrath when, weary by the cry of their sins and iniquities the Lord reigned fire from heaven from the guilty inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah What consternation and dismay must have seized them when they beheld the first fiery strokes of His vengeance? What a change in their feelings they who had thought themselves and their deeds of darkness so hidden from the eye of God and from the strokes of His justice they who had reveled in their iniquities laughed at His threatenings and mocked the prophecies of His vengeance How must they have quailed and howled as each torrent of fire fell on their devoted heads It was a day of vengeance, a day of wrath That was a day of wrath Also, when God resolved on punishing the earth by sweeping it at once of its crimes and its inhabitants when He could no longer endure their evil imagings and open rebellion and when He burst the boundaries which He had set for the great deep opened the sluices of the skies and rained down death and destruction on all flesh What ringing of hands and shrieks for mercy must have mingled with the roar of the angry floods as thousands after thousands sank to rise no more That was a day of wrath That was a day of wrath To, when, after ages of forbearance and merciful interposition long-threatened judgment overtook the Jewish people and God let loose upon them their inveterate enemies Armed with all but supernatural power to torment and destroy Long had His mercy put off the vengeful day For many generations had He sent the messengers and prophets and, last of all, His Son whom they rejected in slu which filled up the measure of their iniquities and brought on them such tortures as had not been since the world began nor shall be again till the last great day of wrath Josephus tells us that 1,100,000 perished in the siege that 115,880 dead bodies were carried out of one gate of Jerusalem in two and a half months when Titus, in going his round along the valleys saw them full of dead bodies and the putrefaction running from them He gave a groan and spreading his hands to heaven called God to witness that this was not His doing Their sufferings by famine were even worse than this death We are told that when the Romans came within the walls and had begun their work of plunder they found the upper rooms of the houses full of corpses They stood in horror at the sight and went out without touching anything The awful prophecy that the mother should eat her own child was then fulfilled and men nod their tongues for pain and saw it for death as a refuge from their misery Truly that was a day of wrath These were all great and terrible visitations of the righteous vengeance of God against sinners but they bear but a faint resemblance to the day which is coming When there shall be a revelation of His judgment against all the unrighteousness and ungodliness of man from the beginning to the end of time What a day that will be Who can conceive or describe There are two or three characteristics of the wrath then to be revealed which we want just to glance at First, it will be the wrath of God and this will embrace the soul as well as the body The wrath of creatures is sometimes very terrible It can inflict untold sufferings on its fellow mortal but it cannot reach beyond the body We have all heard of instances in which the bodies of our fellow creatures have been tormented and wracked by men of hellish disposition and their engines of as hellish construction whose souls have been not only calm and peaceful but joyous and triumphant Man cannot forge a dart which can penetrate the soul that is at peace with God He can imprison and afflict the body but the soul can mount and sing in spite of all his wrath and malice But who shall endure God's wrath for it is not only dryeth the bones but it drinketh up the spirit Indeed, its principle sphere of action is the soul and it seems only just that that which has been chief in sinning should be greatest in suffering We all know that it is the soul that sineth The body is only the instrument of the soul It only does what the soul bids and in some instances the greatest sins are committed by the soul alone Consequently the soul must be the principle sufferer hence Christ in bearing our punishment though his body suffered in a violent and painful death suffered chiefly in a soul He said to his disciples My soul is exceedingly sorrowful even unto death hours before he suffered any bodily anguish and we are told he was in an agony and sweat great drops of blood which ran down to the ground Now what was it that thus wrought upon the spotless soul of Jesus It was the weight of his father's wrath against sin He was standing for us in our stead suffering in his soul the affliction of the justice of God against sin It was this which drank up his spirit and made him utter that exceeding loud and bitter cry Now, if the wrath of God were so terrible to the Son of God himself as to put him in such an agony what will it be to the undone sinner in the great day of wrath Well might our Savior say Fear not them which kill the body but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body and hell Neither angel nor devil can affright or torment the soul but by God's permission He is Lord of the soul of man He created it and he alone has power over it Well might the psalmist say Who knoweth the power of thine anger No creature can conjecture the weight of God's wrath on the soul Whatever comes direct from God is most opendous whether in the way of mercy or judgment His love and mercy are infinite and unsearchable and so is his wrath The weight of his little finger is heavier than the loins of man God sometimes in this life lets in his wrath into the soul Filling it with terror and dismay so that it becomes intolerable Thus it was with Judas The wrath of God filled his conscience with such terror that he could not bear it but hanged himself to be rid of the burden forgetting that he was rushing into greater terror still So it has been with many a sinner who has cried out in death I feel already the torments of hell I will not die, I dare not die But whatever of the wrath of God sinners have ever felt here It is light in comparison with what is to come hereafter It is, as it were, only a sip from the top of that cup of fury The drakes of which all the wicked of the earth shall wring out and drink Oh sinner, consider whose wrath it is that you are treasuring up against the day of wrath If it were the wrath of men, angels, or devils It would be bad enough, but it is the wrath of the Almighty God God himself will come out of his place to punish you His own mighty hand will deal the blow His awful voice pronounced the sentence It must be soul It is according to his impartial justice that it should be soul For all your sins have been against him You sinned against the creature Yet the first and greatest of every kind of rebellion is against God Against thee The only have I sinned Therefore it is meat and right that he himself should punish you What will you do when the day of his wrath is come? But I want you to note, further, that this wrath will be just wrath It will be in exact accordance with every man's guilt, John says And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God And the books were opened And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books According to their works Those who knew their Lord's will, and did it not, are to be beaten with many stripes But those who knew not, with few stripes Not only will this wrath be just The sinner will be made to feel and acknowledge it to be soul His conscience will take sides with God And in spite of his feelings pronounced this wrath to be just Conscience is a witness of God's own appointing It stands, as it were, an impartial judge between God and the sinner You cannot bribe your conscience, even now, to swerve one iota from the light that is in it You cannot make it say that is right, which it feels to be wrong You may refuse to listen to it And you may act contrary to its teaching But it will mutter its condemnation in your soul And right, miserable, it often makes you even hear What an awful witness to be against you in the day of wrath If, when God is beginning to let his wrath out upon you You could cry, stop, hold, listen, oh, almighty judge I am not guilty of this or that You might find some comfort, but conscience will make you speechless For it will bring every sin you ever committed to your remembrance And will say amen to every charge which is brought against you Conscience will be the most terrible witness which can appear against a man in that day Because it knows all about him, just as God does It is the only witness in the universe which knows so much The devil knows a good deal about wicked men But even he does not know so much as their own consciences For he does not know their secret thoughts and motives As conscience does You see, conscience is an inseparable companion It goes with us wherever we go and notes whatever we do It is with us all through life and in death And when the soul and body part The soul and conscience do not part But go together into the next world So that its record exists for every moment of our lives From the dawn of reason to the last thought in death Paul may well ask Who knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him And therefore there is no one so proper to give evidence for Or against a man in the great day of account as conscience Hence God tells us he will judge every man according to the testimony of his conscience Both saints and sinners shall stand or fall by its verdict God will judge upon clear evidence according to those things written in the books of his own omniscience And in the book of the sinner's conscience God will have one book and the sinner another And both will agree to the letter Sinner, this book is in your bosom now You have been writing one of its pages today Beware, it may be brought up against you in the great day of his wrath Beware that you write in it tonight You would be surprised to see how many entries it has already of mercy abused and rejected Calls unheeded, convictions stifled, opportunities trifled with, sermons forgotten Mind what you add to this black catalog For you must either get it cancelled by the blood of Jesus Or add another occasion for wrath against the day of wrath Ah, this will be the climax of your guilt The center on which the fire of God's vengeance will fix itself forever and ever in your guilty soul That you rejected Jesus That after the wonderful love of God in redeeming you by the precious blood of his son You would not listen, submit, repent and be saved But in spite of all he could do would push your way down to eternal death We are told that as the righteous take their places in glory they will sing Just and righteous art thou, O King of Saints And, oh, me thinks the first sentence that is groaned out by the lost sinner As he sinks into perdition will be, it is just But further, I want you to remember that it will be uttermost wrath Wrath on mixed with mercy Some of us have seen centers drink terrible cups of suffering in this world But we none of us ever saw one without some sweet in it There is no calamity in this life without some alleviating circumstances No pain without some palliative Hence the world has accepted the adage There is nothing bad, but it might be worse But this adage will be out of date when the great day of his wrath is come Then the bad will be as bad as it can be And the worst, the very worst, will have come Now the vilest of centers may find mercy for the seeking Then it will be too late even to ask for it Mercy's term will have expired and justice And judgment will be the habitation of his throne forever There are many now who, when asked if they are prepared for judgment Say, well, no, but you know God is merciful, intimating that Though they continue in sin and rebellion till death God will be too merciful to send them to hell at last They forget that he must be just as well as merciful And that there is but one way by which he can show mercy to the guilty And that is through his son to those who repent and accept him But these people refuse to repent and reject God's only way of mercy How will they dare ask for mercy then? It would be like the murderer asking for mercy when he gets to the scaffold The date of mercy will be out, the day of grace over And nothing left but wrath and fiery indignation forever For alas, this wrath will be also everlasting Ah, if sinners or saints or poets or philosophers could only find any satisfactory evidence that this wrath would ever come to an end What a jubilee there would be amongst the wicked both on earth and in hell But sinner, remember that the same words are used to describe the duration of the misery of the wicked Which are used to set forth the duration of the blessedness of the righteous Yay, and the duration of the existence of God himself He who was the embodiment of truth and love, who came to seek and to save us And not to mock us by false representations of future woe Declars that it is better to enter into life halt or maimed Rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire And in another place he calls it the fire that never shall be quenched And in speaking of the wicked in the last great day, he says And these shall go away into everlasting punishment others may choose for themselves But God forbid that you or I should make the fearful experiment of finding out the meaning of these awful words Oh, my unsaved hearers, will you not be persuaded to flee from the wrath? Mercy still holds out, Jesus still shows his wounds and pleads his blood Will you ground your arms and take refuge under his cross? Will you come and drink up the water of life freely, or will you persevere in your rebellion And go on to drain the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath forever? End of chapter 10 Chapter 11 of Life and Death This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Skip, Washington D.C. Life and Death by Catherine Booth Chapter Save Thyself Luke 13, 23-25 Then said one unto him, Lord are there few that be saved? And he said unto them, Strive to enter in at the straight gate, for many I say unto you We'll seek to enter in, and shall not be able, when once the master of the house Is risen up, and hath shut to the door. The man proposing this question in the 23rd verse, we may be sure, Was actuated by a vain curiosity. It was a speculative question, which had nothing to do with his own salvation. So our Lord gave no direct reply, but seized the opportunity to turn The attention of the inquirer and those around him to a subject infinitely More important to them than the relative number of the saved and the lost, Even that of their own salvation. As though the Savior had said, what is it to you how many will be saved or lost? The great question for you is, are you saved? Till this is settled, you are in no position to speculate about the secrets of the future. Make haste to make your own calling and election sure. Strive to enter in at the straight gate, for many I say unto you, we'll seek to enter in, and shall not be able. I would like to note in passing, that this text is very commonly misread and misunderstood through an error in the punctuation. Full stop at the end of the 24th verse should be removed to the middle of the 25th, and then the true meaning of our Lord's words would come out. The text should read thus, many will seek to enter in, and shall not be able, when once the master of the house had thrisen up and has shut to the door. They will not be able to get in because they will be too late, and the door will be shut, not because they had not strength to get in if they had tried in time. Then you perceive that our Lord teaches most unmistakably in this passage that human effort is indispensable to salvation. For this reason, that human obstacles have to be overcome. I think every reader of the New Testament must have noticed two classes of passages bearing on the question of the conditions of our salvation. The one class representing it adds an exceedingly easy thing to be saved, as for instance, and it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, and, God's soul of the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Look unto me, and be ye saved, and so on. All of which texts represent one side, and a glorious side, of God's truth, but not the only one, where as many teachers and preachers have called all these texts and made them almost the exclusive foundation of their teaching, even to the hoisting of placards in the streets. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shall be saved. Without any qualifying or explanatory texts, we can scarcely take up a religious book, but we have this easy one-sided gospel preached to us, and we scarcely hold a service in which we do not meet some persons who have so thoroughly imbibed it, that say what we will, we cannot alarm or make them see the necessity of a change of heart in life. Now, I want carefully to look at both sides of the truth relating to salvation, where this is a momentously important question. To be mistaken respecting it would be awful, and to mislead others still more awful. I have said that the class of texts to which I have referred represents one side of truth, but that it is only one. You will find in your New Testament quite as many texts, quite as relevant, quite as important, and just as much inspired as the former class, which represents it as an exceedingly difficult thing to be saved, requiring as much of human effort and sacrifice as though salvation all depended on ourselves, such as my text, Strive. We find this word would bear a stronger rather than a weaker interpretation. It would bear to be interpreted, fight, wrestle, agonize to enter in at the stray gate. Why strive if there are no difficulties? Why fight and wrestle if there are no enemies to be encountered? And why should it be written as we have read in the lesson that except a man be willing to leave his father or mother and even life itself, he cannot be. Not he is not, but he cannot become the disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. And again, if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out. The apostle Paul in Acts 26 says he preached the same doctrine and should repent and turn to God and do works meet for repentance. But supposing this doctrine were confined to the teachings of Jesus Christ, I take all these to be perspective. Surely these texts do not refer to the men of his generation only. Did he not know what was in the human heart and what would be necessary conditions of salvation in the 19th century, as well as in the first, and do not his conditions apply to all people in all times? Evidently Paul and all the apostles so understood and applied them. Look carefully and impartially at both sides of this question. We shall see that both these classes of texts are perfectly harmonious when looked at from the right point of view. If you take your friend's letter in order to discover his view of any question, every child knows that you must read it through, or else you cannot possibly judge what your friend means. It would be unfair and dishonest to read apart and then give me a theory built on that part. You must read and judge of the whole, just so with the word of God. All that bears on the subject of our salvation must be read and juxtaposition. We must look at it all around and then we shall arrive at the truth. Well, you say, but how do you reconcile these apparently contradictory texts? I say that to my mind they present no difficulty whatever, simply because if you will allow me the expression, I regard the former class as referring to God's side of the question and the latter as referring to man's side of the question. What a mercy it is, too, for those who are struggling after salvation to remember that there are no difficulties on God's side of the question. There might have been and indeed there were once difficulties against which we might have struggled all our lives and we could never have overcome them. There was the barrier of the broken law with its awful penalty which we could never have removed out of the way. But when there was no eye to pity and no arm to save, his eye pitied and his own arm brought forth salvation and by the glorious scheme of redemption he swept the difficulties on his side out of the way forever. He bridged the yawning gulf which sin had created between himself and us by throwing across it the broken body of his son and now, so far as God is concerned, the way is open and easy back again to his throne and to his heart. There is nothing more to be done on his side. Jesus Christ came from the loftiest throne in heaven all the way down to get Samania into Calvary and took away every barrier on that side of the cross and now God, as it were, stands at the cross ready and waiting to receive every sinner who will come to him. Nevertheless, there are difficulties in the way of the salvation of every human being fitly demanding the utmost effort which he can put forth for although on the Godward side of the cross all the barriers are cleared away on the Manward side we have need to strive and wrestle and agonize to get through the crowd which still intervenes. If this is true, we can see the necessity for the exhortation of our text and of many similar ones to strive to seek, to knock, to sell all to forsake all to leave father and mother and life itself in order to save the soul. What a different idea such texts give us of our share in securing our salvation to that commonly entertained in these days. Many people seem to think that all they have to do is sit still and wait for a wave of divine influencer power which will come and carry them into the kingdom of God without any concern or effort of theirs. Alas, I fear thousands wait till death cuts them down and they find their portion with the idle and unprofitable servant in outer darkness. Some of you have been trying this plan for years but you are as far from salvation as ever. How is this? There must be something wrong. God would never keep you waiting so long for a sense of his mercy and salvation if you were on the right track. Depend upon it. You are under a delusion of the devil. If ever you are to be saved you will have to bestow yourself. You will have to strive against those things which keep you back from the cross. There is one who said Lord I will follow thee but suffer me first to go and bury my father. You have a but or it may be many buts in the way. Here is the great difficulty with many. They want to be saved without effort without suffering. They are like some sick people we meet with sometimes who go to the doctor and expect he is going to cure them without any self-denial or self-discipline on their part. They want him to write a prescription that will cure them straight off because he is sent to take that or to practice the other. Oh, they say, am I to cure myself? I can't be at all this trouble and so thousands of people remain sick because they will not endure the self-denial and trouble which the regimen requires to cure them. This will not cure them without the physician. They require his treatment all the same but all his prescriptions and treatment will not cure them without their cooperation. Your heavenly physician has never proposed to cure you without your cooperation. He has never promised anybody to do so and even when you are cured you are to go on doing what he wills to will and to do in you or you will soon fall back again and make shipwreck as thousands do. You will have to go on on your part working out your own salvation to the end abiding in Christ and keeping his commandments or you will fall back and become a withered branch. Salvation means cooperation with God all the way through from the first ray of light till he bids you come up higher. So you see I do not profess the easy gospel or to bring you salvation without suffering and cross-bearing. I don't believe that anybody has ever found such a salvation and I fear those who think they have will find themselves to have been utterly deceived at last but I want to help those of you who are awakened to strive and wrestle to overcome whatever your butt may be. What is your butt? That which represents in your case the man's father whom he wanted to stop and bury or the possessions of the young ruler which Jesus told him to sell or some of his heirs preferred to the honor that comes from God only. These and kindred things are the obstacles and enemies against which men have to strive and wrestle in coming to the cross and your case will be no exception with many the great and as they think insurmountable hindrance is worldly companionship. They say, I see that if I choose Christ in his salvation it means separation from all those I love best in the world. As a young lady said to me a while ago you see I could not and would not be a hypocrite I know what a real disciple ought to be and how he ought to live and I will never try to hold Christ in one hand and the world in the other as nearly all the Christians do with whom I am acquainted therefore I must leave every soul I know and walk in a separate path alas how truly these words echo the wail of thousands of young people of both sexes. God does not leave himself without a witness in their hearts not withstanding the rotten teaching many of them listen to and the rotten practice they are forced to see around them the spirit of God sounds his own alarm in their souls he convinces them of it of righteousness and of judgment he brings to their remembrance the words of Jesus he exhibits his claim upon them he shows them what it is to be a true disciple but instead of a warm tender separated holy parentage and church holding out their hands to the convicted soul and helping it over the bar of its worldly difficulties they say, oh you are too scrupulous your conscience is too sensitive you are morbid, you are extreme you can be a Christian without all that the world is different now to what it was in the days of Christ and of Paul there is no harm in this and there is no harm in that until the young awakened soul either fritters away its convictions puts out its light and becomes such as one as themselves or turns back in disgust from the pitiful caricature and goes headlong into the world I charge it on thousands of half hearted inconsistent world loving parents that they are the deceivers and destroyers of their children's souls lukewarm backslit and lucre-dry churches that when their children ask an egg they give them a stone or a fish they give them a serpent the very vitals of Christianity are not away by the vermin of antinomianism there is nothing left that fits or meets a soul really quickened by the spirit of God such a one must either consent to walk alone or put out his light my young friends listen to the voice of the spirit within you accept of no compromise between Christ and the world you had better go back as the young ruler did then become a hypocrite and lose both worlds the conditions of discipleship remain unaltered if any man come to me and hate not is not willing to give up if fidelity to me requires it his father and mother and his own life also he cannot be my disciple Jesus claims from first to last to be first in your love your interest, your service he never pretends to claim any less and broadly says again and again that whosoever withholds this allegiance must forego all claim to his love and mercy forever keep your own godly companions and have Jesus now make your choice but oh, remember I beseech you that one hour of his love and peace will be worth more to you than a lifetime of empty vanity and mirth true, you must lose some whom you love but your love for him and his love to you will make up a hundred fold for what you lose think also that although you must forsake your companions so far as worldly fellowship and enjoyments go yet your soul shall be filled with divine love and pity and self and effort to save them and perchance you may win some of them to become brethren beloved in the Lord and thus you shall not only save yourself but those for whom Satan would have you sell your soul all companionship out of Christ is a snare and a curse and the more refined and fascinating the bigger the curse flee from all those who love not the Lord Jesus Christ accept to try to save them confer no longer with flesh and blood up and fly for your life strive, wrestle, agonize and not with any Delilah, Herodias, or Drusilla come out from among them and be ye separate and I will receive you and will be a father unto you and ye shall be my sons and daughters sayeth the Lord Almighty remember also that you will find companionship if you seek out true saints far more tender and precious and profitable than any you can possibly give up and such as will be welcome when you are dying and which will last forever another great hindrance with many is unlawful gain a gentleman who was deeply convicted and wanted to be saved but he was engaged in an unlawful business he came to our meetings for about seven weeks when the controversy in his soul reached such a height that he could scarcely sleep or eat he said, I have a large capital involved and I cannot consent to become a poor man his teachers would allow of no compromise knowing that such a course would damn his soul and so at last when driven almost to despair and trying to persuade God to save him while holding on to his idol that business or no business rich or poor he would follow his savior and save his soul accordingly he came out amongst the seekers of salvation and scarcely had his knees touch the ground when his soul was set at liberty and he went away praising God you see at last he embraced the cross submitted to suffer if so the Lord permitted he strove agonized with himself and would not give in till he had overcome his enemy and won Christ so much you if you are entrammeled in any net of unlawful gain there are no bonds harder to break perhaps than these the love of money is the root of all evil I used not to understand that text but I do now I meet with people all over the land who have sold their souls over and over for money who sell their sons and daughters body and soul for money nay who sell Jesus Christ over again for money money is the idol which they have set up and before they worship and sacrifice day and night has the devil got any of you into a trap of unrighteous money making you have only the shadow of a chance for your soul up up strive agonize look into hill think how long eternity will be to spend in reckoning up the prophets on broken hearts wrecked brains murdered bodies and lost souls such reckonings are bad enough on a sick bed are they not it takes a lot of the devil's opiates to compose you to sleep after them but what will they be to go over and over forever in the light of the flames of the bottomless pit oh dishonest man strive now and resolve to conquer or die your only chances in one desperate leap away from your gains through the straight gate another hindrance with many in this day is frivolous trashy reading in a series of services in the north of england a gentleman came every night for about a month and was excessively miserable he was a member of a church and a man of influence in the town he stopped to the prayer meeting every night and friends talked to him and tried in every way to find out his difficulty but in vain one night i went to him as a sort of last desperate effort for i felt deeply concerned about him i said to him, my friend are you not afraid of quenching the spirit by this attitude? he said, yes i am but you've hit the right nail tonight i said, have i? say the lord has hit it will you let it be effectual? he said, you would never suspect what has been my besetment which has kept me from the enjoyment of the peace and love of god it has been novel reading many a night i lie reading till daylight and a cursive trash and i could not make up my mind to give it up but i have tonight and he arose and followed me to the penitent form and got saved in a few minutes he wanted no more teaching he just yielded the controverted point you see, he had to strive to do battle with himself in resolving to deny himself that sinful indulgence then salvation came to his soul if anybody here is thus held captive by the same snare go and do likewise while your mind is preoccupied with the husk and trash of foolish worldly literature the fact that you can relish such stuff proves that you are far too worldly and indifferent to seek in such a way as to be likely to find the pearl of great price with others the hindrance is indulgence in strong drink the spirit of god has shown them the soul ruining character of these drinks and that their use is incompatible with their serving him but they hesitate and argue and try to make themselves believe that this is too small a matter to keep them out of the kingdom of god I knew a gentleman who was kept out of peace and joy for 15 years through indulging in a couple glasses of wine per day he felt that he ought to wash his hands of the evil thing but refused to do it he did not strive he shrunk from the self-denial and so lost the joy of salvation and oh, how many knowingly sell their souls for drink, these say to us sometimes you don't know the dreadful power of this appetite, it is too strong for me, we might answer did you create it? but seeing that you have done so now your only chance of salvation is in a determined and desperate leap right out of its clutches at once if you parlay, you are undone you say, but I shall suffer so very likely even salvation does not prevent people reaping the physical consequences of their sins but you must embrace the suffering strive, man, strive, eternal life is at stake the suffering will only endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning supposing you had to suffer and wrestle with this appetite all your life what would that be compared to an eternity of peace and joy? is it not better to enter into life halt or maimed if need be, than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire but the suffering in your case will only be short a month or two of striving with a physical appetite and you will be a free man for the rest of your life will you be such a coward as to lose your all for one of this bit of wrestling if God is willing to pardon the past and to help and strengthen you for the strife will you sit down and say I can't? God forbid arise and take hold of his strength who knows, but he may deliver you even from the physical craving he will if you will trust him to do it and you shall walk and leap and praise God we have hundreds of men in the salvation army who have been the various slaves of drink for years living and working only to get drink who testify that at a certain hour of a certain day God did work this mighty miracle in them and that from that hour they have neither craved nor missed the deadly drought will you strive with your appetite so far as to bring it to Jesus to be cast out, the Lord help you another hindrance with many is worldly amusement they are so far awakened as to perceive that all those pastimes and recreations from which God is excluded are contrary to scripture and deadening and injurious to their religious impressions the spirit warns them to have no fellowship with the world if they wish to find him who is not of the world declared that his disciples were equally not of the world, they realize all this but instead of coming out from it and being separate they try to trim and compromise and thus spare themselves the conflict which a decided course would bring upon them they love the praise of men more than the praise of God and so they go here and go there and do this and the other which their conscience tells them is wrong rather than suffer and strive if any of you are in this case don't you see there is but one way for you you can never be saved till you give up the world settle that and then weigh the world in one scale and your soul, your eternal destiny in the other and apply yourself to solve our Lord's problem what is man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul there are many other hindrances that intervene between awakened sinners and their savior in fact every soul has a but will you put your butt under your feet and say, Lord I will follow thee and leave the dead to bury their dead will you? do you say it is so hard? yes it looked hard to the young ruler but we can see now what an infinite gainer he would have been by the loss of all things how great a gainer eternity alone can unfold Satan draws his great black wing over all the gain he tries to hide from our view the peace and the gladness and the glory that God has in store for us when our choice is made the prodigal did not know that his father would put on him the best robe and give him the kisses of his love till he came home the silver lining is on the inside of the cloud you must pass through it before you can see it there never was a saint yet who did not count whatever he might have sacrificed in order to win jesus as dung and dross compared with his infinite gain but oh how ashamed many have been to think that they could have hesitated or argued for a moment with such a prize in view having him truly we possess all things some of you have written me that you want to find him will you let go the butt will you pass through the crowd come now and touch the hem of his garment if so you shall be healed of whatever plague you have and songs of praise and thanksgiving shall well up from your satisfied soul continually but you must press through you must wrestle and struggle not with him but with yourself and your sins to get at him will you strive to enter in strange that some people have the idea that there is some merit attached to this strife was there any merit in the woman pressing through the intervening crowd in order to get at jesus there certainly was great wisdom and some courage but I cannot see any merit was there any merit in the prodigal when on the verge of starvation starting to go to his father certainly if he had not gone he would have never had been taken in but I cannot see that his going merited his reception what merit can there be in throwing away our husk and rags in order to be taken in and fed and clothed with the best there is in our father's house surely the merit is all on the father's offering us that we leave all of ours to receive of his suppose a man in the water yonder struggling and battling with the waves he wants to get out but he cannot the more he struggles the sooner he sinks he cannot save himself there is a man on the shore who sees his situation and by great effort and sacrifice procures a rope which he throws within the grasp of the drowning man crying aloud clutch the rope and I will save you but the man has something in each hand filled in one and the title leads to an estate in the other and he answers back I can't let these go can't you save me with these what should I do without my money the man on the bank cries man you are drowning if you don't clutch the rope I cannot save you let those things go and save your life the man feels that he is sinking and at last moment he lets his treasures go and seizes the rope and is pulled to shore now will any sane person say that you or that he saved himself will not all the newspapers and everybody else give the credit and the praise of his salvation to the man on the bank of course they will and properly so but 20 men on the bank could not have saved the man without his own cooperation he had to sacrifice his idols and hold onto the rope he had to strive with himself against his love of money and of ease and embrace the means provided for his rescue just so sinner if you will be saved you must fight yourself your indifference your presumption your selfishness your worldliness your unbelief you must wrestle your way in spite of all these barriers to Jesus he has procured the rope of salvation and now throws it once more within your grasp will you clutch it will you let go of those idols will you cut off and cast away from you every hindrance and spring for your life if you sit still you will be lost if you awake and arise from the dead Christ will give you light and you shall be saved but all the praise and the glory will be due to him without whose blood and sacrifice you might have striven forever without hope End of Chapter 11 Recording by Skip, Washington, DC True and a False Peace Jeremiah 614 They have healed also the herd of the daughter O Lord My people slightly saying peace peace when there is no peace Peace is the universal want of man everywhere and always the race is in a state of unrest tossing like a troubled ocean seeking and finding none consequently men adopt many counterfeits and try to satisfy the aching void of their souls with the opiates of satan Let us look for a moment at the nature of true peace peace is not a state of mere quietness or insensibility alas many people are in this state of turbo and when you ask them about their souls they say oh yes I have a hope I have a measure of peace I hope I am right but when you try to shake them up and find out whether they have any thorough foundation for their peace they don't want to be disturbed but peace is not insensibility to existing differences between the soul and God for in such a condition there are all the elements of awful and eternal warfare only needs a change of circumstances in order to land the soul in conflict, distress and desolation we do not mean that sort of peace true peace divine peace the only peace that will do to die with arises out of a settlement of our differences an assesation of hostilities towards God and reconciliation between the soul and God bringing assurance and quietness in view of both the past present and future but let us look at one or two false methods by which Satan lulls the soul of both sinners and backsliders into a false peace first he gets them to make a false estimate of the character and desserts of sin when God's spirit wakes them up puts before them their sins convinces them of their heinousness and enormity, Satan comes and helps them to reason excuses they say, as these Jews did by Zekil if we pine away in our iniquities how should we then live they charged their sin back again upon God they began to excuse themselves they said his way was unequal and when he charged them with wearing him they said where in have we wearied thee when he charged them with robbing him they said where in have we robbed thee they made excuses for themselves in their sins and oh the multitudes they do so now people want to make it out that they are dying for want of flight I say no I won't allow my God to have that reflection cast upon him they are not dying for want of flight they are dying for want of honesty this spirit of finding excuses is most hateful in the sight of God in the Old Testament all the way through he is continually reproving the spirit and threatening his backs laden people with chastisement because of it whereas he tells them if they would confess and forsake their sins they should be forgiven but we will look at one or two text in the New Testament Revelation 11 5 remember therefore from when you repent and do the first works or else I will come upon thee quickly and will remove thy candlestick out of his place except thou repent now do you see the everlasting principle on which alone God can pardon sin laid down in the last utterance of the New Testament as well as through the Old is repenting and forsaking of sin and not excusing and covering it up now you are convinced that you are wrong but the devil is trying to get you into a false peace he is saying well but you were once right and so were these Jews he is saying you are a Christian and they were Israelites well but you know you are the children of God they were the children of Abraham and they said they were the children of God but Jesus Christ said the works of your father show whose children you are whose works are you doing my friends don't let Satan deceive you if you are living in sin no matter what church you are a member of no matter how long you have been a professor let the Holy Spirit search you take God's way don't begin to excuse yourself you can get quietness that way perhaps but peace never would to God that every soul quiet in sin were awakened by an earthquake like the Gaola if nothing else would do they say they have peace but all the elements of everlasting warfare are ready to break out in their bosoms at any moment Judas had quietness when he sold his master there does not seem to have been a blush of shame or even a tremor in receiving the 30 pieces of silver but wait all the elements of war were in his bosom and when the bitter consequences of his crime came upon him his conscience was touched as with the fires of hell and he went out and hanged himself do you call that peace no he was in a state of tour poor until the full measure of his guilt burst upon him but that was not peace do not confound quietness with peace another method by which people get false peace is stifling their fears and convictions they not only excuse sin but they resolutely resist what God almighty is doing to enlighten them multitudes of this class come to our salvation army meetings God only knows how often I weep over them and say who hath believed our report they come and we see by their faces and by what they say to us and the letters they write that God is stirring their souls and making them realize that something is wrong with them but instead of going down under the searching of the Holy Spirit and saying yes lord here cut it out and make me right they stifle conviction and say oh no no no no it cannot be so bad I am frightened by hearing those people they are such extreme people or I have been had out up with bereavement loss or trial I shall get all right by and by anything but confession and renunciation of sin my friends you may succeed in stifling your convictions you may bury them in your own bosom and go on for a while perhaps a long while but death will open the flood gates of hell on your poor soul oh the deathbeds that our people are called to visit are enough to make the angels weep people who have been burying their inequities in their bosoms instead of confessing and forsaking them and getting saved over again backsliders who once knew gods many of them would get off their beds and hang themselves if they could but get out of their misery there is only one way to deal with sin and that is out with it, forsake it and get it washed away I said I will confess thy transgression unto the lord that forgives the inequity of my sin now sinners or backsliders you both have to come to it my friend if you go down to hell an unconquered, unrepentant unpardoned sinner on your soul will rest the responsibility another false method by which sinners and backsliders try to get peace is that of adopting false views they say I am not to look at myself in Christ I have nothing to do with my feelings or dispositions I am not to be saved by believing the word true, I am not living in obedience to God but then who is nobody even professes to do so except a few enthusiasts and fanatics salvation is not of works and I am clinging to the cross so I must be right certainly I don't understand what that inward kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost means but I belong to the church I take the communion and read my Bible and pray morning and night and so while the Holy Spirit is trying to awaken such people to their dangerous condition they are trying to heal their hurt slightly and crying peace, peace are there any of this class here? my friend there is only one way for you to find true peace and that is to put away the occasion of war where there is sin there must be conflict and misery God himself cannot give peace to a soul holding on to sin nor does he ever propose to do so it is your iniquities that have separated between you and your God and before you can be restored to him they must be repented off and put away give up trying to make yourself believe that you are right and just get right then your peace will flow as a river suppose that you were trying to believe that you were hired to some estate and you go to a friend who is a lawyer and say to him I think I am alright I feel sure I am the ire I have read at the will and I believe I am the person intended I often feel quite comfortable about it but at times I get nervous and fearful and I think that after all perhaps I am mistaken your friends would say well but have you not caught some proofs and if you say no I have no deeds nor any evidence to show that I am the ire he would say then it is the height of folly for you to be building your hopes on the inheritance but once make good your title and then you need have no more misgivings just so spiritually look to your ground of claim get your title clear and then you will have a well founded permanent peace which neither man nor devils can take away God does not leave his real people without an assurance of this saintship he sends the spirit of adoption into their hearts whereby they cry father and they know that they have passed from death until life another false method for trying to get peace is putting off the reckoning day I heard a lady say not long since the fact is I have given up the struggle and I hope somehow or rather I shall get right when I am dying poor woman awful experiment a forlorn hope indeed you need to have all the powers of mind and body in full play when settling your accounts with God dying pains and distractions will be poor circumstances for making your peace with him even if you were sure of the opportunity but the people to whom God has been showing his way of peace for years and who have refused to obey are not the people who get right when they are dying their hope is more likely to be cut off like that of the hypocrite and their lamp to go out in darkness then you say if none of these are the right methods for getting peace what is God's way is always effectual and this is to put away sin no power can give peace to a guilty being except by taking away his guilt confess and forsake your sins and cast your guilty soul on Jesus and then he will give you his peace which will abide with you forever Amen End of chapter number 12 Chapter 13 Will You Obey He wants you he wants your gifts he wants your influence he wants your money he wants all you have but he wants most of all you, you, every one of you I don't know where you sit and I don't know to what he calls you but the question to set aside you, you, every one of you I don't know where you sit and I don't know what he calls you but the question to settle is will you obey will you rise and follow will you face whatever it is he calls you to face shut your eyes never mind me look inside listen to the voice within face God and say yes or no face him oh there's everlasting swinging to and fro like a door on its hinges oh there's coming up to the point coming up to the brink again into the wilderness oh this listening and thinking and saying I would like to I wish I could I will someday and then holding back it has been the damnation of thousands oh how it has robbed the kingdom of God how it has robbed heaven and how many thousands who might have been saved through the influence of those called but unfaithful and disobedient ones have gone to the bottomless pit now what will you do will you obey the call will you arise and follow will you go over the river of decision I know the reason many of you don't you have got too much baggage you have got something that you cannot take over with you there is something God calls you to give up to lay down to cut off and you halt and shrink and you say oh if it were not for this I would go over if it were not for this I would arise and follow him if I could only get rid of this if I could only face that if I could only embrace the other then I would arise and follow him you have been sitting or standing there on the bank some of you for weeks some of you for months and some of you for years now then just face the fact that you never will get saved you never will become what he wants you to be till you do sacrifice that thing till you do put your foot on that idol till you do embrace that cross till you do say in your inmost soul yes lord to that call and then rise and follow him now will you say it some of you perhaps will say it is very well for you people who have done it you crossed and now it is an easy matter for you but do you think that we never had any sacrifices to make or any rivers to cross since that day never shrunk from crossing them never doubted God's power to bring us through no but we have we have do not suppose that God does not keep demanding of us fresh sacrifices and laying upon us fresh crosses we are not asking you to do what we are not doing and not willing to do ourselves the devil takes care that we shall not get it all smooth see when we have once started do not suppose that but we can tell you that whatever the sacrifice may be however dear the idol may be to your bleeding heart however much it may cost you to trample it in the dust whatever suffering it may seem to involve we can tell you that the gain will be ten times as much you will not count it sacrifice you will not count it a loss you will glory as the apostle did in having accounted it but dung and dross that you might win Christ and the excellency and the glory and the power and the success and the heavenly fruit which he will give to you the cost will be as nothing but the devil spreads his great black wing over all that God has in store for you he hides it from your view and only shows you what you will miss now then look over his wing or under it look at what you will gain think how you will gain deliverance from the wretched doubt and fear which have made you so miserable in the years gone by deliverance from that controversy which is always going on think of the rest that will come into your spirit think of the gladness that will fill your soul the songs of freedom of deliverance and power with which you will go forward and battle for him think of having your tongue loosed to speak his praises think of having your heart set at liberty from seeking and fretting about your own to care and weep over and love and seek the salvation of your mothers think what the joy will be of having pearls to bring to your lord sheaves to bring to his garner now and in the great eternal harvest home which is coming on think of that and say whether you will not put down this petty paltry hindrance whether you will not rise and follow him now this very moment embrace the cross sacrifice whatever it may be say lord I do rise and follow thee just now will you? who will? now then to be what? an officer perhaps? well you will never be happy anymore if you hold back never as I said to somebody the other day you might as well try to be happy in perdition as to be happy in this life while you have that call in your soul and are refusing to obey it to be a soldier it may be to leave a business to curse you it may be the giving up your child to be a salvationist an officer perhaps to be sent to some foreign land to suffer and die for Jesus well if you withhold her look out God will perhaps whip you in that very child God will make that child your punishment or does he ask you for a bit of money you have put away somewhere if you don't give it to him it will eat your soul as a canker you will never be happy till you do give it to him does he call you young man to leave father and mother friends and home and go to a foreign land to try to bring the poor heathen into his kingdom if you stop here you will never be happy never you might just as well start once you will never have any more peace or rest till you obey that call oh the folly oh that I could demonstrate it to you as I have seen and realised it oh that I could show you the supreme foolishness while you are fighting against God all that you would get up determined, facing the consequences and come out just as if Jesus Christ were here in his flesh and were calling for volunteers to go and be his witnesses to the ends of the earth people who will come to him and say here I am Lord Jesus to be your saint and your soldier you have been fighting against conviction you have been holding back mocking God lying to the Holy Ghost by bringing part of the price let this night end the wretched conflict come and give yourself fully to him the Lord help you Amen End of chapter 13