2682. A Song And A Solace

No. 2682-46:313. A Sermon Delivered On Lord’s Day Evening, May 1, 1881, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.

A Sermon Intended For Reading On Lord’s Day, July 8, 1900.

You have granted me life and favour, and your visitation has preserved my spirit. And you have hidden these things in your heart: I know that this is with you. {Job 10:12,13}

 For other sermons on this text:
   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2314, “Three Blessings of the Heavenly Charter” 2315}
   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2682, “Song and a Solace, A” 2683}

1. Before I speak on these two verses, I will read the four which precede them, so that you may note the context in which they are found. Job is in great trouble, in severe distress of soul; his heart is very heavy, and his unfriendly friends are casting salt into his wounds instead of trying to heal them. In his distress, he turns to his God, and appeals to him in this way: “Your hands have made me and formed me together all around; yet you destroy me. Remember, I beseech you, that you have made me as the clay; and will you bring me into dust again? Have you not poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese? You have clothed me with skin and flesh, and have fenced me with bones and sinews.” {Job 10:8-11} Then follows our text: “You have granted me life and favour, and your visitation has preserved my spirit. And these things you have hidden in your heart: I know that this is with you.”

2. You see that Job is appealing to the pity of God, and this is the form of his argument: “You are my Creator; be my Preserver. You have made me; do not break me. You are dealing very harshly with me, I am almost destroyed beneath the pressure of your hand; yet remember that I am your own creature. Weak and frail as I am, I am the creation of your hand; therefore, do not despise your own work. Whatever I am, with the exception of my sin, you have made me what I am; it is you who have brought me into my present condition; consider, then, oh God, what a poor, frail thing I am, and restrain your hand, and do not utterly crush my spirit.”

3. This is a wise prayer, a right and proper argument for a creature to use with the Creator; and when Job goes even further, and, in the language of our text, addresses God not only as his Creator, but as his Benefactor, and mentions the great blessings that he had received from God, his argument still holds good: “Do not, Lord, change your method of dealing with me; you have given me life, you have shown me special favour, you have preserved me so far; do not cast me away from your presence, do not dismiss me from your service, do not let your tender mercies fail, but do to me now and in days to come according as you have done to me in the days that are past.”

4. In speaking about these two verses, I am going to use them in two senses; the first in one sense and the second in another, but both and each of them in its own true meaning, so far as I understand it. First, here is a song for bright days: “You have granted me life and favour, and your visitation has preserved my spirit.” Secondly, here is a solace for dark nights: “And you have hidden these things in your heart: I know that this is with you.”

5. I. First, then, let us use the former part of our text as A SONG FOR BRIGHT DAYS: “You have granted me life and favour, and your visitation has preserved my spirit.”

6. Whatever we have received that is good, has come to us from God as a matter of pure favour; certainly we have deserved nothing from his hands but displeasure, and everything short of death and hell is a mercy, and a thing for which to magnify the goodness of God. In this first portion of our text, there is a mention of three blessings that must never be forgotten. The great charter of God’s bounty includes three notable things which he has granted to us: — life, favour, and his visitation which has preserved our spirit.

7. Now, then, you joyful ones, unite with me while we first bless God for granting us life. To a Christian man, life is a blessing; in itself, considered alone, it is a blessing; but to the ungodly man it may turn out to be a curse, for it would have been better for that man if he had never been born. But for a godly man like Job, it is a great mercy even to have an existence. Blessed be the Lord who brought us into the world, and gave breath to these lungs, and the flowing life to these veins. Blessed be God for having made us. Sometimes, as I gaze on the world in spring-time, or in the summer, it appears to me that it is a great happiness for all nature simply to exist. Look at the lovely lily, as it stands quite still, and never speaks, it seems in silence to praise God by its beauty. But a Christian man should go beyond a mere flower, he ought to feel that it is a great favour to be made by God. The man who knows that his eternal future is secured by the unfailing grace of God may always praise the Lord who has given him life.

8. I find that, in the Hebrew, this word “life” is in the plural: “You have granted me lives; ” and, blessed be God, we who believe in Jesus have not only this natural life, which we share in common with all men, but the Holy Spirit has begotten in the hearts of believers a new life infinitely higher than mere natural life, a life which makes us akin to Christ, joint-heirs with him of the eternal inheritance which he is keeping for us in heaven. A Christian man is lifted into quite another sphere of action; he is no longer in the carnal but in the spiritual realm, and therefore he understands things that are hidden from carnal eyes, and he lives in the midst of a world into which the unregenerate cannot possibly come. An unconverted man cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven; he cannot even see it until he is born again, regenerated by the Holy Spirit; but once he is born again, he can bless God for giving him a second life infinitely better than the first one. Our well-being is a far higher thing than simply our being; the new creation is vastly superior to the first creation, good as that was; and the life of God in the soul is infinitely above the mere ordinary life of man.

9. Let us praise God, then, for life, and especially for this higher life if it is ours. What a joy it is to live in this respect! You know that, when a person is very sick and ill, and can scarcely turn in bed, or lift a hand, when every sense is deprived of enjoyment, and every vein or nerve becomes a road for the hot feet of pain to travel over, then life is hardly to be called life; but when God graciously raises us up from sickness, we ought to bless him for giving us life again, prolonged, restored, enjoyable life; and when the heart itself is sick, when the spirit flags, and the soul is ready to burst with inward grief, then the spiritual life seems scarcely to be life; but when, through the mercy of God, the Holy Spirit comes to us, and applies the pardoning blood of Jesus to our heart and conscience, and whispers peace to our troubled spirit, so that we can read our title clear to mansions in the skies, then our spiritual life is life indeed; we run, we leap, we fly; we would scarcely exchange for the bliss of angels the joy which the spiritual life brings to us at such times, and we bless and magnify the Lord who has granted us this higher life, this life so blessed, so superlatively blessed that, even here below, it makes us anticipate and experience some of the glory of heaven itself. Are you, my brother, my sister, enjoying these lives? Do you feel that it is your privilege to be one with Christ, and to live because he lives, and do you really know that you have received this wonderful blessing? Oh, then, sing to the Lord as long as you live, for it is the living, even the living in Zion who shall praise him as we do today! Let this be one of your songs in this bright day of your happy experience; let the joy of your heart ring it out in the words of our text: “You have granted me life.”

10. Next, we have to praise God for granting us favour. I should be quite unable to tell you to the full all that is wrapped up in that word “favour.” Favour from God! It is a great word in the original, a word full of meaning, for it means the love of God. What the expression “the love of God” fully means, we cannot tell, for Charles Wesley truly wrote, —

    “God only knows the love of God.”

God loves immeasurably. The force and extent of true love never can be calculated; it is a passion that cannot be measured by degrees as the temperature can be recorded on the thermometer; it is something that exceeds and overflows all measurement, for a man gives all his heart when he truly loves. So it is with God; he sets no bound to his love. When he loves a man, the great infinity of his being flows out towards his chosen. How much God loves you, my brother, my sister, if you are indeed one of his elect and redeemed people, it would not be possible even for an angel to calculate. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote, —

    The love of Jesus — what it is,
       None but his loved ones know; —

but I correct the poet; for even his loved ones cannot know it, except in that sense which Paul intended when he wrote to the Ephesians, “that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fulness of God.” We might rightly paraphrase Job’s words, and say, “You have granted me life and love.” Oh, what wondrous words to put together, life and love! Life without God’s love is death; but put God’s love with it, and then what a song we ought to send up to his throne if we feel that he has given us both spiritual life and infinite love.

11. The word “favour,” however, means not only love; but, as we ordinarily use it, it means some special form of grace and goodness. I know that there are some people who never will admit that God favours anyone, or that he has any special love towards some more than towards others. They do not like that hymn which Dr. Watts wrote; I heard one alter the verse, —

       Let those refuse to sing
       That never knew our God;
    But favourites of the heavenly King
       May speak their joys abroad.

The gentleman did not like the word “favourites,” so he gave out the line, —

    But subjects of the heavenly King.

I let him sing it in that way, for I thought that very likely he was only a subject, but I sang the line correctly, because I knew that I was one of the King’s favourites, and I was resolved to rejoice in that fact. So I am at this moment, for I know that I have received special favour from God, and that there are some who have not received such favour and mercy. If, at this hour, anyone of you is a child of God, it is because God has done more for you than he has done for others. If there is a difference between you and others, someone made that difference; and whoever made it ought to be honoured and praised for it. Did you make it yourself? Shall I put the crown on your head? Why, if you are right-hearted, you will cry, “No, no; it is God who has made me to differ from others, it is his grace which has been given to me, to bring me out of the darkness in which others have been left.” So, whatever others may think or say, we at any rate, believe in that special form of grace which may be called favour: “You have granted me life and favour.” The Lord has given special favour to his own chosen people, and this makes them sing a song that rises above all the others: “He has not dealt so with any nation.” “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from the hand of the enemy.” Let them praise the Lord with thanksgiving for evermore, and if you, dear friends, belong to that privileged company, praise the Lord.

12. By the word “favour” is also meant grace in all the forms which it assumes, so Job’s words might be rendered, “You have granted me life and grace.” Come, my brothers and sisters, if you can say this, just think over all that it means. “You have granted me the grace and favour of your electing love and of your redeeming love, the grace of effectual calling, the grace of regeneration, the grace of justification, the grace of adoption, the grace of perseverance until today, the grace of sanctification,” (for all this is grace,) “you have given it, you have granted it by your free favour, and granted it to me.” “I do not know whether God has granted this grace to me,” one says. Well, my dear brother, you cannot sing while you doubt this; but if, through faith in Jesus, you know that God has given you life and grace, sing away, sing despite all that might stop you, for this is a mercy which should for ever monopolize the music of everyone who has been so favoured by God: “You have granted me life and grace.” I do not know what any other person in this place might say; but if no one else said it, I should be compelled, in the courts of the Lord’s house, and in the midst of his people, to say, “I bless his name for giving me life and grace; I am altogether undeserving of such mercy, yet he has favoured me with his goodness, so that I cannot do otherwise than feel overwhelmed by his grace.” I do not know whether you can all say the same, but I feel persuaded that there are scores, hundreds, yes, even thousands of you who might stand up, and say, “We bless God that, though unworthy of his notice, he has granted us life and grace.”

13. Now let us dwell, for a minute or two, on the third blessing of this divine grant: “and your visitation has preserved my spirit.” There is a wonderful range of meaning in those words, but Job no doubt first refers to the providence of God by which he makes, as it were, a visitation of all the world, and especially of his own people. Just as a man, who possesses a large estate, if he is wise, goes around and looks over all his cattle and his servants and his fields, and makes a visitation to see whether all is going well, for he knows that the master’s eye does much, so God visits the earth, and inspect it, and cares for the creatures whom he has formed to live on it. “He gives to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry.” The Lord keeps a watchful eye on the whole universe. He leads out the stars, calling them all by their names, and nightly marshals their dense ranks. He counts even the sparrows, so that not one of them falls to the ground without his knowledge. It has been the providence of God that has preserved us so far, so let us bless him for this great favour.

14. Some of us have had very special providential deliverances; we will not mention them tonight, because they are too many. It has been well said, “He who watches providence shall never be without a providence to watch.” I am sure it is so. You, who have had your eyes divinely opened, must have seen an act of God’s gracious providence every day. Some will only see God’s providence in deliverance from a terrible catastrophe, — such as an escape from fire, or from a railway accident, or something of that unusual and startling kind; but, indeed, the providence of God is watching over us just as much when we sit in our home, or sleep in our beds, or go about our daily duties. People used to say of Dr. Gill, my illustrious predecessor, that they could easily find him, for he was always in his study, and someone remarked, “At any rate, he is in a safe place there; a man is out of harm’s way when he is studying at home.” It so happened that the Doctor was called away from his study, one day, when a high wind blew down a stack of chimneys, which crashed right through the house into his study, and must have killed him if he had been in the place where he was usually sitting. Truly, it is the providence of God that preserves our lives as much when we are at home as if we were out on the vast deep when it is tossed with tempests.

15. Now, brethren, is it not wonderful that some of us are alive at all? Have not most of you reason to praise God for some very exceptional cases of his guardian care which has preserved you in being until today? Do not refuse to sing to God the song of thanksgiving which is his due. Prolonged life should beget continual gratitude, and votive offerings of joyful praise should ascend to the Most High.

16. Oh, but that is only the beginning of the meaning of Job’s words, “Your visitation has preserved my spirit.” God has visited those of us who are his people in other ways besides the watching of his providence. Let me mention some of them. He has visited some of us with correction, and we do not like that form of visitation. We have been struck heavily with his rod until all our bones have ached, and the blows have been so severe that they have left black bruises; or we have lost friend after friend, or we have been corrected by the scandal and the slander of wicked men, or in some way or other God has used man as the rod in his hand to chasten us. “Now no chastening for the present seems to be joyful, but grievous: nevertheless afterwards it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who are exercised by it.” Look back, and see whether you cannot say to God, “Your visitation in correction has preserved my spirit.” Can you not say, “Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now I have kept your word?” There have been times, in the lives of some of us, when nothing but affliction could have saved us from falling into gross sin. We should have been carried away with pride, but we suffered from grievous depression of spirit, and so could not afford to be proud. There have been times when we should have been exalted above measure, but the thorn in the flesh was graciously given to us, a messenger of Satan came to buffet us, and so we were preserved in the hour of temptation.

17. There are some, whom God will yet permit to be rich, who would not have been capable of managing so much money to the Lord’s honour and glory if they had not for a while had to live on scanty rations. The very thing we regret most in providence will probably be that in which we shall rejoice most in eternity. You know, in this world, we see the wrong side of the carpet that is being woven. We are like Hannah More in the carpet factory, when she said to the workman, “I cannot see any design; there seem to be a great number of loose pieces of wool, but I cannot perceive any pattern or order.” “No, madam,” said the man, “of course you cannot, because you are standing on the wrong side of the carpet; if you will come to the other side, you will then see it all.” We are on the wrong side at present, but God will take us to the other side eventually, and then each one of us will say, “Oh my Lord, how wrongly did I judge you! How little did I understand your dealings with me! I thought your visitation would have crushed me, but it preserved my spirit.”

18. There are other visitations, however, such as the visitations of consolation. Oh, how sweet those are to the soul when in trouble! You and I must have known times when our spirits have gone down below zero, when no earthly friend could comfort us, and we could not think of any source of consolation for ourselves. Just then, some unnoticed promise of the Word of God has dropped into our soul with charming effect. It was, perhaps, only a sentence of half-a-dozen words, but they came from God the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, and they were so powerfully applied to our spirit that we said, “I do not mind what burden I have to bear, for I know that Christ’s grace will be sufficient for me. I cannot tell what the divine will may be concerning me, or however dark and dreary may be the valley of the shadow of death through which I shall have to pass, but God’s rod and staff are evidently with me, and they will comfort me in the most trying hour, and my Lord himself will surely bring me through all my tribulations.” Cannot some of you say that your blessed Saviour, who has suffered for you, and who understands all your griefs, has come and bound up your broken hearts, and given you unfailing comfort when you were in such sorrow that you feared you would have lost your reason, and perhaps even taken your own life? But here you are still alive to praise him, and to say, “Your visitation by way of comfort has preserved my spirit.”

19. Once more, how sweet are the visitations of God in communion! Have you not sometimes had such communion with your Lord, during a sermon, that you have said, “My steps had almost slipped, but now my Lord has come near to me, and he has made me to stand so firmly that nothing can cast me down.” Or perhaps you have gone upstairs to your room when you have been weighed down under very heavy grief, and you have told it all to Jesus, whispered it all into the ear that never wearies of his people’s complaints; and, after a while, you have come down, and you have felt, “Now I do not mind what happens, I can even face a frowning world, for Jesus Christ’s visitation has preserved my spirit.” I am sure also that many of us can say that, at the Lord’s table, in the breaking of bread, our spirits have been so refreshed that we could go out into our daily callings, or back to our domestic griefs, and feel, “It really does not matter now; I can shoulder my cross, for I have seen the Crucified; I can bear my own sorrows, for I have had fellowship with him in his sorrows; I could even die for his sake, for I have entered into fellowship with his death.”

20. “Your visitation has preserved my spirit.” I want you, my brother, my sister, to pray for that visitation tonight. Ask the Lord Jesus not only to pay a visit to your soul, but to come and stay with you. You only have to open the door of your heart, and he will come in. That is what he said even to lukewarm Laodicea: “If any man hears my voice, and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with me.” So open wide the door at once. You say, “But there is nothing inside; it is only an empty house.” That does not matter to him, for he will bring with him the provisions on which he will dine with you, and you with him. Open the door, give him heart-room, say, “Come in, you blessed Saviour, why do you stand outside?” He says to you who are slow to admit him, “My head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.” Oh, do not keep the door of your heart closed against him any longer! At least be willing that he should enter, pray that he may enter, cry to him to enter, and he will surely come in to you, and you shall have such a blessed time that you shall say, “Your visitation has preserved my spirit.”

21. I have it deeply impressed on me — so I must say it — that there are some of you who had better get a good feast tonight, for you have a great sorrow coming. You had better enter into close fellowship with Christ tonight, for the dark clouds of trouble are gathering around. The tempest lowers, and if your ship is not prepared to weather the storm by having Christ on board, it will go badly with you. Avail yourselves of this present opportunity of a visit from Christ. Creep to the cross, clasp it to your heart, hide yourselves there, for no lightning flash can strike you there; that cross will conduct the lightning of divine wrath right away from you, and you will be saved; and you will say afterwards, “I am glad that I stayed for the communion, and that I communed, for I did not merely eat bread and drink wine, I spiritually ate the flesh and drank the blood of my Lord, and I had fellowship with him, and he has made me strong to suffer or to serve.” If it is so with us now, or if it has been so in the past, let us sing to the Lord a glad song of thanksgiving for this trinity of blessing, — life, favour, and preserving visitation; yes, let us sing to him as long as we live.

22. II. Very briefly I must speak on the second part of our subject, that is, A SOLACE FOR DARK NIGHTS: “And you have hidden these things in your heart: I know that this is with you.”

23. There is another interpretation of this verse, quite different from the one that I am going to give you, but I do not think that Job ever could have meant what some people think he did. I believe that, when he said, “These things” — that is, life, favour, and God’s gracious visitation, — “You have hidden these things in your heart: I know that this is with you,” that he meant, first, that God remembers what he has done, and will not lose his pains. “ ‘You have granted me life and favour’; Lord, you have not forgotten that; you have hidden that in your heart, you remember it well. Since you have done this for me, and you do remember that you have done it, therefore you will continue your mercy to me, and not lose all the grace and goodness which you have already bestowed on me.” Just think of that for a minute. Even if you have forgotten all that God has done for you, God has not forgotten it. If you do a kindness to a man, it is very probable that he will not remember it, but you will. Many children forget all the kindness and love of their mother, but the mother remembers all that she did for her children in the days of their helplessness, and she loves them all the more because of what she did for them. There is a little secret which I may whisper in your ear. If you want people to love you, do what you can for them; yet, possibly, you will not gain their love by that process; but if you let them do something for you, they will be sure to love you then. When you have done much for anyone, you are especially bound to that person, so Job puts it like this, “You, Lord, have done much for me, you have all this in your memory; and I am persuaded that this binds you to me, — your great goodness in giving me life, and favour, and in visiting me, — all this has bound you to me, and I feel persuaded that you will not leave me.” That is the teaching of the verse many of us delight to sing, —

    His love in time past forbids me to think
    He’ll leave me at last in trouble to sink;
    Each sweet Ebenezer I have in review,
    Confirms his good pleasure to help me quite through.

If the Lord had not meant to finish his work, he would never have begun it; if he had not meant to bring us to heaven, he would not have snatched us like brands from the burning; if he had not meant to complete his work, he would not have spent so much on us. “Spent so much on us?” one says. Indeed, he lavished on his people more than all the millionaires who were ever on the earth have possessed, he expended more than there is in heaven with the exception of what he spent on them. “What is that?” you ask. He spent the life of his only-begotten Son; and heaven itself does not contain any other treasure that is at all comparable to the Father’s equal Son. He spent the best he had on us, and do you think that, after that, he will ever leave us? No, that can never be; though he were to take away all our property, though he were to deprive us of every one of our children, though he were to cover us from head to foot with severe blains, though he should cause us to sit on a dunghill, and scrape ourselves with a potsherd, though the very wife of our bosom should tell us to curse God and die, though all our friends should become miserable comforters, and make us ready to curse the day on which we saw the light, yet still God must be gracious to us, and we must trust him; yes, though he should kill us, yet we must trust in him. All the goodness of the past is an infallible guarantee that he will be good to us even to the end, according to that word concerning the Lord Jesus, “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” That is one meaning of the verse.

24. But, next, I think that the words, “And you have hidden these things in your heart: I know that this is with you”; have this meaning, that God sometimes hides his favour and love in his heart, yet they are still there. At times, it may be that you get no glimpse of his face, or that you see no smile on it. When that is my experience, I love to turn to that verse in the 63rd Psalm: “Because you have been my help, therefore I will rejoice in the shadow of your wings.” It is all shadow, shadow, shadow; no sunshine; I cannot see my God, but the very shadow is the shadow of his wings, and just as you may often see the chickens cower down beneath the mother hen, and nestle there, so I will rejoice in the shadow of his wings; and you, dear friend, may share that blessed and safe shelter. “He shall cover you with his feathers, and you shall trust under his wings: his truth shall be your shield and buckler.” When there is no light, you shall walk on as steadily as if seven suns were shining. When there is no comforting assurance for you, when there is no temporal deliverance, when there is nothing for you out of the wine-press or out of the barn, when there is no friend nor helper near you, when the fig tree does not blossom, when you have no flocks, and your herds are cut off by the storm, when God’s mercy seems to be completely gone for ever, and his promises all appear to fail, it is not really so.

    He hides the purpose of his grace
       To make it better known.

The Lord is gracious, and full of compassion; therefore, oh tried child of God, learn what Job teaches us here, that these things are still hidden in the heart of God, and that eternal love holds firmly onto the objects of its choice.

25. “I know that this is with you,” said Job, so the last thing I want you to learn from his words is that God would have his people strong in faith to know this truth. Job says, “I know that this is with you.” I speak to many people who say that they are Christians, and who perhaps are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, and one of their best evidences is that they are very happy. Dear young people, I am glad you are so happy. True religion makes people happy, it is a perennial fountain of delight. But do not put too much value on your emotions of delight, because they may be taken from you, and then where will your evidences be? God’s people sometimes walk in darkness, and see no light. There are times when the best and brightest of saints have no joy. I will not say whether they are not to be blamed for that, it is probable that they are in most cases, though I do not see that Job could be much blamed; I wish I was able to be a thousandth part as good as he was with a thousandth part of his pains and troubles. But it is a fact that, whether rightly or wrongly, God’s people are not always joyful; as Peter says, “For a season, if needs be, you are in heaviness through various temptations.” Whenever you get into that condition, dear young people, if you have learned to trust Christ before, still trust him. If your religion should not, for a time, yield you any joy, cling to it all the same. Do not give it up; for if there is any time when you need faith, it happens when your spirits sink, and when your outward trials multiply.

26. You see, God does not give you faith in order that you may merely run around in the meadows with it all among the fair spring flowers. I will tell you for what purpose he gives you faith; it is so that you may put on your snowshoes, and go out in the cold wintry blast, and glide along over the ice and the snow. He does not give you faith so that you may put it on as I remember seeing Napoleon’s guard with armour in which I saw my face as well as I ever did in a mirror; the Lord does not give you faith merely so that you may go on parade with it, and show yourself; you are to fight with it. There is not a fragment of faith that you have which will not be dented by the blows of the enemy, and rusted through exposure to the weather. You will have difficulties, notice that, as surely as you have faith. You will have a difficulty in maintaining your faith against the assaults of the adversary, for wherever there is faith in the world, there are trials for it to encounter. Railway men do not build bridges over rivers without an intention of sending engines and trains across them, and God does not give faith without an intention of letting it be tried; and he wants you to know, when he does try you, or permits others to try you, that he still loves you. When he leaves you for a little while in the dark, he loves you just as much as when you were in the light. A little child cries, and says that her mother does not love her because she has put her to bed, and gone downstairs, and left her in the dark. She will always be a baby if the mother stays there with a candle for hours on end until she gets to sleep. The mother wants her child to grow into a woman, and she trains her accordingly. So it is with us. God often humours our littleness and weakness by doing many kind things to us as we do to poor feeble little children, but he wants us to grow up, and become men and women in Christ Jesus, and to be strong in the Lord. I pray that you, my dear brothers and sisters, may be stalwart Christians of this kind. You see, if our faith is to depend on our disposition, our joy or our sorrow, it will be always fluctuating, up and down; and we shall be apt to think that we may be saved today and lost tomorrow. That is not the teaching of the Bible. When you are on the mount with Christ, you are safe; but when you are at the bottom of the valley with Christ, you are just as safe; when you sit at the table with Christ, you are safe; and so you are if you should be at sea with Christ in the vessel. Only have faith in him, and say, “My God, your will towards me to give me life, and favour, and preservation, may be hidden, but it is still in your heart, ‘I know that this is with you.’ ”

27. Now I must leave these things with you. You who know and love the Lord will seek a renewal of his visitations tonight; and as for you who do not know him, oh, how I wish that you did! Often as I come on this platform, and look over this throng of people, I should wonder why so many came if I did not know that the earnest simple preaching of the gospel will never fail to bring people together. But since you have come to hear the gospel, please also receive it. Do not merely hear it, but accept it. If there were diamonds to be given away here, and I said that I could give them to everyone who was willing to have them, I am sure that you would not be content to hear me talking about their beauty, their facets, or their particular brilliance, but each one of you would cry out, “Hand me one,” “Give me one,” “Pass me down one worth a hundred thousand pounds; I will be content with that, and you may stop talking if you like.” I will stop talking about Christ if you will take him as your Saviour. I shall not need to extol him when you have once accepted him, for you will find out his excellence for yourselves. The Scripture says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Oh, that you would all taste and see for yourselves! You would know his goodness far better from that taste and sight than you can ever know it from any human language however earnest it may be. May God bless you all, for Christ’s sake! Amen.

Just Published. Price Sixpence. 84 pages.

The Book Fund and its Work.

1898 and 1899.

By Mrs. C. H. Spurgeon.

For several years, Mrs. C. H. Spurgeon’s Book Fund Reports have not been on sale; they have only been sent to subscribers. So many enquiries have, however, been made for the Reports by other friends, that extra copies have been printed this time, and they can be obtained from the publishers, Messrs. Passmore and Alabaster, or through all booksellers and colporteurs.

It has been a source of surprise to many people that any Report of the Book Fund could be issued while Mrs. Spurgeon continues so very ill. The explanation is that, before she was laid aside, the Lord had graciously enabled her almost to complete the manuscript; and when she felt that the time for its publication had arrived, little labour was required beyond the compilation of the various tables of statistics and lists of contributions, — a task of which others were able almost entirely to relieve her.

The Report — which was at first delayed because of the more pressing claims of the Autobiography, and afterwards by Mrs. Spurgeon’s long and serious illness, — now covers the work of two years; and a very remarkable work it is. Over 10,000 volumes and more than 126,000 of Mr. Spurgeon’s Sermons have been sent out during that period, while all the other departments of Book Fund, Pastors’ Aid Fund, and Auxiliary Book Fund service have continued in active operation. Mrs. Spurgeon again pleads the cause of her poor pastors with all the earnestness and pathos of former years, and she gives extracts from many of the grateful letters written by the recipients of her grants, special prominence being accorded to the epistles she has received from clergymen who have derived benefit from her dear husband’s writings. The Report makes a neat booklet of 84 pages, and we think many of our readers will thank us for calling attention to its publication; possibly, some of them, after examining it, will become subscribers to the Book Fund, and so help to extend its blessed influence. — Review in July “Sword and Trowel.”