3552. The Soul’s Desertion

A Sermon Published On Thursday, March 1, 1917.

And of his fulness we have all received, and grace for grace {Joh 1:16}

For other sermons on this text:

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 415, “Fulness of Christ—Received!, The” 406}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 858, “Fulness of Jesus the Treasury of Saints” 849}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 1169, “Fulness of Christ the Treasury of the Saints, The” 1160}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3553, “Fulness and the Filling, The” 3555}

   Exposition on Joh 1:1-34 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2259, “Simplicity and Sublimity of Salvation” 2260 @@ "Exposition"}

   Exposition on Joh 1:1-34 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3222, “Lamb of God, The” 3223 @@ "Exposition"}

   Exposition on Joh 1:1-37 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2329, “Lamb of God in Scripture, The” 2330 @@ "Exposition"}

   Exposition on Mt 3:1-12 Joh 1:15-37 3:22-36 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2818, “Jesus and His Forerunner” 2819 @@ "Exposition"}

1. One Sabbath day I was staying in an Italian town on the other side of the Alps. Of course, the whole population was Catholic. Two or three of us, therefore, being Protestants, held a little service for the worship of God in the simple manner that is our custom. After this, I went out for a walk. The weather being hot and sultry, I sought the outskirts of the town to get to as quiet and cool a place as possible. Presently I came to an archway at the foot of a hill, where there was an announcement that any person who would climb the hill with proper intentions should receive the pardon of his sins and five days’ indulgence. I thought I might as well have five days’ indulgence as anyone else, and if it were of any advantage, to have it stored up. I cannot tell you all I saw as I went, first one way, and then another, up that hill. Suffice it to say that there was a series of little churches, through the windows of which you might look, as one in his boyish days looked through a peep-show. The whole scene and circumstance of the passion and death of Christ were modeled, beginning with his agony in the garden, where he was represented in a statue as large as life, with the drops of bloody sweat falling to the ground; the three disciples a stone’s throw off, and the rest of the disciples outside the garden wall. Every feature looked as real as if one had been standing in the place. I scrutinized each group narrowly, and carefully read the Latin text which served as an index, until I reached the top of the hill, where I saw a garden, just like an English garden, and as I pushed the door open I faced these words, “Now there was a garden, and in the garden there was a new sepulchre.” Walking down a path I came to a sepulchre; so I stooped down and looked in, as Peter had done. There, instead of seeing a picture of the corpse of Christ, I read in gilded letters these words—of course, in the Latin language—“He is not here, for he is risen; come, see the place where the Lord lay.” Passing on, I came to a place where his ascension was represented. On the summit was a large church, into which I entered. No one was there, yet the place had a marvellous interest for me. High up in the ceiling there swung a rough representation of the Lord Jesus Christ, and around it were statues of the prophets, all with their fingers pointing up to him. There was Isaiah, with a scroll in his left hand, on which was written, “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” Further on stood Jeremiah, and on his scroll was written, “Behold and see if there was ever sorrow like my sorrow, which was done to me.” All around the church I read in large words, that were large enough to be seen, though they were emblazoned on the top of the ceiling, “Moses and all the prophets spoke and wrote concerning him.”

2. Now, though I cannot take you to see that remarkable sight, which I shall never forget, I would gladly bring before your mind’s eye something like it. Suppose that all the saints who lived from the days of Adam, down to the times when Malachi closed the Old Testament, and that all the saints who lived in Christ’s time, and then on through the early ages of the Church in the days of Chrysostom, and Augustine, and all the holy men who afterwards gathered around the Reformers, and all who in every place have served God since then—suppose they all stood in one vast circle; to whom do you suppose that everyone would point? To whom would they all bear witness? Why, with outstretched arm, every one of them would turn to the Lord Jesus Christ, and speak his praise. If you could then enquire into their individual history, you would find among them characters very diverse, though all remarkably beautiful; some renowned for courage, others for gentleness; some for patient endurance, others for diligent labour, and yet all inspired by a common faith; all of them aglow with fervent gratitude; all of them looking with steadfast gaze and intense love towards ONE from whom they had received every gift that profited them; and that One, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour of men. The rule would not have a single exception. From each man in his own proper position, from every man in his own particular calling, from all the individuals in their own personal experience, the innumerable voices, distinct, but blending in chorus, would go up from earth to heaven, saying, “Of his fulness we have all received, and grace for grace.” Then I think from the excellent glory would come a response. The inhabitants of heaven would echo back the strain, “Of his fulness we, the glorified spirits, have all received, and grace for grace.” This is the testimony of the Church militant, and of the Church triumphant; yes, it is the testimony of all who in every place and at every time have come and put their trust under the shadow of his wings.

3. Our text seems to suggest two thoughts—the fulness and the filling—on each of which I will attempt to say a little, a very little. With so infinite a theme we can do no more than children do when they take up a little sea-water in a shell; their tiny scoop cannot embrace the ocean. I stand on the narrow edge of a vast expanse, and leave the boundless depths to your contemplation. His fulness! an inexhaustible reservoir. Our filling! a limitless endowment. Beloved, the river of God, which is full of water, can well supply the little canals that are fed from such a fountain with grace for grace.

4. I. I said THE FULNESS. It is his fulness, the fulness of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

5. Oh! what a fulness he has! The fulness which belongs to him personally! Note this well; do not forget it. Our Redeemer is essentially God. By nature he is divine. He has condescendingly taken upon himself our nature, and he is most truly and assuredly man. Very God! for to him belong all the attributes of Jehovah. Very man! for when he took our flesh and blood, he accepted the entire sympathies of our creatureship. In his complex nature he possesses fulness. In him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. He has the fulness of omnipotence, and all power is given to him as Mediator in heaven and on earth. Omnipresence is his to perfection; “for where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there (he said) in the midst of them.” He has essential wisdom. Even when on earth, “he did not commit himself, because he knew all men, and did not need that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man.” In him is fulness of justice. The Father has given all judgment to the Son. “Shall not God judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he has ordained, of which he has given assurance to all men in that he has raised him from the dead?” In him is fulness of mercy, for “the forgiveness of sins is preached to you through this man.” The attributes of God make up a perfect total. The unity, with all its uniqueness, is his. Divisions and subdivisions are ours. The fractional parts of which we take account are only the breaking up of a great fact to our weak understanding. Think as you may, your thoughts cannot describe or encompass God; for God is all that is good and blessed. And as is God, so is Christ. All the divine attributes are contained and represented in Christ Jesus in their fulness, not diminished by his humiliation, but resplendent by his triumph.

6. “In him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead.” He is the express image of the Father’s person, the brightness of his Father’s glory; not more glory, but the brightness of his Father’s glory. What confidence this ought to inspire in our hearts! The fulness from which you and I derive the grace we receive is none other than the infinite fulness of God over all blessed for ever, whose name is Emmanuel, God with us. There was a fulness also in Christ with respect to his manhood. Nothing was lacking in him that is involved in being by nature and constitution a perfect man. He was pure; he did not inherit any sin; his disposition did not tend towards any evil. Still, all that pertains to the original creatureship of man as created by God, Christ possessed in the fulness of development. Hence, my brethren, there is in him at this moment a fulness of sympathy. He is not such a high priest as cannot be touched with a feeling of our infirmities, but he was tempted in all points like we are, yet without sin. Do not suppose that Jesus is less human than you are yourselves; he is fully human. Do not imagine that he is less tender than you would be towards the weak and suffering; he is full of tenderness; his heart melts with love. A mother often has a tenderness that we do not find in a father. Masculine strength and courage do not always blend with the gentle, sympathetic qualities of woman. However when God created man in his own image, he created them male and female. The virtues, if I may say so, of both sexes were combined in our Lord; the suavity as well as the staunchness—the feminine as well as the masculine of our common humanity. Human nature in its totality and completeness was fully possessed and thoroughly represented by him. The sympathetic nature which melts at the tear and smiles at the joy of others, was as truly his as the heroic nature that does not parley with fear, but acts promptly and suffers with fortitude, like a warrior in the hosts of the Lord. So there is a fulness of humanity as well as a fulness of divinity in Christ Jesus, our Saviour—a fulness of perfection in his blessed person which may well fix your trust and rivet your admiration.

7. In our Lord, likewise, there is what I may venture to call, for lack of a better word, an acquired fulness. He has sojourned on earth, and rendered entire and undeviating obedience to the law of God, having taken upon himself the form of a servant, and by his righteousness earned wages; a fulness, an everlasting well-spring of merit. Throughout his whole life he honoured the divine law, and glorified God on the earth. In doing his Father’s will, his action was so voluntary and so vicarious, that he has accumulated an inexhaustible fund of merit, which all of us who believe in his name may plead before the Father’s throne. More especially his death consummated the obedience, and constituted its sterling worth, its intrinsic virtue. His death, with all its surroundings—from the bloody sweat in the olive garden to the last cry, “Into your hands I commit my spirit”—was sublime. All through the scourging and the spitting, the shame, the wounding, the crucifixion, the thirst, the desertion, and the death itself, he was working out an atonement for us;

   Bearing, that we might never bear

   His Father’s righteous ire.

And now with him risen from the dead, raised to the right hand of the Majesty on high, there is a fulness of prevalence in his intercession when he pleads his blood; a fulness of cleansing power when the Spirit applies the blood to the guilty conscience; a fulness of peace to the heart when his blood speaks better things than that of Abel. In that fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins there is a fulness that never can be exhausted by all the sin of man. He has finished the work which his Father gave him to do. Now the covenant is ratified with him that he shall see the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied. In these respects we are convinced that there is an acquired as well as a personal fulness in our precious Lord.

8. No less has he a fulness of dignity, of high prerogative. He is a Prophet. By him all his people are taught, warned, counselled, and encouraged with a blessed hope. He is a Priest, and by him they are cleansed from sin, and consecrated to God. Moreover, he is also a King, spreading the aegis {a} of protection over all his liege subjects, and ordaining peace for them. Under his beneficent rule, they prosper. You good Shepherd! You great Shepherd of the sheep! there is no office or obligation that was necessary for our welfare, but you have taken it, and undertaken it on our behalf. You are to us all that we require, and all that we could desire. Join all the qualities involved in name or fame that commend themselves most closely to your heart, because they meet your needs, or draw out your sympathies, and you shall find that he comprises them all in liberal, lavish fulness. Nor has his prerogative any limit. As a priest, who has once offered a sacrifice of everlasting prevalence, his absolution or his blessing is final and irrevocable. As a prophet, his authority is unimpeachable; the authority with which he teaches allows no appeal. As a king, he has right as well as might on his side. In the midst of Zion, willing subjects yield to his beneficent sway; in the outer world, reluctant rebels must submit themselves to his sceptre. He is no priest whose vain pretence has no valid prescript; he is no prophet whose teaching is uncertain in its tone, or limited in its range; he is no king whose prerogative is not sanctioned by his wisdom, and whose government awakens no fealty of love. But in the administration of all his offices, our Lord Jesus Christ shows a fulness of qualification, and gives a fulness of satisfaction. In such respects he has no rival; nor is there any room for a rival to arise.

9. And let me say here that the power with which our Lord exercises these offices may well command our devout confidence. Do you want to learn the truth? Oh! come to the prophet of Nazareth, and you shall find that there is a satiety of truth in his teaching such as was never found in a heathen augur, {b} or even to the same extent in Hebrew seer! Or do you want acceptance before God. Oh! then, come to the Priest who is not of the tribe of Levi, but a Priest after the order of Melchizedek, whose royalty confers dignity on his sacerdotal office! He can present your sacrifice with the much incense of his merit that is acceptable before the throne. Or do you need strength? Do you need one to fight your battles, to take hold of the shield and the buckler, and draw out the spear, and handle the bow? Behold, the Hero of Israel, whose exploits are told in your songs—Jesus, the King by right of conquest, as well as by divine right, has a fulness of power and majesty with which no adversary can cope. He reigns. His reign is the consolation of his people, the guarantee of their peace. These are bare outlines. Time would fail me to enumerate all his offices. They are very numerous; but, however numerous, Christ possesses them all. He enjoys the prerogatives particular to them all in the fullest degree. He possesses the power to exercise them all to the fullest extent.

10. But in Christ there is truly a blessed fulness of every kind of perfection. Whatever there may be that is lovely or of good repute is to be found in Christ. All that is virtuous or amiable in the character of men; all that is noble and illustrious in the endowments that Heaven bestows on the most privileged of creatures, our Lord possessed. It was said of Henry the Eighth that if all the likenesses of tyrants had been lost out of history, they might have been reproduced out of the one character of that monstrous tyrant king. So, if all the holy features of patriarchs and prophets, of saints and martyrs, who ever lived were blotted from the canvas of history, they all might be painted afresh from the one life of the divine person of our ever-adorable Lord Jesus Christ. In him there was not only one perfection, but all perfections meet and blend to make up one matchless perfection. There was not one sweet only in him, but all sweets combine in him in a perfect sweetness. John has love, Peter courage, Paul zeal—each saint has his own speciality, but in Christ all the qualities of goodness and grace converge. He exhibits them in the highest degree and the purest harmony. After such a manner they are incorporated in him as to produce a character the like of which was never known before, nor ever shall be witnessed again.

11. And never forget that a fulness of the Holy Spirit resides in Christ. The Lord does not give the Spirit by measure to him. He has the fulness of the Spirit. His is the head on which the anointing oil is fully poured. We, who are only as the skirts of his garments, are favoured with some drops of it, but the fulness of the anointing of the Spirit was bestowed on Jesus Christ our Lord, and from him his members must receive the portion they enjoy.

12. His fulness! I linger on the word, for I revel in the meditation. Such a fulness as cannot be diminished, for it is an enduring fulness. Even though all the saints of every age have come to Christ, and drawn their supplies from him, he is just as full as ever. Do not think that those who first came drank from a copious fountain that has been partly drained by the myriads who have since slaked their thirst. The apostles received from his fulness, and so do we; they without any detriment to us; we without any detriment to those who shall follow after us. When I came to Christ almost two millennia after the apostles came, yet I received the fulness at just the same rate as when Peter, John, or Paul received it. Should this age last another thousand years, and some poor, trembling wretch should come to the foot of the cross to receive mercy, he will not receive Christ half full, but he shall receive from Christ’s fulness, for it is an enduring fulness. It is never less than full; never can be more than full. In him there is an infinity of grace and truth. Such fulness is there in him at all times, under all your circumstances of trial, indeed, and under all conditions of sin too. The fulness of Christ to supply will always exceed the faith of the believer to seek. And when you feel your emptiness more than you ever did before, then you will place the most value on his abounding towards us in all wisdom and prudence. Considering, then, his enduring fulness, his inexhaustible fulness, his available fulness, I entreat you to avail yourself of this fulness now without demur, without delay.

13. II. Just as there is a fulness, so there is:—A FILLING.

14. This is to be our second point. I must speak of it with brevity. “Of his fulness we have all received.” Surely, then, all the saints were empty before. You are empty, my brother, and so was Abraham, so was Paul. Grace, the free grace of God, has made all the difference between Peter and Judas, though the one repented and the other despaired; the one travelled the heavenly road, the other went down quickly to hell. They stood on equal footing in transgression, until grace made them to differ. What radical difference is there between one man and another from a legal point of view?

15. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” All equally have to come to Christ empty of merit, or they would never come at all. That was a pretty story we heard the other day, and it has a very good moral. A worthy, consistent, industrious woman was married to a low, worthless, dissipated husband. Both of them, however, were equally ignorant of the gospel. They came together to the house of prayer; they heard together the good news of mercy; they each believed, and each of them received the Saviour, and they both were saved the same way; they both found mercy on the same terms. To the rich, free, sovereign grace of God they vied with each other in ascribing the praise. That is a fact. It occurred last week. I do not know whether this makes it more convincing to you; but I might say, as Elihu said to Job, “Lo, God often works all these things with men, to bring back his soul from the pit, to be enlightened with the light of the living!”

16. Observe that the filling is universal. All the saints partake of it. “Of his fulness we have all received.” There are various diversities of experience among the Lord’s people, but in some things they share and share alike. Some saints do not undergo the stress of trial and tribulation that others pass through. Here, however, there is no partiality. Every one of them has received out of Christ’s fulness. Not one of them could do without receiving it; not one of them could receive it from any other hand than that of the Divine Benefactor. They did not earn it. They accepted it. They received it from Jesus Christ.

17. This is unique to the saints. While it says, “Of his fulness WE have all received,” obviously a certain body of people have become partakers of a privilege which it is no less evident that all men have not received. What thousands and tens of thousands there are who, when invited to the gospel feast, reject the call, “make a wretched choice, and rather starve than come.” “All we!” that is, all of those who have believed. And who are “we,” or what are “we,” that such grace should be given to us in preference to anyone else? Ah! brethren, we have little reason enough for self-satisfaction! On the score of merit no choice had ever fallen on us. We were the vilest, the least worthy, the least attractive, and, in some respects, the least hopeful! Oh! grace, it is your custom to come into the unlikeliest hearts, and it is the glory of divine love to find a home in the darkest places! “All we”; we who were once dead in trespasses and sins; we who were once lost like the prodigal son, lost like the wandering sheep, lost like the piece of money; we who needed seeking, needed finding, need saving; yet of his fulness we have all received. Remember that the reception is unique to believers; it does not go beyond them.

18. Know, however, that there is, and must be, a personal reception in every case. “Of his fulness we have all received.” Not one of us can receive it transmitted from another, but each one of us receives it directly from him. Your father’s grace cannot save you. It was a wise speech of the wise virgins. When the foolish virgins said to them, “Give us some of your oil,” they replied, “No, lest there be not enough for us and you; rather go to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.” Family piety involves responsibilities, but it cannot stand in the place of personal godliness. Dear hearer, you must go to Christ for yourself. All who ever were saved have done so, and you certainly will not be saved unless you are led to do the same. It is a personal filling. “Of his fulness we have all received.”

19. The bounty is gratuitous. Notice the next words, “and grace for grace.” It is not said, “Of his fulness we have all purchased,” nor “Of his fulness we have all earned a share”; but it is all passive. We have received. What does the pitcher do to prepare itself for the water that flows into it? Why, it does nothing. All its doing can prepare it to receive is an undoing; that is to say, it empties itself to prepare itself to be filled. Oh! if any of you desire to find Jesus Christ, the doing must be in the way of undoing. You must be emptied to be filled. The preparation is a consciousness that you are not prepared. In such unpreparedness you are prepared for Christ. This is an enigma and a riddle. Those who think themselves prepared for him are not so, but those who know that they are not prepared are just the souls on whom his grace will come. Poverty, not riches; blindness, not sight; emptiness, not fulness; sinfulness, not virtue—these are the things Christ looks for. He is come to seek and to save those who were lost; not those who had won victories; not those who were splendid in their own esteem, but those who were defeated, ruined, lost. If you are lost, he comes to seek and to save such as you are. Oh! you who were once lost, but now are found, bless his name that you have received from his fulness!

20. “And grace for grace!” What do these words mean? We can only just touch them as a swallow with its wing touches the pool; we cannot pretend to enter into their depth. “Grace for grace.” Does that mean that those who receive grace under the old covenant were later led to receive the grace of the new covenant? Does it mean that we who have the grace of conviction, with the Holy Spirit as a spirit of bondage, shall eventually receive the spirit of liberty, and get out of conviction, through conversion, into full pardon and enjoyment of peace with God? Is that the grace, when grace turns into glory, and we come before the throne does it mean grace by degrees; grace upon grace; a little grace to begin with, and more grace afterwards? “He gives more grace”; grace following on grace, and, further on, superabounding grace, when grace turns into glory, and we come before the throne of grace for ever and ever. Does it mean that God leads us on step by step, adding to our spiritual wealth, initiating us first into simple things, and afterwards leading us into deeper matters? “Grace for grace.”

21. Yes, it means that, but it means more. God gives grace in preparation for further grace—the grace of a broken heart—to make room for deep repentance and abhorrence of sin; the grace of hatred of sin to make way for the grace of holy and careful walking, humiliation, and faith in Jesus; the grace of careful walking to make room for the grace of close communion with Christ; the grace of close communion with the Lord Jesus Christ to make room for the grace of full conformity to his image; perhaps the grace of conformity to his image to make room for the higher grace of brighter views of him, and still closer entries into the very heart of the Lord Jesus. It is grace that helps us on in grace. When a beggar asks you for a penny, and you give him one, he does not ask you for a sixpence; or if you give him a shilling, he would not consider that an argument why you should give him a sovereign. But you may deal like this with God. If you have only, as it were, an ounce of grace, that is a reason why you should then pray to God for a great weight of grace, and afterwards for a far more great and eternal weight of glory. Believe that he gives grace for grace; that is, grace so that you may open your mouth for more grace. The grace you have expands your heart, and gives you capacity for receiving even more grace. Do you not send your child to school to learn A B C? You may call that the grace of learning his alphabet. Yes, but it is preparatory to his learning to read the spelling-book. Well, but what does he learn to read the spelling-book for? Why, that is a preparation for something else. So one grace gives us a preparation for another grace, and so as we have more grace we experience the blessedness of this divine filling out of his fulness.

22. Or, suppose we read the passage like this—grace answerable to grace—and even this will allow for two constructions. Let God give me grace to be a preacher; he will surely give me grace to discharge the office. Perhaps he has given you grace to teach in a Sunday School, then you need a further supply of grace to enable you to be an efficient teacher. Perhaps you have the grace of resignation to suffer for Christ’s sake, you will need the grace of patience to support you in the midst of pain or persecution. You are called to pray, and you yield yourself up to be a wrestler with God in prayer. This is a great grace. Oh! may you have grace answerable to that grace, so that when you get with the angel by the Brook Jabbok, you may take hold of his strength, plead his promise, his covenant, and his oath, and never let him go until he blesses you. So, a halt and fainting Jacob comes away as a prevailing Israel. So may we always have grace answerable to grace. “Grace for grace” may imply grace received by us answerable to the grace that is in Christ.

23. Oh! that we Christians had grace in some measure commensurate with the grace that is treasured up for us in him! All that is in him belongs to you. Then the degree of your daily supplies ought to be proportionate to his ample, unlimited wealth and fulness. A young heir to a large estate, though not of full age, generally gets an allowance made to him by the executors, or the trustees, or the Court of Chancery, suitable to the position he is presently to occupy. If he has £100,000 a year in prospect, he would hardly be limited to a penny a week, like a poor man’s child. We cannot suppose that he would have a tiny allowance given to him such as would barely enable him to live in a humble cottage on the rich domain he is entitled to. Oh! no; that would be a meagre pittance out of all proportion to his position. When I see one child of God always mourning, another always doubting, and yet another always scheming, I feel a kind of disappointment; I see they are living below their privileges. They do not seem to have grace in possession answerable to the grace they are entitled to. We always extol the propriety, on the part of all our people, of living within their means; but I will defy the child of God to live beyond his means in a spiritual sense. You who have very little spending-money are like the elder brother in the parable. You say, “You never gave me a kid so that I might make merry with my friends”; and your Father replies, “Son, you are always with me; and all that I have is yours.” If you do not have it, it is your own fault; it is all there, and is freely yours. You only have to ask, and you shall receive; to seek, and you shall find. Oh! could we once get grace in us at all like the grace that is in Christ, what Christians we should be! No longer starlight Christians and moonlight Christians, but sunlight believers, letting our light shine before the sons of men. Oh! to be among the three Mighties of our royal David! May each of us covet such a position as this, and may God grant it to us for his love’s sake!

24. “Grace for grace” obviously means grace in abundance. Like the waves of the sea, when one comes there is another close behind it. Before you can say that one is gone, there is another coming to fill its place. There they come. Who shall count them? In long succession, wave follows wave. So is God’s grace. “Grace for grace.” One grace has hardly come into your soul but there is another one coming. You have heard the story of Rowland Hill having a hundred pounds entrusted to him for the benefit of a poor minister. He thought that if he sent him the hundred pounds, it would be too large a sum to give him all at once; he would scarcely know how to manage it, and perhaps he would not be so thankful for it as if he had it doled out in smaller amounts. So he sent him five pounds, and wrote in the letter, “More to follow.” Letters did not come often in those days of nine penny or eighteen penny postage, but in about another week he forwarded another five pounds, and a note with it, “More to follow.” After a short interval he did the same again, still saying, “More to follow.” So it went on for ever so long, always with “More to follow,” until the dear good man, I should think, must have been at his wits’ end to know what could follow when so many good presents came to one who needed them so much. Now that is just how God has done with me, and I believe he is just doing the same with all of you who are his people. He has sent you a mercy, and when he has sent it, you might have seen, if you had looked at the envelope, that it was a down payment on further benefits and blessings—“More to follow.” The mercy you have received today has written on it legibly, “More to follow,” and what will come tomorrow will have on it, “More to follow.” “Grace for grace.” Oh! sing to him a new song. Let him have new songs for new mercies, and just as he multiplies the mercy, so you multiply the praises you ascribe to his name.

25. “Grace for grace!” Does it not mean grace from him to produce grace in us? We receive from the fulness of Christ, of his grace, in order that it may be a living seed that shall produce grace in us as its natural fruit. The grace of gratitude should be produced in us by the grace of generosity from God. We ought to be gracious with a holy joyfulness for all his goodness. I hope we shall have the grace of patience under all sufferings, and the grace of zeal in all our labours. At a time like this, my brethren, when we are seeking the conversion of sinners with special efforts, may we have grace from Jesus that shall make all the graces fruitful and fragrant in us! So we shall be to the Saviour as a garden of olives and pomegranates, of lilies and sweet flowers, and may he take a delight in us! When Cyrus took the Greek Ambassador through his garden, he challenged him to admire its charms. The Spartan approved of all he saw, but still his admiration was cool and critical. “This garden,” said its master, “yields me more pleasure and satisfaction than you can imagine, or I can express.” “And why?” asked the visitor. “Because,” replied Cyrus, “I planted every tree in it myself. I planned all the paths, and I have planted all the flowers. No hand but mine has dug the soil, tended the plants, pruned the trees, or done anything besides but my own.” So his toil and his trouble endeared the place to the king. So, truly, Christ can say when he looks at his people, “There is a fruitful bough there; I pruned that. He was sick, long laid aside from business, he feared his family would be starved; I was pruning him then; but I love the fruit that is on him because I know how it came there. That plant over there which is blooming now and exuding such a sweet perfume of love, well do I remember when it was drooping and ready to die. I came and watered it. She, timid disciple, would say, ‘Blessed be the gentle hand that shed the dew and poured nourishment on my poor, parched, and withered root!’” Yes, the Saviour gives us “grace for grace” so that we may produce grace. I leave the thought with you for meditation, and the issues for your edification, only praying that his Holy Spirit may work in you “grace for grace.”

26. Oh! that all of you might receive grace from him. You will never get grace anywhere else. Go to him at once by faith, with humble prayer. Plentiful grace with him is found; all the grace you shall ever require between now and glory you shall find stored up in him. His grace is our blessing. May you one and all partake of it! Amen.

{a} Aegis: A shield, or defensive armour; applied in ancient mythology to that of Jupiter or Minerva. fig. A protection, or impregnable defence. OED.
{b} Augur: A religious official among the Romans, whose duty it was to predict future events and advise upon the course of public business, in accordance with omens derived from the flight, singing, and feeding of birds, the appearance of the entrails of sacrificial victims, celestial phenomena, and other portents. OED.