3557. An Urgent Necessity

A Sermon Published On Thursday, March 29, 1917.

It is time to seek the Lord until he comes and rains righteousness on you. {Ho 10:12}

For other sermons on this text:

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 1261, “Sow For Yourselves” 1252}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 1563, “Duty of the Present Hour, The” 1563}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3557, “Urgent Necessity, An” 3559}

1. Hosea uses a great many illustrations taken from farming. He describes the seeking of the Lord in the former part of this verse as ploughing, and sowing, and breaking up fallow ground. I suppose he intends by this to describe conviction of sin, humiliation of soul as the work that ploughs, the reception of the truth of the gospel by faith in Jesus Christ as sowing, for this introduces the living seed into the soul. And here he gives two reasons why this matter of seeking the Lord should be attended to at once. His first reason is the season. “It is time to seek the Lord.” The second is a very gracious expectation that God will rain righteousness on us.

2. I. First, then, the prophet reasons that we should seek after the Lord because it is:—THE TIME TO SEEK GOD.

3. “It is time to seek the Lord.” I wish you to reflect, first, that we still have time. It might have been otherwise. We might have been cut down in our sins. Many of our neighbours and acquaintances have died. Some of them we have reason to fear died in their iniquities, and were taken away with a stroke. We, too, have passed through dangers. Some have escaped in shipwreck. Some have been in imminent peril in accident; some of us have come into the very jaws of death in serious sickness. We might almost sing, or quite sing:—

   Lord, and am I yet alive,

      Not in torment, not in hell;

   Still doth thy good Spirit strive,

      With the chief of sinners dwell.

4. We still have time. Let no person living say he does not have time, for while life lasts, hope lasts. The sentence, “Depart, you cursed,” is not yet pronounced by Christ’s lips on you. Do not pronounce it on yourselves. Do not conclude your case to be hopeless, and make it hopeless, but rather believe that being in the assembly of God’s people, listening to the testimony of his grace, you are still on praying ground and pleading terms with God, and you still have time given to you to seek the Lord. The most aged need not despair; the most guilty need not conclude that their day of grace is over. Until that iron bar shall bolt the door, and you are shut up in the pit for ever, do not let Satan persuade you that you are beyond all hope. While the gospel note rings from the silver trumpet of gracious invitation, “He who has ears to hear let him hear,” you still have time—time to seek the Lord.

5. This time is given to you for this very purpose. You think, perhaps, that your prolonged life is given to you that you may complete your plans, that you may rectify mistakes of business, that you may accumulate more money, or perhaps you are gross enough to think that the best way of using time is to get earthly pleasure out of it, and indulge animal passions and appetites. Ah! sirs, it is not so. To whatever use you put this talent of time, God’s longsuffering has been your salvation. By it God teaches you to repent while he permits you to live. His longsuffering is not that you may provoke him further, but that you may cease to provoke him. He does not cut down the tree so that it may spread its useless branches and encumber the ground even worse, but if, perhaps, being dug around a little longer, it may produce fruit. It is the very motive why the Intercessor pleads, “Spare it for yet another year.” He spares you so that you may not depart from here until you are ready to depart. He gives you time, not for sin, for repenting—opportunity, not for perpetrating worse offences, but for turning from your evil ways. Your time has this mark on it, if you would only see it, “Repent! I give you time. Repent. Take heed that you do not waste it.” There is encouragement for every unconverted person in this thought. If this time is given to you to repent in, then rest assured that, repenting and believing in Jesus, you will be accepted. If the judge stands at the criminal’s door and waits, and says he waits there until he is willing to receive the pardon he grants, and if the criminal is anxious to receive the pardon, there can be no difficulty in the way. The very waiting of the judge at the door proves that he does not want to execute the sentence—only desires to see some symptom of contrition, some signs of turning from the evil way, and gives time if, perhaps, these signs may become apparent.

6. Hear, then, oh! unconverted ones, hear this, and do not trifle with the time allowed you. It is time to seek the Lord, says the text; surely it is high time. Not only the time, but high time. It is high time, you young ones, that you seek the Lord, for Satan is on the watch for you if, perhaps, your unwary footsteps may be lured into the paths of evil—paths which, if you are not delivered from, you will have to regret ever having trodden to life’s latest hour. Oh! if you would be kept from the snare of the fowler, you young ones, it is time that you seek the Lord—high time. Now when you are leaving your mother’s roof—going away from a father’s gentle guidance, it is time to seek the Lord. I would press this on any young man here just launching into life, before that marriage, before that business is entered into—it is time to seek the Lord. Set up God’s altar when you set up a house, and before you do business for yourself consecrate yourself and your substance to God, who can bless you and will. But, oh! you who have passed now into midlife, have you spent forty years in sin? It is high time you sought the Lord. Your best days have been given to provoking him. Will you not give the rest, such as they are, to his service? Oh! that his Spirit might constrain you to do so. And you who lean on the staff, you who have come to the end of human life, is it not high time to seek the Lord? I see your sun going down; the sky is scarcely bright, the red rays indicate that the sun is hiding itself. Oh! before the dark, dark, endless night comes on, seek the Lord while he may still be found. Be grateful for having been spared for so long. Oh! do not be so ungrateful as to use so long a life all for sin; for, remember, it will be then all used for your own destruction. You have been a fool long enough. Grey hairs and foolery are not well matched. You have sported on the brink of hell long enough; will you not turn back from it? By God’s longsuffering and patience, I beseech you to remember it is high time for you to seek the Lord. And you in whom I see that treacherous spot on the cheek that indicates the worm beneath, and you with the extraordinarily bright eye that indicates the fire of consumption within, it is time you sought the Lord. And you whose crumbling bodies, or aching bones or slack sinews, or trembling nerves, all indicate how weak your body is, and how readily it may be crumbled back into the dust—these signs from the Lord are in you—it is time you sought him. He knocks gently as yet, and gives you warning. Take heed, he will come soon and remove the house of the wicked, and the tabernacle of the ungodly, and your souls must appear before his judgment seat. It is high time you sought the Lord.

7. And, oh! all of you ungodly ones who listen to my voice, and have listened to it for so long, I have asked the Lord to teach me how to preach so that I may somehow reach your hearts. I do not seem to have learned the art as yet. May his Spirit come and give the right word with a barbed shaft that shall plough its way right through your armour and pierce its way through all the hardness of your heart until it breaks the conscience and wounds you, and compels you to cry for mercy. What! all the years of Park Street, and Exeter Hall, and the time at the Surrey Gardens, and ever since this Tabernacle has been built, and still unsaved! It is time to seek the Lord. The very seats you sit on cry out against you, some of you, and I, unwilling as I am to speak it—I must be a swift witness against some of you, for to the best of my ability I have pointed to Christ, I have warned you from danger, I have told you of your great peril, I have warned you of the terrible punishment of sin, I have entreated you to flee to Jesus. It is time, you gospel-hardened ones, that you sought the Lord. If your lusts are gods, serve them; but decide and choose today, and may God choose for you whom you will serve. It is high time as well as time to seek the Lord.

8. Remember, too—and here is something solemn, but something sweet as well—it is God’s time, for these are God’s words put into the prophet’s mouth—it is time to seek the Lord; God says, “It is time.” When God says it is time, why, then, when I come I cannot be denied. God says, “It is time”; then if I do not come, I provoke him. Hear these words, you who are dull of hearing, and you whose hearts have a thick crust; hear, for Jehovah speaks to you today. “Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the provocation.” “Today”—he limits the time—“Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts”; for if you do so, the day will come when he will deal with you as he did with his people Israel, who, having long provoked him, received this as his answer to their face, “He swore in his wrath that they should not enter into his rest.” He has not yet spoken, but he may, and that awful voice which comes from Solomon’s Proverbs may come to you. “Because I have called and you refused, I stretched out my hand and no man regarded it, I also will mock at your calamity; I will laugh when your fear comes.” {Pr 1:24-26} “Today is the accepted time; today is the day of salvation.” {2Co 6:2}

9. Once more only, it is time to seek the Lord, and it is only for a time. It is only for a time. You have not been given eternity in which to seek the Lord. It is the time, and the time is limited. It is still time, but it is limited. For some of you it is most limited. It is time to seek the Lord. The vessel lies in the harbour, and the favourable wind would take her out to sea, and bear her on to her port, but the sailors sleep; the captain does not observe the wind; the sails are furled. Tomorrow the wind has changed. Now he may do as he wishes, he is landlocked, and there he must remain; he cannot put out to sea, for he cannot command the wind. So it is with you; there is a time which God appoints for you. It is now! Slight it, and it may never came again. It is only for a time. Oh! take this mercy at the flood-tide; please do not miss it. While God waits, come, lest there should come an hour when you shall knock at his door and the voice shall be heard, “Too late, too late; you cannot enter now.” Ah! I wish I had the power to say this as I should so that you would feel it; but, perhaps, you will feel it when I would wish you had no need to do so—I mean on your death-bed.

10. The Puritans tell a story of a woman convicted of sin on her death-bed, who lived near Cambridge, who was visited by several ministers, all of whom had great skill in comforting seeking souls. When five or six of them had spoken gently and comfortingly to her, she opened her eyes on them with a glare, and all she said was this, “Call back the time, call back the time, for otherwise I am damned.” And so she died. And there are many, I fear, who might say that. “The time is gone! The time is gone; I cannot call it back!” Oh! take it on the wing while it is still time to seek the Lord. You know, perhaps, the story of the traveller on the prairie, when a fire in the distance could be seen. The prairie was ablaze, and he knew that his only hope for life was to fight fire with fire. He searched for his matches. If he could make a ring around him and burn the grass so that when the fire came up it would have nothing to feed on, then he might escape. He only found three matches in his box. He took one and struck it with some degree of care, but, alas! before he could light the train which he had laid, the match had gone out. He took another, and this time, very tremblingly, with much tremulous anxiety, struck it. There was a light; he thought he was safe, but a gust of wind blew it out. And now all depended on the last match. He must be burned to ashes, unhelped, unpitied by a friend, if that match failed him. Down he falls, and breathes the prayer, “God help me, God help me! Grant this may succeed.” He struck it! You may guess with what care he had laid all the grass around it, and then he struck it as though he were loathe to run the terrible risk; but he praised God when he saw its success, and that his life was saved. You have only one match left, oh sinner; use it well—one light—one time—the time to seek the Lord. Oh! seek him now tonight. This moment in the pew say, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” Is that your prayer? It is good. May God hear and answer it!

11. II. But now I must by your patience speak for a little while on the second part of the text. There is another reason given for seeking the Lord, and that is:—THE BLESSED EXPECTATION.

12. The expectation is that in due time he will rain righteousness on us. I understand by this that the ploughing and the sowing are ours, but these are nothing without the heavenly rain of grace. But God will be sure to send that in due time. In fact, our ploughing and sowing are results and signs of his grace, and the grace of comfort will come where the grace of humiliation has already come. When it says “righteousness” I think it means to assure us that God can in a way of righteousness be gracious to us. Through his dear Son, who bore the punishment of our sins, God can righteously rain on sinners. Now just let me take a moment or two. You say you do not have grace; you say you are not what you should be. It is even so. But seek the Lord, and he will rain righteousness on you. Observe all grace must come from him. Rain comes from God. He rains it. Every drop of grace comes from heaven. You, sinner, can never get any grace unless he gives it to you. Remember this, and wait on him now for it. It must be heavenly grace, or it will be no grace at all. It can come to you. There are some parts on earth that never could be watered if it did not rain. No one would ever think of watering the hill-tops. But he waters his hills from his chambers. We cannot give grace to you; you are in such a desolate, lonely, mountainous place, but he can reach you, and he will. See how he will rain righteousness on you. Then, just as there is a straight way for rain even to the wilderness, so there is a straight way for God’s grace to drop into your desert heart. Rain comes sovereignly as God wills it, where he wills it, when he wills it. And in degree and duration according to his will. So does grace. Then lift up your soul to him for it, and bow your head, feeling that you do not deserve it.

13. But in the metaphor of rain there is the idea of abundance. He will rain righteousness on you. If you have no grace, he will give you much grace if you have great needs; he will give you great supplies; he will rain it on you. God is not frugal with his love; he will not give you a drop or two, but he will give you a sea of mercy. “I will pour water on him who is thirsty and floods on the dry ground.” Now is this not good reason for seeking the Lord? You cannot get grace anywhere but from the Lord. God can gave it to you very abundantly. It is in his hands to give or not as he wishes. Oh! seek it. He holds the stars; he guides the clouds; he wings the tempest. Seek him for his grace; he will give it to you. It can come from no one else besides. But it will come. There is the mercy of it.

14. And you are told in the text to seek it until it does come. Seek him until the grace comes. I have known a sinner to cry to God once, and mercy has come immediately; but there have been many cases where souls have cried again and again, and only after a long while they have had success. I saw as I came here tonight—it all happened in a moment—I saw a little child just come home from Sunday School I suppose—a very little child, and she tapped at her mother’s door, and the mother did not come, and she did what was the best thing to do under the circumstances—cried as loud as she ever could, and her mother came to her. If you have knocked at mercy’s door, and mercy has not come, cry for it. Oh! a groan, a tear, a cry, a sigh, will quicken the steps of mercy. God cannot linger when a sinner cries. When a sinner weeps, Christ will soon have pity on him. But, anyway, keep on until he comes. Seek until he rains righteousness on you. Elijah got the fire in prayer very soon, but he did not get the rain very soon. He had to say to his servant “Go and look towards the sea.” There was Elijah, with his head between his knees, in mighty prayer, but not a drop of rain or a sign of a cloud. “Go again, go again,” he repeated until he had said it seven times, and then there was a cloud the size of a man’s hand. Sinner, have you prayed? Go again. Have you prayed twice? Go again. Has it come to three times? Go again. Has it come to four times, Go again. Does it amount to six times? Go again. Let there be no restraint in prayer. You have kept God waiting long enough. You must not marvel if he should now delay for a while. Go again; go again. Say, “I am resolved that I will not give it up until you shall rain your comfort, your righteousness, your grace, on me.” He will surely do it, and you do not know how soon—you do not know how soon—you will get comfort. And when it comes it will make up for all the delays.

15. You know the woman, when the child is born, remembers no more the travail, for joy that a man is born into the world; and, oh! when Christ is yours, you will forget your travail in your joy and your rejoicing. I am thinking just now of Columbus and his crew. They had sailed long across the Atlantic, and had not found the golden land, the El Dorado, and so the sailors talked about going back, and many a scheme he had, by which he tempted them to go a little farther on to that unknown shore. At last it came to this, they mutinied; they would go no farther; they would not seek the land again; why should they drift away and be lost for ever? He said, “Only give me three days, and if between now and the third day we do not see the shore, then we will reverse the helm.” Within those three days there stood the fair shores of the New World before the mariners’ eyes. Suppose they had turned back the second day, and had gone home and never found it. Well, I do not know that it would have mattered much to those sailors. Someone else would have found it, but you are, perhaps, within three days now of being accepted in the Beloved—perhaps within three hours. Pray God that it may be within three minutes. And will you not go on a little farther; will you not still cry, and will you not take the gospel step, the grand step of believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved? That brings you to the El Dorado, to the land of gold, to the land of mercy, to the bosom of Christ, to the safety of the blessed, to the security of the glory that shall be revealed hereafter. Oh! sinner, do not be discouraged, but seek the Lord, for you have his promise he will be found by you.

16. Some even of God’s servants have been a good while seeking, and they have not found him. When that dear martyr of Christ, Mr. Glover, {a} lay in prison he was in a very sad state of heart, and he said, “I love him, and I will burn for him; but, oh! that I had some glimpses of his face.” And his fellow sufferer who lay in prison with him used to tell him, “He will appear to you; you shall have joy.” But day after day all through that weary time spent in prison, he would constantly be saying, “Am I his? Has he forgotten to be gracious? Has he shut up the heart of his compassion?” “But,” said Glover, “if he never speaks any comfort to me again, I know his truth, and I know his gospel, and I will burn for him. By his grace, I will never turn away”; and the morning came on which he was to be burned, and he awoke with some heaviness in his spirit. There seemed to be no comfort in any promise to which he turned, and prayer brought no relief. And they came and put the chains on him, and they led him out, and he came to where the stake was and where the faggots were, and he was about to strip and put on his shirt for the burning, and suddenly he leaped up and said, “He is come! He is come! He is come! Glory be to his name.” His friends had asked him to give some sign that his spirit had revived, and he stood and burned as though he scarcely felt the fire, singing psalms and praying. And so it will be with every earnest seeker. If the looks of love have never come to you for years, you will have them yet, for never a soul believed that was safe. Some have believed, but not been comforted, but they are safe; the comfort will come. Only seek, for he will rain righteousness on you.

   So I must maintain my hold,

   ’Tis the goodness makes me bold;

   I can no denial take,

   For I plead for Jesus’ sake.

Oh! sinner, never let go. Cling close to Christ, and he cannot cast you away, for this is his promise, “Whoever comes, I will by no means cast out.” Come, and may the Lord bless you. Amen and amen.

{a} Robert Glover (died 1555) was an English Protestant martyr who was burnt at Coventry in September 1555. See Explorer "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Glover_(martyr)"

Exposition By C. H. Spurgeon {De 32:1-39}

It is a very marvellous chapter—a song and a prophecy, in which the poet-seer seems to behold the whole future spread before him as in a map, and it is so vivid to him that he describes it rather as a matter present or past, than as a thing which is yet to be. It is the story of God’s dealing with his chosen and special people, Israel, from the beginning to the end. The beginning is very noble.

1-3. “Give ear, oh you heavens, and I will speak; and hear, oh earth, the words of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil us the dew, as the small rain on the tender herb, and as the showers on the grass. Because I will proclaim the name of the LORD: ascribe greatness to our God,

All through, the song is for the glorification of God; not a syllable, indeed, in which man is held up to honour, but the Lord alone is exalted in his dealings with his people. He is the rock. All other things are the mere cloud that hovers on the mountain’s brow; but—

4. He is the rock,

Immutable, eternal.

4. His work is perfect:

Sometimes very terrible and very mysterious, but his work is perfect,

4. For all his ways are justice; a God of truth and without iniquity, he is just and right.

But as for his people, what a contrast between them and their God!

5. They have corrupted themselves, their mark is not the mark of his children: they are a perverse and crooked generation.

What a stoop from the God of truth, without iniquity, to a people full of iniquity—a perverse and crooked generation. We never know so much of our own vileness as when we get a clear view of the excellency of God. What did Job say? “I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you, therefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.”

6. Do you requite the LORD like this, oh foolish people and unwise? Is he not your Father who has bought you? Has he not made you, and established you?

Who made the Jews to be a people? Who set Israel apart to be a nation? Who, but God, who bought them with a price when they came out of Egypt, and, in his fatherly care, led them through the wilderness?

7, 8. Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask your father, and he will show you; your elders, and they will tell you. When the Most High divided their inheritance to the nations, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.

God’s first point in the government of the world was his own people. Everything else was mapped out after he had set apart a place for them—a place sufficient, large, fruitful, and in an admirable position, so that there they might multiply and enjoy all the good things which he so freely gave them; and to this day dynasties rise and fall, kings reign or are scattered by defeat, only with this one point in God’s eye, and purpose in his mind—the upholding of the Church in the world—the spread of his glorious truth.

9-12. For the LORD’S portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the wasteland, a howling wilderness; he led him around, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. Just as an eagle stirs up her nest, flutters over her young, spreads out her wrings, takes them, bears them on her wings: so the LORD alone led him, and there was no strange god with him.

This is the history of the tutoring of Israel in the wilderness. When they came out of Egypt they were a mere mob of slaves, degenerate by the debasing influence of long bondage. They had to be trained before they were fit to be a nation. Now in all this, let us try to see ourselves. What has God done for those of us who are his people in bringing us out from the bondage of sin? And how graciously does he today preserve us as a man guards the apple of his eye! No sooner does anything come near the eye than up goes the hand instinctively to shield the eye. And let anything happen to the people of God, and the power of God is ready at once for their defence. An eagle has to teach her young eaglets to fly. She will take them on her wings, so they say; throw them off, and let them flutter, and then dash down and come under them and bear them up again until she has taught them to use their wings. And the Lord has been doing this with many here—apparently casting them off, only that, when they fall, underneath them may be the everlasting arms. We have to be trained to faith. It is a difficult exercise for such poor creatures as we are. We are being trained for it at this day. After they had been tutored like this, they were brought into the promised land, which Moses never entered, but yet in his vision of prophecy he sees it all.

13, 14. He made him ride on the high places of the earth, so that he might eat the crops of the fields: and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock; butter of cows, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the choicest wheat: and you drank the pure blood of the grape.

It was a very fruitful land, abounding not merely in necessities, but in luxuries. Palestine gave to its inhabitants all that heart could wish for, and for a long time, while they were faithful to God, they lived in the midst of plenty.

15. But Jeshurun became fat, and kicked:

“The little holy nation”—for I suppose that is the meaning of “Jeshurun.” It is a diminutive word—“the little religious nation became fat. It abounded in prosperity. It grew stout and kicked.”

15. You have become fat, you are grown thick, you are covered with fatness: then he forsook God who made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.

Alas! alas! alas! they set up calves in Bethel. They turned aside to Ashteroth, and worshipped the queen of heaven.

16, 17. They provoked him to jealousy with foreign gods, with abomination they provoked him to anger. They sacrificed to demons,

Demons—not to God.

17. Not to God; to gods whom they did not know, to new gods that came newly up, whom your forefathers did not fear.

There is nothing new in religion that is true. The truth is always old. But only imagine a new God! And truly we have had recently some new fashions brought up—some new styles of worship. I think they call them medieval. They certainly are no older than that—“new gods that newly came up, whom your forefathers did not fear.”

18. You are unmindful of the Rock who fathered you, and have forgotten God who formed you.

Israel was nothing apart from God—a little tribe of people—nothing to be compared with the great nations of the earth. Its only reason for existence was its God. He was their centre, their light, their glory, their power. They had gotten away from him who formed them.

19, 20. And when the LORD saw it, he abhorred them, because of the provoking of his sons, and of his daughters. And he said, ‘I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very perverse generation, children in whom is no faith.

There is the mischief—lack of faith. Lack of faith leads to all kinds of sin. Oh! that we had a strong elastic faith to experience the unseen God, and keep to purely spiritual worship, not wanting symbols, signs, and outward tokens, all of which are abominable in his sight, but worshipping the unseen in spirit and in truth.

But the Lord said:—

21. They have moved me to jealousy with what is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those who are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.

And so the idolatrous nations came and conquered Judea. One after another, they trampled down the holy city, and let them see that God could use the nations that they despised to be a scourge on them.

22-25. For a fire is kindled in my anger, and shall burn to the lowest hell and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set the foundations of the mountains on fire. I will heap mischiefs on them; I will expend my arrows on them—They shall be burned with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction; I will also send the teeth of beasts on them, with the poison of serpents of the dust. The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the nursing babe also with the man of grey hairs.

Now read the story of the destruction of Israel and Judea the overthrow of these two kingdoms—and you will see how, word for word, all this came true.

26, 27. I said, "I would scatter them into corners, I would make the memory of them to cease from among men," had I not feared the wrath of the enemy, lest their adversaries should behave themselves strangely, and lest they should say, "Our hand is high, and the LORD has not done all this"‘.

God always looks for some reason for mercy when he is dealing with his people, and he found it here—that the heathen nations would not admit that God had been chastening his erring people like this, but would begin to ascribe their victories to their own demon gods; therefore, he said he would scatter them.

28-30. For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them. Oh that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end! How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had shut them up.

That little people would have been victorious over all their enemies if God had still been with them, but they were defeated and scattered because they had grieved the Lord. Oh! what strength believers might have if they would only believe! If we could only cast ourselves on God in simple, childlike faith, we might play the Samson over again and strike our thousands. But we, too, have little faith in God, even those who have most of it; and when the time of trial comes, we also are a stiff-necked and unbelieving generation, as our fathers were.

31-34. For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges. For their wine is of the wine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter. Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps. Is this not laid up in store with me, and sealed up among my treasures?

What an awful text! God stores man’s sins up—seals them up among their treasures, so that they should not be forgotten, and he will bring them to account.

35, 36. To me belongs vengeance and retribution; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall happen to them shall come quickly. For the LORD shall judge his people,

He will not always let his enemies triumph over them. He will come back to his people whom he seemed to cast away. “The Lord shall judge his people.”

36. And have compassion on his servants, when he sees that their power is gone, and there is no one remaining or left.

He seemed very angry, but how soon he comes back in love and tries his people over again.

37-39. And he shall say, ‘Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted, which ate the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? Let them rise up and help you, and be your protection. See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me; I kill, and I make alive: I wound, and I heal; neither is there any who can deliver out of my hand.’”

Trumpet Calls to Christian Energy: A Second Series of Mr. Spurgeon’s Lord’s Day and Thursday Evening Sermons. 2s. 6d.

Prayer Made Easy. By E. B. WILSON. With Foreword by the Bishop of Durham. Many Christians are conscious of the weakness of their devotions. They yearn to pray. They yearn to possess the praying spirit. For all such this little book has been written. Its counsels are invaluable. Cloth boards, 1/-, by post, 1/2.

Daily, A Help To Family Prayer. By CHARLES F. HARFORD. There are many households where a help in the family worship would be greatly appreciated. This is just the volume for the purpose—direct, concise, explicit. Cloth bound, 2/-post free.

Abide With Us. By CONSTANCE LADY COOTE. A volume of Family Prayers for Daily Use and for Special Occasions. The author throughout preserves a deep sense of reverence, and has the sympathetic touch of an inspired pen. This little work should be of immeasurable use in the family circle. In cloth boards, 2/6 post free. Special edition in French morocco, 3/6 post free.

I feel certain that Spurgeon would not approve of at least some of the preceding books. Editor.