low. Popular applause has its foot in the sand, even when it has its head among the stars. I have known many who in a cottage seemed to fear God, but in a mansion have forgotten him. When their daily bread was earned with the sweat of their brow, then they served the Lord, and went up to his house with gladness. But their seeming religion all departed when their flocks and herds increased, and their gold and silver was multiplied. It is no easy thing to stand the trial of prosperity. You know the old fable; I will just frame it in a Christian light. When the winds of affliction blow on a Christian’s head, he just pulls around him the coat of heavenly consolation, and girds his religion about him all the tighter for the fury of the storm. But when the sun of prosperity shines on him, the traveller grows warm, and full of delight and pleasure, he takes off his coat, and lays it aside; so that what the storms of affliction never could accomplish, the soft hand and the witchery of prosperity has been able to perform. It has loosened the loins of many a mighty man. It has been the Delilah that has shorn the locks and taken away the strength of many a Samson. This rock has witnessed the most fatal wrecks.
More the treacherous calm I dread,
Than tempests rolling over head.
But shall we be able to say after passing through prosperity, “This is not my rest, this is not my God. Let him give me what he may, I will thank him for it, yet I will rejoice in the giver rather than the gift; I will say to the Lord ‘You only are my rest.’ ” It is well if you can come out of these scales enabled honestly to hope that you are not found wanting.
14. There are again the scales of temptation. A great many men seem to run well for a while; but it is temptation that tries the Christian. In your business you are now honest and upright, but suppose a speculation crosses your path, which involves only a very slight departure from the high standard of Christianity, and indeed would not involve any departure from the low standard which your fellow tradesmen follow. Do you think you would be able to say “How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” Could you say, “Should such a man as I do this? Shall I hasten to be rich, for if I do I shall not be innocent?” How has it been with you? You have had your times of trial. There has been an opportunity of making a little: have you taken it? Has God enabled you to endure when tempted, whether to unlawful gain, or to lustful pleasure, or to pride and vanity? Have you been enabled to stand firm against all these, and to say, “Get behind me Satan for you do not savour the things which are of God, but those which are of man and of sin?” How have you stood the test of temptation? If you have never been tempted you know nothing about this. How can we tell the worthiness of the ship until she has been at sea in the storm? You cannot know what you are until you have been through the practical test of every day life. How then has it been with you? Have you been weighed in the balance, and have you been enabled to say, “I know through grace I have been kept in the hour of temptation, and with the temptation the Lord has always sent a way of escape. And here I am glorying in his grace; I cannot rest in myself, but still I can say, ‘I am truly his.’ The work within me is not of man, neither by man: it is the work of the Spirit. I have found help and support when my heart and my flesh have failed me.”
15. It is probable, my hearers, that most of you are professors of religion; let me ask you again very earnestly to test and try yourselves, whether your religion is real or not. If there are many false prophets in the world, and those prophets have followers, must there not also be many false men who are fatally deceived? Do not suppose, I beseech you, because you are a deacon, or have been baptized, or are a member of the church, or are professors, you are therefore safe. The bleaching bones of the skeletons of self-deceived ones should warn you. On the rock of presumption thousands have been wrecked that once sailed merrily enough. Take care, oh mariner! though your bark may be gaily trimmed and may be brightly painted, yet it is none the surer after all. Take heed, lest the rocks are seen beneath the keel, lest they pierce you through, and lest the waters of destruction overwhelm you. Oh! do not, I entreat you, say, “Why make all this fuss? I dare say I shall be all right at last.” Do not let your eternal state be a matter of suspicion or doubt. Decide now, I beseech you, decide now in your conscience whether you are Christ’s or not. Of all the most miserable men in the world, and the most hopeless, I think those are most to be pitied who are indifferent and careless about religion. There are some men whose feelings never run deeper than their skin; they either have no heart, or else it is so surrounded with fatness that you can never touch them. I like to see a man either desponding or rejoicing; either anxious about his eternal state or else confident about it. But you who never will question yourselves — you are just like the bull going to the slaughter, or like the sheep that will enter the very slaughter house and lick the knife that is about to take its blood. I wish I could speak this morning somewhat more earnestly. Oh that some sparks from the Divine fire could now light up my soul; I think I could speak to you like some of the prophets of old, when they stood in the midst of a professing generation, to warn them. Oh that the very voice of God would speak to each heart this morning! While God is thundering on high may he thunder below in your souls! Be warned, my hearers, against self-deception. Be true to yourselves. If God is God, serve him, and do it truly; if the devil is God, serve him, and serve him honestly, and serve him faithfully. But do not pretend to be serving God, while you are really indifferent and careless about it.
16. II. I must now close, by endeavouring to speak about THE LAST GREAT BALANCE; and here I would speak very solemnly, and may the Spirit of God be with us. Time shall soon be over; eternity must soon begin; death is hurrying onward; the pale horse at his utmost speed is coming to every inhabitant of this earth. The arrow of death is fitted to the string, and soon it shall be sent home. Man’s heart is the target. Then, after death, comes the judgment; the dread assize shall soon commence. The trump of the archangel shall awake the sleeping myriads, and, standing on their feet, they shall confront the God against whom they have sinned. I think I see the scales hanging in heaven, so massive that no one but the hand of Deity can uphold them. Let me turn my eye upward, and remember that hour when I must myself enter those scales and be weighed once and for all. Come, let me speak for each man present. Those scales up there are exact; I may deceive my fellow men now, but I cannot deceive God then. I may be weighed in the balances of earth, which shall give only a partial verdict, and so commit myself to a false idea that I am what I am not, that I am hopeful when I am hopeless. But those scales are true. There is no means whatever of flattering them into a false declaration; they will cry aloud and not spare. When I get there, the voice of flattery shall be changed into the voice of honesty. Here I may go daily on crying, “Peace, peace, when there is no peace”; but there the naked truth shall startle me, and not a single word of consolation shall be given to me that is not true. Let me therefore ponder the fact, that those scales are exactly true and cannot be deceived. Let me remember also, that whether I wish to or not, into those scales I must go. God will not take me on my profession. I may bring my witnesses with me; I may bring my minister and the deacons of the church to give me a character reference, which might be thought all sufficient among men, but God will tolerate no subterfuge. He will put me into the scales whatever I may be; whatever the opinion of others may be of me, and whatever my own profession. And let me remember, too, that I must be altogether weighed in the scales. I cannot hope that God will weigh my head and pass over my heart — that because I have correct notions of doctrine, therefore he will forget that my heart is impure, or my hands guilty of iniquity. My all must be cast into the scales. Come, let me stretch my imagination, and picture myself about to be put into those scales. Shall I be able to walk boldly up and enter them, knowing whom I have believed, and being persuaded that the blood of Christ and his perfect righteousness shall bear me harmless through it all; or shall I be dragged with terror and dismay? Shall the angel come and say, “You must enter?” Shall I bend my knee and cry, “Oh, it is all right,” or shall I seek to escape? Now, thrust into the scale, do I see myself hesitating for one solemn moment. My feet have touched the bottom of the scales, and there stand those everlasting weights, and now which way are they turned? Which way shall it be? Do I descend in the scale with joy and delight, being found through Jesus’ righteousness to be full weight, and so accepted; or must I rise, light, frivolous, unsound in all my fancied hopes, and kick the beam? Oh, shall it be, that I must go where the
