burst with your expanding heart of agony; in vain you kneel until your knees are stiff with prayer: God does not hear you, he does not accept you, until you make mention of Jesus the crucified, his Son, the Saviour of mankind. Oh! it is mournful to see how men try to approach God in any way except through Jesus Christ. You have the Roman Catholic church putting men to penance, in order that they may so come to God. One day this week I went into a Roman Catholic cathedral, and there, to my disgust and horror, I saw poor women on their knees, going entirely around the cathedral, having as a penance to pray before a whole set of pictures that were hanging on the walls. Well, I thought, if this is acceptable to their God, I am sure it would not be to mine. To give these poor women rheumatism, or something worse, in order that God might be pleased with them, is the most extraordinary way of going to do that that I know of. What a God must theirs be, that is pleased with poor souls when they torture themselves. Behold the monk — if he would gratify his god, he must not wash himself; for their god is a god of filth, and according to their own confession, cleanliness is not acceptable to him. Again, he must fast — their god is a god of starvation; it is quite clear he is not our God, — for he is a God of bounty. The poor monk must flog himself: he must flagellate his poor back until the blood runs down in streams; their god delights in the blood of his creatures, evidently, and nothing pleases him so much, according to their own confession, as for his creatures to torture themselves. Happily however, their god has nothing whatever to do with our God. Their god is an old Roman pagan demon that was cursed of old and is cursed now; but our God is a God who takes delight in the happiness of his creatures; who, if there is any merit anywhere, would sooner see it in our happiness than in our sorrow; although, note, that there is no merit in either. When we come to God in penitence we must bring only one oblation, for there is only one way of offering acceptable penitence to God, and that is through Jesus Christ our Lord. We will imagine there is a man over there who is feeling that he has been guilty, but he desires to be forgiven. “Oh!” he says, “I know I am guilty; I feel that I deserve God’s wrath. Well, I will promise I will never be drunk again; I will not swear again; I will henceforth regularly attend the ordinances of God’s house. There I make a resolution that I will be better.” Ah! friend; ah! friend! you will never come to God in penitence that way. Oh man, that way — that way of works — is a way of death. The very first time you put your foot on it I can hear the low mutterings of the thundering curse: “Cursed is every man who does not continue in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them.” Go on with your resolves; try to carry them out; you shall find that this road of yours will grow more difficult every day. The more you do the more you will have to do; when you have climbed a hill, you will see a mountain beyond; when you have forded a stream, you will see a sea before you, and no means of crossing it. The way to heaven through good works would be a very hard one, even if it were possible. Conscience is like the horse leech — it always cries, “Give, give, give.” Conscience is never satisfied with the best works that we can do; it always wants more. But ah, I remind you, man, that if you go on in that way of works, and seek to be forgiven through it, your destruction is as sure as if you ran in the way of sin. Note, oh man, the Jews of old would not accept the righteousness of Christ, and they went about to establish their own righteousness, and would not submit themselves to the righteousness of Christ, and hence they perished, and that without mercy. And so shall you. Oh turn from that way! God will not receive you in it; then turn from it! If you were perfect, and had never broken God’s law at all, then you might be saved by the law; but one sin breaks the law to shivers, and you cannot mend the breach. You are lost if you stand on the footing of works. Come away! then, come away! come to the cross of Christ! There is no way to heaven except by Jesus Christ; come! both from your works and your sins; look to him and live; look to him and see your sins forgiven; look to him, and behold your penitence accepted, and a gracious answer given.
10. III. There are other men who feel, “Well, we know Jesus must forgive our sins; it is through his sufferings that I must be pardoned; but,” they say, “we desire now to be acceptable to God all the days of our life; we will therefore endeavour to come to God in a way in which he shall accept us.” There are many who settle for a way like this, “We will be very scrupulous,” they say, “in all our transactions, exact in our dealings with men, and bountiful in our liberality to God; in this way we shall be accepted. Christ,” they say, “shall be trusted to take away our sins but we will have the clothing of ourselves with a robe of righteousness; we will let Christ wash us, and wash our works too, if he pleases, but at least we will be the authors of our own virtues and excellencies. God shall accept us through what we do; Jesus shall make up the deficiency; he shall darn a hole or two that may occur in the garment, but nevertheless we will stick to the old cloth throughout, and though we do hear that our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, yet we will have them washed, and wear them over again, rags though they are.” Now, note, my hearers, just as when we first come to God we must bring nothing with us but the blood of Christ, so when we come to him afterwards, we must still bring nothing but the same offering. A guilty sinner, when he approaches God’s throne, can never be pardoned, except by pleading the blood once shed by Christ; and the highest saint, the most eminent believer, can no more be accepted by God than the lowliest sinner, unless he still pleads the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. The Arminian, despite his denial of it, has in his own mind, a notion that his acceptance with God in some measure depends upon his own actions. Although many Arminian divines say that they do not believe this, yet they must nevertheless believe it; it lies at the very root and basis of their fallen doctrine. They do believe, that let the Christian fall into sin, God will cast him out of his family, and I say it follows as a necessary influence, that the acceptance of a Christian must on that theory, depend on good works; so that in coming to God he comes through his own good behaviour, and not through what Jesus did. Now, note, this is an obvious falsehood, and as damnable an error as if I were to preach that salvation was entirely by works. There is no part of the Christian’s experience in which a Christian can deal with God otherwise than through Christ. At the beginning it is all through Christ; in the middle it is all through Christ; and in the end it must be the same. If it would be possible for you, my brother, to be completely rid of sin, yet you could not come to God except through Christ. When your faith shall grow into assurance, when the follies of your life shall all be expunged, when your character shall be saintly, when your heart shall be perfectly sanctified, even then the means of access and the mode of acceptance of your soul before God will remain unalterable and unchanged. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, the path for the sinner and the way for the saint. No road to God — even for the holiest man — no road to God’s acceptance, but through Jesus, and through Jesus only.
11. Do not each of us detect in ourselves at times a desire to come to God in some other way than through Jesus Christ? “Now you have preached well,” says Satan; “you have been successful in such-and-such a labour. Ah!” says the devil, “how liberal you have been in such-and-such a cause. Now go to God in prayer.” And we go, and we pray with such assurance; we think we are sure to be heard. But perhaps without our knowing it, there is lurking at the bottom of our excellent fluency in prayer an evil thought that surely God will hear us, for we have been so diligent, and liberal. And on the other hand, when we have been committing sin, when conscience chides us, then we go to the throne, and we are half afraid, because we say God will not hear us. Is not that still pride? Why, were we ever better than we are now? Were we not always, and are we not now, as bad as ever we can be? In ourselves is there anything that can commend us to God? Is not the very fact that when in our good state we come boldly, and when in our low state we come timidly, proof that there is lurking in us a secret suspicion that we are to come to God by something that is in us? Oh! if we could only learn this truth and stand upon it, that our acceptance with God depends upon nothing that we do or can do, nothing that we can think, or feel, or be, but depends wholly and entirely and solely upon what Jesus is, and what he has done, and what he has suffered; let us once get that thought — and it is in the text — we shall then be able, by the divine assistance of the Holy Spirit, to come to God at all times with boldness, knowing that we were so coming through Christ, and therefore we might always come boldly to the throne of grace.
12. Have I here today? — I am sure I have — some timid soul who is afraid to come to God through Christ? Ah! my dear brother, I know
