know your fear, and I can blame you too. What! are you afraid to come to God through Christ, and do you want someone to speak to Christ for you? Oh! foolish heart! You do need a Mediator in coming to God, but you do not need any in coming to Christ. Go to him just as you are, without making yourself any better; go immediately, rags, and sin, and leprosy, and blotches, and sores, and all, directly to him. Do not be afraid that the Father will reject you if you come alone through him. Let me lead you my poor timid brother to this way. Come with me. Do you see that cross? Do you see that glorious man dying on it in agonies that cannot be described? Do you not think that those sufferings are enough to expiate the wrath of God? Why, hear him! Will you not believe what he says? — “It is finished!” he cries before he gives up the ghost. Now, if Jesus thought it was finished, do you not think it is so? If he himself thought that he had done enough, is not that enough for you when it is enough for him? Come boldly, for Jesus smiles upon you. His blood is dropping; his heart is still flowing with the blood and water. Come! none were ever cast out; shall you be the first? Those arms that are nailed to the cross are wide open, as if they would show you that they can receive the greatest of sinners. Those feet that are nailed to the cross are fastened there as if they meant to stop there, and wait to be gracious to you. Oh do you see his pierced side, it seems as if it said to you, “My heart is not hard to reach. See there is a straight road to it opened by the Roman spear. Come, breathe your sighs into my heart, and I will hear and answer.” Come, soul! Come to this way. How safe it is, for over it hangs the banner of Jehovah’s love; and on the ground is the blood mark of the Saviour’s footsteps. This gory pathway to the throne of God, I now entreat you to enter. Jesus made it; Jesus smoothed it; Jesus dyed it with his blood. The stain runs all along a purple clue to guide you through the labyrinths of all your doubts and fears. Come, come away poor soul! Come put your trust alone in Jesus, and then, you do not need to come to God the Father with trembling and with dismay. God help you, timid one, God help you. You have no need to despond: Jesus says he will not cast out anyone who come to him by faith.
13. IV. I shall not keep you much longer, but I must now observe, that there are others who desire to come to God in communion. You will meet every now and then with a devout man who has only very imperfect notions of the gospel, and who, nevertheless, has a kind of reverence for the living God. He is an astronomer, and he will tell you that an irreligious astronomer is mad; he says, that while his eyes look through the telescope upon the wondrous worlds that float in ether, he communes with God, marvels at his power, and admires his matchless benevolence and skill. The geologist, too, will tell you, that when digging into the deep foundations of the world and bringing out those old inhabitants, who in days of yore stalked through gigantic forests, he feels he can talk with God the Eternal One; that those grey hairs of an ancient world remind him of the Ancient of days, and the bones of a buried generation, all remind him of the Eternal One, who was before all things, and by whom all things consist. Now, these men are sincere; but do not imagine for an instant that their devotion is acceptable, or that their communion is true and real, unless in this they tincture and savour their communion with the knowledge, that Jesus Christ is the only way of access to God. Oh, soul, if you wish to walk with God, as Adam did in Eden, and it is quite possible; it you wish to walk with him as Enoch did, and that is quite possible, too; if you wish to see him face to face, and talk to him as a man would talk with his friend, remember you must be set in the cleft of the rock Christ Jesus, or else you cannot do it. Once let a man stand in that cleft and see Jesus’ blood, then he can commune with God in nature readily enough. Standing at the foot of the mountain he may see that hill like a wedge piercing the ebony darkness, and his soul may climb the summit and enter into the invisible; he may look upon that awful summit as upon an ambassador sent from earth to heaven; and his spirit may seem to rise on the mountain top, until it appears to grasp the hand of the Almighty One. But note, the steep summit of fellowship cannot be climbed, except Jesus Christ lends himself to be the sacred ladder, and gives strength to the weary footsteps of our faith. He is the way to God; he is the truth to guide us; he is the life to enable us to run in the road. Without Christ there is no way to communion, no truth in communion, and no life in our pretended fellowship. Christian, take heed that you never try to commune with God except through Jesus Christ. Never try to commune with him even through the Holy Spirit, if you forget Christ. The Holy Spirit acts in communion; but still Christ is the medium through which it flows. The Holy Spirit runs through Christ as through a channel. As water from the conduit runs through the pipe, so fellowship must run through Jesus Christ. There can be no coming of God to us, and no going of our soul to God, except through the highway of communion, Jesus Christ, the man and yet the God.
14. V. And lastly, to conclude: who is there among us who does not desire to come to God in heaven? Is there a man living whose soul is so dead that he has no pantings for another and a better world? Is there a heart so seared that it never longs to be at rest — an eye so blind that it never looks into the hereafter, and a soul so stolid that it never leaps with exulting spirit, in the prospect of a world of joy and happiness? The wild untutored savage of the woods looks to another world, and when some beloved one is buried, he lights a fire upon the grave, to light the spirit through the dreary shades of death, that it may find its way to paradise; and then he sits upon the grave, when the fire is quenched, and sings about the spirit that is gone, and hopes that it has gone to the kingdom of the blessed, to the land of the hereafter. Never is he content, unless he hopes that the spirit of his beloved one is gone to a better land. And shall it be imagined that any of us who are living in a Christian country are shutting our eyes to the future, and never think of looking beyond the grave? Ah! there are many here — no, all of us are longing for another and a better world. Oh world of woe, what would you be, if you were not a stepping stone to a world of bliss? Oh land of graves and shrouds, of pick axe and of spade, what would you be if we did not live through you into the land of light? Oh vale of tears, what would you be, if it were not the pathway to the mountain of transfiguration? Oh valley of Baca, filled with tears of sorrow, until its pools are overflowing! what would you be, if you did not lead to the tabernacles of our God, the peaceful sanctuary in which we hope to live?
15. But there is no way to heaven, whatever our hopes may be, but through Christ. Oh spirit of man, there is no way to the gates of pearl but through the bleeding side of Jesus. These are the gates of paradise — these bleeding wounds. If you wish to find your way to God’s bright throne, first find your way to Jesus’ shameful cross; if you wish to know the way to happiness, tread in that path of misery which Jesus trod. What! attempt another way? Man, are you mad enough to think that you can tear the posts, and bars, and gates of heaven from their perpetual places, and force your way by your created strength? The arm of God shall dash you down to the nethermost pit. Or do you think to purchase a foothold in paradise with your riches and your gold? Fool! what is your gold where streets are made of it, and where the gates are solid pearl — where the foundations are of jasper, and its walls are precious gems? And do you think to get there by your merits? Ah! fool that you are, the angels by pride fell, and by your pride you fall. In your talking of merit you confess that you are Lucifer himself incarnate. Away with you! Heaven is not for such as you are. But do you say, “I will leave my wealth after I have gone; I will build a hospital, or feed the poor.” Then let men pay you. You have worked for your nation, let them pay the debt; let them rear the stony pillar, and set your effigy upon its top. If you have worked for your country, let your country pay you what they owe to you. But God, what does he owe to you? You have forgotten him, you have despised his Son, you have rejected his gospel. Whether you are a warrior, statesman, patriot — let men pay you; God owes you nothing, and all you can do will not bribe him to admit you to his palace, if you do not come in the right way through Jesus Christ, who lived and died, and is alive for evermore, and has the keys of heaven at his belt.
16. Come, now, you who have nothing to bring; come to Christ this morning, you perishing, you guilty, and you lost. God an ambassador stands before you, and as though Christ wooed you, he pleads with you to come to Jesus now. You that are under conviction of sin, and want salvation, believe on him now. In your heart poor sinner, say —
Just as I am, without one plea,
But
