4. This brings us to another point. The experience of the true Christian is a reality; but it never can be known and felt without the Spirit of God. For what is the experience of the Christian? Let me just give a brief picture of some of its scenes. There is a person come into this hall this morning — one of the most reputable men in London. He himself has never committed any outward vice; he has never been dishonest; but he is known as a staunch, upright tradesman. Now, to his astonishment, he is informed that he is a condemned, lost sinner, and just as surely lost as the thief who died for his crimes upon the cross. Do you think that man will believe it? Suppose, however, that he does believe it, simply because he reads it in the Bible, do you think that man will ever be made to feel it? I know you say, “Impossible!” Some of you, even now, perhaps, are saying, “Well, I never should!” Can you imagine that honourable, upright tradesman, saying, “God be merciful to me, a sinner?” — standing side by side with the prostitute and the swearer, and feeling in his own heart as if he had been as guilty as they were, and using just the same prayer, and saying, “Lord, save me, or I perish.” You cannot conceive it, can you? It is contrary to nature that a man who has been so good as he, should put himself down among the chief of sinners. Ah! but that will be done before he will be saved; he must feel that before he can enter heaven. Now, I ask, who can bring him to such a levelling experience as that, except the Spirit of God? You know very well, proud nature will not stoop to it. We are all aristocrats in our own righteousness; we do not like to bend down and come among common sinners. If we are brought there, it must be the Spirit of God who casts us to the ground. Why, I know if anyone had told me that I should ever cry to God for mercy, and confess that I had been the vilest of the vile, I should have laughed in their face; I should have said, “Why I have not done anything particularly wrong; I have not harmed anyone.” And yet I know to this very day I can take my place at the lowest level, and if I can get inside heaven I shall feel happy to sit among the chief of sinners, and praise that Almighty love which has saved even me from my sins. Now, what works this humiliation of heart? Grace. It is contrary to nature for an honest and an upright man in the eye of the world to feel himself a lost sinner. It must be the Holy Spirit’s work, or else it never will be done. Well, after a man has been brought here, can you conceive that man at last conscience stricken, and led to believe that his past life deserves the wrath of God? His first thought would be, “Well, now, I will live better than I ever have lived.” He would say, “Now, I will try and play the hermit, and pinch myself here and there, and deny myself, and do penance; and in that way, by paying attention to the outward ceremonies of religion, together with a high moral character, I do not doubt that I shall blot out whatever slurs and stains there have been.” Can you suppose that man brought at last to feel that, if ever he gets to heaven, he will have to get there through the righteousness of another? “Through the righteousness of another?” he says, “I do not want to be rewarded for what another man does, — not I. If I go there, I will go there and take my chance; I will go there through what I do myself. Tell me something to do, and I will do it; I will be proud to do it, however humiliating it may be, so that I may at last win the love and esteem of God.” Now, can you conceive such a man as that brought to feel that he can do nothing? — that, good man as he thinks himself to be, he cannot do anything whatever to merit God’s love and favour; and that, if he goes to heaven, he must go through what Christ did? Just the same as the drunkard must go there through the merits of Christ, so this moral man must enter into life, having nothing around him but Christ’s perfect righteousness, and being washed in the blood of Jesus. We say that this is so contrary to human nature, so diametrically opposed to all the instincts of our poor fallen humanity, that nothing but the Spirit of God can ever bring a man to strip himself of all self-righteousness, and of all creature strength, and compel him to rest and lean simply and wholly upon Jesus Christ the Saviour.
13. These two experiences would be sufficient to prove the necessity of the Holy Spirit to make a man a Christian. But let me now describe a Christian as he is after his conversion. Trouble comes, storms of trouble, and he looks the tempest in the face and says, “I know that all things work together for my good.” His children die, the partner of his bosom is carried to the grave; he says, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” His farm fails, his crop is blighted; his business prospects are clouded, all seems to go, and he is left in poverty: he says, “Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail and the fields shall yield no food; the flocks shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.” You see him next laid upon a sickbed himself, and when he is there, he says, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted, for before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I have kept your Word.” You see him approaching at last the dark valley of the shadow of death, and you hear him cry, “Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; your rod and your staff comfort me, and you yourself are with me.” Now I ask you what makes this man calm in the midst of all these varied trials, and personal troubles, if it is not the Spirit of God? Oh, you who doubt the influence of the Spirit, produce the like without him, go and die as Christians die, and live as they live, and if you can show the same calm resignation, the same quiet joy, and the same firm belief that adverse things shall nevertheless work together for good, then we may be, perhaps, at liberty to resign the point, and not until then. The high and noble experience of a Christian in times of trial and suffering, proves that there must be the operation of the Spirit of God.
14. But look at the Christian, too, in his joyous moments. He is rich. God has given him all his heart’s desire on earth. Look at him: he says, “I do not value these things at all, except as they are the gift of God; I hold them loosely and, notwithstanding this house and home, and all these comforts, ‘I am willing to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.’ It is true, I want nothing here on earth; but still I feel that to die would be gain to me, even though I left all these.” He holds earth loosely; he does not grasp it with a tight hand, but looks upon it all as dust, — a thing which is to pass away. He takes very little pleasure in it, saying, —
I’ve no abiding city here,
I seek a city out of sight.
Note that man; he has plenty of room for pleasures in this world, but he drinks from a higher cistern. His pleasure springs from things unseen; his happiest moments happen when he can shut all these good things out, and when he can come to God as a poor guilty sinner, and come to Christ and enter into fellowship with him, and rise into nearness of access and confidence, and boldly approach to the throne of the heavenly grace. Now, what is it that keeps a man who has all these mercies from setting his heart upon the earth? This is a wonder indeed, that a man who has gold and silver, and flocks and herds, should not make these his god, but that he should still say, —
There’s nothing round this spacious earth
That suits my large desire;
To boundless joy and solid mirth
My nobler thoughts aspire.
These are not my treasure; my treasure is in heaven, and in heaven only. What can do this? No mere moral virtue. No doctrine of the Stoic ever brought a man to such a state as that. No, it must be the work of the Spirit, and the work of the Spirit alone, that can lead a man to live in heaven, while there is a temptation to him to live on earth. I do not wonder that a poor man looks forward to heaven; he has nothing to look upon on earth. When there is a thorn in the nest, I do not wonder that the lark flies up, for there is no rest for him below. When you are beaten and chafed by trouble, no wonder you say, —
Jerusalem! my happy home!
Name ever dear to me;
When shall my labours have an end,
In joy, and peace, and thee?
But
