love of his own heart, and is not caused by anything in us.
19. Another thing we can bear testimony to, is this — that the love of God is unconquerable. This is my witness, and the witness of all the thousands here today. We fought against God’s love at first; Jesus knocked at the door, but we would not open to him; he invited, but we would not come; he called, but we would not listen. We can say with deepest grief we treated our best friend most shamefully. He knocked at our door in the night with his hair wet with dew and his locks filled with the drops of the night, but we paid no attention to him. In sloth and pride we still kept the bed of indolence and self-confidence, and we would not rise to let him in. And we can testify, that if his love could have been conquered, we would have conquered it, for we shot out the envenomed shafts of ingratitude, we held up against him perpetually the shield of our hard-heartedness, and if he could have been overcome, if he were not an Almighty Saviour, we should have defeated him, and have been still his enemies. You sinners, we can affirm that divine love is a love which many waters cannot quench, and which the floods cannot drown.
20. We can yet again bear another testimony to God’s love. We can say concerning his love that it has never been diminished by all the sins we have ever committed since we believed. We have been truly guilty, and we blush to say it. We have often revolted, but we have never found him unwilling to forgive. We have gone to him laden with guilt, but we have come away with our burden removed. Oh! if God could ever cast away his people, he would have cast me away. I am sure God never turns his children out of doors, or this would have been my lot long ago. I am certain of the doctrine of final perseverance, because I have persevered as long as I have. If God meant to take my name out of the covenant, he has had many strong reasons enough long before this.
If ever it should come to pass,
That sheep of Christ should fall away,
My fickle feeble soul, alas!
Would fall a thousand times a day;
Were not your love as firm as free,
You soon would’st take it Lord from me.
No, we have known, we have believed the love of God for us is not to be cut asunder by our sins, nor diminished by our unworthiness.
21. And we may yet say one more thing. We have known and we have believed the love of God for us to be perfectly immutable. We have changed, but he has never changed. We have doubted him; but when we did not believe he has remained faithful. We have sometimes been in the greatest depths, but never too low for his long arm to reach. We have sometimes, it is true, run so far from him that we could not see him, but he could always see us. We have never found an end to his all sufficiency, or, a limit to his omnipotence. We have never found a change in his love,
Immutable his will,
Though dark may be my grave;
His loving heart is still
Unchangeably the same.
My soul through many changes goes;
His love no variation knows.
We have known this. We have tasted and handled this. We are not to be argued out of it. We are sure it is true. God is immutable. Because he has been immutable; to us, so far, “we have known and believed the love that God has for us.”
22. I will make only one other remark here, and that is, we can bear our willing witness that the love which God has for us has been an unfailing support in all our trials. I cannot speak as a grey headed man of the storms and troubles which many of you have endured; but I have had more joys and more sorrows in the last few years than any man in this place, for my life has been compressed as with a Bramah {a} press — a vast mass of emotion into one year. I have gone to the very bottoms of the mountains, as some of you know, in a night that never can be erased from my memory, a night connected with this place. I have had to pass also through severe suffering and trial from the calumny and scorn of man, with abuse hailed pitilessly on my head. And I have had to pass through severe personal bodily pain. But as far as my witness goes, I can say that he is able to save to the uttermost and in the last extremity, and he has been a good God to me. I have been unfaithful; he has forgiven that, and will forgive; but he never has been unfaithful to me; and if I had the choosing of the rest of my life I would not choose, but let him map my way to the end as he has done until now, for “surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” As for you grey headed men now present, what experiences you could recount. You remember the many deliverances you have had under your sharp afflictions. You have seen a wife buried, but you have seen your God living. You have seen your children carried one after another to the tomb, but you have been able to say “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, and blessed be his name.” You have had your dearest friends torn from you, but still have said:
How can I bereaved be
Since I cannot part with thee.
You have had attacks from Satan, you have had doubts and fears — you have been assailed by men, by earth and by hell, but you can say —
When trouble like a gloomy cloud
Has gathered thick and thundered loud;
He near my soul has always stood,
His lovingkindness, oh how good.
Your testimony is without a flaw. Not one good thing has failed of all that the Lord God has promised, he has never left you, never forsaken you. But to this day you can say, glory be to the name of an unchanging God, the same yesterday, today, and for ever.
23. III. And now the last point is — the practical use of this great truth. It is THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN ENCOURAGEMENT. Will you just think that I am coming down out of the pulpit now to you. I cannot perform much pastoral visitation in going from house to house, and so let us do it wholesale this morning, and may the Spirit of God make it a reality.
24. Dear brothers and sisters, there are some of you here today who have been very much and very severely tried, for your path has been through fire and through water. You are servants of God, and in looking back you can say that you have been helped so far. Just now your health and your spirits are failing you; you are brought very low indeed. Permit your minister to take hold of your hand, and look you in the face. My dear brother, will you dishonour your God now? You say, “No, God forbid that I should dishonour him.” My dear friend, you have now before you a noble opportunity — an opportunity which an angel might well envy you; you have a noble opportunity of honouring God in the fire. I will not speak lightly of your troubles; I will suppose them to be just as great as you say they are. But will you glorify him in them all? Come, you have trusted him many times, will you trust him now? Perhaps Satan has a commission from on high to try you, and sift you in his sieve. He has been before God, and your Lord has said to him, “Have you considered my servant Job?” “Ah,” Satan says, “he serves you now, but you have put a hedge around him and blessed him, but let me touch him”; and he has come down to you, and he has afflicted you in your estate, afflicted you in your family, and at last he has afflicted you in your body. Shall Satan be the conqueror? shall grace give way? Oh my dear brother, stand up now and say once more, once for all, “I tell you Satan, the grace of God is more than a match for you; he is with me, and in all this I will not utter one word against the Lord my God. He does all things well — well, even now, and I do rejoice in him.”
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