reclaimed? Why? For this reason, that it is a poor dilution of Christianity. It is something like it, but it is not the bold, broad Christianity of the Bible; it is not the full gospel of the blessed God, for that has power to save. But if they do believe that theirs is the gospel, let them come out to preach it, and let them strive with all their might to win souls from sin, which is rife enough, God knows. We say again, that we have proof positive in cases even here before us, that Christ is mighty to save even the worst of men — to turn them from follies in which they have too long indulged, and we believe that the same gospel preached elsewhere would produce the same results.
11. The best proof you can ever have of God’s being mighty to save, dear hearers, is that he saved you. Ah! my dear hearer, it would be a miracle if he should save your fellow who stands by your side; but it would be more a miracle if he would save you. What are you this morning? Answer! “I am an infidel,” one says; “I hate and despise Christ’s religion.” But suppose, sir, there should be such a power in that religion that one day you would be brought to believe it! What would you say then? Ah! I know you would be in love with that gospel for ever; for you would say, “I above all men was the last to receive it; and yet here I am, I do not know not how, brought to love it.” Oh! such a man when constrained to believe makes the most eloquent preacher in the world. “Ah! but,” says another, “I have been a Sabbath breaker upon principle, I despise the Sabbath, I hate utterly and entirely everything religious.” Well, I can never prove religion to you to be true, unless it should ever lay hold of you, and make you a new man. Then you will say there is something in it. “We speak of what we do know, and testify of what we have seen.” When we have felt the change it works in ourselves, then we speak of facts, and not of fancies, and we speak very boldly too. We say again, then, he is “mighty to save.”
12. III. But now it is asked, WHY IS CHRIST “MIGHTY TO SAVE?” To this there are various answers.
13. First, if we understand the word “save,” in the popular acceptance of the word, which is not, after all, the full one, though a true one — if we understand salvation to mean the pardon of sin and salvation from hell, Christ is mighty to save, because of the infinite efficacy of his atoning blood. Sinner! black as you are with sin, Christ this morning is able to make you whiter than the driven snow. You ask why. I will tell you. He is able to forgive, because he has been punished for your sin. If you do know and feel yourself to be a sinner, if you have no hope or refuge before God but in Christ, then let it be known that Christ is able to forgive, because he was once punished for the very sin which you have committed, and therefore he can freely remit, because the punishment has been entirely paid by himself. Whenever I get on this subject I am tempted to tell a story; and though I have told it times enough in the hearing of many of you, others of you have never heard it, and it is the simplest way I know of explaining the belief I have in the atonement of Christ. Once a poor Irishman came to me in my vestry. He announced himself in this way: “Your reverence, I’m come to ask you a question.” “In the first place,” I said, “I am not a reverend, nor do I claim the title; and in the next place, why do not you go and ask your priest that question?” He said, “Well, your rev — sir, I meant — I did go to him, but he did not answer me to my satisfaction exactly; so I have come to ask you, and if you will answer this you will set my mind at peace, for I am much disturbed about it.” “What is the question?” I said. “Why this. You say, and others say too, that God is able to forgive sin. Now, I cannot see how he can be just, and yet forgive sin: for,” said this poor man, “I have been so greatly guilty that if God Almighty does not punish me he ought, I feel that he would not be just if he were to allow me to go without punishment. How, then, sir, can it be true that he can forgive, and still retain the title of just?” “Well,” I said, “it is through the blood and merits of Jesus Christ.” “And” he said, “but then I do not understand what you mean by that. It is the kind of answer I got from the priest, but I wanted him to explain it to me more fully, how it was that the blood of Christ could make God just. You say it does, but I want to know how.” “Well, then,” I said, “I will tell you what I think to be the whole system of atonement, which I think is the sum and substance, the root, the marrow, and the essence of all the gospel. This is the way Christ is able to forgive. Suppose,” I said, “you had killed some one. You were a murderer; you were condemned to die, and you deserved it.” “Faith,” he said, “yes I would deserve it.” “Well, her Majesty is very desirous of saving your life, and yet at the same time universal justice demands that someone should die on account of the deed that is done. Now, how is she to manage it?” He said, “That is the question. I cannot see how she can be inflexibly just, and yet allow me to escape.” “Well,” I said, “suppose, Pat, I would go to her and say, ‘Here is this poor Irishman, he deserves to be hanged, your Majesty; I do not want to quarrel with the sentence, because I think it is just; but, if you please, I so love him that if you were to hang me instead of him, I would be very willing.’ Pat, suppose she would agree to it, and hang me instead of you, what then? would she be just in letting you go?” “Indeed” he said, “I would think she would. Would she hang two for one thing? I should say not. I’d walk away, and there is not a policeman that would touch me for it.” “Ah!” I said, “that is how Jesus saves. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘I love these poor sinners; let me suffer instead of them!’ ‘Yes,’ said God, ‘you shall’; and on the tree he died, and suffered the punishment which all his elect people ought to have suffered; so that now all who believe on him, thus proving themselves to be his chosen, may conclude that he was punished for them, and that therefore they never can be punished.” “Well,” said he, looking me in the face once more, “I understand what you mean; but how is it, if Christ died for all men, that notwithstanding, some men are punished again? For that is unjust.” “Ah!” I said, “I never told you that. I say to you that he has died for all who believe on him, and all who repent, and that was punished for their sins so absolutely and so truly, that not one of them shall ever be punished again.” “Faith,” said the man, clapping his hands, “that is the gospel; if it is not, then I do not know anything, for no man could have made that up; it is so wonderful. Ah!” he said, as he went down the stairs, “Pat’s safe now; with all his sins about him he will trust in the man that died for him, and so he shall be saved.” Dear hearer, Christ is mighty to save, because God did not turn away the sword, but he sheathed it in his own Son’s heart; he did not remit the debt, for it was paid in drops of precious blood; and now the great receipt is nailed to the cross, and our sins with it, so that we may go free if we are believers in him. For this reason he is “mighty to save,” in the true sense of the word.
14. But in the larger sense of the word, understanding it to mean all that I have said it does mean, he is “mighty to save.” How is it that Christ is able to make men repent, to make men believe, and to make them turn to God? One answers, “Why by the eloquence of preachers.” God forbid we should ever say that! It is “not by might nor by power.” Others replying, “It is by the force of moral persuasion.” God forbid we should say “indeed” to that; for moral persuasion has been tried long enough on man, and yet it has been a complete failure. How does he do it? We answer, by something which some of you despise, but which, nevertheless, is a fact. He does it by the Omnipotent influence of his Divine Spirit. While men are hearing the word (in those whom God will save) the Holy Spirit works repentance; he changes the heart and renews the soul. True, the preaching is the instrument, but the Holy Spirit is the great agent. It is certain that the truth is the means of saving but it is the Holy Spirit applying the truth which saves souls. Ah! and with this power of the Holy Spirit we may go to the most debased and degraded of men, and we need not be afraid that God is not able to save them. If God should please, the Holy Spirit could at this moment make every one of you fall on your knees, confess your sins, and turn to God. He is an Almighty Spirit, able to do wonders. In the life of Whitfield, we read that sometimes under one of his sermons two thousand people would at once profess to be saved, and were truly so, many of them. We ask why it was. At other times he preached just as powerfully, and not one soul was saved. Why? Because in the one case the Holy Spirit went with the Word and in the other case it did not. All the heavenly result of preaching is owing to the Divine Spirit sent from above. I am nothing; my
