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SPURGEON'S BOOKS

ARE,

.50 each.

IN PRESS:

GLEANINGS AMONG THE SHEAVES.

New York:

SHELDON AND COMPANY,

THE NUMEROUS HEARERS

AND TO

THE INNUMERABLE READERS

OF THE

This unpretentious little Volume

IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED

THE STEMS GROW UP EVERY WEEK:

THE SHOCKS APPEAR ONCE A MONTH:

THE SHEAVES ARE BOUND TOGETHER ONCE A YEAR:

And it is thought that these samples, gleaned from the Sermons, will be welcome to many, but chiefly to those who are most familiar with the ample fields from which they are gathered.

GLEANINGS AMONG THE SHEAVES.

The promises of God are to the believer an inexhaustible mine of wealth. Happy is it for him if he knows how to search out their secret veins, and enrich himself with their hid treasures. They are an armory, containing all manner of offensive and defensive weapons. Blessed is he who has learned to enter into the sacred arsenal, to put on the breastplate and the helmet, and to lay his hand to the spear and to the sword. They are a surgery, in which the believer will find all manner of restoratives and blessed elixirs; nor lacks there an ointment for every wound, a cordial for every faintness, a remedy for every disease. Blessed is he who is well skilled in heavenly pharmacy, and knoweth how to lay hold on the healing virtues of the promises of God. The promises are to the Christian a storehouse of food. They are as the granaries which Joseph built in Egypt, or as the golden pot wherein the manna was preserved. Blessed is he who can take the five barley loaves and fishes of promise, and break them till his five thousand necessities shall all be supplied, and he is able to gather up baskets full of fragments. The promises are the Christian's Magna Charta of liberty; they are the title deeds of his heavenly estate. Happy is he who knoweth how to read them well, and call them all his own. Yea, they are the jewel room in which the Christian's crown treasures are preserved. The regalia are his, secretly to admire to-day, which he shall openly wear in Paradise hereafter. He is already privileged as a king with the silver key that unlocks the strong room; he may even now grasp the sceptre, wear the crown, and put upon his shoulders the imperial mantle. O, how unutterably rich are the promises of our faithful, covenant-keeping God! If we had the tongue of the mightiest of orators, and if that tongue could be touched with a live coal from off the altar, yet still it could not utter a tenth of the praises of the exceeding great and precious promises of God. Nay, they who have entered into rest, whose tongues are attuned to the lofty and rapturous eloquence of cherubim and seraphim, even they can never tell the height and depth, the length and breadth of the unsearchable riches of Christ, which are stored up in the treasure-house of God--the promises of the covenant of His grace.

The Lord gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.

It is a tough battle which the Christian is called to fight; not one which carpet knights might win; no easy skirmish which he might gain, who dashed to battle on some sunshiny day, looked at the host, then turned his courser's rein, and daintily dismounted at the door of his silken tent. It is not a campaign which he shall win, who, but a raw recruit to-day, foolishly imagines that one week of service will insure a crown of glory. It is a life-long war; a contest which will require all our strength, if we are to be triumphant; a battle at which the stoutest heart might quail; a fight from which the bravest would shrink, did he not remember that the Lord is on his side; therefore whom shall he fear? God is the strength of his life: of whom shall he be afraid? This fight is not one of main force, or physical might; if it were, we might the sooner win it; but it is all the more dangerous from the fact that it is a strife of mind, a contest of heart, a struggle of the spirit--ofttimes an agony of the soul.

Do you wonder that the Christian is called to conflict? God never gives strong faith without fiery trial; he will not build a strong ship, without subjecting it to very mighty storms; he will not make you a mighty warrior, if he does not intend to try your skill in battle. The sword of the Lord must be used; the blades of heaven must be smitten against the armor of the evil one, and yet they shall not break, for they are of true Jerusalem metal, which shall never snap. We shall conquer, if we begin the battle in the right way. If we have sharpened our swords on the cross, we have nothing whatever to fear; for though we may be sometimes cast down and discomforted, we shall assuredly at last put to flight all our adversaries, for we are the sons of God even now. Why, then, should we fear? Who shall bid us "stay," if God bid us advance?

It is said, that when the stars cannot be seen during the day from the ordinary level of the earth, if one should go down into a dark well, they would be visible at once. And certainly it is a fact, that the best of God's promises are usually seen by His Church when she is in her darkest trials. As sure as ever God puts His children in the furnace, He will be in the furnace with them. I do not read that Jacob saw the angel, until he came into a position where he had to wrestle, and then the wrestling Jacob saw the wrestling angel. I do not know that Joshua ever saw the angel of God, till he was by Jericho; and then Joshua saw the angelic warrior. I do not know that Abraham ever saw the Lord, till he had become a stranger and a wanderer in the plains of Mamre, and then the Lord appeared unto him as a wayfaring man. It is in our most desperate sorrows that we have our happiest experiences. You must go to Patmos to see the revelation. It is only on the barren, storm-girt rock, shut out from all the world's light, that we can find a fitting darkness, in which we can view the light of heaven undistracted by the shadows of earth.

The Christian's battle-field is here, but the triumphal procession is above. This is the land of the sword and the spear: that is the land of the wreath and the crown. This is the land of the garment rolled in blood and of the dust of the fight: that is the land of the trumpet's joyful sound, the place of the white robe and of the shout of conquest. O, what a thrill of joy shall be felt by all the blessed, when their conquests shall be complete in heaven; when death itself, the last of foes, shall be slain; when Satan shall be dragged captive at the chariot wheels of Christ; when the great shout of universal victory shall rise from the hearts of all the redeemed! What a moment of pleasure shall that be!

Something of the joy of victory we know even here. Have you ever struggled against an evil heart, and at last overcome it? Have you ever wrestled hard with a strong temptation, and known what it was to sing with thankfulness, "When I said my feet slipped, Thy mercy, O Lord, held me up?" Have you, like Bunyan's Christian, fought with Apollyon, and after a fierce contest, put him to flight? Then you have had a foretaste of the heavenly triumph--just an imagining of what the ultimate victory will be. God gives you these partial triumphs, that they may be earnests of the future. Go on and conquer, and let each conquest, though a harder one, and more strenuously contested, be to you as a pledge of the victory of heaven.

"The Lord turned the captivity of Job." So, then, our longest sorrows have a close, and there is a bottom to the profoundest depths of our misery. Our winters shall not frown forever: summer shall soon smile. The tide shall not eternally ebb out: the floods must retrace their march. The night shall not hang its darkness forever over our souls: the sun shall yet arise with healing beneath his wings. "The Lord turned the captivity of Job." Thus, too, our sorrows shall have an end when God has gotten His end in them. The ends in the case of Job were these, that Satan might be defeated, foiled with his own weapons, blasted in his hopes when he had everything his own way. God, at Satan's challenge, had stretched forth his hand and touched Job in his bone and in his flesh; and yet the tempter could not prevail against him, but received his rebuff in those conquering words, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him." When Satan is defeated, then shall the battle cease. The Lord aimed also at the trial of Job's faith. Many weights were hung upon this palm-tree, but it still grew uprightly. The fire had been fierce, yet the gold was undiminished; only the dross was consumed. Another purpose the Lord had was His own glory. And truly He was glorified abundantly. God hath gotten unto His great name and His wise counsels, eternal renown, through that grace by which He supported His poor afflicted servant under the heaviest troubles which ever fell to the lot of man. God had another end, and that also was served. Job had been sanctified by his afflictions. His spirit was mellowed, and any self-justification which lurked within was fairly driven out. And now that God's gracious designs are answered, He removes the rod; He takes the melted silver from the midst of the glowing coals. God doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men for nought, and He shows this by the fact He never afflicts them longer than there is a need for it. He never suffers them to be one moment longer in the furnace than is absolutely requisite to serve the purposes of His wisdom and of His love. "The Lord turned the captivity of Job." Despair not, then, afflicted believer; he that turned the captivity of Job can turn thy captivity as the streams in the south. He shall make thy vineyard again to blossom, and thy field to yield her fruit. Thou shalt again come forth with those that make merry, and once more shall the song of gladness be on thy lip. Let not Despair rivet his cruel fetters about thy soul. Hope yet, for there is hope concerning this matter. Trust thou still, for there is ground of confidence. He shall bring thee up again, rejoicing, out of captivity, and thou shalt yet sing to his praise, "Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness."

When once the human heart is put under the microscope of Scripture, and we see it with a spiritual eye, we perceive it to be so vile, that we are quite sure it would be just as impossible to expect to find good works in an unrighteous, unconverted man, as to hope to see fire burning in the midst of the ocean. The two things would be incongruous. Our good works, if we have any, spring from a real conversion; yet more, they spring also from a constant spiritual influence exercised upon us, from the time of conversion even until the hour of death. Ah, Christian, thou wouldst have no good works if thou hadst no fresh grace day by day! Thou wouldst not find the grace given thee at the first hour sufficient to produce fruit to-day. It is not like the planting of a tree in our hearts, which naturally of itself bringeth forth fruit; but the sap cometh up from the root Jesus Christ. We are not trees by ourselves, but we are branches fixed on the Living Vine.

Our good works spring from union with Christ. The more a man knows and feels himself to be one with Jesus, the more holy will he be. Why is a Christian's character like Christ's character? Only for this reason, that he is joined and united to the Lord Jesus. Why does the branch bring forth grapes? Simply because it has been engrafted into the vine, and therefore it partakes of the nature of the stem. So, Christian, the only way whereby thou canst bring forth fruit to God is by being grafted into Christ and united with him. If you think you can walk in holiness without keeping up perpetual fellowship with Christ, you have made a great mistake. If you would be holy, you must live close to Jesus. Good works spring only thence. Hence we draw the most powerful reasons against anything like trusting in works; for as works are only the gift of God, how utterly impossible it is for an unconverted man to produce any such good works in himself. And if they are God's gifts, how little of our merit can there be in them!

It is the distinguishing mark of God's people that they know the love of Christ. Without exception, all those who have passed from death unto life, whatever they may not know, have learned this. And without exception, all those who are not saved, whatever they may know besides, know nothing of this. For to know the love of Christ, to taste its sweetness, to realize it personally, experimentally, and vitally, as shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, is the privilege of the child of God alone. This is the secure enclosure into which the stranger cannot enter. This is the garden of the Lord, so well protected by walls and hedges that no wild boar of the wood can enter. Only the redeemed of the Lord shall walk here. They, and only they, may pluck the fruits, and content themselves with the delights thereof.

How important, then, becomes the question, Do I know the love of Christ? Have I felt it? Do I understand it? Is it shed abroad in my heart? Do I know that Jesus loves me? Is my heart quickened, and animated, and warmed, and attracted towards Him through the great truth that it recognizes and rejoices in, that Christ has really loved me and chosen me, and set His heart upon me?

But while it is true that every child of God knows the love of Christ, it is equally true that all the children of God do not know this love to the same extent.

There are in Christ's family, babes, young men, strong men, and fathers. And as they grow and progress in all other matters, so they most certainly make advances here. Indeed, an increase of love, a more perfect apprehension of Christ's love, is one of the best and most infallible gauges whereby we may test ourselves whether we have grown in grace or not. If we have grown in grace, it is absolutely certain that we shall have advanced in our knowledge and reciprocation of the love of Christ. Many have believed in Jesus, and know a little of His love; but, O! it is little indeed they know, in comparison with some others who have been brought into the inner chamber, and made to drink of the spiced wine of Christ's pomegranate. Some have begun to climb the mountain, and the view which lies at their feet is lovely and passing fair, but the landscape is not such as would greet their eyes if they could but stand where advanced saints are standing, and could look to the east and to the west, to the north and to the south, and see all the lengths, and breadths, and depths, and heights of the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.

The sway of Christ as King, according to David's description, is like "Clear shining after rain," whereby the tender grass is made to spring out of the earth. So have we often seen it. After a heavy shower of rain, or after a continued rainy season, when the sun shines, there is a delightful clearness and freshness in the air that we seldom perceive at other times. Perhaps the brightest weather is just when the rain has ceased, when the wind has drifted away the clouds, and the sun peers forth from his chambers to gladden the earth with his smiles. And thus is it with the Christian's exercised heart. Sorrow does not last forever. After the pelting rain of adversity cometh ever and anon the clear shining. Tried believer, consider this. After all thy afflictions there remaineth a rest for the people of God. There is a clear shining coming to thy soul when all this rain is past. When thy time of rebuke is over and gone, it shall be to thee as the earth when the tempest has sobbed itself to sleep, when the clouds have rent themselves to rags, and the sun peereth forth once more as a bridegroom in his glorious array. To this end, sorrow co?perates with the bliss that follows it, like rain and sunshine, to bring forth the tender blade. The tribulation and the consolation work together for our good. "As the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ." The clear shining after rain produces an atmosphere that refreshes herbs and cereals: and the joy of the Lord, after seasons of sorrow, makes the soul fruitful. Thus we grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Unless the heart be kept peaceable, the life will not be happy. If calm doth not reign over that inner lake within the soul, which feeds the rivers of our life, the rivers themselves will always be in storm. Our outward acts will always tell that they were born in tempests, by being tempestuous themselves. We all desire to lead a joyous life; the bright eye and the elastic foot are things which we each of us desire; to carry about a contented mind is that to which most men are continually aspiring. Let us remember, that the only way to keep our life peaceful and happy, is to keep the heart at rest; for come poverty, come wealth, come honor, come shame, come plenty, or come scarcity, if the heart be quiet, there will be happiness anywhere. But whatever the sunshine and the brightness, if the heart be troubled, the whole life must be troubled too.

When one of our kings came back from captivity, as old chroniclers tell, there were fountains in Cheapside which flowed with wine. So bounteous was the king, and so glad the people, that instead of water, they made wine flow free to everybody. There is a way of making our life so rich, so full, so blessed to our fellow-men, that the metaphor may be applicable to us, and men may say, that our life flows with wine when other men's lives flow with water. Ye have known some such men. John Howard's life was not like our poor, common lives: he was so benevolent, his sympathy with the race so self-denying, that the streams of his life were like generous wine. You have known personally, it may be, some eminent saint, one who lived very near to Jesus: when he talked, there was an unction and a savor about his words, a solidity and a strength about his utterances, which you could appreciate, though you could not attain unto it. You have sometimes said, "I wish my words were as full, as sweet, as mellow, and as unctuous as the words of such a one. O, I wish my actions were just as rich, had as deep a color, and as pure a taste, as the acts of some other to whom you point. All I can do seems but little and empty when compared with his high attainments. O, that I could do more! O, that I could send streams of pure gold into every house, instead of my poor dross!" Well, Christian, this should stimulate thee to keep thine heart full of rich things. Never, never neglect the Word of God; that will make thy heart rich with precept, thy head rich with understanding, and thy bowels rich with compassion; then, thy conversation, when it flows through thy mouth, will be from thy soul, and, like all that is within thee, rich, unctuous, and savory. Only let thy heart be full of sweet, generous love, and the stream that flows from thy lips will be sweet and generous. Above all, get Jesus to live in thine heart, and then out of thee shall flow rivers of living water, more exhilarating, purer, and more satiating than the water of the well of Sychar, of which Jacob drank. Go forth, with Christian, to the great mine of unsearchable riches, and cry unto the Holy Spirit to make thy heart rich unto salvation. So shall thy life and conversation be a boon to thy fellows; and when they see thee, thy visage shall shine, and thy face shall be as the angel of God.

To-morrow! the Christian may rejoice at it; he may say of to-day, "O day, thou mayst be dark, but I shall bid thee good by, for lo, I see the morrow coming, and I shall mount upon its wings, and shall flee away and leave thee and thy sorrows far behind me."

You have seen the great reservoirs provided by our water companies, in which water for the supply of thousands of houses is kept. Now, the heart is the reservoir of man, from which the streams of his life flow.

O for a heart thus full, and deep, and broad! Find the man that hath such a heart, and he is the man from whom living waters shall flow, to make the world glad with their refreshing streams.

Do not give up those prayers which God's Spirit has put in your hearts--for remember, the things you have asked for are worth waiting for. Besides, you are a beggar when you are in prayer; therefore you must not be a chooser as to the time when God shall hear you. If you had right ideas of yourself, you would say, "It is a wonder that He ever listens to me at all, so unworthy as I am. Does the Infinite indeed bow His ear to me? May I hope He will at last listen to me? Then I may well continue my prayers."

And recollect it is your only hope: there is no other Saviour. This or none--Christ's blood or else eternal wrath. And to whom shall you go, if you turn away from Him? None ever yet perished pleading for mercy; therefore keep on.

Besides, better men than you have had to wait. Kings, and patriarchs, and prophets have waited; therefore surely you can be content to sit in the King's antechamber a little while. It is an honor to sit as Mordecai did at the gate. Pray on--wait on!

What is humility of mind? Humility is to make a right estimate of one's self. It is no humility for a man to think less of himself than he ought, though it might rather puzzle him to do that. Some persons, when they know they can do a thing, tell you they cannot: but you surely would not call that humility? A man is asked to take part in some good work: "No," he says, "I have no ability;" yet, if you were to say so of him, he would be offended at you. It is not humility for a man to stand up and depreciate himself, and say he cannot do this, that, or the other, when he knows that it is untrue. If God gives a man a talent, do you think the man does not know it? If a man has ten talents, he has no right to be dishonest to his Maker, and to say, "Lord, thou hast only given me five." It is not humility to underrate your endowments: humility is to think of yourself, if you can, as God thinks of you. It is to feel that if we have talents, God has given them to us, and let it be seen that, like freight in a vessel, they tend to sink us low. The more we have, the lower we ought to lie. Humility is not to say, "I have not this gift;" but it is to say, "I have the gift, and I must use it for my Master's glory. I must never seek any honor for myself; for what have I that I have not received?" Humility is to feel that we have no power of ourselves, but that it all cometh from God. Humility is to lean on our Beloved, saying, "I can do all things through Christ, who strengtheneth me." It is, in fact, to annihilate self, and to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ as All in All.

Christian! in all thy troubles, look unto God, and be saved. In all thy trials and afflictions, look unto Christ, and find deliverance. In all thine agony, in all thy repentance for thy guilt, look unto Christ, and find pardon. Remember to put thine eyes heavenward, and thine heart heavenward too. Bind round thyself a golden chain, and put one link of it in the staple in heaven. Look unto Christ; fear not. There is no stumbling when a man walks with his eyes up to Jesus. He that looks at Christ walks safely.

Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of; they just turn up some of the ill weeds on to the surface.

Faith fosters every virtue; unbelief withers every virtue in the bud. Thousands of prayers have been stopped by unbelief; many songs of praise, that would have swelled the chorus of the skies, have been stifled by unbelieving murmurs; many a noble enterprise conceived in the heart has been blighted ere it could come forth by unbelief. Faith is the Samsonian lock of the Christian: cut it off, and he can do nothing. Peter, while he had faith, walked on the waves of the sea. But presently there came a billow behind him, and he said, "That will sweep me away;" and then another before, and he cried out, "That will overwhelm me;" and he thought, "How could I be so presumptuous as to walk on the top of these waves?" And as soon as he doubted, he began to sink. Faith was Peter's life-buoy--it kept him up; but unbelief sent him down. The Christian's life may be said to be always "walking on the water," and every wave would swallow him up; but faith enables him to stand. The moment you cease to believe, that moment distress and failure follow. O, wherefore dost thou doubt, then?

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