Read in London March 1, 2009 When next it was on Sabbath evening applying to the Lord’s Supper.
Preached to his Congregation in the Free Presbyterian Church there, on Sabbath, 10th October, 1909.
(Taken down by a hearer.)
THE Apostle here speaks of believers in figurative language. Having spoken of letters of commendation, he tells the Corinthians that those of them who were converted through his instrumentality, and that of his fellow-labourers in the Gospel, were the best letters to commend them as Christ’s ambassadors. “Ye are our epistle.” They were their epistle as instruments of their conversion, but they were “the epistle of Christ,” as He was the Author of that important change. The word epistle is the Greek name for “letter,” in English we call it letter.
In addressing you from the words of our text, as the Lord may enable me, I shall keep to the metaphor the Apostle uses here in comparing believers to an epistle or a letter, and I shall mention as I proceed the various things suggested by the figure, and
I.—The Writer.
No letter is written without a writer. We have several epistles in the New Testament, and as a rule, the names of the authors of these epistles are given. There are epistles by Paul, epistles by Peter, epistles by John, and one by Jude. Who is the writer of the epistles mentioned in our text? The writer is Christ, for the Apostle calls believers “the epistle of Christ.” But it may be objected that the Apostle says that the epistle is written “by the Spirit of the living God.” That is true, but men in high positions in the world have their secretaries to write their letters. The earthly king has his secretary for that purpose. He may write some of his letters with his own hand, but he writes the most of them through his secretary, and those written by his secretary are all the same the king’s letters. Christ has His secretary, so to speak, to write His spiritual epistles. Who is that secretary? It is the Holy Spirit, called in our text “the Spirit of the living God.” The secretary of an earthly king is inferior to the king himself, but not so here. The Holy Spirit is the “same in substance, and equal in power and glory” with Christ. In the arrangement of the everlasting covenant Christ became the Servant of the Father to work out everlasting redemption, and the Spirit was given to Christ to apply his redemption to those given Him in the covenant. Hence the Spirit is called “the Spirit of Christ.” It is to be borne in mind that Christ employs the Spirit in writing His epistles, not as an instrument but as an Agent.
II.—The Pen.
In writing a letter a pen is necessary. However good a writer you may be you cannot write without a pen. Christ uses means and instruments in carrying on His work in the world. What are the pens He uses in writing the epistles under consideration? The prophets of old were His pens, the Apostles were pens, and all Gospel ministers, and others, are His pens. In the 45th Psalm the Psalmist calls himself a pen in the hand of the Spirit: “My tongue is the pen of a ready writer” (verse 2). The Psalmist here calls his tongue a pen. The tongue is necessary to speak; necessary to preach the Gospel. The tongue was given to man to declare God’s glory, though many employ that member of the body in the service of sin. You need, not only a pen, but a good pen in order to make good writing; you cannot make good writing with a bad pen. Christ always writes with a good pen. He never writes His epistles with a bad pen. His ministers were by nature bad—”the children of wrath even as others,” but Christ made them good. You know that pens are made. In my younger days pens were made of quills. How were they made? They were made by the writer himself with a sharp tool called “the pen-knife.” What is the pen-knife which Christ employs to make His pens? He employs His own Word—a two-edged sword—cutting both ways—law and Gospel. By this sharp instrument, in the hand of the Spirit, He prepares His ministering servants to serve Him in the ministry of the Gospel. You cannot make a good pen of a bad quill, but Christ can make good ministers of the worst of men. He made persecuting Saul one of the best ministers that ever served Him in His Church on earth.
Christ does not write all His letters by the same pen. He uses different pens. In Old Testament times He used Prophets; in the New Testament time He used the Apostles and others as His pens; and He still makes new pens to serve His purpose in converting sinners and in building them up in holiness till they are made meet for heaven. When you need a new pen you throw away the old pen, which served you so long in writing. You throw it away as a useless instrument. But Christ does not treat His old pens—after they have done all the work they were able to do on earth—in that manner. They are more precious to Him than that. He has work for them to do in heaven. Not, indeed, to write any more letters with them, but to declare His praise for ever. These old pens are perfectly new there. Think of this when you throw away your old pen. Where are the Prophets? Where are the Apostles? Where are the Reformers? Where are the Gospel Ministers that were in Ross-shire fifty years ago? They are in heaven. But Christ makes new pens, and He will continue to do so to the end of time, till all His redeemed are gathered into His fold on earth, and then He shall not make any more pens. His work on earth is “finished”; all His letters are written, and well written.
Each believer is an epistle of Christ, and it is not the same time He takes to write all His letters. He writes some of them in a few minutes. The thief on the cross, whom He saved, is an instance of this. Others might be mentioned who were effectually called, justified, adopted, and sanctified like that thief in a very short space of time. On the other hand, Christ takes many years to finish some of His letters—some 40 years, some 50 years, and some 60 years. We have an account of aged Christians who were in the state of grace for the period of sixty years; and in Old Testament times there were some in that state for several hundred years, and Christ was writing these epistles all that time.
III.—Another thing you require in writing a letter is ink.
Although you would try to write with a pen without ink, you could not make any writing. The dry pen would not leave a word or a sentence behind it. Ink is necessary in writing a letter. What is the ink Christ uses in writing His own letters? We are not to guess in this matter. We must go to “the law and to the testimony” for the answer. Well, what is the means the Holy Spirit takes in His work of applying the benefits of Christ’s redemption to sinners? You say, “The Word of God.” That is just the correct answer. Then, the Word of God is the ink. As you dip your pen in the ink in order to write, so Christ dips, so to speak, His ministering servants, who are His pens, into the Scriptures—into the Word of God. “The entrance of thy word gives light.” Christ leads His ministers into the meaning of God’s Word, and opens their understanding to understand the Scriptures. And then He uses them as His pens to write, and the mark of the ink—God’s Word—is left behind on the hearers of the Gospel to whom the Word is blessed, and that through them, as pens in the hand of the Spirit. If you are Christ’s epistles, you bear on your soul the mark of God’s Word. The Word of Christ dwells in you in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. The saving work of the Spirit agrees with the Word of God. And the work that does not agree with that Word is a delusion—a delusion under which the great majority of professing Christians in the present age are. But we are speaking about the ink in which the pen must be dipped before it can write. There are fountain pens. These pens have a small fountain of ink in them. So have Christ’s ministers; they have the Word of God in them. Christ gave them that Word. “I have given them the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them” (John xvii. 8). But as the supply of ink in the fountain pen does not last always for the work it has to do, and it requires a new supply again and again in order to write, so it is with ministers. They feel themselves sometimes dry without the ink of God’s Word; they cannot sometimes find even a text of Scripture to preach from. In that condition they cannot preach. If you begin to write with a dry pen, you injure both the pen and the paper on which you write. In like manner, if ministers preach when they are thus dry, they hurt their own feelings and the feelings of the Lord’s people, and they would rather not have preached at all in that dry frame of mind. This will teach them to cry to Christ for a new supply of His blessed Word. When they get that in answer to prayer, they shall then say with the Psalmist: “My tongue is the pen of a ready writer.” Their own souls are benefited by their preaching, and the “poor and needy” are refreshed with the dew from on high, and fed with “the bread of life.”
IV.—Another thing you need in writing a letter is paper.
What is the paper on which Christ writes? The Apostle tells us. It is the heart. “Not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.” The material of which writing paper is made undergoes a great change before it is fit for writing purposes. Of what material is it made? Some say that writing paper is made of old rags. However that may be, it is a fact that the heart of man by nature is much worse than old rags. It is spoken of in God’s Word as “filthy rags.” “We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isaiah lxiv. 6). This being the case, the heart of man must undergo a great process of preparation before it can be used by Christ to write upon. The tables of stone on which God wrote the law were first prepared for that purpose. They were hewn by Moses with a chisel, dressed and prepared, and then God engraved the law upon them with His own hand (Exodus xxxiv. 1). The writing was the writing of God, but He used Moses as His instrument to prepare the tables. In like manner, God uses the law, of which Moses was the representative, in preparing the heart of the sinner. Indeed, He uses law and Gospel in that work. The law is the chisel that cuts and wounds, the Gospel is the polishing instrument whereby the heart is finally prepared for writing on. The change necessary is spoken of in Scripture as “a new creation,” a taking away of the stony heart, and giving a heart of flesh. This is done in the case of every sinner that is saved by the effectual work of the Holy Spirit, and the Apostle speaks of it in our text. He says that the writing is made “not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.” The natural heart is not only corrupt, but also hard as a stone, while the new heart is soft and tender as flesh. There is a heart of stone in all men by nature, but Christ by His Spirit effects such a wonderful change in His own people that they have now a tender heart. This is then the paper on which Christ writes. He does not write upon it as it is by nature. He changes it; as the material on which paper is made is changed by the manufacturer, so is the heart changed by the Spirit of God.
One thing more before I leave this part of the subject. You buy the paper you use in writing a letter. What is the price you pay for it? “Not much,” you say; “I can get a packet of paper for one penny.” Ah, Christ did not buy His paper at such a cheap rate as that. What did He give for it? He gave Himself, He gave His precious blood, He gave His obedience unto death. Oh, what a price! The wonder is intensified when you bear in mind that it was when His people were like “old filthy rags” He bought them at such a cost. If the stationer were to offer you old rags for your penny instead of fine white paper, you would refuse to buy such stuff. But Christ did not refuse to buy His people when there was nothing in them but sin. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans v. 8).
V.—We now come to the writing.
A letter is something written. You all know what it is to write a letter. What is the first thing you write in a letter? You write the name of the place of writing. If you write a letter in this town, the first thing you write is “Dingwall.” In like manner, the first thing Christ writes in His own letter is the name of the place of writing. Where does He write His letters? In His Church on earth. He writes all His letters there, and as He writes all His letters there, He writes first the name of the place of writing. And therefore He says, in Rev. iii. 12, “I will write upon him (the believer) the name of the city of my God.” Zion is the name of the city of God. It is there the Holy Spirit converts sinners, and prepares them for glory. In the eighty-seventh Psalm and fifth verse, we read—
“And it of Zion shall be said,
This man and that man there
Was born; and He that is Most High
Himself shall establish her.
When God the people writes, He’ll count
That this man born was there.
There be that sing and play; and all
My well-springs in thee are.”
The second thing you write is the date of writing. You write the day, the month, and the year. Christ does the same. The date of the sinner’s conversion is written down by Him. The people of Israel were commanded to remember month Abib as the time of their deliverance out of their bondage in Egypt. In the 22nd chapter of Acts we find the Apostle Paul telling the date of his conversion. Not only that he could tell the day, but the exact hour in which the great change took place. It was, he says, “about noon,” when the sun was at its meridian height, shining brightly, indicating, as it were, that the new convert was to be “a burning and a shining light” in the Church, as really he was. Not only that Christ knew the date of Paul’s conversion, and wrote it down, but Paul himself knew it, and probably wrote it down in his diary as a time to be remembered. Some of the Lord’s people remember the day of their conversion, others remember the month, and others the year. Those who know the time of their conversion have, what may be called, an anniversary. Some observe an anniversary of their birth—their natural birth—and they have on that occasion a feast and rejoicing. The Lord’s people—some of them—observe an anniversary of their new birth, and they feast and rejoice in the company of Christ, who comes to them to remind them of His loving-kindness to them in saving them. Some poor one may now say, “I am afraid I am not one of the Lord’s people, because I cannot tell the date of my conversion, though I cannot deny that a change came over me, and that Christ is precious to me, and that His people are my people, and His cause is my cause.” But you are to remember that you are not the writer of the epistle at all, but Christ. He knows the date, and wrote it down. If you bear the marks of His people in other respects as you do by the confession you have just now made, you need not be so much perplexed about the date. If you see a tree growing and bearing good fruit, you may be sure that it was planted some time, though you cannot tell when. There are some of the Lord’s people in whom the work of grace begins so small, like the little leaven in the parable, that they cannot tell when the leavening process began till the whole lump of the dry meal is leavened. By their fruit they are known. There is, however, in the case of all God’s people, a certain period of their life in which they turned from sin to God, a time of their conversion, a time of their embracing Christ by faith, a time when they enjoy spiritual comfort from the Word of God in the private and public means of grace, though some of them are for the most part during their lifetime kept in darkness about their interest in Christ. Such have faith of adherence, but want faith of assurance. They cannot say, “My beloved is mine, and I am his,” but they can say, “To whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.”
Let us now come to consider what is written in the body of the letter. You do not finish a letter by stating by your pen the place and date of writing. That is only a beginning. Neither does Christ. For “he that hath begun a good work in you will perform it”—bring it to perfection. What more does Christ write? Well, to put it briefly, He writes His law in the minds and hearts of His people. He draws by His Spirit and Word the image of God, which was effaced by sin, on their souls again, never to be obliterated any more for ever. He restores that which He took not away. The law of God was written on the soul of man at his creation. By sin he lost that treasure. Christ regained it at a great cost, and He restores it to His redeemed people. It was a token for good that this was to be done when the law was written on tables of stone. It intimated that although their hearts by nature were as hard as the stone, yet they would be so changed that the law would be written again on them. I have already spoken of the change that was made by the Spirit in the souls of God’s people by making them a “new creation.” Their state was changed by the Father when He justified them. But their change of nature is effected by the Spirit. They are perfect in their justification, as perfect as they shall ever be. But they are not perfect in their sanctification. That work is only begun. When God created man he was perfect in His image all at once; God’s image was not put on him by degrees. But in restoring the image of God to His redeemed, the work of the Spirit is gradual. It is a change “into the same image from glory to glory”—2 Cor. iii. 18—that is, from one degree of sanctification to another. This work shall be carried on gradually by the Spirit till they are made perfect in holiness at death. They shall then be, with respect to their souls, as perfect in their sanctification as they are now on earth in their justification. This is, in short, the writing that Christ makes in the body of His epistle.
Before I proceed to notice the last thing that He writes in the letter I may remark that all Christ’s letters are public letters, so that, as Paul says, they may be read and known of all men—verse 2. Public letters are open to all men, and all may read them. There is nothing in Christ’s letters, so far as His writing is concerned, that needs to be concealed. It can stand the light of day, and the gaze of all men, good and bad. Christians are not shut up in monasteries and nunneries, where their fellow-creatures cannot see them, but are public in the world, and associate with their fellowmen in their lawful callings, so that all may see them. They may be read and known of all men, as it is written, “All that see them shall acknowledge them, that they are the seed which the Lord hath blessed” (Isaiah lxi. 9). Even their enemies were constrained to acknowledge this. We have an account in history of those who burnt some of the Lord’s people at the stake confessing afterwards that those they so cruelly put to death were God’s people. They were compelled by the force of conscience to make this confession, though their enmity to God and His people impelled them to continue in their persecuting work. How may those who are Christ’s letter be read and known? You cannot see Christ’s writing, for it is inward in the heart or soul. The work of the Spirit is there. “The kingdom of heaven is within you.” But grace in the heart manifests itself outwardly. You may read and know them in their lives—in their holy walk and conversation in the world. They were thus read and known in all generations. They are “manifestly the epistle of Christ.” Their conduct is manifest to all, though grace in the heart is invisible to creatures. The eye of God only can see it.
What is the last thing you write in a letter? You write your name, that the person to whom you write may know from whom the letter is. Christ does the same. He writes His name. So He tells Himself. “I will write upon him my new name” (Rev. iii. 12). There are anonymous letters, but none of Christ’s letters are anonymous. He writes His name; He owns the letter as His. His name is a new name. As the Saviour, a new name was given him, and this new name is “Jesus.” “Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins” (Luke ii. 21). He signs the letter by His name “Jesus.”
After you write your name in the letter, what more do you do? You enclose it in an envelope. So does Christ. After He has finished, by His Spirit, the work of sanctification in His people, He will at death enclose them in His own envelope, so that they are no more to be seen in their persons in this world, or read or known by their fellow-creatures on earth except by their memory.
After you enclose your letter in an envelope, what more do you do? You write the name and address of the person to whom you wrote the letter, on the back of the envelope. So does Christ. To whom does He write these letters? To His Father. What is the Father’s address? Heaven. “Our Father who art in heaven.” Do you do anything more before despatching your letter? Yes, you put a postage stamp on the envelope. What kind of stamp do you put on? One bearing the image of the king. So does Christ. His own image is the postage stamp He puts on all His letters. That insures their safe arrival at their destination. The royal stamp is enough to pay cost of carriage to any part of our kingdom. It is enough for the carriage of believers to the kingdom of glory. He who made them His epistles put that stamp upon them. It is the writer, and not the letter itself, that puts the postage stamp on the letter.
The last thing you have to do now is to send away your letter. How do you do this? You either post it in the post office or hand it to the letter-carrier. Well, it is the latter way Christ takes to send away His own letters. He does not put them in the post office, to lie there for any time. He hands them at once, without any delay, to His letter-carriers. Who are these? They are the holy angels. We read that these angels carried the soul of Lazarus to heaven as soon as he died—(Luke xvi. 22). The holy angels are waiting at the death-bed of God’s people, to carry their souls to heaven when Christ hands them to them immediately after death. The angels are thus waiting, just as you see postmen waiting at the Dingwall Post Office to receive letters which they are to carry to their destination, according to address. On the other hand, evil angels are waiting at the death-bed of the unconverted, to carry their souls to hell as soon as they die! As soon as Christ hands His letters to the holy angels, they set off at once, and although the distance they have to travel is so long—no man can tell how long—their motion is so swift, and their errand so delightful, that they are at the end of their journey within a very short time. The time is so short that it is but “to be absent from the body, and present with the Lord,” as Paul speaks of it. “As it does not yet appear what we shall be,” we cannot at present enter within the veil, to behold the happy reception the Father gives to the letters of His beloved Son, in whom He is well pleased. Let each of us seek to be “the epistle of Christ.”
The Epistle of Satan.
As people are at times cheated by spurious letters, it will be proper, in conclusion, to give a word of warning on the subject. Satan, in order to deceive, transforms himself into an angel of light, and in that shape he writes letters—(I keep to the metaphor)—purporting to be written by Christ, and by this device he deceives many, especially in this age. Do you ask, “How can I distinguish between Satan’s letters and Christ’s letters?” There is a great difference between them. Take the following marks of distinction:—
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The handwriting of Satan is different from that of Christ’s. A letter-forgery tries to imitate as much as possible the handwriting of the person in whose name he writes. But if you receive a letter from a forger, purporting to be written by your friend, whose handwriting you know so well, you may know at once that the letter was not written by your friend. In like manner, you who know the handwriting of Christ, will not be too readily deceived by Satan, however he may try to imitate the handwriting of Christ. The handwriting of Christ is inimitable. As no creature ever spoke like Christ, so no creature ever wrote like Him.
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The pens that Satan uses in writing his letters are quite different from those Christ uses in writing His own letters. While Christ employs converted ministers for that purpose, Satan employs unconverted ministers as his instruments to do his own deceptive work. When, in an evil age, the enemy sends forth a host of ministers from his college to deceive congregations, he “transforms them into the apostles of Christ” (2 Cor. xi. 13). Under that disguise he knows that his messengers are more readily received by ignorant people, than if he had sent them forth in their natural form. He has thousands and tens of thousands of ministers of this description in the present day, so that congregations need to be on their guard lest they be deceived. “Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision. For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh” (Phil. iii. 2, 3).
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There is a difference in the ink. The Word of God is the ink Christ uses to write His letters; the word of man is the ink Satan uses to write his own, and if he dips his pen sometimes in Scripture, it is in order to deceive. Although he quotes Scripture to suit his purpose, yet he often misquotes it, and always gives a wrong interpretation of it. His key to expound Scripture is not Scripture itself, but the opinions of men. How much of this way of interpreting Scripture is to be seen among Satan’s ministers in our own day!
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There is a difference in the paper. To speak plainly—while Christ prepares His people by regeneration in order to write His image upon them, Satan makes good Christians of his own children without that essential change, without which no man can enter the kingdom of heaven—(John iii. 3). Or if he acknowledges that such a change is necessary, he will tell them that they were “born again” when they were baptised. He deludes some of his subjects by making them believe that man did not fall from the state in which God created him, and that therefore all men shall go to heaven after they leave this world. Some of his ministers, who are his pens, declare openly that it is “difficult,” if not impossible, for man in his state of nature “to go wrong.” In their view, under the teaching of Satan, men are good enough as they are born into the world, and there is no need of the regenerating work of the Spirit to make them better. This is the kind of material on which Satan writes his epistles.
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There is a difference between what Satan writes in his letter and what Christ writes in His own. (1) With regard to the place of writing. Although it would appear that the place of writing is common to both writers, viz., the Church, yet we learn from Scripture that the place from which Satan writes is different from Christ’s writing place. For we read of a place of worship which was called by men a Church, called by Christ “the Synagogue of Satan.” It is by calling his place of writing the Church, Satan deceives many. If he gave its appropriate name—“the Synagogue of Satan”—people would not be deceived by him. But as he is a forger, he pretends to write from Zion, Christ’s writing place. But from what has been already pointed out, it is clear that Satan’s place of writing and Christ’s are different, although the evil one performs his work of deception with more plausibility within the pale of what is called the “Visible Church.”
(2) With respect to date, that is, the date of conversion. Satan has his converts as well as Christ. Does he convert sinners to himself? There is no need for that, for he has all from their birth. But you are to bear in mind that he pretends to convert sinners to God, and he knows that by his way of conversion he has a firmer hold of them than before their conversion. At what date are Satan’s converts converted? In the case of some of them they are converted when they are baptised; others are converted when they partake of the symbols of the Lord’s body and blood in the Sacrament of the Supper; others are converted when they give up the grosser forms of sin and become moderate in their habits; and so on. But in all these ways of conversion Satan may reckon his converts as his own still, and as already stated, he has a firmer hold of them than he had before their conversion.
(3) With regard to what is written in the body of the letter. While Christ writes His own holy image on His people—implanting in them the graces of the Spirit, working spiritual thoughts, desires, and affections, which lead to corresponding actions—the devil is so far content to see his image still remaining on his own people under the cloak of a Christian profession. His image is on them from the womb. But although they are born into the world bearing his image, yet he may be said to still write his image on them deeper and deeper, inasmuch as he works in them, prompting them, by manifold temptations, to actual transgression, which more and more blinds the eyes of the mind, hardens the heart, sears the conscience, and corrupts the affections. Thus evil men wax worse and worse in their nature as well as in their practice.
(4) Satan’s epistles are public epistles as well as Christ’s, and may be read and known of all men. “The children of the devil are manifest,” as well as the children of God—(1 John iii. 10). How may they be read and known ? You cannot see what is in their heart except as it manifests itself outwardly in their actions; and as they profess the Christian religion, and perform religious exercises, you are to look at them in that aspect of their character in order to know them. Follow them to their places of worship, and observe how they worship. Some of them adhere to the outward form of worship instituted by Christ in His Church, but as they were not regenerated by the Spirit, they know nothing of the power of godliness, and consequently they rest in the mere outward form, without seeking to worship God in the spirit and to hold fellowship with Him. They have gone through the outward form exactly as prescribed by the Head of the Church, and they are satisfied with that. These we call Formalists. But there is another class of Satan’s converts (and they form the great majority of present-day worshippers bearing the Christian name) who have, to a large extent, ceased to worship God in the manner prescribed by Himself because they consider it antiquated, and invented another way more agreeable to the carnal mind. What these aim at in their worship is not to please God but to please themselves. You have only to read newspaper reports of their religious services, and you will see that these so-called worshippers have usurped the place of God as the object of worship. These we call Self-worshippers.
By these, among many other marks, they may be read and known of all, except such as are under judicial blindness. As there are multitudes of our fellow-creatures illiterate, who cannot read—not a few still, even in our own kingdom—there are many more who have no spiritual discernment to distinguish between true Christians and the great multitude who are so only in name. But the people of God, who are taught of Himself, are able to make the distinction; and while they cannot associate with false worshippers in their religious services, they pity them, and give glory to God who made themselves to differ.
(5) There is a difference in the signature adhibited to the letter when it is finished. As already stated, Christ writes His own name at the end of His letter, as the author of all that was written in it. Satan does not sign His own name, but, as a forger, he signs the name of Christ. And how can it be proved that the letter has never been written by Christ, though His name is to it? It can be proved, first, by the great difference there is between the handwriting of Christ and that of the forger. However Satan may try to imitate Christ’s writing, he cannot do it, for it is inimitable. Second, by internal evidence. Spurious letters are proved to be ungenuine by this test. There are writings attributed to some of the fathers who succeeded the apostles in the Christian Church, which have been proved to be spurious by internal evidence. By comparing these writings with other writings which were well known to have been written by those fathers, it was found that they did not agree, and therefore it was concluded, on good evidence, that the fathers to whom these writings were attributed were not the authors of them. On the same principle, when you compare what Christ has written in His own epistle—His work of grace in the souls of His people—with what Satan has written (including the signature) in his own epistle, you will find that they do not agree; on the contrary, that there is as much difference between them as there is between light and darkness. But as a deceiver of souls, Satan makes his dupes believe that his work in them is the genuine work of the Spirit of God, and he keeps them under this delusion till he gets them with him down in the pit of destruction.
(6) Satan imitates Christ in addressing his letters to God, the Father in heaven; but if he should, through temporary failure of memory, omit to write this address on them, he has agents in his service who will, through the telegraph of prayer, wire the address to eternity when burying the dead. These agents are so full of false charity that they send all men to heaven, making no difference “between the righteous and the wicked; between him that serveth God, and him that serveth him not” (Mal. iii. 18).
(7) There is a difference in the postage stamp. The stamp Christ puts on His own letters is, as already mentioned, His own holy image, in which His people are made perfect at death, so far as their souls are concerned; but the stamp Satan affixes to his letters is a counterfeit—an imitation of Christ’s image in one form or another, as suits his purpose in deceiving immortal souls. So long as he sees that his postage stamp is different from Christ’s stamp, he is content to allow his dupes to pass on to eternity in the hope of entering heaven, while he knows that hell is their place of abode for ever!
(8) Lastly, there is a difference in the letter-carriers. Holy angels are Christ’s letter-carriers. They carry the souls of believers to heaven immediately after their death; but evil angels, of whom he is the prince, are Satan’s letter-carriers, and they carry the souls of all the wicked—that is, all that die in an unregenerate state—to hell as soon as they die. As there are two classes of men in the world—the righteous and the wicked—there are two places (and two only) in eternity—heaven and hell; and the souls of the former class shall go to heaven, and the souls of the latter class shall go to hell immediately after death, and both parties shall remain in their respective places for ever and ever; the one party enjoying perfect blessedness in the full enjoyment of God to all eternity, the other party enduring the greatest misery for ever.
I have in this lecture spoken of these two classes under the titles of “the epistle of Christ” and “the epistle of Satan.” I now appeal to you, in the name of God, to examine yourselves as to which of these epistles you are. You must be either Christ’s epistle or Satan’s. There is no intermediate position for you to stand in between these two. There are a few of you of whom I am persuaded that you are the epistles of Christ, but the larger number of you by far are still in your natural state, and if you continue in that state till death, Satan shall claim you as his own, and the justice of God shall see to it that you shall have your portion with him in everlasting torment. But you are still in the land of the living, where mercy may be found, and where God waits to be gracious to sinners that come to Him by Christ as the way; and we beseech you in Christ’s stead, “Be ye reconciled to God” on the ground of Christ’s atonement. Oh, seek by earnest prayer that the Holy Spirit make you, by His effectual and saving work, the epistle of Christ, that you may live to His glory during your time on earth, and that when you die you may be carried by the holy angels to heaven, to be for ever with the Lord.