By Rev. WILLIAM ROMAINE.
“Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?”—Jer. 8: 22.
ALL men love health. The desire of it is founded in nature. It is one of the natural instincts which never leaves us. So long as we love pleasure and hate pain, we cannot but love health, as the chief of all outward blessings. Indeed it is to be desired beyond them all, because without it we can enjoy none of them, without it we are unfit for our worldly business and employment, and unfit for the duties of religion. A good man would therefore wish for health with a view to the concerns of a better life, as well as to those of the present life. All men desire it upon a temporal account. But alas! how few have any real desire for the health of the soul? If the body be in great pain, with what haste do they send for relief, and how carefully do they follow the physicians’ prescription? But when their souls are wounded with sin, and they may endure the smart and anguish of their wounds forever; for these are by any human means incurable, and when a divine remedy is proposed, and they hear of a loving and an almighty physician, under whose hands no patient was ever lost, yet they have not one wish to be healed. What can be the reason of this? Why are the very men, who with an invariable affection love bodily health, so far from desiring the health of the soul, that when they have an offer of being healed of all their spiritual maladies, they neglect the remedy, and despise the physician? Is not this unaccountable conduct? What can make the same men in the same case reason so differently? If they had an infallible remedy for the recovery of bodily health, there is not one of them who would reject it; but there is a sovereign remedy for the recovery of the health of the soul, there is balm in Gilead, and a most kind and able physician there to apply it, and yet spiritual maladies abound. Let us enquire into the cause of this inconsistent behaviour. It is an enquiry in which we are all closely concerned. Our welfare depends on our being healed of the wounds of sin, by this balm of Gilead. We can have no true peace of conscience here, nor true happiness hereafter, unless we take this sovereign medicine. May the Lord God dispose us all to take it by means of what shall be said in opening and explaining the text in which there is.
*This sermon by the well-known evangelical preacher of the Church of England has been printed in the excellent series—The Inheritance of our Fathers (Grand Rapids, Mich., U.S.A.).
First, Some sickness referred to.
Secondly, A sovereign medicine,—there is balm in Gilead to heal it.
Thirdly, A great physician to apply it; and all the means of healing being thus ready at hand, the question naturally follows, in the
Fourth place, Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?
If we look back to the 17th verse we shall find an account of the sickness referred to in the text. The people were stung with serpents and cockatrices, and of the most venomous and fiery sort, whose poison, once infused into the blood acts like the most raging fire, consuming and drying up the fluids of the body, and in a short time bringing on certain death. “For behold I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the Lord.” This is the picture of that more deadly poison, which the old serpent the devil infused into both body and soul, the effects of which all the human race have felt; for he drew us all into sin, and the dreadful consequences of sin appear in that variety of diseases which bring down our bodies to the grave of death, and in that variety of corrupt and depraved appetites, which proves the soul to be alienated from the life of God, and to be incapable, unless it be entirely changed, of enjoying God. It was sin which thus poisoned our nature; for before sin entered into the world, all things were good. There was no evil to afflict either body or soul. But when sin entered, then the sanction of the law took place, “In the day that thou eatest of the forbidden fruit, dying thou shalt die.”—Gen. 2: 17. In that day thy body shall become mortal, and liable to those pains and diseases, which in a course of years shall destroy its animal life, and thy soul shall be separated from the fountain of its spiritual life, and cut off from all communion with God in this world, and in the next it shall be separated from him forever, which is the second death. Oh sin! what hast thou done! Thou art the author of all the evils which mankind are capable of suffering in earth and hell. Thou broughtest them all upon us, thou enemy of God and man. And wilt thou afterwards pretend to be our friend? Wilt thou come to court us with promises of happiness, that by deceiving us, thou mayest more effectually poison and destroy our bodies and souls? Look upon this base traitor, my brethren. Can he be a friend to your nature, who has subjected it to all the miseries of mortality? If you have any true love for yourselves, how can you love and cherish sin, which has made you liable to suffer the first and second death? What! is this a friend to be taken into your bosom, one that will murder your body, and bring both body and soul into hell? Accustom yourselves to view sin in this light, and it will help you to see the horrible destructive nature of it. When you behold a dead corpse, think what a murderer sin is; for that body would never have died, if sin had not poisoned it. And then turn your eyes inwards and let each man say to himself—This beloved body of mine, upon which I spend so much time and care, was made mortal by sin, and all the pains and diseases, which I can suffer, came from the same cursed cause; yea, from it came all the miseries which I deserve to suffer with devils and condemned spirits in the fire that never is to be quenched; and shall I love and delight to serve such an enemy? Shall I give up the members of my body as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, and so work out mine own everlasting destruction? God
forbid. As sin is the author of all the evil which I do or can endure, I will therefore fight against it, and may the Lord God save me from the guilt, and deliver me from the dominion of it.
This is the language of every heart which is made sensible of the poisonous qualities of sin. When the awakened sinner feels the malignant venom working in his constitution, he will be led to abhor and to detest it, and the more so, when the scripture discovers to him the execrable foe, who poisoned him with sin, and that was the old serpent. What these serpents are said in the 17th verse to have done to the body in poisoning it, the same did he both to body and soul; and as he did it at first in the serpent, he has therefore been known and distinguished by this name from the time that he deceived our first parents in the subtle serpent. The apostle has given us a very alarming description of him, Rev. 12: 9, where he is treating of the war which was in heaven between Michael and his angels, and the dragon and his angels. “And the great dragon, he says, was cast out, the old serpent, called the devil and satan, who deceiveth the whole world.” Here he is called the serpent, alluding to his crafty wiliness, and the old serpent, to denote his having employed all his wiles to deceive and ruin mankind. As soon as they were created, he plotted their destruction, and he became satan, their sworn adversary, and the devil, their accuser, who fought to destroy their precious lives with the rage of a dragon; yea, with more rage than common dragons have, even with the burning fury of the great dragon. And alas! he was successful; for he deceiveth the whole world. He poisoned the whole human race. He corrupted all flesh, and we are now groaning under the dreadful effects of our total corruption. The cursed venom of sin, which he infused into our bodies, still works in them; but its more cursed venom still works, though less perceptibly in the body, until it brings on sickness and death, and reduces us to the dust, from whence we were taken; and it keeps working in the soul in every hateful and unholy temper, which tends to stir up the wrath and indignation of God, and to separate the soul forever and ever from him the fountain of life and glory.
This is the great and universal malady referred to in the text, the malady of sin, with which the old serpent, the devil, has poisoned the whole world. When he deceived our first parents, he then poisoned the fountain, and all the streams which have been ever since flowing from it partake of the direful infection; for the word of truth declares, “That as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned.” Here the entrance of sin is said to be the cause of the entrance of death, and we all die in Adam, therefore we all sinned in him; for the wages of sin is death. Now God being infinitely just and righteous, would not pay the wages, unless there were some sin to deserve them, but infants receive the wages of sin, and consequently they are sinners; they die in Adam, because in him they sinned. “For by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation.” Thus was our whole nature, both body and soul, corrupted by the fall, and there is not a sound part or faculty in either of them. They are corrupt and abominable altogether, and in nothing does this total corruption more evidently discover itself, than in their entire blindness and insensibility of their dangerous condition. They are poisoned, and yet they know it not; nay, they are so unwilling to know it, that when we inform
them of it, they are highly offended. They cannot bear to be told of it, no, not by the ministers of the gospel, whose office and duty it is. We are sure to stir up their rage and hatred, if we discover to them the workings of this poison in their hearts, and if we appeal to the effects of it in their lives, and refer them to the plentiful streams of iniquity, which are continually flowing from the corrupt fountain of the heart, then they cannot bear us; they are like the deaf adder, that stoppeth her ear; which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming ever so wisely. They are resolved not to be disturbed about their sins, and therefore they will not hear of their sickness or of their danger. They had rather die of their malady, than be made uneasy about it. Let sin do its worst in the next life, in the present they will enjoy it; and in sweet security too, if they can. Is not this an astonishing degree of infatuation? Is it not one of the strongest delusions of the devil, that he should make those very men insensible of their spiritual maladies, who are exquisitely sensible of the least bodily malady, whose fears are all alarmed at the thoughts of their dying to this world, but who have not the least concern about their dying from God and glory? Are any of you, my brethren, in this case? Are you easy about the state of your souls, having never been in any distress about original and actual sin? Did you never feel yourselves so sick of both, that you were afraid you should perish everlastingly? If not, consider what it is, which keeps you in this fatal security. Are you not sinners? For all have sinned. And has not sin poisoned both body and soul? And is not this one of the sad, stupefying effects of its poison, that while there is but a step between you and death, yet you have no concern about your being healed? Are these things so? If they are, may the almighty God awaken you to a sense of your danger. Oh! that he may set home and fix such a conviction of sin upon your consciences that, feeling your malady, you may earnestly seek the great physician’s help, and may happily find that there is balm in Gilead: which is the
Second particular I was to consider. Glory be to God who hath not left us without remedy. Our disease is dangerous, but there is balm in Gilead, which can heal perfectly and eternally. The country of Gilead was famous for a precious balm which grew there. “Go up to Gilead, and take balm,” says the prophet Jeremiah, 46: 11. Its healing virtue is described by him, chap. 51: 8, where speaking of the downfall of Babylon, he says, “Take balm for her pain, if so be she may be healed.” This sovereign medicine which then grew in Gilead, could assuage the pain of wounds and heal them, and thereby was a type of the gracious remedy which God had provided for the healing of the wounds of sin; namely, the most precious blood of the Lamb of God, applied and made effectual by the Holy Spirit, for as this cleanses away all the pollutions, so it heals all the diseases of sin. It cleanseth us, says one who had experienced its virtue, and by cleansing healeth us from all sin. And no wonder, because it is the blood of God. He who shed it, was God and man united in one Christ, and therefore it had infinite and divine merit. And when He stood in the place of sinners, obeyed and suffered for them, and was obedient even unto death, his obedience and sufferings could want nothing to render them as satisfactory as the law and justice of the Father could require, because his blood had virtue as a release to discharge believers from all the pains and penalties to which they were subjected for their
sins, and as a purchase to put them in possession of their forfeited estate. The Apostle describes its operating as a release when he says of it, “that we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins,” and as a purchase, when he says, “that Christ, having washed us from our sins in his own blood, hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father.”
Now since the blood of Christ has this sovereign healing virtue, and since we have through it redemption, even eternal redemption from all the pains and miseries of sin, surely then, it is an essential ingredient in that precious balm of Gilead, which has virtue to heal every sinner who takes it, let his case be ever so dangerous! But then it must be taken. A sick man may have a very good remedy at hand, but if he never takes it, it can never cure him. In like manner, it is not enough that the blood of Christ can heal, but in order to heal, it must be applied. The application makes it effectual, and therefore we read of the blood of sprinkling both in the Old Testament, and in the New. The blood must be sprinkled upon the conscience in order to heal the wounds of sin, and this is the office of the Holy Spirit. He applies the blood of Christ; He brings this healing balm to the wounded houl.
There is not a wound of sin so deep, a disease of sin so desperate, but the blood of Christ, applied by the Holy Spirit, can heal them; for God hereby healeth the broken in heart, and giveth this medicine to heal their sickness. Although they be half dead, yet it can recover them; because it operates by a divine and almighty power. The blood of Christ can raise the deadest soul to justification of life, and through sanctification of the Spirit this life is renewed and strengthened day by day, until every spiritual malady of sin be removed, and sorrow and sighing be done away forever. Hear this, ye mourners in Sion, and lift up your drooping heads. Looking into yourselves you may have reason to grieve. Your sins are many and great. They have wounded your consciences. You feel the smart, and your distress is exquisite. But despair not. Lo, there is balm in Gilead. The blood of Jesus is an infallible remedy. The Holy Spirit is almighty to apply it, and he has already showed you your want of it. Oh! that he may give you grace to wait until he supply your wants, and you feel its sovereign virtue healing your wounded consciences. And to encourage you to seek and wait until you find, remember that there is not only balm in Gilead, but also that there is a physician there; as I am, in the
Third place to consider, under whose hands you cannot fail of a perfect recovery; and he is no less a person than the great physician of souls, who is also God over all, blessed forever. He who created all things, visible and invisible, and who supports them by the word of his power, vouchsafes to heal his people of their sins; so there can be no doubt of his power, because he is almighty to heal. And can there be any doubt of his love? Did not his love bring him down from heaven to the lowest humiliation, even to veil his divine glory under a covering of flesh, and did not his love then lead him to put forth his divine power to heal every one who applied to him for a bodily cure? Whereby he demonstrated to us his readiness to exert the same power to heal the spiritual infirmities of those who come to him for his assistance. The eternal God, whom angels and arch-angels worship and adore, was pleased to be manifested in the flesh, so that God and man were one in Christ, and the one Christ, the God-man, stood up in the place of sinners, as their representative;
for them he obeyed the law, and suffered the pains and penalties due to the breach of it, that by his stripes they might be healed. He was obedient even unto death, and then rising from the dead, as their representative, he wrought out an all-perfect righteousness for them, which being imputed unto them by faith, they thereby received justification to life, and all the deadly wounds of sin are healed. Thus the great physician of souls has demonstrated his love. You may read it in every action of his life, and in every suffering unto death. You may read it engraven in every wound of his crucified body. What were the marks and scars which the crown of thorns made in his head, and the whips and scourges made on his back, but visible signs and seals of his love? The love which lead him to his agony and bloody sweat, to his bitter cross and passion, was greater than that of the strongest instinct and natural affection in the human breast: “For can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion upon the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will not I forget thee, saith the Lord; for I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands.” While he looks upon them, he cannot forget his people; because on the palms of his hands are the prints of the nails by which he was fastened to the cross, and these prints are the precious engravings of his wonderful love. Look upon the crucified Jesus, my Christian brethren, as wounded for your transgressions, and bruised for your iniquities, and see if ever there was love like his. Every wound speaks forth his love, every bruise loudly proclaims the greatness of it. His death demonstrates his love to have been stronger than death, and his pierced side shows that he had set his people as a seal upon his heart; for from thence there flowed blood and water, water to cleanse the pollution and blood to heal the wounds of their sins. Surely then, he who shed his heart’s blood for them cannot want love? Let this encourage poor dejected souls to wait upon him. Why are ye so troubled, as if God had not provided a medicine to heal the broken-hearted? Is there not balm in Gilead? Is there not a physician there? Oh! wait upon him then for his kind assistance, and you will certainly find that the fountain of his love is not dried up. He is now indeed on the throne of glory, king of kings, and lord of lords, but he has the same tender heart, which once bled to death upon the cross. Apply to him for relief, and he will not cast you out. You can have no distemper but what he has power to heal, for he is an almighty physician. And no distemper but what he has love to heal; for God is love, and the Saviour the Lord Christ is God. How great soever the wounds of sin may be, yet if you fall low at his footstool, crying for mercy, he will not reject your suit. What! was it ever known that he cast out the prayer of the poor destitute? No. There never was, and there never will be such an instance. When he was upon earth he never refused to heal any one who asked his help. He never sent one single person away unrelieved, whatever his disease might be, or however unworthy he was to be healed of it. He cured all that came to him, and he did not half cure them, but it is written, “they were made perfectly whole.” Perfectly does he heal all the wounds of sin, and eternally. He heals forever. His medicine restores his patients to everlasting health. He forgiveth all their sins, and healeth all their infirmities, and thus admits them into the city of the living God, the inhabitant of which shall not say, I am sick; for the people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity, and so freely and fully forgiven, that God will
remember it no more. And is this indeed the character of the great physician of souls? Is his heart so full of love, that he is always disposed to use his power for the perfect recovery of convinced and afflicted sinners? Is he as willing as he is able to heal them? No doubt he is. Let such persons then seek his help, and look up unto him for medicine to heal their wounded consciences. He hath wounded you out of love, and he will heal, He hath convinced you of your wants in order that you might wait upon him to have them supplied. Wait then, and he will give you abundant reason to admire and to praise the wonders which he will do for you and for your salvation. He will pardon you freely, and will heal all the wounds which sin has made, and then he will enable you to declare upon your own happy experience that there is balm in Gilead, and a physician there.
Now since this is the case, why do men labour under the maladies of sin? Since the blood of Christ is the sovereign balm, and Christ is the physician, whose power and love are able and willing to heal the most desperate disease, and the Holy Spirit is almighty to apply the healing balm, may we not then reasonably enquire, Why is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered? And this is the
(To be continued.)