by Rev. Arch. Cook
Well, you are now at the Lord’s table seeking Jesus who was crucified. Do not be ashamed of His name. You that received something that made you forsake your idols, will not be ashamed to confess Him before an assembled world. The Lord loveth the broken heart for sin. It was sin that made Christ go through the ocean of God’s wrath that He might redeem the objects of His love. Sin is the only thing in the world that the Lord hates. On that night on which he was betrayed He took bread. That night will never be forgotten. It has sent forth a savour that will never pass away through eternity. He will come again and finish His work. He finished a great part of it upon the Cross, but He has a great deal yet to do. A good woman said, “If ever I get to heaven, He has much yet to do in my soul. If I would be taken to heaven in my sins I would turn a serpent and would sting the Lord of Glory.” Mary washed His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head. That was the fruit of pardon. The Lord never gives a token of the pardon of sin, but He gives a token of the sanctification of the soul.
My friends, if ever you get a drop of grace, when you come to Jordan, you will see that you had need of every cross and every trial to draw the soul from its idols. Remember, poor sinner, that one vain thought will do more harm to your soul than all the devils in hell. Poor creature, do they call you a hypocrite? What will they say when the Lord will acknowledge you to be His own before an assembled world.
Many poor sinners are contented with the form of godliness. But there is nothing in the world one should be so much afraid of as starving one’s soul. There is nothing so near the Lord as the death of His Son. It is the death of the Saviour that lifted the glory and cause of God in the world.
We read that the Lord’s eyes are as a flame of fire. This means that His secret eye observes the actings of the souls of men. “God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.” For my part, I would prefer one spiritual thought to a million of prayers. The secret eye will pierce through the soul. Don’t look about you at the Lord’s table. You don’t know how near you are to consuming fire.
My friends, a person might go so far in religion that the Lord’s people, and even the angels and saints in heaven might think he was a gracious person, when the secret eye sees in him nothing but emptiness to the very bottom. Did you ever see the mercy of God? Did you see it in the death of the Saviour? If not, you never tasted of the mercy of God. O what love shall be seen, when He will say concerning some, “Behold me and the children whom thou hast given me.” The Lord will not break one of your bones, He will not give you one stroke, but what you will bless Him for through eternity. O poor worldling, you will yet see all the world burning. All that took away your heart from God you will see in flames, and you will then say, “O that I had thought more of the world to come.” One said in speaking of Jacob, “It is written, fear not, thou worm Jacob, for I am thy God. “When Jacob was a worm he thrashed the mountains, but when he was a mountain the worms thrashed him.”
An old divine once said, that man was a ring which dropped from the finger of God into hell, and the Second Person of the Godhead stooped down into hell and lifted the ring, and put it on the hand of God. I hope there are none here whose soul never kept them five minutes from the world. If there are, they are miserable creatures. If the greatest sinner here should get a drop of repentance he would be eternally saved, but it is not every late repentance that ends in glory. It is an awful thing to see a sinner going to eternity without repentance, like the very beasts that perish.
“Do this in remembrance of Me.” He asked no more from the objects of His love than to remember Him. When He had supped, He gave the bread and wine to His disciples as I now give them to you, in the name of a Triune God, on condition that you will be His through time and through all eternity.
To one who asked him the secret of his service, George Miller said, “There was a day when I died, utterly died,” and as he spoke, he bent lower and lower until he almost touched the floor—”died to George Miller, his opinions, preferences, tastes and will,—died to the world, its approval or censure, died to the approval or blame, even of my brethren and friends, and since then I have studied only to show myself approved unto God.”
From “Life of George Miller” by A.T. Pierson.