The Blood — C.H. Spurgeon

The Prince of Preachers Charles Haddon Spurgeon has been called England's greatest contribution to the spread of the gospel in the 19th century. One of his contemporaries said that the chief secret of Spurgeon's attractiveness was the fact that in every sermon, no matter what the text or the occasion, he explained the way of salvation in simple terms.

Spurgeon's messages remain one of the great treasure houses of Christian literature, still bringing the light of the gospel and the comfort of the scriptures to hungry souls long after the preacher has passed into glory.

This is Charles Kelsch inviting you to listen to a message from the Prince of Preachers. C. H. Spurgeon preached this message on December 12, 1858, at the Music Hall of the Royal Surrey Gardens. It is entitled, The Blood.

The Passover Blood and the Safety of God's People

The text is in Exodus chapter 12 and verse 13. When I see the blood, I will pass over you. God's people are always safe. All the saints are in his hand, and the hand of God is a place of safety as well as a place of honor.

Nothing can hurt the man who has made his refuge God. Thou hast given commandment to save me, said David, and every believing child of God may say the same. Plague, famine, war, tempest, all these have received commandment of God to save his people.

Though the earth should rock beneath the feet of man, yet the Christian may stand fast. And though the heavens should be rolled up and the firmament should pass away like a scroll that is burned by fervent heat, yet need not a Christian fear.

God's people shall be saved. If they cannot be saved under the heavens, they shall be saved in the heavens. If there be no safety for them in the time of trouble upon this solid earth, they shall be caught up together with the Lord in the air, and so shall they ever be with the Lord and ever safe.

Now at the time of which this book of Exodus speaks, Egypt was exposed to a terrible peril. Jehovah himself was about to march through the streets of all the cities of Egypt. It was not merely a destroying angel, but Jehovah himself.

For thus it is written, I will pass through the land of Egypt this night and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast. No one less than the I Am, the great God, had vowed to cut Rahab with the sword of vengeance.

Tremble, ye inhabitants of the earth, for God has come down among you, provoked, incensed, and at last awakened from his seeming sleep of patience. He has girded on his terrible sword, and he has come to smite you.

Quake for fear, all ye that have sin within you, for when God walks through the streets, sword in hand, will he not smite you all? But, hark! the voice of covenant mercy speaks. God's children are safe, even though an angry God be in the streets.

As they are safe from the rod of the wicked, so are they safe from the sword of justice, always and ever safe. For there was not a hair of the head of an Israelite that was so much as touched. Jehovah kept them safe beneath his wings.

While he did rend his enemies like a lion, yet did he protect his children, every one of them. But, beloved, while this is always true, that God's people are safe, there is another fact that is equally true, namely, that God's people are only safe through the blood.

The reason why God spares his people in the time of calamity is because he sees the blood mark on their brow. What is the basis of that great truth, that all things work together for good to them that love God?

What is the cause that all things so produce good to them but this, that they are bought with the precious blood of Christ? Therefore it is that nothing can hurt them, because the blood is upon them, and every evil thing must pass them by.

It was so that night in Egypt. God himself was abroad with his sword, but he spared them, because he saw the blood mark on the lentil and on the two side posts. And so it is with us. In the day when God in his fierce anger shall come forth from his dwelling place to affright the earth with terrors and to condemn the wicked, we shall be secure, if covered with the Saviour's righteousness and sprinkled with his blood, we are found in him.

Preaching the Old Story of Christ's Dying Love

Did I hear someone say that I am now coming to an old subject? This thought struck me when I was preparing for preaching, that I should have to tell you an old story over again. And just as I was thinking of that, happening to turn over a book, I met with an anecdote of Judson, the missionary to Burma.

He had passed through unheard of hardships, and had performed dangerous exploits for his master. He returned after thirty years' absence to America. Announced to address an assembly in a provincial town, and a vast concourse having gathered from great distances to hear him, he rose at the close of the usual service, and as all eyes were fixed in every ear attempt, he spoke for about fifteen minutes, with much pathos, of the precious Saviour, of what he had done for us, and of what we owed to him.

And he sat down, visibly affected. The people are very much disappointed, said a friend to him on their way home. They wonder you did not talk of something else. Why, what did they want? he replied. I presented to the best of my ability the most interesting subject in the world.

But they wanted something different, a story. Well, I am sure I gave them a story, the most thrilling one that can be conceived of. But they had heard it before. They wanted something new, of a man who had just come from the Antipodes.

Then I am glad they have it to say, that a man coming from the Antipodes has nothing better to tell than the wondrous story of the dying love of Jesus. My business is to preach the gospel of Christ, and when I can speak at all, I dare not trifle with my commission.

When I looked upon those people today, and remembering where I should next meet them, how could I stand up and furnish food to vain curiosity, tickle their fancy with amusing stories, however decently strung together on a thread of religion?

That is not what Christ meant by preaching the gospel. And then how could I hereafter meet the fearful charge? I gave you one opportunity to tell them of me. You spent it in describing your own adventures.

So I thought. Well, if Judson told the old story after he had been thirty years away and could not find anything better, I will just go back to this old subject, which is always new and always fresh to us, the precious blood of Christ by which we are saved.

The Divinely Appointed and Spotless Lamb

First, then, the blood. Secondly, its efficacy. Thirdly, the one condition appended to it, when I see the blood. And fourthly, the practical lesson. First, then, the blood itself. In the case of the Israelites, it was the blood of the Paschal Lamb.

In our case, beloved, it is the blood of the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world. The blood of which I have solemnly to speak this morning is, first of all, the blood of a divinely appointed victim.

Jesus Christ did not come into this world unappointed. He was sent here by His Father. This, indeed, is one of the underlying groundworks of the Christian's hope. We can rely upon Jesus Christ's acceptance by His Father, because His Father ordained Him to be our Savior from before the foundation of the world.

Sinner, when I preach to thee the blood of Christ this morning, I am preaching something that is well-pleasing to God, for God Himself did choose Christ to be the Redeemer. He Himself set Him apart from before the foundation of the world, and He Himself, even Jehovah the Father, did lay upon Him the iniquity of us all.

The sacrifice of Christ is not brought to you without warrant. It is not a something which Christ did surreptitiously and in secret. It was written in the great decree from all eternity that He was the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.

As He Himself said, Lo, I come, in the volume of the book it is written of Me, I delight to do Thy will, O God. It is God's will that the blood of Jesus should be shed. Jesus is God's chosen Savior for men, and here, when addressing the ungodly, here, I say, is one potent argument with them.

Sinner, you may trust in Christ that He is able to save you from the wrath of God, for God Himself has appointed Him to save. Christ Jesus, too, like the Lamb, was not only a divinely appointed victim, but He was spotless.

Had there been one sin in Christ, He had not been capable of being our Savior, but He was without spot or blemish, without original sin, without any practical transgression. In Him was no sin, though He was tempted in all points like as we are.

Here again is the reason why the blood is able to save, because it is the blood of an innocent victim, a victim the only reason for whose death lay in us and not in Himself. When the poor innocent Lamb was put to death by the head of the household of Egypt, I can imagine that thoughts like these ran through His mind.

Ah, He would say, as He struck the knife into the Lamb, This poor creature dies, not for any guilt that it has ever had, but to show me that I am guilty and that I deserve to die like this. Turn, then, your eye to the cross, and see Jesus bleeding there and dying for you.

Remember, for sin's not His own, He died to atone. Sin had no foothold in Him, never troubled Him. The prince of this world came and looked, but he said, I have nothing in Christ. There is no room for me to plant my foot, no piece of corrupt ground which I may call my own.

O sinner, the blood of Jesus is able to save thee, because He was perfectly innocent Himself, and He died, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God. But some will say, Whence has the blood of Christ such power to save?

The Divine Nature of Christ Gives His Blood Saving Power

My reply is, not only because God appointed that blood, and because it was the blood of an innocent and spotless being, but because Christ Himself was God. If Christ were a mere man, my hearers, you could not be exhorted to trust Him.

Were He ever so spotless and holy, there would be no efficacy in His blood to save. But Christ was very God of very God. The blood that Jesus shed was godlike blood. It was the blood of man, for He was man like ourselves.

But the divinity was so allied with the manhood that the blood derived efficacy from it. Can you imagine what must be the value of the blood of God's own dear Son? No. You cannot put an estimate upon it that should so much as reach to a millionth part of its preciousness.

I know you esteem the blood as beyond all price if you have been washed in it. But I know also that you do not esteem it enough. It was the wonder of angels that God should condescend to die. It will be the wonder of all wonders, the unceasing wonder of eternity, that God should become man to die.

Oh, when we think that Christ was creator of the world and that on His all-sustaining shoulders did hang the universe, we cannot wonder that His death is mighty to redeem and that His blood should cleanse from sin.

Come hither, saints and sinners. Gather in and crowd around the cross and see this man overcome with weakness, fainting, groaning, bleeding and dying. This man is also God over all, blessed forever. Is there not power to save?

Is there not efficacy in blood like that? Can you imagine any stretch of sin which shall outmeasure the power of divinity? Any height of iniquity that shall overtop the topless steeps of the divine? Can I conceive a depth of sin that shall be deeper than the infinite?

Or a breadth of iniquity that shall be broader than the Godhead? Because He is divine, He is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him. Divinity appointed, spotless and divine, His blood is the blood whereby ye may escape the anger and the wrath of God.

Christ's Once-for-All Sacrifice and Accepted Ransom

Once more, the blood of which we speak today is blood once shed for many for the remission of sin. The paschal lamb was killed every year, but now Christ hath appeared to take away sin by the offering up of Himself, and there is now no more mention of sin, for Christ once for all hath put away sin by the offering of Himself.

The Jew had the lamb every morning and every evening, for there was a continual mention of sin. The blood of the lamb could not take it away. The lamb availed for today, but there was the sin of tomorrow.

What was to be done with that? Why, a fresh victim must bleed. But, O my hearer, our greatest joy is that the blood of Jesus has been once shed, and He has said, It is finished. There is no more need of the blood of bulls or of goats or of any other sacrifice.

That one sacrifice hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. Trembling sinner, come to the cross again. Thy sins are heavy and many, but the atonement for them is completed by the death of Christ.

Look then to Jesus, and remember that Christ needs nothing to supplement His blood. The road between God and man is finished and open. The robe to cover thy nakedness is complete without a rag of thine.

The bath in which thou art to be washed is full, full to the brim, and nothing needs to be added thereunto. It is finished. Let that ring in thine ears. There is nothing now that can hinder thy being saved if God hath made thee willing now to believe in Jesus Christ.

He is a complete Savior, full of grace for an empty sinner. And yet I must add one more thought, and then leave this point. The blood of Jesus Christ is blood that has been accepted. Christ died. He was buried.

But neither heaven nor earth could tell whether God had accepted the ransom. There was wanted God's seal upon the great Magna Carta of man's salvation, and that seal was put, my hearer, in that hour when God summoned the angel and bade him descend from heaven and roll away the stone.

Christ was put in the prison house of the grave as a hostage for His people. Until God had signed the warrant for acquittal of all His people, Christ must abide in the bonds of death. He did not attempt to break His prison.

He did not come out illegally by wrenching down the bars of His dungeon. He waited. He wrapped up the napkin, folding it by itself. He laid the grave clothes in a separate place. He waited, waited patiently.

And at last, down from the skies like the flash of a meteor, the angel descended, touched the stone and rolled it away. And when Christ came out, rising from the dead in the glory of His Father's power, then was the seal put upon the great Carta of our redemption.

The blood was accepted, and sin was forgiven. And now, soul, it is not possible for God to reject thee if thou comest this day to Him fleeting the blood of Christ. God cannot, and here we speak with reverence to, the everlasting God cannot reject a sinner who pleads the blood of Christ.

For if He did so, it were to deny Himself and to contradict all His former acts. He has accepted blood, and He will accept it. He can never revoke that divine acceptance of the resurrection. And if thou goest to God, my hearer, pleading simply and only the blood of Him that did hang upon the tree, God must un-God Himself before He can reject thee or reject that blood.

Christ Crucified as the Only Object of Saving Trust

And yet I fear that I have not been able to make you think of the blood of Christ. I beseech you, then, just for a moment, try to picture to yourself Christ on the cross. Let your imagination figure the motley crew assembled round about that little hill of Calvary.

Lift now your eyes, and see the three crosses put upon that rising knoll. See in the center the thorn-crowned brow of Christ. Do you see the hands that have always been full of blessing, nailed fast to the accursed wood?

See you His dear face, more marred than that of any other man? Do you see it now, as His head bows upon His bosom in the extreme agonies of death? He was a real man, remember. It was a real cross. Do not think of these things as figments and fancies and romances.

There was such a being, and He died as I describe it. Let your imagination picture Him. And then sit still a moment and think over this thought. The blood of that man whom now I behold dying in agony must be my redemption.

And if I would be saved, I must put my only trust in what He suffered for me when He Himself did bear our sins in His own body on the tree. If God the Holy Spirit should help you, you will then be in a right state to proceed to the second point.

The Efficacy of Christ's Blood: Salvation by Christ Alone

The efficacy of this blood. When I see the blood, I will pass over you. The blood of Christ has such a divine power to save that nothing but it can ever save the soul. If some foolish Israelite had despised the command of God and had said, I will sprinkle something else upon the doorposts, or I will adorn the lentil with jewels of gold and silver, he must have perished.

Nothing could save his household but the sprinkled blood. And now let us all remember that other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, Jesus Christ. For there is none other name given among men whereby we must be saved.

My works, my prayers, my tears cannot save me. The blood, the blood alone has power to redeem. Sacraments, however well they may be attended to, cannot save me. Nothing but thy blood, O Jesus, can redeem me from the guilt of sin.

Though I should give rivers of oil and ten thousand of the fat of fed beasts, yea, though I should give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul, all would be useless.

Nothing but the blood of Jesus has in it the slightest saving power. O you that are trusting in your infant baptism, your confirmation and your Lord's Supper, you are trusting in a lie. Nothing but the blood of Jesus can save.

I care not how right the ordinance, how true the form, how scriptural the practice. It is all a vanity to you if you rely in it. God forbid I should say a word against ordinances or against holy things, but keep them in their places.

If you make them the basis of your soul's salvation, they are lighter than a shadow, and when you need them most, you shall find them fail you. There is not, I repeat it again, the slightest atom of saving power anywhere but in the blood of Jesus.

That blood has the only power to save, and aught else that you rely upon shall be a refuge of lies. This is the rock, and this is the work that is perfect, but all other things are daydreams. They must be swept away in the day when God shall come to try our work of what sort it is.

The blood stands out in solitary majesty, the only rock of our salvation. This blood is not simply the only thing that can save, but it must save alone. Put anything with the blood of Christ, and you are lost.

Trust to anything else with this, and you perish. It is true, says one, that the sacrament cannot save me, but I will trust in that and in Christ too. You are a lost man, then. So jealous is Christ of His honor that anything you put with Him, no matter how good, becomes, from the very fact of your putting it with Him, an accursed thing.

And what is it that thou put with Christ, thy good works? What, wilt thou yoke a reptile with an angel, yoke thyself to the chariot of salvation with Christ? What are thy good works? Thy righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and shall filthy rags be joined to the spotless celestial righteousness of Christ?

It must not, and it shall not be. Rely on Jesus only, and thou canst not perish, but rely on anything with Him, and thou art as surely damned as if thou shouldst rely upon thy sins. Jesus only! Jesus only!

Jesus only! This is the rock of our salvation. And here let me stop and combat a few forms and shapes which our self-righteousness always takes. Oh, says one, I could trust in Christ if I felt my sins more.

Sir, that is a damning error. Is thy repentance, thy sense of sin, to be a part Saviour? Sinner, the blood is to save thee, not thy tears, Christ's death, not thy repentance. Thou art bidden this day to trust in Christ, not in thy feelings, not in thy pangs on account of sin.

Many a man has been brought into great soul distress because he has looked more at his repentance than at the obedience of Christ. Could thy tears forever flow? Could thy zeal no respite know? All for sin could not atone.

Christ must save, and Christ alone. Nay, says another, but I feel that I do not value the blood of Christ as I ought, and therefore I am afraid to believe. My friend, that is another insidious form of the same error.

God does not say, when I see your estimate of the blood of Christ, I will pass over you. No, but when I see the blood, it is not your estimate of that blood, it is the blood that saves you. As I said before, that magnificent, solitary blood must be alone.

Nay, says another, but if I had more faith, then I should have hope. That, too, is a very deadly shape of the same evil. You are not to be saved by the efficacy of your faith, but by the efficacy of the blood of Christ.

It is not your believing, it is Christ's dying. I bid you believe, but I bid you not to look to your believing as the ground of your salvation. No man will go to heaven if he trusts to his own faith. You may as well trust to your own good works as trust to your faith.

Your faith must deal with Christ, not with itself. The world hangs on nothing, but faith cannot hang upon itself. It must hang on Christ. Sometimes when my faith is vigorous, I catch myself doing this.

There is joy flowing into my heart, and after a while I begin to find that my joy suddenly departs. I ask the causes, and I find that the joy came because I was thinking of Christ. But when I began to think about my joy, then my joy fled.

You must not think of your faith, but of Christ. Faith comes from meditation upon Christ. Turn then your eye not upon faith, but upon Jesus. It is not your hold of Christ that saves you, it is His hold of you.

It is not the efficacy of your believing in Him, it is the efficacy of His blood applied to you through the Spirit. I do not know how sufficiently to follow Satan in all his windings into the human heart, but this I know.

He is always trying to keep back this great truth. The blood, and the blood alone, has power to save. Oh, says another, if I had such and such an experience, then I could trust. Friend, it is not thine experience, it is the blood.

God did not say, when I see your experience, but when I see the blood of Christ. Nay, says one, but if I had such and such graces, I could hope. Nay, but He did not say, when I see your graces, but when I see the blood.

Get grace, get as much as you can of faith and love and hope, but, oh, do not put them where Christ's blood ought to be. The only pillar of your hope must be the cross, and aught else that you put up to buttress up the cross of Christ is obnoxious to God, and ceases to have any virtue in it, because it is an antichrist.

The blood of Christ then alone saves, but anything with it, and it does not save. Yet again we may say of the blood of Christ, it is all-sufficient. There is no case which the blood of Christ cannot meet.

There is no sin which it cannot wash away. There is no multiplicity of sin which it cannot cleanse. No aggravation of guilt which it cannot remove. You may be double-dyed like scarlet. You may have lain in the lie of your sins these seventy years, but the blood of Christ can take out the stain.

You may have blasphemed Him almost as many times as you have breathed. You may have rejected Him as often as you have heard His name. You may have broken His Sabbath. You may have denied His existence.

You may have doubted His Godhead. You may have persecuted His servants. You may have trampled on His blood. But all this, the blood, can wash away. You may have committed whoredoms without number. Nay, murder itself may have defiled your hands.

But this fountain filled with blood can wash all the stains away. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin. There is no sort of a man, there is no abortion of mankind, no demon in human shape, that this blood cannot wash.

Hell may have sought to make a paragon of iniquity. It may have striven to put sin and sin and sin together till it has made a monster in the shape of a man, a monster abhorred of mankind. But the blood of Christ can transform that monster.

Magdalene's seven devils it can cast out. The madness of the demoniac it can ease. The deep-seated leprosy it can cure. The wound of the maimed, yea, the lost limb it can restore. There is no spiritual disease which the great physician cannot heal.

This is the great catholicon, the medicine for all diseases. No case can exceed its virtue, be it ever so black or vile. All sufficient, all sufficient blood. But go further. The blood of Christ saves, surely.

Many people will say, well, I hope I shall be saved through the blood of Christ. And perhaps, says one here who is believing in Christ, well, I hope it will save. My dear friend, that is a slur upon the honor of God.

If any man gives you a promise and you say, well, I hope he will fulfill it, is it not implied that you have at least some small doubt as to whether he will or not? Now, I do not hope that the blood of Christ will wash away my sin.

I know it is washed away by his blood, and that is true faith which does not hope about Christ's blood, but says, I know it is so. That blood does cleanse. The moment it was applied to my conscience, it did cleanse, and it does cleanse still.

The Israelite, if he was true to his faith, did not go inside and say, I hope the destroying angel will pass by me. But he said, I know he will. I know God cannot smite me. I know he will not. There is the blood mark there.

I am secure beyond a doubt. There is not the shadow of a risk of my perishing. I am. I must be saved. And so I preach a sure gospel this morning. Whosoever believeth on the Lord Jesus Christ shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

I give unto my sheep eternal life, said he, and they shall never perish. Neither shall any pluck them out of my hand. O sinner, I have not the shadow of a doubt as to whether Christ will save you if you trust in his blood.

O no, I know he will. I am certain his blood can save, and I beg you, in Christ's name, believe the same. Believe that that blood is sure to cleanse. Not only that it may cleanse, but that it must cleanse.

Whereby we must be saved, says the Scripture. If we have that blood upon us, we must be saved, or else we are to suppose a God unfaithful and a God unkind. In fact, a God transformed from everything that is godlike into everything that is base.

And yet again, he that hath this blood sprinkled upon him is saved completely. Not the hair of the head of an Israelite was disturbed by the destroying angel. They were completely saved. So he that believeth in the blood is saved from all things.

I like the old translation of the chapter in Romans. There was a martyr once summoned before Bonner, and after he had expressed his faith in Christ, Bonner said, You are a heretic and will be damned. Nay, said he, quoting the old version, there is therefore now no damnation to them that believe in Christ Jesus.

And that brings a sweet thought before us. There is no damnation to the man who has the blood of Christ upon him. He cannot be condemned of God anyhow. It were impossible. There is no such thing. There can be no such thing.

There is no damnation. He cannot be damned, for there is no damnation to him that is in Christ Jesus. Let the blood be applied to the lintel and to the doorpost. There is no destruction. There is a destroying angel for Egypt, but there is none for Israel.

There is a hell for the wicked, but none for the righteous. And if there is none, they cannot be put there. If there is no damnation, they cannot suffer it. Christ saves completely. Every sin is washed, every blessing ensured, every perfection is provided, and glory everlasting is the sure result.

I think, then, I have dwelt sufficiently long upon the efficacy of his blood, but no tongue of seraph can ever speak its worth. I must go home to my chamber and weep, because I am powerless to tell this story, and yet I have labored to tell it simply so that all can understand.

And I pray, therefore, that God the Spirit may lead some of you to put your trust simply, wholly, and entirely on the blood of Jesus Christ. This brings us to the third point, upon which I must be very brief.

The One Condition: God Sees the Blood

And the third point is the one condition. What says one? Do you preach a conditional salvation? Yes, I do. There is the one condition. Where I see the blood, I will pass over you. What a blessed condition!

It does not say when you see the blood, but when I see it. Thine eye of faith may be so dim that thou canst not see the blood of Christ. Ay, but God's eye is not dim. He can see it, yea, he must see it, for Christ in heaven is always presenting His blood before His Father's face.

The Israelite could not see the blood. He was inside the house. He could not see what was on the lintel and the doorpost. But God could see it. And this is the only condition of the sinner's salvation, God seeing the blood, not your seeing it.

Oh, how safe then is everyone that trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ! It is not His faith that is the condition, not His assurance. It is the simple fact that Calvary is set perpetually before the eyes of God in a risen and ascended Savior.

When I see the blood, I will pass over you. Fall on your knees then in prayer, ye doubting souls, and let this be your plea. Lord, have mercy upon me for the blood's sake. I cannot see it as I could desire.

But, Lord, Thou seest it, and Thou hast said, When I see it, I will pass over you. Lord, Thou seest it this day. Pass over my sin and forgive me for its dear sake alone. And now, lastly, what is the lesson?

The Practical Lesson for Christians: Trust the Blood, Not Your Feelings

The lesson of the text is to the Christian this. Christian, take care that Thou dost always remember that nothing but the blood of Christ can save Thee. I preach to myself today what I preach to you. I often find myself like this.

I have been praying that the Holy Spirit might rest in my heart and cleanse out an evil passion. And presently I find myself full of doubts and fears. And when I ask the reason, I find it is this. I have been looking to the Spirit's work until I put the Spirit's work where Christ's work ought to be.

Now, it is a sin to put your own works where Christ's work should be. But it is just as much a sin to put the Holy Spirit's work there. You must never make the Spirit of God an antichrist, and you virtually do that when you put the Spirit's work as the groundwork of your faith.

Do you not often hear Christian men say, I cannot believe in Christ today as I could yesterday, for yesterday I felt such sweet and blessed enjoyments? Now, what is that but putting your frames and feelings where Christ ought to be?

Remember, Christ's blood is no more able to save you in a good frame than in a bad frame. Christ's blood must be your trust, as much when you are full of joy as when you are full of doubt. And here it is that your happiness will be in danger by beginning to put your good frames and good feelings in the room of the blood of Christ.

O brethren, if we could always live with a single eye fixed on the cross, we should always be happy. But when we get a little peace and a little joy, we begin to prize the joy and peace so much that we forget the source whence they come.

As Mr. Brooks says, a husband that loves his wife will perhaps often give her jewels and rings. But suppose she should sit down and begin to think of her jewels and rings so much that she should forget her husband.

It would be a kind husband's business to take them away from her so that she might fix her affections entirely on him. And it is so with us. Jesus gives us jewels of faith and love, and we get trusting to them.

And he takes them away in order that we may come again as guilty, helpless sinners and put our trust in Christ. To quote a verse I often repeat, I believe the spirit of a Christian should be, from his first hour to his last, the spirit of these two lines.

Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. That is the lesson to the saint. But another minute, there is a lesson here to the sinner. Poor, trembling, guilty, self-condemned sinner, I have a word from the Lord for thee.