#WHO CAN TELL?
"Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from His fierce anger, that we perish not?"
- Jonah 3:9
THIS was the forlorn hope of the Ninevites—"Who can tell if God will turn and relent and turn away from His fierce anger, that we perish not?" The book of Jonah should be exceedingly comfortable to those who are despairing because of the wickedness of their times. Nineveh was a city as great in its wickedness as in its power. If any of us with little faith had been bid to go round about her and "tell the towers thereof and mark well her bulwarks;" if we had been commanded to go through her streets and behold her both in the blaze of the sun and in the light of the moon as her inhabitants indulged in vice; we would have said. "Alas, alas, the city is wholly given unto idolatry and it is girt about with a wall of sin as stupendous as its wall of stone." Suppose that the problem had been given to us to solve—how shall this city be moved to repentance? How shall its vice be forsaken and the God of Israel worshipped by all its inhabitants from the highest to the lowest? If we had not been paralyzed with despair, which is the most probable, we would, nevertheless, have sat down carefully to consider our plans. We would have parceled it out into missionary districts. We would have needed at least several hundred, if not thousands, of able ministers! At once expenses would have to be incurred and we would have considered ourselves bound to contemplate the erection of innumerable structures in which the Word of God might be preached! Our machinery would necessarily become cumbersome. We would find that we, unless we had the full resources of an empire, could not even begin the work! But what said the Lord concerning this? Putting aside the judgments of reason and all the plans and schemes which flesh and blood so naturally follow, He raises up one man. By an amazing providence, He qualifies that one man for his mission! He sends him down into the very depths of the sea, where the weeds are wrapped about him. He comes up from the great deep and the awful descent has steeled his soul and completely covered him with the armor of courageous faith. Who need tremble at anything on shore who has passed the bowels of a fish and yet survived? He comes into the city, his eyes almost starting from their sockets with the remembrance of the great judgment which had passed over his head and in stern inflexible manner, with shrill monotonous voice, he begins to cry, "Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" Is this, O God, is this Your way? Is this the means with which You will accomplish the great event? Will you make Nineveh repent at the bidding of one man? Shall yon sickly man fresh from the sea—shall his voice be sufficient to stir this great city? O God, if You had come forth in Your fiery chariot; if You had spoken with Your thunder; if You had shaken the earth with Your earthquakes—then might Nineveh feel! But surely, this one man is not sufficient for the deed! But as high as the heaven is above the earth, so high are His ways above our ways and His thoughts above our thoughts. So skillful is He that, with the weakest instrument, He can produce the mightiest workmanship! That one man begins his journey. Already the inhabitants flock to listen to him. He proceeds—the crowd multiplies! As he stands at the corner of the alleys and the lanes, every window is thrown open to listen and the streets are thronged as he walks along. Still on he goes till the whole city has begun to shake with his terrible voice! And now the King, himself, bids him come into his presence and the fearless still propounds the threat of God! Then comes the effect! All Nineveh is wrapped in sackcloth! The cry of man and beast go up in one terrible wailing to God. Jehovah is honored and Nineveh repents! Ah, my brothers and sisters, we see rich grounds for hope in this! What cannot God do? Think not that He needs to wait for us. He can accomplish the greatest deeds by the meanest instrumentality. One man, if He willed it, would be sufficient to stir this giant city! One man, if God decreed it, might be the means of the conversion of a nation, no, a voice could not reach it, and there is no den of infamy so deep that his cry would not be heard in it! All we need is that God should "make bare His arm," and who can withstand His might? What? Though He grasps but the jawbone of an ass, yet is His arm mightier than Samson’s and, not only would it be heaps upon heaps, but city upon city, continent upon continent! With the meanest instrument would God slay His thousands and overcome His myriads! Oh, church of God, never fear—remember the men who God has given you in the days of yore? Look back to Paul. Remember Augustine? Think about Luther and Calvin. Think of Whitefield and, of Wesley, and remember these were but separate individual men and, yet, through them God did a work, the remembrance of which still rolls on, and shall never cease while this earth endures!
With this by way of preface, I shall, now, somewhat turn aside from the narrative to address myself to those who are trembling on account of sin and who are in the same position as the men of Nineveh and, like they, anxiously desiring mercy!
I shall notice briefly this morning three things. First, the miserable plight in which the men of Nineveh found themselves; secondly, the scanty reasons which they had for hope; and then, thirdly, I shall observe that we have stronger reasons to compel us to pray, and more comfortable arguments to urge us to trust.
I. First then, I shall consider the men of Nineveh as representing many here present, as to THE DOLEFUL PLIGHT IN WHICH THEY FOUND THEMSELVES. The men of Nineveh were like those in the days of Noah. They were married and given in marriage—they ate and they drank—they built and they planted. The whole world was their granary and the kingdoms of the earth their hunting ground. They were rich and mighty above all people, for God had greatly increased their prosperity. And they had become the greatest nation upon the face of the earth. Locked in security, they fell into great and abominable sins! Their vices probably rivaled those of Sodom. If they were not worse, even, than the Eastern cities of the present day, they were abominable beyond description! How suddenly, however, were they startled from their security and convicted of their sin! The preaching of that one strange man had brought them from the height of their splendor to the depths of sorrow! Now was their boasting cut off. The sound of their mirth had ceased. And they began to weep and lament. What was their miserable plight? I take it, it consisted in three discoveries. They now discovered their great sin; then again, the shortness of their time and, in the next place, the terrible character of their destruction. Would that you would discover the same, you careless sinners, you who slumber in Zion, you who fear not God, neither turn from your evil ways! Would I say that, in the first place, some prophet’s voice would stir you to remember your sins, for are they not many and exceedingly great? Let each man among us look to his life and who is there here who need not blush? Some of us have been moral. We have, by the training of our youth, and by the restraints of divine grace, been kept from the immoralities of others, but even we are compelled to lay our mouths in the dust! While looking into our heart, we discover it to be a nest of unclean birds, full of all manner of evil and loathsome things! We have been as visions in our hearts as the worst of men have been in their acts. But there are too many who cannot even plead that they have been moral, though this would be but a poor excuse for the lack of love to God! Look, brothers and sisters; look to your lives; who among us has been free from murmuring against God? Who is he who has loved his neighbor as himself? Who has never been angry without a cause? Who has never cursed God in his heart, even if he has not done so with his lips? Who among us have always scrupulously kept our eyes from lust and our heart from covetousness?
Have we not all sinned? If our iniquities could now be revealed—if on every man’s brow were written his sin, which of you would not put his hand upon his forehead to hide his iniquity from his fellows? It will be of essential service to many of you if you will read over your lives! Turn, I beseech you, to the pages of your memory and let the black, blotted, misspelled pages now be read again. Think not that the preacher understands how to flatter his congregation. It has become fashionable in these times to look upon our hearers as all being good and excellent—would not this be a lie and a falsehood before Almighty God? Are there not here those who can indulge secretly in vices which we must not mention? Are there not those who do that to their fellows in trade which they would despise in others? What? Are none of you covetous? Do none of you over-reach or defraud your neighbors? Do none of you practice the common frauds and tricks in trade? Are none of you liars and none deceivers, none slanderers who cannot flatter myself that such can be the truth! No, our iniquities are great and our sins are hideous! Oh, that we were all ready to confess, each man and woman for himself, the iniquities which we have done! Surely, if the Spirit of God shall but shine into our hearts and show us the evil of our ways, we shall find ourselves in a sorrowful condition, indeed, and shall be ready to cry out before God, even as Nineveh did of old!
Added to this, however, the Ninevites had information as to the shortness of their days. "Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown." How fixed and definite the date! "Six weeks shall scarcely run their round," says the prophet, "before you must die and perish miserably." To an hour was the time described, "Yet forty days." How would the Ninevites count the days with terror and watch each rising and setting sun as if these were the black milestones upon their dreary road to death! "Ah," says one, "but you will not tell us that our days are only forty." No, brothers and sisters I am no prophet. I cannot tell how many your days may be—but this one thing I can say—it is possible that there are some here who have less than 40 days to live! There may be some among you who have not so long a respite as even Nineveh, itself. Suppose now I should be able to take you to that great city. If I could have shown you its massive ramparts and its stupendous fortresses—if like Jonah, I could point to them and say, "In 40 days this city will be all overthrown"—which would require the greater stretch of credulity to believe—this prophecy or that which follows, "In forty days your body shall crumble back to dust?" Which, I say, would require the greater stretch of faith? Which is the easier of these two—to send you to death, or to uproot a city? What are you, man, but a heap of animated dust? A worm may destroy you; a grain of sand may be sufficient to take away your life! Feeble is the thread of life—a spider’s web is a cable compared to it! It is but a dream—a child’s whisper may break it, and we may awake in another world! "Forty days!" Surely that was a long and distant period compared with what may be the date of your death! I have been long enough preaching in this place to look back now on many who have gone from this spot to the place appointed to all living. Many, many are the faces which this day I miss as I look along your ranks and cast my eyes around this gallery. There are not a few who I remember to have passed from the land of the living and to have gone to another world—and some, how suddenly, how rapidly! I have often been startled at it! I have seen some here on the Sabbath, and by Tuesday, or by Thursday, the message has come, "On what day can you bury such-and-such a one?" "Bury her?" "Yes sir, bury her, she is gone." And I have said, "How strange it seems that she should be dead who so lately was living in our midst!"
Forty days, I add, is a long lease compared with that which you have any reason to conclude that God has bestowed on you; but what if it were 40 years, how short a time even then? If you will but look with the eyes of wisdom, how rapidly our years revolve. Are you not startled even now to see the withered leaf in your path? It was but yesterday that the fresh green buds were seen. It seems but a month ago since first we saw the wheat starting up from the ground and lo, the harvest is over and gone, and many of the birds have disappeared and the tints of autumn are succeeding the verdure of summer! Years seem but months now, and months but days, and days pass so rapidly that they flit like shadows before us! O, men and women, if we could but measure life, it is but a span, and in a time how short, how brief, every one of us must appear before his God! The shortness of time should help to awake us and then, let me add the third thing which startled the Ninevites—the terrible character of the judgment. Doubtless one part of the effect of Jonah’s preaching may be traced to the singular vagueness of his prophecy. He says, "Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown." By whom, he does not tell us. How, he does not deign to reveal. It is to be overthrown, that is all. Whether some mighty nation should invade it, or whether an earthquake should swallow it up, or whether by plague or pestilence the whole city should be emptied, or whether an intestine disease should cut off the population, he says not! The very vagueness and indistinctness of a prophecy adds to its terror, just as men can never bring their minds to think of phantoms in the plain daylight, but always conjure up such things in hours of shade and gloom. The gloominess of the message made men tremble! And oh, you who are not reconciled to God, men without religion, without hope and without God in the world—how terrible is the judgment that shall come upon you! It is not for me to attempt to describe it. Scripture only speaks of the life to come in indistinct terms. Terrible are they in their vagueness! Jesus said, "These shall go away into outer darkness, where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth." And now and then, He speaks of torment as a place, "where the worm dies not and the fire is not quenched." And then, He describes it as "a bottomless pit," and as "a fire" that "never shall be quenched."
Ah, my brothers and sisters, we know but little of the wrath of God which shall certainly come upon the wicked—but we know enough to let us understand that it is too terrible for human ear to hear! If hell had been fully described to us in this time-state, this life itself would have been but the vestibule of eternal torment! I question whether any eyes could bear to read such a description as God might have given. Both our ears would have tingled and our hearts would melt like water at the sound thereof. Oh, sinner, it is enough for me to say to you this day, unless you repent, you must perish with a terrible overthrow! God, even God, Himself, shall draw His sword and bathe it in your blood! He shall drive you from His presence amidst the thunders of His wrath and the lightning of His vengeance. He shall smite you with His omnipotence, and shall spend Himself in punishing you and your torment shall be without end and the smoke thereof shall go up forever and ever! I speak not this day to you who are unbelievers in the Word—with you I will have nothing to do this morning. But to you who are believers in the revelation of the Bible—who profess to be nominal Christians—with you I have to deal! Oh sirs, if you believe this book, if you are impenitent, how tremendous is the doom which awaits you—how fatal shall death be to you and how terrible the last dread day of judgment! And all this is coming on apace. The chariot wheels of God’s justice have axles which are hot with speed; the black horses are covered with foam as on they drive. Perhaps, as here I stand and speak, alas, too coldly on things which should make any man boil over with enthusiasm—perhaps death may even now be fitting his arrow to the string and you may be his victim—and this sermon may be closed, as Paul’s sermon was, with someone’s falling dead like Eutychus, in the window in his sleep! God grant it may not be so, but nevertheless, there is cause enough for each one of us to tremble and to bow before the God of Israel! Thus have I spoken on the first point—O Holy Spirit, bless the word!
These Ninevites however took heart and hope. They said, "Let us proclaim a fast, let man and beast cry mightily unto God, for who can tell but He may turn from His fierce anger that we perish not."
II. Now, the second point was, THE SLENDER GROUND WHICH THE NINEVITES HAD FOR HOPE. And now, regard attentively, for I long this morning for you all in the heart of Christ, that you also with a far better hope may be enabled to imitate the example of the men of Nineveh! You will notice that in Jonah’s message, there was no proclamation of mercy made. It was one short sentence of doom! It was like the great bell of St. Sepulcher’s church tolling out the hour of the execution of a criminal. There was not so much as a note of mercy! It was the trumpet of the Judge, but not the silver trump of Jubilee! No mercy glanced from Jonah’s eyes, no pity was in his heart. He was sent with a thundering commission and he dealt it out in a thundering fashion. "Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown." I think I see the king of Nineveh sitting down with his nobles at a council of State and one of them would say, "We have little hope of mercy, for if you will observe, Jonah never offered us any. How terribly he spoke! There was not as much as a tear in his eyes. I am persuaded that Jonah’s God is very just and severe. He will by no means spare us. We shall be cut off." But the king’s answer to his counselor was, "Who can tell? You only think so, but you cannot say it, let us yet hope, for, ‘Who can tell?’" My dear hearers, it is no Jonah that addresses you. My language today shall be rather that of Isaiah, "Come now and let us reason together, says the Lord—though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Oh, cannot you say with Nineveh’s king, "Who can tell?" Will not you go home to your chamber and pray, for, "Who can tell?" Will you not go to the Bible and search for a promise, for, "Who can tell?" Will you not go to the cross and trust in the flowing blood, for, "Who can tell?" You may be forgiven yet, accepted yet, and one day yet sing God’s praises before His throne above! Another thing which would cut off the hope of the Ninevites very much was this—they knew nothing of God except, it may be, some dreadful legends they had heard of His terrible acts. One of the counselors of the king, deeply learned, would say, "O king, live forever! The God of Jonah is a terrible God. Have you not heard what He did in Egypt? How He destroyed Pharaoh and his chariots of old in the Red Sea? And have you not heard what He did to Sennacherib when He cut him off and his hosts? Have you never heard the thunder of His power and the might of His terrible acts? Surely, He will have no mercy on us." But the king answered—"Who can tell?" You do not know. It is but a surmise. ‘Who can tell?’" But oh, my hearers, we are on a vantage ground here, for you through this written word that He delights in mercy! You have His promise for it! No, you have His oath for it. Jehovah lifts His hands to heaven and swears by Himself. "As I live," says the Lord, "I have no pleasure in the death of him that dies. But had rather that he should turn unto Me and live." Come, then, sinner, for, "Who can tell?" He is a merciful God. Do what Benhadad did of old, when he and his army had been routed and he, alone, was left with a few of his nobles. He said—"Let us put ropes on our necks and go unto the king of Israel, for we have heard that the kings of Israel are merciful kings." You do the same with Jesus! You have heard that He is merciful and full of compassion. Come to Him now—trust in His blood and, "Who can tell?" This day your sins may be blotted out. "Who can tell?" This day, you may be washed in the blood of Christ and made white as Adam in Paradise! "Who can tell?" This day the Lord may make your heart leap with joy, while He whispers—"You are Mine and I am yours." "Who can tell?" Drowning men catch at straws—this is no straw—this is a solid rock—lay hold on it and be saved. "Who can tell?"
But once again, the people of Nineveh lacked another encouragement which you and I have. They had never heard of the cross. Jonah’s preaching was very powerful, but there was no Christ in it. There was nothing about the Messiah that was to come—no talking of the sprinkled blood—no mention of a great sin-atoning sacrifice—and, therefore, the men who were in the council of the king, might have said—"Surely we have never heard that any satisfaction has been offered to the injured justice of God. How, therefore, can He be just and yet the justifier of the ungodly?" "Ah," said the king, "who can tell?" And on that slender "Who can tell?" they ventured to cry for mercy! But oh, sinner, you are answered this day, that "God has spared not His own Son, but freely delivered Him up for us all, that whoever believes on Him might not perish, but have everlasting life. For God so loved the world that He sent forth His only begotten Son, that whoever believes on Him might not perish, but might be saved. "For there is now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus." Come sinner; come to the cross, for God can be just and yet the justifier of the ungodly! I say, this should make you ask—"Who can tell?" He may wash me clean; He may accept me and I may yet be able to sing with the loudest of all the voices of His children—
"I, the chief of sinners am,
But Jesus died for me!"
And now, shall I tell you what I think was the hope which the poor king of Nineveh really had? I have set before you his discouragements and now, I will set before you his encouragements. They were very slender, but still they seemed to have been sufficient. Perhaps the king said in his heart, or he might have said to his counselors—"Sirs, there is one thing which you cannot deny, we are come to the worst, but if we repent and cry for mercy, at least that cry will not be to our disadvantage. We shall be none the worse off even if we are not heard."
Now, sometimes I have known a trembling sinner take comfort even from that. The words of our hymn suggest the full idea—
"I can but perish if I go,
I am resolved to try.
For if I stay away I know,
I must forever die."
If you do not seek Christ; if you repent not of sin; if you put not your trust in Him, you must perish. That is certain! If you go and are rejected, at least you are none the worse off. Try it and you shall find out that you are much the better—for you shall not be rejected. Remember the three lepers at the gate of Samaria? They were sitting there without food to eat and, at last, the pangs of hunger were strong upon them. One of them said to his fellows, "Let us go now to the host of the Syrians. If they kill us, we shall but die. If they save us alive, we shall live. But if we stay here, perish we must." So, as there was nothing to lose, and there might be something to gain, they risked it. Oh, sinner, would to God, the Lord would teach you as much wisdom as this! Go to Him just as you are and say, "Lord, sink or swim, I take Your cross to be my only trust. If You will not save me; if I perish in the stream; yet will I perish clinging to the rock of my salvation, for no other trust and no other hope have I." Oh, that you may be led to do even this—and you shall not be disappointed!
Besides, the king would add, "It is true that Jonah did not say that God would have mercy, but then he did not say He would not." There was a cry from Jonah’s lip, "Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown," but he did not say, "God will not have any mercy at all." So the king said, "Who can tell, then?" If any could have told him, Jonah would. Was he not a fierce looking man? If there had been any thunders in store, would he not have dealt them out in his terrible fury of prophecy? "Surely," said the king, "if he stopped there and did not add, ‘I will have no mercy,’ this is a happy token. Who can tell? If Jonah did not tell, we cannot."
And now, sinner, I wish you would catch hold on this. But you have something stronger and firmer still, for there is mercy proclaimed to you this day! God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. These are His own words and He, Himself, expressly invites you to come to Him. He says, "Whoever will, let him come and take of the water of life freely." And He gives you His Word for it—"He that comes unto Me, I will in nowise cast out." Salvation is free as the air we breathe to every convicted sinner! If you know this day your need of Christ, take Him, He is yours! He is a fountain open for the thirsty—all the preparation you need is simply a burning thirst. Then, come and drink and none can tell you no—
"From the Mount of Calvary,
Where the Savior deigned to die,
What transporting sounds I hear,
Bursting on my ravished ear!—
Love’s redeeming work is done,
Come and welcome, sinner, come!"
Well, then, if you are invited, "Who can tell?" Come, come and try, for, "Who can tell?"
I think the greatest confidence which the king of Nineveh would have, would be derived from the following suggestion. "Oh," he said, "If God had meant to destroy us without giving us an opportunity of pardon, He would not have sent Jonah 40 days beforehand! He would have given us no time at all. He would simply have given a blow and a word, but the blow would have been first. He would have overthrown the city in His wrath without a single message." What did He do to Sodom? He sent no messenger there. The sun rose and the fire descended from God’s terrible right hand. Not so Nineveh. It had its warning. And now, sinner, turn this to good account! You have had many a warning. You are this day warned, no, more—you are affectionately invited to come to Christ. The voice from the cross is speaking and each trickling drop of blood cries, "Amen."
"Come and welcome, sinner, come!"
Now, if the Lord were unwilling to forgive, would He have sent His servants to warn and to invite? If there was not a heart of mercy within Him, would He not have said, "Let them alone, they are joined unto idols, let them perish"? It is no small prophecy of God’s good intentions to a man when God sends to him a faithful minister. Oh, my hearers, I cannot speak to you with eloquence! I cannot address you with the fervid words of such a one as Whitefield, but this I can say and God is my witness—I have not shunned to declare the whole counsel of God, whether man would hear, or whether he will not! If you perish, it is not because I have kept back any part of that which I have received of God, who has sent me. I have broken through the shackles of creed and system that I might free my head of the blood of all men. I have not been content to run in the track of an old and narrow creed, if I felt that it kept me from earnestly pleading with you and warning you to flee from the wrath to come! I have endangered many a friendship and brought upon my self no little shame, because I must and will, in this matter, deal earnestly with your souls! It is no child’s play to preach! It shall be no child’s play to give an account of preaching at the last great tremendous day. You are warned; in God’s name I beseech you, before the gates of mercy are shut upon you—before life shall end; now—now may the Spirit of God bring you to your knees, now drive you to prayer, now lead you to faith in the sprinkled blood of the Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the world!
Sinner, remember! If you perish, you destroy yourself! Behold, God wills not your death, but He bids you come now. No, He does, as it were, pray that you would return. He says, "Return, you backsliding children of men." "Oh Israel, return unto Me." He says again, "Come, now, let us reason together— though your sins are as scarlet they shall be as wool. Though they are red like crimson they shall be white as snow." Would that I could draw you! Oh, that I had chains on my lips that would bind you in golden fetters to the cross of Christ! Come, sinner, for, "Who can tell?" No, I change the sentence. "I can tell"—if you turn, He will turn unto you! Come to Him and He will accept you, for He is a God ready to forgive and now, this day, He is ready to cast your sins into the depths of the sea and remember them no more!
III. And now, this shall bring me to the third point, namely, THE URGING OF MANY REASONS WHY WE SHOULD IMITATE THE NINEVITES IN REPENTANCE.
It was an old and a horrible custom of past governments, when a man was executed for murder, to allow him to be hung in chains, so that as often as anyone passed by the gallows they might learn, as was thought, the severity of justice. I fear, however, that they more frequently learned the brutality and barbarism of the age! Now, as these were hung in chains as warnings, I would translate this horrible figure into one that shall glitter with joy and delight! God, in order that you may know His mercy, has been pleased to preserve instances thereof, that so often as you look upon them you may be led to say, "If such-and-such a one was saved, why may not I?" It is needless for me to refer you to Old Testament and New Testament Scriptures. You will remember well the pardon given to David! Surely you have not forgotten the mercy which God had on that chief of sinners, Manasseh? As for the New Testament pardoned sinners, from the thief on the cross to Saul of Tarsus, the chief of sinners, it suffices but to hint at them! And now, this day, behold before your eyes in this place, sinners, once like yourselves, who have obtained mercy and are now forgiven! Among the thousands in this hall, there are not a few who (say some two years ago or less) entered this place out of idle curiosity. I could describe some to you who had never entered a place of worship for 20 or even 30 years. Some of them had been habitual drunks— their lives had been the abodes of misery. Some of them had been harlots and led others into sin, besides destroying their own bodies and their souls! Into this place they crept; they came merely to listen to the preacher, of whom many a strange thing had been said. Their attention was riveted. An arrow from the bow of God shot into their hearts and here they are this day! Without boasting I say it, they are my joy and my crown of rejoicing and shall be such in the day of the appearing of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! If you, who have been like they, but are now repenting of your sins, could hear their testimony as I have done, you would never doubt of the mercy of God! If you could read the account that I have preserved of some of them—sailors, who in every part of the world have sinned—who have never touched upon land except to commit fornication and wickedness! If I could tell you, on the other hand, the dreadful iniquities into which some here have plunged in the days of their flesh, you would say, "Surely He is a pardoning God," and I think that might entice you to come.
Oh, if there are any such here, and there are many such here, I know—if you are sitting in this hall today, side by side with some trembling sinner, and you observe the tears dropping from his eyes, be not slow to tell him, "I am one of the men that Mr. Spurgeon mentions." The Lord has saved you and be not slow to take the hands of the penitent and bid him come where you went and bid him look for mercy where you sought it and found it! And, I may say again, if I may speak for myself, here today, if you knew my own character as it was before conversion, you need, none of you, despair of mercy! When I went to God confessing my sins to Him, I felt myself to be the vilest sinner out of hell. Others might have praised me, but I had not a word to say on my own account. If the hottest flames of the pit of hell had been my eternal portion, it was not one whit more than I deserved. But—
"Tell it unto sinners tell,
I am, I am out of hell!"
And forgiven and accepted in Christ. Who, then, need despair? Who can tell? Come, sinner, come and say this in your heart and go and cry unto God in prayer and lay hold on Christ by faith, saying, "Who can tell?" The innumerable instances of past mercies should stir us up to say, "Who can tell?"
And then, again, let me remind you—you who are now conscious of your guilt—your only hope for deliverance lies in the mercy of God! When a man knows that he has only one hope left, how tenaciously will he cling to it. Some sick man has tried every system of medicine—he has spent nearly all his wealth and, now, he has come to the last stage. He is trying the last system of medicine. If this remedy fails, he must die. Do you not readily imagine that he would use this with the greatest diligence and be as obedient as possible to every command of the physician? And now, sinner, it is Christ or hell with you this day? If Christ saves you not, you are lost! If the cross is not your Salvation, the jaws of hell must soon close upon you! It is Christ or nothing! No, it is Christ or hell! Lay hold on Him then. Clutch Him. He is your last, your only hope! Oh, fly to Him—He is your only refuge! If you were pursued by hope of escape by climbing it—with what speed would your feet carry you to it? I see you running and I come before you and say, "Stop, why in such haste?" You rush past me crying—"Sir, it is my only chance; it is my only hope! I am devoured; I am torn in pieces if I find not shelter there!" It is your case today; behold the roaring lion of the pit of hell, thirsty for your blood—is after you. Away to the cross! Cling to it! There is hope. There is sure refuge. But apart from that, you are worse than torn in pieces— you are destroyed forever and ever!
But, for your encouragement, let me tell you one other thing and then I shall have done. Sinner, remember that while it will be a happy thing for you to be saved, it will be a glorious thing for God to save you! Men object not to do a thing which is expensive to them, if it brings them in some honor. They will not stoop to do a thing which involves shame and scorn; but if honor goes with a thing, then are they ready enough to do it. Now soul, remember, if God shall save you, it will honor Him. Why, will you not honor Him if He will but blot out your sin? I thought, when I was seeking mercy, if God would but save me, there was nothing I would not do for Him. I would be cut in pieces rather than deny Him. I would serve Him all my life and He might do what He would with me in heaven. And do you not sometimes feel that if God would but save you, you would sing loudest of them all in heaven? Would you not love Him—creep to the foot of His throne and cast your crown before His feet, saying—"Lord, not unto me, not unto me, but unto Your name be all the glory"? God delights to save sinners, because this puts jewels in His crown. He is glorified in His Justice, but not as He is in His mercy! He appears in silken robes with a golden crown upon His head when He saves sinners. He wears an iron crown when He crushes them. Judgment is His strange work—He does that with His left hand—but His right-handed acts are those of mercy and of love! Hence, He puts the righteous always on the right hand that He may be ready to pardon and ready to deliver. Oh, come then, soul, to Christ! You are not about to ask a thing which God is unwilling to give, or that which will slur His shield, or blot His banner. You are asking for that which is as glorious to God as it is beneficial to yourself! Come, humble soul, and cry to Christ and He will have mercy upon you!
My only fear, in conclusion, is that if any of you have received the slightest impression this morning you will go home and forget it. May I ask you now, as a favor, that if you have but got so much as a scratch under the preaching of the Word, go home alone if you can. Say but little if you are obliged to walk with others and go straight away to your chamber. There, fall on your knees, make a confession of your sins, cry to God for mercy through the blood of Christ, and, "Who can tell?" Who can tell?—This very day there may be a high holiday in heaven over hundreds of sinners who in this Music Hall have first learned to pray—who in this place have first been led to consider their ways and turn to God! I hope our friends will all remain and no one move, while I pray that that may be the case and all of you who wish it may be so, will solemnly say, Amen, after the few sentences of prayer I shall utter—"Lord, save us this morning. We confess our sin. We humbly ask for mercy through the blood of Christ. We pray You do not deny us, but let us all appear at Your right hand at last. Here reveal with power, and let many be saved this morning for Jesus’ sake." And the people said AMEN.