Am I Clear of His Blood?

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A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, July 20, 1862, By Pastor C. H. Spurgeon, At The Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.

The voice of your brother’s blood cries to me from the ground. (Ge 4:10)

1. Cain was of the wicked one and murdered his brother. “The way of Cain” is not hard to describe. He is too proud to offer atonement for his sin; he prefers his own way of sacrifice; he presents a bloodless oblation; he hates the obedience of faith; he strikes the faithful Abel. See the way of Cain, and beware, oh proud self-righteous ones, lest you run in it, for the steps are few from self-righteous pride to hatred of true believers, and murder is not far behind. There is the seed of every infamy in the proud spirit of self-justification, and it is a great mercy that it does not more often show itself in all its terrific fulness. Look, bold boasters of your own merits, at the mangled body of the first martyr, for this is the full blown development of your rebellious self-conceit. Dear Lord deliver us from all pride and vain glory, from all self-righteousness and hatred of the cross of Christ.

2. This is not, however, the drift of my discourse this morning, I have rather to indicate the method in which we also may be guilty of this sin of bloodguiltiness concerning our brother.

3. Dear friends, I feel assured that the text of this morning, terrible as it must have been in the ears of Cain, ought to ring in your ears and mine; and it may be that while that cry is heard again, although many thousand years old, it may awaken some present here to a sense of guilt, and to a desire for amendment; and thus the blood of Abel may speak good, though terrible things to them, and prepare their ears to listen to the voice of that other blood, “which speaks better things than that of Abel.”

4. First, we shall this morning enquire for the criminals whose brother’s blood cries from the ground; next, we will endeavour to show the execrable character of the crime; then, thirdly, we will expect the judgment; and fourthly, we will exhort the guilty ones to turn from their ways, and to hear the voice of mercy.

Make a Searching Enquiry for the Criminals.

5. I. First, then, we are to MAKE A SEARCHING ENQUIRY FOR THE CRIMINALS.

6. I do not intend to say much this morning, about the act of actually killing one’s brother. The question of the rightness of war is a moot point even among moral men. Among those who read their Bibles, the allowance of defensive war may, perhaps, still be a question; but any other kind of war must certainly be condemned by the man who is a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. We shall say nothing, however, or only very little, concerning the criminality of those ambitious and unscrupulous people who hurry nations into war without cause. Lust for dominion and a false pride are setting the United States on a blaze. I know at this time a tragic incident connected with the present war in America. Four brothers left one of our villages in Oxfordshire, two of whom, if now alive, are in one army, and two of them in the other; and, I do not doubt, as desperately as any of their comrades, they are thirsting for each other’s blood. What horrors cluster around the iniquity of civil war. On that soil it is the blood of brothers that cries from the ground. Men are fighting against each other in this lamentable conflict for no justifiable cause. The one cause which justified the war, as we thought — the snapping of the fetters of the slave — is gone, emancipation is not proclaimed, the bondman is forgotten. What might have been a struggle for the rights of man, is now a shameful and abominable slaughter of brothers by brothers; and a cry is going up to heaven from those blood red fields which God will hear, and will yet avenge on both sides. Oh that they would sheathe their swords and end it once and for all! What does it matter if there are two nations or one, better two in peace, than one divided with civil strife! How much better to have even twenty nations of living men, than one nation of mangled corpses! What does it mean to the survivors if they have all the honour and dignity of conquerors, when they are stained up to their elbows in the blood of their fellowmen? Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “Consider your ways.” Arise, you who draw your sword against your fellows, and weep like the weeping of Ramah of old, and make your cities like Bochim, because of your iniquities; go back to your homes in peace, beat your swords into ploughshares, and your spears into pruning hooks, for Jehovah will have none of them; he casts out your armies like dung upon the field, because each of you strikes his kinsman and his fellowman! That, however, is not my subject this morning. May God grant that whatever may come of this terrible struggle, his name may be glorified; at present I see nothing except a carnival of madmen — hell let loose; and I much fear that an evil demon has deceived both nations, and made them like ravening wolves, and roaring lions.

7. I have to deal with you, however, and not with those across the ocean; let us come, therefore, to the point. There are many people whose brother’s blood cries to God from the ground. There is the seducer; he spoke with honeyed words, and talked of love, but the poison of asps was under his tongue, for lust was in his heart. He came to a fair temple as a worshipper, but he committed infamous sacrilege, and left that to be the haunt of demons which once was the palace of purity. Such men are received into society; they are looked upon as gentlemen, while the fallen woman, the prostitute sister, she may hide herself beneath the shadow of night. No one will make excuse for her sin; but the man, the criminal — he is called a respectable and reputable man — he may fill places of trust, and posts of honour, and no one points the finger of scorn at him. Sir, the voice of that poor fallen sister’s blood cries to heaven against you, and in the day of judgment her damnation shall be on your skirts; all the infamy into which you have plunged her shall lie at your door; and among the dreadful sights of hell, two eyes shall glare at you through the murky darkness like the eyes of serpents, burning their way into your innermost soul. “You deceived, and enticed me to the pit,” she says, “your arms dragged me down to hell, and here I lie to curse you for ever and ever as the author of my eternal ruin.” I know I address some such this morning; it would not be possible that all men here were pure and spotless. Hear! while yet there is time for your repentance, for the voice of her blood cries to God from the ground for vengeance.

8. Then there are men who educate youth in sin. Satan’s captains and marshalls; strong men with corrupt hearts, who are never better pleased than when they see the buds of evil swelling and ripening into crime. We have known some such; men of an evil eye, who not only loved sin themselves, but delighted in it in others; patted the boy on his back when he uttered his first oath; rewarded him when he committed his first theft. Satan has his Sunday School teachers; hell has its missionaries who encompass sea and land to make one proselyte, and make him tenfold more a child of hell than they are themselves. Most of our villages are cursed with one such wretch, and is there a street in London which is not the haunt of one such fiend, or more? Oh, do I speak to any here who have applauded and praised young people when they have commenced walking in the paths of infamy? Wretch, have you sought to entangle them in your net? Have you, like the spider, thrown first one thread around them and then another, until you have them safely in your coils to drag them down to the den of Beelzebub? Then the voice of your brother’s blood cries from the ground, and at the judgment this shall be a witness which you shall not be able to confute, the witness of the blood of souls ruined by your foul and evil training. Beware! you who hunt for the precious life!

9. Indeed, and I know some base men who, if they see young converts, will take a pride in putting stumblingblocks in their way. They no sooner discover that there is some little working of conscience, than they laugh, they sneer, and they point the finger. How often have I seen this in the husband who seeks to prevent the wife’s attendance at the house of God; in the young man who jeers at his companion because he felt something of the power of religion! Is not this too frequent in our great establishments in London; where one young man kneels to pray and many are found to laugh at him and hurl some foul term at his head; not content to perish themselves. Like dogs pursuing a deer so will the wicked haunt the godly. Oh! you who are the enlisting sergeants for the Black Prince of Darkness, you who never seem happy unless you set your traps for souls to inveigle them to destruction; solemnly do I warn you. Oh! take the warning, lest God’s avenging angel, without warning, should soon overtake you with the dividing sword which shall strike you even to the neck, and make you feel how terrible a thing it is to have tried to ruin the servants of the living God.

10. Then there is the infidel, the man who is not content to keep his sin in his own heart, but must needs publish his infamy, he ascends the platform and blasphemes the Almighty to his face; defies the Eternal; takes Scripture to make it the subject of unhallowed jest; and makes religion a theme for comedy. Take heed, sir, there will be a tragedy by and by, in which you shall be the chief sufferer! What shall I say of those men who are more diligent by far than half God’s ministers are, whose names we see placarded on every wall, who will go from town to town, especially where in greatest numbers artisans are dwelling, and never seem content unless they are preaching against everything that is pure, and lovely, and of good report; uttering things which would make your cheeks blanche if you heard them, and at the very reading of which the marrow of your bones might melt — dreadful things against the Most High, such as David heard when he said, “Horror has taken hold of me because of the wicked that do not keep your law.” Oh, sirs! should I address such people here, the voice of your brother’s blood cries to Jehovah today. The young men you have deluded, the working men you have led astray, the sinners whose lullaby you have sung, the souls that you have poisoned with your foul draughts, the multitudes, the multitudes that you have deceived — all these shall stand up at the last, an exceedingly great army, and pointing their fingers at you, shall demand your swift destruction, because you enticed them to their doom.

11. And what shall I say about the unfaithful preacher; the slumbering watchman of souls, the man who swore at God’s altar that he was called by the Holy Spirit to preach the Word of God; the man upon whose lips men’s ears waited with attention while he stood like a priest at God’s altar to teach Israel God’s law; the man who performed his duties half a sleep, in a dull and careless manner until men slept too and thought religion was only a dream? What shall I say about the minister of unholy life, whose corrupt conduct out of the pulpit has made the most telling things in the pulpit to be of no avail, has blunted the edge of the sword of the Spirit, and hindered God’s army in the day of battle? Indeed, what shall I say about the man who has amused his audience with pretty things when he ought to have roused their consciences, who has been polishing phrases when he ought to have denounced the judgment of God; who has been preaching a dead morality when he ought to have lifted Christ on high as Moses lifted the serpent in the wilderness. What shall I say, brethren, about those who have dwindled away their congregations, who have sown strife and schism in Churches of Christ which were once happy, peaceful, and prosperous? What shall I say about the men who, out of the pulpit, have made a jest of the most solemn things, whose life has been so devoid of holy passion and devout enthusiasm that men have thought truth to be fiction, religion a stage play, prayer a nullity, the Spirit of God a phantom, and eternity a joke? Among all who will need eternal compassion, surely the unfaithful, unholy, unearnest minister of Christ will be the most pitiable! What did I say? Indeed, rather the most contemptible, the most despicable, the most accursed! Surely, every thunderbolt shall make his brow its target, and every arrow of God shall seek his conscience as its target. If I must perish, let me suffer in any way except as a minister who has desecrated the pulpit by a slumbering style of ministry, by a lack of passion for souls. God knows how often this body trembles with horror at the thought lest the blood of souls should be required at my hands; and I cannot, and I hope I never may, I cannot understand that lifeless performance of duty, that cold and careless going through of services which, alas! is too common. How shall such men answer for it at the bar of God — the smooth things, the polite and honeyed words, the daubing of men with the untempered mortar of peace, peace, when they should have dealt with them honestly as in God’s name? Oh, sirs, if we never play the Boanerges, we shall hear God’s thunders in our ears, and that for ever and ever, and, cursed by men, and cursed by the Most High, shall we be without end. In Tophet we shall have this wail peculiar to ourselves, “We preached what we did not feel; we testified about what we did not know; men did not receive our witness, for we were hypocrites and deceivers, and now we go down, richly deserving it, to the very lowest depths of perdition.”

12. But, my hearers, do not think when I thus speak of the ministry that I am about to permit you to escape. The voice of your brother’s blood cries to God from the ground, even though you are no infidel lecturer, though you have never been debauched, though you have taught no heresy, though you have spread no schism. If your life is unholy your brother’s blood is on your skirts. “Oh,” one says, “if I sin I sin to myself.” Impossible! As well might the miasma say “I am deadly to myself alone”; as well might the cholera say “my deadly breath is for myself only.” Your example spreads; you, like the leper, leave uncleanliness on everything you touch. The very atmosphere which surrounds you breeds contagion. What others see you do, they learn to do. Some may rival you, and exceed you, but if you taught them their letters, and they learn to read in hell’s book better than you, all that they learn afterwards will come to your door, because they learned the elements of sin from your example. I am afraid many people never look at their transgressions in this light. Why, you cannot help being leaders and teachers. If in your own house you are a drunkard, your boys will be drunkards too! I have heard of a man who flogged his boy for swearing, swearing at him all the time he did it. We know instances of men who feel as if they would sooner bury their children than see them grow up such as they are themselves, but yet how can it be helped? Your example must and will influence your children; indeed, not your children only, but all with whom you come in contact with in the business world. Do not think, sir, if you are a great employer that your men can know what your life is without being affected by that knowledge. There may be some among them who have an inward principle which will not yield to temptation, but I know of hardly anything more dangerous than for a number of employees to come constantly into contact with one whom they look up to as a master, who is also a master of the arts of sin, and a doctor of damnation to their souls. Oh! take care, if not for yourselves yet for others, or else, as sure as you live, the voice of your brother’s blood will cry to God from the ground.

13. We come still closer home to this present audience. How much of the blood of man will die at the door of careless professors? You who make a profession of being Christians and yet live in sin, you are the murderers of souls by thousands. And you, too, who are moral enough in your conduct, and regular in your attendance on the outward forms of religion, you who never weep over sinners, you who never pray for them, you who never speak to them, you who leave all that to your minister, and think you have nothing to do with it, the voice of your brother’s blood cries from the ground to heaven. A man died in your street the other day; you did not speak to him about his soul; his blood cries to heaven against you. You live in a villa in the country; there was a neighbour of yours, you were on speaking terms with him, but you did not talk to him about his soul; he is dead; he is gone; his blood cries to God against you! You have relatives, relatives to whom you could speak with familiarity; you have spoken to them of business; you have befriended them, perhaps, in their needs, but you have never said a word to them about escaping from hell and fleeing to heaven. When you shall hear the mournful news that they have departed this life will not their blood cry against you from the ground where they are buried? You work, young man, in an establishment where you are somewhat respected, and, without intrusiveness you might often say a good word for your Master, but you do not do it; the blood of your companions shall cry against you if they perish! Do not think the minister is the only man who is responsible for souls. God has made you all watchmen; all of you, in your spheres, are to be watchers for the souls of men; and “If the watchman does not warn them,” says the Lord, “they shall perish, but I will require their blood at the watchman’s hands.”

14. I know you do not think of this, and I am sorrowfully conscious that I do not feel it myself as much as I ought to do. Ah! the servants of Satan shame me; they shame me, they shame me! At night there comes a message to some of you who are the servants of Satan — “The master is come, and he calls for you.” You leave your wife and your children without a tear, you go to your master’s house, and there are cups, foul cups, passing around, and you will drink, and drink, and drink, and drink still on; never denying your master; confessing him with many an oath; saying to your comrades many things which injure your poor souls, and yet you do it so bravely, oh, so bravely! You hardly know how you get home at night, but when the morning comes, and you wake up, there is the redness of the eyes, the headache, and the sickness; but the next night when your master wants you and you go again; and so you will do year after year, even though delirium tears you like a whirlwind. But here I am, a servant of God, and when my Master calls for me and bids me go and confess him, I am tempted to be still, and when he tells me to speak to that man I would wickedly avoid the task; and whereas you confess your master and imprecate a curse upon your head, how often do some of us confess our Master as timidly as if we feared a curse, when instead it is by confession that the curse is turned away! Oh, it is enough to make us Christians ashamed to think how sinners will confess their god! Hear them at night, as they reel home through the streets, they are not ashamed of their lord and master. Hear how they swear, and defy heaven! They are ashamed of nothing for their lord; and yet we, who have heaven for our reward, and such a Christ to serve, and one so good and gracious to us — look at us — look at us! What poor lovers of our Saviour we are! What poor lovers of the souls of men! I know this is not true of all of you, for there are some of you who love men’s souls. I have delighted to see in many of you that deep earnestness which makes you yearn for the conversion of others. You will sometimes take your stand at the corner of the street, and although you cannot speak as you wish, yet, the tears running down your cheeks prove your earnestness. There are many women among you, too, who have spoken a good word for Christ in strange places, and have never been ashamed of him. But oh! there are some of you, the members of this Church, over whom the angels of glory might weep, for what do you do for Christ? What do you give to Christ? You are content to go to heaven yourselves, but you let your neighbours perish for lack of knowledge, and neither will you help the Mission, nor anything else besides. The blood, the blood of dying London cries from the ground against you before God. The perishing crowds of every street, and every courtyard, and every alley send up their wail to heaven — “Oh, God! your professing people have forgotten us.” The daughter of Zion is become like the ostrich of the desert; the tongue of the nursing child cleaves to the roof of its mouth for lack of moisture! Oh, God, will you not visit your Church for this, and make these, your people, who forget the souls of men, smart even to the quick!

15. I do not know whether I have seized hold of any of your consciences, but if I have, may God the Holy Spirit get such a grip on you that he may never let you rest until you say, “Great God, in your name I will do something, so that the next time I hear the bell toll I may be able to say, ‘I did what I could for that man, and if his soul has perished, his blood does not lie at my door, for I told him the way of salvation, I exhorted him to flee from the wrath to come.’?” I am afraid none of us are altogether guiltless here; we must all take some degree of sin to our own consciences. I fear against every one of us, to some extent, the voice of our brother’s blood cries to heaven because of our sloth.

Hold Up This Crime to Execration.

16. II. But to pass on; I was, in the second place, to HOLD UP THIS CRIME TO EXECRATION, the chief point being whose blood it is; it is the blood of our brethren. “The voice of your brother’s blood cries to me from the ground.” All men are our brethren; let any of them perish, if we have not done our best for their conversion, their blood has a fearful and telling cry against us when it reaches to heaven. But I shall rather dwell this morning upon certain special cases. Perhaps, young man, it is your natural brother’s blood that cries against you. You have been converted to God say these three, four, ten, or twenty years. You have done nothing for your brother’s conversion; never written him a letter begging him to think of his state; never spoken a kind and gentle word to him about Christ. No, you have been content to let him know you were a Christian, and were half afraid of that, but you have done nothing for him. Will not your brother, if he perishes, be well able to say, “My brother and I nursed on the same breast, and were rocked in the same cradle; we played together; we filled one home with glee; he professed to know the way of life, but he never told it to me; he professed to have pardon for his sins, but he never told me how I might find it too; he allowed me to go unpitied to my doom without a tear?” Will not the voice of such blood as that cry against us if we have been guilty?

17. It may be, however, it is the blood of your father or mother. Some of you young people have come to London, and God has met with you in this house of prayer; you still have ungodly parents in the country, have you quite forgotten them? What if your grey headed father should die! You know he never thinks of God; what if he should die before his son has talked to him? Oh, you have a strange power, you sons and daughters; if you will only take the old man by the sleeve, and say, “Father, by the child’s love I bear you, I would desire to see you saved!” And do you fling this power away? Would you see your father and mother sold to slavery, and if it were in your power to redeem them would you keep the filthy lucre? Or if you saw them sick, would you spare your feet and not run for a physician? Or if you saw them sinking in the stream, would you not leap in, at the peril of your own life, and rescue them? And will you let them perish, perish for ever, without a struggle on your part? Will you see them go down to the depths without stretching out a helping hand? I cannot think this of you if God has touched your hearts!

18. But what shall I say to those who are not only careless about parents, but are neglecting their own children? Mother, what if the voice of your child’s blood should cry to God against you! You trained that child up without the fear of God. You sent your boy and girl to Sunday School it is true, but that was only to get rid of them. What was your own example to them? Bad. What was the father’s example? Vicious. When your boy grows up he becomes reckless. You cannot get him to come to a place of worship with you now. No, but if you had brought him when he was a child, it may be he would have been here now; and, inasmuch as you have tutored him for Satan, if that boy of yours goes down to the pit, his soul shall cry against you. Up to heaven shall it send its shriek — “Oh God! the mother who bore me, and the man who fathered me, were as cruel to me as if I were not their child, for they allowed me to come here without weeping for me, without praying for me, without taking me in their arms of loving supplication, and pleading that I might be saved!”

19. Look at this again in the case of some of you against whom the indictment lies, that you have done injury to your employees. Oh! I know great cotton factories, builders, and traders, that have many men in their employ, and have much to answer for. Sirs, though it is your skill and your capital that brings in your wealth, have you no responsibility towards the men who toil for you day and night? You pay them their wages, but do you think that your responsibility has stopped there? Are they not the very bones and sinews of your establishment, and after taking everything into consideration, do you not owe far more to them than the best remuneration can ever pay? And what if you have left their spiritual state uncared for; have said, “Oh, it is no business of mine what they do with their Sundays; I do not care what they do when they are out of the mill, or away from the workshop?” What, sirs, do you think that as those hundreds of souls go before God they will lay no impeachment against you? Do you think they will not arraign you at God’s judgment bar? I tell you, and I think I speak by the Spirit of God when I say this, you shall find that the voices of your neglected workers, the voices of those whom you never tried to bless with spiritual instruction, shall cry against you from the ground. Oh that I had an audience, for the moment, consisting more largely of such people! There are some here who can, I think, plead exemption, for they have done much to spread spiritual light among those who work for them; but I do fear they are rather the exception than the rule, and that there are many who think no more of the men who work for them than of their horses, and some not so much; and who take as much interest in the spirit of the beast that goes downwards as in the soul of man that goes upwards. Let it be no more so. Employers, contractors, you who have great influence, I do entreat you — shall I fall upon my knees to do it? I could not then do it more earnestly — see to it that your brother’s blood does not lie on your skirts throughout eternity!

20. Oh! there is one sinner who can look upon this in a solemn light! Who is it that has gone down to the pit? Oh man over there — who is it that died only a few days ago? The woman who loved you as she loved her own soul; who idolized you; who thought you were an angel. Shall I say it before God and to your face? — you ruined her. And what next, sir? You cast her off as though she were only dirt, and threw her into the street with a broken heart. And being there, her god having cast her off — for you were her god — she fell into despair, and despair led to dreadful consequences, and to still more dire ruin. She has gone, and you are glad of it; glad of it, for you will hear no more from her now, you say. Sir, you shall hear of it; you shall hear of it; you shall hear of it! As long as you live her spirit shall haunt you; track you to the filthy joy which you have planned for a future day; and on your deathbed she shall be there to twist her fingers in your hair, to tear your soul out of your body, and drag it down to the hell appointed for such fiends as you; for you spilt her blood, the blood of her who trusted you — a fair, frail thing, worthy to be an angel’s sister, and you pulled her down, and made her a devil’s tool! God save you! for if he does not, your damnation shall be sevenfold. Oh! you son of Belial, what shall be your doom when God deals with you as you deserve? Are these hot words? Not half so hot as I wish to make them. I wish to send them hissing into your souls if I were able; not so much to condemn you as with the hope that though you cannot undo the mischief you have done, you may still turn from the error of your ways to seek a Saviour’s blood, and find pardon for this great iniquity. Oh! dear friends, let us all take something of our text home. When we think of friends who are dead and gone, are there none over whose corpses we must say “I did not do what I could for this man; I did not do what I could for this woman?” I know when I go down to the village where I used to preach, and as I look upon the houses, I am apt to question myself — “Was I as earnest with the people as I used to be?” I can say I hope I never flinched from telling them all the truth, although sometimes it had to be very rudely and roughly spoken; but yet God knows I do sometimes kick myself to think I did not weep over them more, and did not entreat them more to be won to Christ. And you, too, who sit in these pews so often, many of you are joyful converts to Christ, but numbers of you are still unsaved. What if any of you should be able to say at the last, “We trusted our minister; we hung upon his lips; we were never absent; we loved the Sabbath day, but oh, he did not tell us about our sin; he did not plead with us to be saved; he left us to ourselves: he was cold when his heart should have been hot; he was a man without tears, and had a heart without sympathy for us!” Oh! sirs, God grant you may never be able to say that about me. God save you, for my soul longs for you. He is my witness how earnestly I long for you all in the heart of my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ! Come to him! Come to him! Do not let your blood cry out against me! Oh, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and trust him; trust him now, so that you may be saved, and that at last I may be able to say, “Here am I and the children whom you have given me; you have kept them through your power, and they are preserved even to the end; to you be glory for ever and ever!”

Expect the Judgement.

21. III. We are on the third point, and that only for a moment, TO EXPECT THE JUDGMENT. “The voice of your brother’s blood cries to me from the ground.” It does not cry to a deaf ear, but to the ear of one who hears and feels the cry, and will certainly make bare his arm to strike the offender and to avenge the wrong. Seducer, infidel, tempter of the young, God hears the cry that goes up against you, and this is its burden: it comes from souls damned through your influence, and they say — “Lord give him his portion with the tormentors; let him suffer, for we suffer; he killed us, avenge our death!” He will do it and the day shall come when swift destruction shall overtake you, and as with a rod of iron he will break you; like a potter’s vessel he will dash you in pieces, and who shall deliver you out of his hand?

22. The cry goes up to heaven against barren, careless, cold hearted professors, from many in London, untaught and untrained, who are on their beds today in the jaws of death, they cry out I say against you, careless Christians, and they say “Lord, take away their privileges from them; Lord, take them away from the Church which they disfigure and dishonour; Lord, take away these trees that bear no leaves for the healing of the nations; sweep away this salt which has lost its savour; Lord, cast these candles that give no light into the fire; oh Lord, take away, take away once and for all these cities that are not set on hills, but are hidden from the sight of men.” What would you say if God should visit this Church for instance, and take out of it all of you who are useless? How would the membership be thinned! How would our lists show here and there the black mark of erasure! Unless you are doing something to win souls, the voice of your brother’s blood cries to God from the ground, and it cries that your privileges may be taken away, and the lampstand moved out of its place. And it will be so, my hearers, it will be so unless all of us arise to serve our Master. We are happy when God does prosper us, but if we get many in our midst who do nothing for Christ we shall have “Ichabod” written on these walls; the walls that now ring with the song of the multitude shall hear only the wail of a desolate few; the pulpit that now thunders out God’s own voice will become a dead, dreary, and voiceless platform; the time will come when your deacons and your elders shall be no more men of earnest hearts, and when you shall grope as the blind in the midnight, and say — “Oh, that God would give us back once more such times as we used to have, which we frittered away through our carelessness, and lost through our lukewarmness.”

23. Further, how awful must be the cry of this blood from the ground against a minister! I think I hear it, a cry from earth, from heaven, from hell: “Hurl him from his pulpit. Tear away his vestments! Snatch the book from his blood stained hand! Strike upon the mouth the dog that will not bark; let his corpse fall before men’s eyes; let him be made a hissing and a byword, because, being made a winner of souls, he dared to trifle, and being made a watchman of a besieged city, he dared to lie down and slumber.” “Tear him down; tear him down; tear him down,” a hundred voices cry; “Although he is a bishop or a great man in the Church; although his eloquence is unrivalled; although his power is matchless, pull him down from his high places; miscreant that he is to waste men’s time and ruin men’s souls for ever!”

24. And what shall the cry be against you who still continue by your poor example to lead others into sin — open sinners and infidels? It would be an awful thing to pray for a man’s damnation; but there are some people I know of who while they live do so much mischief, that if they were dead, men would breathe more freely. I know a village where a man lives who contaminates half the population. There is a leer upon his face at which virtue blushes; there is a sneer at which even courage quails. He is a wretch so well taught and so deeply instructed in the highest science of iniquity, that wherever he may go he finds no one a match for him, either in his reasoning or in the infamous conclusions which he draws; a man who is a deadly Upas tree,¹ dropping black poison upon all beneath his shadow. I thought once I would half pray that the man might die and go to his doom, but one must not; and yet, if he were gone, the saints might say, “It is well,” and as over Babylon when she is destroyed and the smoke of her torment goes up for ever, the saints will say “Hallelujah,” so I have thought that over these against whom the blood of many young people cries to God from the ground, when they go at last to their doom, men might almost say, “Hallelujah, for God has judged the great sinner who made the people of the earth drunk with the wine of his fornication.”

Hear the Voice of Exhortation.

25. IV. I hope that these terrible things have prepared our minds to hear the better THE VOICE OF EXHORTATION.

26. If there is the voice of blood crying against us today, and we affirm that none of us can altogether escape from it, what shall we do to be rid of the past? Can tears of repentance do it? No. Can promises of amendment make a blank page where there are so many blots and blurs? Ah, no! Nothing that we can do can put away our sin. But may not the future atone? May not future zeal wipe out past carelessness? May not the endeavour of our life that is yet to come, make amends for the indolence or vice of the life that is past? No. The blood of our brethren has been shed, and we cannot gather it up. The mischief we have done is not to be undone! Oh God! souls that are lost through us cannot be saved now; the gates of hell are so shut that they can never be opened. We cannot make any restitution. The redemption of the soul is precious, and it ceases for ever; the sin is not to be washed away by repentance, nor retrieved by reformation. What then? Hopeless despair for you and I, and every one of us, if it were not that there is another blood, the blood of one called Jesus, that cries from the ground too, and the voice of that blood is “Father, forgive them; Father, forgive them.” I hear a voice that says, “Vengeance, vengeance, vengeance,” like the voice of Jonah in Nineveh, enough to make every man clothe himself in sackcloth. But a sweeter and a louder cry comes up — “Mercy, mercy, mercy”; and the Father bows his head and says, “Whose blood is that?” and the voice replies, “It is the blood of your only begotten Son, shed on Calvary for sin.” The Father lays his thunders aside, sheathes his sword, stretches out his hand, and cries to you, the sons of men, “Come to me, and I will have mercy upon you; turn, turn; I will pour out my Spirit upon you and you shall live.” “Repent and believe the gospel.” Hate the sin that is past, and trust in Jesus for the future. He is able to save to the uttermost all who come to God by him; for the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s dear Son, cleanses us from all sin. Flee, sinner, flee! The avenger of the blood that you have shed pursues you with hot haste; he pursues you with winged feet and with a heart that is thirsty for blood. Run, man, run! The refuge city is before you. It is there, along the narrow way of faith. Flee, man, flee, for unless you reach that city before he overtakes you he shall strike you, and one blow shall be your everlasting ruin. For God’s sake do not loiter, man! Do not care for those flowers on your left hand side; you will dye that field with your blood if you linger there! That ale house on the right hand? Do not stop for any of these things. He comes! Listen to his footsteps on the hard highway! He comes, he comes, he comes now! Oh, that now you may pass the portals of the refuge city! Trust the Son of God, and sin is forgiven, and you have entered into everlasting life.

27. Dear Lord, add your blessing! We are powerless; we can say no more. For Christ’s sake, “by his agony and bloody sweat, by his cross and passion, by his precious death and burial,” bless these souls. Amen.