A Sermon Delivered On Monday Afternoon, March 25, 1861, By Pastor C. H. Spurgeon.

And daily in the temple, and in every house, they did not cease to teach and preach Jesus Christ. (Ac 5:42)

1. I do not know whether there are any people here present who can contrive to put themselves into my present position, and to feel my present feelings. If they can do that, they will give me credit for meaning what I say, when I declare that I feel totally unable to preach. And, indeed, I think I shall scarcely attempt a sermon, but rather give a sort of declaration of the truths from which future sermons shall be made. I will give you bullion rather than coin; the block from the quarry, and not the statue from the chisel. It appears that the one subject upon which men preached in the apostolic age was Jesus Christ. The tendency of man, if left alone is continually to go further and further from God, and the Church of God itself is no exception to the general rule. For the first few years during and after the apostolic era, Christ Jesus was preached, but gradually the Church departed from the central point, and began rather to preach about ceremonies and church offices rather than the person of their Lord. It has it been so in these modern times; we also have fallen into the same error, at least to a degree, and have gone from preaching Christ to preaching doctrines about Christ, inferences which may be drawn from his life, or truths which may be gathered from his discourses. We are not content to stand like angels in the sun, our imagination disturbs our rest and needs to fly on the sunbeams, further and further from the glorious source of light. In the days of Paul it was not difficult at once, in one word, to give the sum and substance of the current theology. It was Christ Jesus. Had you asked any one of those disciples what he believed, he would have replied, “I believe Christ.” If you had requested him to show you his Body of Divinity, he would have pointed upward, reminding you that divinity only had one body, the suffering and crucified human frame of Jesus Christ, who ascended up on high. To them, Christ was not a refined but unsubstantial notion; not a historical personage who had left only the savour of his character behind, but whose person was dead; to them he was not a set of ideas, not a creed, not an incarnation of an abstract theory, but he was a person, one whom some of them had seen, whose hands they had handled, indeed, one of whose flesh they had all been made to eat, and of whose blood they had spiritually been made to drink. Christ was substance to them, I fear he is too often only a shadow to us. He was a reality to their minds; to us—though, perhaps, we would scarcely allow it in so many words—rather a myth than a man; rather a person who was, than he who was, and is, and is to come—the Almighty. I would propose (and oh may the Lord grant us grace to carry out that proposition, from which no Christian can dissent), I would propose that the subject of the ministry of this house, as long as this platform shall stand, and as long as this house shall be frequented by worshippers, shall be the person of Jesus Christ. I am never ashamed to avow myself a Calvinist, although I claim to be rather a Calvinist according to Calvin, than after the modern debased fashion. I do not hesitate to take the name of Baptist. You have there (pointing to the baptistery) substantial evidence that I am not ashamed of that ordinance of our Lord Jesus Christ; but if I am asked to say what is my creed, I think I must reply—“It is Jesus Christ.” My venerable predecessor, Dr. Gill, has left a body of divinity, admirable and excellent in its way; but the body of divinity to which I would pin and bind myself for ever, God helping me, is not his system of divinity or any other human treatise, but Christ Jesus, who is the sum and substance of the gospel; who is in himself all theology, the incarnation of every precious truth, the all glorious personal embodiment of the way, the truth, and the life.

2. This afternoon I will try to describe the subject, Christ Jesus; then, secondly, to speak for a little while upon its comprehensiveness; then to enlarge upon various of its excellencies; and conclude by testing its power.

3. I. First, then, the SUBJECT.

4. They continued both to teach and preach Jesus Christ. To preach Jesus Christ properly we must preach him in his infinite and indisputable Godhead. We may be attacked by philosophers, who will either make him not a God at all, or one constituted temporarily and, I must add, absurdly a God for a time. We shall be attacked at once by those who view Christ as a prophet, as a great man, as an admirable example; we shall be assailed on all sides by those who choose rather to draw their divinity from their own addled brains than from the simplicity of Holy Writ; but what does this matter? We must reiterate again and again the absolute and proper deity of Christ; for without this we are in the position of those described by the prophet:—“Their tacklings are loosened, they could not strengthen their mast very well,” and soon our enemies will prevail against us, and the prey of a great spoil shall be taken. Take away the divinity of Christ from the gospel, and you have nothing at all left upon which the anxious soul can rest. Remove the Word who was in the beginning with God, and who was God, and the temple pillars called Jachin and Boaz are overturned. Without a divine Saviour, your gospel is a rope of sand; a bubble; something less substantial than a dream. If Christ were not God, he was the basest of impostors. He was either one of two things, very God of very God, or else an arch-deceiver of the souls of men, for he made many of them believe he was God, and brought upon himself the consequences of what they called blasphemy; so that if he was not God, he was the greatest deceiver that ever lived. But he is God; and here, in this house, we must and will adore him. With the multitude of his redeemed we will sing—

Jesus is worthy to receive,
Honour and power divine;
And blessings more than we can give
Be Lord for ever thine.

5. To preach Christ, however, we must also preach his true humanity. We most never make him to be less manlike because he was perfectly divine. I love that hymn of Hart which begins—

A man there was—a real man,
Who once on Calvary died.

6. “Real man!” I think we do not often realise that manhood of Christ; we do not see that he was bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh; feeling, thinking, acting, suffering, doing, just like ourselves—one of our fellows, and only above us because he is “exalted with the oil of gladness above his fellows.” We must have a human Christ, and we must have one of real flesh and blood too; not of shadows or filmy fancies. We must have one to whom we can talk, one with whom we can walk, one

Who in his measure feels afresh
What every member bears;

who is so intimately connected with us in ties of blood, that he is one with us as the head of the family, firstborn among many brethren. I am never more glad than when I am preaching a personal Christ. A doctrinal Christ, a practical Christ or an experimental Christ, as some good men make him to be according to the temper of their minds, I do not feel to be sufficient for the people of God. We need a personal Christ. This has been a power to the Roman Catholic Church—a power which they have used for evil, but always a power; they have had a personal Christ, but then it has either been a baby Christ in his mother’s arms, or else a dead Christ upon the cross. They never reached the force of a real full grown Christ, one who not only lived and suffered, but who died and rose again, and sits at the right hand of God, the Head of the Church, the one ruler of men. Oh! we must bring out more and more clearly each day the real personality of the Redeemer in his complex person. Whatever we fail to preach, we must preach him. If we are wrong in many point, if we are only right here, this will save our ministry from the flames; but if we be wrong here, however orthodox we may pretend to be, we cannot be right in the rest unless we think correctly of him.

7. But, further, to preach Christ Jesus, it is absolutely necessary we should preach him as the only mediator between God and man. Admitting the efficacy of the intercession of living saints for sinners, never for a moment denying that every man is bound to make supplication for all ranks and conditions of men yet we must affirm that the only mediator in the heavens, and the only direct intercessor with God is the “man Christ Jesus.” Indeed, we must not be content with making him only a mediator, we must set aside any other way to God except through him. We must not only have him for the priest, but we must have him for the altar, the victim, and the offerer too. We must learn in full the meaning of that precious text—“Christ is all.” We must not see a part of the types here and a part, there but all gathered up in him, the one door of heaven, the one crimson way by which our souls approach to God. We must not allow that approaches can be made in human strength, by human learning, or by human effort; but in him and through him, and by him, and in dependence upon him, all must be done between God and man. We have no wings, my brethren, with which to fly to heaven; our journey there must be on the rungs of Jacob’s ladder. We cannot approach God by anything we have, or know, or do. Christ crucified, and he alone, must lift us up to God.

8. And more, we must preach Christ in the solitariness of his redemptive work. We must not permit for a moment the fair white linen of his righteousness to be stained by the patch work of our filthy rags. We must not submit that the precious blood of his sins should be diluted by any offering of ours co-acting with these for our salvation. He has, by one sacrifice, for ever put away sin. We shall never preach Christ unless we have a real atonement. There are certain people nowadays who are making the atonement, first a sort of compromise, and the next step is to make the atonement a display of what ought to have been, instead of the thing which should have been. Then, next, there are some who make it to be a mere picture, an exhibition, a shadow—a shadow the substance of which they have not seen. And the day will come, and there are various traces of it here and there, in which in some churches the atonement will be utterly denied, and yet men shall call themselves Christians, while they have broken themselves against the cornerstone of the entire system. I have no kith nor kin, nor friendship, nor Christian amity, with any man whatever who claims to be a Christian and yet denies the atonement. There is a limit to the love of Christians, and there can be none whatever entertained to the man who is dishonest enough to occupy a Christian pulpit and to deny Christ. It is only in the Christian church that such a thing can be tolerated. I appeal to you. Was there ever known a Buddhist acknowledged in the temple of Buddha who denied the basic doctrine of the sect? Was there ever known a Mohammedan Imam who was sanctioned in the mosque while he decried the Prophet? It remains for Christian churches only to have in their midst men who can bear the name of Christian, who can even venture to be Christian teachers, while they slander the Deity of him who is the Christian’s God, and speak lightly of the efficacy of his blood who is the Christian’s atonement. May this deadly cancer be cut out root and branch; and whatever tearing of the flesh there may be, better cut it out with a jagged knife than allow it to exist because no lancet is to be found to do it daintily. We must have, then, Christ in the efficacy of his precious blood as the only Redeemer of the souls of men, and as the only mediator, who, without assistance of ours, has brought us to God and made reconciliation through his blood.

9. Our ministry will scarcely be complete unless we preach Christ as the only lawgiver and Rabbi of the Church. When you put it down as a canon of your faith that the church has right and power to decree rites and ceremonies, you have robbed Christ at once of his proper position as the only teacher of the church. Or when you claim the office of controlling other men’s consciences by the decree of the church, or the vote of a synod, apart from the authority of Christ, you have taken away from Christ that chair which he occupies in the Christian church, as the teacher in the great Christian school, as the Rabbi, and the only Rabbi of our faith. God forbid that we should hold a single truth except on his authority. Do not let our faith stand in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God. You refer me to the writings of Doctor this and Doctor the other: what are these? The words of Christ, these are truth, and these are wisdom. You bring the authority from the practice of a church three or four centuries removed from the crucifixion as the proof of the existence of a certain ceremony and the righteousness of certain ecclesiastical offices. What is your proof worth? If Christ has not specifically ordained it, and if he has not commanded his people to obey it, of what value is any rite whatever? We acknowledge Christ is ordaining all things for his church, and presenting that church with a finished code of laws, from which any deviation is a sin, and to which any addition is a high crime. Any church officer who is not ordained by Christ occupies an office from which he ought to resign. Any person who practices a ceremony for which he has not scriptural authority should renounce it; and any man who preaches a doctrine for which he has not Christ as his certifier, should not demand the faith of men for it.

10. But I fear there are times coming when the minister will not be true to his duty unless he goes further, and preaches Christ as the sole King of the Church. There has been a disposition on the part of the state, especially with regard to the Free Church of Scotland, to exercise power and judgment over church decrees. No king, no queen who ever lived, or can live, has any authority whatever over the church of Christ. The church has no one to govern and rule over her except her Lord and her King. The church can suffer, but she cannot yield; you may break her confessors alive upon the wheel, but she, in her uprightness, will neither bend nor bow. From the sentence of our church there is no appeal whatever on earth. To the court of heaven a man may appeal if the sentence of the church is wrong, but to Caesar never. Neither the best nor the worst of kings or queens may ever dare to put their finger upon the prerogative of Christ as the head of the church. Up, church of God! If once there are any laws of man passed to govern you, up, dash them in pieces! Let us each raise up the war cry, and lift up the lion standard of the tribe of Judah; let us challenge the kings of the earth and say, “Who shall rouse him up?” The church is queen above all queens, and Christ her only King. No one has jurisdiction or power in the church of Christ except Jesus Christ himself. If any of our acts violate the civil laws, we are men and citizens, and we acknowledge the right of a state to govern us as individuals. None of us wish to be less subjects of the realm because we are kings and priests to God. But as members of Christian churches we maintain that the excommunication of a Christian church can never be reversed by the civil power, or by any state act, nor are its censures to be examined, much less to be removed, mitigated, or even judged. We must have, as Christ’s church, a full recognition of his imperial rights, and the day will come when the state will not only tolerate us as a mere society, but admit that as we profess to be the church of Christ, we have a right by that very fact to be self-governing, and never to be interfered with in any sense whatever, so far as our ecclesiastical affairs are concerned.

11. Christ must be preached, then, and exalted in all these respects, or else we have not preached a full Christ; but I go one step further. We have not yet mounted to the full height of our ministry unless we learn to preach Christ as the King of kings. He has an absolute right to the entire dominion of this world. The Christian minister, as ordained by God to preach, has a perfect right in God’s name to preach upon any subject touching the Lord’s kingdom; and to rebuke and exhort even the greatest of men. Sometimes I have heard it said, when we have criticized the acts of an emperor or senator, “These are politics;” but Christ is King of polities as well as theology. “Oh! but”—they say—“what have you to do with what the state does?” Why, just this: that Christ is the head of all states, and while the state has no authority over the church, yet Christ himself is King of kings, and Lord of lords. Oh, that the church would put her diadem upon her head, and take her right position! We are not slaves. The church of God is not a grovelling corporation bound for ever to sit upon a dunghill; there never was a queen so fair as she and never a robe so rich as the purple which she wears. Arise, oh Church! arise—the earth is yours; claim it. Send out your missionary, not as a petitioner to grovel at the feet of princes, but as an ambassador for God to make peace between God and man. Send him out to claim the possession which belongs to you, and which God has given to you to be yours for ever and ever, by a right which kings may dispute, but which one day every one of them shall acknowledge.

12. The fact is we must bring Christ himself back into camp once more. It is of little use having our true Jerusalem swords, and the shields, and the banners and the trumpets, and the drums: we want the King himself in the midst of us. More and more of a personal Christ is the great void of the time. I would not wish for less doctrine, less experience, or less practice, but more of all this put into Christ, and Christ preached as the sum and substance of it all.

13. II. But, secondly, I am now to speak, for a short time, upon the COMPREHENSIVENESS OF THE SUBJECT which the text announces.

14. It is an old and trite saying that the ministers of the gospel may be divided into three kinds—the doctrinal, the experimental, and the practical. The saying is so often repeated that very few would contradict it. But it betrays at once, if it is true, the absence and lack of something essentially necessary for the church’s success. Where is the preacher of Christ out of these? I propound this, that if a man is found to be a preacher of Christ, he is doctrinal, experimental, and practical. The doctrinal preacher generally has a limited range. He is useful, exceedingly useful; God makes him a barrier against the innovations of the times: he preaches upon his subjects so frequently that he is well versed in them, and becomes one of the armed men around the bed of Solomon. But suppose the doctrinal preacher should have it all his own way, and there should be no others at all, what would be the effect? See this in our Baptist churches about one hundred and fifty years ago. They were all sound and sound asleep. Those doctrines had preached them into a lethargy, and had it not been for some few who rose up and proposed the missions for the heathen, and who found very little sympathy at first, the church would have been utterly inactive. Now, I would not be harsh with anyone, but there are some brethren still whose preaching might justly be summed up as being doctrinal, nothing more than doctrinal, and what is the effect of their ministry? Bitterness. They learn to contend not only earnestly for the faith, but savagely for it. Certainly we admire their earnestness, and we thank God for their soundness, but we wish there were mingled with their doctrine somewhat else which might tone down their severity and make them seek rather the unity and fellowship of the saints than the division and discord which they labour to create.

15. Again, I will refer you to the next class of preachers, the experimental.—How delightful it is to sit under an experimental preacher! Perhaps of all ministries this one is the most useful,—he who preaches the doubts, the fears, the joys, the ecstasies of the people of God. How often do the saints see the footsteps of the flock, and then they find the shepherd under an experimental minister! But do you know the effect of an experimental minister, purely so, I mean, when all else is put aside to make room for experience? There is one school of divines always preaching the corruption of the human heart. This is their style: “Except you are flayed alive by the law; except you are daily feeling the utter rottenness of your heart; except you are a stranger to full assurance, and do always doubt and fear;” “Except you abide on the dunghill and scrape yourself with a potsherd, you are no child of God.” Who told you that? This has been the preaching of some experimental preachers, and the effect has been just this. Men have come to think the deformities of God’s people to be their beauty. They are like certain courtiers of the reign of Richard III, who is said by history to have had a hump on his back and his admirers stuffed their backs that they might have a graceful hump too. And there are many who, because a minister preaches about doubts and fears, feel they must doubt and fear too; and then that which is both uncomfortable to themselves and dishonouring to God comes to be the very mark of God’s people. This is the tendency of experimental preaching, however judiciously managed, when ministers harp on that string and on that alone: the tendency is either to preach the people into a soft and savoury state, in which there is not a bit of manliness or might, or else into that dead and rotten state in which corruption overcomes communion, and the savour is not the perfume of the King’s ointments, but the stench of a corrupt and filthy heart.

16. Take also the practical preacher; who would say a word against this good man? He stirs the people up, excites the children of God to holy duties, promotes every excellent object, and is in his way an admirable supplement to the two other kinds of ministers. But sit under the practical preacher; sit under him all the year around and listen to his people as they come out. There is one who says, “The same thing over again—Do, do, do, nothing but do.” There is a poor sinner over there who has just gone down the front steps. Follow him. “Oh,” he says, “I came here to find out what Christ could do for me, and I have only been told what I must do for myself.” Now this is a great evil, and people who sit under such a ministry become lean, starving things. I wish that practical preachers would listen to our farmers, who always say it is better to put the whip in the manger than upon the horse’s back. Let them feed the people with food convenient for them, and they will be practical enough; but all practice and no promise, all exhortation and no sound doctrine, will never make the man of God perfect and zealous for good works.

17. But what am I driving at in describing these three kinds of ministers? Why, just this: to show you that there is one minister who can preach all this, without the dangers of any one of the others but with the excellencies of the whole. And who is he? Why, any man in the world who preaches Christ. If he preaches Christ’s person he must preach doctrine. If I preach Christ I must preach him as the covenant head of his people, and how far am I then from the doctrine of election? If I preach Christ I must preach the efficacy of his blood, and how far am I removed then from the great doctrine of an effectual atonement? If I preach Christ I must preach the love of his heart, and how can I deny the final perseverance of the saints? If I preach the Lord Jesus as the great Head and King, how far am I removed from divine Sovereignty? Must I not, if I preach Christ personally, preach his doctrines? I believe they are nothing but the natural outgrowth of that great root thought, or root substance rather, the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He who will preach Christ fully will never be lax in doctrine. And what better experience can you preach than in preaching Christ? Would you preach the sufferings of the saints, preach his agony and bloody sweat, his cross and passion; for the true sufferings of the saints are in fellowship with him. If you want to preach their joys, preach his resurrection, his ascension, and his advent; you are never far from the joys of the saints when you are near to the joys of Christ; for did he not say, “My joy shall be in them that their joy may be full?” And what better practice can be preached than preaching Christ? He is the pattern of every virtue; he is the very mirror of the perfection of human character; he is the abiding incarnation of everything that is holy and of good report. He cannot fail, then, to be a good doctrinal, experimental, practical preacher, who preaches Christ. Did you ever know a congregation grow less spiritual by a minister preaching Christ? Did you ever know them to get full of doubts and fears by preaching Christ? Did you ever hear of their getting lax in sentiment by his preaching Christ? Did you ever hear a whisper that men became unholy in their lives because they heard too much about Christ? I think that all the excellence of all ministers may be gathered up into the teaching of the man who can preach Christ every day in the week, while there will not be any of the evils connected with the other forms of preaching.

18. III. I shall now pass on to notice some of THE SURPASSING EXCELLENCIES of the subject.

19. First, he will always have a blessed variety in his preaching. In Australia I have heard that the only change for the backwoodsmen is to have one day damper,¹ tea, and bread, the next day, bread, damper, and tea; and the next day, tea, bread, and damper. The only variety some ministers give, is one Sunday to have depravity, election, and perseverance, and the next Sunday, election, perseverance, and depravity. There are many strings to the harp of the gospel. There are some brethren who are so exceedingly charmed with five of the strings, which certainly have very rich music in them, that they never meddle with any of the other strings; the cobwebs hang on the rest, while these five are pretty well worn out. It is always pretty much the same thing from the first of January to the last of December. Their organ has very few keys, and upon these they may make a very blessed variety, but I do not think it is a very extensive one. Any man who preaches Christ will ensure variety in his preaching. He is all manner of precious perfume, myrrh, and aloes, and cassia. He is all kinds of music, he is everything that is sweet to the ear; he is all manner of fruits; there is not one dainty in him but many. This tree of life bears twelve manner of fruits. He is all manner of clothing; he is golden clothing for beauty, he is the warm clothing for comfort, he is the stout clothing for harness in the day of battle. There are all things in Christ, and he who has Christ will have as great a variety as there is to be found in the scenery of the world where no two rocks are alike, and no two rivers wind in precisely the same manner, and no two trees grow in precisely the same shape. Any other subject you may preach upon until your hearers feel satiety; but with Christ for a subject, you may go on, and on, and on, until the sermon swells into the eternal song, and you begin to sing, “To him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood.”

20. There is yet another excellence about this subject, namely, that it suits all sorts of people. Are there rebels present? Preach Christ; it will suit them. Are there pardoned sinners present? What is better, to melt their hearts than the blood of the Lord Jesus. Are there doubting Christians? What can cheer them better than the name of Christ. Are there strong believers? What is stronger food than Jesus crucified? Are there learned, polite, intellectual hearers? If they are not satisfied with Christ, they ought to be. Are there poor, ignorant, unlettered men? Jesus Christ is just the thing to preach to them—a naked Christ for their simple ears. Jesus Christ is a topic that will keep in all climates. Land in New Zealand in the midst of uncivilised men, travel to another land and stand in the midst of poetic Persia or fickle France, the cross is adapted to all. We need not enquire into the doctrinal opinion of our hearers. If they are high, I am sure Christ will suit them. If they are low, if they be true believers, I am sure Christ Jesus will suit them. No Christians will reject such food as this, only prepare it, and with a hot heart serve it up on the table, and they will be satisfied and feed to the full. So there is adaptation as well as variety in this subject.

21. IV. But more than this, I must add, and this will bring me to my last point, for my time flies—there is a power about this subject when it is preached with the demonstration of the Spirit, which is not found in any other. My brethren, what power there is in this subject to promote the union of the people of God! There is a man there, he is almost a Puseyite. “I do not like him,” one says. Stop until I tell you something more about him, and you will. There is another man there, a Presbyterian—true blue; he cannot bear Independency, or anything except Presbytery—a covenant man. “Well,” one says, “I like him a little better; but I do not suppose we shall get along very well.” Stop! I will tell you some more about him. There is another man down there; he is a very strong Calvinist. “Humph,” one says, “I shall not admire him.” Stop, stop! Now, here are these three men; let us hear what they say about each other. If they know nothing of each other except what I have stated, the first time they meet there will be a magnificent quarrel. There is over there clergyman—he will have little fraternity whatever with the ultra-Evangelical; while the Presbyterian will reject them both, for he abhors Black Prelacy.² But, my dear brethren, all three of you, we of this congregation will approve of you all, and you will approve of one another when I have stated your true character. That man over there, whom I called almost a Puseyite, was George Herbert. How he loved the doornails of the church! I think he would scarcely have had a spider killed that had once crept across the church aisles. He was a thorough churchman, to the very centre of the marrow of his bones; but what a Christian! What a lover of his sweet Lord Jesus! You know that hymn of his which I have so often quoted, and mean to quote a hundred times more:—“How sweetly does my Master’s sound,” and so forth. I hear a knock at the door. “Who is that?” “Why, it is a very strong churchman.” “Do not show him in; I am at prayer; I cannot pray with him.” “Oh, but it is George Herbert!” “Oh, let him in, let him in! I could pray with no better man than Mr. Herbert. Walk in, Mr. Herbert; we are very glad to see you; you are our dear companion; your hymns have made us glad.”

22. But who was that second man, the Presbyterian, who would not have liked George Herbert at all? Why, that was Samuel Rutherford. What a seraphic spirit! What splendid metaphors he uses about his sweet Lord Jesus! He has written all Solomon’s Song over without knowing it. He felt and proved it to be divine. The Spirit in him redictated the song. Well now, I think, we will introduce Mr. Rutherford and Mr. Herbert together, and I am persuaded when they begin to speak about their Master they will find each other next of kin; and I feel sure that, by this time, Samuel Rutherford and George Herbert have found each other in heaven, and are sitting side by side. Well, but then we mentioned another; who was that high Calvinist? He was the man who was called the Leviathan of Antinomians. I will grant that he was a leviathan, but it is false that he was an Antinomian. It was Dr. Hawker. Now, I am sure, George Herbert would not have liked Dr. Hawker, and I am certain that Dr. Hawker would not have liked George Herbert, and I do not suppose that Samuel Rutherford would have had anything to do with either of them. “No, no,” he would say, “I hate your Black Prelacy.” But look at Hawker, there is a sweet spirit; he cannot take up his pen unless he dips it in Christ, and begins to write about his Lord at once. “Precious Immanuel—precious Jesus.” Those words in his morning and evening portions are repeated again and again, and again. I remember hearing of Mr. Rowland Hill, that he said to a young man who having the evening meal with him one night when he was about to go:—“Where are you going to?” “Oh!” he said, “I am going to hear Dr. Hawker, at St. George’s in the Borough.” “Oh, go and hear him,” he said, “he is a very good man, worth hearing. But there is this difference between him and me; my preaching is something like a pudding, with here and there a plum; but Dr. Hawker’s is all plum.” And that was very near the mark, because Dr. Hawker was all Christ. He was constantly preaching of his Master; and even if he gave an invitation to a sinner, it was generally put in this way:—“What do you say? Will you go with this man, and be married and espoused to him?” It was the preaching of a personal Christ that made his ministry so full of marrow and fatness.

23. My dear friends, let a man stand up and exalt Christ, and we are all agreed. I see before me this afternoon members of all Christian denominations; but if Christ Jesus is not the topic that suits you, why then I think we may question your Christianity. The more Christ is preached, the more will the Church prove, and exhibit, and assert, and maintain her unity; but the less Christ is preached, and the more of Paul, and Apollos, and Cephas, the more of strife and division, and the less of true Christian fellowship.

24. We will only mention the power of the preaching of Christ upon the heart of sinners. There is a person, now a member of my church, whose conversion was owing to the reading of that hymn—

Jesus, lover of my soul.

“Ah,” he said, “does Jesus love my soul? Then how vile I have been to neglect him.” There are scores whose conversation is distinctly and directly traceable, not to doctrine—though that is often useful—nor experience, nor practice, though these are fruitful, but to the preaching of Christ. I think you will find the most fertile sermons have always been the most Christly sermons. This is a seed which seldom rots under the clod. One may fall upon the stony ground, but it more often happens that the seed breaks the stone when it falls, and as Christ is a root out of a dry ground, so this finds root for itself even in dry, hard, stony hearts. We ought to preach the law, we ought to thunder out the threatenings of God, but they must never be the main topic. Christ, Christ, Christ, if we wish to have men converted. Do you want to convict that careless one? Tell him the story of the cross. Under God it will arrest his attention and awaken his thoughts. Do you wish to subdue the carnal affections of that profligate? Preach the love of Christ, and that new love shall uproot the old. Do you wish to bind up that broken heart? Bring forth Christ, for in him there is a cordial for every fear. Christ is preached and we do rejoice, yes, and will rejoice “for he is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes.” Do not judge, my dear brethren, any man’s ministry. The world has too often condemned the man whom God intended to honour. Do not say of another one, “He can do no good, for his language is rough and rude.” Do not say of another that his style is too often marred with flippancy. Do not say of a third that he is too erudite or soars too high. Every man in his own order. If that man preaches Christ, whether he is Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, we wish him God speed; for God will bless the Christ he preaches, and forgive the error which is mingled with his ministry. I must even frankly admit the truth of many a criticism that has been uttered about my ministry, but I know it has been successful, and under God it has been, because I have tried to preach Christ. I say that without boasting or egotism, because if I had not done so I would have no right to be a minister of Christ at all, and since I claim to be God’s minister, I will and must declare it, whatever I have not preached, I have preached Christ, and into whatever mistakes I have fallen, I have tried to point to his cross, and say, “Behold the way to God.” And if you see others preaching Christ, do not be their foe. Pray for them; hear them in your arms before God; their errors may yet be outgrown, if they preach Christ; but if not, I do not care what their excellency may be, the excellency shall die and expire like sparks that go out in darkness. They do not have the fuel for the flame, for they do not have Christ Jesus as the substance of their ministry.

25. May I entreat, in closing, your earnest prayer, each one of you, that in this house as well as in all the places of worship all around, Christ may for evermore be preached, and I may add my own sincere desire that this place may become a hissing and the abode of dragons, and this pulpit be burned with fire, if ever any other gospel is preached here than that which we have received from the holy apostles of God; and of which Jesus Christ himself is the chief corner stone. Let me have your incessant prayers. May God speed every minister of Christ. But where there is so large a field of labour may I claim your earnest and constant intercessions, that where Christ is lifted up, men may be drawn to hear, and afterwards drawn to believe, that they may find Christ the Saviour of our soul. “He who believes, and is baptized, shall be saved; he who does not believe shall be damned.” “Repent and be converted, every one of you,” said Peter. Yet again said Paul to the jailer, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved, and your house.” God give us grace to believe, and to him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.