out of mere denominational pride, out of emulousness, and to make our own names great in the earth-"Did ye at all fast unto me, even to me? When ye did eat and when ye did drink, did ye not do it unto yourselves?" I would to God we were all contending earnestly for the faith, and provoking one another to love and to good works, but to do good for the mere sake of doing more than some person whom I look upon as my rival is not serving God; it is indulging my weaker passions under the pretence of honouring the Lord. Oh! brothers and sisters, I have had to ask myself this question many a score times, "Have I done it unto God?" I have gone groaning from this platform because I could not preach as I wished, but this has been my comfort, "Well; I did desire to glorify Christ; I did desire to free my conscience of the blood of men; I did want to tell men the whole truth whether they liked it or not." But sometimes when I have got on better, and the words have flowed fluently, and the sentences have had a little polish about them (they have not much at any time) I have thought, "Well, I went on pretty well this morning;" just then my conscience has smote me,You made the people pleased, but did you glorify your Master? Did you lay the axe at the foot of the tree? Did you come down on their consciences? Did you strive to drive the nail right into their hearts? You might have done better with rough words than with those garnished utterances." I have no uneasiness about rough sentences, but I have when I have not been earnest in my Master's cause. Oh! I think it must be so with you sometimes. You Sunday-school teachers, are you sure that you teach for Jesus Christ? May it not be possible that you teach for custom, or that you do it because you like the association of your fellow teachers? You tract distributors, are you sure that when you distribute the tracts it is with an idea of winning souls to Christ? Is it not because your conscience tells you you ought to be doing something? And you who go out preaching, are you sure that you preach only for Christ's glory? Does it not sometimes happen that you are tempted to glorify yourselves and try to be fine and great when you ought to be simple, and plain, and earnest with the souls of men? Oh! when I think of some who spend all the week writing out their sermons, and touching up every line and every sentence, I fear there must be something of self there; and when I hear some preachers with such splendid diction, with words so nicely picked, I cannot help thinking that there must be a sacrificing to the genius of oratory or to the beauty of eloquence, rather than to the Master's cause. I say of every thing that is done for selfdown with it, down with it, let Dagon fall. Break these images, every one of them, smite them like the proud Philistine or the boastful Babylonian king. What have we to do with idolatrous self-worship? O Lord, deliver us from it.

I shall not detain you longer upon this point when I have said another word. Though this is a Protestant land it is beyond all question that there are some Popish enough to perform great religious acts by way of merit. What a goodly row of almshouses was erected by that miserly old grinder of the poor as an atonement for his hoarding propensities! What a splendid donation to that hospital! A very proper thing indeed, but the person who left it never gave a farthing to a beggar in his life, and

he would not have given it now only he could not take it with him, and so he has left it as an atonement for sin. Sometimes persons think that the doing of some outrageous religious act will take them to heaven; frequenting Church prayers twice a day, fasting in Lent, decorating the altar with needlework, putting stained glass in the window, giving a new organ or such like, at the suggestion of their priest they do many such things, and thus they go on working like blind asses at a mill, from morning to night, and make as much real progress. Do I address any one such person here? I do not find fault with you for what you do, but I do find fault with you for why you are doing it. If you dream that you are saving yourselves thereby, remember that your acts are selfish acts, and that there is nothing good in them. They may be good things in themselves, but as they are done not unto God, but evidently with a view to your own welfare, they are done to yourselves, and he cannot therefore accept them. Let there be never such splendid deeds of alms-giving, never such marvellous mortifications of the flesh, never such devout attendings at daily prayer, they avail nothing before God, when they proceed from a self-righteous heart. Away with them, away with them all; they are dross and dung before the Most High, if you bring them to him with a view of purchasing salvation thereby. No, ye must have done with these and trust in Jesus only. When a man can say, "I am saved; Christ is mine:" then he can serve God acceptably, and his deeds shall be received through Christ Jesus.

III. Now for our last point. It seems to me that our text may be a

TEST OF OUR SPIRITUAL STATE.

Brethren in Christ Jesus, may I solemnly ask you now to put your souls into the scales for a few minutes by way of self-examination. What can you and I say with regard to our lives since we have known the Lord? Have we lived unto Christ? Dare we take the Apostle Paul's motto "For me to live is Christ, to die is gain?" Oh, beloved, it is not what we have done, so much as with what object we have done it; for every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weigheth the heart. Have we in our hearts longed to serve him? "Oh," I hear one say, "it was little I could do, sir; I was poor; I could not give him gold; I was uneducated, I could not give him words." Ah, my brethren, it is possible that what you have been able to do may be more acceptable than what some others have done, if you can say "I did not desire mine own honour. I was content to be humble, to be obscure, to be unknown, and to be forgotten, if I might but lift him up and praise him in my little sphere, and make him glorious among men." I fear, beloved brethren, that some of us do but little for Christ even outwardly, and I blush to confess that in that little which we do there is so much that is spoiled by our looking after self. Have we not sometimes prayed at the prayer-meeting with the view of being thought gifted men! Have we not joined a church that we might be a little better thought of? May we not have laboured more abundantly that there might be the whisper about-"So-and-so is a flourishing Christian, a useful man?" Do we not compliment ourselves thus"Well, people think very highly of me; they say so-and-so, and it must be all right?" Are we not smuggling over the frontier some of the

merchandise of pride?

It has been lately remarked, and not before it was necessary, that this is an age in which the word pride means what it never meant before. You hear gentlemen on the platform say, "I am proud;" you hear the minister himself when speaking of something that has been done for him, "I am proud." The words, "I am proud," do not mean any hurt now, because we have forgotten that pride in any shape and in every shape is detestable in the eyes of God. We talk of a decent pride. I saw a good young woman the other day-I dare say she is here this morning-and she told me she could not come now on a Sunday because her clothes were getting so bad, and she said, "I thought it was decent pride to stop away." And I said, "No, my sister, no pride is decent." I saw her last Sabbathday standing down there, and I have no doubt she enjoyed what was said as well in her cotton dress as she would have done if she could have worn her silk one. All pride is indecent. A few Sundays ago, when we had the mourning for Prince Albert, some people could not go to church because the dress-makers had been so busy that they could not get their black things ready, and it was called decent pride which kept them at home, but I say again it was indecent pride-indecent pride such as the Lord God of Hosts abhors. We must have done with these prides, but yet I do fear that pride has so mixed with all we have done, and so stained our best acts, that we have reason to cry out this morning, “All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; Lord have mercy upon us, for Jesu's sake."

There is another arrow in my quiver and it must be shot out. Alas! alas! I address some this morning who never did anything for God in their lives; to whom it would make no difference if there were no God at all, except that they would be rather glad than otherwise. A man; a man, mark that, made in the image of his maker, and yet he has never said a good word for his Creator! The breath in his nostrils this morning is the gift of God; the comforts of his home are gifts from the liberality of the God that has made him, and yet he has never done anything for that God in his life! Touch him upon the point of what he has done for man, and he may have done much; let men applaud him. If a great general has won battles for men let men honour him. If a philanthropist has done much for men let men be grateful. If you have spent your time for your families let your families thank you. But there are some here who have done nothing for God. "Hear, O Heavens, and give ear O Earth; I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me; the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib, but they know not, neither do they consider." A man would not keep even a dog which never looked to him with thankfulness; never frisked about his feet with joy at his liberality; and yet here are men more brutish than their own dogs-fed by God and never thankful to him, they have never done anything for him in all their lives! I know there are many here who, if their consciences sleep not, must stand convicted. Again I repeat it, we will not touch you upon the point of what you have done for man, but let me remind you that man did not make you, that it is not your deeds for others that can save you, it is not your nation that can save your soul; it is God; it is God, and yet you have forgotten him, and he

is not in all your thoughts. You can go to bed without a prayer to him; you can rise in the morning without a hymn of thankfulness! A God forgotten in his own world, a God unknown by his own creature, a Godand such a God! so good, so gracious, so tender, so loving-a God who has given his own Son to die, and yet by his own creature so lightly deemed that he gives him not a word or thought. Well, soul, well, sinner, what a mercy it is that God has not forgotten thee; if he had forgotten to give thee thy bread, where hadst thou been? If he had forgotten to let the sun shine on thee-if he had forgotten to let the fields yield their harvests if he had forgotten to keep back the feverif he had forgotten thee when thou wert lying last year upon a sick bed-or when thou wert out in that storm at sea, and the wind had rent away the mast-or when thy gun exploded in thine hand-thou hadst been howling in hell now, but he has not forgotten thee and thou art yet alive. Oh! may his longsuffering lead thee to repentance for having lived as if there were no God to love, and yourself the only thing worth caring for.

But, soul, let me remind thee that longsuffering does not last for ever. The Roman judges were attended by lictors, as you know; these lictors carried on their shoulders a bundle of rods, and in the centre an axe. Now, when the judge condemned any man to be beaten by the rods, the following scene always took place. The rods were tied about with leather thongs, which were knotted a great many times. When the judge condemned the man to be beaten, his back was stripped, the lictor then untied one knot, and then another, and another, which took some little time, and during all this time the judge was looking in the face of the person to be scourged, watching him if he saw hardness of heart and rebellion there; then the blows came heavy, and perhaps the axe followed; but if he looked in the criminal's face, and saw repentance expressed there, it often happened that before the last knot was untied, the judge would say, "the punishment is remitted, tie up the rods again." Now, you that have forgotten God, remember his rods, too, are bound up with many knots. Many of those knots have been untied for some of you. Six years ago you laid ill with the cholera; there was a knot untied then. Before that you had had many warnings that were like loosenings of the knots. And now, this morning, the fingers of Eternal Justice are loosening another of the knots. Sinner, it may be it is the last, and God is looking in thy face now, and what does he see there? Does he see a brow of brass? Is thy heart saying, "I have loved pleasure and after it I will go?" Then it is possible that justice will untie the last knot, and then comes the axe. Take heed, sinner, when once God's axe is taken, thou canst not escape it, he shall dash thee in pieces, and there is none to deliver. O God of mercy, touch the sinner's heart, and make him repent, compel him to feel his need of Christ. Lord, lead him to Jesus, and then the rods shall never be untied, and he shall never be smitten!

THE DANGER OF DOUBTING.

A Sermon

DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, MARCH 16TH, 1862, BY

REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"And David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul."1 Sam. xxvii. 1.

To doubt the lovingkindness of God is thought by some to be a very small sin; in fact, some have even exalted the doubts and fears of God's people into fruits and grace, and evidences of great advancement in experience. It is humiliating to observe that certain ministers have pampered and petted men in unbelief and distrust of God, being in this matter false to their Master, and to the souls of his people. Far be it from me to smite the feeble of the flock; but their sins I must and will smite, since it is my firm conviction, that to doubt the kindness, the aithfulness, and the love of God, is a very heinous offence. Unbelief is akin to Atheism. Atheism denies God's existence-unbelief denies his goodness, and since goodness is essential to God, these doubts do, in reality, stab at his very being. That can be no light sin which makes God a liar; and yet unbelief does in effect, cast foul and slanderous suspicion upon the veracity of the Holy One of Israel. That can be no small offence which charges the Creator of heaven and earth with perjury; and yet, if I mistrust his oath, and will not believe his promise, sealed with the blood of his own Son, I count the oath of God to be unworthy of my trust; and so I do, in very deed, accuse the King of Heaven as false to his covenant and oath. Besides, as I shall have to show this morning, unbelief of God is the fountain of innumerable sins. As the black cloud is the mother of many rain-drops, so dark unbelief is the parent of many crimes. And what if I should say that unbelief concentrates the vice of ages into a moment, and gathers up the virus of all the offences of the race in one transgression? I should not be far from the mark. But I shall say no strong words in the preface, because methinks the incident in David's history, to which I shall call your attention this morning, will be in itself enough to lead you to give your verdict with mine, that unbelief is a damnable sin, that it should be condemned by every believer, should be struggled against, should if possible be subdued, and certainly should be the object of our deep repentance and abhorrence.

Nos. 439-40.

Penny Pulpit, 3,676-77.