He will receive you to glory-you! Why, if it had been said, "He shall damn thee to all eternity," thy heart would have said, "Ah, that I richly deserve;" but he saith, "I will receive thee to glory." Slipping, sliding, falling, and yet I will bring thee safe at last; wandering, erring, straying, yet I will receive thee to glory. Full of sin, even to the last full of sin, haunted with unbelief even to thy dying hour; tempted perhaps on thy death-bed, thy very couch a part of the battle-field, and thy pillow a castle to be stormed or to be defended-yet I will receive thee to glory. Brethren, that moment when you and I shall be received into glory-can we conceive it? Thou art gone, frail body, no more pain from thee; but better still, thou art gone, vile flesh-no more temptation, no more sin. Old Adam, thou shalt rot. Let the worms devour thee; glad am I to be rid of thee.

"Far from a world of grief and sin,

With God eternally shut in."

And this is your portion and my portion, though doubts and fears prevail, and we hardly dare to say that Christ is ours; yet, resting on him, on him only, having nothing of our own, looking to his flowing wounds, covered with his matchless righteousness, saved at last we shall be, and we will sing for ever to that matchless grace which saved us even to the end.

To conclude, the psalmist has been looking at his complex self; at the flesh, and groaning over that; and then at his spirit, confident in its God, and he winds the whole story thus: "WHOM HAVE I IN HEAVEN BUT THEE?" I have known men lose their property, and yet they did not say, "Whom have I in heaven but thee?" I have known a man lose his wife, and yet look to earth to find some comfort. I have known him lose child after child, and yet he still thought the world had many charms. I have known him sick, yet he has had pleasure in vanity. But there is one thing which cannot happen-a man cannot know himself so as to feel his folly and his ignorance, to feel the beastlike character of his nature, without at once turning his eye to Christ. There is nothing that makes one love Christ, I think, so much as a sense of His love balanced with a sense of our unworthiness of it. It is sweet to think that Christ loves us; but oh, to remember that we are black as the tents of Kedar, and yet he loves us! This is a thought which may well wean us from everything else beside. That he should love me when I have some graces and some virtues is not a great marvel; but that he should love me, when in me, that is, in my flesh, there dwelleth no good thing; when I have no charms, no beauties, not one attractive attribute, not one trait of character that is worthy of his regard—that he should love me then-oh! if this does not make me swear a divorce to the world, what can? Methinks, believer, thou wilt come to Jesus and put thy hand in his, and say, "Thou, thou alone art mine. No other love can I have but this. I cannot love the world, when I have known such affection as thine. And when I see how little I deserve it, I must love thee." Then, the spirit flies to heaven, thinking of all that joy and rapture which is to come, but remembering as it enters paradise that it was on earth but as a beast before God, it looks all round through heaven, and says to angels, "I cannot think of you, I can

only think of him who could love so base, so vile a creature as I am." Surely, passing by principalities and powers, forgetting for awhile the blood-washed company, the sacramental host of God's elect, we shall find out the throne where Jesus sits, and we shall sing to him, and this shall be the song, "Unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, unto him be glory for ever and ever." Contemplate much, believer, your own sad state, contemplate yet more your own safety and perfection in Christ, and these two things together shall make you despise the world and its joys, make you tread on the world and its trials, and make you feel such a knitting and union of heart to Christ, to Christ Jesus only, that you may say, "Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee."

I thought I saw just now before my eyes a dark and horrible pit, and down deep below, where the eye could not reach, lay a being broken in pieces, whose groans and howlings pierced the awful darkness and amazed my ears. Methought I saw a bright one fly from the highest heaven, and in an instant dive into that black darkness till he was lost and buried in it. I waited for a moment, and to my mind's eye I saw two spirits rising from the horrid deep, with arms entwined, as though one was bearing up the other, I saw them emerge from the gloom. I heard the fairest of them say, as he mounted into light, "I have loved thee, and given myself for thee." And I heard the other say, who was that poor broken one just now, "I was foolish and ignorant, I was as a beast before thee." Ere I could write the words both spirits had risen into mid air, and I heard one of them say "Thou shalt be with me in Paradise," and the other whispered "Nevertheless I am continually with thee." As they mounted higher, I heard one say, "None shall pluck thee out of my hand," and I heard the other say "Thou holdest me by my right hand." As still they rose they continued the loving dialogue. "I will guide thee with mine eye," said the bright one; the other answered "Thou shall guide me with thy counsel." They reached the bright clouds that separate earth from heaven, and as they parted to make way for the glorious One, he said, "I will give thee to sit upon my throne even as I have overcome, and sit upon my Father's throne," and the other answered, "And thou shalt afterward receive me to glory." Lo the clouds closed their doors, and they were gone. Methought again they opened, and I saw those two spirits soaring onward beyond stars, and sun, and moon; right up beyond principalities and powers; on, beyond cherubim and seraphim; right on beyond every name that is named, until in that ineffable brightness, dark with unsufferable light, the awful glory of the Deity whom eye cannot see, both those spirits were lost, and there came the sound of joyous hallelujahs from the spirits which are before the throne. May it be your lot and mine thus to be brought up, for we are thus fallen; may it be ours to be thus caught up to the third heaven, for we are thus broken and cast down into the lowest hell by nature. God give us faith in Christ. Faith in Christ-that is the link, the bond, the tie. "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." "Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief."

EZEKIEL'S DESERTED INFANT.

A Sermon

DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 7TH, 1862, BY
REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out into the open field, to the loathing of thy person, in the day that thou wast born. And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live."-Ezekiel xvi. 5, 6.

DOUBTLESS the Lord here describes the Jewish people when they began to multiply in the land of Egypt, and were grievously oppressed by Pharaoh. Pharaoh had commanded them to cast out the male children that they might perish. Hence, the figure of an infant deserted, cast out into the open field to perish by wild beasts, by starvation, or exposure, was a very apt portrait of the youthful state of Israel, when God looked upon her in love, and brought her out of Egypt to set her in a goodly land. But all the best divines and expositors concur in the belief that we have here also a most extraordinarily apt and significant description of the human race by nature, and of the way in which God in divine mercy passes by the sinner when utterly lost and helpless, and by the power of the Spirit, bids him "Live." At any rate, we intend so to consider it this morning. Without any preface, for we need none, we shall, first of all, bid you look at the misery of man's estate as set before us in the present verses; then, next, we shall search for motives which could urge the Lord to have pity upon this miserable one; and then, thirdly, we shall pause awhile to listen to the divine mandate by which this unhappy being is delivered from his lost estate. "I said unto thee, Live; yea, I said unto thee, Live."

I. At the outset, I shall direct your contemplations to a survey of THE MISERY OF MAN'S ESTATE.

The verse presents to us an infant exposed to die. All the common offices that were necessary for its life and health have been forgotten. Its heartless parents have laid it out in the open field, having no regard whatever for it; and there it lies before our eye, covered with blood, exposed to wild beasts, famishing, ready to perish. Among many heathen nations there existed the barbarous custom of leaving deformed children to perish in the woods or fields. Among the Spartans it was an established regulation to abandon their weaker offspring to

perish at the foot of Mount Taygetus; and in these times there are dark places of the earth which are full of this unnatural cruelty. The Jews were certainly free from this sin, but it was a practice of their near neighbours, and therefore, well known to them; and moreover, the remembrance of Egypt and their great lawgiver among the crocodiles of the Nile, and all the males murdered by royal decree, would make the metaphor very simple to them.

1. At the very first glance, we remark, here is an early ruin. It is an infant. A thousand sorrows that one so young should be so deeply taught in misery's school! It is an infant; it has not yet tasted joy, but yet it knoweth pain and sorrow to the full. How early art thou blasted, O sweet flower! How soon are thy young dawnings quenched in darkness, O rising sun! A ruin so terrible and so early has fallen upon each of us. Let proud man kick against the doctrine as he may, Scripture telleth us assuredly that we are "born in sin and shapen in iniquity." We came not into this world as Adam came into the garden, without flaw, without condemnation, without evil propensities; but lo, by one man's offence we are all made sinners, and through his desperate fall our blood is tainted and our nature is corrupt. From the very birth we go astray, speaking lies, and in the very birth we lie under the condemnation of the law of God. It is not mine to defend this doctrine, to answer objections to it, or to bring arguments for it; I simply announce what God has himself revealed by the mouth of his servant David, and also more fully by the tongue of the apostle Paul. Man, except God have mercy on thee, thou art lost, and lost from thy very beginning! Thou didst not come into this world as one who might stand or fall, thou wast fallen already; an original and birth-sin had seized upon thee in the womb, and thou wast even then as an infant cast out to perish and to die. There is hardly any doctrine more humbling than that of natural depravity or original sin; it has been the main point of attack for all those who hate the gospel, and it must be maintained and valiantly vindicated by those who would exalt Christ, since the greatness and glory of his salvation lies mainly in the desperateness of the ruin from which he hath redeemed us. Man, think not to save thyself by thy works; boast not of the excellence of thy character and of thy nature; thou art a traitor's son, thou art a felon's child! An act of attainder was passed upon thy father's house, and thou wast born under the law and under the curse, obnoxious to divine wrath in the very moment when thy first breath was drawn. Sad heritage of sin! Miserable estate of sorrow! How deep the ruin of the fall! Oh, to grace what debtors we are, that out of this ruin it can lift us up to heights of glory!

2. The next very apparent teaching of the text is utter inability. It is an infant-what can it do for itself? If it were a child of some few years it might be able, with tottering feet, to find its way to some shelter; if it had the gift of articulate speech, it might sob out its wants, and tell to the passer-by what it needed; but it is an infant, it cannot speak. It knows pain, but it has not mind enough to know wherefore the pain is there. It is ignorant; and although conscious of its ills, its untutored, undeveloped intellect can neither describe the evil, nor prescribe the remedy.

Though it may cast its little eyes around, even if help were there it were not in its power to avail itself of the proffered aid. It is impotent, helpless, utterly powerless; if anything is to be done for it, it must all be done by another's hand. Not even clay on the potter's wheel is more helpless than this infant as it now lies cast out in the open field. Such is human nature; it can by no means help towards its own restoration. "Dead," saith our apostle, "dead in trespasses and sins," and what shall the dead in their graves do towards resurrection? Shall the worm become mother of life, or shall corruption be the father of immortality? No, trumpet of God, there is no life in the dull, cold ear of death, and no hearing in the hollow skull of the skeleton; if the graves open, a divine hand must break the seal, upheave the mould, and uplift the mouldering corpse. If there be resurrection, it must come from God, and from God alone. It must be a miracle in the beginning, and a miracle even to the end. My hearers, I am not the author of this doctrine, but simply the declarer of what God reveals. Ye are so lost, that ye cannot by the most desperate efforts of your own save yourselves; nay, worse, so lost that by nature ye have no wish to be saved, and will not make the efforts or desire to make them. Ye hate God. It is a cutting accusation, but it is true, and may God the Holy Ghost make ye feel its truth; naturally, I say, you hate the Lord; by nature you love vanity, and not God's truth; you love sin, and do not wish to be delivered from it. Holiness ye choose not; God's commandments ye abhor. Your nature hath become so evil that the Ethiopian may sooner change his skin, and the leopard his spots, than ye of yourself learn to do well.

But, mark you-and this is a thought that may crush our boastings and make us hang our head like a bulrush evermore--this inability is our own sin. This is laid at our door, not as an excuse for our sinfulness, but as a frightful aggravation of our guilt, that we have become so bad that we cannot make ourselves good, that our nature is now so desperately evil, both by its native depravity and by our continual practice of sin, that iniquity has become our nature; so that it is as natural to us to sin as for water to descend, or sparks to fly upward.

"Where vice has held its empire long,
'T will not endure the least control;
None but a power divinely strong
Can turn the current of the soul."

Ye cannot, souls, ye cannot save yourselves; ye are as helpless as the infant cast out; your inability is utter and entire.

3. Apparent, too, is yet a third misfortune-we are utterly friendless. "None eye pitied thee to do any of these things unto thee." We have no friend in heaven or in earth that can do aught for us, unless God shall interpose. Grant you that a tender parent may pity, but no parent can change his child's nature or cleanse away the sin of his offspring. Let it be granted that there are ministers of Christ whose tearful eyes would woo you to Christ, but the most earnest evangelist cannot quicken your soul. The most thundering of all God's Boanerges cannot awake the dead. Let it be considered that angels are anxious for your conversion, that were you saved they would clap their wings with joy and make glad holiday in heaven;