A VOICE FROM THE HARTLEY COLLIERY.

A Sermon

DELIVERED ON THURSDAY EVENING, JANUARY 30TH, 1862, BY REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"If a man die, shall he live again?"—Job xiv. 14.

ONCE more the Lord has spoken. Once again the voice of Providence has proclaimed "All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of grass." O sword of the Lord, when wilt thou rest and be quiet? Wherefore these repeated warnings? Why doth the Lord so frequently and so terribly sound an alarm? Is it not because our drowsy spirits will not awaken to the realities of death? We fondly persuade ourselves that we are immortal, that though a thousand may fall at our side, and ten thousand at our right hand, yet death shall not come nigh unto us. We flatter ourselves that if we must die, yet the evil day is far hence. If we be sixty, we presumptuously reckon upon another twenty years of life; and the man of eighty, tottering upon his staff, remembering that some few have survived to the close of a century, sees no reason why he should not do the same. If man cannot kill death, he tries at least to bury him alive; and since death will intrude himself in man's pathway, we endeavour to shut our eyes to the ghastly object. God in providence is continually filling our path with tombs. With kings and princes there is too much forgetfulness of the world to come; God has, therefore, spoken to them. They were but few in number; one death might be sufficient in their case. That one death of a beloved and illustrious prince will leave its mark on courts and palaces. As for the workers, they also are wishful to put far from them the thought of the coffin and the shroud: God has spoken to them also. There were many; one death would not be sufficient; it was absolutely necessary that there should be many victims, or we should have disregarded the warning. Two hundred witnesses cry to us from the pit's mouth, a solemn fellowship of preachers all using the same text, "Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel!" If God had not thus spoken by the destruction of many, we should

have said, "Ah, it is a common occurrence; there are frequently such accidents as these?" The rod would have failed in its effect had it smitten less severely. The awful calamity at the Hartley Colliery has at least had this effect, that men are talking of death in all our streets. Oh! Father of thy people, send forth thy Holy Spirit in richer abundance, that by this solemn chastisement higher ends may be answered than merely attracting our thoughts to our latter end. Oh! may hearts be broken, may eyes be made to weep for sin, may follies be renounced, may Christ be accepted, and may spiritual life be given as the result of temporal death to the many who now sleep in their untimely graves in Earsdon churchyard.

This text is appropriate to the occasion, but God alone knoweth how applicable the discourse may be to some here present; yes, to young hearts little dreaming that there is but a step between them and death; to aged persons, who as yet have not set their house in order, but who must do it, for they shall die and not live. We will take the question of the text, and answer it upon Scriptural grounds. "If a man die, shall he live again?" NO!-YES! I. We answer the question first with a "No." live again here; he shall not again mingle with his repeat the life which death has brought to a close. of him with regard to himself, and equally true with neighbours. Shall he live again for himself? No. again for his household? No.

He shall not fellows, and This is true regard to his Shall he live

1. Dwell for a moment on the first thought. "If a man die, shall he live again." Shall he live for himself? No; if he hath lived and died a sinner, that sinful life of his shall never be repeated. Sinner, thou mayest empty the cups of drunkenness in this world throughout a long life, but thou shalt never have another season to spend in intoxication! Thou who hast broken through all the bounds of morality, thou mayest live in this life debauched, depraved, and devilish, but death shall put an end to thy career of lust. Let the cup be sweet; it is the last time thou shalt ever drink it. If there be any pleasures in sin, thou shalt never taste them again. The sweets shall be over once for all, and at the bottom thou shalt find the bitter dregs which shall be gall for ever. Once thou shalt insult high heaven, but not twice. Once shalt thou have space to blaspheme; once shalt thou have time proudly to array thyself in self-righteousness; once shalt thou have power to despise the Christ who is the Saviour of men, but not twice. The longsuffering of God shall wait for thee through thy life of provocations; but thou shalt not be born again into this world; thou shalt not a second time defile its air with blasphemies, nor blot its beauties with impiety. Thou shalt not live again to forget the God who hath daily loaded thee with mercies. Thou hast thy daily bread now; the clothes that are on thy back shelter thee from the cold;, thou goest to thy house, and thou hast comforts and mercies

cause of Christ, the next thing he will do is to plan and to purpose for it. What fine purposes some men have at eccentric seasons! After they have listened to some earnest address they go home thinking.—" Well, I must do something;" and they half resolve they will, but, lacking the whole-heartedness of Hezekiah, the purpose never comes to a definite shape; it still resides in the clouds. As some men build castles in the air, so others build churches there, they educate preachers in the air, they support Christ's ministers in the sky, they send out fresh missionaries in the clouds. All their plans are very beautiful, and all practical schemes are poor affairs compared with their magnificent projects, but then it is all an unsubstantial dream-a pleasing picture, a dissolving view, and it soon melts into something which for them is more practical -the world and the affairs thereof. Give a man earnestness, and every time he makes a purpose it is a purpose; every stroke of the great motive-power within his soul tells, and sets a wheel in motion; he cannot let the blood circulate through him without its carrying life in every drop; but some men have dead blood in their veins, it is going round, going to the heart and issuing from it, but there is no life in a drop of it. They can talk, and they can sometimes make a resolve, but it never comes to a definite purpose; they never set their teeth and plant their feet down, and say, "God helping me, I will do something. God being with me, I will not live in this world for nothing. I will not be as an oyster which lies in the mud, and opens its shell according as the tide brings round the meal-time; it shall not be said that I live merely to eat and drink, and to accumulate wealth; but, O Christ Jesus! by everything that is true, if thou wilt help me I will serve thee while I live, and, if it must be, will be prepared to die for thy 'cause." Only earnest men get so far as to select their purpose and adhere to it. Dear friends, choose your gun, but mind you stand to it till every round of ammunition is exhausted.

But we have known persons in a great spasm-in a sort of apoplectic fit of pious enthusiasm, make a huge resolve, but they came to their cooler senses long before it was carried out. The blood has run to the head very powerfully, there has even been too much blood; they have rolled over in the spasm of fanaticism; it has never come to a practical effect. Now, when a man's heart is right with God, what he has resolved to do he will do. I can speak for one, when I say I know a man who, when he feels that God has given him a work to do when he has once resolved it shall be done, would move heaven and earth but what he would accomplish it; and he would sooner break his heart or destroy his health than he would fail in it; for he feels that if it be God's work, it must be done. Man's work may stop, but God's work cannot; and when any get in his way, or seem to thwart his purpose, that man feels his zeal so boiling over, that for God's sake he forgets everything else; and even dear friendships snap when it appears as if Christ's cause were imperiled. I know this, that when a man gets thoroughly alive for God, he cannot put up with those lazy sluggards who will neither work themselves nor permit others to labour. When once a believer gets his spirit wholly up to the work, it is now-for God and Christ, follow who may; but as for ye that are faint-hearted, go to your homes lest ye make also the man-of-God's heart to faint; stand ye away, lest the chilling

if ye can say, "Lord, our soul is all on flame with an agony of desire to do good to the souls of men;" then you are doing good, and God is blessing you as he did Hezekiah, who did it with all his heart and prospered.

Feeling that very many Christians are not Christians with all their hearts, and that perhaps some of you have only given Jesus Christ a dull, cobwebby corner of your hearts, instead of bidding him sit at the head of the table and reign upon the throne; fearing that we are all in danger of getting into a Laodicean lukewarm state I wish to stir you up this morning, and if I may only stir myself up, I shall be thrice happy to go home and think that at least one has gotten some good from the service, for the preacher needs to be kept alive quite as much as the hearers, for there is a danger that even the Lord's servant may lack the live coal upon his lips, and then he will be useless to his hearers.

This morning we shall notice the effects of whole-heartedness upon the Christian; I shall then endeavour to stir you up with many arguments to be earnest in your work of faith and labour of love; and when I have so done, I shall address those to whom religion has as yet been a trifling matter; and God grant that they may be ready to seek the Lord with all their hearts, for then he will surely be found of them.

I. First, then, let us notice THE SPHERE WHICH CHRISTIAN EARNESTNESS OCCUPIES IN THE DIVINE LIFE. Mark, I speak now only to those who are really and savingly converted to God, for if we be not first right with God, zeal for God is but a pretence.

One of the first things that thorough earnestness will do for a Christian man, is to make him think very earnestly for his Lord and Master. In the diary of Jonathan Edwards, we find the following account of his feelings towards the Lord's work, "I had great longing for the advancement of Christ's kingdom in the world; my secret prayer used to be in great part taken up in praying for it. If I heard the least hint of anything that had happened in any part of the world, which appeared to me in some respect or other to have favourable aspect on the interest of Christ's kingdom, my soul eagerly caught at it, and it would much animate and refresh me. I used to be earnest to read public news letters, mainly for that end, to see if I could not find some news favourable to the interest of religion in the world." Now, when we are full of zeal for God, it is the same with us. Our thoughts are continually set upon things divine; go where we may we regard our place not as a sphere for business, but as a sphere for usefulness. We make that our very first thought. Why, beloved, if we are really in earnest for God, we shall begin to think of Christ's work in the world as soon as ever we wake; and when we rest at night it will be still with the Lord before us, and with his glory written in our hearts. I am afraid some of you think but very little of him, and of his cause in the world. How often when our missionary heralds are issued, nobody cares to read them. The annual report of what God is doing in foreign nations is generally the driest and dullest affair that ever comes in our way-not so much dry in itself, but because we of this generation have not been tutored and schooled to think of the advance of the gospel and the progress of Christ's cause. Let once this flaming torch of zeal kindle your souls, and you will have Christ's cause upon your hearts at all times. But when a man has thus had his soul quickened to consider the

made Mahommedanism once so mighty in the earth? It was because Mahomet himself when he preached was as sincerely deluded as any of his followers: when he was pelted in the streets he still persevered, and when assassins dogged his footsteps he counted not his life dear unto him that he might proclaim what he thought to be a revelation from heaven. As for his followers, they were not sleepy professors; they drew their scimitars from their scabbards and swore that they would not rest till they had brought men by edge of steel to the faith of their prophet, and on they dashed till their religion, like a mighty rising ocean, swept all before it, nor could its rising wave be driven back till it was met by an equal enthusiasm to withstand its progress. Look again on Roman Catholic missions. How was it that Romanists did what we have never done, and what I fear we never shall do till we have changed our men? How was it that Francis Xavier carried his faith into India, preached in Burmah, obtained great influence in China, and even entered into the recesses of Japan, till everywhere you might see a Catholic convent or nunnery, and a cross lifted up, with devotees bowing before it? Because Xavier's spirit was full of fire. He seemed to be a flash of lightning flaming from one end of heaven to the other. Now mark, as it has been with false religions, so must it be with the true. Under God the Holy Spirit our only hope for the increase of the Church and for the conversion of the world lies in the development of energy within us, in the bringing out of earnestness in Christian souls. Oh! it was not scholarship that converted the heathen world at first, for on the slabs in the catacombs we have decisive evidence that the first Christians could scarcely spell their own names. It was not the pomp of learning, the pride of philosophy, or the power of eloquence, which made the early confessors so mighty; it was their singular earnestness. The Church was all on fire. She was like a volcano; she might not be high and lofty as some of the surrounding hills, but they had summits clothed with frost, while she sent forth earnest truths like streams of lava, which burned their way, and covered all the lands. Christians in those days were Christians indeed. They believed what they professed; they knew what they spoke; they testified what they had seen; and they spoke with an unconquerable, untameable energy, which smote even the iron power of Rome and dashed it into shivers. So must it be to-day, and indeed so is it. Look around you; who are the most useful men in the Christian Church to-day? The men who do what they undertake for God with all their hearts. Where is the preacher whom God blesses to the conversion of hundreds in a year? Is he a sleepy, prosaic soul? Does he confine himself within narrow limits? Does he speak sleepy words to a slumbering congregation? We know it is not so, but where God is pleased to give the congregation it is, whatever it may not be, a proof that there has been earnestness in the preacher. Who are the most successful Sabbath-school teachers? The most learned? Every superintendent will tell you it is not so. The most talented? The most wealthy? No; they are the most zealous; the men whose hearts are on 'fire; those are the men who honour Christ. Who among you to-day is doing the most for your Master's kingdom? I will tell you. Lend me a spiritual thermometer by which I may try the heat of your heart, and I will tell you the amount of your success. If your hearts be cold towards God, I am sure ye are doing nothing though ye may pretend to do it, but