Puslapio vaizdai
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service has become tedious and monotonous: I have come to bid You farewell; good-by, Lord Jesus Christ." I never heard of one doing this. I will tell you how they go away they just run away. Where are you, you backslider? Just look upon your condition during the past ten years. Have they been years of happiness? Have they been years of answers ten thousand times, "No." never mind what your past has salvation.

peace?

Echo Return to Him at once; been, He will give you

But I must hasten on to the next class-the unsaved. I will admit that professed Christians have got their failings; we are far from being what we ought to be. But is that any reason why you should not come to Him? We do not preach ourselves—we do not set ourselves up as the Saviour: if we did you might make this an excuse. But we preach Christ. Now, you who are unsaved, won't you come? I do not know who you are in this audience, but if the Spirit of God is not born in you, and does not tell you you are the children of God, this is an evidence that you have not been born of God. Do you love your enemies? Do you love those who slander you? Do you Íove those who hate you? Have you joy, peace, long-suffering, courage, charity? If you have got the fruit of the Spirit you have those qualities; if you have not, you have not been born of the Spirit. Now, friends, just ask yourself this question; "Where am I?" Here I am in this hall to-day, surrounded with praying friends. It seemed, sometimes, to me as if the words came to me and fell to the floor: and at other times the words fell on the heart. We can feel it in this hall to-day, in the atmosphere; we feel its influence all around. It may be that that mother is praying for the return of an erring son; it may be that that brother has been praying all the afternoon, "O, my God, may the Spirit come to my brother." friends, let us ask each other to-day, "Where art thou ?" Resisting, earnest, trembling prayers of some loving mother, of some loving wife-trampling them underfoot? Now, be honest. Have I not been talking to many in this audience who made promises five, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago—who made a promise to serve Him? Those promises have faded away, and hose five, ten, fifteen, twenty years have rolled on and you are no nearer. Oh, sinner, where art thou? Are you making light of all offers of mercy? Are you turning your back and ridiculing Him and laughing at Him? If you are, may He, the God of mercy, arrest you and have mercy on your soul and save you. The last three years have been the most solemn years of my life. A man's life is just like going up and down a hill. If I live the allotted time I am going down the hill. Many of you

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are on the top of the hill and are not saved. Suppose you pause a moment and look down the hill on the road from whence you came-look back toward the cradle. Don't you remember that the sermons you heard ten or fifteen years ago moved you? You say, "When you look back at those times, we used to have good sermons, better and more earnest ministers than now." Don't you make any mistake. The Gospel is the same as it was then, as powerful to-day as ever. The fault is not with the ministers of the Gospel; it is with yourself—your heart has become hard. Then, as you look down into the valley, don't you see a little mound and a tombstone? It marks the resting-place of a loving father or a loving mother. Ten years ago you had a praying mother. Every morning and evening she went down on her knees in her closet and prayed for you. Her prayers are ended now, and yet you are not saved. It may be, as you look down the stream of time, you see a little grave that marks the resting-place of your child. It may be that child. took you by the hand, and asked you, "Will you meet me in that land ?" And you promised her that you would meet her there. As you looked down into that little grave, and heard the damp, cold earth falling down, you repeated that promise. Five, ten, fifteen years ago you promised this: have you kept it? Some of you are far down the hill, and hastening to judgment. May God open your eyes to-day as you look back upon your lives and look into the future. It may be that you will live the allotted time, but the end is soon to come. The average age is thirtythree years. There are a number of you in this hall this afternoon who will be in eternity inside of thirty days. Ask yourselves where you are-resisting the offer of mercy, turning back the offer of God. May the loving God show you the Saviour standing at the door of your heart, and knocking and telling you He wants to come in and save you.

In London, when I was there in 1867, I was told a story which made a very deep impression upon me. A young French nobleman came there to see a doctor, bringing letters from the French Emperor. The Emperor Napoleon III. had a great regard for this young man, and the doctor wanted to save him. He examined the young man, and saw there was something upon his mind. "Have you lost any property? What is troubling you? You have something weighing upon your mind," said the doctor. "Oh, there is nothing particular." "I know better; have you lost any relations ?" asked the doctor. "No, none within the last three years.' "Have you lost any reputation in your country ?" "No." The doctor studied for a few minutes, and then said: "I must know what is on your mind-I must know what is troubling you." And the young man said: "My father was

an infidel; my grandfather was an infidel, and I was brought up an infidel, and for the last three years these words have haunted me, 'Eternity, and where shall it find me?'" "Ah," said the doctor, "you have come to the wrong physician," "Is there no hope for me?" cried the young man. "I walk about in the daytime: I lie down at night, and it comes upon me continually Eternity, and where shall I spend it?'

Tell me, is there any hope for me." The doctor said: "Now, just sit down and be quiet. A few years ago I was an infidel. I did not believe in God, and was in the same condition in which you now are." The doctor took down his Bible, and turned to the fiftythird chapter of Isaiah, and read: "He was wounded for our trangressions; He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed." And he read on through this chapter. When he had finished, the young man said: "Do you believe this, that He voluntarily left heaven, came down to this earth, and suffered and died that we might be saved ?" "Yes, I believe it. That brought me out of infidelity, out of darkness into light." And he preached Christ and His salvation and told him of heaven, and then suggested that they get down on their knees and pray. And when I went there in 1867, a letter had been received from that young nobleman, who wrote to Dr. Whinston, in London, telling him that the question of "Eternity, and where he should spend it," was settled, and troubling him no more. My friends, this question of eternity and where we are going to spend it, forces itself upon every one of us. We are staying here for a little day. Our life is but a fibre, and it will soon be snapped. I may be preaching my last sermon. To-night may find me in eternity. By the grace of God say that you will spend it in heaven. All the hosts of hell cannot hinder you, if you make up your mind to come to heaven, because if God says, "Let him come," "who can resist you? If that little child sitting yonder says it will enter heaven, all the hosts of hell cannot keep it out. May God help you to spend your eternity in heaven, and may you say: "By the grace of God I accept Jesus as my Redeemer."

"Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die."-Ezekiel xxxiii. 11.

Он, turn ye, oh, turn ye, for why will ye die,
When God in great mercy is coming so nigh?
Now Jesus invites you, the Spirit says,
"Čome,"
And angel's are waiting to welcome you home.

Heaven, I.

WAS on my way to a meeting one night with a friend, and he asked, as we were drawing near the church, “Mr. Moody, what are you going to preach about ?" "I am going to preach about heaven," I said. I noticed a scowl passing over his face, and I said, "What makes you look so ?" "Why, your subject of Heaven. What's the use of talking upon a subject that's all speculation? It's only wasting time on a subject about which you can only speculate ?" My answer to that friend was, "If the Lord doesn't want us to speak about heaven He would never have told us about such a place in the Scriptures, and, as Timothy says, 'All the Scriptures are given by inspiration, and all parts are profitable." There's no part of the word of God that is not profitable, and I believe if men would read more carefully these Scriptures they would think more of heaven. If we want to get men to fix their hearts and attention upon heaven we must get them to read more about it. Men who say

that heaven is a speculation have not read their Bibles. In the blessed Bible there are allusions scattered all through it. If I were to read to you all the passages upon heaven from Genesis to Revelation it would take me all night and to-morrow to do it. When I took some of the passages lately and showed them to a lady, "Why," said she, "I didn't think there was so much about heaven in the Bible." If I were to go into a foreign land and spend my days there, I would like to know all about it; I would like to read all about it. I would want to know all about its climate, its inhabitants, their customs, their privileges their government. I would find nothing about that land that would not interest me. Suppose you all were going away to Africa, to Germany, to China, and were going to make one of those places your home, and suppose, that I had just come from some of those countries, how eagerly you would listen. I can imagine how the old grey-haired men and young men and the deaf would crowd around and put up their hands to learn anything about it. My friends where are you going to spend eternity? Your life here is very brief. Life is but an inch of time; it is but a span ; but a fibre, which will soon be snapped, and you will be ushered into eternity. Where are you going to spend it. If I were to ask you who were going to spend your eternity in heaven to stand up, nearly every one of you would rise. There is not a

man here, not one in Chicago, who has not some hope of reaching heaven. Now, if we are going to spend our future there it becomes us to go to work and find out all about it. I call your attention to this truth that heaven is just as much a place as Chicago. It is a destination-it is a locality. Some people say there is no heaven. Some men will tell you this earth is all the heaven we have. Queer kind of heaven this. Look at the the poverty, disease in the city; look at the men out of employment walking around our streets, and they say this is heaven. How low a man has got when he comes to think in this way. There is a land where the weary are at rest, there is a land where there is peace and joy-where no sorrow dwells, and as we think of it and speak about it, how sweet it looms up before us.

I remember soon after I got converted a pantheist got hold of me, and just tried to draw me back to the world. Those men who try to get hold of a young convert are the worst set of men. I don't know a worse man than he who tries to pull young Christians down. He is nearer the borders of hell than any man I know. When this man knew I found Jesus he just tried to pull me down. He tried to argue with me, and I did not know the Bible very well then, and he got the best of me. The only thing to get the best of these atheists, pantheists, or infidels is to have a good knowledge of the Bible. Well, this pantheist told me God was everywhere-in the air, in the sun, in the moon, in the earth, in the stars, but really he meant nowhere. And the next time I went to pray it seemed as if I was not praying anywhere or to anyone.

We have ample evidence in the Bible that there is such a place as heaven, and we have abundant manifestation that his influence from heaven is felt among us. He is not in person among us; only in spirit. The sun is 95,000,000 miles from the earth, yet we feel its rays. In Second Chronicles we read: "If my people which are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." Here is one reference, and when it is read a great many people might ask, "How far is heaven away, but there is one thing I can tell you. He can hear prayer as soon as the words are uttered. There has not been a prayer said that He has not heard; not a tear shed that He has not seen. We don't want to learn the distance. What we want to know is that God is there, and Scripture tells us that. Turn to First Kings and we read: "And hearken thou to the supplication of Thy servant and of Thy people Israel, when they shall pray toward this place, and hear Thou in heaven, Thy dwelling place, and when thou hearest forgive." Now, it

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