The Spurgeon Series 1855 & 1856. Charles H. Spurgeon
all honour to my God.” Great souls know what they merit from their critic; to them it is nothing more than the giving of their daily income. Some men cannot live without a large amount of praise; and if they have no more than they deserve, let them have it. If they are children of God, they will be kept steady; they will not be ruined or spoiled; but they will stand with feet like hinds’ feet upon high places. — “This is the victory that overcomes the world.”
8. 4. Sometimes, again, the world turns jailer to a Christian. God sends affliction and sorrow, until life is a prison house, the world its jailer — and a wretched jailer too. Have you ever been in trials and troubles, my friends? and has the world never come to you and said, “Poor prisoner, I have a key that will let you out. You are in pecuniary difficulties; I will tell you how you may get free. Put that Mr. Conscience away. He asks you whether it is a dishonest act. Never mind about him; let him sleep; think about the honesty after you have gotten the money, and repent at your leisure.” So says the world; but you say, “I cannot do the thing.” “Well,” says the world, “then groan and grumble: a good man like you locked up in this prison!” “No,” says the Christian, “my Father sent me into want, and in his own time he will fetch me out; but if I die here I will not use wrong means to escape. My Father put me here for my good, I will not grumble; if my bones must lie here — if my coffin is to be under these stones — if my tombstone shall be in the wall of my dungeon — here will I die, rather than so much as lift a finger to get out by unfair means.” “Ah,” says the world, “then you are a fool.” The scorner laughs and passes on, saying, “The man has no brain, he will not do a bold thing; he has no courage; he will not launch upon the sea; he wants to go in the old beaten track of morality.” Indeed, so he does; for thus he overcomes the world.
9. Oh! I might tell you of some battles that have been fought. There has been many a poor maiden, who has worked, worked, worked, until her fingers were worn to the bone, to earn a scanty living out of the things which we wear, not knowing that often we wear the blood, and bones, and sinews of poor girls. That poor girl has been tempted a thousand times, the evil one has tried to seduce her, but she has fought a valiant battle; stern in her integrity, in the midst of poverty she still stands upright, “Clear as the sun, fair as the moon, and terrible as an army with banners,” a heroine unconquered by the temptations and enticements of vice. In other cases: many a man has had the chance of being rich in an hour, affluent in a moment, if he would only clutch something which he dare not look at, because God within him said, “No.” The world said, “Be rich, be rich”; but the Holy Spirit said, “No! be honest; serve your God.” Oh, the stern contest, and the manly combat carried on within the heart! But he said, “No; could I have the stars transmuted into worlds of gold, I would not for those globes of wealth betray my principles, and damage my soul”: thus he walks a conqueror. “This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith.”
10. II. But my text speaks of a GREAT BIRTH. A very kind friend has told me that while I was preaching in Exeter Hall I ought to pay deference to the various opinions of my hearers; that albeit I may be a Calvinist and a Baptist, I should remember that there are a variety of creeds here. Now, if I were to preach nothing but what would please the whole lot of you, what on earth should I do? I preach what I believe to be true; and if the omission of a single truth that I believe, would make me king of England throughout eternity, I would not leave it out. Those who do not like what I say have the option of leaving it. They come here, I suppose, to please themselves; and if the truth does not please them, they can leave it. I will never be afraid that an honest British audience will turn away from the man who does not stick, and stutter, and stammer in speaking the truth. Well, now, about this great birth. I am going to say perhaps a harsh thing, but I heard it said by Mr. Jay first of all. Some say a new birth takes place in an infant baptism, but I remember that venerable patriarch saying, “Popery is a lie, Puseyism {c} is a lie , baptismal regeneration is a lie.” So it is. It is a lie so palpable that I can scarcely imagine the preachers of it have any brains in their heads at all. It is so absurd upon the very face of it, that a man who believes it puts himself below the range of a common sense. Believe that every child by a drop of water is born again! Then that man that you see in the ring as a prize fighter is born again, because those sanctified drops once fell upon his infant forehead! Another man swears — behold him drunk and reeling about the streets. He is born again! A pretty born again that is! I think he needs to be born again another time. Such a regeneration as that only fits him for the devil; and by its deluding effect, may even make him sevenfold more the child of hell. But the men who curse, and swear, and rob and steal, and those poor wretches who are hanged, have all been born again, according to the fiction of this beautiful Puseyite church. Away with it! away with it! Ah, God sends something better than that into men’s hearts, when he sends them a new birth.
11. However, the text speaks of a great birth. “Whoever is born of God overcomes the world.” This new birth is the mysterious point in all religion. If you preach anything else except the new birth you will always get on well with your hearers; but if you insist that in order to enter heaven there must be a radical change, though this is the doctrine of the Scripture, it is so unpalatable to mankind in general that you will scarcely get them to listen. Ah! now you turn away if I begin to tell you, that “except you are born of water and of the Spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” If I tell you that there must be a regenerating influence exerted upon your minds by the power of the Holy Spirit, then I know, you will say “it is enthusiasm.” Ah! but it is the enthusiasm of the Bible. There I stand; by this I will be judged. If the Bible does not say we must be born again, then I give it up; but if it does then, sirs, do not distrust that truth on which your salvation hangs.
12. What is it to be born again, then? Very briefly, to be born again is to undergo a change so mysterious, that human words cannot speak of it. Just as we cannot describe our first birth, so it is impossible for us to describe the second. “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but cannot tell from where it comes or where it goes; so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” But while it is so mysterious, it is a change which is known and felt. People are not born again when they are in bed and asleep, so that they do not know it. They feel it; they experience it. Galvanism, or the power of electricity, may be mysterious; but they produce a feeling — a sensation. So does the new birth. At the time of the new birth the soul is in great agony — often drowned in seas of tears. Sometimes it drinks bitters, now and then mingled with sweet drops of hope. While we are passing from death to life, there is an experience which no one except the child of God can really understand. It is a mysterious change; but, at the same time, it is a positive one. It is as much a change as if this heart were taken out of me, and the black drops of blood wrung from it, then washed and cleansed and put into my soul again. It is “a new heart and a right spirit”: a mysterious but yet an actual and real change!
13. Let me tell you, moreover, that this change is a supernatural one. It is not one that a man performs upon himself. It is not stopping drinking and becoming sober; it is not turning from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant; it is not veering around from a Dissenter to a Churchman, or a Churchman to a Dissenter. It is a great deal more than that. It is a new principle infused which works in the heart, enters the very soul, and moves the entire man. Not a change of my name, but a renewal of my nature, so that I am not the man I used to be, but a new man in Christ Jesus. It is a supernatural change — something which man cannot do, and which only God can effect; which the Bible itself cannot accomplish without the attendant Spirit of God; which no minister’s eloquence can bring about — something so mighty and wondrous, that it must be confessed to be the work of God, and God alone. Here is the place to observe that this new birth is an enduring change. Arminians tell us that people are born again, then fall into sin, pick themselves up again, and become Christians again — fall into sin, lose the grace of God, then come back again — fall into sin a hundred times in their lives, and so keep on losing grace and recovering it. Well, I suppose it is a new version of the Scripture where you read of that. But I read in my Bible that if true Christians could fall away, it would be impossible to renew them again to repentance. I read, moreover, that wherever God has begun a good work, he will carry it on even to the end; and that whom he once loves, he loves to the end. If I have simply been reformed, I may