Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vols. 13–63

This story of the children of Israel, after they came out of Egypt, is like a mirror in which we may, with great sadness, see ourselves reflected.

Verse 9. The children of Ephraim, being armed, and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle. They had every opportunity of serving their God. He had provided them with fit weapons for the war, but they were cowardly, so they "turned back in the day of battle."

10, 11. They kept not the Covenant of God, and refused to walk in His Law; and forgot His works, and His wonders that He had showed them. Let each one of us ask, "Does the Psalmist describe me?"

12, 13. Marvelous things did He in the sight of their fathers, in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan. He divided the sea, and caused them to pass through; and He made the waters to stand as an heap. What a marvelous miracle that dividing of the Red Sea was! Did it not make an abiding impression upon them? I will be bound to say that many of them said, "We shall never doubt God again." Yet, they soon did doubt, murmur and rebel against Him!

14-16. In the daytime also He led them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire. He split the rocks in the wilderness, andgave them drink as out ofthe great depths. He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers. It seemed as if there was nothing that the Lord would not do for them—all that they needed for food and refreshment was given to them freely.

17, 18. And they sinned yet more against Him by provoking the Most High in the wilderness. And they tempted God in their heart by asking meat for their lust He had given them food for their necessities, but now they must have meat for their lusts.

19. Yes, they spoke against God; they said, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness? So you see, dear Friends, what speaking against God really is! I am afraid that we, also, have often done that. To question God's power is to speak against Him. Perhaps you have thought lightly of your unbelieving speeches, but God does not think lightly of them— to my mind it seems that there is hardly anything that so grieves Him as the doubts of His people concerning Him.

20. Behold, He smote the rock, that the watersgushed out, and the streams overflowed; can He give breadalso? Can He provide flesh for His people? There ought to have been no question as to the Lord's power—the God who could fetch water out of a rock could, if He pleased, make loaves of bread out of the sand under their feet, or cause the very stars to drop with meat for them if necessary.

21. Therefore the Lord heard this, and was angry. He was really angry with His people because they doubted Him. He loved them and because He loved them, it cut Him to the quick that they should have questioned His power to bless them.

21-23. So a fire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also came up against Israel because they believed not in God, and trusted not in His salvation: though He had commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of Heaven. Unbelief is very hard to kill. God opens the doors and windows of Heaven to feed His people yet, nevertheless, the next time they are in trouble, they begin to stagger at the promise. Oh, shameful unbelief!

24-29. And rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them of the corn of Heaven. Man did eat angels ' food: He sent them meat to the fullest. He caused an east wind to blow in the Heaven: and by His power He brought in the south wind. He rained flesh also upon them as dust, and feathered fowls like as the sand ofthe sea: andHe letit fall in the midst of their camp, round about their habitations. So they did eat, and were well filled: for He gave them their own desire. Yet that was not a blessing to them and, Brothers and Sisters, let us always be afraid of our own desire, unless that desire comes from the Lord. You know how David puts it in the 37th Psalm—"Delight yourself, also, in the Lord; and He shall give you the desires of your heart." If, however, you find your delight in any earthly thing, it shall be a plague to you to have the desire of your heart! "He gave them their own desire."

30. They were not estranged from their lust For the more lust gets, the more lust wants. It is like the daughter of the horse-leech that always cries, "Give! Give!" God can satisfy the longing soul, but all the world cannot satisfy the cravings of lust.

30, 31. But while theirmeat wasyet in theirmouths, the wrath ofGod came upon them andslew the fattest ofthem, and smote down the chosen men of Israel They received what they pined for, but they had a curse with it. Affliction with a blessing is far better than prosperity with a curse!

32. For all this they sinned still, and believed not for His wondrous works. They were dyed ingrain with unbelief, so that it seemed as if it could not be washed out of them.

33. Therefore their days did He consume in vanity, and their years in trouble. A great part of our trouble is the fruit of our own unbelief. It is like hemlock in the furrows of the field. They who distrust God are making a rod for their own back and, before they have done with it, they will have to rue the day in which they thought themselves wiser than God!

34-36. When He slew them, then they sought Him: and they returned and enquired early after God. And they remembered that God was their Rock, and the High God, their redeemer. Nevertheless they did flatter Him with their mouth, and they lied unto Him with their tongues. Some men are like dull animals that will not go without the whip. Many of us cannot be kept right without constant affliction. If our God gives us a little smooth walking, we go half-asleep, or we trip and stumble. And so He is compelled, as it were, to make our way very rough, and often to strike us with the rod to keep us from falling altogether into sinful slumber. How many there are who, when they seem to turn to God in times of sickness, are not truly penitent! A death-bed repentance may be true, but, oh, what a risk there is that it may be false!

37-51. For their heart was not right with Him, neither were they steadfast in His Covenant. But He, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity and destroyed them not: yes, many a time turned He His anger away, and did not stir up all His wrath. For He remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passes away, and comes not again. How oft did they provoke Him in the wilderness, and grieve Him in the desert! Yes, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel. They remembered not His hand, nor the day when He delivered them from the enemy. How He had worked His signs in Egypt, and His wonders in the field of Zoan: and had turned their rivers into blood; and their floods, that they could not drink. He sent divers sorts of flies among them, which devoured them; and frogs, which destroyed them. He gave also their increase unto the caterpillar, and their labor unto the locust. He destroyed their vines with hail and their sycamore trees with frost. He gave up their cattle, also, to the hail, and their flocks to hot thunderbolts. He cast upon them the fierceness of His anger, wrath, and indignation, and trouble, by sending evil angels among them. He made a way to His anger; He spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence; and smote all the firstborn in Egypt; the chief of their strength in the tabernacles of Ham. This is what God did with their enemies who had oppressed them, that He might set His people at liberty. After all that, ought they not to have trusted Him as a little child trusts its mother, without ever a question or a doubt? While He thus overthrew their enemies, see what He did for His own people.

52-56. But made His own people to go forth like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock. And He led them on safely, so that they feared not: but the sea overwhelmed their enemies. And He brought them to the border of His sanctuary, even to this mountain, which His right hand had purchased. He cast out the heathen, also, before them, and divided them an inheritance by line, and made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their tents. Yet they tempted and provoked the Most High God, and kept not His testimonies. This sad note seems to come over and over again, as if they never could have too much of grieving God. Yet the Lord was still tender towards them. Well may we sing—

"Who is a pardoning Godlike Thee? Or who has Grace so rich and free?"

57-64. But turned back, and dealt unfaithfully like their fathers: they were turned aside like a deceitful bow. For they provoked Him to anger with their high places and moved Him to jealousy with their graven images. When God heard this, He was angry, and greatly abhorred Israel: so that He forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which He placed among men; and delivered His strength into captivity, and His glory into the enemy's hands. He gave His people over, also, unto the sword; and was angry with His inheritance. The fire consumed their young men; and their maidens were not given to marriage. Their priests fell by the sword; and their widows made no lamentation. They were dumb with excess of grief. When God chastises His children, He does not play at it. Sometimes, when He is angry at their sin, He lays on the blows fast and heavy till their very bones are broken, so that they may hate sin as God hates it, and seek after holiness even as God loves it. So, dear Friends, I pray that if any of us have lost the consolations of God and are feeling the weight of His rod, we may begin to inquire what secret thing it is in us which has angered Him, and go back to Him, and seek to stand before Him as once we did. For, otherwise, He will smite, and smite, and smite yet again and again. But notice that the Lord never delights in chastening His children. He is glad to have done with the necessary correction. So, when their enemies were most cruel with them—

65-69. Then the Lord awakened as one out of sleep, andlike a mighty man that shouts by reason of wine. AndHe smote His enemies in the hinder parts. He put them to a perpetual reproach. Moreover He refused the tabernacle of Joseph and chose not the tribe of Ephraim, but chose the tribe of Judah, the Mount Zion which He loved. And He built His sanctuary like high palaces, like the earth which He has established forever. You see that we are getting into clear water now—it was all broken water, storm and hurricane, while we heard of what Israel did—but when we come to deal with God in Christ, of whom David is the type, then how sweetly everything goes!

70-72. He chose David, also, His servant, and took him from the sheepfolds: from following the ewes great with young He brought him to feed Jacob, His people, and Israel His inheritance. So he fed them according to the integrity of his heart and guided them by the skillfulness of his hands. Blessed be God who puts away the sin of His people, because He delights in mercy!

"But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavers is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord." James 1:6, 7.

THE Apostle James was always very practical. He never really differed from Paul, but, whereas Paul dwelt more upon the doctrinal side of the Truth of God, James, who has given us but one Epistle, dwelt more upon the practical. I should not have wondered, if Paul had taken up the same subjects as James did, if he had written in the same style. At any rate, we are very grateful to James that he is so downright, so straightforward, so plain and practical. He never minces matters. He hits the nail on the head every time. Whenever he talks about faith, he seems to be saying all the while, "Believe." If he discourses on prayer, you can hear him crying, "Pray!" And if he speaks concerning holy living, you can hear the thunder at the back of his words commanding us to forsake sin and to follow after righteousness!

In the passage before us, the Apostle is dealing with the matter of prayer, but not with that, alone, for, while the verse previous to my text is about a man praying and, therefore, James says, "Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering," yet the verse followingour text is notabout prayer, but about a man's general life—"A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." Therefore I shall try to show you, first, that the text speaks of the great necessity in prayer, namely, decided faith. And then I shall use the text as pointing forward to that which follows it, and speak to you concerning the great necessity in life, namely, decision of character for the Lord.

I. To begin, then, the Apostle James first speaks of THE GREAT NECESSITY IN PRAYER. If we would pray successfully, we must have a decided faith.

There should be, first of all, a very decided conviction in our own minds as to the desirableness of the thing that we are asking for ' 'Why," says one, "that is self-evident! Would a man pray if he did not thoroughly desire what he asked of God?" My reply is that I am afraid a great many people ask for what they do not really desire—and they would be taken aback if God were, at once, to give them what they have asked for! There is a man who says that he has been praying for a new heart, but then he does not intend to give up frequenting the bars, nor will he leave off associating with his bad companions. Well, if God could give such a man as that a new heart, all of a sudden, and he could still retain his love for his old evil habits, he would be likely to kneel down and pray to have it taken away again, for he would be very uncomfortable with such a burden as a new heart and a right spirit! That is not what he truly wants.

Some men pray to be made holy, but they wish to keep some little pet sin in the backyard. They do not really want what they are asking for—they are not yet convinced of the desirableness of the thing that they profess to be seeking. Men and women pray that they may be saved, but if we explained to them what it is to be saved, they would pray, "Lord, do not save us—at least, not just yet! We must have a little more of the world. We have some unholy engagements that we must keep—we do not want to be made religious people just at present." In all probability, the more they understood of what salvation really is, the less they would think of praying to be saved.

A man kneels down, and says, "Lead us not into temptation," and he gets up and goes straight away to a place where temptations swim all around him. What is he but a self-deceived man asking for a thing which he practically proves that he does not wish for? He prays, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us." Within five minutes of so praying, he says, "I will never forgive that fellow! I hate him for what he did and the longer I live, the worse I shall hate him." Will a man thus mock God? Will he so trifle with his Maker? Alas, how many do! If you must insult someone by your mockeries, go and insult your equal—your king if you dare! But to go and insult your God—can you commit such a terrible sin as this? Yet many do it. If they complain that their prayers are not answered, they have no right to complain, for such people must not expect to receive anything of the Lord. They are wavering even as to the sincerity of their prayer! Their own wish is not intense enough or intelligent enough to be really their settled desire. They waver even on the threshold of the House of Mercy—how can they expect to succeed in their business with the great Lord of the house?

Further, wavering may be seen in some persons as to the fact of God's hearing prayer at all. Possibly they are not even sure that there isa God, or, if that Truth of God is believed, yet God's existenceis to them a matter of great obscurity. They know little about Him and do not care to know any more. "Yes," they say, with a kind of languid assent which they have not the moral courage to refuse, "no doubt there is a God"—and they are a little proud to think that they are not atheists as some people are—"Yes, there is a God, but does He really hear prayer as a man hears the requests of his fellow men? And does God actually attend to the prayer so as to be affected by it and to grant the desire of His creature?" If, my dear Friend, you have been led to question this Truth of God, you must not expect to receive anything of the Lord, for, "he that comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." If either of these is a moot point with you, you might as well stand upon a hill and whistle to the wind, as go up into your chamber and bow your knee in prayer! You are a waverer about matters in which a man must not waver if he expects to be successful in pleading with God! Your fulcrum is not fixed, so you cannot have any effectual leverage in prayer. This must be a settled and fully-believed fact, that God is, and that He hears and answers prayer. You may not be able to make out how that is consistent with His fixed purposes and it is a blessing that you need not try to make it out. The way to Heaven is not by explaining riddles, but by believing Revelations. The way to Heaven is not through the cleverness that can spell out an enigma, but through the simplicity that believes in God who cannot lie. It is true that God's eternal purpose is fixed, do not doubt that—but it is equally true that the Lord listens to the voice of a man and that whatever we ask in prayer, believing, we shall receive.

Furthermore, there are some who very greatly spoil their prayers because they waver as to God's granting the specific thing which they are seeking at His hands. You know, dear Friends, that there is a way of praying in which you ask for nothing and get it I have heard that kind of praying even in public Prayer Meetings. It was a very good prayer, indeed, containing many admirable phrases—a prayer that was very well put together—I seem to have heard it ever since I was a boy. But there is no real prayer in it and that is the fatal flaw in it. It would be a capital prayer if it were a prayer at all—it has all the makings of a prayer—and yet it is no prayer! It is just as though you might see in a shop window all the garments of a man, but no man wearing the garments! Now, such a prayer as that never succeeds with God because He does not play at hearing prayer though far too many play at praying. It is earnest work with God and it must be downright business work with us.

Suppose you go into a bank and stand at the counter, and say, "I want some money." The clerk says, "How much do you want, Sir? Please put the amount down on this check." "Oh, I do not want to be specific! You can give me a few hundred pounds, but I do not know to a sixpence exactly what I want, I am not sure that I could put it down in black and white." You will get no money at all that way! But if you write down in black and white exactly how much you want— spell it in letters and put it down, also, in figures—the clerk will give you the money if you have so much in your account at that bank. So, if you have an account with the great God—as, blessed be His name, some of us have—go and ask for what you want!

The Apostle James says in the chapter we read, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God." If a man asks of God riches, that is not what He has promised to give! If he asks of God good health, that may be granted to him but, still, the promise is concerning wisdom, and that is what the man needs! Therefore, let him with all his heart pray, "Lord, give me wisdom." I think our prayers would succeed much better if we were not so wavering about what it is that we really require, and if we were not dubious as to whether God could give us that very thing.

You, dear Friends, are in a fix—you do not know which way to move. Happily, you have forgotten your troubles the little while you have been in the House of Prayer, but tomorrow morning the first thing you will say to yourself will be, "What am I going to do today?" Do you believe that God can give you wisdom and that He will do so if you ask

Him? Then go at once to Him and say, "Lord, this is what I need." Specify your needs. State your exact condition. Lay the whole case before God with as much orderliness as if you were telling your story to an intelligent friend who was willing to hear it and prepared to help you. And then say, "Lord, this is specifically what I think I need, and I ask this of You believing that You can give it to me."

If it is wisdom that you need, it will be essential, when you ask for that wisdom, that you decidedly believe that this Book, through which God teaches us wisdom, is really Inspired, so that what it teaches is distinctly and unquestionably true—and is received by you as the utterance of Infallibility. Ask of God in the full belief that it is so, or else I do not see how you can pray to be guided. Moreover, the Author of the Bible is prepared to teach you concerning the things which are written in this Book and it is essential, when you ask for wisdom, that you should believe that the Holy Spirit is able to enlighten you and is willing to instruct you concerning those things which now perplex you. Go, then, to God in prayer, believing in His Word and believing in His Holy Spirit.

God also teaches men sometimes by Providence. He guides their way as otherwise it could not have been directed. Believe in the Providence of God, in the overruling hand of God everywhere in everything and, believing that, go upon your knees and say to Him, "Lord, give me direction. Give me wisdom by Your Word, by Your Spirit, or by some other means in Your gracious Providence, and I will bless Your name for it." But, mark you, when you go to God asking for wisdom, you will not get any help from Him unless you are prepared to follow the guidance of that wisdom when He gives it to you. Many people, when they ask advice, have long before made up their minds what they mean to do. It is not infrequently my lot, as pastor, to be consulted by some persons about marriage. I am very careful as to what I say upon that matter because I am pretty sure that, long before they ask my opinion, they have decided whom they mean to marry. In the case of marriage with ungodly persons, they only come just to salve their consciences, meaning, all the while, to do what they know is wrong.

Now, dear Friends, do not go to God in that fashion—having made up your mind already what you mean to do! "Lord," says one, "help me to do right in this business." And he means to do right if it will not be too expensive. "Lord," he says, "keep me upright in this transaction." And he means upon the whole, preferably, to be upright—if, if, if—if there is anything to be made by it. He would sooner get the money honestly than the other way but, still, he means to make money somehow! Well, that kind of praying is impudence, and worse than that—it is an attempt to flatter the Oracle to take the responsibility of iniquity off your shoulders—and that will never do when God Jehovah, the All-Glorious One, is the Oracle to which you appeal! No, there must be in our cries to God a firm belief in the power of prayer, a firm conviction of the truth of Revelation and a strong resolve that whatever the Lord bids us do, we will do it, for only to the man who keeps His Commandments and delights himself in the Lord, will God give the desires of his heart. If you will not listen to God's Word, neither will God listen to your word when you come to Him in prayer.

II. Now I want to gather up all my strength and to ask the special attention of all of you who are undecided, while I speak about THE GREAT NECESSITY IN LIFE, that is, decision for God and for His Truth.

What is indecision? Well, first, it is a thing which permeates the lives of many men. I could describe some of them and they would probably think that I was very personal. I wish that they would believe that I mean to be exactly so! They wish above all things to be Christians, especially on Sundays, but they have some associates whose company is particularly pleasurable—and when they are with them, they studiously avoid anything that looks like religion! I have seen them among Christian people and they are very cautious, for they would not like to be thought worldly. And I have seen them among worldly people and they are very cautious there, too, for they would not wish to be thought to be Christians! They highly approve of a religious book, but then, as some men like a little rotten cheese for the taste of it, so they like just a flavoring of bad literature because they must know what is in the world—and that rottenness has to them rather a pleasant flavor.

As for prayer, of course that is admirable—they are glad that their wives pray, they would be delighted to hear that their children pray and they, themselves, do pray—but not very often. They do it when they are obliged to, just as some ships put into harbor when there is rough weather about. They are upright in business, nobody can find much fault with them in that respect. They only rob God, that is all—and God being of no particular consequence to them, they act just as they like towards Him. Imagine, dear Friends, that you can see a pair of scales and you have a good illustration of what these waverers are like. Look, that scale slowly gets to a balance and, by-and-by, the wrong side goes down, and the right side proves to be short weight! That is how it is with these people—they would and they would not—they are, "to good and evil equal bent."

And, according to the mood in which you catch the man, he is either a devil or a saint! He can speak very prettily when, after a service, he is questioned about his conversion. He says that he is very much obliged to the friend for being so careful about his soul and he hopes that there is some good thing in himself toward the Lord God of Israel. If one from the opposite camp were to accost him in his shop and say, "You go to a place of worship, don't you?" he is such a coward that, though he might not actually tell a lie about it, he would sail wonderfully near the wind and you might think, from what he said, that he was much more often at the theater than at a House of Prayer!

This is the kind of man who is undecided and, in describing him, I take leave to tell him that his condition is one of immorality. Nothing can be more immoral than for a man to know the right, yet not to follow it and so far to admit the importance of that right as well-near to yield to it, and yet to do such despite to God and to his own conscience, as not to yield to it at all, but to be drawn aside by altogether opposite influences! If a man were to say, "Well, I am undecided upon the question of honesty," I would be very decided about locking up the spoons! If there should be a woman who said, "I am very undecided about the question of purity of morals," I would know that she was no better than she ought to be. There are some things about which a man must not be undecided—you must not be undecided about being chaste, about speaking the truth—and you cannot be undecided about serving God without being guilty, in that very indecision, of manifest treason against the majesty of Heaven! I pray every undecided man to give himself his true character and that will not be a good one. It will be written out in large letters, "You are in an immoral state as long as you are halting between two opinions." Christ reckons that the man who is not with Him is against Him! He who does not serve Christ is opposing Him. There are no "betweenites"—none can dwell on the fence. You are either in Immanuel's land, or else you are in the dominions of Satan—you can be sure of that! If not right, you are wrong! If not a friend of Christ, you are His enemy!

This condition of things is also very dangerous. There are some persons here for whom I always pray whenever I enter the pulpit and see them here. There are some not here, as I see by their not being in their places, for whom I think no Sunday has passed over my head for years without my breathing a prayer for them. And still they are not saved. I have seen some very strange persons who had never come in before and they have been converted the first time they have attended this place. But these other people have been here, some of them for 20 years, and they are not a bit nearer than they were at first because they have always seemed so near. They still appear very promising, but it never comes to anything. Everybody who knows them says that within a very short time they will come forward and confess Christ, but a very long time has already passed and they have not done so yet because they do not know Him in their heart and, therefore, they cannot confess Him with their mouth. You know that when a man is an out-and-out black sinner, you can aim at him and hit the mark the first shot—but these people who are a sort of whitey-black, or a kind of blackey-white—you do not know which they are! It might have been white originally, but certainly it has been smoked nearly black. Or it may have been originally black, but it has been certainly bleached to look like white. These undecided people somehow baffle us. We cannot get at them and meanwhile they get confirmed in that wretched condition—and there is no doing anything with them. It is a very, very dangerous position for a man to occupy.

O my Friend, if this is where you are, I pray you not to sit down at ease in such a state as that! As well might a man go to the edge of Shakespeare Cliff at Dover, and lie down to sleep there, and feel himself perfectly safe, when in a moment he may be dashed to pieces at the foot of the rock! O Sirs, will you stay where you are? You are on a volcano! It will burst before long to your destruction. Therefore, escape for your life!

Our text also tells us what this indecision is like— "He that wavers is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed." Like a wave of the sea! Well, a wave of the sea is very unrestful. You see it come rolling up from a distance. On, on it sweeps and never stops! Out on the broad Atlantic, what a life a wave seems to have—never still—never for a second in one place. Now up like a mountain, then down again like a great abyss! Such is the life of the undecided man—he does not know where he is—and you do not know where to find him. He is never quiet, never still, never at rest. A man who gives himself up to the devil gets a kind of dead peace within him. His conscience being seared as with a hot iron, he is still. This is quite different from the state of the Christian who gives himself up wholly to his Lord and who, therefore, enters into a delightful heavenly peace which continually deepens and increases. The man who is always shilly-shallying, playing at see-saw all his life, knows nothing of real rest. He does not make even the best that can be made out of the devil—he gets nothing worth having from either one side or the other—so he is a wretched creature, indeed!

The Church will not acknowledge him and the world is suspicious of him. I am always glad when the world turns out a person of this character. When I was pastor at Waterbeach, a certain young man joined the Church. We thought he was an excellent young man, but there used to be in the village, once a year, a great temptation in the form of a feast, and when the feast came round, this young fellow was there in very evil company. He was in the long room of a public house in the evening, and when I heard what happened I really felt an intense gratitude to the landlady of that place. When she came in and saw him there, she said, "Halloa, Jack So-and-So, are you here? Why, you are one of Spurgeon's lot, yet you are here? You ought to be ashamed of yourself! This is not fit company for you. Put him out the window, boys." And they did put him out the window on the Friday night—and we put him out the door on the Sunday—for we removed his name from our Church-book! Where was he to go? The world would not have him and the Church would not have him. If he had been all for the world, the world would have made something of him—and if he had been all for Christ, Christ would have made something of him. But as he tried to be a little of each and so nothing to either, his life became a wretched one! As he walked the streets, people pointed at him with scorn. The Christians turned away, thinking him a hypocrite, as I fear he was, and the worldlings called him so, and made his name a by-word and a proverb. Oh, you who are neither for God nor the devil, nobody will respect you long! They cannot!

You fancy, just now, because you have money in your pocket, that you are a very respectable person. But you are a disreputable person and the world itself says that you are! And you will find it out, yourself, before long—and you will be unrestful, like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.

The undecided man is also like a wave of the sea, unstable. Yonder great wave seems to form a pyramid—look how it towers aloft! It is a wonderful sight, but while you are admiring it, it is gone. It was only made of water and it has disappeared into its own element. So are there some people who appear to be excellent and admirable, but they are undecided and their goodness is as the morning cloud and as the early dew—it soon passes away.

They are also uncertain. That wave that is rolling away yonder, where will it end? Will it sweep across the Atlantic till it reaches the shore of America? Look, there comes a north wind and it turns towards the icebergs! But another wind blows and now the wave is rolling towards the coast of England. It is in a perpetual whirl, just as the winds happen to drive it—and we have many people of that uncertain kind—"driven with the wind and tossed."

These undecided persons, too, are like the waves of the sea because they have no inward vital principle. A wave of the sea is dependent upon the wind that comes to bear it on. There may be a great force in the waves, but even that is not mighty enough to stand against the rough gale—they are "driven with the wind and tossed." And look at some of you! There has only to be a bit of a breeze and see how you are driven by it. You sang with us just now, "Happy day! Happy day!" Yet, perhaps, tomorrow evening you will be at a social party where there will be jesting at religion and some questionable witticisms—and you will laugh at them as loudly as others will. And if somebody does charge you with being on the other side, you will stutter, stammer, blush and, at last, you will say something that all the while you do not like to say. Yes, you are "driven with the wind." There are some fellows six feet high if they did but stand upright, yet anybody can twist them whichever way he likes.

For my part, "I had as well not be, as live to be in awe of such a thing as I myself." What does it matter to me what a mere man's opinion of me may be? Nothing whatever! If a thing is right, I believe it, say it and try to live it. And if others also think that it is right, so much the better for them, but if they think it is wrong, it is none the worse for me when I have once learned to stand on my own legs. But there is a certain class of people who always stand on other people's feet. They ask "Mrs. Grundy" what is the proper thing to do. If they move in West-End circles, they would sooner die than be out of the cruel bondage that is called, "fashion." If they live at the East-End, there is a rough sort of fashion there, and they cannot stand against it. They are "like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed." I should have an unutterable contempt for all such people if I did not feel an earnest desire that they might yet possess a living, powerful principle, and begin to stand alone in the power and energy of the Divine Life which God gives to all of those who believe in His Son, Jesus Christ.

The worst of these wavering, undecided people is that, like waves of the sea, though they are creatures of circumstances, yet they have a great force for evil Those waves of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed, sink many a gallant ship and devour many a brave mariner—and these unstable people have an influence by which they carry many away. They half wish that they were not themselves carried away, yet they are. There is something good about them, but there is also something so bad that they sweep others on with them to destruction! Perhaps they are bearing their own children away by their indecision, so that they, too, will grow up undecided—and generation after generation may be cursed by their wicked hesitation. God grant that they may not continue in this evil condition a single moment longer!

In closing, what shall I say to you who are undecided? I pray you think whether you have not been undecided long enough. Remember that the question you have to decide is by no means a difficult one. Whether you shall serve God or Satan, whether you shall live with Christ in Heaven or lie among the lost in Hell forever—these are not questions about which there ought to be any choice! Decide, then, foolish waverer! If you are a Believer in the Scriptures, a Believer in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Savior of men, decide to follow the teaching of those Scriptures and to accept that Savior—and decide at once! May God help you to decide very speedily! All this while you are robbing yourself of happiness, robbing God of glory, robbing His people of your help, you are even robbing this poor wicked world of what little you might do for its benefit, robbing your family of a holy example, robbing your entire life by letting its best days go for nothing. It is time, then, you were decided! O Lord, bring these waverers to decision, for Your dear Son's sake! Amen.