Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vols. 13–63

Verses 41, 42. And, behold, there came a man named Jairus, and he was a ruler of the synagogue: and he fell down at Jesus 'feet, and besought Him that He would come into his house: For he had one only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she lay dying. But as He went the people thronged Him. Notice the word, "behold," for this was a wonder that a man so high in position to come to Christ at all, especially one who was in an ecclesiastical position, for he "was a ruler of the synagogue." Usually those who had to do with the synagogue were great despisers of our Lord Jesus! God works great wonders, however, and sometimes the camel does go through the eye of the needle! This man's name was Jairus, a common Jewish name, and you will find it was the name of one of the judges recorded in the Book of Judges. Note this man's humility, "He fell down at Jesus' feet." The greatest of men must humble themselves before they can obtain mercy. Jesus Christ is always ready to receive, to accept and bless all those who fall down at His feet, but those who lift up themselves shall find Him to be their sure and swift enemy—and the day shall come when He shall abase them to the dust. "He besought Him that He would come into his house, for he had one only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she lay dying." She seems to have been not only the darling of the house, but of all the neighbors, too, for we find that all the neighbors came together to weep and to lament her. You find Matthew says that this daughter was already dead. It seems that some delay arose, so that the child died, but the father, with triumphant faith, still besought Him to come and raise her, even from the very jaws of death.

43, 44. And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any, came behind Him and touched the border of His garment: and immediately her issue of blood stopped. This disease laughs at the physicians, and whenever a cure has been effected it has always been a slow one. Hence the supernatural character of this cure, "Immediately her issue of blood stopped." This is the glory of our blessed religion, that it heals sin-sick souls at once and upon the spot! The moment a man believes in Jesus, his nature is changed! He becomes a new creature—in that moment all his sins are gone! In that same hour he becomes heir of God, and joint-heir with Christ. "Immediately."

45. And Jesus said, Who touched Me? When all denied, Peter and they that were with him said, Master, the multitude throng You and press You, and do You ask, Who touchedMe?What impudence on their part! Doubtless there are many things we say of our Lord, and even to Him in prayer, that are very far from such words as He should have from His disciples. There were many who touched Him out of curiosity, and doubtless some out of lack of respect to His Person came too close to Him, but there was only one who touched Him with the finger of faith, which was the only true touch!

46-48. And Jesus said, Somebody has touched Me, for I perceive that virtue has gone out of Me. And when the woman saw that she was not hid, she came trembling and, falling down before Him, she declared unto Him before all the people for what cause she had touched Him, and how she was healed immediately. And He said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort: your faith has made you whole; go in peace. Faith crowns Christ and, therefore, Christ takes the crown off His own head and puts it upon the head of faith. "Your faith has saved you." Christ's virtue would not have saved her without her faith—and certainly her faith could not have saved her without Christ's virtue! We ought to note how vital faith is to true salvation, and what a high degree of importance is attached to it. Let us, therefore, if we have some degree of faith, pray for more, "Lord, increase our faith, for if a little of it may heal, what may not a great faith do?"

49. While He yet spoke, there came one from the ruler of the synagogue's house, saying to him, Your daughter is dead; trouble not the Master Be resigned, and say, "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away," and expect not the blessing back again. Do as David did, who, while the child was yet alive, fasted and prayed, saying, "Perhaps God will spare him," but when he was dead, fasted no more. Your daughter is dead—trouble not the Master." Ah, but this man knew that He who can stay the soul at the gates of death can also bring it back from the gates of death if He wills. He that can get it from the paw of the lion can get it from the jaw of the bear! He can deliver His people at all times and at all seasons, and even Death is a conquered foe!

50. But when Jesus heard it, He answered him, saying, Fear not: believe only, and she shall be made whole. "Believe only." What a depth lies in those two words! Believe only! Ah, Lord, it ought to be the easiest thing in the world to believe You, for You are so truthful! You keep every promise to us, and yet sometimes when we are in the dark, and when circumstances go contrary to us, it is hard to believe—but is it not the hardness in our own hearts? Believe only! Christian, what is your trouble this morning, what is your trial? Believe only, and let your humble faith cast your burdens upon your God! "Believe only, and she shall be made whole."

51. 52. And when He came into the house, He allowed no man to go in except Peter, and James, and John, and the father and the mother of the maiden. And all wept, and bewailed her: but He said, Weep not; she is not dead, but sleeps. They were so sure she was dead that they had actually hired the minstrels for her funeral—so Mark tells us—and the pipers and the women that made those strange, Oriental lamentations were there, ready to bury her.

53, 54. And they laughed Him to scorn, knowing that she was dead. And He put them out, and took her by the hand, and called saying, Little girl, arise.But Christ put them all out. They laughed Him to scorn and, therefore, He would not work the miracle in their presence. It is not meet to cast pearls before swine!

55. And her spirit came again, and she arose straightway: and He commanded to give her food.Do note here the word, "straightway." Just now we had the word, immediately, and now we have, straightway. It is one of the distinguishing features of the Gospel, both of Mark and of Luke, that both Evangelists use the word "eutheos," "straightway." Christ's miracles do not take a long time to do—they are done straightway! If there is a distressed soul here, now, your salvation need not take months and years—it may be done today, and in a moment you may be able to rejoice that your sins are forgiven, and that you are a child of God! "She arose straightway, and He commanded to give her food." There are no unnecessary miracles. It needed a miracle to give her life, but food could sustain it and, therefore, there is no further miracle performed.

56. And her parents were astonished: but He charged them that they should tell no man what was done.But we know from another Evangelist that the same thereof went abroad everywhere and, indeed, the healing of a soul is not a thing to be kept secret—but when any are raised from the dead the world must know it!

"We hid, as it were, our faces from Him." Isaiah 53:3.

You will find in the margin of some of your Bibles that this passage is rendered, "He hid, as it were, His face from us." The literal translation of the Hebrew would be, "He was as a hiding of faces from him," or, "from us." Some critical readers think these words were intended to describe our Lord as having so humbled Himself and brought Himself to such a deep degradation, that He was comparable to the leper who covered his face and cried, "Unclean, unclean!" hiding himself from the gaze of men. Abhorred and despised of men, he was like one put aside because of his disease, and shunned by all mankind. Others suppose the meaning to be that on account of our Lord's terrible and protracted sorrow, His face wore an expression so painful and grievous that men could scarcely bear to look upon Him. They hid, as it were, their faces from Him—amazed at that brow all carved with lines of anxious thought, those cheeks all plowed with furrows of deep care, those eyes all sunk in shades of sadness—that soul bowed down, exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death! It may be so. We cannot tell. So let it pass. I have a plain, practical purpose to pursue. Here is an indictment to which we must all plead guilty. Let us make the reflection our own, as we humbly bow at the dear pierced feet of our Lord and remember how cruelly we slighted our kindest Friend, when, "We hid, as it were, our faces from Him."

At sundry times and in divers manners we may have done this. Where shall I begin? Alas, I fear that contempt and contumely, alone, will interpret some men's sayings and doings. Their conversation is so profane that their crime becomes indisputable. Sometimes men hide their faces from Jesus—

How astounding! How revolting! He, the Lord of Glory, the Creator of Heaven and earth, out of compassion to the children of men, condescended to take upon Himself our nature! Should we, therefore, slight Him? Being found in fashion as a Man, He was subjected to all the pains and miseries of this mortal life and encountered the horrors of death, itself—should we, therefore, revile, or should we not revere Him? He ought surely to be esteemed by all mankind! I have sometimes felt that had He not redeemed my soul, I must reverence Him for redeeming others. Had I never tasted of His love at all, myself, yet the story of His love to His enemies is such that I think I could fall down and worship Him! His Character claims our admiration and appeals to the most tender feelings of our heart. So disinterested was the love of Christ, so self-denying, so unwavering in its constancy, He surpassed every instance on record and excelled any ideal that the most gifted imagination could paint!

Greater love has no man than this, that he laid down his life for his friends. There, creature generosity exhausts itself! Mere human love has reached its limit! But God commends His love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And this blessed Man, Christ Jesus, personally shows and makes evident this love to His enemies, His persecutors, His murderers! Still there are those who can revile His name while they scan His history. We can scarcely speak of Him but forthwith the vials of their wrath begin to distil. Strange is it that a fame so lively, and a name so altogether lovely should so commonly set a man against his fellows and become the innocent cause of strife and persecution in the world! That name of Jesus—a name of highest heavenly Glory, a name of profound peace, a name of universal good will, a name to knit all mankind in one common brotherhood—has become, by the perversity of human nature, a by-word and a reproach! Their Savior in every age they have not known! Their day of visitation they have not heeded! Hence His name has excited wrath and opposition among the sons of men, where it should have excited reverence and love! Some show their opposition by attempting to ignore or to tarnish the dignity of His Person. These blatant infidels, I trust, are getting fewer and fewer. The rough, bullying speech of Tom Paine we sincerely hope will never be heard on earth again! There are thinkers (as they would have us call them) abroad in these days more courteous in their address and far more cautious in their language, than the disbelievers of former times—but too often they are as full of malignity and deadly venoms against the Christ of God as were the coarsest scoffers who uttered their blasphemy before we were born—so persistently is the Person of Christ held in contempt alike by Greek and barbarian!

And are there not others who affect great admiration for Jesus of Nazareth as an example of virtue and benevolence, who, nevertheless, reject His mediatorial work as our Redeemer? As a substitutionary Sacrifice they do not and cannot esteem Him! Isaiah, in the Chapter before us, was holding up Christ as the Lamb led to the slaughter, the Victim of our transgressions, bearing our chastisement. How the anger of some men kindles at this representation of the Gospel! They sneer at the Doctrine of Substitution, Vicarious Sacrifice, Atonement—at the simple fact, indeed, that, "His own Self bore our sins in His own body on the tree." That He was a true Philanthropist, an admirable Teacher and an Inspired Prophet, they will readily allow—but that our iniquities were laid on Him, that He was punished in our place, that He died, the Just for the unjust—they set aside as though it were an idle tale, a baseless fiction! This noblest of all Doctrines, the grandest of all conceptions is here brought down to the humblest capacity of the most simple understanding. The learned can find no flaw in the logic. But learning and logic have little enough to do with it. The heart that believes it, can tell its worth—"He loved me and gave Himself for me." Angels have but to hear of it, and they sing of it! Marvel of marvels that there should be men on earth so wise that they hoot at it and count it worthy of nothing but their scorn! They hide, as it were, their faces from the Crucified Savior.

And then they will pour contempt upon other Doctrines of His Gospel. Not satisfied with opposing the main and cardinal Truth of God, they will hold up other parts of Revelation to ridicule. If a man likes to laugh, and wishes to scoff, he can find folly in Infinite Wisdom. No, he can, if he has eyes that are full enough of lies, discover faults even in the Immaculate God, Himself! Given but the desire to deride and parody, the occasions and opportunities will always be plentiful. And with what pitiful disdain the Lord's people are slighted! The followers of Christ are, as it is commonly said, poor people—illiterate and uninstructed—and but few of the great ones of the earth, or the learned men, will give their names as adherents of the Savior! Well, so it always has been! And yet the day shall come when the Lord shall vindicate His own election and prove how infinitely superior it is to man's reputation! What though He choose the base things of the world and the things that are not, yet by these will He be exalted when His enemies are rolled in the dust!

Do I address anybody who has despised the Lord Jesus Christ? Ah, my Friend, little do you consider what you have done! Your wantonness can offer no excuse but your ignorance. And as for your ignorance, it is without excuse! You are unacquainted with our Lord, or you would not decry Him. Think, I pray you! Have you really studied His Character? Have you looked into the proofs of His being the Messiah? Have you weighed the evidence of His Divinity? If you have not, surely you should be ashamed of your recklessness! Can it be that out of mere prejudice you have condemned One who, to us, is all our hope? One who has lifted some of us out of despair and given us peace of mind? One who is now so dear to us that we feel we could cheerfully die for Him? Do not affront Him! Do not disparage His claim upon our tender regard! Do not speak ill of His blessed name! He is a Friend to some of us, the like of whom we never found elsewhere! Were it not wiser and fitter every way, that you should listen to our testimony and go to Him—and see whether He cannot and whether He will not save you and make you partakers of our joy? If He rejects you, or if you find Him false to His promises, then speak against Him! But we beseech you, do not begin to rail before you have any reason! He that builds upon this Stone builds securely, but alas, for the man that falls foul of this Stone, it will assuredly grind him to powder! As surely as Christ is God, those who oppose Him will one day wonder and perish! The peril is looming as the day is coming. The glorious apocalypse for which saints look will bring about a total eclipse of everyone that is proud and lofty, everything that is high and lifted up! I will not linger on so dreadful a subject, but I earnestly admonish you to lay it to heart!

A second and far more common way in which men hide their faces from Christ is— II. BY THEIR HEEDLESSNESS, THEIR INDIFFERENCE, THEIR NEGLECT.

Alas, all of us are guilty, or have been guilty in this respect. Allow me to ask you, my beloved Friends in Christ, to look back a little while to the period before your conversion. Was not Jesus as worthy of your love, then, as He is now, as glorious, as admirable? And yet for how long a time did you hide your face from Him! Surely you must remember the days gone by when you did not care even to hear about Him! Any kind of amusement was more fascinating for you than discourse or converse concerning your Savior and your King! There is music in His name now—it was dull enough to you once. You heard sermons without heeding them. Perhaps some of you were compelled by force of circumstance to attend the sanctuary, though no part of the service was attuned to your taste. You mixed with the multitude, but you did not see or draw near the Master. They were dreary hours—you were glad when they were spent and you were liberated! You listened, but what came in at one ear went out at the other. Scarcely that, for you did not allow it to go far enough into your brain for that! Listlessly you listened, with no desire to learn anything about that Christ who is your only true Savior, your only rightful Sovereign. If you had been in the market and someone had been describing the prices of goods, telling you of the probabilities of a rise or fall, you would have been all attention and you would have no difficulty in carrying home the bulk of what you had heard, especially that part which was about your own business! But oh, in those days Christ was nothing to you! The preacher might lift Him up with all his might and tell you with tears that if you rejected Him, you must perish. You took no heed. You did not care whether you perished or not! You did not give Christ a thought. He was put before you, but you hid, as it were, your faces from Him!

Although the Bible was in your house, bearing witness to Jesus Christ, you never searched it. You may have taken the Book down sometimes and read a Chapter here, or picked out a verse there, and congratulated yourself not a little upon your good deed—but as to searching the Scriptures through and comparing passage with passage, spiritual things with spiritual, that you might know Jesus Christ, who is hidden there like a pearl in the field—oh, no, you did not care to give any diligence in this matter! Why, some of you young men were studying hard years ago! You rose up early and sat up late over professional and profound books and, truly, if you were to be proficient in your secular calling, you had need to do so. But all that while you never sat up an hour later than usual to make a search concerning your soul and the Lord who bought it with His blood! Neither did you ever rise from your soft couch at daylight on purpose that you might bow the knee and seek your Lord and worship Him. No, everything was sought except the Savior, every duty you would scrupulously fulfill except that which you owed your Lord—all the world was fair except the Altogether Lovely! And, perhaps, at that very time there were pursuits that gratified you utterly unworthy of your preference! You had loves which have proved bitterness to you—things that fascinated your heart that did but degrade you. He was your best Friend—He who only meant you good, He who elevates the man that does but look to Him, He whose very name fills the soul with refreshment, He, the love of whose Person is Heaven begun—He was all this while cast into the background!

I am not speaking of you, my Friends, as if you had a monopoly of reproach. I speak of myself with many deep regrets of heart. I hid, as it were, my face from Him, and I let the years run round not without twitches of conscience—not without rebukes, when I knew how much I needed a Savior, not without the warnings which came from others whom I saw happy and rejoicing in Christ, while I had no share in His salvation! Still I put it off, as perhaps some of you are doing, from day to day, and month to month, and thought that Christ might come in some odd hour and when I had nothing else to do I might think of Him, whose blood could cleanse me! O my Soul, I could gladly smite you now! I have heard of a minister who preached for several years before he was converted, and when converted he became a very earnest preacher of the Gospel. But one day as he rode along the street, he was observed to stop and cane a dog which was lying in front of a door. When they said to him, "Mr. McPhayle, why did you beat the dog?" He said, "He was so exactly like myself, lying in the sun sleeping—a dumb dog that didn't bark—that I could not but give him a touch of the rod, though I meant it all the while for myself." Truly I could lay this rod about my own heart to think that weeks and weeks should have rolled over my head and I should have hid, as it were, my face from Christ in willful neglect of my dear Lord, whose heart has bled for me! Does not this come home to anybody here? Are there not some who might justly chastise themselves?

But we pass on to a third form of this same folly. We hid, as it were, our faces from Him, many of us— III. BY PREFERRING ANY OTHER MODE OF SALVATION TO SALVATION BY FAITH IN CHRIST. The great Gospel fact is that whoever looks to Christ is saved. The moment Faith, with her intelligent eyes, beholds Christ on the Cross and depends on Him, the man that exercises that faith is forgiven, rescued, saved! Now when we were awakened to something like anxiety about our souls, we were told this. Some of us were told it very plainly, others perhaps not quite so clearly, but we did not like this way of being saved, simply by believing! Did not we try to merit salvation by our own good works? Oh, we would do this, and that, and the other! We would correct ourselves in this department, and we would push on and make progress in the other—or at least we triedto do so. Oh, I could pour scorn upon myself to think of some of the good resolutions I made! I blew them up like children with their pipes and their soap. Fine bubbles they were, reflecting all the colors of the rainbow. But a touch and they dissolved! They were good for nothing—poor stuff to build eternal hopes upon! Oh, that working of ours! What slavery it was, but what small results it produced! We came to grief whenever we began to get a little comfortable with ourselves. Just when we said, "Now my tower will stand," there came an earthquake and it all went to a heap of ruins. Then, if we remember well, we tried our feelings—we said, "It cannot be that if I believe in Jesus just as I am, I shall be saved—I must felsomething." How we resorted to sharp books, terrible sketches of death, judgment and perdition—I know I did. Baxter's Call to the Uncon-vertedcut me to the quick and harrowed up my gloomiest apprehensions. We expected to feel something indescribable, and when we began to feel a little alarm and distress of mind, we found it was not the thing that brought satisfaction to the mind, or peace to the heart, for the more we did feel, the less we thought we felt! And the more we felt, the less we considered our feelings to be of the right kind! So, after tossing, and toiling, and rowing with feelings, we found we had got no farther than we did with works! And all this while there stood the Savior with this simple counsel, "Look unto Me and be you saved, all you ends of the earth."

Still, we wrapped ourselves in our mantle and hid, as it were, our faces from Him. We kept looking at ourselves and enquiring in the biographies of good men after this feeling and after the other, while we hid, as it were, our faces from Him! And when we were beaten off from that false refuge, we took to a fresh conceit. Thinking we could pray ourselves into Heaven, we began to pray! This would have been quite right had not we put the exercise of prayer before the commandment to believe. "He that believes and is baptized shall be saved"—that is the Gospel! We were reluctant to surrender ourselves to an implicit confidence in our Lord. We resolved to pray. Prayer seemed to us a proper performance— a religious duty acceptable to God and much to be commended. We did not understand that we must first be quickened into life before we could breathe freely. Looking upon daily prayer as a kind of ecclesiastical exercise, albeit there was no real heart in it, we thought some good would come of making it a habit. But no good came! Our prayers became a form, and we disquieted ourselves in vain. We found we could not pray. Oh, what fools we were! What fools all of us are to look anywhere for salvation but to Jesus Christ! God the Father has set forth Christ to be a Propitiation for sin. If God has done that, cannot I be content? If the Lord has accepted Christ instead of me, and promised that if I believe in Jesus I shall be saved, why need I go about to find some other way of peace, pardon and full salvation? Is not God's way good enough for me? If God accepts it, why should not I rejoice in it? Oh, dear Friends, if we have been covering our faces, let us uncover them right now! And if they are black as soot with sin, let us just look up to the Cross with a black face, and say, "Savior of sinners, I, the very chief among them, put my sole trust in You! Hiding my eyes no more from the Light of God, I will look to You and trust You with all my heart."

In yet another way we hid our faces from Him. After we were quite sure that we could not be saved other than by the one Mediator, do you remember how we continued to hide our face from Jesus—

I know it for myself. I held up the handkerchief before my eyes, saturated with my own tears. This sympathy for our sorrows I could not credit. It is the sullen sulk of sad souls. Their distress of mind has come between them and the Redeemer. Strange to tell, some men will reason against themselves. No doubt if there were a gift to be bestowed upon all the poor people in the parish, everybody who needed anything would try to prove himself to be in the parish. If there were a man who lived with half his house in one parish and half in another, I'll be bound to say he would try to prove he lived in the parish where the gifts were to be had! But somehow or other, awakened sinners try to prove that they are notthe sort of people Christ died for! They used to have in Rome, when they were canonizing saints, an Advocatus Diaboli, or advocate of the devil, who used to plead against the person being canonized and offer all the objections he could. It seems strange that so many people should turn Advocati Diaboli against themselves! I can tell you how they argue, for I have talked with them by the hour, and this has been the fashion of their counterpleading—"But, Sir, I don'tfeel my need of it." We reply, "If you cannot go to Christ with a broken heart, go to Christ fora broken heart." "Oh, but, Sir, I don t feel that I am fit to go." "Your unfitness is the only evidence He needs." "But I don't think I have repented enough." "Granted. And you never will repent enough, could your tears flow forever. You cannot be saved by the merit of your repentance. Jesus Christ will forgive your impenitence as well as your other sins. Certainly if you need more repentance, you must go to Him for it." "Well, but, Sir, do you know I cannot help fearing that perhaps I am not one of the elect?" We have replied, "Perhaps you are. And anyhow, you had better go to Christ, because He has given an invitation to every creature. He says, 'Whoever will, let him come and take of the water of life freely.'" "Ah, Sir, but you don't know—I am so indifferent." "Well, but you will never be otherwise than indifferent as long as you stay away from the Savior. If you go to Him and put your trust in Him, He will remove your indifference. He alone can roll away this stone from the door of your heart." One moment they will say they do not feel—and almost in the same breath they will turn round and say they feel the horrors of despair! When they tell you of the dreadful blasphemies that come into their mind, you may answer that it is written, "All manner of sin and of blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, and whoever believes in Him is not condemned," feel, or notfeel as he may!

Well, I have pursued that business till I have been pretty nearly tired of it, when all of a sudden the person I have been trying to comfort has begun again where he commenced, as if he had never said those things before! He has gone over the same round of objections and I have, no doubt, would have continued to repeat himself, had I continued to answer him, 50 times over! And so did he encourage the morbid apprehension that he could not, himself, be saved. You see a man put into the condemned cell at Newgate and you go in and tell him that Her Majesty presents him with a free pardon. I guarantee you he will not put his hand to his brow and say, "Well, but I think there is this or that objection to my accepting it." "No," he thinks, "if there is any objection, let those find it out that like—it is no business of mine." And so with the soul that is bid to come to Christ! I say, let it come, objections or no objections, and if there are objections, let somebody else find them out, but as for you, poor Sinner, don't cover your face from Jesus, but come as you are, just as you are, and say, "Here I am, my Savior! If You can, save—and I believe You can—save me! At any rate, if I perish, I will perish trusting in You." Rather, Sinner, shall Heaven and earth pass away than even a soul perish that acts on this firm resolve! Hide not your eyes from the Savior! It is a dreadful temptation of Satan, this mistaken notion of humility. People think, or affect to think, that it would be arrogant or presumptuous on their part to believe in Jesus. I tell you solemnly that unbelief is not humility! It is a foul conceit. Humility trusts the Savior. Base, indeed, is the ingratitude which casts a slur upon His truthfulness and refrains from venturing to accept His promises! Oh, Brothers and Sisters, we once hid, as it were, our faces from Him—let us pray for others who are hiding their faces—and beseech the Lord to incline them to turn their faces right round to His dear Cross, and then let us gently take off the mantle that obscures their vision, and say to them, "Look, look through your tears! Look even now, for there is life in a look at the Crucified One."

But not to tarry, I am afraid there are some of us who must plead guilty to another charge. We have hidden, as it were, our faces from Him since He has saved us, and since we have known His love—

Perhaps I speak to some Christians here, who, though they love the Lord, have never professed His name! Dear Brother, dear Sister, do you think this is right—is it loyal? Had He kept His love to you a secret and never openly espoused your cause, and given up Himself for your salvation, where would you now have been? Howbeit He boldly declared He was not ashamed to call us "brethren," and, true to His word, He acted a brother's part and carried through the work of our Redemption! Since Jesus Christ was not ashamed of us, surely we need never be ashamed of Him! "But I think I may go to Heaven by myself," said one, "for I am afraid I shall compromise other people if I dishonor Christ." And do you not think, my dear Brother, that you are dishonoring Him by such a suggestion? "Oh, but suppose I were to fall into sin?" Do you not think that even now you are living in sin while you are refusing what He demands, that you should confess Him before men? His promise is that he that with his heart believes, and with his mouth makes the good confession, shall be saved. Or, as it is put in another form, we read, "He that believes and is baptized" (which is the open confession of Him) "shall be saved." Do not, I entreat you, play the coward! "Suppose I should fall," you ask, "after I have made a profession?" Which do you think the safer place—where your Lord bids you, or where you choose to be yourself? Come forward if you are His followers and put on His regimentals. I wonder what our Government would say if Her Majesty's soldiers were to take off their red coats and protest, "We should be just as good soldiers, and as true, without this uniform, as with it." They would be suspected of treason! They would be taken up as deserters And are there no deserters here? I would like to send the officer round and find you out—

"Are you the soldiers of the Cross, The followers of the Lamb?

How can you blush to acknowledge His cause, Or fear to speak His Name?''

Come out Brothers and Sisters, come out! If you want your Master's blessing, come and join your Master's servants! Yes, but some of us who have made a profession of our faith may, nevertheless, have sometimes hid our faces from Christ—

Have you ever been in company where religion was jested at and felt, "Well, I had better hold my tongue here"? There are seasons when that is prudent, and even proper—when you are so weak a champion that you might damage the cause. At the same time, even the weakest champion had better have his lance broken than be altogether a coward! How often might we have spoken for Jesus when nothing has kept us back except cowardice? It was not prudence—it was cowardice, downright cowardice! We thought they would give us a bad name, and so we dishonored Christ lest we should encounter a rude joke or a coarse jest from a person whose opinion was never worthy of a moment's thought! I wish there were more boldness for Christ everywhere. In the higher circles he that confesses Christ may have to run the gauntlet for it, but let him do so boldly! And among working men in the shop or factory there is a deal of "chaffing" goes on, often of a cruel kind, against the Christian, but he who is such a feather-bed soldier that he cannot bear the reproach is not worthy of such a Lord! Our sires were not so tame that they could be intimidated with a taunt. They never drew back at the stake, or in the fire! They were ready to die for the Lord Jesus. What do you think, then—should we play the coward— shall a little maid make us afraid, or shall some silly fools who scoff at all that is holy, drive us to disown our Savior? Oh, Brothers and Sisters, do not surrender your souls so cheaply! Never mind their sneers! Never hide your face from Him. Come out and have no fellowship with the profane, the profligate, or the persecutors. Is Christ in the pillory? Put me in with Him, and then throw what you like at me! Is Christ's name rolled in the mud, and made a by-word and a proverb? Link my name with His and make a by-word and a proverb of it! Twist the two together and let us be the object of your slanders. I will glory in it! The reproach of Christ is greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt! Hide not, then, your faces from Him, Beloved, nor shrink from espousing His cause!

I feel sure that many, if not all of us, who are Believers will penitently confess that we have sometimes hidden our faces from Christ—

I once asked a Brother how long it was since he had enjoyed fellowship with Jesus. His reply was remarkable. "I feel sorry," he said, "you have asked me that question, and yet I must thank you. Had you asked me whether I continued in prayer, I would have said 'Yes,' for, with more or less fervor, I do constantly pray. Had you inquired whether I endeavored to walk honestly and uprightly before my fellow creatures, I would have said, 'Yes, thank God I hope I have not slipped with my feet.' But when you say, 'How long is it since you really have had fellowship with Jesus?' I blush to admit that many a day has passed since I have known this high privilege." Is that so with you, my dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ? If so, it is very, very sad. Our heart, if we are Christians, is married to Christ. Say, then, would it not be strange if a wife should live with her husband and hide her face from him by the week and month together? Should there be scarcely a comfortable word between them? Should there only be just the decent civilities of a daily routine, without much concern or any confiding? Yet perhaps some of you pray a little every morning and every night because you think it is proper. At special times you do your reverence to Christ and then you go out into the world, and there, in a measure, you estrange yourselves from Him. And then you return home, far from being eager and anxious for communion with your Lord—so, not seeking His face for yourselves—you do, in effect, hide your face from Him. There is no face to face fellowship. Remember, I entreat you, that His love to you is constant, although your love to Christ may grow cold. If you can dispense with His company, remember that He delights in yourcompany! There it stands in the Canticles, "Let Me see your face. Let Me hear your voice, for sweet is your voice and your countenance is comely." Now had you said that to Christ, it might be easily understood, but when He says that to you, it is most admirable! His love makes Him desire to hold fellowship with you—will you refuse it? Will you deny Him? Surely you will say, "Do You think so much of me? I ought to have said to You what You have said to me, 'You have ravished My heart, My sister, My spouse, with one look of your eyes, and one chain of your neck.' No, but these are the words of Him from whom I have often hid my face! And is this precious Christ so enamored of me? Has He, the Prince of Life, so fixed His affections on my spirit? Does He love to hear me speak with Him? Does He delight in my communing with Him? Oh, then I cannot forbear! I must cry, 'Come to me, my Lord, and I will tell You my griefs, and my joys, and You shall tell me all Your heart, and we will thus confer and confide with secrets of which the world knows not!'"

The secret of the Lord is with them who fear Him. Let us, therefore, tell our heart's love to Christ. We hid, as it were, our faces from Him. Say, when and how did you begin thus to act? You used to revel in the light of His Countenance, once—why did you hide your face? Did you get worldly? Did you dote too much upon some earthly object? Did you neglect prayer? Did you give way to temptation? Beloved, whatever may have been the cause, remember Jesus Christ has not divorced you! He has said, "Return, you backsliding children; I am married unto you, says the Lord." Come back then! Come back, now, as we meet around the Lord's Table, you that love your Lord, but have lost fellowship with Him! Pray—pray that this may be the beginning of a happier era. Oh, that we might keep looking on to Jesus, and Jesus looking to us! Oh, that we might maintain that dear fellowship and never have it broken till it shall melt into the yet nearer and more glorious communion on the other side of the river where nothing can disturb the profound enjoyment! Get up, get up, Believers, from your sorrows, from your cares, from your anxieties and distractions! Get up to the Master's feet and sit there with Mary, and look up into His dear loving face, and listen to His gracious words of promise! Hide not your face from Him! He will not hide His face from you! Say, like the spouse in the Canticles, "Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth, for His love is better than wine," and He will answer your prayer, and make your heart burn within you with the holy ecstasy of fervent love! May it be ever so with us! Amen.