Part 2
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Jewish, the same in CHARACTER, only different in name. That is all the difference, hanging on to the creed of Jesus Christ, while they know nothing of its spirit; the form without the power; and they deny their professed Lord every day. Oh! are there any of this class here? My friend, my friend, if you never find it out until you come to die, you will find it out then, but it may be too late. May God, the Holy Spirit, help you to find it out this afternoon, and bring that unrenewed, unrepentant, evil heart of yours to the Cross; bring it to God, and wait, and weep, if need be, and struggle, and knock, and cry, as He tells you, until He does renew it and write His law in it; then the outward form will be the expression of the inward grace. Then the fruit will be good, because it springs from a good root inside. The Lord help you! This tendency to rest in form is just as great as ever, and instead of putting away their idols, and bringing their conscience to be cleansed and kept clean by the precious Blood, prayerfully and carefully walking before God, striving in all things to please Him, people get an outside form, but LIVE just like the world around them, calling Jesus, 'Lord, Lord,' but doing not the things that He says. Now, I say that a pure Gospel requires that we bring our evil HEARTS to God to be renewed, and that we resolutely put away our idols, and that we wait on Him by the Cross until He renews our motives, tempers, tendencies, feelings, and dispositions, and makes us new creatures in Christ Jesus. Instead of doing this, people go on being circumcised or baptized, as the Jews did, and they call themselves 'Israel,' as they did; whereas, of the spiritual Israel they are utterly ignorant. They are the children of Hagar (as Paul says), and not the children of the promise. May the Lord help you to come and be made children of the promise! Now, as in the individual there is such a tendency to rest in form, so in the Church collectively; hence this tendency to a formal religion. Just as it was with the Jews--their Temple service and the paraphernalia of Judaism was all in all to them, and they thought that Jesus Christ was the most awfully severe and uncharitable person who ever appeared on the face of the earth, because He told them the truth. And the same class of character presents the same attitude now. We shall see when we get to the Judgment-seat of Christ which is the true charity--that which covers up things, or that which tears off the bandages and shows people their hypocrisy and, as we have just read, reveals to them the secrets of their hearts. I fear that we are very largely in the same condition as the Jews were when Christ came. I say 'very largely,' for I know that there are grand and glorious exceptions; but I speak of the great whole, and I am backed up in this opinion by some of the most thoughtful and spiritual men of this age. It is the lamentation everywhere this formality and death. It reaches us from all parts of the land, yea, from all parts of all lands. I once heard a great divine, a leader of spiritual thought in his day, who has recently passed to Heaven, say, 'I consider that the writings of the Prophets are far more applicable to the state of the churches now than the writings of the New Testament, for we are in the same lapsed and fallen condition, as churches, as Israel of old was.' So many think, and so many teach. If this be the case, WHAT IS TO BE DONE? What would strike you should be done in this state of comparative--spiritual eclipse? Evidently it would be madness to go on as we are. That will mend nothing! Somebody must strike and do something worthy of the emergency. 'There is no improving the future, without disturbing the present,' and the difficulty is to get people to be willing to be disturbed! We are so conservative by nature--especially some of us. We have such a rooted dislike to have anything rooted up, disturbed, or knocked down. It is as much the work of God, however, to 'root out, and to pull down, and to destroy,' as 'to build and to plant'; and God's real ambassadors frequently have to do as much of the one kind of work as of the other. This is not pleasant work; but what is necessary to be done? Is it not manifestly necessary that we should go back to the simplicity and SPIRITUALITY of the Gospel, and to the early modes of propagating it amongst men? On the two last Sunday afternoons we tried to show what was the pure Acts of the Apostles Gospel--calling men to forsake their sins, to cast away their idols, come out from the world of the ungodly and be separate in order that their sins might be forgiven, and that God might receive them, and they become His sons and His daughters. Last Sunday we spoke of faith and what it would do for us. Now, with respect to the outward manifestations and propagation of the Gospel it is equally necessary to go back. We have such a heap of rubbish to carry away--the accumulated traditionalism of ages to go through and dig under--that it sometimes takes a considerable amount of time, and force of character, and a great deal of the Spirit of God to enable us to do it. Nevertheless, it must be done if we are to reach a better state of things.
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It seems to me, in order to do this we should not shrink from a recognition of our lapsed and fallen condition. That was what the Jews did at the teaching of Jesus. They would not have His reproach. They would not have the light because it condemned them. They rejected it. They persisted they were the children of Abraham--the children of the promise. They persisted they were all right, and they pointed to the Temple and to their ceremonialism as a proof of it; they would not have His testimony, would not admit that they were wrong. Do not let us imitate them. Let us recognize this state of things. Let us look it fairly in the face. Honesty is always the best policy both in spiritual and in temporal things. There is nothing gained by ignoring a disagreeable truth. It is best to face it. Now there it is, and the best wav is to hail any ray of light that comes to us from any part of the heavens, even though a carpenter should bring it, as He brought it to them--or a fisherman, or a woman. Never mind--let us hail the light and apply it to ourselves. Let us bring our hearts and lives out into its blaze, and examine them by it, and improve it to our own Salvation and to the Salvation of others. If the Jews had done that they would have been saved, and their nation. 'If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day'--this twelfth hour of the last day--'the things that belong unto thy peace; but now'--because of thy obstinate rejection--'they are hid from thine eyes.' The Lord help us to take the light home to ourselves, each one. We have seen that it is clearly laid down in the texts I have read this afternoon that the law of adaptation is the only law laid down in the New Testament with respect to modes and measures. I challenge anybody to find me any other. While the Gospel message is laid down with unerring exactness, we are left at perfect freedom to adapt our measures and modes of bringing it to bear upon men to the circumstances, times, and conditions in which we live--free as air. 'I became all things to all men.' The great Apostle of the Gentiles who had thrown off the paraphernalia of Judaism years before, yet became as a Jew that he might win the Jews. The great, strong intellect became as a weak man that he might win the weak. He conformed himself to the conditions and circumstances of his hearers, in all lawful things, that he might win them; he let no mere conventionalities, or ideas of propriety, stand in his way when it was necessary to abandon them. He who was brave as a lion, and hailed a crown of martyrdom like a conquering hero, as he was, yet was willing to submit to anything when the requirements of his mission rendered it necessary. He suffered his limbs to be ignominiously thrust into a basket, and himself let down over the wall, when necessary for the success of his work. He adapted himself to the circumstances. He was instant in season and out of season. Oh! what a hue and cry there is about out-of-season Christianity; 'of some making a difference'--pulling them out of the fire by the hair of the head, if needful! Never mind--save them, SAVE THEM. That is the great desideratum. Save them--pulling them out of the fire. Adapt your measures to your circumstances and to the necessities of the times in which you live. Now, here it seems to me that the Church--I speak universally--has made a grand mistake, the same old mistake which we are so prone to fall into, of exalting the traditions of the elders into the same importance and authority as the Word of God, as the clearly laid down principles of the New Testament. People contend that we must have quiet, proper, decorous services. I say, WHERE IS YOUR AUTHORITY FOR THIS? Not here. I defy any man to show it. I have a great deal more authority in this book for such a lively, gushing, spontaneous, and what you call disorderly, service, as our Army services sometimes are, in this 14th of Corinthians than you can find for yours. The best insight we get into the internal working of a religious service in Apostolic times is in this chapter, and I ask you--is it anything like the ordinary services of to-day? Can the utmost stretch of ingenuity make it into anything like them? But even that is not complete. We cannot get the order of a single service from the New Testament, nor can we get the form of government of a single church. Hence one denomination think theirs is the best form, and another theirs; so Christendom has been divided into so many camps ever since; but this very quarrelling shows the impossibility of getting from the New Testament the routine, the order, and the fashion of mere modes. They cannot get it, because it is not there!! Do you think God had no purpose in this omission? The form, modes, and measures are not laid down as in the Old Testament dispensation. There is nothing of this stereotyped routinism in the whole of the New Testament. Why? Now there may be some who may have difficulties in this matter. I said to a gentleman, who came to me with this and that difficulty about our modes and measures, 'I will meet your difficulties by bringing them face to face with the bare principles of the New Testament. If I cannot substantiate and defend them by that I will give them up for ever. I am not wedded to any forms and measures. To many of them I have been driven by the necessities of the case. God has driven me to them as at the point of the bayonet, as well as led me by the pillar of cloud, and when I have brought my reluctance and all my own conventional notions, in which I was brought up like other people, face to face with the naked bare principles of the New Testament, I have not found anything to stand upon! I
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find things here far more extravagant and extreme than anything we do--looked at carefully.' Here is the principle laid down that you are to adapt your measures to the necessity of the people to whom you minister; you are to take the Gospel to them in such modes and habitudes of thought and expression and circumstances, as will gain for it from them a HEARING. You are to speak in other tongues--go and preach it to them in such a way as they will look at it and listen to it! Oh! in that lesson we read what beautiful freedom from all set form and formula there was! What freedom for the gushing freshness, enthusiasm, and love of those new Converts! What scope for the different manifestations of the same spirit. Everything was not cut and dried. Everything was not pre-arranged. It was left to the operation of the Spirit, and the argument that this has been abused is no argument against it, for then you might argue against every privilege. Here is abundant evidence that these new Converts, each one, had opportunity to witness for Jesus, opportunity and scope to give forth the gushing utterance of his soul, and tell other people how he got saved, or the experience the Holy Ghost has wrought in him. And look at the result! 'If there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all; and thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest, and so, falling down on his face, he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth.' What unkind things have been said of The Salvation Army, because people have fallen on their faces under the convicting power of the Spirit at our Meetings, but you see this is Apostolic! And, Oh, friends, what a glorious service this would be! You say, it would look so strange. More the pity. More the pity that this natural, easy, domestic, familiar kind of testimony and witnessing of divine things should have become strange. May it not be because the experience which prompted it has become strange? May it not be that there is no more desire to testify because there is little to testify about? May it not be that there is want of the utterance of the Holy Spirit through the tongue because there is less of it in the soul? Oh! then, should we not make haste back to those days of simplicity and power? Should we not pray to be set free from the traditionalism and routinism in which Satan has succeeded in lulling us to sleep? I ask any saved man--Do you not remember the gushing love and enthusiasm of your first-found liberty? how you longed to tell everybody, and if you had been placed in such circumstances as these Corinthian converts, how gladly you would have testified to what Jesus had done for you? It was only the repressing, keeping down, and ultimately, I am afraid, the all-but extinguishing of the Holy Spirit's urgings that has led to the state in which many of you now are, and also to the dead wav in which many of our services are conducted. Now, let us look fairly at these things. I maintain that the only qualification--the only indispensable qualification--for witnessing for Christ is the Holy Ghost. Paul, expressly, over and over again, abjures all merely human equipment. He expressly declares that these things were not the power, even where they existed, but that it was the Holy Ghost. Therefore, give me man, woman, or child, with the Holy Ghost, full of love and zeal for God, and I say it is a great strength and joy to that Convert to testify to the Church and to the world, and it is the bounden duty of the Church to give him the opportunity to do so. The Lord is going to demonstrate in this land that He is not going to evangelize it by finished sermons and disquisitions, but by the simple testimony of people saved from sin and the Devil, by His power and His grace. He is going to do it by WITNESSING, as He began. Now, I say, read your New Testament on this point, and you will be struck with the amazing amount of evidence for this unconventional kind of service. The world wants some more PENTECOSTS. When shall Peters and Marys be so filled with the Spirit that they cannot help telling what God has done for them--male and female, men, women, and children--like the woman of Samaria, who, when she had found Him of whom Moses and the Prophets wrote, went and fetched her fellowtownsmen and women to hear Him? He wishes you to do the same, and this is the way the Lord is going to gather out His great and glorious kingdom in these latter days by the power of testimony in the Holy Ghost. He only wants witnesses to be able to go and say, 'We speak that we do know'--that is the qualification. The Lord is multiplying such witnesses. Bless His holy name. But you may say--what did the Master Himself do? Well, He adopted these very measures. I was so struck with this, when some one said, 'Why, you are sending people to preach who cannot read or write.' For a moment I was staggered, but I asked him, 'How many of the Apostles do you suppose could read and write when they were first sent out?' And then it was the questioner's turn to be staggered. There is no reason to suppose, with but two or three exceptions, that any of them could. Education then was far more uncommon than now. It was not reading and writing that was the great qualification for preaching Christ; it was KNOWING AND SEEING! It was not the power of eloquence, but it was being able to cast out devils, that was the test. Give me somebody able to cast out devils, and I don't care whether they can read or write, or put a grammatical sentence together. That is
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of no consequence whatever. Why did not Jesus Christ call the doctors and scribes of His day? There were plenty of them--highly educated men with trained and disciplined minds. He was amongst them in the Temple, when He was twelve years old. He knew them. How was it He did not select these? He who could have commanded a legion of angels, could surely have commanded a few scribes and doctors to go to preach the Gospel. Why not? He acted on the law of adaptation. He wanted His Gospel preached to the great masses--not to the select few. Not to the educated 'upper ten,' but to the great masses of mankind. How was He to have His Gospel so preached, but by men like unto themselves? They fled from the educated doctors. They would not listen to the doctors, and they will not now. It may be very wicked, and obstinate, and foolish, but such is the fact--they never have and they never will. Hence, Jesus Christ, instead of working a miracle, which He never did when it was unnecessary, chose the weak things of the earth to confound the mighty. He would, in the other case, have had first to have untaught all those scribes and doctors almost all they had learned. He would have had to set them free from the bonds of traditionalism. He would have had to remould their minds, and then equip them. There was no necessity for this, when He found the fishermen ready to His hand. They were just the men He wanted. They only required tempering with the Holy Ghost, and they were ready for the work. They thought as the people thought; they spoke with and associated with the people, and, in fact, were of them. As He wanted the masses of men evangelized, He chose men from amongst the masses to evangelize them. Here was infinite wisdom: 'I thank Thee, O Father, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight.' But He had a purpose in it, and the purpose was this--that the Gospel might be propagated in all climes and conditions of men, through any kind of an agent--Greek, Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, man, woman, child. Any person who has experienced its power in their souls may go and speak it to anybody they can get to hear them and everywhere! We are free as air and sunlight as to our choice of agencies, and it is time the Church woke up to this. The Lord have mercy on us! Is there not work enough to do? It makes my ears tingle and burn with shame when I hear people saying, 'You must not send agencies here and there, and we can't have our organization interfered with.' I say, 'Are all the sinners converted in your neighbourhood?' Nay; has every poor, lost, wretched soul heard the name of Jesus, and the testimony of His Gospel? Are there not teeming thousands round about you who never heard His name, and who care nothing for Him, who live every day trampling His law under their feet? For Christ's sake, send somebody after them. If they will not have your doctors of divinity and your polished divines, get hold of fishermen and costermongers and send them! Let the people have a chance for their souls. Let them hear, for if they hear not, how shall they believe? Oh, they are dying for lack of knowledge--they are, friends; thousands are dying for the lack of knowledge. It is quite a common thing for us to get people into our services who say, 'I never knew there was anything so pretty as that in the Bible. I didn't know you were reading from the Bible. We never heard anything like that before.' Hundreds of men in this country were never in a place of worship, save to be christened or to be married, and a good many, sad to say, are living without being married. While we have been standing UPON OUR DIGNITY, WHOLE GENERATIONS HAVE GONE TO HELL!--if the Bible is true. How much longer shall we stand there? If Jesus had stood upon His dignity He would never have come to die between two thieves. The whole work of redemption is a work of humiliation, self sacrifice, and suffering; and if we are not willing to follow Him in that, we may as well give up professing His name. The Lord help us to go down, down amongst the fishermen, amongst the poor, the weak, the unlearned, the vulgar, to 'condescend to men of low estate.'
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ASSURANCE OF SALVATION
ROMANS viii. 3, 4.
--'For what the Law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.' I WILL try, by God's grace, as much as in me lies, to deal with this subject in a way that shall not provoke controversy. I do deplore this. I wish there was a way of improving the future without disturbing the present, but it is a misfortune, I suppose, that there is not, and, however carefully one may guard oneself in trying to lead the Lord's people higher, there is always somebody who will quibble and make objections and take exceptions. But we cannot help this. We must be true to our convictions of God's truth, and to what He has taught us, and revealed to us by His Spirit, for we speak the things that we do know, and do see, and do handle, of the Word of Life. However, I will try to keep to ground on which I think all really spiritual people will be agreed. We may go a bit farther some day, but this afternoon we will just go so far as we believe every real disciple of the Lord Jesus will be willing to go with us, and, Oh! may the Holy Spirit give us one mind and help us to see in His light, and if there is anything we do not see in His light, Oh! that this very hour He may show it to us, for He knows that we are all willing to see, and only longing and desiring to know the whole truth, as it is in Jesus. Let every sincere soul put up this prayer for himself and for me, as I put it up for myself and for you, that the Holy Spirit may lead us into all truth, at any rate as far as it is important to our own Salvation and our practical exhibition of the Salvation of Christ to other people, for a dying world is hanging upon our skirts. They are looking at us to find out what religion is. They will not come to this Book. They will not even hear about it, but they are looking to us to find it out; how momentously important it is, therefore, that we should be truly living Epistles, known and read of all men. We are epistles, whatever sort of doctrine our lives teach. We cannot help ourselves, for while we profess to be the Lord's we are living epistles, known and read of all men. Specially, then, I want first to look at the third verse of the eighth chapter. Now, I thought it would, perhaps, be the most profitable way to look at this subject, and would meet the experience of some who I know are here, to try to answer the question-- Wherein does the Law fail to save us? Then we shall be able to see wherein and how Jesus Christ transcends the Law. First, then, the Law does not fail in giving a knowledge of sin, for it is by the Law, as the Apostle says, that I know sin. Without the Law I was dead, so dead in sin that I did not realize it at all. Its power was so complete over me that I did not realize it was sin, and, therefore, was asleep and comparatively happy; but when the commandment came, 'sin revived and I died'--that is, to all hope of making myself righteous. The commandment showed me the awful chasm there was between me and it. The Holy Commandment, just and pure and good--and myself unholy, impure, and unrighteous. A light from Sinai flashed upon it, and I died in despair and utter helplessness. Thus, I say, the Law does not fail in giving knowledge of sin, for it is by the Law that I get the knowledge of sin. Secondly.--Neither does the Law fail in begetting a sense of guilt and condemnation on account of sin, for it is by the Law again that I get this. I not only get the knowledge of sin by the Law, but I get the sense of guilt and condemnation for sin by the Law, for the Law comes in and condemns me. It is the spirit of death and condemnation to me: it says, 'You should have done this; and because you have not done it, you shall die.' I feel that the Law is just and good, and yet I feel that I do not keep it; and, therefore, I have the sentence of condemnation upon me because I do not keep it. Then the Law does not fail in begetting a sense of condemnation and guilt on account of sin. Thirdly.--Neither does the Law fail in producing desire after righteousness and effort to attain it. The Law begets in me the desire after righteousness, by contrasting my condition with the purity and Holiness of God's law. I see the Law to be good and holy, I see it to be desirable, and I desire to attain the righteousness of the Law. I am speaking now of a convicted sinner, as the Apostle did when
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speaking of the same character. A convicted sinner sees the righteousness and beauty of the Law of God. He sees that it is holy, just, and good. He sees that it is intended to make him holy, just, and good, for the Law is not sin, as the Apostle says, but is ordained unto righteousness, which the sinner has failed to attain because of weakness, but struggles to attain. The first thing is to set himself to strive to attain the righteousness of the Law by his own efforts. This was the case with the Apostle. He longed to do what he could not, and he constantly did what he would not; and, as it was with the Apostle, so it is with every convicted sinner on earth. We were constantly longing after righteousness. We could not help looking on the beautiful, pure, and holy law of God, and we longed to keep it, and tried again and again, until we were tripped down again and again, and died in utter despair, never being able to attain it for ourselves and of ourselves. So you see the Law begets first a knowledge of sin; secondly, it begets guilt and condemnation on account of sin; and, thirdly, desire after righteousness and effort to attain it. Thus far I think we must all be agreed. Wherein does the Law fail? It does all this for me. It brings me right up, as it were, my schoolmaster lashing me right up to the cross, opening my eyes, creating intense desire after Holiness and efforts for it, and then it just fails me. Where? At the vital point. It cannot give me power. That is where the Law fails. It cannot give me power to fulfil itself. I am strengthless through the weakness of the flesh and the sinfulness of my nature to keep it, and so I struggle and wrestle for power to keep it, but I have not power. 'What the Law could not do, in that it was weak, God sent his Son to do,' and I maintain HE DOES IT, and that is the one vital point where the Son transcends the Law. Oh! but there is a Gospel nowadays, a Law-Gospel. A great deal of the Gospel of these days never gets any farther than the Law, and some people tell me that it is never intended to do so, and then I ask, Wherein does Christ Jesus advantage me? What am I better for such a Gospel, if my Gospel cannot deliver me from the power of sin? If through the Gospel I cannot get deliverance from this 'I-would-ifI-could religion,' this 'Oh!-wretched-man-that-I-am religion,' wherein am I benefited by it? Wherein does your Gospel do more for me than the Law? The Law convinced me of sin, and set me desiring and longing after righteousness; but wherein is the superiority of Jesus Christ, if He cannot lead me further than that? And I say, 'Very well; your faith is vain, and Christ died in vain, and you are yet in your sins, if that is all it can do.' If that is all Jesus Christ can do, His coming is vain, and I am yet in my sins, and am doomed to hug this dead corpse to the last, and go down to Hell; for death will never do for me what the Blood and sacrifice of Jesus Christ cannot do for me. If Christ cannot supersede the Law, then I am lost, and lost for ever. Wherein then does this 'Oh!-wretched-man Gospel' supersede the Law? Will anybody point it out to me? Oh! but the real Gospel does. The Gospel that represents Jesus Christ, not as a system of truth to be received into the mind, as I should receive a system of philosophy, or astronomy, but it represents Him as a REAL, LIVING, MIGHTY Saviour, ABLE TO SAVE ME now. I said to a lady once, who was seeking this deliverance, and who was struggling and wrestling, as I kneeled by her side, 'Wait a minute. Suppose Jesus Christ were here in His flesh, as He once was. Suppose He were to come to your side now, and put His hand upon you and say, 'Hush! I know your desire; I see your heart; I know what you are longing after. You are longing to be delivered from everything that grieves Me, upon which My pure eyes cannot look with allowance. You are wanting to be brought into full conformity to My will, and that is what I have come to do now. I have come to live with you. I am taking up My abode under this roof, and I will never leave your side. I will be with you by day, and I will be with you by night. I will sit at the dinner-table and tea-table with you, and walk out with you, and go to bed with you, and rise up with you. Don't be troubled. I will never leave you and never forsake you.' Do you think if He were to come and say that, you would be able to trust Him?' 'Oh! yes.' 'You would not be afraid?' 'Oh! no.' 'Now, what would it be that would save you? Would it be the bodily presence of Jesus, which they laid in the sepulchre, and which was as dead and helpless as any other clay when the spirit was gone
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out of it? NO. It would be His spiritual presence, would it not? and His spiritual eyes seeing you, and His spiritual tongue speaking to you?' 'Yes.' 'Well, then, this is just the presence that He has promised to be with every one of His people, and now He is here and able to do this, and will abide with you and enable you to abide in Him, if you will just trust Him. Now, just trust Him.' And the Lord, by His blessed Spirit, did take and reveal this truth unto her, and just then and there she did leap into the arms of her Saviour and realize that He did save her. Oh! friends, some people do not think we make enough of Christ. We make all of Christ, only it is a living Christ instead of a dead one. It is Christ in us, as well as for us. We believe in Christ for us, and we should not have been here at all, but for Christ for us up there for ever and ever, and nobody will hasten to throw the crown at His feet readier than I shall; but we believe in order to do it we must have Him in us, and if He is not in us, then it is sounding brass and tinkling cymbal to call upon Him for us. He must be in us. Christ in us as well as for us, and those whom He is not in He will not be for. If He dwell not 'in you,' ye are 'reprobates.' But Christ in us--an ever-loving, ever-present, Almighty Saviour- -is just able to do what the angels said He should do, that for which He was called Jesus, viz. to save His people from their sin. Then how does He this? Wherein does He supersede the Law? Wherein does Christ do for me and wherein is He made to me, what the Law could not do or be to me? We have seen what the Law could do and how far it could go. We have seen that it fails just at the vital point of power. Now, how does Christ become this power to me? How is He made unto me--not for me, up in Heaven; He is there, too; but how is He made unto me down here--wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption? How does He deliver His people from their sins? How does He save us from the power of sin? Now, you who are longing to get free, try to listen to me, and, Oh! may the HOLY GHOST TEACH US. He does this, first, by giving-- Assurance of Salvation. He saves and then He makes us conscious of the fact, which the Law could not do. All it could do was to set us struggling after it. It could not give us assurance. Now, by assurance, I mean the personal realization of my acceptance in Christ; my acceptance by the Father; my present acceptance--I mean the inward assurance, which men and women find for themselves, or have revealed in themselves, which they know as a matter of consciousness. Not that which their minister tells them; not that which they learn from books; not even that which the Bible only tells them, for there are thousands of people who read the Bible, who are not saved, and who know they are not. You all know there are thousands of people who believe it in vain. I was walking down the Anxious Room at one of Mr. Moody's meetings, when two ladies came and said: 'Will you please speak to us?' I don't know why they came to me, except it was my plain dress which made them think I ought to know, even if I did not, how to deal with souls. We took three chairs and sat down. The youngest was a lady about thirty or thirty-three, and very intelligent, evidently an educated person, and the elder was an old lady, gorgeously attired. They sat down; and as to the younger one there was no mistake about her earnestness. Mr. Moody had been preaching on 'The Cities of Refuge,' and showing how the soul who desired to be saved had nothing to do and nothing to suffer, but only to run into the Cities of Refuge and be saved--a beautiful sermon for convicted sinners--and this lady said to me, almost passionately-- 'How is it? there must be something wrong somewhere; there must be a mistake somewhere. I believe all that Mr. Moody has been saying, every word of it. I have believed every word since I was a little girl; in fact, I believe the whole of the New Testament--all about Jesus Christ, and I believe, moreover, that He died for me, and that He makes intercession for me, and yet I'm not saved a bit. I have no more power over sin than other people, and I know I am not saved. Now, what can be the reason? I am afraid it is want of faith.' That is the universal resort to fall back upon by all souls in that condition. I said, 'Will you be
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honest with me? It is of no use coming to a spiritual doctor any more than to a physical doctor if you are not frank; you would only mislead him. If you really want to be saved, be honest with me, and I will try, by the help of the Spirit, to help you.' 'I do indeed want to be saved,' she said. 'I often go into my room, and weep, and struggle, and pray for hours. I try to believe. I think I have believed, and I come out and I am no better.' 'Oh,' I said to myself, 'alas! here is the experience of thousands.' 'Tell me, in these times when you say you go into your room, and struggle, and pray, and strive, and believe; tell me, is there anything that comes up before the eye of your soul as an obstacle and difficulty that has to be put away or embraced; anything that comes up and that the Spirit of God said "You must sacrifice this, or cut off that, or do the other?" Just tell me that.' She was quiet for a moment and speechless. She waited; then she drew her breath and said, 'Well, yes, I am afraid there is.' 'Ah!' I said, 'that is it; it is not want of faith, it is want of obedience. Now you may go on another ten years, going into your room, struggling and striving, and until you trample that under your feet, and say, "Lord, I will follow Thee at all costs," you will not be able to believe. I don't want you to tell me what it is; sufficient that you know it, and that the Lord knows it; but, after an experience of dealing with hundreds of souls just at this point, I tell you: you must give up that idol or embrace that cross, whatever it may be; I believe that here is the cause of your trouble.' 'Then,' she said, 'I will make no secret of it. I am the only member of an unconverted family that has any desire after God. My husband is a worldly, unconverted man, and I am in a worldly, unconverted circle, and always when I come to the Lord Jesus it comes up before me that I will have to confess Him and to live like a Christian, and I am not willing to do so.' 'Then, my dear lady, it is the old story over again of the Young Ruler. Now, you know, I should be untrue to your soul if I were to go on plastering you with untempered mortar. There you are; make your choice. You cannot be a Christian, and not confess Christ. You cannot be a Christian, and not live like one before your unconverted relatives; and, therefore, if you are not willing to take up the cross and follow Him, you cannot become His disciple.' Then I went down on my knees with her, and we talked and prayed, and, at last, she said: 'By the grace of God, I WILL confess Him.' Bless the Lord! and the light of Salvation soon gladdened her eye, for it shone through her face. She found herself able to believe at once, and this is just the condition of thousands of souls. She got assurance then. She got saved. Before, she had being trying to believe she was saved, when she was not--quite a different thing to getting saved and then knowing it. People are told to believe this, that, and the other. As a gentleman said, at whose house I once stayed: 'I had a curious episode the other morning. I have had a gentleman here of some note in the evangelistic world for two or three days, and he came in the other morning at breakfast-time and said, 'I am happy to tell you that both your gardeners are converted.' I was very thankful to hear it; and surprised to hear that the work had been so quickly and thoroughly done. Well, I was walking in the grounds, and saw one of the gardeners. 'John,' I said, 'I am glad to hear the happy news.' He didn't seem to know what I meant. '"What news, sir?" '"Well, I hear you have given your heart to God this morning. You are converted, saved?" '"Well," John said, "I could hardly say that, sir." '"Then what has happened? Something has happened in your experience--some change taken place?"
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'"Well," he said, "I don't hardly know that. The gentleman brought a Bible to me and read two or three verses, and asked me if I believed, and talked very nicely to me, and asked me again if I believed; then I said I did, and then he said I was all right; but I can't say I feel any different."' Now, I am afraid there has been sadly too much of that. There is all the difference between believing the letter of the Word and knowing that you are saved. I say, that man was not saved--was he? I say, the lady who spoke to me in the Anxious Room was not saved--was she? And I say there are, alas! thousands to-day in just that position. They are not saved. They manifest it by their fruits. They confess it. They write it to me in their letters on the right hand and on the left. Members of churches ten, fifteen, and twenty years, some of them Ministers of the Gospel, and yet they tell me they are NOT SAVED!! Thus, you see it is something more than the belief after all. It is something more than what my minister tells me, something more than what books tell me, and what the Bible tells me. It implies and includes this, but something more than this. It is believing in a living, personal, and almighty Saviour, and believing in Him now, and that faith brings the realization. The other brings nothing. When people believe thus, the Spirit comes into their hearts, crying, 'Abba, Father!' To them there is no condemnation. They have the witness of the Spirit that they are in Christ Jesus. The Spirit of the Son comes into their hearts, crying, 'Abba, Father!' and they know by demonstration, by inward consciousness, that they have passed from death unto life. You see there is all the difference between the means of Salvation and Salvation itself. The means of Salvation is not Salvation. The means only brings Salvation. 'Thy faith hath saved thee.' 'By faith are ye saved,' and when you are saved by faith, then consciousness attests the fact. Your own spirit attests the fact, and God's Spirit attests the fact, and you know it beyond controversy. You have assurance, and this is the first indispensable condition of power over sin, for while I remain unassured of my Salvation, Oh! what power the Devil has over me. 'Oh,' he says, 'you're not saved at all. What is the good of your standing out on this point, for you are not saved at all. You may as well go all the way. You are under the power of sin, and may as well remain there. You have not got the witness of your Salvation, and, therefore, what is the use of standing out here or there? 'But when we have the witness of the Spirit in our souls of our acceptance with God, that He does now for Christ's sake pardon and receive us, what power it brings! This is what the old Divines called assurance of faith, a conviction wrought in the soul by the Holy Ghost that Jesus Christ has given Himself for me, that God has accepted that offering in view of my sin and transgression, and for its sake, and its sake only, has justified me freely from all things by which I could not be justified by the Law of Moses, and that in Him God becomes my Father, and now accepts me and looks upon me well pleased--a conviction wrought in my soul by the Holy Spirit; for, as the Apostle says, 'No man can call Jesus "Lord" but by the Holy Ghost.' There must he the spiritual realization of Him as Lord. Why, anybody can call Him 'Lord.' Tens of thousands of people call Him 'Lord' nowadays, whom nobody supposes to have the Spirit. What did he mean? He must have meant a confession of Jesus out of a heart which has a revelation and recognizes its Lord; such a confession as Thomas made when the conviction of His Master's Deity shone into his doubting soul: 'My Lord and my God.' To this relationship only the Holy Ghost can testify. Don't ever tell anybody he is saved. I never do. I leave that for the Holy Ghost to do. I tell them how to get saved. I try to help them to the way of faith. I will bring them up as close as ever I can to the blessed broken body of their Lord, and I will try to show them how willing He is to receive them, and I know that when really they do receive Him, the Spirit of God will tell them quickly enough that they are saved. He will not want my assistance to tell that. I have proved it in hundreds of cases. Nobody knows the soul but God. Nobody can see the secret windings of the depraved heart but God. Nobody can tell when a full surrender is made but God. Nobody can tell when the right hand is cut off, or the right eye plucked out, but God. Nobody can tell when a soul is whole-hearted but God, and as soon as He sees it He will tell that soul that it is saved; but, if God has not told you, be up and stirring, and strive to make your calling and election sure, for you are not saved yet, or you would know it. What are you to believe unto? Hope? Oh, dear, no! you don't believe unto hope. Effort? Oh, no! you had that before in the Law. SALVATION? Yes! and if you 'believe unto Salvation,' you will get 'saved,' and if you are not saved, you have never believed unto Salvation. Instead of trying to make yourself happy in this state of uncertainty and misery, for Christ's sake get up and get saved. It is a great deal easier to get saved than it is to make yourself believe you are saved, when you are not. The one is a philosophical impossibility; the other is a glorious possibility at any moment, when you get low enough before God, and give up all, and take His Son as your precious and almighty Saviour. God's Gospel is beautifully adjusted to the laws of our mental constitution. He who wrote, framed, and conceived it, created us, and He has made
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it like a key to fit the lock, and knows just the conditions that are necessary, and He has conformed His Gospel to those conditions. My friend, if you want to know you are saved, this is the only response I can give, and the only way I know, and I have talked to hundreds of souls of all grades and conditions, to many ministers of the Gospel, deacons and leaders, in just this state. For years my labours were exclusively carried on in churches and chapels, where, naturally, church members have come, and they have told me by hundreds with their own lips that they have been members so many years and were never saved. I am not, therefore, speaking without experience in this matter. I tell you, when you 'believe' in a Scriptural sense, you will get 'saved' in a Scriptural sense. When you put out of your head all these new-fangled notions about faith, and cease to credit any faith that does not save the soul and bring it into conscious union with Jesus Christ, and resolve to have such a faith as will do that for you, then you will get Salvation. I never in my life knew a soul come to that resolve who did not get saved. I have had people before me who were worn almost to skeletons and were driven almost mad, and the first thing they have said has been, when I have asked the reason, 'Oh! I have no faith. It is want of faith!' This is the universal lament, and, when we have come to close quarters, I have invariably found it has been no such thing, but want of OBEDIENCE, which spiritual teachers have not had the wisdom to discern, as Christ did in the heart of the young Ruler, 'one thing thou lackest.' He saw that young man's besetting sin to be covetousness. I do not know that He would have said the same to every rich man, but in the case of the young Ruler He saw that the love of his possessions was so paramount, that unless he let them go and made a clean sweep, he could not follow Him and be a consistent disciple; and so He said, 'Sell all, and come, follow Me,' and the young man went away sorrowful; and, mark you, Jesus Christ did not call him back, and yet He looked after him and loved him. His great, benevolent heart panted after him, and He desired to have him; but He saw it would be a greater evil to call him back and compromise the conditions of Salvation, than to let him be lost. And yet, methinks, if there was any case in which a compromise could be made, it would have been in this. He did not do, as many would have done in our day--call him back and say, 'Here, young man, I think I have been a little too hard on you. You shall sell half, and keep the other half and come and follow me.' Oh, no! Everybody would be saved at that rate. There would be no test of whole-hearted consecration to Him then. If you can let people into Heaven on terms like these, they would be only too ready to close with them. But whether ministers teach people the truth or not, the Holy Ghost does; and He puts His finger on the sore spot, and says, 'If you want to follow Me, you will have to renounce this, and give up that, or embrace the other,' and if the soul says, 'No, Lord, I would follow, but suffer me first to go and hug this idol'; then Jesus Christ says, 'Very well, go!' That is the sort of faith most people are resting in. I see we shall not get any farther in this address than assurance of Salvation. You are panting after it. You are longing for it. You may have it. God wants every one of His people to have it. Get saved, and you will know it. Use your Heavenly Father's letter to find your way up to Him. It is not the letter you are to rest in: it is the God who wrote it. Use the letter to get at the Spirit, for the letter will not save you--it is the Spirit that saves you. Hug his volume to your heart as the expression of your Father's will and the record through which you are to believe on His Son, but it is the Son who is to save you. People talk about exalting Christ. I think this is His glory, that He can save His people and make them know it, and make them feel it, and carry them as He did Paul and Silas through the prison and the stocks singing His praises, and make them unspeakably happy in His love. Assurance of Salvation! All want it when they come to die. Why don't people get it while they live? Did you ever know a professing Christian come to die who did not want it? Did you ever know one dare to die without it? or, if you ever knew such, you know what a miserable death it was. Then, I contend, that what is necessary to die with, is necessary to live with. Why not get it while you live? Assurance! Assurance! And you can have it just now. Hallelujah! Amen.
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HOW CHRIST TRANSCENDS THE LAW
ROMANS vii. 4.
--'Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.' IN answer to letters received since last Sabbath, I would just say that the writers tell me that they have been struggling for years for assurance; that they do receive the testimony of God concerning His Son; that they do believe that Jesus Christ died for their sins; still they have no peace or joy. I want you to mark well that assurance of Salvation is the testimony of God's Spirit to a fact which has transpired, and if that fact has not transpired, God's Spirit will never testify to it. You may think you believe; but, Oh, I feel sure numbers of people are deluded here. They think they believe because they receive into their minds the written record that God has given of His Son; but they have not believed and rested on the promise in such a way as to bring the witness of the Spirit. They have stopped short of that. They have been satisfied with the letter. Now, do not think, friends, that I underestimate the letter. Perhaps few of you, if any, value this word more than I do, but I have known very few of those who have rested merely in the letter (and I have known many do so), who, when I have come into close conversation with them, have not been miserably dissatisfied, unassured, sin-conquered souls; and that fact alone convinces me that there is something wrong. That is not the glorious liberty of the children of God. That is not knowing God in the scriptural sense. Take God's way, and then the witnessing Spirit will come. Of course, people are not assured because they have nothing to be assured of! They have no Salvation, and, therefore, they cannot be assured of it. Get Salvation, and you will get assurance. Oh! friends. This is what you want. IT IS FOR YOU. Here it is. There is no other religion recognized in this Book. All the saints to whom Paul wrote, knew they were saved. Here and there was an exception, where they had fallen back and got into bondage, as some of you have; but, as a rule, be recognizes the fact that they all were saved, and were rejoicing in the assurance of it, and this is the normal condition of the children of God. I do not say such a person may not occasionally slip. He may occasionally. He may lose his scroll, as Pilgrim did, but he cannot, will not rest till he finds it again! Then you say, 'I am not to believe, I suppose.' Oh, yes! you are. Take the blessed record to your heart, but do not rest in the letter. Do not rest in the letter. GO ON until you find the substance of things hoped for--the substance. There is a substance in spiritual things quite as much as there is in natural things, and those who really and truly believe, know it. No one can testify when you do really and truly believe but God's Spirit, for the things of a man knoweth no man save the spirit of a man that is in him, and just so with the things of God. He searcheth the hearts and minds, and knows when you are sincere and real and true; and when you seek Him with all your heart you will find Him, and He will come and testify to that fact--and, Oh! if you have not this testimony suspect yourself. Do not throw discredit upon God. Begin over again and get assurance. Oh! what POWER assurance of Salvation gives! when the individual can say I know; not merely I believe, but I know. St. John seems to have written his First Epistle mainly to enable the believers to know: and then several times shows how we may 'know' we are saved. Faith is the means to assurance, but assurance is not faith, and faith is not assurance. Assurance is the result of faith, and when you have the right sort of faith you will have assurance. 'He that believeth hath the witness in himself,' and until you get assurance do not trust yourself. Persevere until you get it. God will never leave a sincere soul in the dark. You must come down to the foot of the Cross in the little children's way--give up all for Christ, and make up your mind that you will follow Him at all costs, and then cast your guilty soul upon His broken, bleeding sacrifice, and, as soon as you do this, God will send the answer of His Spirit. But this afternoon I want to go a little farther in showing how Christ supersedes the Law.
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We have noted in a former sermon that He does so, first, by giving assurance. Secondly, I want to show that He does so, by giving POWER OVER SIN. Now we shall be safe here. I trust this will not be controverted ground. I believe He can do a great deal more for His people than this, but we will stop here this afternoon. By and by we may, perhaps, go farther. Christ gives His people power over sin. Now, this is a necessity of our position. We have, as we saw last Sunday, been all slaves of sin. Sin is, indeed, the sting of death. Now, how is it, if there is no deliverance from this dreadful plague and scourge of God's people--how is it that the Holy Ghost sets every real child of God struggling after it? Whatever may be a man's theory in his creed, you get him on his knees, and he will begin to pray to God to save him from sin. Sin is the abominable thing which he hates, and longs to be delivered from; and the universal experience of God's people is that the Spirit urges them to seek to be saved from sin. I have heard people argue powerfully against the possibility of being delivered from sin, and the next time I have heard them pray they have asked God for the very thing, and I have said, 'Thank God, that is the Holy Ghost teaching him now; he cannot help praying for it, whether he believes in it or not.' If I have been under the power of sin, so as to become its complete slave, and Jesus Christ comes and pardons me for the past, and delivers me from the guilt and condemnation which came upon me in consequence of the past, what do I want? I want some new power. I want something besides pardon. I want power to stand, or I shall be down again the next minute. What God does for us through Jesus Christ outside of us is one thing, and what He does in us by Jesus Christ is another thing, but the two are simultaneous, or one so immediately succeeds the other, that we hardly discern the interval. Now, I say, I want power to enable me to meet that temptation which is coming on me to-morrow, as it came on me yesterday, and, if Jesus Christ pardons me ever so, and leaves me under the reigning power of my old appetites, what has He done for me? I shall be down in the mud, and to-morrow night I shall be as condemned as ever. I want power. I want regeneration--as the Holy Spirit has put it. I want the renewing of the spirit of my mind. I want to be created anew in Christ Jesus; 'made a new creature.' Now, this is where Jesus Christ transcends the Law. The Law could not renew the spirit of my mind. It could only show me what a guilty rebel I was. It could not put a better spirit in me. It could not extract the venom, but only show it to me, and make me writhe on account of it. But Jesus Christ comes and does this for me--gives me power. How? Now, I hope those friends who think that I do not sufficiently exalt the Saviour, will mark this. How does He give it to me? He unites me to Himself. I am dead to the Law. He delivers me from the condemning power of the Law when He pardons me, and then He does not leave me there, but He 'marries' me to Himself. He unites me 'to another' husband, and then I attain power to bring forth fruit unto God. A beautiful--a wonderful figure! We may not pursue it; but, Oh! what a wonderful figure! Alone under the Law's power, my old husband, I could do nothing but agonize, wrestle, and desire. There was no power in me but when Jesus Christ comes and unites me to Himself; then He gives me power to bring forth fruit unto God. It is by the UNION OF MY SOUL WITH HIM. You say, 'Explain it!' I cannot. God Himself cannot explain it. We cannot explain it, but we know it. As Jesus said to Nicodemus: 'The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.' The mystery is too great to be explained, but there is the beautiful illustration; united to Christ I have power to conquer, to subdue, to trample under foot those things which heretofore have been my master, and by virtue of Him I retain the power, and no other way. Oh! dear friends, what a delusion there is on the subject of Christian knowledge. If knowledge could save people, what a wonderful world we should have to-day. Knowledge is as powerless as ignorance. A man is not a whit nearer God, or more like Christ, because he has his head crammed with this Word. In fact, some I have known who have been best acquainted with the Word, who have been the greatest slaves of sin; and even ministers of Jesus Christ have confessed to me that they have been bond-slaves of some besetting sin. The power is not in knowledge--and God is raising up thousands of witnesses to this fact, that it is not in knowledge --it is in union with Him, and the little child in intellect and intelligence, who has the real, vital union with Jesus, has more power than the most cultivated theologian has without Christ. The things of God can only be understood by those who have the Spirit of God. The world by wisdom knows not God any more now than it did in Paul's days. The things of the Spirit are only spiritually comprehended. Hence
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this beautiful union cannot be explained; I only know it is spoken of all through the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New, as knowing God. After God has summed up the failures of His people, He gives them a promise, and says, 'I will betroth thee unto Me in righteousness for ever, and thou shalt KNOW the Lord,' as though that were the end of the whole matter, really and truly to know Him. When they come to that living union of soul with Him, it brings the vital sap as it were into the branch of the tree--another of his own beautiful illustrations. 'Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me.' You know what the branch is when it is broken off. It is a branch. It retains the form of a branch; and for a while the beauty and the greenness of a branch, but it is broken off. There is no power in it. Suppose it could maintain that form. Alas! human branches often maintain their verdure in a certain beauty, as when first lopped off. But it can never bear fruit. Why? Because the communication is cut between itself and the vine, and there is no sap in its fibre. Its life is cut off. Now, my friends, you can see why a soul who has never been truly united to Christ in this living spiritual marriage, cannot bear fruit unto God. You can be like a branch. You can get so much scriptural knowledge, that you can look just like a real Christian. Alas! You can get many of the feelings of a Christian, and of the sentiments, as well as a great many of the aspirations and desires, of a Christian. You can be so like a branch that nobody, but Jesus Christ, may know you are not in that true Vine, and yet you have never, as the Apostle says, been grafted on to the olive tree. And, therefore, you go on weeping, and struggling, and trying to perform the function of a living branch, when all the while you are a dead one. You go on trying to bring forth fruit unto God when the one indispensable condition of fruitfulness is wanting. You have got every other condition. You may even be nailed up to the wall close to the vine. You may be such a professor that nobody may ever doubt you. You may be so close to the vine that nobody can detect your want of union, excepting the Gardener who comes and closely inspects you, and yet you may not have one fibre truly circulating the real spiritual sap. HENCE YOU HAVE NO POWER, and down you go when the temptation comes. Ah! what weary years of strife some professing Christians have--they would be ashamed to tell; death sometimes forces it from their lips before they die--trying to perform the functions of living men when they have never been spiritually made alive. All they have ever had has been what Paul depicts as the struggle of a poor convicted sinner unable to bring forth any fruit unto God. Now, you say, this union with Him--what is it? Well, I cannot explain it. You, who know what it is cannot explain it--so to know the Lord as to be conscious of the living sap circulating through your soul, anointing your eyes with eye-salve, giving you eyes to see, a voice to speak, feet to run, and hands to serve--making you in all respects a 'new creature.' Now, my dear friends, those of you who have not experienced this, never mind who comes to you and brings a Bible, and says, 'Do you believe this and that? if you do you are saved.' Say, 'Miserable comforters are ye all: I will never be content until I know God.' I made up my mind to this when I was fifteen years of age. I had had the strivings of God's Spirit all my life, since I was about two years old. My dear mother has often told me how she went upstairs to find me crying, and when she questioned me, I said I was crying because I had sinned against God. Thank the Lord, I do not say this boastingly. I have good cause to be ashamed that I was so long before I fully gave myself up; but all through my childhood I was graciously sheltered by a watchful mother from outward sin, and, in fact, brought up as a Christian. When I came to be between fifteen and sixteen, when I believe I was thoroughly converted, the great temptation of Satan to me was this: 'You must not expect such a change as you read of in books. You have been half a Christian all your life. You always feared God. You must content yourself with this.' Oh! how I was frightened! It must have been the Spirit of God that taught me. I was frightened at it. I said, 'No. no.' My heart is as bad as other people's, and if I have not sinned outwardly I have inwardly. I cried to God to show me the evil of my heart, and said, 'I will never rest till I am as thoroughly and truly changed, and know it, as any thief, or any great outward sinner.' I went on seeking God in this way for six weeks, often till two o'clock in the morning, wrestling, and I told the Lord I would never give up, if I died in the search, until I found God, and I did find Him, as every soul does, when it comes to him in that way. I cried for nothing on earth or in Heaven but that I might find Him whom my soul panted after, and I did find Him, and you can find Him. I knew Him. I can't tell how, but I knew Him. I knew He was well pleased with me. I knew that we held sweet converse often to the small hours of the morning together, and I know that I was as happy in His love, and far more happy than I ever was in any human love before or since.