many people in this world who are not willing to surrender their wills to anybody, not even
II. WHY MEN WILL NOT COME TO CHRIST.
life eternal. At one of my missions I asked a woman how she was getting on. She replied, "I am not getting on at all; I am perfectly miserable." "Why is that?" I said. "I don't know" she replied. Another said, "I can tell you why it is, she has never told her husband she has accepted Jesus Christ." "Is that so?" I asked her. "It is," she replied. "But you stood up in the meeting?" I said. "Yes, but not when he was present." "Well, you must tell him!" "I can't tell my husband; he would laugh at me," she answered. "Never mind how much he laughs" I said. "I can't do it," was all she would reply. The next Sunday night the lady and gentleman were sitting together in one of the front seats. I stopped in the midst of my address and said, "Every woman in the house who will say that from this time on my husband shall have an out-and-out Christian for his wife, please rise." This woman immediately rose to her feet. "Now," I said, "every man who will say from this time my wife shall have a true Christian man for her husband, please rise." That man was the first man in the house on his feet. Show people the beauty and power of a living faith in Jesus Christ, and you will bring them with you.
5. An unforgiving spirit is another thing that is keeping men and women from coming to Jesus Christ. They know they cannot come, and bring a heart full of hate, and so they choose bitterness and hatred and death instead of Christ and life. One afternoon at Cleveland, after Mr. Moody had been speaking, he brought me to a lady to show her the way of life. I had been speaking to her trying this and that passage to see what was in the way of her accepting Christ, when suddenly I turned to her and said, "Is there somebody you cannot forgive?" She looked quickly at me, and said, "Who told you?" I said, "Nobody told me, and I have never seen you before to-night." That was her trouble, and that is the trouble with some of you. Some one has done you an injustice or you think they have, and you will not come to Jesus Christ because you want to cherish this bitter grudge in your heart. I once talked about two hours to a young lady, trying to lead her to Christ, but at last she said, "There is somebody I cannot forgive." I told her, "You must or be lost for ever." But she replied, "I cannot; they have done me a wrong." I said, "If they had not done you a wrong, there would not be anything to forgive. Have they wronged you as much as you have wronged Jesus Christ?" In the eighteenth chapter of Matthew, commencing at the twenty-third verse, we have the parable of the servant who was forgiven a large debt, and then would not forgive his fellow-servant a trifling sum. That is a picture of the unforgiving one to-day. I said to her, "Read that incident; you must forgive." But she said, "I can't." "Are you willing," I then asked her, "that God should take the bitterness out of your heart?" She replied, "I am." Then I said, "Kneel down and ask Him;" As she knelt down, and scarcely had her knees touched the floor, when she burst into tears, as she felt the feeling of hate taken away. Are you going to reject Jesus Christ and eternal life for the sake of hating somebody? God have mercy upon you.
6. Self-will stands between many a person and Christ and eternal life. There are a great many people in this world who are not willing to surrender their wills to anybody, not even