Love Abounding

By George Douglas Watson

Chapter 10

SAVING MAN FROM HIS PURPOSE.

 

"For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not.

"In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed;

"Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction,

"That he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man.

"He keepeth back his soul from the pit, and his life from perishing by the sword." — Job 33:14-18.

God speaks once, yea twice, but man perceives it not, and then He speaks by another process: in visions, in night dreams, when deep sleep falleth upon man, He sealeth up instruction. He does this in order that He may withdraw man from his purpose, and save his soul from going down into the pit. I ask your attention to a running exegesis of these words.

Notice, first, the different kinds of calls that God gives to men. He speaks three times. He speaks once, yea twice; man perceives it not. Then He speaks by revelation. He speaks first by creation, and then He speaks by conscience, and then He speaks by revelation. Now, God's voice in nature and God's voice in conscience are unheard, and men do not perceive it. He says here, "God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not." Why? Why, because he is so fallen, so depraved, so blind, that he is not on a plane high enough to detect the voice of God in nature and in conscience.

A great many people in Boston are talking about natural religion, and about God in nature; but they never saw God in nature, and they never heard God in nature. They heard the echo of their own fancies. No man can see God in nature until he gets on a plane where God is. If a watchmaker should fling a watch into a cage of monkeys, no monkey would be able to understand anything about that watch, because he has got to get as much brains and as much intelligence and as much mechanism, and he has got to understand as much, as the watchmaker does, before he can understand who made the watch. And neither man nor demon, in his depravity, will ever see God in nature until he gets on a level with God; and all this talk about seeing God in nature is nonsense. The heathen never saw God in nature. I mean to say they never saw God in such a way as to come to God and get saved and get pardoned. And nobody else ever did.

Now, God talks first in nature, but men do not perceive it. Then God talks by the conscience. He speaks in the conscience, but the conscience is so dull, so dead, and so dwarfed, that men do not perceive God speaking in their consciences. A very few have, faintly and dimly, and yet the great mass of men do not recognize God's voice in the conscience.

And so God had to resort to a third method of saving men. This was by direct revelation. People are not saved by God in nature, nor by God in conscience, nor by natural religion. And so God speaks to men by a direct, spiritual revelation; a revelation that lies outside of man, and superior to and above man, and that comes down upon him.

Now, this revelation began away back before the Bible was made. Direct revelations have been made before the Bible was written, in visions, in dreams, in sleep at night; so that inspired men had visions of God and dreams from God, and they were taught things of God before the Bible was penned. Job had no Bible, but he had his direct and infallible revelation from God. God does not come to us now in individual visions and dreams, that is, in a sense to reveal the plan of salvation. It is true that often yet God does reserve to Himself the right to visit anybody with a dream or a vision. God has not sold out the right to work miracles. God has not leased the power that He possesses to reveal Himself to human beings. And even now among the Indians, — among people who cannot read nor write, — before the war among the colored people of the South, and out in Africa and among the Red Men, and among various people who have not access to the written page, and who cannot read the Bible, God has oftentimes sent them dreams and visions by which they are taught and instructed and revealed things concerning salvation.

But God has given to us His written Word, so that this written Word covers all the territory that is here mentioned by speaking in visions and dreams in deep sleep; so that all spiritual light must come to us by revelation. God must reveal Himself, His true nature and true character, in some way above nature and above the mere conscience; and all you know of God really, as to His character and as to His method of salvation, you have got from revelation.

You hear the Unitarian talk about the All-Father, about God being a Father. There is not a Unitarian on this earth that absolutely knows one single thing of God the Father, except he learned it and saw it of Jesus Christ, or in Jesus Christ; and if Jesus Christ is not God, then God the Father is unknown. There is no God the Father in the universe, except it be God the Father that was shown out in the Lord Jesus. And the man who bows down to God out of Christ bows down to an idol of his own fancy and of his own imagination. And there is not a Unitarian on God's earth that ever prays to the God of the Bible; and every prayer he offers is a blasphemy to an unknown, imaginary ghost. There is no God the Father except the Father which has been revealed in Jesus Christ, and to ignore that Father is to ignore the only Father and the only God. Yet men are going around worshiping God, building churches to God, having colleges to God, having seminaries to God, and ignoring Jesus Christ and Him crucified; and in the day of judgment God Almighty will condemn the whole of them from end to end, as having worshiped a false god.

There is no true God but the God that was revealed through and in Jesus Christ. There is no true prayer in this world that is not offered in and through Jesus Christ, and all other prayer is a humbug. I have no more respect for prayers that are offered outside of Christ than I have for the blasphemies of anybody — not a bit. You may think I am very narrow gauged, but I will tell you that God is deaf as a stone to every thief that tries to climb into His bosom outside of Jesus; and any man that tries to get to heaven outside of Christ is a thief, and every man that ignores the blood of Jesus, every man who ignores the Son of God, is a thief, — is trying to steal a ride to heaven on some other train than God's train. And God does not recognize any worshiper on earth as a true worshiper except he worships Him in God's revealed way, through His Son.

Right away there is a smart fellow back there says, " Hold on, Brother Watson; how about the poor heathen, that have no Bible? Don't they pray to God?" — "Yes." — "And aren't their prayers heard? " — "Yes." "And aren't their prayers answered?" — "Yes." — "What about their knowledge of Christ?" I answer, that every prayer they offer, they offer to Jesus Christ. There is not a heathen on this earth that ever prays to any God but Jesus Christ. How do I know that? I will tell you. Bishop Taylor and all the African explorers -will tell you that when the heathen men of Africa pray, they call on the God that made the heavens and the earth: " O God, who made these stars, who made these heavens, who made this earth, have mercy on me." And they pray to the God that made the heavens and the earth. And who is that God? Jesus Christ. "All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made." Jesus Christ made every blazing star and every planet and every atom of matter. And the heathen are an infinite distance beyond the Unitarians of Boston. They pray to Jesus Christ.

And so it is all revelation. I know nothing of heaven except what Christ has revealed. I know nothing of hell except what Christ has revealed. We know nothing of sin except what Christ has revealed. We know nothing of salvation but what Christ has revealed. Man does not know his own heart; he does not know his own depravity; he does not know the viciousness and the depth and the magnitude of his own fall; neither does he understand the depth and the extent of salvation, except as it is revealed in Jesus Christ. And I insist absolutely on a revealed religion all the way through. I would as lief trust to the fetich of a heathen that bows down to an old stick, as trust to the fetiches of modern science and philosophy; and if I have got to have a little bit of a god, I would as soon have a little dirt god made by a black man in Africa as have a little, transcendental, ethical, theological, mythological god, manufactured in Cambridge. If I am going to be a heathen let me be one out and out.

No, my friends, nobody can be saved except they are saved through the revelation that comes from God in Jesus Christ. Now, why does God reveal Himself? Why does He speak through nature and then through the conscience, and we do not perceive, and then He comes closer and reveals Himself in this wonderful spiritual vision, in this wonderful daylight manifestation? Why does God reveal to us His own heart? Why does God reveal hell to us? If the revelation of hell is not true the revelation of heaven is not true. The people who do not believe in hell do not believe in heaven, and if there be no hell there is no heaven. If God will tell me a lie about hell He will tell me a lie about heaven; and if I cannot trust what God says about damnation, neither can I trust what He says about salvation.

And yet the scholars and the higher critics are trying to eliminate hell fire from the Word of God, without •knowing that they are simply eliminating salvation. Every time they eliminate hell they eliminate heaven, for they go together in the revelation. I say Jesus has. revealed to me a hell, and He has shown me people in hell suffering. He has revealed to me heaven, and people there happy and triumphant. And He has revealed a way of escape from hell, and a way to get to heaven; and anybody is a fool that will try to get ahead of God, and try to invent or patent a hell or heaven of his own. I am going to take what God says about the one and the other.

And He shows me my sin. I had not known the feelings of my heart except Jesus Christ had told me what lay in man's heart. And I had not known what a clean, pure heart was, except Jesus had described it and lived it, and given me a dictionary to define it, and then a photograph to look at. None of you know anything of the depravity in your inner soul except what you have learned out of the Bible. And all you and I know about ourselves and about the future world has been revealed to us; and this revelation comes to us, — what for? In order to draw man from his purpose, and save him from going down into the pit.

Now, let us consider, in the next place, what man's purpose is. God reveals Himself in order to draw man away from his purpose. The margin says, to draw man from his work, from his own work, from his own purpose. God, in order to save men, must draw men from themselves. He must draw us from our own center of gravity; He must draw us from our own inclinations and predilections and preconceived ideas and our own depravity. And so God reveals Himself. He comes close to us, and opens up a wonderful panorama. He opens up to us three worlds, — the world within, the world above, and the world below. He unfolds to us this vast panorama; and He does all this in order that He may draw man from his own purpose, entice and draw and win man from himself, in order that he may not go down into the pit.

I remark that by nature nobody is conscious of what their own purposes are. We have purposes and drifts and tendencies and biases and bents in our nature that we are utterly unaware of. There are tendencies in boys and girls that they are never aware of until they get to be along in years. There are subtle biases, there are motives in the human heart, that people are not aware of. People are selfish and mean and greedy and stingy and underhanded when they are not aware of it. People are cruel and harsh and unkind and brutal when they are not aware of it. People in their homes are unkind, harsh, and cruel, and biting, and sarcastic and cutting in their words, when they are not aware of it.

There is a depravity in the human heart that the human heart is not aware of. There is an over-reaching and under-reaching and selfishness towering up in the human soul, and a self-will, that, like the subtle lightning, pervades every cloud; and yet people are not aware of it. And human beings would be frightened to death if God was to show them absolutely all the little details and driftings of their nature that they are unconscious of. If God should come right squarely to us and begin to tell us all about these things we would not believe Him. We would say, "Lord, you don't know who you are talking to; I am one of the first families, and I don't have all those things in me." And God knows it is no use; but He can see away down what the drift and what the bias of our natures are, and He came by this revelation of hell to awaken us, and of heaven to entice us, to salvation. There is a latent despot in every human soul. There is a latent Nero in every human heart. There is a latent worm that never dies. There are latent principles in us that God sees will in a few years work out our absolute destruction. And God's plan is to draw us from our purposes in order to save us. He need not tell us our purposes, for we would not acknowledge them; we are not aware of them at all.

Then, again, man is not aware of the result of his purposes. The men who run off to Canada with a handful of money never designed in their lives to do that thing when they commenced. Never! The men who go to the penitentiary never designed going there. The man who dies a drunkard never designed going to a drunkard's grave. Men are doing things to-day, sinners are doing things to-day, church members are doing things to-day, they never dreamed they would do in years gone by. But gradually, notch by notch, gradually they have gone on; but they are not aware of what is going to come to pass in their own hearts and lives. God can foresee just exactly how things will turn out, and He knows if He cannot arrest and save man from sin, and the results of his sins, what the end will be. You recollect that when the old prophet saw the king he began to weep. He said, " What are you weeping at?" "Oh!" he said, "I am weeping to think of the awful, horrible, unmentionable crimes that you are going to commit "; and he went on to rehearse before the young and gay fellow the awful crimes, too horrible to mention, that he would commit. The king said, "Am I a dog? Do you think I am a dog to do those things?" But in the lapse of a very few years that young man committed those very crimes. Why? God put glasses on the old prophet's eyes, and enabled the old prophet to see what the result would be if he followed the bent of his inner heart.

So to-day we are not aware of the results of the depravity that lies in our own selves. Men who get converted, doubtless, and join the church, intending to press on their way and be good, active Christians, gradually allow depravity in some form or other to be entertained in their hearts, and to live in their hearts; and the depravity grows upon them as the years go by, and the outcome of that life is miserable indeed, and nobody but God can foresee what the end will be. So His great revelation is to draw man from his purpose, from the bent and bias of his own nature, in order to save him from going down into the pit.

There are many men to-night who once sat under lamplight as soft as this is, in churches as pleasant as this is, and heard the gospel preached, either in its more negative or positive forms, as the case may be, who were utterly unaware that they had within themselves the very things that would result in their damnation. You and I carry within ourselves those very things that, if allowed to remain in our hearts, to work out their natural and legitimate results, will land us in hell fire. And only God can foresee what the outcome of these hearts will be, and God reveals Himself to draw us from our purpose.

There is nothing in this universe so ruinous to a man as himself. The devil is not half as bad as we are ourselves, so far as our own damnation is concerned, and to leave a man to himself is the worst calamity in the universe. Nothing can be more awful in the universe than for God to walk off and leave a man all by himself.

Now, salvation consists in drawing a man from himself. That is the point. That is salvation. Salvation consists, not in a man catching himself up, not in reforming, not in eliminating, not in revamping, not in repainting. Salvation is just exactly the opposite of what the great mass suppose it to be. It is directly the opposite of all man-made dreams about salvation. Salvation is divine, supernatural, and revealed to men in order to draw men from themselves; and our salvation consists simply in drawing us from our own selves. That is salvation. Instead of trying to reform yourself and patch up yourself, it is just exactly the opposite. It is to get you to move out and leave yourself behind yourself and go off with God. That is salvation.

Now this word "purpose" in the margin is "work." It does not matter. Man's "purpose" or man's " work," it is all the same. And this can be applied to salvation. Salvation consists in saving a man from his own work, his own wisdom, his own power, his own greatness, his own glory, his own. self-esteem, his own righteousness, his own piety, his own church, his own god. Every man has a god, every man has a little church of his own manufacturing; every man has a little creed, god, church, idol, a little righteousness, a little wisdom. Salvation consists in drawing man from his own god to a true God, from his own dreams and ideas and purposes and righteousness to Jesus Christ.

There is an instinct in the human soul by which people try to work themselves into salvation. It is instinctive. People try to work themselves into pardon; and it is the most difficult thing to get people to understand that salvation is divine, supernatural, a free gift. It is all right. There must be a human side to it. There must be a human work. But it is so difficult to get the sinner to see that salvation is divine, it is a gift, it is to be received by simple faith.

It is the most difficult thing in this world to get a penitent to let go of his own works and take Jesus and His salvation. People will join the church, and be baptized either by immersion or sprinkling, or both. They will take the Lord's Supper, read prayer books, put on gowns, swing censers, bow their heads, be confirmed, go to the Holy Land, confess to a priest, dip in holy water, count their beads, go through snowstorms and all kinds of bad weather; they will do anything on God's earth but surrender to Jesus Christ and trust His blood.

I tell you, talk about popery — popery is nothing in this world but just what is everywhere in the world, salvation by works. You will find people who are running hither and thither, going to hear this man preach and that man preach. " What do you think of Dr. So-and-so? " And they will run to hear a Methodist, and then a Unitarian, a Baptist, and then a Swedenborgian, to Spiritualist meetings — trot here and there, and do anything on this earth except just turn their hearts inside out and say, " O God, I am a miserable sinner; save me for Jesus Christ's sake," and trust His blood and get salvation by simple faith.

I have traveled up and down this continent, and gone into a great many of the churches, and I tell you I find that salvation by works is an instinct to the depraved human soul, and that the Church is largely preaching salvation by works. It is, "Go and join our church," and do this and do that. Here we find people leaving one church and going to another, because they say this church don't allow them to do what they want to. One girl in Indiana left her church because the pastor had religion and didn't allow dancing, and went to a church where the pastor had no religion, and where they allowed dancing and advocated it; and she thought she would get to heaven all straight. The minister who tells souls that they can go to heaven by doing so and so, is just as guilty before God as any pope that sells indulgences; and hell is just as close to a backsliding Methodist preacher who will do that as it is to the pope or anybody else.

My soul gets sick within me, and my eyes fill with weeping, when I see people deluded in this idea that religion consists in a thousand and one things, whereas it consists in coming to Him. Jesus did not say, Go join the church; nor, Go be baptized; nor, Go be confirmed; nor, Go commit the shorter catechism; but, " Come unto me." You can do anything out of hell but go to Jesus Christ. You can commit all the books in the world, but you won't " come to me, that ye might have life."

The same thing is true about Christian people seeking sanctification. They will do anything in this world but just fall right flat down at Jesus' feet and say, "Jesus, I am your child, but my heart is depraved. Please wash out my depravity and save me, for I cannot do it. If you do not save me, I never can be any better than I am. Cleanse me."

People go to camp meetings; they join the choir and sing; men will get up and preach sermons; they will do anything but trust the cleansing blood. They will putter round and make believe they are working hard for God, as if they could buy God off with a little bit of work. A great many people will do things to avoid the issue. They will say they are working for God. They will take a basket, or two baskets, and go round and hunt for the poor, and they will say, " Now I am working for God," and they will think God ought to sanctify them. They will go and beg subscriptions, and work, and do anything but trust the cleansing blood. Preachers will preach themselves hoarse, and they will think the Lord ought to sanctify them because they have been preaching so well. God won't sanctify you if you preach yourself to death. You cannot hire your God to sanctify your soul by doing anything. You have got to trust the cleansing blood, or you will never get a clean heart. You may weep and pray, and go around and make believe you are doing a lot of work, but let me say, you have got to come right down where you can say, Lord, —

In my hand no price I bring;

Simply to Thy cross I cling.

Jesus, Thy blood, Thy blood alone,

Has power sufficient to atone.

And I will tell you why. There are some things you cannot buy; there are some things you cannot hire. You can hire an Irish girl or a German girl or an American girl to cook your breakfast for you; but you cannot hire any servant girl to love your children for you. When it comes to loving your wife or loving your husband or child, that is a job you cannot let out. You can hire things done on the plane of hiring, but there are some things that are infinitely beyond hiring. And the blood of Jesus cannot be hired and cannot be bought. A bride can give herself to her husband, but she cannot be bought; there are not riches enough in the universe of God to buy her, but she can give herself away.

Jesus Christ cannot be bought, but He will give Himself to you. He is above being bought. Jesus says, "I give you my blood and I will give you my cleansing; I will give you my salvation and I will give you myself; but you cannot buy me. I am not in the market to be sold, but I will give myself." And yet the world is so gross and so heathenish and so vile, it does not understand that about God. It thinks God will traffic with His precious blood, like a man will his old clothes. People do not know who God is. When you know the Lord you will find out that God cannot be bought, but He can be induced to give Himself to you. So the precious blood is a gift, but it never can be purchased. You cannot purchase it by saying prayers nor counting beads nor preaching sermons, any more than you can purchase it by brass cents; not a bit.

Now, my friends, preachers and people, if you want a clean heart you have just simply got to lay aside all your own merit and all your own righteousness, all your own wisdom, all your own good works, all your own glory, and come to God, naked, empty handed, and take it as a free gift. Do it to-night, right here.

So salvation is to save man from his own works. Then again, this applies to business. God reveals Himself to us in order to draw man not only from his own works in saving him, but to draw man from his own works, his own business. People are devoted to business, Christian people. They are so devoted to their business that it becomes an idol, and the Lord reveals Himself to draw us from being devoted to our own affairs, our own business. How many men there are making a god of their business! They cannot go to the holiness convention, they cannot go to prayer meeting; they have no time to get a higher, deeper life. They have no time to be converted, in the first place. Men say, " I am a business man "; and somehow people think they can talk about being a business man, and that is a license for them to absent themselves from secret prayer and family prayer, and the real duties belonging to the inner and spiritual life. Such men do not know that they are blaspheming God and putting up another god in the place of Jesus; but they are really saying, "My business is my god, and I must worship down at my shop, my store, and my office, and I must leave Jesus with the women and children. I must go off and attend to business. I am a business man." Everybody who talks in that way proclaims his idolatry — that he is worshiping a god that is not the Lord God. No time to get sick, they say, and death comes and robs them, and then the devils laugh.

Oh, how devoted people are! Sometimes people are devoted to a little patchwork, to a little visiting, to any little work. They have got some little job on hand, and they say, " I would like to, but I really have no time for secret prayer, no time to look after my soul's welfare, because here is this little piece of business, and I must attend to it." And they are so devoted; and somehow the devil comes in and throws a sort of gilding over the work, and makes them believe it is halfway pious for them to neglect their soul's salvation and to attend to business. What do they need? They need a red-hot revelation from God to draw them from their work — in the language of the text, to save them from going down into the pit. People are going down to the pit all around, because they are so devoted to what they call their business, their domestic affairs, and their science and their philosophy and their work. Now just think of those people dying. Just think of the awful lonesomeness of going into eternity and never having anything to do but to wail and gnash their teeth, and cry, " Fool, fool! " Here is a man who cannot read the Bible, he is so busy with the newspaper. Here is a man who cannot say his prayers in secret, for he must rush down and unlock the office. No time to wait on Jesus, no time to have a little talk with Jesus, no time to get a peep into eternity, no time to consider the soul's welfare; and when they die, they go out disembodied ghosts, to wander through eternity, where there are no more works, no newspapers, no banks, no railroads. I wonder what poor sinners will do!

Where are the men who tramped these streets thirty years ago? The graveyards are full of people whose feet once moved along these streets, so busy, busy, busy, busy. Their bodies are now decaying in the dust; their souls are in some lonesome vestibule of perdition, and they have nothing to do. No railroads, steamboats, shops, nor stores. What on earth do these people do through the lonesome ages of eternity? That is where we are going to unless we are prepared for heaven. Every unsaved person, as sure as you live, you are simply preparing yourself to sit in some lonely chamber of eternity, and wail and wail. You say you are busy now. Well, the day will come when death will relieve you of all your business, and you will have nothing to do through all eternity but to sink into the pit.

Well, it has a still closer application. God wants to save man from his own church work. A great deal of so-called church work nowadays is a substitution for the Holy Ghost. People are busy working for the church; they are so busy. They say, "Really I am busy working for the church," and they have what is so-called church work.

There is a vast amount of ecclesiastical work in these times that does not have anything more to do with salvation than a fire company has. There is a vast amount of puttering and busying around, and running hither and thither, doing jobs that look to be ecclesiastical, that seem to have a churchly aspect to them; but they have no relation to spiritual life or salvation, or the Holy Ghost. How easy it is to take up something or other in the shape of church work and make that a substitute for the baptism of the Holy Ghost! We are so busy with our church work we have no time to seek power. Now God wants to draw man from his own work, from his own ecclesiastical work, if need be, in order that He may save him from going into the pit.

Now, what is this pit? That is the last point. It is a bottomless pit. A great many persons laugh at a bottomless pit. They say, " How can there be a pit that has no bottom to it?" The Bible does talk about it, and I presume God knows what He is talking about. God does talk about a bottomless pit. The Bible says that this bottomless pit is in the outer darkness. Well, now, I can simply give you an illustration of a bottomless pit; whether it be the real pit or not, it is one like it. Suppose this world were hollow, as scientists think it is, largely, and full of fire — and they think it is full of fire, burning sulphur. Now suppose you could bore a hole in the earth, and drop something right down in the middle of this world, and there was a great cavity inside. Will you tell me where the bottom of that place would be? The exact center of that hollow space would be the center of the world. But if you go up on this side of the world, that is on the top; if you go down there, that is on the top; and where is the bottom of a concave surface, like the hollow earth? The bottom is the center. Now, then, that is absolutely and really a bottomless pit; and there may be a world away off some where that God has made hollow, where the sun never shines and there is no light, and in an enormous cavity God may punish the lost forever. That is the external meaning, the physical meaning.

But do you know there is another meaning to the words "bottomless pit," that comes closer home, and that is your own selves? Man is a sphere, man is a little world by himself; and when man falls from God and cuts loose from God, and gets away beyond the touch of the Holy Ghost and beyond the touch of the cleansing blood, man naturally and everlastingly gravitates into his own self, and falls, falls, falls, world without end, all through eternity; keeps falling into his own self. Man is forever gravitating to the center of his own being, and never finding it; and there is in man's soul, just as in a hollow globe, a bottomless pit. Suicides find it, misanthropes and melancholists; people who despair find it; people who brood over themselves. Oh! to think of the awful horror of just simply devouring yourself all through eternity; falling into self, cursing yourself, finding fault with yourself, calling yourself fool, tearing your hair, saying, " What a fool I was, what a fool I was, what a fool I was! God, why didn't you kill me? What a fool I was!" forever and forever.

Man can never find repose in himself. You can never find a place of rest in your own soul. Your own soul has no more place for a rest than a hollow world has; and if you were tumbled into a hollow world, where could you find a place to put your foot on? The only way a human being can rest, or an angel can rest, is to get out of one's self, and lean down on God and repose in God. Jesus' bosom is the only pillow where immortal souls can rest; on Jesus' heart, the center of the universe, where all things can repose. And if you cut loose from Jesus and His salvation, and try to find rest in yourself, you are forever and forever sinking down in your own self, in your own thoughts, and passing the long centuries like a piece of iron in a hollow world. You can never find rest.

And so, friends, the worst hell is the pit that man carries in his own soul, — to be forever tumbling and falling into your own self, without ever finding any rest, any peace, any comfort, any satisfaction; forever gravitating from God, and going down, down, down, without ever finding a place of repose. That is the pit that God wants to save us from, and He knows that we have a tendency that way. And God calls by nature and calls by the conscience, and we still go on -, and then He comes closer, by visions and dreams, and revelation and Bible, and the bleeding Lamb and a cross; and He makes all His revelation in order to call us from our own selves, our own works, our own purposes; to save us to His own self, that we may not go down into the pit.

Oh, I beg of you, bid good-bye to your own selves to-night! Bid good-bye to your depravity, your doubts and fears, and just put your eye on Jesus, and go straight to Jesus and say, " Jesus, I will take you, and I will take the Father in you, and I will take the Holy Ghost in you; I will put my arms by faith around Jesus crucified, and in Him I will receive the Father, and in Him I will receive the Holy Ghost. I take Jesus to wash my soul and cleanse my heart, and I will risk my eternity in His hands, and instead of gravitating into the pit of my own self, I will fall over in the bosom of my redeeming Lord."