loves you. You prize such a man above rubies. So is it with the child of God. The mere legalist does what he ought, or at least thinks he does so; but as for heartiness and zeal, he knows nothing of such things. The child of God, with all his feebleness and his blundering, is far more accepted, for he does all he can out of pure love, and then cries, "I am an unprofitable servant, I have done no more than was my duty to have done; the Lord help me to do more." God accepts heart service, but heart service the law never did produce, and never will. The only true heart service in the world comes from those who are not under the law, but under grace; hence sin shall not have dominion over those who are not under the law. The spirit of the world is legal, and its wise men tell us that we must preach to people that they must be virtuous or they will go to hell, and we must hold out heaven as the reward of morality. They believe in the principle of chain and whip. But what comes of such doctrine? The more you preach it, the less virtue, the less obedience there is in the world. But when you preach love the effect is very different— "Come," saith God, "I forgive you freely. Trust my Son, and I will save you outright, though in you there is nothing to merit my esteem. Accept my free favour, and I will receive you graciously, and love you freely." This looks at first sight as if it gave a licence to sin, but how does it turn out? Why, this wondrous grace taking possession of the human heart breeds love in return, which love becomes the fountain of purity and holiness, and such as receive it endeavour to perfect holiness in the fear of God. Beloved, do not get under the law, do not yield to legal threats or legal hopes, but live under the free grace gospel. Let the note that peals on your ear be no longer the thunder of Sinai. "Do and live," but let it be the sweet song of free grace and dying love. Ah, ring those charming bells from morn till eve. Let us hear their liquid music again and again. Live and do; not do and live: not work for salvation, but being saved, work; being already delivered, go forth and prove by your grateful affections and zealous actions what the grace of God has done for you. "Whosoever believeth in Jesus Christ hath everlasting life." "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned." Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-Romans v. vi.

HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"-911, C17, CAC.

UNDER CONSTRAINT.

A Sermon

DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, APRIL 28TH, 1878, BY

C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead.”—2 Corinthians v. 14.

THE apostle and his brethren were unselfish in all that they did. He could say of himself and of his brethren that when they varied their modes of action they had ever the same object in view; they lived only to promote the cause of Christ, and to bless the souls of men. He says, "Whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God: or whether we be sober, it is for your cause." Some may have said that Paul was too excitable, and expressed himself too strongly. "Well," said he, "if it be so, it is to God." Others may have noticed the reasoning faculty to be exceedingly strong in Paul, and may perhaps have thought him to be too coolly argumentative. "But," said Paul, "if we be sober, it is for your

Viewed from some points the apostle and his co-labourers must have appeared to be raving fanatics, engaged upon a Quixotic enterprise, and almost if not quite out of their minds. One who had heard the apostle tell the story of his conversion exclaimed, "Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad;" and no doubt many who saw the singular change in his conduct, and knew what he had given up and what he endured for his new faith, had come to the same conclusion. Paul would not be at all offended by this judgment, for he would remember that his Lord and Master had been charged with madness, and that even our Lord's relatives had said, "He is beside himself." To Festus he had replied, "I am not mad, most noble Festus; but speak forth the words of truth and soberness"; and to Corinthian objectors he gave a still fuller reply. Blessed are they who are charged with being out of their mind through zeal for the cause of Jesus, they have a more than sufficient answer when they can say, "If we be beside ourselves, it is to God." It is no unusual thing for madmen to think others mad, and no strange thing for a mad world to accuse the only morally sane among men of being fools and lunatics: but wisdom is justified of her No. 1,411.

children. If others assailed the apostle with another charge, and insinuated that there was a method in his madness, that his being all things to all men showed an excess of prudence, and was no doubt a means to an end, which end it is possible they hinted at was a desire for power, he could reply most conclusively, "If we be sober, it is for your cause. Paul had acted so unselfishly that he could appeal to the Corinthian church and ask them to bear him witness that he sought not theirs but them, and that if he had judged their disorders with great sobriety it was for their cause. Whatever he did, or felt, or suffered, or spake, he had but one design in it, and that was the glory of God in the perfecting of believers and the salvation of sinners.

Every Christian minister ought to be able to use the apostle's words without the slightest reserve; yea, and every Christian man should also be able to say the same: "If I be excited, it is in defence of the truth; if I be sober, it is for the maintenance of holiness: if I seem extravagant, it is because the name of Jesus stirs my inmost soul; and if I am moderate in spirit and thoughtful in mood, it is that I may in the wisest manner subserve the interests of my Redeemer's kingdom." God grant that weeping or singing, anxious or hopeful, victorious or defeated, increasing or decreasing, elevated or depressed, we may still follow our one design, and devote ourselves to the holy cause. May we live to see churches made up of people who are all set on one thing, and may those churches have ministers who are fit to lead such a people, because they also are mastered by the same sacred purpose. May the fire which fell of old on Carmel fall on our altar, whereon lieth the sacrifice, wetted a second and a third time from the salt sea of the world, until it shall consume the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and lick up the water that is in the trench. Then will all the people see it, and fall upon their faces, and cry, "The Lord, he is the God; the Lord, he is the God."

The apostle now goes on to tell us why it was that the whole conduct of himself and his co-labourers tended to one end and object. He says, "The love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then the all died." I give you here as exact a translation as I can. Two things I shall note in the text: first, under constraint; secondly, under constraint which his understanding justified.

66

I. Our main point will come under the head "UNDER CONSTRAINT.” Here is the apostle, a man who was born free, a man who beyond all others enjoyed the greatest spiritual liberty, glorying that he is under constraint. He was under constraint because a great force held him under • its power. "The love of Christ constraineth us." I suppose constraineth us" is about the best rendering of the passage that could be given; but it might be translated "restraineth." The love of Christ restrains true believers from self-seeking, and forbids them to pursue any object but the highest. Whether they were beside themselves or sober, the early saints yielded to divine restraint, even as a good ship answers to her helm or as a borse obeys the rein. They were not without a restraining force to prevent the slightest subjection to impure motives. The love of Christ controlled them, and held them under its power. But the word "restrained" only expresses a part of the sense, for it means that he was "coerced or pressed," and so impelled forward as one carried along by

pressure. All around him the love of Christ pressed upon him as the water in a river presses upon a swimmer and bears him onward with its stream. Bengel, who is a great authority, reads it, "Keeps us employed": for we are led to diligence, urged to zeal, maintained in perseverance, and carried forward and onward by the love of Jesus Christ. The apostles laboured much, but all their labour sprang from the impulse of the love of Jesus Christ. Just as Jacob toiled for Rachel solely out of love to her, so do true saints serve the Lord Jesus under the omnipotent constraint of love. One eminent expositor reads the word, "containeth us," as though it signified that the Lord's servants were kept together and held as a band under a banner or standard; and he very appropriately refers to the words of the church in the Song, "His banner over me was love." As soldiers are held together by rallying to the standard, so are the saints kept to the work and service of their Lord by the love of Christ, which constrains them to endure all things for the elect's sake, and for the glory of God, and like an ensign is uplifted high as the centre and loadstone of all their energies. In our Lord's love we have the best motive for loyalty, the best reason for energy, and the best argument for perseverance.

The word may also signify "compressed," and then it would mean that all their energies were pressed into one channel, and made to move by the love of Christ. Can I put restraint and constraint, and all the rest, into one by grouping them in a figure? I think I can. When a flood is spread over an expanse of meadow land, and stands in shallow pools, men restrain it by damming it up, and they constrain it to keep to one channel by banking it in. Thus compressed it becomes a stream, and moves with force in one direction. See how it quickens its pace, see what strength it gathers; it turns yonder wheel of the mill, makes a sheep wash, leaps as a waterfall, runs laughing through a village as a brook wherein the cattle stand in the summer's sun. Growing all the while it developes into a river, bearing boats and little ships; and this done, it still increases, and stays not till it flows with mighty flood into the great sea. The love of Christ had pressed Paul's energies into one force, turned them into one channel, and then driven them forward with a wonderful force, till he and his fellows had become a mighty power for good, ever active and energetic. "The love of Christ," saith he, "constraineth us.'

All great lives have been under the constraint of some mastering principle. A man who is everything by turns and nothing long is a nobody: a man who wastes life on whims and fancies, leisures and pleasures, never achieves anything: he flits over the surface of life and leaves no more trace upon his age than a bird upon the sky; but a man, even for mischief, becomes great when he becomes concentrated. What made the young prince of Macedon Alexander the Great but the absorption of his whole mind in the desire for conquest. The man was never happy when he was at ease and in peace. His best days were spent on the battle field or on the march. Let him rush to the forefront of the battle and make the commonest soldier grow into a hero by observing the desperate valour of his king, and then you see the greatness of the man. He could never have been the conqueror of the world if the insatiable greed of conquest had not constrained him. Hence come your Cæsars and your Napoleons -they are whole men in their ambition, subject to the lust of dominion.

When you carry this thought into a better and holier sphere the same fact is clear. Howard could never have been the great philanthropist if he had not been strangely under the witchery of love to prisoners. He was more happy in an hospital or in a prison than he would have been at Court or on the sofa of the drawing room. The man could not help visiting the gaols, he was a captive to his sympathy for men in bondage, and so he spent his life in seeking their good. Look at such a man as Whitfield or his compeer Wesley. Those men had but one thought, and that was to win souls for Christ; their whole being ran into the one riverbed of zeal for God, and made them full and strong as the rushing Rhone. It was their rest to labour for Christ: it was their honour to be pelted while preaching and to be calumniated for the name of Jesus; a bishopric and a seat in the House of Lords would have been the death of them; even a throne would have been a rack if they must have ceased hunting for souls. The men were under the dominion of a passion which they could not withstand, and did not wish to weaken. They could sing

"The love of Christ doth me constrain
To seek the wandering souls of men ;
With cries, entreaties, tears, to save,
To snatch them from the fiery wave."

Their whole life, being, thought, faculty, spirit, soul, and body became one and indivisible in purpose, and their sanctified manhood was driven forward irresistibly, so that they might be likened to thunderbolts flung from the eternal hand, which must go forward till their end is reached. They could no more cease to preach than the sun could cease shining or reverse his course in the heavens.

Now, this kind of constraint implies no compulsion, and involves no bondage. It is the highest order of freedom; for when a man does exactly what he likes to do, if he wants to express the enthusiastic joy and delight with which he follows his pursuit, he generally uses language similar to that of my text. "Why," saith he, "I am engrossed by my favourite study; it quite enthrals me; I cannot resist its charms, it holds me beneath its spell." Is the man any the less free? If a man gives himself up to a science, or to some other object of pursuit, though he is perfectly free to leave it whenever he likes, he will commonly declare that he cannot leave it; it has such a hold upon him that he must addict himself to it. You must not think, therefore, that when we speak of being under constraint from the love of Christ we mean by it that we have ceased to exercise our wills, or to be voluntary agents in our service. Far from it, we own that we are never so free as when we are under bonds to Christ. No, our God does not constrain us by physical force; his cords are those of love, and his bands are those of a man. The constraint is that which we are glad to feel; we give a full assent to its pressure, and therein lies its power. We rejoice to admit that "The love of Christ constraineth us," we only wish the constraint would increase every day.

We have seen that Paul had a great force holding him: we advance a step further and note that the constraining force was the love of Christ. He does not speak of his love to Christ: that was a great power too, though secondary to the first; but he is content to mention the greater,