no longer be God, since truth is essential to deity. Until Christ himself shall fail he cannot refuse to save one that trusteth in him; and if he were to fail it would prove that he was not omnipotent, and could not therefore be God. And if the Spirit of God which hath wrought us to the selfsame thing, even to this day, were after all to deny his own witness, and suffer the new life which is in us to die out, then he were not the almighty, indwelling Quickener and Comforter of former days. No, beloved, everything hangs upon the divine fidelity. If believers are lost, God loses more than they do, for he loses his honour, he loses his character for truthfulness, and the glory of his name is tarnished. If I am a sheep and I am lost, I am a great loser certainly; but then I am not my own, but belong to the Great Shepherd, and he has lost me, and so is a loser too. If I am a member of Christ's body and I am lost, I am a great loser certainly, but my Head is a loser too, for henceforth his body is incomplete. The church is the fulness of Christ, "the fulness of him that filleth all in all"; and, I venture to say it, Jesus Christ were not a perfect Christ if he lost the very least and meanest of those who put their trust in him. It would be hell's boast against him to all eternity that he could not keep his own. If the devil could get a believer in hell, what a noise he would make about him! "Jesus of Nazareth, here is one of thine own, one who trusted in thee, and yet he is in hell. Thou didst keep the strong because they kept themselves, but thou couldst not keep the weak, and therefore here is one, lost, lost for ever." How would hellish malice exult if such an occasion for scorn were given. But it shall never be. Because Jesus lives we shall live also, and shall not be confounded. Let us rest in our Lord's faithfulness, and accept the pledges of his eternal affection.

"His honour is engaged to save
The meanest of his sheep;
All that his heavenly Father gave
His hands securely keep.

"Nor death nor hell shall e'er remove
His fav'rites from his breast;
In the dear bosom of his love
They must for ever rest."

Amen and amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-Hebrews vi.

HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"-395, 550, 397.

REFINED, BUT NOT WITH SILVER.

A Sermon

DELIVERED BY

C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction."-Isaiah xlviii. 10.

THE Lord refines his people, but he exercises great discrimination as to the means by which he does so. A silver furnace is one of the very best for the removal of dross, and would seem to be well adapted for refining the most precious things, but it is not choice enough for the Lord's purpose with his people. It is prepared with extreme care, and has great separating power, but the purging away of sin needs greater care and more cleansing energy than a silver refinery can supply. The greatest delicacy of skill is exhibited by the refiner, who watches over the process, and regulates the degree of heat and the length of time in which the precious metal shall lie in the crucible: this, then, might well serve as a figure of the best mode of sanctification, but evidently the figure falls short in its delicacy. The process of silver refining is, no doubt, one of the best arranged and most ably conducted of the works of man; but when the Lord sits as a refiner, he executes his work with greater wisdom and diviner art. Silver refining is but rough work compared with the Lord's purification of his people, and therefore he says, "I have refined thee, but not with silver." The Lord hath a furnace of his own, as it is written, "his furnace is in Jerusalem," and in this special furnace he purifies his people by secret processes unknown to any but himself. He has a fire of his own kindling in Zion, compared with which all other flame is strange fire, and only in this peculiar fire will he in his own singular fashion consume his people's dross and tin. His saints are more precious than silver or gold, and therefore while in one place it is written, "Thou hast tried us as silver is tried," yet in another he declares that he has gone about it after a diviner sort, and hath refined us, "but not with silver." No one would think of refining silver by the same rough means as they smelt iron, so neither will the Lord purify his precious ones, who are far above silver in value, by any No. 1,430.

1

but the choicest methods. More subtle and yet more searching, more spiritual and yet more true, more gentle and yet more effectual are the purifying processes of heaven; there is no refiner like our refiner, and no purity like that which the Spirit works in us.

Note, then, that distinguishing and discriminating grace finds room to exercise itself even in the trials of the elect: "I have chosen thee in the furnace, yet not in the best furnace that man could make, but in a furnace of my own, which I reserve for my peculiar treasures." There is distinguishing grace in all the trials of God's people. Every man in the world has a measure of trial, for "we are born to trouble as the sparks fly upward"; but there is a distinction between the sorrows of the wicked and the trials of the righteous-a very grave distinction between the punishments of the ungodly and the chastisements of them that fear God. There is a furnace for each metal, but the more precious the ore the more special the refining. There is a furnace for all men-for kings upon their thrones, to whom sickness and bereavement come as freely as to the poor; for the rich in the midst of their wealth, from whom their substance departeth, or their power to enjoy what they have heaped together: but there is a special fire, a reserved furnace, into which neither the great ones of the earth nor the wealthy ones thereof shall ever be placed; it is kept for more precious material than the unregenerate children of men. God's furnace in Zion is especially meant for his own people. Of each of these right royal jewels he says, "I have refined thee, not with the precious things of earth-the kings and princes, the silver ones among mortals; but I have refined thee in a different manner, and thus I make my election to be visible, even in connection with the furnace in which I refine my treasures.'

I will push the thought a little farther, dear friends, and remark that the Lord has special dealings with each one of his saints, and refines each one by a process peculiar to the individual, not heaping all his precious metals into one furnace of silver, but refining each metal by itself. You do not know my trials, I am glad you do not: neither do I know yours, nor could I wish to bear that which you may have to suffer. There is a common sympathy, for we all go into the furnace; but there is a distinction in the case of each one, for to each one the furnace differs. Some tender hearts would be utterly crushed if they were afflicted as others are. Does not even the husbandman teach us this? He does not beat out the tender cummin and fitches with the cart wheel which he turns upon the heavier grain. No; he has different modes of operating upon the different kinds of seeds. They must all be thrashed, but not all thrashed in the same way. Thou, brother, mayest be as a sheaf of the best corn. Be thou grateful; but remember thou shalt feel the sharp thrashing instrument having teeth. And thou, my brother, mayest be one of the tender seeds, the minor seeds of the Master's garner. Be thou grateful, for thou shalt feel a lighter flail than some others; but do not compliment thyself upon it, for thou mightest almost regret that gentler flail, because it proves that thou art of lighter stuff, although still true grain of the Master's sowing.

Beloved, I would venture to go so far as to say that the lines have not fallen to any two men in precisely the same places. We rejoice as

we read the life of David, because he seems to set us all forth. David is to the church of God what Shakespeare is to the world :

"A man so various, that he seems to be

Not one, but all mankind's epitome;"

and yet David is totally distinct from any other of the saints. There are not, and could not be, two Davids. So you and I may travel in lines almost parallel, and we may therefore know each other's griefs, and tenderly sympathize, but there is a turning in my life which you have never reached, and there is a dark corner in your life which I have never seen. The skeleton in any one person's house is of a different sort to that which haunts any other dwelling. No one man is the exact replica of another. In all this, divine sovereignty operates in connection with divine love and divine wisdom, purifying all the sons of Levi, giving to each one his own separate purification, according as his need may be. "I have refined thee, but not with silver. I have chosen thee." Marknot "you," but "thee." A distinct personal word is used, and is addressed to each separate saint. "I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction."

Having thus sufficiently shown that distinguishing grace is to be seen even in the trials of the chosen, we will now turn to the subject of this evening, which is the sweet connection which exists between God's election and the furnace. I have many things to say to you, and therefore I will say them as briefly as I can, asking you to jot them down upon the tablets of your memory, and enlarge upon them when you are alone.

I. And, first, between God's election and the furnace there is this connection-that THE FURNACE WAS THE FIRST TRYSTING PLACE BETWEEN ELECTING LOVE AND OUR SOULS.

God did not choose his people in the furnace in any sense in which it can be said that he never chose them before they were there, for he chose them before the foundation of the world. Before one solitary star had begun to peer through the darkness the Lord had given over his people unto Christ to be his heritage, and their names were in his book; but the first manifestation of his electing love to anyone of us was where? Well, I venture to say it was in the furnace. Abraham knew little of God's love to him till the voice said, "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee." This was a grievous trial for him: the breaking up of family ties and associations was a furnace to him; and then it was that he knew that God had chosen him, for the same voice said, " And I will bless thee, and thou shalt be a blessing." I do not think that Isaac knew much about God's choice of him till he went up the mountain's side, and said to his father, "Behold the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" When he found out that the burnt sacrifice was to be himself, it was there that he, like his father knew Jehovah-Jireh, and learned the covenant. So was it with Jacob. Little did he understand the mystery of electing love till he lay down one night with the stones for his pillow, the hedges for his curtains the skies for his canopy, and no attendant but his God; and as he

1

slept, even there at the furnace-mouth, an exile from his parents and his home, he began to understand that God had highly favoured him in his electing love. Certainly, Israel as a nation did not understand God's election till the people were in Egypt; and then, when Goshen, the land of plenty, became a land of brickmaking and sorrow and grief, and the iron bondage entered into their souls, they cried unto God, and began to understand that secret word-" I have called my son out of Egypt.'" They knew then that God had put a difference between Israel and Egypt. The more they were oppressed the more they multiplied; the more they were afflicted the more God blessed them; and they perceived that the hand of God was in this, and that he had met with them there in the furnace of affliction. Yes, if you want the trysting place of the electing God with the chosen soul, it is just there, at the back of the desert, where the bush burns with fire and yet is not consumed. Now mayest thou put off thy shoe from off thy foot, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground, while out of the bush there comes the voice-"I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." God finds his people in the place of trial and distress, and there he reveals himself in his special character as their God. Did he not say to Moses, "I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and I have heard their cry"?

We will settle this matter by personal experience. When did you first know anything about God's choice of you? Was it not when you were in trouble-in many cases in temporal trouble? You had prospered in the world for years, and you knew not God, but you were like the prodigal son, wasting your substance in riotous living. By-and-by things went against you, and you became poor, and sick, and sorry, and then it was that you began to think of the Father's house, and resolved to fly to it. Then it was that electing love began to deal with you. I own that it was not so in all cases. With some of us it was very different; but I make no kind of exception to another rule, namely, that we first began to learn electing love when we were in spiritual distress. When that fine righteousness of ours turned out to be a spider's cobweb, when that hope on which we had built so fondly began to rock and reel beneath our feet, when we found ourselves on the borders of death and at the gates of hell; it was then that free grace and dying love rang out most sweetly in our ear. We had often kicked against the doctrine of free grace before, but now we clutched at it as a hungry man at a piece of bread, which before he had despised. We saw that it was the only hope for us, and we turned to it; and, blessed be God, we found salvation. Would our proud wills have ever bent before the sceptre of sovereign grace if they had not first been melted in the furnace of soul-trouble? Should we have ever known that the Lord killeth and maketh alive if we had not ourselves been slain by the fire of his word? Had he not permitted us to lie like Nebuchadnezzar's guards, slain at the furnace mouth, we should never have known the truth. "It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy." While we heard the thunder roll-"I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion"-we bowed our heads meekly, accepted the grace which was in Christ Jesus, and at the