Lose all their guilty stains.”
He has become a child of God, an heir of heaven. His children are climbing up his knee, and he has his arms round their necks. That dark home is now changed into a little Bethel on earth. God dwells there now. Yes; God has done all that, and that is regeneration.
THE WORTH OF GOOD RESOLVES.
Then some of you may have been saying, “I wish Mr. Moody would tell us how we are to become Christians, for he says that we cannot be Christians by trying to do good and by making new resolutions.” Many a time you have been at a meeting like this, and have resolved to turn over a new leaf, and you may now form another good resolution. If you do, you will break it. What are you going to do? If it is a new birth you are to have, you cannot create life. Can you bring life to the dead? All the wise men in London cannot do it. God alone is the author of life; and if you have the new birth, it must be God’s work. When the Jubilee Singers were in the North of England my family went to see them, and my little boy asked why they didn’t wash the black off their faces. I told him it was because they were born black. The Ethiopian cannot change his skin, nor the leopard his spots. You cannot save yourself. There is a man dying—can you put new life into him? Or can you raise up a dead body by saying, “Young man, arise”? That is the work of God. Your souls are dead in trespasses and sins, and only the Lord Jesus Christ can speak life.
THE BEGGAR AND THE PRINCE.
I imagine some of you will say, “Haven’t I anything to do?” Well, you haven’t. Salvation has been worked out for you by another. Many go all round the world in search of honour or possessions. Salvation is worth thousands of times more than any thing earth can produce; but you don’t get it that way. God has but one price for salvation. Do you want to know what it is? It is without money and without price. Rowland Hill said that most auctioneers found they had hard work to get people up to their price, but that he had hard work to get people down to his. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.” Who will have it now? I say to you, young man, will you have this gift? Suppose I was going over London Bridge, and saw a poor miserable beggar, bare-footed, coatless, hatless, with no rags hardly to cover his nakedness, and right behind him, only a few yards, there was the Prince of Wales with a bag of gold, and the poor beggar was running away from him as if he was running away from a demon, and the Prince of Wales was hallooing after him, “Oh, beggar, here is a bag of gold!” Why, we should say the beggar had gone mad to be running away from the Prince of Wales with the bag of gold. Sinner, that is your condition. The Prince of Heaven wants to give you eternal life, and you are running away from Him.
THE DYING SOLDIER.
Then you say, “If it is not by working in earnest, how am I to be saved?” I will tell you; Scripture will tell you—that is better. Take the illustration Christ used to Nicodemus; you could not have a better. He took him to the remedy: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John iii. 14, 15). Now there is the remedy. How am I to be saved? By looking to Christ; just by looking. It’s very cheap, isn’t it? Very simple, isn’t it? Just look away to the Lamb of God now and be saved. What says the great wilderness preacher? “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” You might say the whole plan of salvation is in two words—Giving; Receiving. God gives; I receive.
I remember, after one of the terrible battles in the American Civil War—I was in the army, tending soldiers—and I had just laid down one night, past midnight, to get a little rest, when a man came and told me that a wounded soldier wanted to see me. I went to the dying man. He said, “I wish you to help me to die.” I said, “I would help you to die if I could. I would take you on my shoulders and carry you into the kingdom of God if I could; but I cannot. I can tell you of One who can.” And I told him of Christ being willing to save him; and how Christ left heaven and came into the world to seek and to save that which was lost. I just quoted promise after promise, but all was dark, and it almost seemed as if the shades of eternal death were gathering around his soul. I could not leave him, and at last I thought of this third chapter of John, and I said to him, “Look here, I am going to read to you now a conversation that Christ had with a man that went to Him when he was in your state of mind, and inquired what he was to do to be saved.” I just read that conversation to the dying man, and he lay there with his eves rivetted upon me, and every word seemed to be going home to his heart, which was open to receive the truth. When I came to the verse where it says, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life”—the dying man cried, “Stop, sir. Is that there?” “Yes, it is all here.” Then he said, “Won’t you please read it to me again?” I read it the second time. The dying man brought his hands together, and he said, “Bless God for that. Won’t you please read it to me again?” I read through the whole chapter, but long before the end of it he had closed his eyes. He seemed to lose all interest in the rest of the chapter, and when I got through it his arms were folded on his breast, he had a sweet smile on his face; remorse and despair had fled away. His lips were quivering, and I leant over him, and heard him faintly whisper from his dying lips, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” He opened his eyes, and fixed his calm, deathly look on me, and he said, “Oh, that is enough; that is all I want”; and in a few hours he pillowed his dying head upon the truth of those two verses, and rode away on one of the Saviour’s chariots, and took his seat in the kingdom of God.
Oh, sinner, you can be saved now if you will! Look and live. May God help every lost one here to look on the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.