2. Consider the mercies of God. How great! how numerous! when traced from the moment of your birth, through the successive stages of life to the present hour; or contemplated in his glorious works, and most merciful dispensations! Divine mercy hath spared the life, which divine power first gave, and a long list of favors, as unmerited as they are numerous, hath swelled the account through every interval of your days. Fruitful seasons, exuberant plenty, outward peace, the possession of health, the light of yonder sun that cheers the world with his prolific beam, and the clouds that drop fatness on the earth, vallies standing thick with corn, and liberty, that crown of national privileges, are all mercies, that have a voice, would sinners but hear it, that cries, “Oh that men would therefore praise the Lord for his goodness, and declare the wonders that he doeth for the children of men!” Psal. cvii. 8. Reflect upon the mercies of redemption—upon the breadth, length, depth, and height of them, as they shine out in richest lustre in Jesus Christ; and say, Should you withhold your heart from the Father of these mercies? Because he is merciful, will you presume? And while he is dispensing his favors, will you rebel against him? Had not mercy interposed, your worthless heart had never been inquired after; and had God dealt with you as your sins deserved, you might have been at this moment beyond the reach of mercy for ever.
3. Know that another day may find you in eternity. And if the great work should not be done, who would be in your condition for ten thousand worlds? It is high time to awake out of sleep. You have, perhaps, sometimes seen and acknowledged the necessity of seeking the Lord. But, as if this were a kind of bondage in which you were to engage, or some grievous business you wished to postpone; you have been putting it off to some distant period, as if life were at your own disposal, or religion the last thing a man should think of. Or, you wished to give your heart to God; but a constant succession of snares and rivals hath to this day prevented. Oh that you may procrastinate and delay no longer! Lest, while you are asking leave of the world and your lusts to give your heart to God, death should strike the fatal blow, and transmit you to the eternal world, to lament for ever your having trifled with your immortal soul, your time, your conscience, and with God.
4. I come now to urge the last motive, taken from the nature of the person, who says, “My son, give me thine heart.” That person is God; the most high, and holy God; the Creator, Preserver, and Redeemer of men, who gave us a being, and, when in a state of apostacy, took our nature, and was manifest in the flesh, that he might save us from sin. The three persons in the Godhead, Father, Son, and Spirit, unite in the request; especially the second, who groaned beneath our weight of woes, and sunk under the burden of our imputed guilt; whose bitter passion bespoke the horrid nature of sin, and the greatness of redeeming love. It is Jesus, the chiefest among ten thousand, that asks your hearts, O sinners! They are the purchase of his blood; and can you deny him his own dear-bought property? See him in his bloody sweat, or view him bleeding and mangled on the cross, and then say, whether he must not have loved your hearts, when Gethsemane’s garden and Calvary’s mount have been witnesses to the intenseness of his desire to win them? Fancy that you were present at the tragical scene of his sufferings, and that you saw him this moment nailed to the accursed tree; and that, while in this state of ignominy and torture, you were accosted with the following address from his precious dying lips:—“Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold and see, if there was ever sorrow like unto my sorrow! Behold in my hands and feet the marks of my dying love; and see, there gushes forth a fountain in which the guilty may wash and be clean. While my temples stream with blood, they are disgraced with a crown of thorns that lacerate them, which I contentedly wear, that a diadem of glory may encircle your brow. My heart is big with sorrow, and upon my eye-lids is the shadow of death. My soul is transfixed with the arrows of Almighty vengeance, the poison whereof is the bitterest ingredient in my cup of sorrow. For your sins I suffer all this, and die to save you from death eternal. The last drop of my blood shall be shed to expiate your guilt, and the merit of it shall cleanse the earth, and perfume heaven. My dying breath shall be spent in prayer for the persons who brought me to this shame and pain; and I shall rejoice in this travail of my soul, if you look to me for salvation. I die to win your heart. Do not plant additional daggers in mine, or tear open my wounds afresh by denying my request. O, my son! give ME thine heart.”—Thus may we suppose the dying love of Jesus to address us. And who can withstand such philanthropy, or withhold his heart from a Redeemer, who asks it in agony and blood? A believer, contemplating his crucified Lord in such circumstances of love and sorrow, would say, with the poet,
“O may I breathe no longer than I breathe
My soul in praise to Him, who gave my soul,
And all her infinite of prospect fair,
Cut thro’ the shades of hell, Great Love, by thee!
Oh! most adorable! most unador’d!
Where shall that praise begin, which ne’er should end?”
And now, brethren, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and upon the authority of his sacred word, I beg leave to put the grand question; which I pray that every one of us may be able to answer in the affirmative, Have you given your hearts to God? I ask the question most solemnly, as one that must shortly meet you at the judgment-seat of Christ; where if either preacher or hearers appear without the blessing suggested in the text, it would be better we had never been born. Remember, as you will answer at the great and terrible day of the Lord, that I have this day begged you to give Christ your hearts. If you do, he will wash them in his blood; he will make them happy, and keep them so. But, if the world engross your affections, and sin be suffered to tyrannize in your heart, the consequence will be horrible beyond all conception. Will you, therefore, can you, dare you deny a request, that involves in it your eternal happiness or misery? May there not be one dissentient voice! But, with the most unanimous and solemn surrender, may all cry out, “Here are our hearts; blessed Jesus, take them, and seal them eternally thine.” Amen and Amen.
SERMON III.
AN INVITATION TO THE GOSPEL FEAST.
“Come; for all things are now ready.” Luke, xiv. 17.
The parable, from whence I have selected the text, resembles, in its general import, that recorded in Mat. xxii. 2–10. The design of our Lord, in both, is, to represent, under the similitude of a sumptuous feast, the rich provision, which he hath made for his people in the covenant of redemption;—the suitableness of that provision to all the effects and consequences of our fall;—the medium of its conveyance, the divine person and glorious salvation of the Son of God;—the extensive and merciful invitation, given in the gospel to participate of its rich blessings;—and the different reception, which that gospel meets with from the men of the world; some treating it with indifference and scorn, and others, through grace, embracing it as the most acceptable message, that ever addressed the ears of mortals, and as the most invaluable gift, that God could bestow, or sinners receive.
These are the principal topics illustrated in both parables: the analogy, beauty, and important tendency of which must strike the mind of any person, whose eyes have been opened to see the worth of his soul, and the method by which its guilt is to be expiated and its pollutions cleansed; who is athirst for truth, and longs to experience that happiness, which only they feel, who know Christ and him crucified: by such an one, the blessings exhibited in the parable will be considered as the most gracious vouchsafement of Heaven; and the call given in the text, as infinitely superior in importance, to that which would invite the most indigent beggar to the table of plenty and munificence, or raise a fettered captive from the terrors of a dungeon to the splendor of a throne.