SIN AND SALVATION. MAN A FAILURE. "Ye must be born again."-JOHN iii, 7. CAKE him where you will, and man has always been a failure. of it; a failure before the flood and a failure after it; a failure in the wilderness and a failure in Canaan. Hear what David says: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me." Men are slow to find out that none are pure in the sight of God; but the nearer they get to him the more they see their own sinfulness. Job could argue with his friends and make himself out to be a very good man, a benevolent man, such a man as you would like to have for an elder, or church-warden, or chairman of the Board of Foreign Missions. If there was an endowment to be raised for a theological seminary his name would be first on the list; but the moment that God said to him, "Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me," and then began to put to him a few questions, Job saw his sinfulness, and cried out, "I am vile. I abhor myself." No man is fit to come into God's kingdom till he learns this first letter of the alphabet; but there are a great many who want to begin with Z instead of A. If a mar don't believe he is lost to begin with, what does he want of a Gospel or a Saviour? Did any of you ever go down into a coal-pit, fifteen hundred or two thousand feet, right down into the bowels of the earth? If you have, don't you know that it would be sheer madness to try to climb up the steep sides of that shaft and so get out of the pit? Of course you couldn't leap out of it; in fact, you couldn't get out of it at all by yourself. But I'll tell you this-you could get out of a coal-pit fifteen hundred feet deep a good deal quicker than you can get out of the pit that Adam took you into. When Adam went down he took the whole human family with him. But the Lord, by means of his cross, has lifted us out of the pit of ruin. Now who was it to whom Christ said, "Ye must be born again?" It was to Nicodemus, as moral a man, I presume, as lives in the city of Boston. There is not a thing on record against him. He was a ruler of the Jews; he belonged to the highest ecclesiastical court on earth at that time; if he lived now he would be called the Rev. Dr. Nicodemus, and we would make him president of some theological seminary—perhaps give him a chair at Andover. He was a man who stood high, and yet this very man Christ said must be born again. I am glad this was said to Nicodemus and not to the poor woman at the well, because then the moral men in Boston would have said, "I hope the revival will reach all the harlots and drunkards in Boston, but we respect able people don't need it; O, no!" But if Nicodemus, that moralist in Jerusalem, needed to be born again, so does every man in Boston. This idea, that you who are born in Boston don't need to be born of the Spirit, comes from the devil; it don't come from the Bible. You can't find that anywhere in the Scriptures; the moralist of Boston needs to be converted as much as the drunkard. "Except ye be converted, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of God." "Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish," said Christ to the moralists of his time. So don't flatter yourselves that you are going to get into the kingdom of God without being converted; or that the poor harlots and drunkards need to be converted, and you do not. The moralists of this audience need to be converted, for Christ said to Nicodemus, “Except "—put that word in there-" Except ye be born again, ye cannot see the kingdom of God." Wont you just ask yourself the question? Let it come home to every heart to-night! Don't think, now, I am speaking to the man who is next to you, or the man behind you. That is the way ministers lose about half their sermons. People are all the time lending their ears for some one else, and saying: “O, that will hit somebody else; that is good for a man behind me," and he passes it over his shoulder, and that man over his, and so it goes out doors. Let it commence right down here to-night, and lodge in your hearts, and then let it go around all over the platform. Don't let any one excuse himself to-night. Let us have a heart-searching time. Let us ask God to show us whether we have been born of the Spirit, because it is a solemn question, a terribly solemn question! "Except-a man-be born-again--he cannot -see-the kingdom-of God." I wish I could get you to think five minutes to-night. Just forget the preaching and the surroundings, and let the question sink down into your heart: "Have I been converted? Have I been born ,of the Spirit?" When I was born, in,1837, I was born after the flesh, with a wicked nature which I had inherited all the way back from fallen Adam; but when I was born again, in 1856, then I became a child of God. A Christian is the most remarkable thing on the face of the earth. He has two natures, the flesh nature and the spiritual nature; and these two are at war, one against the other, until grace finally triumphs over nature. This world is one vast hospital. Everybody is sick; • everybody needs a physician; but, thanks be unto God! there is the great Physician, who is able to cure all diseases of soul and body. I heard of a young man, a surgeon in Belfast, who used to go into the hospitals, and when he found a wounded man, and was making ready to operate upon him, he would say to him: “Look at your wound, take a good look at it ;" and when he had come to realize what a bad, dangerous wound it was, he would say, "Now look at me:" and then he would begin to cut. He That is the way with Christ, the great physician. wants us to take a good look at our sick, sinful souls, and then he wants us to stop looking at ourselves and our sins, and look straight at him. Not one here, another there, and another somewhere else, but whosoever believeth shall be saved. God wants every one of his children in heaven. Somebody will say, Why, that is Universalism. Yes, the offer of salvation is a universal offer. "Jesus Christ, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man." All you want to prove is, that you were born into this world, and I will prove to you that you have a Saviour., If you were born in the moon, or, some of the planets, I don't know how the case may be; but if you are human, if you are flesh and blood, you may be born again, born of the Spirit into everlasting life. "TEKEL." "Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting."-Dan. v, 27. AFTER briefly reciting the single scene from the life of king Belshazzar-the record of his one night of idolatrous feasting and revelry, wherein he and a thousand of his lords drank wine out of the holy vessels of the house of the Lord which his father had brought from the temple of Jehovah in Jerusalem, praising the gods of silver and gold-Mr. Moody pictured the fear of the king as the writing appeared; the interpretation thereof by Daniel; the entry of Cyrus and his army that very night, and the death of Belshazzar.-He then made the thrilling proposition to weigh all the souls then present in the balance of God's judgment, to see if they were not "Tekel," like the wretched Belshazzar. MEN cavil now at God's word, and think themselves good enough to be saved without Christ; but when the judgment comes their view of themselves will be altogether different. Suppose God were to give us notice that we were, every man and woman in this Tabernacle, to be weighed to-night in his balance, suspended from his throne in heaven and dropped down here before us, how many of you would be ready to be weighed ? Sinner, are you ready to be weighed on God's scales? What shall we have to weigh with? The law of God. "O," says some one, "I don't want to be weighed by the law that is gone by; we are not living now under the law." But what does Christ say about it? "Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets. I |