me with thy salvation. Come back to me, Lord. Come and dwell in me again.

Why should my foolish passions rove?
Where can such sweetness be
As I have tasted in thy love,

As I have found in thee ?'

Come back, my Lord, and visit me with thy salvation." Is not this a prayer made on purpose for you?

And, next, you observe in the text that the poor backslider is longing to get a sight of the good things which for a long time has been hid from him. He cries, "That I may see the good of thy chosen." He has been out amongst the swine, but he could not fill his belly with the husks. He has been hungering and thirsting, and now he remembers that in his Father's house there is bread enough and to spare. Backslider, do you remember that to-night? You know you are not happy, and you begin to perceive that you never will be happy while you are living in the far country. If you had not been a child of God you might have made a happy worldling after the sort of happiness that worldlings know; but you are spoiled for a worldling if you have ever known the love of God; and you have known that, or else you have been indeed a hypocrite. Do you not sigh to the Lord to give you these good things again? Well, he will freely give them to you, and he will not upbraid you. Come and try him. He is ready to press you to his bosom, and to forget and forgive the past, and accept you in the Beloved.

The poor backslider praying in the words of my text longs to taste once more the joy he used to feel, and therefore he says, "That I may rejoice in the gladness of thy nation"; and, again, he wants to be able to speak as he once could-"that I may glory with thine inheritance." Poor man, he is ashamed to speak to sinners now. He hangs his head in company, for there are some that call him turncoat. He does not like to have it known that he was once a Christian: and therefore he comes stealing in to the assembly of the saints as if he hoped no one would know him. There he is, but he feels half ashamed to be here: and yet he wishes that he were once more with the Christian brotherhood, and could rejoice with them. My poor friend, you used to be bold as a lion for Christ once, and now you turn tail and fly. How can you be bold with all those inconsistencies? There was a time when you might have made a martyr, but now what a coward you are; and who wonders that you are so when they know that secret sin has sapped and undermined your profession, and made you weak as water? I beg you to pray the prayer "That I may glory with thine inheritance." You never will again make your boast in the Lord till you are restored, till you come back again as you came at first with the old cry, "Father, I have sinned before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son." Come back even now, my brother, and get another application of the blood of sprinkling. Look again to Jesus. Ah, and I may here say, if you have not backslidden, look again to Jesus. Those of us who have not faller had better look to him with our brethren who have fallen, for there is the same blessing wanted by us all. We have all wandered to some extent. Come, let us look to those dear wounds anew. Can yo

not see him? Methinks he hangs before me now. The thorn-crown is on his head, and his eyes are full of languid pity and tearful grief. I see his face bestained with spittle, and black and blue with cruel bruises. I see his hands, they are founts of gore. I see his feet, they gush with rivulets of crimson blood. I look upon him, and I cry, "Was ever grief like thine, O King of sorrow?" and as I look I do remember that the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of all his people; and, looking, my sin departs from me, because it was laid on him. Looking, my heart begins to love, and then begins to leap. Looking, I come back again to where I stood before; and now, once again, Christ is my all, and I rejoice in him. Have you gone through that process, backslider? If you have done so while I have been speaking, let us praise God together.

III. The last use I have to make of my text will, I hope, be beneficial to many here present. It is this: THIS IS A VERY SWEET PRAYER FOR A POOR SORROWING SEEKER. I beg all who desire conversion to remember this prayer. They had better jot it down, and carry it home. with them, or, better still, breathe it to heaven at once.

"Remem

Consider it well. To begin with, it is a sinner's prayer. ber me, O Lord!" A sinner's prayer, I say, for the dying thief rejoiced to use the words. He could not have reached down a prayer-book and said a collect, poor man, when he was dying, and there was no need he should. This is the best of prayers, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." Trembling sinner, what suited the dying thief may well suit you. Breathe it now, "Forget my sins, my Father, but remember me. Forget my delays, forget my rejectings of a Saviour, forget the hardness of my heart, but, oh, remember me. Let everything pass away from thy mind, and be blotted from thy memory; but, dear Father, by the love of the Lord Jesus, do remember me." Sinner, do not go home without presenting that prayer to God.

Note, again, it is the prayer of a lost one. "Visit me with thy salvation." Nobody wants salvation unless he is lost. People may talk about salvation who do not feel that they are lost, but they do not know anything about it, and do not really desire it. Lost soul, where art thou? Art thou lost in a thousand ways-lost even to society? Well, here is a fit prayer for thee-" Visit me with thy salvation." Jesus Christ has not come to seek and to save those who do not want saving, but he has come on purpose to seek and to save that which was lost. Thou art the man he came to bless. Look to him, and thou shalt find that he is the Saviour thou dost require. "Visit me with thy salvation "-I cannot get this prayer into your hearts, but God can, and I am praying in my own soul that many of you in the galleries, or down below there, may now be crying, "Visit me with thy salvation."

Further, remark that our text is the prayer of one who has a dim eye"That I may see the good of thy chosen." We have told the seeker to look to Jesus, but he complains, "I do try to look, but I cannot see." Beloved seeker, I do not know that you are bidden to see. You are bidden to look; and if you could not see when you looked you would at least have obeyed the gospel command. The looking, the looking would bring salvation to you. But for dim eyes Christ is the great cure. He can take away the cataract and remove the gutta serena. Pray

to-night, "Lord, open my blind eyes, that I may see the good of thy chosen."

Then it is a prayer for a heavy heart. "That I may rejoice in the gladness of thy nation.' The seeking soul moans out, "O that I had a little joy, or even a trembling hope. If it were ever so small a portion of light I should be glad." Pray for joy. The Lord waits to give it, and if you believe in Jesus your joy shall be full.

And in the last place-not to detain you till you are weary-our text is the prayer of a spirit that is humble and laid in the very dust, which cries to God to enable it to glory with his inheritance, because it is stripped of all other glory, emptied of its own boastings. Practically its plea is, "Lord, give me to boast in thy mercy and thy goodness, for I have nothing else to boast of."

Now, beloved hearer, this prayer I would most earnestly press upon you, and I would press it upon you for these reasons.

Just think for a moment. Supposing you are living now without seeing the good of God's chosen, without being saved, what a wretched life it is to live! I cannot understand what men do without God: I cannot comprehend how they live. Do you have no cares, men? "Oh," you say, "we have anxieties in shoals." Well, where do you take them? I find I have troubles enough, but I have a God to take them to. What do you do with many troubles and no God? Do your children never distress your mind? How can you live with bad children, and no God? Do you never lose money in your business? Do you never feel distracted? Do you never say, "What shall I do? Which way shall I turn?" I suppose you do. Then what do you do without a helper or a guide? Poor weak thing as I am, I run under the shelter of my Father's wing, and I feel safe enough. But where do you go? Where do you fly? What is your comfort? I suppose you are something like the poor creatures condemned to death in old times to whom they gave a stupefying cup, so that they might die without feeling the horror of death: surely you must be under a strong delusion that you can believe a lie, for if you were in your senses you could not do without a God,-no, not with your beautiful gardens and fine parks, and wealth, and riches, much less-many of you with your poverty and hard labour. Poor man without a God, how do you keep up your spirits? What comfort is there in your life? No prayer in the morning, no prayer at night: what days, what nights! Oh, men, I could as soon think of living without eating, or living without breathing, as living without prayer. Wretched naked spirits, your souls must be with no God to cover them! But if it be bad to live without Christ-and I am sure it is,--what will it be to die without him? What will it be to look into the future, and find no light-no light, and nobody that can bring you any? You have sent to the minister, and he has spoken with you, but he cannot help you; you have had the prayers of your family, who are sobbing at the thought of losing you, but you are looking out alone like one that gazes upon an angry sea in a cold winter's storm, and you can see nothing but the palpable dark. Or, to change the metaphor, you are like a man on yonder wreck. See, he is clinging to the mast; he hears the blast go whistling by him, and anon it comes back howling around him, as if hungry for its prey. He can hear the sea mews screaming in the sky

and they seem to prophesy his doom. The waves break over him, drenching him with their brine, till he is ready to freeze as he hangs between death's awful jaws. The lifeboat has been and carried off all it can, and it will never come back any more; and, though he clings with desperation, he knows it is a forlorn hope. He will drift out to sea, and his corpse will lie where pearls lie deep, in the caverns where many thousand skeletons have bleached these many years: his case is terrible to the last degree, and yet it is a feeble picture of a soul leaving the body without an interest in Christ's salvation. Before you get into that state, cry to God, "Remember me, O Lord, with the favour that thou bearest unto thy people. O visit me with thy salvation!"

But the mist darkens and the tempest lowers in tenfold fury when we come to think what it must be to rise again from the tomb without Christ. When that last shrill clarion has sounded, and every grave and cemetery shall have given up their sleepers, and the sea has yielded up the dead that are therein, and battle-fields are swarming with the myriad slain that live again, and in the sky shall be seen the great white throne, and upon it the Son of man who bled for sinners now come to judge and to condemn his adversaries; what will men then do if they have no personal religion, no interest in Christ, no portion in his salvation? Scripture tells us that they will ask the rocks to hide them and the hills to cover them: but they have no bowels of compassion, they will yield no shelter. There will be no refuge for the ungodly, and nothing before them except the fiery indignation and wrath of God. "O turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die?”

I

This is a common scene to many of you, this great gathering in the Tabernacle. I must confess I caunot look upon it without emotion, though I see it twice each Sabbath day. Here are all of you, and I, a lone man, standing here to talk to you in God's name. It is as much as my soul is worth if I am not earnest with you; but ah, I am not half as earnest as I ought to be. Yet hear me once more. am a true prophet at this hour-when I warn you that you shall see this sight again if you reject the Saviour. Across the flames of hell you will see it, and you will say to yourself, "The preacher did warn us: he did tell us to cry to God for mercy: he did point us to the Saviour. He bade us pray, and pray there and then." You will remember my entreaties, and then you will renew your agony as, with a wail which shall never end, you will cry, "God called, but I refused: he stretched out his hands, but I regarded him not, and now the day of grace is past, and the Christ whom I despised doth laugh at my calamity and mock when my time is come: for there is no hope-no hope. I knocked too late at mercy's door. My lamp went out. I was a foolish virgin, and I am shut out in outer darkness, where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth." In the name of the everlasting God I pray you submit yourselves to Christ your Lord at once and you shall live. Amen. Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-Psalm li.

HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"-51, 584, 556.

EVERY MAN'S NECESSITY.

A Sermon

DELIVERED BY

C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"Ye must be born again."-John iii. 7.

WHEN men are perishing all around you it would be cruel to waste time in attempting to interest their minds or to amuse their fancies. We must do something more practical, and give earnest heed to their pressing necessities. Is it famine which slays them? Let us feed them. Is it cold? Let us supply them with covering. Is it disease? Let us administer medicine. When the case is urgent we confine ourselves to necessaries, and attend with our whole heart to that which must have our attention. That which may be can wait, but that which must be demands our immediate care. Now, the spiritual needs of men are urgent, and among them the most pressing is their regeneration: they must be born again, or they are lost. Therefore, at this time, we will dwell on this topic and give it our whole consideration, letting other interesting matters wait till this most weighty business is happily over. This is a must, and we must press it upon you at once with our whole heart. Our earnest desire is for a great ingathering of souls to the garner of salvation, but in order to this they must be born again. We have had many of you hovering round about us like birds around the fowler, but you are not as yet taken in the gospel net; this state of things cannot content us; we want to see you decided for Christ, and truly born again. You have been hearers long, but, alas, you remain hearers only, and are not "doers of the word.". We mean that the fault shall not lie with us; if you continue unsaved it shall not be because we have not preached the gospel and kept to preaching it, and preached it as a matter of life and death. Again, then, do we aim at the one point, the point of absolute necessity-"Ye must be born again." We trust that if one arrow does not reach the mark another may; at any rate, we will continue driving at the one target-the conversion of your souls. O you who as yet have not been brought to know the Lord, may the Holy Spirit guide the arrow at this hour.

And now we will have a little simple talk about the great experience called regeneration, or the new birth, without which no man can see the kingdom of heaven, much less enter it.