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have believed in Jesus are the produce of that divine power which raised the Son of God from the dead, shall they not live in newness of life? God has taken this pains with us, that he has made us twice over, and he has made a new heaven and a new earth for us to dwell in; whom should we serve with all our mind but him by whom we have been made anew? Then comes in redemption. We are not our own, for we are bought with a price. We dare not be selfish: we may not put self in opposition to God, but I must go further, we may not allow self to be at all considered apart from God. Even when it seems that self and God might both be served at the same time, it must not be; self in any degree will spoil all. We are never to be masters, but servants always; and to serve ourselves is to make ourselves masters. Turn thine eyes, O my heart, to the cross and see him bleeding there whom heaven adored he is the light of glory, the joy and bliss of perfect spirits, and yet he dieth there in pangs unutterable-dieth for me. O bleeding heart, my name was engraven upon thee! O tortured brain, thy thoughts were all of me! O Christ, thou lovedst me and lovest me still, and that I should serve thee seemeth but natural; that I should pray to serve with intense white-hot enthusiasm is an impulse of my life. Do you not confess it so, my brethren? Besides, remember you are one with Christ. Whom should the spouse serve but her husband? Whom should the hand serve but the head? It scarce is service. Christ is your alter ego, your other self-no, your very self; should you not live for him? You are bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh and therefore you must love him. Let a divine selfishness impel you to love your Lord. No hand, methinks, counts it hard to be serving his own head. Sure, it can be no hardness to do service to him with whom we are joined by bonds and bands of vital union. He is our head, and we are his body and his fulness. Let us fill up his glory; let us spread abroad the praises of his name. God help us to finish this sermon never, but to begin it now and go on preaching it in our lives world without end. For heaven shall lie in this: "Not unto us, not unto us, but to thy name be praise;" and the beginnings of heaven are with us now, the youth, the dawn of glory, in proportion while we say from our very souls, "Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord; whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's." And so shall it be henceforth and for ever.

As to those that know nothing of this, seeing they know not Christ, may the Lord bring them to believe in Jesus Christ this day, that they may through his grace become his servants. Amen and amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-Luke vi.

HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK."-145, 660, 661.

THE WITHERED HAND.

A $ermon

DELIVERED ON THURSDAY EVENING, MAY 22ND, 1879, BY

C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

Then

"And, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered saith he to the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, like as the other."-Matthew xii. 10, 13.

NOTE well the expression. Jesus "went into their synagogue; and, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered." A mark is set, as it were, in the margin, as if it were a notable fact. That word "behold" is a sort of note of exclamation to draw attention to it. "Behold, there was a man which had his hand withered." In many congregations, if there should step in some one of the great and mighty of the land, people would say, "Behold, there was a duke, an earl, or a bishop there." But although there were some great ones occasionally in our Saviour's congregation, I find no notes of admiration about their presence, no "beholds" inserted by the evangelists as if to call attention to their appearance. No doubt if there were in a congregation some person of known intelligence and great learning, who had earned to himself a high degree, there are persons who would say, "Do you know that Professor Science or Doctor Classic was present at the service?" There would be a "behold" put to that in the memories of many. There were persons well learned, according to the learning of the day, who came to listen to Christ, but there are no "beholds" put about their having been present. Yet in the synagogue there was a poor man whose hand had been withered, and we are called upon to note the fact.

It was his right hand which was withered, the worse of the two for him, for he could scarcely follow his handicraft or earn his bread. His best hand was useless, his bread-winner failed him. I have no doubt he was a very humble, obscure, insignificant individual, probably very badly off and in great poverty, because he could not work as his fellow craftsmen could, but not a man of any rank, or learning, or special intelligence. His being in the assembly was in itself nothing very remarkable. I suppose he had been accustomed to go to the synagogue as others of his townsmen did; yet the Holy Spirit takes care to mark that he was present, and to have the word "behold" hung

out like a signal, that it might be regarded as a special subject for consideration that the crippled man was there.

And to-night, dear friends, it matters very little to the preacher or to the congregation that you are here, if you are some person of note or consequence; for we make no note of dignitaries here, and attach no special consequence to any one in this place, where the rich and the poor meet together. But if you happen to be here as a needy soul wanting a Saviour, if you happen to be here with a spiritually withered hand so that you cannot do the things that you would, and you are wanting to have that hand restored to you, there shall be a "behold" put to that, and especially shall it be doubly emphatic if to-night the Master shall say to you, "Stretch out thy withered hand," and if the divine power shall restore that hand and a deed of grace shall be accomplished. What our Lord wanted on that particular Sabbath morning was somebody to work upon, somebody whom he might heal, and so defy the traditional legality of the Pharisees who said that it was wrong to heal on the Sabbath day. Christ did not want their health that morning: he looked out for their sickness that he might illustrate his healing power. He did not want any greatness in anybody there; but he did want some poor needy one in whom he could display his power to heal. And that is just the case to-night. If you are rich and increased in goods and have need of nothing, my Master does not want you. He is a physician, and those who practise the healing art look out for sickness as their sphere of operation. If we were to tell a wise physician of a town where nobody was sick, but everybody enjoyed perfect health, he would not settle there, unless he wished to retire from practice. My Master does not come into the assemblies where all feel themselves quite content with themselves, where there are no blind eyes, no deaf ears, no broken hearts, no withered hands; for what do such folks need with a Saviour? He looks around and his eye fixes itself upon pain, upon necessity, upon incapacity, upon sinfulness, upon everything to which he can do good; for what he wants in us mortals is the opportunity to do us good and not a pretence on our part that we can do him good.

I begin with this, because my talk to-night will be very simple, and it will only be meant for those of you who want my Lord and Master. Those of you who do not need him can go; but you that want him, it may be you shall find him to-night; and there shall be the record kept in heaven, not of those who were here, who said, "We see," nor of those who said, "Our hand is strong and deft for labour," but there shall be a register of blind ones who shall say, "Thou Son of David, open our eyes," and of withered ones who shall to-night stretch out their withered hands in obedience to his divine command. I do not know that our crippled friend when he went to the synagogue that morning expected to get his withered hand healed. Being, perhaps, a devout man, he went there to worship, but he got more than he went for. And it may be that some of you whom God means to bless to-night do not know what you have come here for. You came because you somehow love the ordinances of God's house, and you feel happy in hearing the gospel preached. You have never yet laid hold of the gospel for yourselves, never enjoyed its privileges and blessings as your own, but still you have a hankering after the best things. What if to-night the hour has

come, the hour which sovereign grace has marked with a red letter in the calendar of love, in which your withered hand shall be made strong, and your sin shall be forgiven! What bliss if you shall go your way to glorify God because a notable miracle of grace has been wrought in you! God grant it may be so done by the power of the Holy Spirit. I entreat those of you who love the Master to pray him to work wonders at this time upon many, and his shall be the praise.

I. First, we will say a little about THE PERSON TO WHOM THE COMMAND IN OUR TEXT IS ADDRESSED. "Then said Jesus to the man, stretch forth thine hand."

This command was addressed, then, to a man who was hopelessly incapable of obeying. "Stretch forth thine hand." I do not know whether his arm was paralysed, or only his hand. As a general rule when a thorough paralysis, not a partial one, takes place in the hand it seizes the entire member, and both hand and arm are paralyzed. We usually speak of this man as if the entire limb had been dried up, and yet I do not see either in Matthew, Mark, or Luke, any express declaration that the whole arm was withered. It seems to me to have been a case in which the hand only was affected. We used to have, not far from here, I remember, at Kennington Gate, a lad who would frequently get on the step of the omnibus and exhibit his hands, which hung down as if his wrists were broken, and he would cry, "Poor boy! poor boy!" and appeal to our compassion. I fancy that his case was a picture of the one before us, in which, not the arm perhaps, but the hand had become dried up. We cannot decide positively that the arm was still unwithered, but we may notice that our Lord did not say, "Stretch out thy arm," but "thine hand," so that he points to the hand as the place where the paralysis lay. If he had said, "Stretch out thy arm," as the text does not declare that the arm was dried up, we should have said that Christ bade him do exactly what he was capable of doing, and there would have been no miracle in it. But inasmuch as he says, "Stretch forth thine hand," it is clear that the mischief was in the hand, if not in the arm; and so it was putting him to do what he could not possibly do, for the man's hand was assuredly withered. It was not a sham disease. He had not made a pretence of being paralyzed, but he was really incapable. The hand had lost the moisture of life. The spirits which gave it strength had been dried out of it, and there it was a withered, wilted, useless thing, with which he could do nothing; and yet it was to such a man that Jesus said, "Stretch forth thine hand."

This is very important for us to notice, because some of you under a burden of sin think that Christ does not save real sinners-that those people whom he does save are, in some respects, not quite so bad as you that there is not such an intensity of sin about them as about your case, or if an intensity of sin, yet not such an utter hopelessness and helplessness as there is about you. You feel quite dried up, and utterly without strength. Dear hearer, it is exactly to such as you that the Lord Jesus Christ directs the commands of the gospel. We are bidden to preach to you, saying, "Believe," or at other times, "Repent, and be baptized, every one of you; "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,"-commandments not addressed, as some say they are, to sensible sinners, but to insensible sinners, to stupid sinners, to

sinners who cannot, so far as moral ability is concerned, obey the command at all. Such are bidden so to do by him, who in this case bade the man do what he, naturally in and of himself, was quite incapable of doing; because you see if he could stretch out his hand himself, there was no miracle wanted, for the man's hand was not withered at all. But it is clear that he could not move his hand, and yet the Saviour addressed him as if he could do it; in which I see a symbol of the gospel way of speaking to the sinner; for the gospel cries to him in all his misery and incapacity, "To thee, even to thee, is the word of this salvation sent.", This very incapacity and inability of thine is but the space in which the divine power may be displayed, and because thou art thus incapable, and because thou art thus unable, therefore to thee does the gospel come, that the excellency of the power may be seen to dwell in the gospel, and in the Saviour himself, and not at all in the person who is saved.

The command, then, which brought healing with it, was addressed to one who was utterly incapable.

But, mark you, it came to one who was perfectly willing, for this man was quite prepared to do whatever Jesus bade him do. If you had questioned him you would have found no desire to retain that withered hand-no wish that his fingers should remain lifeless and useless. If you had said to him, "Poor man, would you like to have your hand restored?" tears would have been in his eyes, and he would have replied, "Ay, that I would, that I might earn bread for my dear children; that I might not have to go about begging, and have to depend upon the help of others, or only earn a hard crust with this left hand of mine. I wish above all things that I could have my hand restored!" But the worst of many unconverted people is that they do not want to be healed-do not want to be restored. As soon as a man truly longs for salvation, then has salvation already come to him; but the most of you do not wish to be saved. "Oh," say you, 66 we truly wish to be saved." I do not think so, for what do you mean by being saved? Do you mean being saved from going down to hell? Everybody, of course, wishes that. Did you ever meet a thief that would not like to be saved from going to prison or being locked up by the policeman? But when we talk about salvation, we mean being saved from the habit of wrong-doing; being saved from the power of evil, the love of sin, the practice of folly, and the very power to find pleasure in transgression. Do you wish to be saved from pleasurable and gainful sins? Find me the drunkard who sincerely prays to be delivered from drunkenness. Bring me an unchaste man who pines to be pure. Find me one who is an habitual liar and yet longs to speak the truth. Bring me one who has been selfish and who in his very heart hates himself for it, and longs to be full of love and to be made Christlike. Why, half the battle is won in such cases. The initial step is taken. The parallel holds good in the spiritual world. The character I have in my mind's eye is the case of a soul desiring to be what it cannot be, and to do what it cannot do, and yet desiring it. I mean the man who cries in agony, "To will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not." "I would, but cannot, repent. My heart feels like a stone. I would love Christ, but, alas, I feel that I am fettered to the world. I would be holy, but, alas, sin comes violently