or with pride. The reason why we did not at one time perceive the glory of God in Christ was because we were blind by nature, and were darkened by the evil one. As only the pure in heart can see God, we, being impure in heart, could not see God in Christ. What, then, hath happened to us? To eternal grace be endless praise, God himself hath shined into our hearts: that same God who said "Light be," and light was, hath shined into our hearts. You know creation's story, how all things lay in black darkness. God might have gone on to make a world in darkness if he had pleased, but if he had done so it would have been to us as though it had never been, for we could not have perceived it; therefore he early said, "Let there be light." Now, God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ might have been all there, and we should never have discerned it, and as far as we are concerned it would have been as though it had never been, if the Lord had not entered into us amid the thick darkness and said, "Let there be light." Then burst in the everlasting morning, the light shined in the darkness, and the darkness fled before it. Do you recollect the incoming of that illumination? If you do, then I know the first sight you saw by the new light was the glory of God in Jesus Christ: in fact, that light had come on purpose that you might see it; and at this present moment that is the main delight of your soul, the choice subject of your thoughts. In the light of God you have seen the light of the glory of God, as it is written, "In thy light we shall see light."

One thing I want to say to comfort all who believe. Beloved, do you see the glory of God in Christ Jesus? Then let that sight be an evidence to you of your salvation. When our Lord asked his disciples, "Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?" Simon Peter answered, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Now, note the reply of the Lord Jesus to that confession: "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto you, but my Father which is in heaven." If thou canst delight in God in Christ Jesus, then remember, "no man can say that Jesus is the Christ but by the Holy Ghost," and thou hast said it, and this morning thou art saying it, and therefore the Holy Ghost has come upon thee. "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God." Thou believest this, and therefore thou art born of the Father. "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: but he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also." Thou lovest God, and thou art his: the Spirit of God hath opened thine eyes and thou art saved.

While I have been preaching this morning a number of my hearers have been saying, "We care nothing about Jesus Christ. His name is a most respectable one in our religion; we call ourselves Christians, but as to seeing the glory of God in him when he was a babe, and when he was despised and rejected of men, we know nothing of it. No doubt he is exalted now in heaven, and we worship him, though we hardly know why. But we see no special glory in him." Others of you have been saying, "Yes, God was in Christ Jesus reconciling the world unto himself, and he has reconciled me to himself. I never loved God till I saw him in Christ. I could never have any familiarity with God till I saw his familiarity with me in the person of his Son. I never understood how I could be God's son till I understood how God's Son

became a man. I never saw how I could be a partaker of the divine nature till I saw how his Son became a partaker of the human nature, and took me up unto himself that he might take me up unto his Father." Oh, beloved, do you delight in Jesus Christ? Is he all your salvation and all your desire? Do you adore him, do you consecrate yourself to his honour, do you wish to live for him, and to die for him? Then be sure that you belong to him, for it is the mark of the children of God that they love God in Christ Jesus.

IV. So I finish by mentioning, in the fourth place, THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THIS KNOWLEDGE. There have been considerable debates among the interpreters as to the precise bearing of this text, and some of them think it means that Paul is giving a reason why he preached the gospel. This makes the verse run thus:-" For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, that we might give out again the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." God gave light to the apostles that they might show forth the light of the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ to the nations. I do not know whether this is the exact run of the text, but I know it is true anyhow. Never is a gleam of light given to any man to hide away, and to spiritual men the great object of their lives, after they have received light, is to reflect that light in all its purity. You must not hoard up the light within yourself; it will not be light to you if you do. Only think of a person when his room is full of sunlight saying to his servant, "Quick, now! Close the shutters, and let us keep this precious light to ourselves." Your room will be in the dark, my friend. So, when a child of God gets the light from Christ's face he must not say "I shall keep this to myself," for that very desire would shut it out. No, let the light shine through you; let it shine everywhere. You have the light that you may reflect it. An object which absorbs light is dark, and we call it black; but hang up a reflector in its place when the sun is shining, and it will not appear black, it will be so bright that you will hardly bear to look at it. An object is itself bright in proportion as it sends back the light which it receives. So you shall find, as a Christian, that, if you absorb light into yourself, you will be black, but if you scatter it abroad you yourself shall be brilliant: you shall be changed into the very image of the light which you have received, you shall become a second sun. I noticed last Sabbath evening, when I came into this pulpit, that, at the angle of the building before me, on the left hand the sun seemed to be setting, and I saw the brightness of his round face, and yet I knew it to be the wrong quarter of the heavens for the sun to be setting there. Perhaps you will observe that there is a peculiar window on the other side of the street, and it was reflecting the sun so well that I thought it was the sun himself, and I could hardly bear the light. It was not the sun, it was only a window, and yet the radiance was dazzling; and so a man of God, when he receives the light of Christ, can become so perfect a reflector that to common eyes, at any rate, he is brightness itself. He has become transformed from glory to glory as by the image of the Lord.

Brothers and sisters, if you have learned the truth, manifest it, and make it plain to others. Proclaim the gospel, not your own thoughts;

for it is Christ that you are to make manifest. Teach, not your own judgments, and conclusions, and opinions, but the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Let Jesus manifest himself in his own light; do not cast a light on him, or attempt to show the sun with a candle. Do not aim at converting men to your views, but let the light shine for itself and work its own way. Do not colour it by being like a painted window to it, but let the clear white light shine through you that others may behold your Lord.

Scatter your light in all unselfishness. Wish to shine, not that others may say "How bright he is," but that they getting the light may rejoice in the source from which it came to you and to them. Be willing to make every sacrifice to spread this light which you have received. Consecrate your entire being to the making known among the sons of men the glory of Christ. Oh, I would we had swift messengers to run the world over to tell the story that God has come down among us. I wish we had fluent tongues to tell in every language the story that, coming down among us, God was arrayed in flesh like to our own; and that he took our sins and carried our sorrows. Oh, that we had trumpet tongues, to make the message peal through heaven and carth that God has come among men, and cries, "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Oh for a thunder voice, to speak it, or a lightning pen to write it athwart the heavens, that God hath reconciled the world unto himself by the death of his Son, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and that whosoever believeth in Christ Jesus hath everlasting life. I cannot command thunder or lightning, but here are your tongues, 9 and tell it this afternoon: here is my tongue, and I have tried to tell it, and may it be silent in the dust of death ere it ceases to declare that one blessed message, that God in Christ Jesus receives the sons of men in boundless love. Tell it, brother, with broken accents, if thou canst not speak it more powerfully. Whisper it, sister, gently whisper, if to none other yet to thy little children, and make the name of " Emmanuel, God with us," to be sweet in thine infant's ears. Thou art growing in strength and talent, young man, come, consecrate thyself to this. And thou, grey-beard, ere thou dost lie down on thy last bed to breathe out thy spirit, tell the love of Jesus to thy sons that they may tell it to their sons, and hand it down to coming generations, that mankind may never forget that the "word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." God bless you. Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-2 Cor. iii., iv. 1—7.

HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"-249, 384, 425.

THE ONE FOUNDATION.

A Sermon

DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 14TH, 1879, BY

C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.". 1 Corinthians iii. 11.

UPBUILDING is very important, but the first question must always concern the foundation." However quickly, however cleverly a man may build, if the foundation be unsound he is a foolish builder; and however slowly, however laboriously a man may proceed, his building will not put him to shame if he has set his walls erect upon a firm basis. This is emphatically true in spiritual things, for there the foundation is of the utmost importance. The hearer of the word, who is not a doer also, comes to a fatal end, because, as the Saviour says, he has built upon the sand, and therefore his fabric in the day of storm and flood is swept away, while he who hears the word and does it is secure because he digs deep and lays his foundation upon a rock, and therefore his building survives the rains of trial from above, the floods of persecution from without, and the mysterious winds of Satanic temptation which howl from every quarter. The best masonry must crack and fall if the groundwork is unstable: the higher the pinnacle the speedier its fall if the base is insecure.

As to what the foundation is in the religion of Jesus Christ there is no question. This verse declares it to be decided beyond controversy. A man may build the superstructure in some measure according to his own taste and judgment, but it must be based upon the one foundation; there may be room for varieties of style in the upper building, but there can be no variety in the groundwork. That is fixed for ever by the unchanging God, who says, " Behold, I lay in Zion a foundation stone." It must be acknowledged that all Christian minds and lives do not take exactly the same form and fashion: there are among the best of Christian builders certain grades of excellences,-one man builds with gold, another with silver, and a third with precious stones; but as to the foundation, all are on a level, Christ is all and in all. Whether the gracious life be rich as a golden palace, or pure as a temple of silver, or substantial as a tower of marble, whether it be public or obscure, wide or narrow, it must in every case be built upon the same basement of eternal rock: "for other foundation can no man lay than that is No. 1,494.

laid." You may say we will agree to differ" about matters which concern the superstructure, but we must agree to agree as to the foundation; for if we are not at one with the plain statement of the text we are in the wrong.

66

The apostle is dogmatic to the very last degree: "Other foundation can no man lay." But," saith one, 66 various teachers did lay other foundations." The apostle will not admit that they were foundations: they were not worthy of the name, the imposture was too shallow to succeed. No builder if he looked upon a heap of sand poured into an excavation would admit that it was a foundation. If he saw a mass of decayed vegetation and garden rubbish heaped together no architect would for one moment allow it to be spoken of as a "foundation." Paul declareth that there is but one foundation, and that there is none beside it, or beyond it; and that the one only, unalterable, immovable, everlasting foundation is Jesus Christ. It is not to be imagined that there are other foundations somewhat differing and only a little inferior to the Lord Jesus: there is no other, and no other can be laid. It is not a question of comparison, but of monopoly. All other groundworks and principles, whatever may be said in their praise, are mere falsehoods if they are set forth as foundations, for the Lord Jesus has exclusive possession of that title, and in him alone all that is fundamental is summed up; "Neither is there salvation in any other for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved."

And truly, when you think that God from all eternity has made his only-begotten Son to be the foundation and corner stone, it will be seen that this rock goes deep into the very nature of things, ay, deep as infinity itself; and, therefore, there cannot be two of the kind, for of whom else is it written that verily he was fore-ordained before the foundation of the world? Of whom else is it said, "I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was"? When you think that this foundation is nothing less than divine, for Christ is very God of very God, it is as impossible that there should be two foundations as that there should be two Gods. You must imagine two redemptions before you can conceive of two groundworks for our confidence. Who will dream of two atonements, two Saviours, two Christs? Yet must such a thing be ere there can be two foundations. None but Jesus, the divine Saviour, could sustain the weight of a single soul with all its sins, much less of all the souls which are built up into the temple of God. Jesus alone can sustain our eternal interests, deliver us from eternal wrath, or lift us into eternal bliss. "There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” His own words in prophecy are very positive-"I, even 1, am the Lord, and beside me there is no Saviour"; and equally express is his personal declaration-"I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.'

I will sketch out my discourse with these four lines, which I may not always be able to keep from intersecting each other, but they shall each be marked deeply and broadly, so that none can help seeing them. First, no church but what is built on Christ; secondly, no gospel but what is built on Christ; thirdly, no hope of salvation but what is built on Christ; and fourthly, no Christian but what is built on Christ.