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some such by the half-hour together, and they always finish up with, "Yes, that is true, sir, but-" And then we try and chop that "but to pieces; but after a while they find another, and say, Yes, I now see that point, but-" So they buttress their unbelief with " buts." If anybody here should be wishful to give you a thousand pounds, can you tell me any reason why he should not? Well, I fancy if he were to come to you and present you with a bank note for that amount you would not worry yourself to discover objections. You would not keep on saying, "I should like the money, but-" No, if there were any reason why you should not have it, you would let other people find it out. You would not labour and cudgel your brains to try and find out arguments against yourself; you are not so much your own enemy. And yet with regard to eternal life, which is infinitely more precious than all the treasures of this world, men act most absurdly and say, "I earnestly desire it, and Christ is able to do it, but-" What folly is this to argue against yourself. If a man were in Newgate condemned to die, and had to stand upon the drop to-morrow morning, and the sheriff came and said, "There is a free pardon for you," do you think that man would begin to object? Would he cry, "I should like another half-hour to consider my case, and find out reasons why I should not be pardoned"? No, he would jump at it. Oh that you may also jump at the pardon to-night. The Lord grant that you may such a sense of danger and guilt, that you may promptly cry, "I do believe; I will believe in Jesus."

Sinners are not half as sensible as sparrows. David said in one of the Psalms, "I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the housetop." Well, have you noticed the sparrow? He keeps his eyes open, and the moment he sees a grain of wheat or anything to eat down in the road, he flies to get it. I never knew him wait for someone to invite him, much less to beg and beseech him to come and feed. He sees the food and he says to himself," Here is a hungry sparrow, and there is a piece of bread. Those two things go well together, they shall not be long apart." Down he flies, and eats up all he can find as fast as he finds it. Oh, if you had half the sense of the sparrow you would say, "Here is a guilty sinner, and there is a precious Saviour. These two things go well together, they shall not be long apart. I

believe in Jesus and Jesus is mine."

The Lord grant that you may find Jesus to-night before you leave this house. I pray you may. In these very pews and aisles may you look to Jesus Christ and believe. Faith is only a look, a look of simple trust. It is reliance, a believing that he is able to do this, and a trusting in him to do it and to do it now. God bless every one of you, and may we meet in heaven, for Christ's sake. Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-Matthew ix. 18—38.

HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN Book"-100, 539, 555.

THE HEAVENLY WIND.

A Sermon

DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MAY 27TH, 1877, BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit."-John iii. 8.

THE Holy Spirit is to be admired, not only for the great truths which he teaches us in Holy Scripture, but also for the wonderful manner in which those truths are balanced. The word of God never gives us too much of one thing or too little of another: it never carries a doctrine to an extreme, but tempers it with its corresponding doctrine. Truth seems to run at least in two parallel lines, if not in three, and when the Holy Spirit sets before us one line he wisely points out to us the other. The truth of divine sovereignty is qualified by human responsibility, and the teaching of abounding grace is seasoned by a remembrance of unflinching justice. Scripture gives us as it were the acid and the alkali; the rock and the oil which flows from it; the sword which cuts and the balm which heals. As our Lord sent forth his evangelists two and two so doth he seem to send out his truths two and two, that each may help the other, for the blessing of those who hear them. Now in this most notable third of John you have two truths taught as plainly as if they were written with a sunbeam, and taught side by side. The one is the necessity of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the fact that whosoever believeth in him is not condemned. This is a vital doctrine, but there is a possibility of preaching it so baldly and so out of relation to the rest of God's word that men may be led into serious error. Justification by faith is a most precious truth, it is the very pith and heart of the gospel, and yet you can dwell so exclusively upon it that you cause many to forget other important practical and experimental truths, and so do them serious mischief. Salt is good, but it is not all that a man needs to live upon, and even if people are fed on the best of dry bread and nothing else they do not thrive; every part of divine teaching is of practical value and must not be neglected. Hence the Holy Ghost in this chapter lays equal stress upon the necessity of the No. 1,356.

new birth or the work of the Holy Spirit, and he states it quite as plainly as the other grand truth. See how they blend-" Ye must be born again;" but "whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life;" "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God;" but " he that believeth on him is not condemned." Two great truths are written in letters of light over the gate of heaven, as the requisites of all who enter thereReconciliation by the blood of Jesus Christ; and Regeneration by the work of the Holy Ghost. We must not put one of these truths before the other, nor allow one to obliterate or hide the other: they are of equal importance, for they are revealed by the same divine Spirit, and are alike needful to eternal salvation. He who cares to preach either of these ought also diligently to teach the other, lest he be found guilty of violating that salutary precept, "What God hath joined together let no man put asunder." Avoid all neglect of faith, and equally shun all undervaluing of the work of the Holy Ghost, so shall you find that narrow channel in which the way of truth doth lie. You must rest in Christ that you may be accepted before God, but the work of the Holy Spirit within you is absolutely needful that you may be able to have communion with the pure and holy God. Faith gives us the rights of the children of God, but the new birth must be experienced that we may have the nature of children: of what use would rights be if we had not the capacity to exercise them?

Now it is of the work of the Spirit of God, and of the man in whom the Spirit of God has worked, that I shall speak this morning, according to the tenor of the text. The text may be read two ways. First it may evidently refer to the Holy Spirit himself. Do you not expect the text to run thus-"The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so also is the Spirit of God"? Is not that the way in which you naturally expect the sentence to end? Yes, and I doubt not that such was really the Saviour's meaning; but frequently according to the New Testament idiom the truth is not stated as our English modes of speech would lead us to expect for instance, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that sowed good seed in his ground." Now the kingdom is not like the man, but like the whole transaction of the parable in which the man is the principal actor. "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchantman seeking goodly pearls," but the kingdom is not like the man, but the comparison runs into all that the man does. So here the Lord Jesus lays hold of one grand sphere of the Spirit's operations and puts it down, intending, however, a wider sense. There are certain readings of our text which would make this more clear if we could think them allowable, as for instance that which does not render the Greek word by "wind" at all, but translates it "spirit," and makes it run, "The Spirit bloweth where he listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof." I do not adopt that reading, but there are several great authorities in its favour, and this tends to show that our first head is correct. When we have spoken upon that we will take the language in its second sense, in reference to the regenerate man, and then we read, "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth:

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o is every man that is born of the Spirit": he himself, like the Spirit f which he is born, is free, and is mysterious in his ways, but discerned y the sound of his works and life.

I. Take the text in reference to THE HOLY SPIRIT HIMSELF. The igure is the wind, and, as most of you know, the Hebrew word for wind " and for "spirit" is the same; and it is interesting to note hat the same is true with the Greek word "pneuma," which signifieth both "breath" and "spirit," so that the figure which the Saviour used might very naturally grow out of the word which he employed. The wind is air in motion, and is, of course, material; but air is apparently more spiritual than any of the other elements, except fire, since it is not to be grasped by the hand nor seen with the eye. It is certain that wind really exists, for we hear the sound thereof and observe its various effects, but it is not to be touched, handled, or gazed upon; men cannot traffic in it, or measure it in scales, or weigh it in balances. We may watch for hours as we will the clouds as they hasten along like winged fowl, but the wind which driveth them is out of our sight; we observe the waves roused to fury in the tempest, but the breath which so excites Hence the word becomes all the more excellent them we cannot see. a figure of that mighty power, the Holy Ghost, of whose existence no man ever doubts who has come under his influence, but who, nevertheless, is not to be tracked in his movements, nor to be seen as to his livine person; for he is mysterious, incomprehensible, and divine.

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The metaphor of the wind cannot fully set forth the Holy Spirit, as you know; and, consequently, many other natural figures are employed, such as fire, dew, water, light, oil, and so on, in order to exhibit all the phases of his influence; but still the wind is a most instructive metaphor as far as it goes, and as we cannot draw forth all its teaching in one sermon let us be content to keep as closely as we can to the text. First, the wind is a figure of the Holy Ghost in its freeness-" The wind bloweth where it listeth." We speak of the wind as the very go bind image of freedom: we say to those who would enthral us, the winds," as for ourselves, we claim to be "free as the winds which roam at their own will." No one can fetter the wind. Xerxes threw chains into the Hellespont to bind the sea, but even he was not fool enough to talk of forging fetters for the winds. The breezes are not to be dictated to. Cæsar may decree what he pleases, but the wind will blow in his face if he looks that way. The Pope may command the gale to change its course, but it will blow around the Vatican neither less nor more for the holy father and the cardinals. A conference of plenipotentiaries from all the powers of Europe may sit for a week and resolve unanimously that the east wind shall not blow for the next six months, but it will take no heed of the arrangement, and will cast dust into the counsellors' eyes, and whistle at their wisdom. clamation nor purpose under heaven will be able to affect the wind by so much as half a point of the compass. It will blow according to its own sweet will, where it pleases, when it pleases, how it pleases, and as it pleases, for "the wind bloweth where it listeth." So is it, only in a far higher and more emphatic sense, with the Holy Spirit, for he is most free and absolute. Ye know that the wind is in the hand of God, and that he ordaineth every zephyr and each tornado: winds arise and

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tempests blow by order from the throne supreme; but as for the Holy Spirit, he is God himself, and absolutely free, and worketh according to his own will and pleasure amongst the sons of men. One nation has been visited by the Holy Spirit and not another-who shall tell me why? Why lie yon heathen lands in the dense darkness while on Britain the light is concentrated? Why has the Reformation taken root in England and among the northern nations of Europe, while in Spain. and Italy it has left scarce a trace? Why blows the Holy Spirit here and not there? Is it not that he doeth as he wills? "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion" is the declaration of the divine sovereignty, and the Spirit of God in his movements confirmeth it. Among the nations where the Spirit of God is at work how is it that he blesseth one man and not another? How is it that of two men hearing the same sermon, and subject to the same influences at home, one is taken and the other left? Two children nursed at the same breast, and trained by the same parents, grow up to different ends. He who perishes in sin has no one to blame but himself, but he who is saved ascribes it all to grace-why came that grace to him? We never dare to lay the fault of man's not repenting and believing upon God-that resteth with the evil will which refused to obey the gospel; but we dare not ascribe the saving difference in the case of the one who believes to any natural goodness in himself, but we attribute it all to the grace of God, and believe that the Holy Spirit worketh in such to will and to do according to his own good pleasure. But why works he in us? Why in any of the chosen? Ah, why? "The wind bloweth where it listeth."

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So, too, is it with the blessing which rests upon ministries. One man winneth souls to God, and as a joyous reaper returneth with full sheaves, but another who goeth forth with strong desires, and seems at least to be as earnest as his fellow, comes home with a scanty handful of ears, which he has painfully gleaned. Why is one man's net full of fish and another's utterly empty? One servant of the Lord seems, whenever he stands up to preach the gospel, to attract men to Jesus as though he had golden chains in his mouth which he did cast about men's hearts to draw them in joyful captivity to his Lord, while another cries in bitterness of soul, "Who hath believed our report ?" Truly, "the wind bloweth where it listeth." Ay, and these changes happen to each man severally one day the preacher shall be all alive, his spirit shall be stirred within him, and he shall speak evidently with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; and to-morrow he shall find himself dull and heavy, even to his own consciousness, and even more so to his people's experience, for the power rests not upon him. One day he speaketh like the voice of God, and another day he is but as a reed shaken of the wind. His fat kine of years gone by are devoured by the lean cattle of the present. He has his famine as well as his plenty. You shall see him come forth to-day with the unction of the Lord upon him, and his face shining with the glory of fellowship with the Most High, and to-morrow he shall say, "Look not upon me, for I am black," for the glory shall have departed. We know what it is to come forth like Samson when his locks were shorn; and to shake ourselves as at other times and discover that the Lord is not with us. Why all this?