and God help you, that the verdict may not be against you — that it may not be said of you, “You are weighed in the balances and are found wanting.”
11. I would have every man also weigh himself in the scales of God’s Word — not merely in that part of it which we call legal, and which has respect to us in our fallen state; but let us weigh ourselves in the scale of the gospel. You will find it sometimes a holy exercise, to read some psalm of David, when his soul was most full of grace; and if you were to ask questions as you read each verse, saying to yourself, “Can I say this? Have I felt as David felt? Have my bones ever been broken with sin as his were when he penned his penitential psalms? Has my soul ever been full of true confidence, in the hour of difficulty, as his was when he sang of God’s mercies in the cave of Adullam, or the holds of Engedi? Can I take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord? Can I pay my vows now to the Lord, in the courts of his house, in the presence of all his people?” I am afraid that the book of Psalms itself would be enough to convince some of you that your religion is only superficial, that it is only a vain show, and not a vital reality. God help you often to weigh yourselves in that scale. Then read over the life of Christ, and as you read, ask yourselves whether you are conformed to him, such as he describes a true disciple. Endeavour to see whether you have any of the meekness, any of the humility, any of the lovely spirit which he constantly inculcated and displayed. Try yourselves by the sermon on the mount, you will find it a good scale in which to weigh your spirits. Take then the epistles, and see whether you can go with the apostle in what he said of his experience. Have you ever cried out like him: — “Oh wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Have you ever felt like him, that “this is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners?” Have you ever known his self-abasement? Could you say that you seemed to yourself the chief of sinners, and always accounted yourself less than the least of all saints? And have you known anything of his devotion? Could you join with him and say, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain?” Oh, brethren! the best of us — if we put the Bible into the scales for the proof of our state, if we read God’s Word as a test of our spiritual condition — the very best of us has reason to tremble. Before Almighty God, on our bended knees, with our Bible before us, we have good reason to stop many a time and say, “Lord, I feel I have never yet been here, oh, bring me here! give me true penitence, such as this that I read of. Give me real faith; oh, let me not have a counterfeit religion! give me what is the current coin of the realm of heaven — your own sterling grace, which shall pass in the great day, when the gates of heaven shall be opened, and alas! the gates of hell wide open too.” Try yourselves by God’s Word, and I fear there are some who will have to rise from it, and say, “I am weighed in the balances and found wanting.”
12. Yet again, God has been pleased to set another means of trial before us. When God puts us into the scales I am about to mention, namely, the scales of providence it behoves us very carefully to watch ourselves and see whether or not, we are found wanting. Some men are tried in the scales of adversity. Some of you, my dear friends, may have come here very sorrowful. Your business fails, your earthly prospects are growing dark; it is midnight with you in this world; you have sickness in the house; the wife of your bosom languishes before your weeping eyes; your children perhaps, by their ingratitude, have wounded your spirits. But you are a professor of religion, you know what God is doing with you now; he is testing and trying you. He knows you, and he wishes to have you know that a summertime religion is not sufficient; he wishes to have you see whether your faith can stand the test of trial and trouble. Remember Job; what a scale was that in which he was placed! What weights of affliction were those cast in one after another, very mountains of severe trouble; and yet he could bear them all, and he came out of the scales proof against all the weight that even Satanic strength could hurl into the scale. And is it so with you? Can you now say — “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord?” Can you submit to his will without murmuring? Or if you cannot master such a phase of religion as this, are you able still to feel that you cannot complain against God? Do you still say, “Though he kills me, yet I will trust in him?” Oh, my friends, remember that if your religion will not stand the day of adversity, if it affords you no comfort in the time of storms, you would be better in that case without it than with it; for with it you are deceived, but without it you might discover your true condition, and seek the Lord as a penitent sinner. If you are now broken in pieces by a little adversity, what will become of you in the day when all the tempests of God shall be let loose on your soul? If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you, what will you do in the swellings of Jordan? If you cannot endure the open grave, how can you endure the trump of the archangel, and the terrific thunders of the last great day? If your burning house is too much for you, what will you do in a burning world? If thunder and lightning alarm you, what will you do when the world is ablaze, and when all the thunders of God leave their hiding place, and rush pealing through the world? If mere trial distresses you and grieves you, oh, what will you do when all the hurricanes of divine vengeance shall sweep across the earth and shake its very pillars, until they reel and reel again? Yes, friends, I would have you, as often as you are tried and troubled, see how you bear it — whether your faith then stands and whether you could see God’s right hand, even when it is wrapped in clouds; whether you can discover the silver lining to the black clouds of tribulation. God help you to come out of the scales, for many are weighed in them and have been found wanting.
13. There is another set of scales, too, of an opposite colour. Those I have described are painted black; these are of golden hue. They are the scales of prosperity. Many a man has endured the chills of poverty who could not endure sunny weather. Some men’s religion is very much like the palace of the queen of Russia, which had been built out of solid slabs of ice. It could stand the frost; the roughest breeze could not destroy it; the sharp touch of winter could not devour it; they only strengthened and made it more lasting. But summer melted it all away, and, where once were the halls of revelry, nothing remained but the black rolling river. How many have been destroyed by prosperity? The fumes of popularity have turned the brains of many a man. The adulation of multitudes has laid thousands low. Popular applause has its foot in the sand, even when it has its head among the stars. I have known many who in a cottage seemed to fear God, but in a mansion have forgotten him. When their daily bread was earned with the sweat of their brow, then they served the Lord, and went up to his house with gladness. But their seeming religion all departed when their flocks and herds increased, and their gold and silver was multiplied. It is no easy thing to stand the trial of prosperity. You know the old fable; I will just frame it in a Christian light. When the winds of affliction blow on a Christian’s head, he just pulls around him the coat of heavenly consolation, and girds his religion about him all the tighter for the fury of the storm. But when the sun of prosperity shines on him, the traveller grows warm, and full of delight and pleasure, he takes off his coat, and lays it aside; so that what the storms of affliction never could accomplish, the soft hand and the witchery of prosperity has been able to perform. It has loosened the loins of many a mighty man. It has been the Delilah that has shorn the locks and taken away the strength of many a Samson. This rock has witnessed the most fatal wrecks.
More the treacherous calm I dread,
Than tempests rolling over head.
But shall we be able to say after passing through prosperity, “This is not my rest, this is not my God. Let him give me what he may, I will thank him for it, yet I will rejoice in the giver rather than the gift; I will say to the Lord ‘You only are my rest.’ ” It is well if you can come out of these scales enabled honestly to hope that you are not found wanting.
14. There are again the scales of temptation. A great many men seem to run well for a while; but it is temptation that tries the Christian. In your business you are now honest and upright, but suppose a speculation crosses your path, which involves only a very slight departure from the high standard of Christianity, and indeed would not involve any departure from the low standard which your fellow tradesmen follow. Do you think you would be able to say “How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” Could you say, “Should such a man as I do this? Shall I hasten to be rich, for if I do I shall not be innocent?” How has it been with you?