A dear friend, who has been used by God to awaken thousands, and turn many from sin to holiness, and from profession to reality, during a long stay in Scotland, was led to speak out with the utmost plainness about the mockery and folly of people going down to the everlasting burnings by the holy way of the communion table! [Many Scottish people of the last century were considered to be devout church-goers. The key is: “Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart” - 1 Samuel 16:7]

He said one day something very like this, “I fear many of you are going to endless misery, and you are not doing so like many of my countrymen, who never go to church at all, but spend their time at home or in the public house. There might be said to be a Scotch way of going to hell, and this seems to be it: You have got the Shorter Catechism in your head, your Bible in the one hand, and communion bread from your minister in the other, but the world is in your hearts, and hell fire will be the end of it ‘except ye repent.’” This is very strongly expressed, but is there not too much truth in it?

While many an English rich man perishes through carelessness and apathy to the gospel, and many an Irish peasant is led into hell blindfolded by the superstitious rites of a cruel priesthood, multitudes of the church-going Scotch seem bent on entering eternity arrayed in all the holy garments of a religious profession, but it will be only to hear, with astonished ears, the withering words from a Savior’s lips that will send them to their own place, “I never knew you; depart from me ye that work iniquity” (Mat 7:23).

At a meeting for inquirers, held after an open-air service in the town of Dundee, a minister’s attention was drawn to an old man. When asked, whether thoughts of his soul and his Savior led him to appear among the inquirers, he sat for a while, Job-like, unable to speak. At length he acknowledged that, although he had made a public profession of Christianity for many years, it had been a Christ-less profession. He had heard the preacher say in his discourse, that a person might receive fifty “tokens” to admit to the communion table, and yet, after all, be unconverted; and this pierced his heart, for he felt that it was an accurate representation of his own case. He was directed to the Lord Jesus Christ as the Savior of the chief of sinners. He listened, he believed; and the minister now writes of him that “he gives all the marks of having unreservedly yielded himself to Jesus, and of walking in the fear of God, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost.”

Many are deceiving themselves by joining themselves to some one of the churches of Christ before being joined by the Holy Spirit to Christ Himself! The Holy Ghost, when He comes in saving power, will make havoc of the Church, in so far as it is composed of such members. He has done so in the case of thousands in past revivals, and He is doing so still in many different places throughout the land.

Third, personal responsibility of your sin: An intelligent, amiable, honest, upright young man, a pattern of good conduct and religiousness, was suddenly arrested one night by the Spirit of God. “Oh, my sin! My Sin!” he cried. “What sin?” asked a friend, wondering what sin could be lying upon his conscience. “Oh, it is my cold neglect of the loving Savior.” For four hours he writhed in torture under a dreadful sense of sin; and after the Lord revealed Himself to him, he vowed that his life should be one living sacrifice to his Redeemer’s praise. His conviction and conversion were the means of leading more than one flourishing professor in the town to inquire, “Am I saved or lost?”

It is greatly to be feared that many even of those who frequent our communion tables are not saved, and will be in hell forever, unless they repent of their dependence upon church membership and all their other sins, and, like this religious youth, be brought to Jesus for pardon and peace. Religion, you see, saves none! “The precious blood of Christ” alone (1 Peter 1:19) can save us from sin and wrath. Are you, my dear friend, saved or lost? If you are saved, you remember a time when you were lost; and you can tell something of your conviction and conversion. Those who are saved, because they are not sanctified from their infancy, can tell how they were brought to a sense of sin and a knowledge of salvation.

Have you felt that you are a sinner, and, as such, have you sought salvation? While passing along the street one morning, a young man rushed out of his office and caught me in his arms, “O sir, I have found Christ.” “When and how?” were the questions I earnestly put to him. He then gave me the following account of himself: “You know, sir, I have been very anxious for some weeks past. That anxiety became dreadful on Friday night. I was engaged in prayer. While on my knees my burden became intolerable. I felt my sins pressing on my heart as if that warehouse were built on my body. I could not move. I could not rise from my knees. I cried with such agony that my next neighbor rose out of bed and rushed in to know what was wrong. He prayed with me. Before he left I found peace through believing on the Lord Jesus Christ.”

My dear friend, have you known nothing of an experience like that? Have you ever felt your sins pressing on your heart, as if the weight of “a warehouse” were lying up- on your body; and do you know what it is to have peace “through believing on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Act 16:31)?

“If you do not find out your sin, and bring it to Calvary to get it pardoned and washed away through the blood of Jesus, be sure your sin will find you out, and bring you to the judgment seat, to be condemned by Jesus, and sent away into everlasting punishment.”

A little girl, who had told her mother a lie before she left home, was greatly troubled when she heard a minister say these awful things in his sermon. “Oh, that lie!” she said within herself. “I must bring it to Calvary, or it will send me to hell!” She was led, step by step, to see herself a great sinner, although a little girl; and she walked miles to see the minister, to ask him how she was to be saved. By and by, she was enabled to lay her sins on Jesus, and when she was asked, afterwards, if she had laid her sins on Jesus, she replied, “Oh, yes, and I’ll never lie anymore.” 

My dear friend, have you laid your sins on Jesus; and has it made you so averse to sin, and so full of desires after holiness, that you now feel anxious to “sin no more,” like this dear lamb of the Good Shepherd’s fold?

[Where is sin coming from? If we know the answer, we may find solutions. Matthew 15:19-20, “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies; These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.” After all, evil comes out of our own heart. What shall we do?]

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