A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING,

SEPTEMBER THE 29TH, 1861,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

THE subject of this morning’s discourse will be “Infant Salvation.” It may

not possibly be interesting to all present, but I do not remember to have

preached upon this subject to this congregation, and I am anxious

moreover that the printed series should contain sermons upon the whole

range of theology. I think there is no one point which ought to be left out

in our ministry, even though it may only yield comfort to a class. Perhaps

the larger proportion of this audience have at some time or other had to

shed the briny tear over the child’s little coffin; — it may be that through

this subject consolation may be afforded to them. This good Shunammite

was asked by Gehazi, whether it was well with herself. She was mourning

over a lost child, and yet she said, “It is well;” she felt that the trial would

surely be blessed. “Is it well with thy husband?” He was old and stricken in

years, and was ripening for death, yet she said, “Yes, it is well.” Then came

the question about her child, it was dead at home, and the inquiry would

renew her griefs, “Is it well with the child?” Yet she said, “It is well,”

perhaps so answering because she had a faith that soon it should be

restored to her, and that its temporary absence was well; or I think rather

because she was persuaded that whatever might have become of its spirit,

it was safe in the keeping of God, happy beneath the shadow of his wings.

Therefore, not fearing that it was lost, having no suspicion whatever that it

was cast away from the place of bliss — for that suspicion would have

quite prevented her giving such answer — she said “Yes, the child is dead,

but ‘it is well.’”

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Now, let every mother and father here present know assuredly that it is

well with the child, if God hath taken it away from you in its infant days.

You never heard its declaration of faith — it was not capable of such a

thing — it was not baptized into the Lord Jesus Christ, not buried with him

in baptism; it was not capable of giving that “answer of a good conscience

towards God;” nevertheless, you may rest assured that it is well with the

child, well in a higher and a better sense than it is well with yourselves; well

without limitation, well without exception, well infinitely, “well” eternally.

Perhaps you will say, “What reasons have we for believing that it is well

with the child?” Before I enter upon that I would make one observation. It

has been wickedly, lyingly, and slanderously said of Calvinists, that we

believe that some little children perish. Those who make the accusation

know that their charge is false. I cannot even dare to hope, though I would

wish to do so, that they ignorantly misrepresent us. They wickedly repeat

what has been denied a thousand times, what they know is not true. In

Calvin’s advice to Omit, he interprets the second commandment “shewing

mercy unto thousands of them that love me,” as referring to generations,

and hence he seems to teach that infants who have had pious ancestors, no

matter how remotely, dying as infants are saved. This would certainly take

in the whole race. As for modern Calvinists, I know of no exception, but

we all hope and believe that all persons dying in infancy are elect. Dr. Gill,

who has been looked upon in late times as being a very standard of

Calvinism, not to say of ultra-Calvinism, himself never hints for a moment

the supposition that any infant has perished, but affirms of it that it is a

dark and mysterious subject, but that it is his belief, and he thinks he has

Scripture to warrant it, that they who have fallen asleep in infancy have not

perished, but have been numbered with the chosen of God, and so have

entered into eternal rest. We have never taught the contrary, and when the

charge is brought, I repudiate it and say, “You may have said so, we never

did, and you know we never did. If you dare to repeat the slander again, let

the lie stand in scarlet on your very cheek if you be capable of a blush.” We

have never dreamed of such a thing. With very few and rare exceptions, so

rare that I never heard of them except from the lips of slanderers, we have

never imagined that infants dying as infants have perished, but we have

believed that they enter into the paradise of God.

First, then, this morning, I shall endeavor to explain the way in which we

believed infants are saved; secondly, give reasons for so believing; and

then, thirdly, seek to bring out a practical use of the subject.

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Some ground the idea of the eternal blessedness of the infant upon its

innocence. We do no such thing; we believe that the infant fell in the first

Adam, “for in Adam all died.” All Adam’s posterity, whether infant or

adult, were represented by him — he stood for them all, and when he fell,

he fell for them all. There was no exception made at all in the covenant of

works made with Adam as to infants dying; and inasmuch as they were

included in Adam, though they have not sinned after the similitude of

Adam’s transgression, they have original guilt. They are “born in sin and

steepen in iniquity; in sin do their mothers conceive them;” so saith David

of himself, and (by inference) of the whole human race. If they be saved,

we believe it is not because of any natural innocence. They enter heaven by

the very same way that we do; they are receives in the name of Christ.

“Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid,” and I do not

think nor dream that there is a different foundation for the infant than that

which is laid for the adult. And equally is it far from our minds to believe

that infants go to heaven through baptism — not to say, in the first place,

that we believe infant sprinkling to be a human and carnal invention, an

addition to the Word of God, and therefore wicked and injurious. When we

reflect that it is rendered into some thing worse than superstition by being

accompanied with falsehood, when children are taught that in their baptism

they are made the children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of

heaven, which is as base a lie as ever was forged in hell, or uttered beneath

the copes of heaven, our spirit sinks at the fearful errors which have crept

into the Church, through the one little door of infant sprinkling. No;

children are not saved because they are baptized, for if so, the Puseyite is

quite right in refusing to bury our little children if they die unbaptized. Yes,

the barbarian is quite right in driving the parent, as he does to this day,

from the church yard of his own national Church, and telling him that his

child may rot above-ground, and that it shall not be buried except it be at

the dead of night, because the superstitious drops have never fallen on its

brow. He is right enough if that baptism made the child a Christian, and if

that child could not be saved without it. But a thing so revolting to feeling,

is at once to be eschewed by Christian men. The child is saved, if snatched

away by death as we are, on another ground than that of rites and

ceremonies, and the will of man.

On what ground, then, do we believe the child to be saved? We believe it

to be as lost on the rest of mankind, and as truly condemned by the

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sentence which said, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely

die.” It is saved because it is elect. In the compass of election, in the

Lamb’s Book of Life, we believe there shall be found written millions of

souls who are only shown on earth, and then stretch their wings for

heaven. They are saved, too, because they were redeemed by the precious

blood of Jesus Christ. He who shed his blood for all his people, bought

them with the same price with which he redeemed their parents, and

therefore are they saved because Christ was sponsor for them, and suffered

in their room and stead. They are saved, again not without regeneration,

for, “except a man” — the text does not mean an adult man but a person, a

being of the human race — “except a man be born again, he cannot see the

kingdom of God.” No doubt, in some mysterious manner the Spirit of God

regenerates the infant soul, and it enters into glory made meet to be a

partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light. That this is possible is

proved from Scripture instances. John the Baptist was filled with the Holy

Ghost from his mother’s womb. We read of Jeremiah also, that the same

had occurred to him; and of Samuel we find that while yet a babe the Lord

called him. We believe, therefore, that even before the intellect can work,

God, who worketh not by the will of man, nor by blood, but by the

mysterious agency of his Holy Spirit, creates the infant soul a new creature

in Christ Jesus, and then it enters into the “rest which remaineth for the

people of God.” By election, by redemption, by regeneration, the child

enters into glory, by the selfsame door by which every believer in Christ

Jesus hopes to enter, and in no other way. If we could not suppose that

children could be saved in the same way as adults, if it would be necessary

to suppose that God’s justice must be infringe, or that his plan of salvation

must be altered to suit their cases, then we should be in doubt; but we can

see that with the same appliances, by the same plan, on precisely the same

grounds, and through the same agencies, the infant soul can behold the

Savior a face in glory everlasting, and therefore we are at ease upon the

matter.

First, we ground our conviction very much upon the goodness of the

nature of God. We say that the opposite doctrine that some infants perish

and are lost, is altogether repugnant to the idea which we have of Him

whose name is love. If we had a God, whose name was Moloch, if God

were an arbitrary tyrant, without benevolence or grace, we could suppose

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some infants being cast into hell; but our God, who heareth the young

ravens when they cry, certainly will find no delight in the shrieks and cries

of infants cast away from his presence. We read of him that he is so tender,

that he careth for oxen, that he would not have the mouth of the ox

muzzled, that treadeth out the corn. Nay, he careth for the bird upon the

nest, and would not have the mother bird killed while sitting upon its nest

with its little ones. He made ordinances and commands even for irrational

creatures. He finds food for the most loathsome animal, nor does he

neglect the worm any more than the angel, and shall we believe with such

universal goodness as this, that he would cast away the infant soul I say it

would he clear contrary to all that we have ever read or ever believed of

Him, that our faith would stagger before a revelation which should display

a fact so singularly exceptional to the tenor of his other deeds. We have

learned humbly to submit our judgments to his will, and we dare not

criticize or accuse the Lord of All; we believe him to be just, let him do as

he may, and? Therefore, whatever he might reveal we would accept; but he

never has, and I think he never will require of us so desperate a stretch of

faith as to see goodness in the eternal misery of an infinite cast into hell.

You remember when Jonah — petulant, quick-tempered Jonah — would

have Nineveh perish God gave it as the reason why Nineveh should not be

destroyed, that there were in it more than six score thousand infants, —

persons, he said, who knew not their light hand tram their left. If he spared

Nineveh that their mortal life might be spared, think you that their immortal

souls shall be needlessly cast away! I only put it to your own reason. It is

not a case where we need much argument. Would your God cast away an

infant? If yours could, I am happy to say he is not the God that I adore.

Again, we think it would be inconsistent utterly with the known character

of our Lord Jesus Christ. When his disciples put away the little children

whom their anxious mothers brought to him, Jesus said, “Suffer the little

children to come unto me, and forbid them not for of such is the kingdom

of heaven,” by which he taught, as John Newton very properly says, that

such as these made up a very great part of the kingdom of heaven. And

when we consider that upon the best statistics it is calculated that more

than one third of the human race die in infancy, and probably if we take

into calculation those districts where infanticide prevails, as in heathen

countries, such as China and the like, perhaps one half of the population of

the world die before they reach adult years, — the saying of the Savior

derives great force indeed,” Of such is the kingdom of heaven.” If some

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remind me that the kingdom of heaven means the dispensation of grace on

earth, I answer, yes, it does, and it means the same dispensation in heaven

too, for while part of the kingdom of heaven is on earth in the Church,

since the Church is always one, that other part of the Church which is

above is also the kingdom of heaven. We know this text is constantly used

as a proof of baptism, but in the first place, Christ did not baptize them, for

“Jesus Christ baptized not;” in the second place, his disciples did not

baptize them, for they withstood their coming, and would have driven them

away. Then if Jesus did not, and his disciple did not, who did,’ It has no

more to do with baptism than with circumcision. There is not the slightest

allusion to baptism in the text, or in the context; and I can prove the

circumcision of infants from it with quite as fair logic as others attempt to

prove infant baptism. However, it does prove this, that infants compose a

great part of the family of Christ, and that Jesus Christ is known to have

had a love and amiableness towards the little ones. When they shouted in

the temple, “Hosanna!” did he rebuke them? No; but rejoiced in their

boyish shouts. “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hath God

ordained strength,” and does not that text seem to say that in heaven there

shall be “perfect praise” rendered to God by multitudes of cherubs who

were here on earth — your little ones fondled in your bosom — and then

suddenly snatched away to heaven. I could not believe it of Jesus, that he

would say to little children, “Depart, ye accursed, into everlasting fire in

hell!” I cannot conceive it possible of him as the loving and tender one, that

when he shall sit to judge all nations, he should put the little ones on the

left hand, and should banish them for ever from his presence. Could he

address them, and say to them, “I was an hungered, and ye gave me no

meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink, sick, and in prison, and ye

visited me not? “How could they do it? And if the main reason of

damnation lie in sins of omission like there which it was not possible for

them to commit, for want of power to perform the duty how, then, shall he

condemn and cast them away?

Furthermore, we think that the ways of grace, if we consider them, render

it highly improbable, not to say impossible, that an infant soul should be

destroyed. What saith Scripture? “Where sin abounded, grace did much

more abound.” Such a thing as that could not be sail of an infant cast away.

We know that God is so abundantly gracious that such expressions as the

“unsearchable riches of Christ,” “God who is rich in mercy,” “A God full of

compassion,” “The exceeding riches of his grace,” and the like are truly

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applicable without exaggeration or hyperbole. We know that he is good to

all, and his tender mercies are over all his works, and that in grace he is

able to do “exceeding abundantly above what we can ask or even think.”

The grace of God has sought out in the world the greatest sinners. It has

not passed by the vilest of the vile. He who called himself the chief of

sinners was a partaker of the love of Christ. All manner of sin and of

blasphemy have been forgiven unto man. He has been able to save unto the

uttermost them that come unto God by Christ, and dons it seem consistent

with such grace as this that it should pass by the myriads upon myriads of

little ones, who wear the image of the earthy Adam, and never stamp upon

them the image of the heavenly? I cannot conceive such a thing. He that

has tasted and felt, and handled the grace of God, will, I think, shrink

instinctively from any other doctrine than this, that infants dying such, are

most assuredly saved.

Once again one of the strongest inferential arguments is to be found in the

fact that Scripture positively states that the number of saved souls at the

last will be very great. In the Revelation we read of a number that no man

can number. The Psalmist speaks of them as numerous as dew drops from

the womb of the morning. Many passages give to Abraham, as the father of

the faithful, a seed as many as the stars of heaven, or as the sand on the sea

shore. Christ is to see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied; surely it is

not a little that will satisfy him. The virtue of the precious redemption

involves a great host who were redeemed. All Scripture seems to tendon

that heaven will not be a narrow world, that its population will not be like a

handful gleaned out of a vintage, but that Christ shall be glorified by ten

thousand times ten thousand, whom he hath redeemed with his blood. Now

where are they to come from? How small a part of the map could be called

Christian! Look at it. Out of that part which could be called Christian, how

small a portion of them would bear the name of believer! How few could

be said to have even a nominal attachment to the Church of Christ? Out of

this, how many are hypocrites, and know not the truth! I do not see it

possible, unless indeed the millennium age should soon come, and then far

exceed a thousand years, I do not see how it is possible that so vast a

number should enter heaven, unless it be on the supposition that infant

souls constitute the great majority. It is a sweet belief to my own mind that

there will be more saved than lost, for in all things Christ is to have the preeminence,

and why not in this? It was the thought of a great divine that

perhaps at the last the number of the lost would not bear a greater

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proportion to the number of the saved, than do the number of criminals in

gaols to those who are abroad in a properly-conducted state. I hope it may

be found to be so. At any rate, it is not my business to be asking, “Lord,

are there few that shall be saved?” The gate is strait, but the Lord knows

how to bring thousands through it without making it any wider, and we

ought not to seek to shut any out by seeking to make it narrower. Oh! I do

know that Christ will have the victory, and that as he is followed by

streaming hosts, the black prince of hell will never be able to count so

many followers in his dreary train as Christ in his resplendent triumph. And

if so we must have the children saved; yea, brethren, if not so, we must

have them, because we feel anyhow they must be numbered with the

blessed, and dwell with Christ hereafter.

Now for one or two incidental matters which occur in Scripture, which

seem to throw a little light also on the subject. You have not forgotten the

case of David. His child by Bathsheba was to die as a punishment for the

father’s offense. David prayed, and fasted, and vexed his soul; at last they

tell him the child is dead. He fasted no more, but he said, “I shall go to him,

he shall not return to me.” Now, where did David expect to go to? Why, to

heaven surely. Then his child must have been there, for he said, “I shall go

to him.” I do not hear him say the same of Absalom. He did not stand over

his corpse, and say, “I shall go to him;” he had no hope for that rebellious

son. Over this child it was not — “O my son! would to God I had died for

thee!” No, he could let this babe go with perfect confidence, for he said, “I

shall go to him.” “I know,” he might have said, “that He hath made with

me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure, and when I walk

through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil, for he is with

me, I shall go to my child, and in heaven we shall be re-united with each

other.” You remember, his, those instances which I have already quoted,

where children are said to have been sanctified from the womb. It casts this

light upon the subject, it shows it not to be impossible that a child should

be a partaker of grace while yet a babe. Then you have the passage, “Out

of the mouths of babes and sucklings he hath perfected praise.” The

coming out of Egypt was a type of the redemption of the chosen seed, and

you know that in that case the little ones were to go forth, nay, not even a

hoof was to be left behind. Why not children in the greater deliverance to

join in the song of Moses and of the Lamb? And there is a passage in

Ezekiel, for where we have but little, we must pick up even the crumbs,

and do as our Master did — gather up the fragments that nothing be lost

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— there is a passage in Ezekiel, sixteenth chapter, twenty-first verse,

where God is censuring his people for having given up their little infants to

Moloch, having caused them to pass through the fire, and he says of these

little ones, “Thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them

to pass through the fire,” so, then, they were God’s children those little

ones who died in the red-hot arms of Moloch while babes, God calls “my

children.” We may, therefore, believe concerning all those who have fallen

asleep in these early days of life, that Jesus said of them, “These are my

children,” and that he now to-day, while he leads his sheep unto loving

fountains of water, does not forget still to carry out his own injunction,

“Feed my lambs.” Yea, to-day even he carrieth “the lambs in his bosom,”

and even before the eternal throne he is not ashamed to say, “Behold I and

the children whom thou hast given me.” There is another passage in

Scripture which I think may be used. In the first chapter of Deuteronomy

these ball been a threatening pronounced upon the children of Israel in the

wilderness, that, with the exception of Caleb and Joshua, they should never

see the promised land; nevertheless, it is added. “Your little ones, which ye

said should be a prey and your children, which in that day had no

knowledge between good and evil, they shall go in thither, and unto them

will I give it, and they shall possess it.” To you, fathers and mothers who

fear not God, who live and die unbelieving, I would say, your unbelief

cannot shut your children out of heaven and I bless God for that. While

you cannot lay hold on that text which says “The promise is unto us and

our children, even to as many as the Lord our God shall call,” yet inasmuch

as the sin of the generation in the wilderness did not shut the next

generation out of Canaan but they did surely enter in, so the sin of

unbelieving parents shall not necessarily be the ruin of their children, but

they shall still, through God’s sovereign grace and his overflowing mercy,

be made partakers of the rest which he hath reserved for his people.

Understand that this morning I have not made a distinction between the

children of godly and ungodly parents. If they die in infancy, I do not mind

who is father nor who their mother, they are saved; I do not even endorse

the theory of a good Presbyterian minister who supposes that the children

of godly parents will have a better place in heaven than those who happen

to be sprung from ungodly ones. I do not believe in any such thing. I am

not certain that there are any degrees in heaven at an; and even if there

were, I am not clear that even that would prove our children to have any

higher rights than others. All of them without exception, from whosoever

loins they may have sprung, will, we believe, not by baptism, not by their

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parents’ faith, but simply as we are all saved through the election of God,

through the precious blood “Christ, through the regenerating influence of

the Holy Spirit, attain to glory and Immortality, and wear the image of the

heavenly as they have worn the image of the earthy.

First, let it be a comfort to bereaved parents. You say it is a heavy cross

that you have to carry. Remember, it is easier to carry a dead cross than a

living one. To have a living cross is indeed a tribulation, — to have a child

who is rebellious in his childhood, vicious in his youth, debauched in his

manhood! Ah, would God that he had died from the birth; would God that

he had never seen the light! Many a father’s heirs have been brought with

sorrow to the grave through his living children, but I think never through

his dead babes, certainly not if he were a Christian, and were able to take

the comfort of the apostle’s words — “We sorrow not as they that are

without hope.” So you would have your child live? Ah, if you could have

drawn aside the veil of destiny, and have seen to what he might have lived!

Would you have had him live to ripen for the gallows? Would you have

him live to curse his father’s God? Would you have him live to make your

home wretched to make you wet your pillow with tears, and send you to

your daily work with your hands upon your loins because of sorrow? Such

might have been the case; it is not so now, for your little one sings before

the throne of God. Do you know from what sorrows your little one has

escaped? You have had enough yourself. It was born of woman, it would

have been of few days and full of trouble as you are. It has escaped those

sorrows, do you lament that? Remember, too your own sins, and the deep

sorrow of repentance. Had that child lived, it would have been a sinner,

and it must have known the bitterness of conviction of sin. It has escaped

that; it rejoices now in the glory of God. Then would you have it back

again? Bereaved parents, could you for a moment see your own offspring

above, I think you would very speedily wipe away your tears. There among

the sweet voices which sing the perpetual carol may be heard the voice of

your own child — an angel now, and you the mother of a songster before

the throne of God. You might not have murmured had you received the

promise that your child should have been elevated to the peerage, it has

been elevated higher than that — to the peerage of heaven. It has received

the dignity of the immortals, it is robed in better than royal garments it is

more rich and more blessed than it could have been if all the crowns of

earth could have been put upon its head. Wherefore, then would you

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complain? An old poet has penned a verse well fitted for an infant’s

epitaph; —

Your child has had that one stroke and has been relieved from all these

pains, and you may say of it, this much we know, he is supremely blessed,

has escaped from sin, and care, and woe, and with the Savior rests. “Happy

the babe,” says Hervey, “who,

While another says, looking upward to the skies,

So is it. It is well to fight and will, but to will as fairly without the fight! It

is well to sing the song of triumph after we have passed the Red Sea with

all its terrors, but to sing the song without the sea is glorious still! I do not

know that I would prefer the lot of a child in heaven myself. I think it is

nobler to have borne the storm, and to have struggled against the wind and

the rain. I think it will be a subject of congratulation through eternity, for

you and me, that we did not come so easy a way to heaven, for it is only a

pin’s prick after all, this mortal life; then there is exceeding great glory

hereafter. But yet I think we may still thank God for those little ones that

they have been spared our sins, and spared our infirmities, and spared our

pains and are entered into the rest above. Thus saith the Lord unto thee, O

Rachel, if thou weepest for thy children, and refuseth to be comforted

because they are not: “Restrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes

from tears, for thy work shall be rewarded with the Lord, and they shall

come again from the land of the enemy.”

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The next and perhaps more useful and profitable inference to be drawn

from the text is this: many of you are parents who have children in heaven.

Is it not a desirable thing that you should go there, too? And yet have I not

in these galleries and in this area some, perhaps many, who have no hope

hereafter? In fact, you have left that which is beyond the grave to be

thought of another day, you have given all your time and thoughts to the

short, brief, and unsatisfactory pursuits of mortal life. Mother unconverted

mother, from the battlements of heaven your child beckons you to

Paradise. Father, ungodly, impenitent father, the little eyes that one —

looked joyously on you, look down upon you now, and the lips which had

scarcely learned to call you father, ere they were sealed by the silence of

death, may be heard as with a still small voice, saying to you this morning,

“Father, must we be for ever divided by the great gulf which no man can

pass? “Doth not nature itself put a kind of longing in your soul that you

may be bound in the bundle of life with your own children? Then stop and

think. As you are at present, you cannot hope for that; for your way is

sinful, you have forgotten Christ, you have not repented of sin, you have

loved the wages of iniquity I pray thee go to thy chamber this morning and

think of thyself as being driven from thy little ones, banished for ever from

the presence of God, cast “where their worm dieth not and where their fire

is not quenched.” If thou wilt think of these matters, perhaps the heart will

begin to move, and the eyes may begin to flow, and then may the Holy

Spirit put before thine eyes the cross of the Savior the holy child Jesus!

And remember, if thou wilt turn thine eye to him thou shalt live: if thou

believest on him with all thy heart thou shalt be with him where He is, —

with all those whom the Father gave him who have gone before Thou

needest not to be shut out. Wilt thou sign thine own doom, and write thine

own death warrant? Neglect not this great salvation but may the grace of

God work with thee to make thee seek, for thou shalt find — to make thee

knock, for the door shall be opened — to make thee ask, for he that asketh

shall receive! O might I take you by the hand — perhaps you have come

from a newly-made grave, or left the child at home dead, and God has

made me a messenger to you this morning; O might I take you by the hand

and say, “We cannot bring him back again, the spirit is gone beyond recall,

but you may follow!” Behold the ladder of light before you! The first step

upon it is repentance, out of thyself the next step is faith, into, Christ, and

when thou art there, thou art fairly and safely on thy way, and ere long

thou shalt be received at heaven’s gates by those very little ones who have

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gone before, that they may come to welcome thee when thou shouldest

land upon the eternal shores.

Yet another lesson of instruction, and I will not detain you much longer.

What shall we say to parents who have living children? We have spoken of

those that are dead, what shall we say of the living? I think I might say,

reserve your tears, bereaved parents, for the children that live. You may go

to the little grave, you may look upon it and say, “This my child is saved; it

resteth for ever beyond all fear of harm.” You may come back to those

who are sitting round your table, and you can look from one to the other

and say, “These my children, many of them are unsaved.” Out of God, out

of Christ, some of them are just ripening into manhood and into

womanhood, and you can plainly see that their heart is like every natural

heart, desperately wicked. There is subject for weeping for you. I pray you

never cease to weep for them until they have ceased to sin, never cease to

hope for them until they have ceased to live; never cease to pray for them

until you yourself cease to breathe. Carry them before God in the arms of

faith, and do not be desponding because they are not what you want them

to be. They will be won yet if you have but faith in God. Do not think that

it is hopeless. He that saved you can save them. Take them one by one

constantly to God’s mercy-seat and wrestle with Him, and say, “I will not

let thee go except thou bless me.” The promise is unto you and to your

child, even to as many as the Lord your God shall call. Pray, strive,

wrestle, and it shall yet be your happy lot to see your household saved.

This was the word which the apostle gave to the jailer, “Believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved and thy house.” We have had

many proofs of it, for in this pool under here I have baptized not only the

father and the mother, but in many cases all the children too, who one after

another have been brought by grace even to put their trust in Jesus. It

should be the longing of every parent’s heart to see all his offspring

Christ’s, and all that have sprung from his loins numbered in the host of

those who shall sing around the throne of God. We may pray in faith, for

we have a promise about it; we may pray in faith, for we have many

precedents in Scripture, the God of Abraham is the God of Isaac and the

God of Jacob, but for this good thing he will be inquired of by the House

of Israel to do it for them. Inquire of Him, plead with Him, go before Him

with the power of faith and earnestness, and He will surely hear you.

One word to all the congregation. A little child was saying the other day —

and children will sometimes say strange things — “Papa, I cannot go back

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again.” When he was asked what he meant, he explained that he was here,

he had begun his life, and it seemed such a thought to him that he could not

cease to be, — he could not go back again. You and I may say the same;

here we are; we have grown up, we cannot go back again to that childhood

in which we once were; we have therefore no door of escape there. Good

John Bunyan used to wish that he had died when he was a child. Then

again, he hoped he might be descended from some Jew, for he had a notion

that the Hebrews might be saved. That door God has closed. Every door is

closed to you and me except the one that is just in front of us, and that has

the mark of the cross upon it. There is the golden knocker of prayer: do we

choose to turn aside from that to find another, — a gate of ceremonies, or

of blood, or of birth? We shall never enter that way. There is that knocker!

By faith, great God, I will lift it now. “I, the chief of sinners am, have

mercy upon me! “Jesus stands there. “Come in,” saith he, “thou blessed of

the Lord; wherefore standest thou without?” He receives me to his arms,

washes, clothes, glorifies me, when I come to him. Am I such a fool that I

do not knock? Yes, such I am by nature — then what a fool! O Spirit of

God! make me wise to know my danger and my refuge! And now, sinner,

in the name of him that liveth and was dead, and is alive for evermore, lay

hold upon that knocker, lift it, give it a blow, and let your prayer be, ere

thou leanest this sanctuary, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” May the

Lord hear and bless, for his name’s sake!

By C.H Spurgeon