Spurgeon Gems, 51-100

These Gems are a collection of many treasured sayings of Charles Spurgeon during his ministry of over 40 years, from 1850 to 1892. My purpose in presenting them is to encourage and help the Christian in their love and devotion to their Lord and Master, Jesus Christ.

(You will find it helpful to listen to the audio, as you read the text below.)

Gem #51 - Our Works
You cannot get to Heaven by your works. You might as well seek to reach the stars on a treadmill, as to go to Heaven by works; for as you take one step, you will always be where you were before. If you cannot be perfect, God will not save you by works.

Gem #52 - God's Sovereignty
The worm is not to complain, because God did not make it an angel, and the fish that swims the sea must not complain because it has no wings to fly into the highest heavens. God had a right to make his creatures just as He pleased, and though men and women may dispute His right, He will hold and keep it intact against all comers. He protects His right and makes proud men and women acknowledge it, in all His gifts He continually reminds us of His absolute sovereignty.

Gem #53 - The God of the Present
Don't you know that God is an eternal self-existent Being; that to say He loves now, is, in fact, to say He always did love, since with God there is no past, and can be no future. What we call past, present, and future, He wraps up in one eternal now. And if you say He loves you now, you say He loved you yesterday; He loved you in eternity past; and He will love you forever; for now with God is past, present, and future. 

Gem #54 - Man's Strength 
They that go off to fight, boasting that they can do it, will return with their banners trailed in the dust and with their armor stained with defeat; for God will not go with the man or woman who goes in their own strength. 

Gem #55 - Think of God
Let your mind think on the great doctrines of the Godhead: consider the existence of God from before the creation of the world. See Him who is, and was, and is to come, the Almighty; let your soul comprehend as much as it can of the Infinite and Eternal God, and I am sure, if you have minds at all, they will shrink with awe. The lofty archangel himself bows before his Master's throne; and we will cast ourselves into the dust when we feel what lowly nothings, what insignificant specks we are when compared with our completely magnificent Creator.

Gem #56 - God's Gifts
Faith is the gift of God. Does my earthly, natural father love me because he fed me, and because he clothed me? No, he clothed and fed me because he loved me, for his love was prior to his gift. His gifts did not cause him to love me, because he loved me before he gave them. And if any man or woman says, "God loves me because I can do this or that for him," they talk nonsense.

Gem #57 - Peace and Joy
Peace is the flowing of the brook, but joy is the rushing of the waterfall when the brook is filled and bursts its banks, and gushes down upon the rocks.

Gem #58 - The Lasting Works of Man
Many men and women have said of their works, "They will last forever!" but how disappointed they have been! In the age following the flood, they made the bricks and built the Tower of Babel, and they thought, "This will last forever!" But God confused their language; they never finished their tower. By His sovereignty he scattered the men and women and left the tower as a monument to their folly. Pharaoh and the Egyptian monarchs built their pyramids, and they said, "They will stand forever!" and yes it is true that they still stand today; but the time is approaching when age will devour even these great monuments. So it is with all the proudest works of man, whether they have been his temples or his kingdoms, he has written "everlasting" on them; but God has ordained their end, and they have passed away.

The most stable things have vanished like shadows and bubbles of the moment, quickly destroyed at God's command. Where is Babylon? Where are the cities of Persia? Where are the high places of Edom? Where are the temples of the heroes of Greece? Where are the vast armies of the Roman Emperors? Have they not all passed away? And though in their pride they said, "This kingdom is an everlasting one; this queen of the seven hills (Rome) will be called the eternal city!" its pride is dimmed; and she who sat alone, and said, "I will not be a widow, but instead a queen forever!" she has fallen, has fallen, and in a little while she will sink like a millstone in the flood, her name being a curse and a byword, and her site the habitation of wild animals.

Man calls his works eternal—God calls them transitory. Man conceives that they are built of rock—God says, "They are built of sand, or worse than that—they are built of air." Man says he erects them for eternity—God blows on them for a second, and where are they? Like the fragments of a vision, they are passed and gone forever.

Gem #59 - God's Spirit and Man's Spirit
God's Holy Spirit and man's sin cannot live together peacefully; they may both be in the same heart, but they cannot both reign there, nor can they both be quiet there; for "the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature." They cannot rest, instead there will be a perpetual warring in the soul, so that the Christian will have to cry out, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" But in due time, the Spirit will drive out all sin, and will present us blameless before the throne of his Majesty with great joy.

Gem #60 - Heresy
The boasted power of man's reason has not changed in the last one hundred and fifty years! It has piled up one thing; and then on another day it has laughed at its own handiwork, demolished its own castle, and constructed another one, and the next day a third. It has a thousand dresses. Once it came out dressed like a fool with its bells, heralded by Voltaire; then it came out a bragging bully, like Tom Paine; then it changed its course, and assumed another shape, until finally, we have it in the base, perverted secularism of the present day, which looks only at the earth, keeps its nose on the ground, and like the animal, thinks this world is enough; or looks for another world by seeking this one. Why, before one hair on his head will turn gray, the last secularist will have passed away; before many of us are fifty years of age, a new heresy will come. They will have altered their name, assumed a fresh shape, put on a new form of evil, but still their nature will be the same: opposing Christ, and endeavoring to blaspheme His truths. On all their systems of religion, or non-religion—for that is a system too—it may be written "Transient! Fading as the flower, fleeting as the meteor, frail and unreal as a vapor." But of Christ's religion, it will be said, "His name will endure forever!"

Gem #61 - Worldly Flavors
You know, when we have been taking some kind of medicine, and our mouth has been impregnated with a strong flavor, whatever we eat acquires that taste. You have got your mouth out of taste by taking in some of the world's delicacies; you have some of the powder of the pastries of Sodom hanging on your lips, that spoils the glorious flavor of your meditation on Jesus. In fact, it prevents you from meditating on Christ at all. It is only a hearing of the meditation with your ear—not a receiving of it with your hearts.

Gem #62 - Warning of Judgment
Warn the boater before he enters the current, and then, if he is swept down the rapids, he destroys himself. Warn the man before he drinks the cup of poison, tell him it is deadly; and then, if he drinks it, his death lies at his own door. And so, let us warn you before you depart this life; let us preach to you while your bones are still full of marrow, and the sinews of your joints are still fastened.

Gem #63 - The Man Without the Spirit
Friend, you don't have the Holy Spirit. You are nothing better—whatever you are, or whatever you may be—than the fall of Adam left you. That is to say, you are a fallen creature, having only capacities to live here in sin and to live forever in torment! But you don't have the capacity to live in Heaven at all, for you do not have the Holy Spirit; and therefore you are unable to know or enjoy spiritual things. And mark this, a man may be in this state, and be a carnal man, and yet he may have all the virtues that could grace a Christian; but with all these, if he doesn't have the Holy Spirit, he has not advanced an inch further than where Adam's fall left him—that is, condemned and under the curse! Yes, and he may practice religion with all his might—he may share in the Lord's Supper and be baptized, and may be the most devout person in church; but if he does not have the Holy Spirit, he has not moved a solitary inch from where he was, for he is still "a slave to sin," and a lost soul.

Further, he may pick up religious phrases until he talks very fast about religion; he may read biographies until he seems to be a deeply taught child of God; he may be able to write an article on the deep experience of a believer; but if this experience is not his own, if he has not received it by the Holy Spirit of the living God, he is still nothing more than a carnal man, and Heaven is to him a place to which there is no entrance.

Further, he might go so far as to become a minister of the gospel, and a successful minister too, and God may bless the word that he preaches to the salvation of sinners, but unless he has received the Holy Spirit, even if he is as eloquent as Apollos, and as earnest as Paul, he is nothing more than a mere man, without a capacity for spiritual things.

No, to top it all, he might even have the power of working miracles, as Judas had—he might even be received into the Church as a believer, as was Simon Magus, and after all that, though he had cast out devils, though he had healed the sick, though he had worked miracles, he might have the gates of Heaven shut in his face, if he had not received the Holy Spirit. For this is the most important thing, without which all others are in vain—the receiving of the Holy Spirit of the living God. "If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ!" Romans 8:9

Gem #64 - Alone with Christ
Some persons say they cannot bear to spend one hour in quiet solitude; they have nothing to do, nothing to think about. Surely no Christian will ever talk like that, for if I can but give him one word to think of—Christ—let him dwell on that forever. Let me give him the word Jesus, and only let him try to think it over, and he will find that an hour is not enough, and that eternity is not half enough time to utter our glorious Savior's praise!

Gem #65 - Showers of Blessings
When God sends rain upon the church, He "sends showers of blessings." There are some ministers who think, that if there is a shower on their church, God will send a shower of work. Yes, but if He does, He will send a shower of comfort. Others think that God will send a shower of gospel truth. Yes, but if He sends that, He will send a shower of gospel holiness. For all God's blessings go together. They are like the sweet sister graces that danced hand in hand. God sends showers of blessings. If He gives comforting grace, He will also give converting grace. If He makes the trumpet of judgment blow for the bankrupt sinner, He will also make it sound a shout of joy for the sinner that is pardoned and forgiven. He will send "showers of blessings" 

Gem #66 - The Outpouring of the Spirit
The hour is coming, and has now come, when the Holy Spirit will be poured out again in such a wonderful manner, that many will go here and there to increase knowledge—the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the surface of the great deep; when His kingdom will come, and His will, will be done on earth, even as it is in Heaven. We are not going to be dragging on forever like Pharaoh, without wheels on his chariot. My heart exults, and my eyes flash with the thought that very likely I will live to see the outpouring of the Spirit; when "the sons and the daughters of God again will prophesy, and the young men will see visions, and the old men will dream dreams." Perhaps there will be no miraculous gifts for they will not be required; but yet there will be:
such a miraculous amount of holiness,
such an extraordinary fervor of prayer,
such a real communion with God,
and so much vital religion, and
such a spread of the doctrines of the cross,

that every one will see that truly the Holy Spirit is poured out like water, and the rains are descending from above! For that let us pray; let us continually work for it, and seek it of God.

Gem #67 - Controlling Evil Thoughts
My thoughts will sometimes fly up to God with such a power that eagles' wings cannot match it. It sometimes has such might that it can almost see the King in His beauty, and the land which is very far off. With regard to myself, my thoughts will sometimes take me over the gates of iron, across that infinite unknown, to the very gates of pearl, and discover the glorified Blessed One.

But, if it is powerful one way, it is also powerful in another way: for my thoughts have taken me down to the vilest gutters and sewers of the earth. It has given me imaginations so dreadful, that, while I could not avoid them, yet I was thoroughly horrified at them. These thoughts will come; and when I feel in the holiest condition, the most devoted to God, and the most earnest in prayer, it often happens that that is the very time when the plague breaks out the worst! But I rejoice and think of one thing, that I can cry out when these thoughts come upon me.

I know it is said in the Book of Leviticus, when someone committed an immoral act of evil against a virgin, if the maiden cried out for someone to help her, then her life was to be spared. So it is with the Christian. If he cries out when evil thoughts come, there is hope. Can you chain your thoughts? No; but the power of the Holy Spirit can. Yes, He will do it! and He does it even on the earth.

Gem #68 - The Call of Salvation
Once I was tied to the wild horse of my lust, tied hand and foot, incapable of resistance; and was galloping on with hell's wolves behind me, howling for my body and my soul, as their just and lawful prey. Then there came a mighty hand which stopped that wild horse, cut my ropes, set me down, and gave me freedom! Is there power? Yes, there is power; and he who has felt it, must acknowledge it.

There was a time when I lived in the strong old castle of my sins, and rested on my works. Then there came a trumpeter to the door, and begged me to open it. I, in anger, chased him from the porch, and said he would never enter. Then there came a glorious and loving person; His hands were marked with scars, where nails were driven, and His feet had nail prints too; He lifted up His cross, using it as a hammer. At the first blow the gate of my prejudice shook; at the second it trembled more, at the third down it fell, and in He came; and He said, "Get up, and stand on your feet, for I have loved you with an everlasting love!"

Gem #69 - Holy Like God
My sanctification will be finished just before I die; but not until that moment will I ever claim perfection in myself. But at that moment when I depart, my spirit will have its last baptism in the Holy Spirit's fire. It will be put in the crucible for its last testing in the furnace; and then, free from all imperfections, and fine like a wedge of pure gold, it will be presented at the feet of God without the least degree of impurity.

O glorious hour! O blessed moment! I think I would still long to die if there were no Heaven, if I could only have that last purification, and come up from Jordan's stream pure white from the washing. Oh, to be washed white, clean, pure, perfect! There will not be one angel more pure than I will be—yes, not God himself more holy! And I will be able to say, in a double sense, "Great and Holy God, I am clean, through Jesus' blood I am clean, through the Spirit's work I am clean too!"

Gem #70 - God's Army Comes Alive
If this earth could have its coat torn away for a little while, if the green sod could be cut from it, and we could look about six feet deep into the earth, what a world it would seem! What would we see? Bones, carcasses, rottenness, worms, corruption! And you would say, "Can these dry bones live? Can they stand up?" Yes! "in a moment! in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet sound, the dead will be raised." He speaks; they are alive! See them scattered! Bones came together, bone to bone! See them naked; flesh comes upon them! See them lifeless; "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain!" When the wind of the Holy Spirit comes, they live; and they stand upon their feet as a very great army.

Gem #71 - The Same Yesterday and Today
Theology has nothing new in it, except that which is false. The preaching of Paul, must be the preaching of the minister today. There is no improvement here. We may advance in our knowledge of it; but it stands the same because it is perfect, and perfection cannot be any better.

Gem #72 - The Resurrection of Christ
The resurrection of Christ was effected by the power of the Holy Spirit! and here we have a vivid illustration of His omnipotence. If you could you have stepped, as the angels did, into the grave of Jesus, and seen His sleeping body, you would have found it cold as any other corpse. Lift up the hand; it falls by the side. Look at the eye; it is glazed. And there is the gaping wound in His side which must have annihilated His life. See His hands; the blood no longer drips from them. They are cold and motionless. 
Can that body live? Can it rise up? Yes! and it is an illustration of the power of the Holy Spirit. For when the power of the Holy Spirit came on Him, as it was when it fell upon the dry bones of the valley, "He arose in the majesty of His divinity, and, bright and shining, astonished the Roman soldiers guarding the tomb so that they ran away. Yes, He arose never to die again, but to live forever, King of kings and Prince of the kings of the earth!"

Gem #73 - The God of the Christians
God is love in its highest degree. He is love rendered more than love. Love is not God, but God is love. He is full of grace. He is the abundant source of mercy—He delights in mercy. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are His thoughts of love above our thoughts of despair; and His ways of grace above our ways of fear. This God, in whom these three great attributes harmonize—unlimited sovereignty, inflexible justice, and incomprehensible grace—these three make up the main attributes of the one God of Heaven and earth whom the Christians worship.

Gem #74 - Meditate on Christ
I urge you to meditate on Christ, as a piece of scented substance that was perfumed in Heaven. It does not matter what you have in your house; this will make it like the fragrance of Paradise—will make it smell like those breezes that once blew through the garden of Eden, carrying the odor of flowers. Oh! there is nothing that can so comfort your spirits, and relieve all your distresses and troubles, as the feeling that now you can meditate on the person of Jesus Christ.

Gem #75 - Communicating with Jesus
I think that if you had a free pass to Heaven's palace, you would use it often; if you could go there and hold communion with some person whom you dearly loved, you would often be found there. But here is your Jesus, the king of Heaven, and He gives you that which can open the gates of Heaven and let you in to personally meet with Him, and yet you live without meditating on His work, without meditating on His person, without meditating on His offices, and without meditating on His glory.

Gem #76 - What We Do With Our Lives
Just as the tiny pieces of dirt and rock make up the mountains and the mountains together make up the mountain range, so the trivial actions of our lives make up the whole life and each of these must be pulled apart separately. You had an hour to spare the other day—what did you do with it? You had an opportunity to speak—how did you use it? You had a pen—you could use that—what did you write? Each opportunity and moment of our lives will be revealed, and there will be demanded an account for each one!

Gem #77 - Wandering Sheep
It is good to be the sheep of God's pasture, even if we have been wandering sheep. The straying sheep has an owner, and however far it may stray from the fold, it never ceases to belong to that owner. I believe that God will yet bring back into the fold every one of His own sheep, and they all will be saved. It is good to be aware of our wanderings, for if we feel ourselves to be lost, we will certainly be saved; if we feel ourselves to have wandered, we will certainly be brought back.

Gem #78 - Worthless Virtue
Virtues in unsaved men and women are nothing but whitewashed sins! The best accomplishment of an unchanged character is worthless in God's sight. It lacks the stamp of grace on it; and that which does not have the stamp of grace on it is a counterfeit coin.

Gem #79 - Jesus Our Sweet Counselor
Good old Simeon called Jesus the consolation of Israel; and so He was. Before His actual appearance, His name was the morning star; celebrating the passage of darkness, and predicting the rising of the sun. To Him they looked with the same hope which cheers the night watchman, when from the lonely castle-top he sees the fairest of the stars, and welcomes it as the usher of the morning.
 
When Jesus was on the earth, He must have been the consolation of all those who were privileged to be His companions. We can imagine how quickly the disciples would run to Christ to tell Him of their griefs; and how sweetly, with that matchless inflection of His voice, Jesus would speak to them, and command their fears to be gone. Like children, they would have considered Him as their Father; and to Him every need, every groan, every sorrow, every agony, would at once be carried to Him; and He, like a wise physician, had a ointment for every wound; He had mixed a cup of hope for their every care; and He willingly dispensed some mighty remedy to alleviate all the fever of their troubles. Oh! it must have been sweet to have lived with Christ. Surely, sorrows were then nothing but joys in masks, because they gave an opportunity to go to Jesus to have them removed. Oh! if God had been willing, some of us may wish, that we could have lain our weary heads on the chest of Jesus, and that our birth had been in that happy era, when we might have heard His kind voice, and seen His kind look, when He said, "Let the weary ones come to Me!"

It was right for Jesus to slumber in the dust awhile, that He might perfume the cavity of the grave to make it "No longer a repository for the bones and bodies of the dead—the relics of lost innocence." It was good for Jesus to have a resurrection, that we, who will one day be the dead in Christ, might rise first, and in glorious bodies stand upon earth. And it was good for Jesus that He ascended up to Heaven, that He might lead captivity captive; that He might chain the demons of Hell; that He might tie them to His chariot-wheels, and drag them up high Heaven's hill, to make them feel a second overthrow from His right arm, when He will throw them from the pinnacles of Heaven down to the deeper depths beneath.

"It is for your good that I am going away," said Jesus, "Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you." Jesus must go. Weep, you disciples; Jesus must go. Mourn, you poor ones, who are to be left without a Counselor. But hear how kindly Jesus speaks: "I will not leave you as orphans; I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever."

Jesus would not leave those few poor sheep alone in the wilderness; He would not desert His children, and leave them fatherless. Although He had a mighty mission which filled His heart and hand; even though He had so much to perform, that we might have thought that even His gigantic intellect would be overburdened; although He had so much to suffer, that we might suppose His whole soul would be concentrated on the thought of the sufferings to be endured. Yet it was not so; before Jesus left, He gave soothing words of comfort; like the good Samaritan, He poured in oil and wine, and we see what He promised: "I will send you another Counselor—one who will be just what I have been, yes, even more; who will:
console you in your sorrows,
remove your doubts,
comfort you in your afflictions, and
stand as My vicar on earth, to do that which I would have done had I stayed with you.

Gem #80 - Sitting Next to Jesus
Let your face always wear a smile; let your eyes sparkle with gladness; live near your Master; live in the suburbs of the celestial city, and when your time comes, you will be given better wings than angels ever wore, and out-soar the cherubim, and climb up where your Jesus sits—and sit at His right hand, even as He has overcome and has sat down at His Father's right hand. 

Gem #81 - A Heart Pounding for Christ
Many good old gospel blades has been made blunt against the hard heart. Many pieces of the true steel that God has put into the hands of His servants has had their edges dulled by being used against the sinner's heart. We cannot reach the soul, but the Holy Spirit can. We read in the Song of Solomon, "My lover thrust His hand through the latch-opening; my heart began to pound for Him" (Song of Solomon 5:4). Jesus can give a sense of blood-bought forgiveness that will dissolve a heart of stone!
Gem #82 - Peace in the Midst of Trouble
The very fact that you have troubles is a proof of His faithfulness; for you have received one half of His gift, and you will receive the other half. You know that Christ's last will and testament has two portions in it. "In this world you will have trouble:" and you have received that. The next clause is, "So that in Me you may have peace." You have that too. "But take heart! I have overcome the world!" That is yours also.

Gem #83 - Christ is Everything
There will be little else we will want in Heaven besides Jesus Christ. He will be our bread, our food, our beauty, and our glorious garment. The atmosphere of Heaven will be Christ; everything in Heaven will be Christ-like! Yes, Christ is the Heaven of His people! 

Gem #84 - Warning to the Scorner
Be assured, O Scorner, that your laughs cannot alter truth, your ridicule cannot avert your inevitable doom. Though in your foolishness you would make an alliance with death, and sign a covenant with hell—yet swift justice will overtake you, and strong vengeance will strike you down. In vain do you jeer and mock, for eternal truths are greater than your twisted lies; nor can your sly sayings alter a single word of divine truth in the Word of God. Oh! why do you quarrel with your best friend, and mistreat you only refuge? However, hope still remains, even for the scorner. Hope in a Savior's veins. Hope in the Father's mercy. Hope in the Holy Spirit's supreme power.

Gem #85 - The Provision of God
It is true that you do not have a fiery chariot to take you to Heaven; but the angels will carry you to Jesus' waiting arms, and that is just as good. It is true, no ravens bring you food; it is also true that you get your food somehow or other. It is quite certain that no rock gushes out with water; but you always have water to drink. It is true your child has not been raised from the dead; but you must remember that David had a child that was not raised any more than yours. You have the same consolation as he had: "I will go to him; he will not return to me."

Gem #86 - Looking the Wrong Direction
Men in the days of Whitfield looked back to the days of Bunyan; men in the days of Bunyan wept for the days of Wycliffe, and Calvin, and Luther; and men in their day then wept for the days of Augustine and Chrysostom. Men in those days wept for the Apostles; and doubtless men in the days of the Apostles wept for the days of Jesus Christ; and no doubt some in the days of Jesus Christ were so blind as to wish to return to the days of the prophets, and thought more of the days of Elijah than they did of the most glorious day of Christ. Some men look more to the past than the present. Rest assured that Jesus Christ is the same today as He was yesterday, and He will be the same forever.

Gem #87 - Sound Preaching
The old truth that Calvin preached, that Chrysostom preached, that Paul preached, is the truth I must preach today--or else I would be a liar to my conscience and my God. I cannot shape the truth. I know of no such thing as shaving off the rough edges of a doctrine. John Knox's gospel is my gospel. That which thundered through Scotland must thunder through our country. The great majority of our ministers are sound enough in the faith, but not sound enough in the way they preach it.
Gem #88 - Our Precious Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit champions our cause with Jesus Christ, with groans that words cannot express. O my soul! You are ready to burst within me. O my heart! You are swollen with grief. The hot tide of my emotion would quickly overflow the channels of my veins. I long to speak, but the very desire chains my tongue. I wish to pray, but the fervency of my feeling curbs my language. There is a groaning within that cannot be uttered. Do you know who can utter that groaning? Who can understand it, and who can put it into heavenly language, and utter it in a celestial language, and utter it in a celestial tongue, so that Christ can hear it? O yes; it is God the Holy Spirit; He defends our cause with Christ, and then Christ defends it with His Father. He is the advocate who makes intercession for us, with groans that words cannot express.

Gem #89 - The Life-giver
You may take a corpse, you may dress it in all the garments of eternal decency; you may wash it with the water of morality; yes, you may adorn it with the crown of profession, you may put on its forehead a tiara of beauty, you may paint its cheeks, until you make it almost lifelike. But remember, unless the Spirit is there, the worm will feed on the painted cheek, and corruption will soon seize the body. It is the Holy Spirit that is the one who gives life.

Gem #90 - The Holy Spirit's Love For Us
Oh! there is a voice in love; it speaks its own language; it has a dialect and an accent which no one can mimic; wisdom cannot imitate it; oratory cannot attain to it; it is love alone which can reach the mourning heart; love is the only handkerchief which can wipe away the mourner's tears. And isn’t the Holy Spirit a loving comforter? Do you know, O saint, how much the Holy Spirit loves you? Can you measure the love of the Holy Spirit? Do you know how great the affection of His soul is towards you?

Go measure Heaven with your ruler;
go weigh the mountains with your scales;
go take the ocean's water, and count each drop;
go count the sand on the sea's wide shore!

And when you have accomplished all this, you still can't tell how much He loves you. He has loved you extensively, He has loved you abundantly, He has loved you forever, and He still will love you always; surely the Holy Spirit is the person to comfort you, because He loves you.

Gem #91 - The Power of the Holy Spirit
Spiritual farmer! Sharpen your plow with the Holy Spirit. Spiritual sower! Dip your seed in the Holy Spirit, so it will germinate; and ask the Holy Spirit to give you grace to scatter it, that it may fall into the right furrows. Spiritual warrior! Sharpen your sword with the Holy Spirit, and ask the Holy Spirit, whose word is indeed a sword, to strengthen your arm to wield it. 

Gem #92 - The Wicked in Old Age
The young may die; the old must die! To sleep in youth is to sleep in a siege; to sleep in old age is to slumber during the attack. What! Will you that are so near the Maker's court still put Him off with the question "Go your way?" What! Procrastinate now, when the knife is at your throat—when the worm is at the heart of the tree, and the branches have begun to wither—when the molars in your mouth fail even now, because they are few, and your eyes that look out of the windows are darkened? The dried up and yellow leaf has come on you, and you are still not ready for your doom!
Gem #93 - The Closed Canon of Scripture
The canon of revelation is closed; there is no more to be added; God does not give a fresh revelation, but He rivets the old one. When it has been forgotten, and laid in the dusty closet of our memory, He grabs it out and cleans the picture, but does not paint a new one. There are no new doctrines, but the old ones are often revived. It is not, I say, by any new revelation that the Holy Spirit comforts. He comforts us by telling us old things over and over again; He brings a bright light to manifest the treasures hidden in Scripture; He unlocks the vaults in which the truth has long lain, and He points to secret rooms filled with untold riches; but He coins no more, for enough is done.

Believer! There is enough in the Bible for you to live on forever. If you should outnumber the years of Methuselah, there would be no need for a fresh revelation; if you should live until Christ returns, there would be no necessity for the addition of one single word; if you should go down as deep as Jonah, or even descend as David said he did, into the depths of Hell, still there would be enough in the Bible to comfort you without one extra sentence.

Gem #94 - The Foolish Gospel Conquers Worldly Wisdom
Worldly wisdom has had its time, and enough time; it has done its all, and that was not enough; it has made the world worse than it was before it stepped on to it, and "now," God says, "foolishness will overcome worldly wisdom; now ignorance, as you call it, will sweep away science; now (God says), humble, childlike faith will smash into dust all the colossal systems your hands have piled up." 

He calls us His warriors. Christ puts His trumpet to His mouth and up come the warriors, dressed in fisherman's garb, with the dialect of the lake of Galilee—poor humble fishermen. Here are the warriors, O worldly wisdom, that are to confound you; these are the heroes who will overcome your proud philosophers; these men are to plant their standard on your ruined walls, and call them to fall forever; these men and their successors are to exalt a gospel in the world which you may laugh at as absurd, which you may sneer at as folly, but which will be exalted above the hills, and will be glorious even to the highest heavens!

Gem #95 - Security
There are moments when the eyes glisten with joy, and we can say, "We are persuaded, confident, and certain!" I don't wish to distress any one who is under doubt. Often gloomy doubts will prevail; there are seasons when you fear that you have not been called, when you doubt your interest in Christ. Oh! What a mercy it is that it is not your hold on Christ that saves you, but His hold on you! What a sweet fact that it is not how you grasp His hand, but His grasp of yours, that saves you.

Gem #96 - Thoughts of God
The book of nature is an expression of the thoughts of God. We have God's terrible thoughts in the thunder and lightning. We have God's loving thoughts in the sunshine and the balmy breeze. We have God's plentiful, prudent, careful thoughts in the waving harvest and in the ripening meadow. We have God's brilliant thoughts in the wondrous scenes which are beheld from mountaintop and valley. We have God's most sweet and pleasant thoughts of beauty in the little flowers that blossom at our feet.
Gem #97 - Indifference
I remember standing on a seashore once, on a narrow neck of land, thoughtless that the tide might come up. The tide kept continually washing up on either side, and, wrapped in thoughts, I still stood there, until finally I had the greatest difficulty in getting to shore.

You and I stand each day on a narrow neck, and there is one wave coming up there; see, how near it is to your foot; and look! another follows at every tick of the clock! "Our hearts, like muffled drums, are beating funeral marches to the tomb!"

Gem #98 - Dying Grace
A martyr is going to the stake; the men with their axes are around him; the crowds are mocking, but he is marching steadily on. See, they tie him with a chain around his waist, to the stake; they heap sticks and twigs all around him; the flame is lighted; listen to his words: "Bless the Lord O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name!"

The flames are burning around his legs; the fire is burning him even to the bone; see him lift up his hands and say, "I know that my redeemer lives, and though the fire devour this body, yet in my flesh I will see the Lord!" Look at him clutch the stake and kiss it, as if he loved it, and hear him say, "For every chain of iron that man tied me with, God will give to me a chain of gold; for all these sticks and twigs, and this disgrace and shame, God will increase the weight of my eternal glory."

See all the lower parts of his body are consumed; still he lives in the torture. Finally he bows himself, and the upper part of his body falls over; and as he falls you hear him say, "Into Your hands I commend my spirit!" Sir, what wondrous magic was on him? What made that man strong? What helped him to bear that cruelty? What made him stand unmoved in the flames? It was the thing of power; it was the cross of Jesus crucified! For "unto us who are saved it is the power of God."

Gem #99 - The Poison of False Teaching
There have been many destroyed by poisons, given to lull them to sleep. Many have been ruined by the cry of "peace, peace," when there is no peace—hearing gentle things, when they ought to be hearing things that convict their hearts. Cleopatra's asp was brought in a basket of flowers; and men's ruin often lurks in fair and sweet speeches. But the Holy Spirit's comfort is safe, and you may rest on it. Let him speak the word, and there is a reality about it; let him give the cup of consolation, and you may drink it to the bottom; for in its depths there is no residue, nothing to intoxicate or ruin—it is completely safe!

Gem #100 - The Wisdom of the Gospel
The gospel is the sum of wisdom; a collection of knowledge; a treasure-house of truth; and a disclosure of mysterious secrets. In it we see how justice and mercy may be associated; here we see unalterable law entirely satisfied, and sovereign love carrying away the sinner in triumph. Our meditation on it broadens the mind; and as it opens to our soul in successive flashes of glory, we stand astonished at the profound wisdom manifest in it. Yes, dear friends! if you seek wisdom, you will see it displayed in all its greatness; not in the firmness of the earth's foundations: not in the measured march of the clouds of the sky, nor in the perpetual motions of the waves of the sea; not in the vegetation with all its intricate forms of beauty, nor in the animal with its marvelous tissue of nerve, and vein, and sinew; nor even in man, that last and loftiest work of the Creator.

But turn aside and see this great sight!—an incarnate God on the cross; a substitute atoning for mortal's guilt; a sacrifice satisfying the vengeance of Heaven, and delivering the rebellious sinner. Here is essential wisdom; enthroned, crowned, and glorified. Admire, you men and women of the earth, if you are not blind; and you who glory in your learning, bow your heads in reverence, and admit that all your skill could never have devised a gospel that is one so just to God, and so safe to man.