" For he spake, and it was done." PSALM xxxiii. 9.
WHEN David sang these words in his great Psalm,
he was calling upon the earth to fear the Lord, and
all the inhabitants of the world to stand in awe of
Him, because He was its Maker: "For he spake,
and it was done; he commanded and it stood fast."
No truth can ever be opened to man's knowledge
which can supersede the simple dignity of that con-
ception, that God made the world. No motive for
lofty life can be presented which can outshine this :
that, because God made the world and all that
therein is, the world must fear its Maker with that
fear which is the beginning of wisdom. The method
of men, trying to get at the true explanation of
things which they see, is to construct an hypothesis,
to see how that hypothesis will meet the facts which
they observe, and to modify their hypothesis as the
facts compel them. Behind all other hypotheses
there must always stand the first hypothesis of a
God-Creator. Before any revelation authenticates
it, man, standing in the midst of the wondrous
world, says to himself: "Where did it come from?
What made it?" and the answer springs from his
own consciousness: "Why, the only creative power
which I know of must have made it a personal
Will ! Some He must have spoken the word, and it
was done." With that hypothesis he tests the
world, and nowhere does it fail him. Much light
he gets upon the character and intentions of this
sublime He who made the world ; but, above it all,
clearer and clearer it grows to the holder of that
hypothesis continually that He did make it. And
so he is ready by and by, when Revelation opens its
mouth and Incarnation comes, to listen and look and
understand the nature of the God whose existence
has been to him the key of the world.
And so the primal motive of all life must be, as I
said, this same Creatorship which is the final know-
ledge. What is the strongest power to make men
good, to take them from their sins, to turn them to
new lives? You say, Christ's Love. Yes, but the
Love of Christ, remember always, is but the reasser-
tion of Creatorship. It is the Father claiming His
children, claiming them because they are His child-
ren; and all that which comes into the Christian s
heart, and sets it struggling, yearning towards God,
is only the reawakened childhood. It has been em-
phasized by danger ; it is full of special gratitude for
special love ; but, after all, it is the soul of the child
finding out the Father. It has its root in the crea-
tive act by which God made man when "He spake
and it was done."
These thoughts cannot but arise when we speak
of God s act of creation, but it is not on these
thoughts that we will dwell now. I want to have
you notice with me the singular form of the declara-
tion, and the way in which it puts what we may call
the decisiveness of God. "He spake, and it was
done," says David. Here, you see, is a perfect
meeting of the Word and the Deed, and those two
in their combination make the perfect life.
See what they are. The word is the completed
thought. It is the reasonable process of a man who
has come at last up to the point of resolution and
of declaration. Not yet is there anything to show
in outward life. No material has yet been touched.
The world seems the same that it has seemed be-
fore ; but inside the man everything is altered. The
thought, the passion, the struggle of motive with
motive has been going on, and at last has come to
a decision. The word is ready, and is spoken. The
conclusion is reached. The resolution is declared.
That moment always has a special solemnity and in-
terest when it is recognizable the moment when
the word is perfect, but the deed not yet begun.
Such was the moment when Abraham determined
on his journey, sleeping his last night in Ur of the
Chaldees, with all the Jewish history before him ;
when Paul was sitting in the house at Damascus,
with the determination of his new life made, but not
one stroke of work yet done for Christ ; when Co
lumbus uttered his strong conviction to the world,
waiting only for his ships to find America.
There are moments in all our lives which have this
solemnity, as we look back upon them ; moments
when the word was complete, the resolution made,
but the deed not yet begun. Before that moment
there had come the perplexity of puzzled thought ;
after it, came all the bewildering detail of action.
But, just there, thought stood clear in its conclu-
sion, and the coming deed glowed bright and certain
in its promise ; and that was, what such moments of
a man's life always are, heroic and inspiring. It
exalted us when we were in it, and we remember it
with joy. But yet, on the completed word a deed
must follow, or the word loses its beauty and dis-
tresses us. If, as we look back, we see our lives all
strown with words that never came to deeds, with
resolutions that never produced actions, we are as
unsatisfactory to ourselves as if we saw our lives full
of actions which had no reasonable resolutions out
of which they sprang, but were the results of
thoughtless whims. These make the two kinds of
men who disappoint us always : the men of words,
but not of deeds; the men of deeds, but not of
words ; the men who resolve without acting, and the
men who act without resolving; for remember that
speech has a deep meaning in the Bible. It is not
the mere use of words. It is that whole reasonable
process which culminates in the use of words, in the
deliberate utterance. This is the high use in which
the Lord Himself is called the Word of God.
These two kinds of men, then, there are. The
men of words who are not men of deeds think,
speculate, dream, grow vague, intangible, and help-
less. The men of deeds who are not men of words
grow shallow and shortsighted, practical only in the
outside ways and little tricks of things. As men
grow to be full and complete men, the two come
together. The word and the deed correspond. Every
reasonable resolution has its action, and every action
has its reasonable resolution. The object of all
education, whether of the family or the school or
the church, ought to be to bring this union to its
best completeness.
Now, when David says of God, "He spake, and
it was done," he is declaring that in God the word
and deed unite completely. It is impossible for
them to be separated. God cannot know a truth,
involving a conviction, that shall not flash out some
action, as its consequence, to the very ends of the
universe. And God cannot do a deed out on the
farthest confines of His eternal nature, but that
deed has its root down in the very deepest depths
of His nature. He never resolves but action fol-
lows. He never acts but resolution has gone be-
fore. In this truth lies the solidity, the solemnity,
the wonderful beauty of the world. God does some-
thing to you. He opens His hand and fills your cup
with plenteousness. Or is it the opposite? He
closes His hand, and takes the joy and pride of your
life away. Before He did that deed, He spake. It
was the utterance of a reasonable resolution. It
was no generous nor cruel whim. The strange
event, be it all bright with sunshine or black with
grief, comes in and sits down in your life crowned
with God s intention. He did it, and He meant to
do it.
And so, upon the other hand, no word without
its deed. God s words are words of righteousness.
"All sin is bad; all holiness is good." When once
those words have been spoken, evil must come upon
wickedness; blessing must come upon goodness.
No power in the universe can stop it. He who tries
to be wicked, and yet enjoy, casts himself between
a word and a deed of God, and must be crushed in
their inevitable meeting. He who tries to be holy
and yet thinks he must be wretched, is amazed to see
how impossible that is. God takes him up and bears
him, in spite of himself and his feeble expectations,
into happiness. Ah yes; the necessary union, the
necessary correspondence of word and deed, in God,
is what makes the solidity and the solemnity, the
awfulness and beauty, of the universe and of every
life.
If we allow ourselves to ask why it is that God s
words always produce deeds, why His resolutions
always produce their actions, while ours so often
only die away in their own echoes, and have no re-
sult to show; the answer, the deepest answer, I am
sure, will be in this: that God s resolutions are real
resolutions ; or, to put it more simply, that God al-
ways thoroughly means everything that He says.
It is not simply the greatness of His power, for there
are regions where we, too, have power and yet in
them our resolutions fail, but the real difference is
here: God s resolutions mean the things they say,
while ours have only half made up their minds.
We dwell, indeed, on what we choose to call the
delays of God. There is nothing more impressive to
our thoughts. We know that God decrees the sin-
ner s punishment or the saints' reward at the very
moment of the sin or holiness; nay, in the very sin
or holiness itself the punishment or the reward is
promised ; but years slip by, the man grows old, and
only on the gray hairs, perhaps, comes the retribu-
tion of the action which was done in all the flush of
youth. We watch and wonder at God s patience in
His treatment of the nations. Jerusalem, Assyria,
Rome, the judgment of death which they have in-
curred comes creeping on for centuries before it
fastens upon them and they die. So everywhere
we see God's patience. But nowhere is there hesi-
tation. However slow it comes, it comes with
absolute sureness the suffering upon the sin, the
blessing on the goodness, the ruin on the wicked
nation. And we must always remember that those
words of our feebleness "slow" and "quick"
mean nothing in the life of Him who is eternal.
But with us it is not merely delay. It is a lack of
power in the word to turn itself into a deed at all.
It is hesitation. How many times have you said,
"I will give up this bad habit"? It is not that you
have seen that it takes a long time to give it up. It
is not that you began at once and it has taken you
longer than you thought it would. It is that your
word was not strong with real intention. You did
not really mean what you said. Therefore the deed
never came. How often we say : "I will go into the
heavenly life. I will not live to myself; I will live
to God and God s children." We speak and it is
not done, because our speech was not strong and
determined. Alas for our poor resolutions ! Oh, the
woeful, woeful lack in our lives of the decisiveness
of God ! It grows more and more clear to me the
power that belongs to self-consecration and absolute
determination. Men do what they mean to do.
For the will is a part of God in man, and has some
of His absoluteness and certainty.
It seems to me that no thoughtful man watches
the state of things to-day, without seeing continual
illustrations of a very curious and important truth
with regard to this matter of the will and its power
of decision. That truth is this : Decision is easy in
the lowest and crudest conditions of human life; and
it is easy again in the highest conditions of human
life; but there are middle conditions in which de-
cision becomes difficult, and men s minds float about
loose and unsettled. Just consider if that be not so.
You take a child, and how quickly he decides every-
thing. Promptly and sharply his word leaps into
action. He speaks and acts. There are very few
considerations in his mind. Everything is simple
to him, so simple that he can hardly conceive how it
can seem otherwise to any one. Then take the
other end the full-grown man. He too decides.
With many more elements to harmonize, with many
more aspects of the subject to adjust than the child
had, the mature man feels the necessity of decision,
and grasps, as it were, the mass of many thoughts
into his hand, and compacts them into a solid reso-
lution. But between the two, what have we? the
irresolute and vague and doubtful years of him who
is neither boy nor man, the years in which the direct-
ness of childhood has been lost, and the higher di-
rectness of manhood not attained, the years when
crowding thoughts of many kinds make it seem
often impossible to decide on anything, the misty
and uncertain years of young manhood and young
womanhood.
The same thing is true about the degrees of cul-
ture, independent of age. The savage or the brute,
whether he is old or young, decides easily, decides
instantly. The beast sees his prey, and springs upon
it. The savage sees his enemy, and the javelin flies.
On the other hand, the man of highest culture, the
finished soldier, the accomplished statesman, the ex-
perienced merchant, he again is quick as lightning.
He speaks, and it is done. He summons with a
quick, imperious call one summary result out of the
complication of the business that lies before him. It
is the man between the two, the man who has left
the simpleness of the brute, and come in sight of
many considerations which the savage never dreamed
of, but has not yet passed out into the highest cul-
ture, who, Hamlet-like, hesitates and fears to act.
There are faith and action at the bottom and faith
and action at the top of life; between the two lies
inability to decide.
It is a sign of where our age stands, of what mul-
titudes of minds in it have left the lowest without
having attained the highest culture, that so many
men in our age are haunted by indecision. Light
at the bottom of the mountain and light at the top ;
but half-way up clouds and mist ! This is the order
of the mental conditions of mankind. First comes
he who leaps at conclusions without evidence; then
he who questions everything ; and then he who holds
truth which he has proved. The dogmatist, the
skeptic, the believer, such is the order of the phases
of the growing mind.
There is in the midst of all indecision and all
doubt a constant conviction that not these, but de-
cision and belief, are the highest condition for man-
kind. The highest men have come out of the mists,
and are living in action and faith. And what de-
livers a man from the confusion and helplessness of
the middle state is really a moral need. This is
most interesting and important. When a man's in-
tellectual life has become snarled and confused, and
with all his thinking he cannot decide what he ought
to do, then it is that a moral necessity steps in and
furnishes the point about which all this mental dis-
turbance crystallizes into coherency and purpose.
A young man has so perplexed himself with many
schemes of life that it seems impossible for him to
settle upon any one thing and do it. But by and
by his duty to his family, the need of making bread
to put into his children s mouths, steps in, and he is
compelled to fix his will on something, to strike the
balance of his long debate and go to work. A man
has tossed back and forth the arguments for two
sorts of doctrine, all the while his heart no more
holding any faith than the juggler holds the balls
which he flings from hand to hand in quick succes-
sion. What finally stops his weary and unsatisfac-
tory debating is the absolute necessity, for the
regulation of his life, that he should have something
to believe. It is the felt power of temptation, the
absolute inability to meet sorrow with a debate
instead of a faith.
Those are the things that must break up every
man s indecision at last. If you are a young man
questioning what you will do with your life, it must
be the duty of being something for other men.
Certainly it must be duty somewhere that saves you
and brings you out a true man, and makes you really
live a life. If you are an unbeliever, perplexed with
many doubts, I tell you earnestly that the intellect
will never clarify itself by its own action. It must
be duty, duty demanding the power for its task
which nothing but belief can give it ; this it must be
which throws light into the darkness, and scatters
the mist, and makes you a believer. It is the man,
"perplexed in mind, but pure in deed," of whom it
is written that "At last he beat his music out."
I believe with all my heart in this necessity of
the moral to the intellectual man. I believe it so
strongly that if a man is not trying to do right, if he
has not got the idea of duty, I count his judgments,
upon even the most purely intellectual questions
of religious faith, of very little worth. The selfish
man who says that the divine self-sacrifice is in-
credible ; the man who never grapples with tempta-
tion and so never feels the need of divine help, and
yet who says that the miracles of Christ are impos-
sible ; the man who undertakes no tasks so spiritual
that they demand eternity for their accomplishment,
and yet who denies the everlasting life; the man
who never cares for his own soul, and then says,
"There is no God" I find but little power in the
skepticism of such men. It is the soul struggling
to do right, and yet finding it hard to get hold of
truth that soul which we do see here and there
which is terrible. In God Himself the moral and
the intellectual are but one. His goodness and His
wisdom perfectly belong together. And it is Duty
that settles, with strong but gentle touch, the min-
gled problems of our life. The mother learns a
faith above her child s cradle that she never knew
before; and the man setting out to do some hard
work for his land or his friend calls on a God of
whom he has been debating with himself whether,
indeed, there were a God at all.
I have been speaking about decision in general.
I want to bring what I have been saying to a point
and make it bear directly on the great decision of a
man's life that decision by which he becomes a
Christian. There is one act which goes beyond
and includes all other acts. It is the act in which,
won by the authority and love of Jesus Christ, a
man takes his whole self and gives it up into the
mastery of the Lord, making himself thenceforth
His disciple. That act of consecration and sur-
render, how differently it looks to different men;
nay, how differently it looks to the same man at
two different times ! It is the very hardest or the
very easiest act in all the world; so hard that it
seems truly impossible, or so easy that it is amazing
how any man can keep from doing it. The simplest
natures often find it very easy. The child learns of
its Saviour s love, and to accept that Saviour, to ask
Him to forgive its sins, to make His will its law,
seems to the child s heart the easiest and most
natural of all things. The nature of the man in
penitence is the child s nature over again, and so for
him, too, the trust in Him who is all-trustworthy
seems not difficult. But, when the great act of dedi-
cation is not done at once, there come in all man-
ner of complicating questions about Christ and His
mercy, and they make irresoluteness, the condition
of unresolve in which such hosts of men are standing.
Oh, how familiar those questions have grown !
how dusty and forlorn they sound, as we bring them
out of the thousand experiences in which they have
lain and rankled so miserably! "Is Christ ready to
receive me, and must I not do something before I
come to Him? Is it indeed necessary that I should
own my faith in Him? What will happen to me if
I do not come? Do I believe enough to come?
How is it with this other man? How is it with
these heathen?" These are the questions that
make men hesitate about the Christian act. They
are always lying in wait. If the soul touched by
the Saviour does not instantly and spontaneously
give itself to Him, then they come flocking in. And
when they have once taken possession of a heart,
then, you know so many of you there are who
know what comes, what hesitating, what unrest,
what a constant sense that there is something which
you ought to do, which yet you will not do, what
putting off and putting off, what dissatisfaction
everywhere year after year, till at last the time
arrives when, through every hesitation, you step
right across and do the act, and really give yourself,
body and soul, to Christ. There is the only escape.
There is the only daylight.
But when it comes, it is not like the first glad
turning to the Saviour which might have been be-
fore all these sad years of questioning began. It is
soberer and calmer. No longer possible for you is
the happy taking of Christ s service as if there were
no thought of anything beside ; no longer possible
for you is the fresh, enthusiastic faith of the young
Christian all glowing with the joy of giving his
whole life to Jesus ; but still there is something very
rich, if you will only take it, the sober, deep, and
soulvpossessing joy of a man who has hesitated long,
and asked many and many a question, now at last
coming in the full strength of manhood, and resting
his soul, heavy with its long-accumulated need, all
in one great reasonable act, upon a mercy which
has convinced him of its mercifulness by the way
in which it has waited for him through all his
hesitations.
And now, observe that when this decision comes,
when the hesitation of the life gathers itself up at
last, and with one total consecration gives itself to
Christ, it is a moral act that does it. The intel-
lectual elements are already there. "How shall
they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? "
says St. Paul. But this man has heard, year after
year, of Christ. All of His work has been abun-
dantly familiar. It has lain so long in the mind that
it has caught the dust of floating difficulties that are
not really a part of itself. What is needed is not
more knowledge ; it is something that shall transfer
the knowledge into action. It is Decision.
And that, surely, is moral. It grows from moral
needs. It acts by moral powers. Indeed, it corre-
sponds exactly to the act which one of those people
who were with Jesus in Palestine did when he be-
came the Lord s disciple. He had known all about
Jesus before. He had heard of Him. He had
heard Him. He had discussed His claims. He had
looked up the Scriptures, to see how this Teacher cor-
responded with the old Teachers. He had watched
other men who had come to Christ, as interesting
phenomena. Could you have a truer picture of the
position in which many a man here and now stands
concerning the Saviour? But some day there came
a great need into that Jew s household. Into the
peace and composure dropped a hot and burning
pain. Perhaps sickness smote him who had never
known what it was to feel an ache before. Perhaps
death came and stood at the door and beckoned ;
and some one, the dearest in the household, grew
pale as if he knew the summons was for him, and
began to gather up his reluctant robes, to follow the
austere messenger. Perhaps something deeper than
either of these things came. Perhaps the man s soul
itself grew troubled. A deep dissatisfaction settled
on it. Its selfishness, its worldliness, dismayed it.
It cried out at its own uselessness. It was sorry for
its sin.
In either case, what followed? How all that had
been learned before of the Saviour sprang into
clearness, grew compact with force! The need
took everything the man had thought before, and
crowned it with decision. He who had reasoned
and reasoned, talked and talked before, now "spake,
and it was done." Do you not hear the rushing
of the centurion's horses across the hills to Caper
naum, to bring Jesus Christ where his servant is
lying sick? Do you not see the figure of the poor
woman creeping into the banquet-room in her shame
and love? Do you not hear the timid knock in
the darkness of Nicodemus at the Master's humble
doorway? In every case the relation between the
intellectual conviction and the moral act is plain.
The thought and reasoning and observation have
gathered the material for decision and piled it in the
life, and then the spark of a need falls into the tinder
and the decision blazes in an instant.
People talk about "sudden conversions." "Do
you believe in them? " says one. "You do not be-
lieve in them, do you ? " says another. My friends,
there never was a sudden conversion, and there never
was a conversion that was not sudden. Never was
there one that had not been made ready beforehand,
never one which, having been made ready before
hand, did not come by one strong resolution, one
supreme decisive, "I will." There is a sudden con-
version of which men talk which is no conversion.
No change of life, no change of heart, nothing but
just a mood, the momentary impression of the sensi-
bilities by the sweet sound of a name, or the im-
perious declamation of a speaker, or the plaintive
singing of a hymn. The trouble with that is, not
that it is sudden, but that it is not conversion. But
the true conversion is always sudden, and never
sudden.
Look at the thief upon the cross beside the dying
Jesus. If ever any man seemed to be suddenly con-
verted, it was he. But who can tell how much,
before his crucifixion, in all the wild days of his
wickedness, he had known of Him who was to be
the sharer of his suffering? Or, if we allow ourselves
no such conjecture as that, still we must remember
that he saw upon the cross beside him the nature of
Jesus Christ in its supremest manifestation. The
last veil was drawn aside, and the very heart of the
Divine Sufferer was laid bare. And the thief, too,
saw with perceptions quickened by his own agony,
and by the terrible intensity of his need. No won-
der if his suffering eyes saw into the Saviour s
suffering love with most exceptional clearness and
quickness. No wonder if he gathered a knowledge
of Christ in that hour while they hung together,
which less intense perceptions would have taken a
long time to gather. It was the experience of years
compressed into the agony of an awful hour. And
so when at the last, he broke down and gave way,
and cried out from his cross, "Lord, remember me
when thou comest into thy kingdom!" it was as
truly the completion of a process as when, through
years of study and reflection, some placid soul ac-
cumulates those thoughts of Christ and His salva-
tion which some shock of overwhelming need finally
crystallizes into the strong resolution to come to
Christ. There comes a moment when the resistance
gives way before the weight, whether that weight be
the force of the cannon ball that comes crashing
through the wall, or the pressure of the snow that
has gathered flake by flake upon the roof.
Indeed everything in this world is sudden and not
sudden. The sunrise that has been creeping up the
east for hours, and then leaps in a moment from the
eastern hills ; the onset of an army which has slowly
gathered its strength together out of cottages and
cities, and then falls like an eagle on the enemy ; the
breaking up of a kingdom which has been growing
rotten at the heart, and in some still noontide of
history drops into ruin ; the coming of a boy to
manhood; the bursting of a plant to flower; all
things are sudden and not sudden.
And so must be the coming of man to Christ.
"Coming to Christ !" I love those words. I be-
lieve there are no words that have meant so much to
human ears as those words have meant. To come
to Christ is the completest act that any man can do.
It is the acceptance of His forgiveness, the reliance
upon His help, and the gradual growth into His
character. Is not that plain? Is there anything
mysterious or unintelligible about it? There is one
Being, and only one Being, who can forgive you
for your sins, and that is the God whom Christ
manifests. There is only one Being who can make
you live a new life, and that is the present, ever-
living Christ, to whom you can pray, whose soul
your soul can touch. There is one Image, growing
into which you shall be perfect. It is the Image of
Christ. Now, when you ask Him to forgive you,
when you ask Him to help you, and, by any culture
that He will, to make you like Himself, that is
coming to Christ. When you have done that, you
have come to Christ. It begins when you lay hold
upon the borders of His help. It is finished only
when you have attained His Christliness. When
you have made up your mind to do that, you have
resolved to come to Christ.
Whether it be sudden or gradual, evidently that
makes no difference. That is a question of curiosity.
But whether you do it or not, on that hangs every-
thing. There are men who have been gathering
material for that resolution for years. Now the
spark must touch the tinder. Now the resolution
must be made. Now, having seen Christ so long,
you must give yourself to Christ.
One last barrier, perhaps, stands between you and
the Christian Life. It may be fear! If it is, lay
hold of Christ s promises. You cannot fear God if
you really know what He is. Does the child fear
the mother's bosom? Does the bird fear its home
nest? Or, it may be pride! If it is, rise to a higher
pride. Grow indifferent to all that men will say
about you if you become a Christian, by hearing,
above everything that they say, the songs of the
angels, among whom, Christ says, there is joy over
every sinner that repenteth. Let to-day be the
strong day of your life, the day when you "spake,
and it was done " ; the day when you gave yourself
to the living, loving Christ, and He took you into
His Life and Love.
