The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

      12. Observe, again, that the substance of the oak is a hidden thing: you cannot see it. When the oak or the terebinth is standing destitute of leaves, you know that life is there somewhere. But you cannot see it! And very likely you cannot and do not know the men that are the holy seed, the substance of the church. Perhaps you imagine the substance of the church lies in the pulpit. No, friend! Let us pray to God that such of us as are in the pulpit may be a part of that substance; but much of the substance of the church lies where you do not know anything about it. There is a mine near Plymouth, where the men who work in it, two hundred and fifty feet below the surface, have a little shelf for their Bibles and their hymn books, and a little place where every morning, when they go down in the black darkness, they bow before God, and praise him whose tender mercies are over all his works. You never heard of these miners, perhaps, and do not know of them; but perhaps some of them are the very substance of the church. There sits Mr. Somebody in that pew: oh! what a support he is to the church. Yes in money matters, perhaps; but do you know, there is poor old Mrs. Nobody in the aisle that is most likely a greater pillar to the church than he, for she is a holier Christian, one who lives nearer to her God and serves him better, and she is, “its substance.” Ah! that old woman in the attic that is often in prayer, that old man on his bed that spends days and nights in supplication; such people as these are the substance of the church. Oh! you may take away your prelates, your orators, and the best and greatest of those who stand among earth’s mighty men, and their place could be supplied; but take away our intercessors, take away the men and women that breathe out prayer by night and day, and like the priests of old offer the morning and evening lamb as a perpetual sacrifice, and you kill the church at once. What are the ministers? They are only the arms of the church, and its lips. A man may be both dumb and armless, and yet live. But these, the heavenly seed, the chosen men and women who live near their God, and serve him with sacred fervent piety — these are the heart of the church; we cannot do without them. If we lose them we must die. “The holy seed is its substance.”

      13. Then, my hearer, you are a church member. Let me ask you — are you one of the holy seed? Have you been born again to a lively hope? Has God made you holy by the sanctifying influence of his Spirit, and by the justifying righteousness of Christ, and by the application to your conscience of the blood of Jesus? If so, then you are the substance of the church. They may pass by you and not notice you, for you are little; but the substance is little; the life germ within the grain of barley is too small for us, perhaps, to detect; the life within the egg is almost a molecule — you can scarcely see it; and so the life of the church is among the little ones, where we can scarcely find it. Rejoice, if you are much in prayer; you are the life of the church. But you, oh you proud man, pull down your grand thoughts of yourself: you may give to the church, you may speak for the church, and act for the church, but unless you are a holy seed you are not its substance, and it is the substance which is in reality of the greatest value.

      14. But here let me say one thing, before I leave this point. Some of you will say, “How is it that good men are the means of preserving the visible church?” I answer, the holy seed does this, because it derives its life from Christ. If the holy seed had to preserve the church by its own purity and its own strength, the church would go to the dogs tomorrow; but it is because these holy ones draw fresh life from Christ continually that they are able to be, as it were, the salvation of the body, and by their influence, direct and indirect, shed life over the whole visible church. The prayers of those living ones in Zion bring down many a blessing upon us; the groans and cries of these earnest intercessors prevail with heaven, and bring down very argosies {a} of mercy from the gates of paradise. And besides, their holy example tends to check us and preserve us in purity; they walk among us like God’s own favoured ones, wrapped in white, reflecting his image wherever they go, and tending, under God, to the sanctifying of believers, not through their vaunting of any self-righteousness, but by stirring up believers to do more for Christ, and to be more like him. “The holy seed shall be its substance.”

      15. III. And now I come to the third point. This is true of EVERY INDIVIDUAL BELIEVER: his substance is in him when he has lost his leaves.

      16. The Arminian says that when a Christian loses his leaves he is dead. “No”; says God’s Word, “he is not; he may look as if he were dead, and not have so much as here and there a leaf upon the topmost bough; but he is not dead. Their substance is in them even when they lose their leaves.”

      17. By losing their leaves I understand it to mean two things. Christian men lose their leaves when they lose their comforts, when they lose the sensible enjoyment of their Master’s presence, and when their full assurance is turned into doubting. You have had many times like that, have you not? Ah! you were one day in such a state of joy, that you said you could

      Sit and sing yourself away

      To everlasting bliss.

      But a wintry state came, and your joy all departed, and you stood like a bare tree after the wind had swept it in the time of winter, with just perhaps one dead leaf hanging by a thread on the topmost bough. But you were not dead then: no, your substance was in you, when you had lost your leaves. You could not see that substance, and for good reason, because your life was hidden with Christ in God, you did not see your signs, but you had your substance still, though you could not find it. There were no stirrings of faith, but faith was there, there were no lookings out of hope, but though hope’s eyelids were shut, the eyes were there, to be opened afterwards; there was no lifting, perhaps, of the hand of ardent prayer, but the hands and arms were there, though they hung powerless by the side. God said, afterwards, “Strengthen the feeble knees, and lift up the hands that hang down.” Your substance was in you when you had lost your leaves. Good Baxter says — “We do not see our graces, except when they are being exercised; and yet they are as much there when they are not exercised as when they are.” He says, “Let a man take a walk into a forest; there lies a hare or a rabbit asleep under the leaves; but he cannot see the creature until it is frightened, and it runs out, and then he sees it to be there.” So if faith is exercised you will perceive your evidence, but if faith is slumbering and still, you will be led to doubt its existence; and yet it is there all the while.

      Mountains when in darkness hidden,

      Are as real as in day,

      one said; and truly the faith of the Christian, when shrouded by doubts and fears, is just as much there as when he rejoices devoutly in the display of it.

      18. It is a common error of young converts that they attempt to live by their experience, instead of tracing their life up to its precious source. I have known people rejoicing in the fullest assurance one day, and sinking into the deepest despondency the next. The Lord will sometimes strip you of the leaves of evidence to teach you to live by faith, as John Kent says, —

      If today he deigns to bless us

      With a sense of pardoned sin;

      He tomorrow may distress us,

      Make us feel the plague within;

      All to make us

      Sick of self and fond of him.

      19. But ah! there is a worse phase to the subject than this. Some Christians lose their leaves not by doubts, but by sin. This is a tender topic — one which needs a tender hand to touch. Oh! there are some in our churches that have lost their leaves by lust and sin. Fair professors once they were; they stood green among the church, like the very leaves of paradise; but in an evil hour they fell, the slaves of temptation. They were God’s own people by many infallible marks and signs; and if they were so, though it is grievous that they should have lost their leaves, yet there is the sweet consolation, their substance is in them still: they are still the Lord’s, still his living children, though they have fallen into the coma of sin, and are now in a fainting fit, having gone astray from him, and having their animation suspended, while life is still there. Some, as soon as they see a Christian do anything inconsistent with his profession, say, “That man is no child of God; he cannot be; it is impossible.” Indeed, but, Sir, remember what he thought who once