The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

it will be a sorrowful thing to be lost with the notes of the gospel in your ears, and to perish under the ministry of truth.

      {a} Puseyite: A follower of Pusey; a supporter or promoter of the Oxford or Tractarian Movement. Puseyism was a name given by opponents to the theological and ecclesiastical principles and doctrines of Dr. Pusey and those with whom he was associated in the “Oxford Movement” for the revival of Catholic doctrine and observance in the Church of England which began about 1833; more formally and courteously called Tractarianism. Now little used. Dr. Pusey’s initials were appended to No. 18 (21 Dec. 1833, on Fasting) of the Tracts for the Times, and, of the ninety, seven were written by him. His academic and ecclesiastical position gave great weight to his support of the movement, and specially associated his name with it. OED.

      {b} Dr. William Palmer, born in Rugeley on 6th August 1824, hanged at Stafford, June 14, 1856. Christened by the Newspapers as “The Rugeley Poisoner” and “The Prince of Poisoners.” Around 30,000 people saw Palmer (aged 31 years) publicly executed in Stafford at 8.00 a.m. on Saturday June 14, 1856 for the murder of John Parsons Cook in Rugeley at the Talbot Arms (later the Shrewsbury Arms, now The Shrew). His effigy stood in Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors for some 127 years. That he was a rogue, heavily in debt, guilty of attempted bribery, fraud, forgery and overly fond of the ladies and of gambling on the horses is beyond doubt! http://www.staffspasttrack.org.uk/exhibit/palmer/

      {c} Beau Brummell, ne George Bryan Brummell (7 June 1778, London, England-30 March 1840, Caen, France), was the arbiter of men’s fashion in Regency England and a friend of the Prince Regent, the future King George IV. He established the mode of men wearing understated, but fitted, beautifully cut clothes including dark suits and full length trousers, adorned with an elaborately-knotted cravat. Beau Brummell is credited with introducing and establishing as fashion the modern man’s suit, worn with a tie. He claimed to take five hours to dress, and recommended that boots be polished with champagne. His style of dress was known as dandyism. See Explorer “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beau_Brummell”

      Salvation Of The Lord

      No. 131-3:193. A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, May 10, 1857, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.

      Salvation is of the Lord. {Jonah 2:9}

      1. Jonah learned this sentence of good theology in a strange college. He learned it in the great fish’s belly, at the bottom of the sea, with the weeds wrapped around his head, when he supposed that the earth with its bars was around him for ever. Most of the grand truths of God have to be learned by trouble; they must be burned into us with the hot iron of affliction, otherwise we shall not truly receive them. No man is competent to judge in matters of the kingdom, until first he has been tried; since there are many things to be learned in the depths which we can never know in the heights. We discover many secrets in the caverns of the ocean, which, though we had soared to heaven, we never could have known. He shall best meet the needs of God’s people as a preacher who has had those needs himself; he shall best comfort God’s Israel who has needed comfort; and he shall best preach salvation who has felt his own need of it. Jonah, when he was delivered from his great danger, when by the command of God the fish had obediently left its great deeps and delivered its cargo upon dry land, was then capable of judging; and this was the result of his experience under his trouble — “Salvation is of the Lord.”

      2. By salvation here we do not merely understand the special salvation which Jonah received from death; for according to Dr. Gill, there is something so special in the original, in the word salvation having one more letter than it usually has, when it only refers to some temporary deliverance, that we can only understand it here as relating to the great work of the salvation of the soul which endures for ever. That “Salvation is of the Lord,” I shall this morning try to show as best I can. First, I shall endeavour to explain the doctrine; then I shall try to show you how God has guarded us from making any mistakes, and has hedged us in to make us believe the gospel; then I shall dwell upon the influence of this truth upon men; and shall close up by showing you the counterpart of the doctrine. Seeing every truth has its opposite or obverse, so has this.

      3. I. First, then, to begin by explanation, let us EXPOUND THIS DOCTRINE — the doctrine that salvation is of the Lord, or of Jehovah. We are to understand by this, that the whole of the work by which men are saved from their natural estate of sin and ruin, and are translated into the kingdom of God and made heirs of eternal happiness, is of God, and of him only. “Salvation is of the Lord.”

      4. To begin, then, at the beginning, the plan of salvation is entirely of God. No human intellect and no created intelligence assisted God in the planning of salvation; he contrived the way, even as he himself carried it out. The plan of salvation was devised before the existence of angels. Before the daystar flung its rays across the darkness, when as yet the unnavigated ether had not been fanned by the wing of a seraph, and when the solemnity of silence had never been disturbed by the song of an angel, God had devised a way by which he might save man, whom he foresaw would fall. He did not create angels to consult with them; no, by himself he did it. We might truly ask the question, “With whom did he take counsel? Who instructed him, when he planned the great architecture of the temple of mercy? With whom did he take counsel, when he dug the depths of love, that out of them there might well up springs of salvation? Who aided him?” Not one. He himself, alone did it. In fact, if angels had then been in existence, they could not have assisted God; for I can well suppose that if a solemn conclave of those spirits had been held, if God had put to them this question, “Men will rebel; I declare I will punish; my justice, inflexible and severe, demands that I should do so; but yet I intend to have mercy.” If he had put the question to the celestial squadrons of mighty ones, “How can these things be? How can justice have its demands fulfilled, and how can mercy reign?” The angels would have sat in silence until now, they could not have dictated the plan; it would have surpassed angelic intellect to have conceived the way by which righteousness and peace should meet together, and judgment and mercy should kiss each other. God devised it, because without God it could not have been devised. It is a plan too splendid to have been the product of any mind except of that mind which afterwards carried it out. “Salvation” is older than creation; it is “of the Lord.”

      5. And as it was of the Lord in planning, so it was of the Lord in execution. No one has helped to provide salvation. God has done it all himself. The banquet of mercy is served up by one host; that host is he to whom the cattle on a thousand hills belong. But none have contributed any dainties to that royal banquet; he has done it all himself. The royal bath of mercy, in which black souls are washed was filled from the veins of Jesus; not a drop was contributed by any other being. He died upon the cross, and as an expiator he died alone. No blood of martyrs mingles with that stream; no blood of noble confessors and of heroes of the cross entered into the river of atonement; that is filled from the veins of Christ, and from nowhere else beside. He has done it wholly. Atonement is the unaided work of Jesus. On that cross I see the man who “trod the winepress alone”; in that garden I see the solitary conqueror, who came to the fight single handed, whose own arm brought salvation, and whose omnipotence sustained him. “Salvation is of the Lord,” as to its provisions; Jehovah — Father, Son, and Spirit — has provided everything.

      6. So far we are all agreed, but now we shall have to separate a bit. “Salvation is of the Lord,” in the application of it. “No,” says the Arminian, “it is not; salvation is of the Lord, inasmuch as he does all for man that he can do; but there is something that man must do, which if he does not do, he must perish.” That is the Arminian way of salvation. Now last week I thought of this very theory of salvation, when I stood by the side of that window of Carisbrooke Castle, {a} out of which King Charles I, of unhappy and unrighteous memory, attempted to escape. I read in the guide book that everything was provided for his escape; his followers had means at the bottom of the wall to enable him to flee across the country, and on the coast they had their boats lying ready to take him to another land; in fact, everything was ready for his escape. But here was the important circumstance: his friends had done all they could;