LivePrayerSermon 818. The Pleiades and Orion (No. 818)
Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, June 28, 1868, by C. H. SPURGEON, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
"Can you bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?"Job 38:31.
MOST of you know that singularly beautiful cluster of stars called the Pleiades-very small, but intensely bright. These aremost conspicuous about the time of spring, and therefore, in poetry the vernal influences which quicken the earth and clotheit with the green grass and the many-colored flowers are connected with the Pleiades. By the sweet influences of the Pleiadeswe understand, then, in plain language, those benign influences which produce the spring and the summer. These, it is said,no man can restrain.
Orion, a very conspicuous constellation with its glittering belt, is best seen towards the close of autumn, just before thecoming in of the winter. It is a southern and wintry sign and therefore, poetically, the winter is traced to the bands ofOrion, and we are told in the text, literally, that no man is able to loosen the bonds of frost, or check the incoming ofthe cold. In other words, the whole verse asserts that none can stop the revolutions of the seasons! When God ordains thespring the shining months come laughing on. And when, again, He calls for winter, snow and ice must rule the dreary hour.
The farmer is entirely dependent upon the God of Heaven. He may plow with industry and cast in the good seed with hope, butunless the sweet influences of Heaven shall be given he can reap no harvest. If the drought is long and severe, he cannotcause the clouds to drench the thirsty furrows, or, if the rain descends in torrents, drowning the pastures, he cannot sealup the bottles of Heaven. He is absolutely dependent upon God, who governs all things according to His will. And we who knowso little of agricultural operations-being so far removed from the country which God has made and living in the town whichman has made-we, also, are as much dependent as any-for even the king is nourished by the fruit of the field! And follow whatmerchandise we will, ultimately it is still from the fields that our nourishment must come.
All of us, then, and not us alone, but all the beasts and birds, and all the creatures are entirely and absolutely dependentupon God, and unless He helps them, they cannot help themselves. This is the simple teaching of the verse, but it was doubtlessused to teach Job that as he could not alter the ordinances of Heaven, so neither could he change the purposes of God in theevents of Providence. You cannot hasten the spring nor postpone the winter! Neither can you prevent those calamities whichplunge nations in distress, nor prohibit those mercies which lift up tribes into prosperity. Evil comes to the sons of menby God's purpose, and good comes also. Neither is it in your power, O son of man, with all your discretion and skill, withall your economy and industry to avert the evil which God appoints!
The scythe of the dread mower cannot be arrested by wisdom-the inevitable hour comes to all. Need and sickness, and bereavementinvade us at the Lord's bidding, and although we may greatly mitigate their rigor, yet we cannot avert them, for the ordinancesof God must surely come to pass. Whatever is written in the folded book of the Divine decree must, in due season, be fulfilledin the history of man. If you cannot alter, then bow yourself and submit! If you cannot change the purpose, then yield toit and ask to have it sanctified to you! O Job, if your cattle must be taken away, if your children must die, if sore boilsmust break out upon your body, if you must sit upon the dunghill, if you have no power to alter a single circumstance-thenaccept the affliction at the hand of the Infinite One! Humbly kiss the hand that smites, and say, "It is the Lord. Let Himdo what seems good to Him."
The doctrine of a Divine Providence is calculated to create in the minds of the thoughtful and believing, the spirit of resignation.They might, perhaps, rebel and struggle, if this were of some use, but since it would be utterly useless-since the great wheelsof Providence proceed in their perpetual revolutions, not pausing for our tears nor hastening for ourgroans-then it is best for us to admire it as it revolves, to believe that it is producing good and to submit ourselves towhatever the Lord appoints.
However, I do not intend using the text in that sense this morning, but as we are told that no man can restrain the benigninfluences of the Pleiades, so, in the first place men cannot utterly prevent the working of the gracious Spirit. And as men,in the second place, cannot loose the bands of Orion, so men, of themselves, are not able to overcome those wintry powerswhich sometimes seize upon the human heart. These two things, and then, in the third place, the lessons from them.
I. WHO SHALL BIND THE SWEET INFLUENCES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT? The Holy Spirit does not always operate in the same degree of power,but when His time, His set time, to favor Zion is come, then, blessed be God, He is like the dew upon the grass that waitsnot for man, neither tarries for the sons of men. It is not in human or in diabolical power to restrain the influences ofthe Holy One of Israel when He deigns to visit His Church.
Many attempts have been made against the Church of God but they have all proven failures because the sweet influence of theHoly Spirit has frustrated all the purposes of the Lord's enemies. The Church of God, especially in her early days, has beenassailed by the envenomed tongue of slander. All over the Roman empire it was reported that Christians were men of the mostbrutalized habits. I dare not mention, for the cheek of modesty would be crimsoned, what were the charges brought againstChristians of crimes perpetrated in their assemblies. Suffice it to say that among the rest, as they met together to breakbread and drink wine in memory of their Lord, it was said they were accustomed to eat the flesh of a man and that they passedround from hand to hand and drank together out of a cup of warm human blood.
Of course, the populace believing these horrible stories were violently opposed to the Christian faith. And how did the Christianfaith overcome the popular opposition stimulated by such calumny as this? Simply by the power of the Holy Spirit! The sweetinfluences of the Holy Spirit which descended upon the disciples at Pentecost remained with them, so that when they preachedthey preached with the Holy Spirit sent down from Heaven! When in their private assemblies they spoke of Jesus, they spokein the power with which they had been endowed at Jerusalem and calumny was of no more avail than chaff contending with thewhirlwind, or stubble warring against the fire!
In fact, these very calumnies brought men out of curiosity to behold these atrocious sinners in their orgies of vice, andcoming, they listened to the gracious words which proceeded out of their mouths, and, in the power of the Holy Spirit theybelieved and became Christians, too! Beloved, this stands good today. Many a Christian has to endure slander, and of the mostcruel kind, too. To a sensitive heart, perhaps, slander is a more severe trial than even the whip or the rack. And yet, glorybe to God, if our names are cast out as evil, they cannot deprive us of the comfort of the Holy One of Israel!
Often, when we are worst spoken of by the world, we are best beloved of our God. The Lord has a way of taking up His peoplewhen they are despised and rejected of men, and manifesting His love to them after an unusual sort, so that if the cup mighthave been dashed with bitters, God pours in so much of the honey of His own precious love the bitter is forgotten, and thecalumny is swallowed up in the communion. Happy are you, Beloved, when they say all manner of evil against you for Christ'sname's sake, for you can reply to your accusers, "Can you bind up the sweet influence of the Holy Spirit? Can you stop frommy soul the Divine and overflowing consolations which proceed from the Pleiades of promise when they shine full upon my soul?"
If calumny does not do, the world has always been ready with coarser weapons-she resorts to open persecution. But, Beloved,all the persecutions which have ever assaulted the Church have never been able to stop the sweet influence of the Pleiades-Imean to quench the work of the Spirit and deprive the Church of God of her true comfort. When it has been her springtime,all the blood which could be shed could not thrust her back again into her dreary winter. Her flowers bloomed, her buds beganto shoot forth and her fruits adorned her branches to the glory of our God! Behold Paul and Silas in the dungeon of Philippi!Their persecutors have scourged them. They have laid them in the stocks. They have thrust them into the noisome filth of theinnermost prison-but the sweet influences of the Pleiades are felt and they begin to sing in the dead of night until the prisonershear them!
Behold the influence of these same Pleiades in every place where the Apostles went! They were followed by their Jewish persecutorsand they were molested by the Gentile mobs-but their preaching drew to the Cross of Christ acompany whose hearts the Lord had touched and He added unto the Church, daily, of such as should be saved. After the Apostolicdays, often in the midst of the amphitheater, when the nobles and the matrons of Rome and the Plebs-in all their ranks weregathered together and a few defenseless men and women were given up to bears and wolves and lions in the midst of the arena-howthe sweet influence of the Pleiades fell on them! How they sung their Psalms as the lions rushed from their dens, or foldedtheir arms in peace, praising the Lord that He thought them worthy to be partakers of His sufferings!
So was it on the snowy Alps! So was it in the valleys of Piedmont! So was it among the suffering Huguenots of France! So wasit among our martyred fathers! Smithfield felt the influence of the Pleiades full often when her flames became as chariotsin which the saints mounted to their thrones! In the glens of Scotland, among her lone hills and shaggy woods, when such menas Cargill and Cameron opened the Bible and read the text by a flash of lightning and then preached of the royalties of KingJesus-in those covenanting days the sweet influence of the Pleiades were, perhaps, more felt than in these softer hours whenmen learn to sleep under the ministry of the Truth-and too many of them are ready to cancel their principles and give up theirhopes if but a little gain should cross their path.
Persecution, what have you done? March before us, you cruel ranks of persecutors, each with the Hell-brand on your brow! Yousons of Cain, you brethren of Korah, you disciples of Balaam-you have never been able to impede the onward march of the Churchof God-no, not so much as for a single hour! Vain were your arts and villainies, for God from Heaven fought against you! Nor,dear Brethren, have even the crafty heresies which at different times have crept into the Church of God been able to bindthe sweet influences of the Holy Spirit.
Oftentimes, the very springtime of the Church has come when to all outward appearance it appeared that evil had altogethertriumphed. When Popery's power had become consolidated and universal, it was then that Savonarola, Jerome of Prague, and JohnHuss were raised up together with our own John Wickliffe to shake the foundations of the throne of Antichrist! At the darkesthour of the world's history the light began to shine! These men, when they had either burnt them alive, or consumed theircorpses-these men it was supposed, would be forgotten and their influence would perish from off the face of the earth-for,were not all the doctors on the side of Rome? Were not all the school-men zealous to maintain her dogmas?
What were these few men that they should be able to stand against the old, the venerable, the wealthy? But, Brothers and Sisters,the old error had to give way and the light of the Gospel shone forth! And a new spring life came to the world, and the timeof the singing of birds and the blooming of the flowers was come, and men called it the Reformation! Rest assured it willbe so today. The craft of Satan and the wickedness of man have invented forms of mischief so insinuating that they threatenspeedily to envelop our land. We have among us a form of Popery in which Romanism is divested of its grosser idolatries, clothedwith gorgeous vestments, garnished with attractive pomp and upheld by the most earnest, and to all appearances, the most piousof men!
Will this prevail? Will this destroy the Gospel by whose dew the nation has so long been watered? We have among us at thesame hour a rationalism, sufficiently cautious not to deny too much, stealthily advancing to its ultimate results, but lingeringwisely by the way to talk of liberality and breadth of thought. This is fascinating to the last degree to many minds, andis subduing to itself hundreds of the more thoughtful youths of this country. Between these two millstones will not Christ'skingdom be crushed? May we not fear that rationalism and ceremonialism will be like the two hands of Samson to remove thepillars whereon our house does lean?
Ah, not so! If the Holy Spirit does but descend upon the living Churches of God and put power into the preaching of the Truth,we may safely laugh all these to scorn, and say to the greatest of them, "Can you stand for a single second against the benignpower of the adorable Spirit who is the Guardian of the Truth of God, the Life of the Church, the Defender of the faith, theVanquisher of errors, the Defier of Hell, the Establisher of Truth's empire and the Destroyer of the throne of falsehood?"
Advancing step by step I would remind you that there is a great opposition in man himself to the sweet influences of the HolySpirit. When the time comes for any one man to be saved, his natural enmity is sure to be on the alert against the Divinepower, and Satan is certain, also, to strengthen him lest he should lose his victim. Now, I glorify God in this that you,Sinner, though you may resist and grieve the Spirit for awhile, yet if He comes to you with Omnipotent powereffectually to save, you must yield, for you, even you, with all your enmity, cannot bind the sweet influences of the Spiritof eternal life!
It is with many men as I have sometimes seen with a village brook-it has been dammed up for some reason and the water hasbecome a pool. A heavy shower has, by-and-by, fallen upon the hills and the full stream has leaped downward. There standsthe dam for a little while, but it trembles as the stream swells. Perhaps the villagers strengthen it, but if the rain continuesto fall the stream increases in volume, and at last, with one noble outburst, down leaps the torrent and the dam is sweptaway like a bowing wall. So with our evil nature-when the Holy Spirit comes with greater and greater power, descending fromthe hills of God's eternal purposes-He at last sweeps away every remnant of opposition, and on He sweeps in the greatnessof His strength.
"You deny, then," says one, "the free will of man?" Who says that? I never denied it! On the contrary, I insist upon it morethan most men! There is no opposition between the doctrine of Irresistible Grace and the fact of the free agency of man. "How,"you say, "if man is thus irresistibly carried as by storm, how can he be free?" Think, Man, and answer for yourself! Wereyou never overcome in an argument? Did you never resist an argument for a time, till at last another reason was given, andthen another and you could not but yield to the overwhelming arguments? Did you then prove that you had no reason of yourown?
No, it proved you had a reason, and therefore could be mastered by arguments fitted to your reason. If you had been bereftof reason-an idiot-nobody could have spoken of an irresistible argument so far as you were concerned. But your powers of understandingenabled you to be overcome by legitimate force. So with the will-we do not dream, as some falsely imagine, that physical forceis used by the Lord with men's moral natures! We teach that there are appeals and persuasions, arguments and forces whichare applicable to the will which, without violating its freedom even in the smallest degree, yet overwhelm it and subdue itto the right and the true-so that the man, with full consent, yields up himself to the full power of Divine love!
Do not the hymns of Mr. Wesley often express our meaning when he uses such words as overcoming and forcing? As in the verse-
"Save the vilest of the race,
Force me to be saved by Grace"?
Such expressions mean just what we mean and no more. We do not mean the violation of the will, but we do mean this, that wherethe Holy Spirit comes, though the man's will may have been obstinate enough before, when He exerts His wondrous influences,He makes the will to yield itself at once! The man is made willing in the day of God's power-the sweet influences of the Pleiadesare not bound even by human rebellion!
It is cause for thankfulness, also, that no man can bind the sweet influence completely after he has been saved. If your experienceis at all like mine, you sometimes get into a very horrible state of mind. You may feel as if you had no spiritual life atall. You cannot pray-or, if you pray, you do not enjoy it. You go up to the House of God and get no comfort. You turn to theBible and behold no gleams of light. You get wretched and you sing with Dr. Watts-
"Dear Lord, and shall we always live
At this poor dying rate?"
Well, all of a sudden you have such a visitation-you have not had such a time for months. It may be under a sermon, or, perhaps,at the Lord's Table or even in the midst of your business! Before you are aware your soul is made like the chariots of Amminadab-youfeel so rejoicing-it is not bodily excitement, it is spiritual life filled with vigor!
Now you can pray. Now you can pour out your soul in tears. Now you feel most happy and blessed you wonder how you could havebeen like a desert before, for you blossom so much like a garden now. Ah, it is this-the sweet influences of the Holy Spiritcould not be bound even by your darkness and your death. God determined to visit you, and coming to you, He overcame everyobstacle and made your soul to rejoice with joy unspeakable! Beloved, it is just so with a Church. I am sure this Church wasin about as bad a plight as we could well suppose for the sweet influences of the Holy Spirit to work in it. It was a scatteredflock, and divided and brought low-yet, though there were a thousand discouragements-no sooner did the Holy Spirit visit thisChurch than see how it began to multiply and rejoice!
During these years the same influences have blessed us, obstacles have been overcome, difficulties have been swept away andnone have been able to keep from us the reviving influences of the Holy Spirit! You have now before you the thought of thefreeness of the Spirit of God, who, like wind, blows as He wishes and is not bound by human might. Letme only add that although no man can, by his own power, bind or effectually and finally restrain the power of the Spirit ofGod, yet the Lord may withdraw His Spirit either from a Church or from an individual for a season and so cause sore distress-andprove that nothing is good or strong without Him.
Be tender, therefore, of the Holy Spirit. O you who know His power, trifle not with any of His Divine warnings! Be jealouslest you grieve Him! Follow His faintest monitions, and in all things do Him honor as your Friend and Guide. He may departfrom the sinner who is not obedient to Him, He may leave altogether, and then such a soul is given up! From the saint alsoHe may, for a time, be gone, till the good man repents and humbles himself-and then He will return, like a dove, with allHis peaceful powers, to abide with Him evermore.
II. Now we shall turn to the second half of the text. There is a winter time both with Churches and with individuals whenOrion is in the ascendant, and then, though we could well wish to do so, WE ARE NOT ABLE TO LOOSE THE BONDS OF THE FROST.This is sadly true in individual cases. My dear Brothers and Sisters, I suppose in your endeavors to do good you have metwith persons in despair. There are none who more thoroughly baffle all the arts of the human comforter than these. You bringthem the Gospel and they see it, but refuse it. If they cannot help it, they will sometimes get a little light, but only letthem have time enough and they will shut their eyes and get into the dark again.
They bring objections and you answer them so conclusively that you could almost laugh at them, but they only renounce oneset of fears to raise another. You hunt them out of one hole and you close it so that they never can get into it again. Alas,they make another! You drive them forth, again, but they find another retreat. They are most ingenious in inventing reasonsfor misery! They are diligent in the business of tormenting themselves. They are good people-they really have the fear ofGod. They are desirous of eternal life-they have it, even-and yet for all this, are involved in a net in which the more theystruggle the more they are entangled. They are like men in the mud of the river Nile, who, sinking in it, splash and plungeonly to sink deeper every time.
Have you not felt altogether confused in dealing with them? Have you not come out of the house and said, "I did think I couldcomfort people. I had some sort of conceit that I could have brought forward precious promises which might have cheered thehopeless, but I am altogether beaten. I can do nothing." Now you may quote the language of the Psalm we sang this morning-
"When he shuts up in long despair,
Who can remove the heavy bar?"
Such cases are not at all uncommon. What a happy day it is when God, having proved to us that we cannot loose the bands ofOrion, looses them Himself and says to the captives, "Go free!" These make the best of Christians when they obtain liberty!They become among the fairest of the Divine family when they anoint their faces with the oil of joy!
The terrible experience they have had helps them to sympathize with others and instructs them in the devices of Satan so thatthey can console others. If it sometimes becomes a puzzle how to cheer others, I am sure it is so with yourself. WheneverI get under the bands of Orion, I find I cannot loose them from my own hands. There are some very happy, cheerful spiritswho appear to have no winter, but the most of us occasionally fall into doubts and fears, and spiritual decays when our livelinessand joy are at a low ebb-
"If anything is felt, 'tis only pain
To find I cannot feel."
We are, in the words of the text, bound with the bands of Orion, frost bound, ice-bound. The soul which once ran warblingon like a clear stream is cold and hard as a stone. Its prayers are like icicles, its emotions like blocks of ice.
Then, Brothers and Sisters, you may try and make the effort, as you ought to do, to loosen yourself from these bands, butyou are powerless. Then is that text learned experimentally, "Without Me you can do nothing." Oh then we feel that we areless than nothing and vanity, while merciless Orion hangs fetters on our soul and hunts our joys to death! Blessed be God,the warmth of love returns before long and the Pleiades shine again, and then we, "Rejoice with joy unspeakable, and fullof glory."
Now, Brethren, this same Truth is carried out in our works of faith in connection with each soul. You are going into yourclasses this afternoon and I would be far from dispiriting you, but I would have you remember that if you attempt to converta soul yourself, you had better first answer the question of our text, "Can you loose the bands of Orion?" It were easierfor you to turn winter into summer than to turn a child of wrath into an heir of Divine Grace. You have a task before youwhich is utterly impossible to human strength!
Conversion is no more in your power than creation. Regeneration lies not with you, but men are begotten again by the greatFather of Spirits unto a lively hope. Bow before the power of God and feel at this moment your own utter powerlessness inthe work to which He has called you. To turn an understanding from darkness to light, to make the stubborn will supple, tobreak the iron sinew of pride and make the neck to bow with cheerful obedience-this belongs not unto you, but unto the eternalSpirit who is Omnipotent in the world of mind. Think of this and go in His strength-not in your own.
Brethren, if it is so with individuals, it is in proportion equally so with entire congregations. We have, under God, as Hisservants, to save a perishing world. We are sent out as laborers in Christ's vineyard to be the means of reclaiming the wildwastes to the husbandry of Christ. And what a task is ours! How impossible! We had better first attempt to loose the bandsof Orion before we shall be able, unaided of God, to loose the bands of wickedness and say to the oppressed, "Go free!" Themissionary enterprise, apart from supernatural influences, is the most insane that ever crossed the mind of man!
Yes, I will venture to say that the work of preaching the Gospel, even in Christian England, is of all attempts the most foolishunless we believe in the celestial power which alone can make preaching to be of any avail. Withdraw the Spirit-withdraw ourbelief in His power-and our teachings become the subjects of deserved ridicule! It is even so in our attempts to revive aslumbering Church. I discern a sleeping Church pretty readily. When I am preaching in any place I can soon tell what kindof people I am preaching to by their looks. There is a fire that flashes where there is life. Truth draws forth a responsiveglance-good men's bosoms heave while Christ is preached!
But in some places hearers are stolid, cold, dead-you might almost as well preach to the green hillocks that surround theChurch as preach to them. They stir not, they move not, neither can they be moved. Now, at such times it is very dispiritingunless one can fall back upon the belief that the Holy Spirit can, if He wills, on a sudden quicken the most dead of all professingChurches and make His people again to live! And like the dry bones of Ezekiel's vision, they shall stand upon their feet anexceedingly great army, ready to fight the battle of their Master! Can you loose the bands of Orion? Christian, feel yourpowerlessness! Behold, what must be done, and yet how you can do less than nothing in it!
III. Stand here and hear the voice of God which now speaks to you-that voice I will try to expound in the third part of thesubject which consists of THE LESSONS DRAWN FROM THIS GREAT TRUTH, that we can neither restrain nor yet command the influencesof the Holy Spirit. On the very surface lies the lesson of humility. I trust, Brethren, I have no need to say this, for thedoctrine before us must have already had an effect upon your minds-while you have been thinking of the power of God, and ofyour own insignificance-you must have felt bowed down and humbled.
It is always dangerous to be useful. It is to be desired above silver, and coveted above fine gold, and yet, when obtained,it has its measure of dangers, for Satan will whisper, even if natural pride does not, "What an excellent man you must be!What qualifications there must be in you! What glory God gets out of you!" "See," says the devil, "hundreds saved under you!Believers comforted under you!" And then the foul thought, the wicked thought seeks to build its nest right under the eavesof God's own temple in the heart, "You are something after all."
But, Brethren, we need to be brought back to this-"You can do nothing out of Christ. You are, apart from Him, a withered boughto be gathered and cast into the fire." Yes, you preacher-powerful, useful, honored of God-nothing but a withered bough apartfrom Christ! Yes, you goodly woman, you godly, earnest man engaged in the Sunday school or in the Bible-class-all speak wellof you and yet you art a cloud without rain, and a well without water-unless you have a vital union with Christ! As well mighta child uproot an Alp as you attempt to win a soul apart from Christ! As well an infant creep from the cradle and pluck thesun from its place, and hurl the moon into the deep as you be able to deliver a soul from going down into the pit! Oh, thisthought, Brothers and Sisters! I feel as if I should not speak of it for it prostrates me before God and makes me ask Himnever to leave me to myself to think myself something lest He be angry with me, and use me no more!
Should not the next thought which comes into the mind be that of gratitude and adoration to God? If we cannot command theHoly Spirit's power, yet He can. What if Orion's bands cannot be loosed by us-they can be loosed by Him! There is no despairingsoul that cannot find comfort when He visits it. "Yes, He makes the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful motherof children." "He raises up the poor out of the dust, and lifts the needy out of thedunghill, that He may set him with princes, even with the princes of His people." "The people that walked in darkness haveseen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them has the light shined." He opens the blindeyes, and brings "out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house."
Glory be to His name! Where the human arm fails to work results, the Divine arm, with ease, achieves its purpose. And withus here, within our hearts, these gardens so frostbitten can be visited by Him. And if the Well-Beloved comes, the summercomes with all its pleasant fruits! If Jesus will but walk into this garden and open the doors of our hearts and enter in,then there will be a paradise where there was before a wilderness! Blessed be the Lord, we cannot have sunk so low but Hecan lift us up! We cannot be so barren and so comfortless but what He can make us fruitful and give us joy and peace again.
There is no Church which He cannot revive! Are you members of congregations which are slumbering? Do not despair! You willgo home after the day's service, and say, "I wish I could do some good here, but I am only one." No, dear Brother, you cannotloose the bands of Orion, but God can! The great Head of His Church can suddenly come into His temple and fill it with Hisglory. He can rake together the almost expiring ashes and kindle the fire anew, and bring the sacrifice and make your Churchyet to be a temple to His praise! Glorify the name of God, the All-Powerful One! never let despair cross your soul. WhileHe lives, who made Heaven and earth. While He works, who bears up the pillars of the universe. While He loves, who once gaveup His Son to redeem us-there can be no cause for trembling! Zion shall be comforted! Her days of gladness shall dawn! Herwinter of sorrow shall flee away! God is on her side and Orion relaxes his bonds.
There is another lesson, however, which I must not fail to bring before you in a word or two, namely this-behold the pathand walk of Faith! She cannot walk in human power. She has quick eyes and she perceives mortal might to be a mere pretense,but she walks in the power of the Unseen One. "Can you bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades?" Faith answers, "I can."If Joshua bound the sun-put chains upon the horns of the moon-Faith feels that she can do the same. Can you loose the bandsof Orion? "Yes," says Faith, "that I can." If Elijah, after three years of drought, prayed, and the heavens were covered withclouds and there was a sound of abundance of rain-and he did this by the prayer of faith-even so can we do by the power ofHim that lives and rules in the highest heavens!
Faith has the art of getting hold upon the arm of God and then, though she cannot stir or move in her own strength, yet shemoves the arm of God that moves everything! She touches the motor nerve of Omnipotence and He acts whose action is conquest,whose work never fails. O Brothers and Sisters, if we can believe and pray, all things will be possible to us and we shallhold the Holy Spirit bound in this Church to remain with us for many and many a year! He will never depart while His people'scries, and tears, and joyful thanksgivings are like a golden chain to stop His blessed feet! He will be bound and held byus.
We may do with Him as the spouse did with her Beloved. "I found him," says she, "and I would not let him go." O Beloved membersof this Church, make it a resolution that the Holy Spirit shall not go from us! That we will, with diligent service and unceasingprayer, and constant gratitude stay Him and compel Him, seeing the day is far spent, to abide with us! One of the best waysto retain the Holy Spirit is to use what powers we have. Look at our farmers, how busy they have been during the last twoor three weeks while the sun was shining, to gather in their hay! We must use every gleam of heavenly sunshine for Jesus'sake! It does not always come, but when a Church is favored with it, let it use it to the utmost of its power, for God willnot continue to give while we do not appreciate and prove our appreciation by making the full use of it.
Yes, prayer and faith can hold the Spirit! Prayer and faith can also loose the bonds of Orion. We will have sinners saved,we will have Churches revived, we will have London yet warmed with the life of God! Not because we can do it, but becausewe will give Him no rest until He comes forth from His secret dwelling place and makes the power and life of His Truth tobe known from the ends of the earth!
The drift of the sermon is to cut you off from yourselves and throw you flat on your faces before God. Sinner, you cannotsave yourself! You cannot bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades! You cannot take away from yourself those bands of Orion!But Jehovah can, and in simple faith in Him who offers His blood before the Throne, come to your Father and ask Him to dothese things for you and they shall be done! And you shall glorify His name! May the blessing of God descend upon these words,for Jesus' sake. Amen.