Ah me! how glad and gay we were, Then life almost eternal seemed, To which we meant in after-time, With whom our youth first journeyed on, Hope faltering then with doubtful mind, Ah! all in vain-grant 'twas a cheat, Yet no voice ever was so sweet, No presence like to Love's, who threw Preach not, O stern Philosophy! So beautiful, as what we had. The perfume faint and exquisite, That haloed the enraptured sense, When Faith and Love were at our side, And common life was deified. Our shadows that we used to throw Our thoughts with joyous impulse soar, Beyond, what waits for us, who knows? New life, or infinite repose? "THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE." BY D. L. MOODY. "There is no difference: for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." Rom. iii. 22, 23. THAT is one of the hardest truths man has to learn. We are apt to think that we are just a little better than our neighbours; and if we find they are a little better than ourselves, we go to work and try to pull them down to our level. If you want to find out who and what man is, go to the third chapter of Romans, and there the whole story is told: "There is none righteous, no, not one; "All have sinned, and come short." All! Some men like to have their lives written before they die. If any of you would like to read your biography, turn to this chapter, and you will find it already written. I can imagine some one saying, I wonder if he really pretends to say that there is no difference? The teetotaller says, "Am I no better than the drunkard?" Well, I want to say here that it is a good deal better to be temperate than intemperate; a good deal better to be honest than dishonest. It is better for a man to be upright in all his transactions than to cheat right and left, even in this life, But when it comes to the great question of salvation, that does not touch the question at all, because "all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." Men are all bad by nature; the old Adamstock is bad; and we cannot bring forth good fruit until we are grafted into the one true Vine. If I have a garden, and two apple-trees in it, which both bear some bitter apples, perfectly worthless, does it make any difference to me that the one tree has got perhaps five hundred apples, all bad, and the other only two, both bad? There is no difference, only one tree has more fruit than the other. But it is all bad. So it is with man. One thinks he has got only one or two very little sins-God won't notice that; why, that other man has broken every one of the ten commandments! No matter, there is no difference; they are both guilty; both have broken the law. The law demands complete and perfect fulfilment; and if you cannot do that, you are lost, as far as the law is concerned. "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all" (James ii. 10). Suppose you were to hang up a man to the roof with a chain of ten links. If one were to break, does it matter that the other nine are all sound and whole? Not the least. One link breaks, and down comes the man. But is it not rather hard that he should fall when the other nine are perfect, when only one has been broken? Why, of course not; if one is broken, it is just the same to the man as if all had been broken: he falls. So the man who breaks one commandment is guilty of all. He is a criminal in God's sight. Look at yonder prison, with its thousand prisoners. Some are there for murder, some for stealing, some for forgery; some for one thing, and some for another. You may classify them, but every man is a criminal. They have all broken the law, and they are all paying the penalty. So the law has brought every man in a criminal in the sight of God. "Oh If a man should advertise that he could take a correct photograph of people's hearts, do you believe he would find a customer? We go to have our faces taken, and if the artist flatters us, we say, yes, that's a first-rate likeness," as we pass it round among our friends. But let the real man be brought out-the photograph of the heart and see if a man will pass that round among his neighbours. Why, you would not want your own wife to see it! You would be frightened even to look at it yourself. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" We do not know our own hearts; none of us have any idea how bad they are. Some bitter things are written against me; but I know a good many more things about myself that are bad than any other man. There is nothing good in the old Adam nature. We have got a heart in rebellion against God by nature; and we do not even love God unless we are born of the Spirit. I can understand why men do not like this third chapter of Romans. It is too strong for them; it speaks the truth too plainly. But just because we do not like it, we shall Very likely we shall find Here is a man who thinks be all the better for having a look at it. that it is exactly what we want after all. he is not quite so bad as it makes him out to be. He is sure he is a little better than his neighbour next door. Why, he goes to church regularly, and his neighbour never goes to church at all! "Of course," he congratulates himself, "I'll certainly get saved easier." But there is no use trying to evade it. God has given us the law to measure ourselves by, and by this most perfect rule "we have all sinned, and come short," and "there is no difference." Paul brings in the law to show man that he is lost and ruined. God, being a perfect God, had to give a perfect law, and the law was given not to save men, but to measure them by. I want you to understand this clearly, because I believe hundreds and thousands stumble here. They try to save themselves by trying to keep the law; but the law has never saved a single man since the world began. Men have been trying to keep it, but they have never succeeded, and never will. Ask Paul what it was given for. Here is his answer: "That every mouth might be stopped, and the whole world become guilty before God" (Rom. iii. 19). In this third chapter of Romans the world has been put on its trial, and found guilty. The verdict has been brought in against us all-these ministers, and elders, and church members, just as truly as the prodigal and the drunkard— "All have sinned, and come short." The law stops every man's mouth. I said to my little family one morning, a few weeks before the Chicago fire, "I am coming home this afternoon to give you a ride." My little boy clapped his hands. "Oh, papa, will you take me to see the bears in Lincoln Park?" "Yes." You know boys are very fond of seeing bears. I had not been gone long when my little boy said, "Mamma, I wish you would get me ready. "Oh," she said, "it will be a long time before papa comes." "But I want to get ready, mamma.” At last he was ready to have the ride-face washed, and clothes all nice and clean. "Now, you must take good care and not get yourself dirty again," said mamma. Oh, of course he was going to take care; he wasn't going to get dirty. So off he ran to watch for me. However, it was a long time yet until the afternoon; and after a little he began to play. When I got home, I found him outside, with his face all covered with dirt. take you to the Park that way, Willie.' "Why, papa? You said you would take me." Ah, but I can't; you're all over mud. I couldn't be seen with such a dirty little boy." Why, I'se clean, papa; mamma washed me." Well, you've got dirty since." But he began to cry, and I could not convince him he was dirty. clean; mamma washed me!" he cried. Do you think I argued with him? No. I just took him up in my arms, and carried him into the house, and showed him his face in the looking-glass. He had not a word to say. He could not take my word for it, but one look 66 66 66 "I can't "I'se at the glass was enough; he saw it for himself. He didn't say he wasn't dirty after that! 66 Now the looking-glass showed him that his face was dirty. But I did not take the looking-glass to wash it; of course not. Yet that is just what thousands of people do. The law is the lookingglass to see ourselves in, to show us how vile and worthless we are in the sight of God; but they take the law, and try to wash themselves with it! Man has been trying that for six thousand years, and has miserably failed. 'By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight." Only one man ever lived on the earth who could say He had kept the law, and that was the Lord Jesus Christ. If He had committed one sin, and come short in the smallest degree, His offering Himself for us would have been useless. But men have tried to do what He did, and have failed. Instead of sheltering under His righteousness, they have offered God their own. And God knew what a miserable failure it would be. "There is none righteous, no, not one" (Rom. iii. 10). But is it not better to find out in this world that we are a failure, and to go to Christ for deliverance, than to sleep on and go down to hell without knowing we are sinners? "Then is there any hope for me?" you say. "What is to become of me? If all this is true, I am a poor lost soul. I have committed sin from my earliest childhood." Thank God, my friends, this is just where the gospel comes in. "He hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin (2 Cor. v. 21). "He was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all " (Isa. liii. 5, 6). You ask me what my hope is; it is, that Christ died for my sins, in my stead, in my place; and therefore I can enter into life eternal. You ask Paul what his hope was. ing to the Scriptures" (1 Cor. xv. 3). This is the hope in which died all the glorious martyrs of old. Take that doctrine of substitution out of the Bible, and my hope is lost. With the law, without Christ, We are all undone. The law we have broken, and it can only hang over our head the sharp sword of justice. Even if we could keep it from this moment, there remains the unforgiven past. "Without shedding of blood there is no remission " (Heb. ix. 22). He only is safe for eternity who is sheltered behind the finished work of Christ. What the law could not do for us, He does. obeyed it to the very letter, and under His obedience we can take our stand. For us He has suffered all its penalties, and paid all that the law demands. "His own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree" (1 Peter ii. 24). He knew what death, what ruin, what misery lay before us if we were left to ourselves; and He came from "Christ died for our sins accord He |