The Fainting Soul Revived
C. H. SPURGEON,
"When my soul fainted within me,
I remembered the Lord."Jonah 2:7.
WHEN man was first made, there was no fear
of his forgetting God for it was his highest privilege and
delight to have communion with his Maker. "The Lord God walked
in the garden in the cool of the day," and Adam was privileged
to hold fellowship with God, closer, perhaps, than even the
angels had in heaven. But the spell of that sacred harmony
was rudely broken by man's disobedience and his dreadful fall.
Ever since our first parent tasted of the forbidden fruit,
which brought death into our world, and all its train of woes,
his mortal race has been naturally prone to forget God. The
evil propensities of flesh and blood have made it impossible
to persuade man to remember his Creator. The complaint of
God against the Jews is true as an indictment against the
whole human family. "Hear, O heaven, and give ear. O earth:
I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled
against me; the ox knoweth its owner, and the ass its master's
crib, but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider."
Man is foolish; he flies from the highest good. Man is wicked;
he turns his back upon supreme holiness. Man is worldly: he
forgets the kingdom of God and the world to come. Man is wilful;
he follows his own vain imaginations, and, with head-strong
rebellion, opposes himself to his God, that he may pursue
his own wayward course, and gratify his wanton passions.
To convince a man
of his error, to arrest him in his evil pursuits, to reclaim
him to the paths of righteousnessthis is seldom accomplished
without dire trouble and deep affliction. Some men, it is
true, are brought to God by gentle means; they are drawn by
soft but mighty bonds; still, a much larger class of persons
remains, upon whom these silken cords would exert no influence.
They must not be handled softly, but must be dealt with heavily.
The picklock will never open their hearts; there must be the
crowbar, and even the battering ram, to give a furious cannonade.
Some hearts can never be captured for God and for truth except
by storm. Sword in hand, God's law must scale the ramparts.
With thundering report, God's Word must dash down the walls
of their confidence, and make breach after breach in the bastions
of their pride, and even then they will fight it out, and
never yield, until, driven to an awful extremity, they see
that they must either yield at once, or else be lost for ever.
It is with such persons that I now particularly want to deal.
There are those who have forgotten God after having once known
him, and they are not likely to be brought back without great
trouble; and there are others who never did know God, and
they never will enquire after him, unless they are driven
to their wits' end by calamity, as when a great famine in
the land where he dwelt compelled the prodigal for very lack
of bread to seek his Father's house. So I have first to remonstrate:
Let me, however, before
I go into the matter with you, describe a little more minutely
the individuals I wish to address. There is no need to call
out your names; it will suffice if we portray your character
and describe your conduct. There are some of you who used
to be members of Christian churches years ago, but you have
gradually declined, and so reckless has your career at length
become, that it is a wonder that you have not utterly perished
in your sin. You seemed to run well on the outset, and for
a time you held on in the way; but where are you now? Well,
you happen at this present to be in God's house, and I do
trust that God's own hour has come, when he will meet you
and bring you back. What we have to say of Jonah, I do entreat
you to apply to yourselves; if the cap seems to fit you, put
it on and wear it, even though it should be a fool's cap:
wear it till you are ashamed of yourselves, and are led to
confess your folly before the God who is able to remove it,
and to make you wise unto salvation.
Observe, dear friends,
that though Jonah remembered the Lord, it was not till he
got into the whale's belly, nor even then till his soul fainted
within him. He did not remember the Lord all the time he was
going down to Joppa to find a ship, nor yet when he got on
board that ship. His Master had said to him, Jonah, go to
Nineveh," but Jonah was a strong-willed, head-strong fellow.
Though a true servant of God, and a prophet, yet he fled from
the presence of the Lord. To Nineveh, he resolved within himself,
he would not go. He could foresee no honour to himself out
of the journey, no increase of his own reputation, no deference
that would come to him amongst those proud Assyrians, so,
in direct defiance of the divine command, he set off to Joppa,
to take a ship and to flee from God's presence. Into the ship
he got, paid the fare, and went sallying down the sea to go
to Tarshish; but all this while he never thought of God. Not
unlikely in this assembly there may be a woman who used to
be a member of a Christian church, but she married an ungodly
man; after that there was no going to the house of God, much
less anything like keeping up her church membership. The shop
was kept open on Sunday, or there was a pleasure party to
be entertained at home, or an excursion taken into the country.
All this seemed very pleasant. The disquietude of conscience
she might feel at first wore off as habit made it familiar,
until, year after year, this woman, who once seemed to be
a true servant of Christ, lives in carelessness and indifference,
not to say profanity, with hardly any thoughts of God. Perhaps
she has not quite given up prayer; she could not absolutely
become an enemy of Christ, or entertain a dislike to his people.
Still, God was forgotten. So long as the business prospered,
the husband was in good health, and the world smiled, God
was never thought of. Can I be mistaken in supposing that
there is a man here who in his youth was a loud talker, a
vehement professor of religion, and a companion of those that
fear the Lord? But after a time there seemed to be a way of
getting money rather faster than the ordinary methods of honest
labour or simple merchandise; so he entered into, a speculation,
which soon ate out the vitals of his piety. His new projects
involved new companions; in their fellowship he stifled his
old convictions, and, as he would not play the hypocrite,
he ceased to make any profession at all. Perhaps months have
passed since he has been in a place of worship; even now he
would rather be unrecognised, for he has only come here because
a friend from the country asked him company to me the place
and to hear the preacher. Ah! my dear sir, it is strange indeed,
if you be a child of God, that you could have walked so contrary
to God as you have. Yet so did Jonah. Do I, then, hold up
his case before your eyes to comfort you? Nay; but let me
hope that you will apply the bitter rebuke to your own soul,
and be led to do as Jonah did. All the while the ship sailed
smoothly over the sea, Jonah forgot his God. You could not
have distinguished him from the veriest heathen on board.
He was just as bad as they were. Yet was there a spark of
fire among the embers, which God in due time fanned into a
flame. Happy for you if this better part of his experience
should tally with your own.
Such, too, was Jonah's
blank forgetfulness, that he does not appear to have thought
upon his God all the while the storm raged, the billows
rolled, and the ship was tossed with tempest. The poor heathen
sailors were all on their knees crying for mercy, but Jonah
was asleep in the vessel, till the superstitious captain himself
was amazed at his apathy: "What meanest thou, O sleeper; carest
thou not that we all perish?" He went down and upbraided him,
and asked him how it was that he could sleep while the passengers
and crew were all crying. "Arise," said he, "and call upon
thy God." He was stirred up to his danger and his duty, even
by a heathen! Now maybe there are some here who have had a
host of troubles. Is husband dead? Are you a lone woman with
a family to provide for? Or are you a widower, looking on
your children with pity, whom you once regarded with a homely
pride? Possibly you may have another form of trial. Your business
has gone to the bad; you expected to have realised large profits
by it, but you encountered loss upon loss, till your little
capital has been scattered. Still, all this while you have
not thought about God. Mayhap that child after child has been
taken from you, and yet you have not remembered God. Is it
really so, that the Lord loves you, and, because he loves
you, therefore chastens you? Mark my word, you will continue
to suffer loss upon loss, till you have lost all you have
and all you count dear, and you will be brought to death's
door yourself, but he will save you at last. If you ever were
his, he never will let you sink into hell; but, oh! it will
be hard work for you to get to heaven. You will be saved,
but it will be so as by fire. You will be saved as by the
skin of your teethscarcely saved, and the way in which
you are saved will be a most terrible one to you. Oh! friend,
I wish you would turn while God is smiting you gently, for
know of a certainty if rods will not do, he will come to scourges,
and if the scourge will not do, he will take the knife, and
if the knife will not do, he will take the sword, and you
shall have to feel it, for, as sure as God is God, he will
never lose his child, and he will cut that child, as it were,
into pieces, but he will save his soul. He will undermine
your constitution by disease, and make you toss upon the bed
of anguish, but he will bring you back. Oh! that you had grace
to come back by gentler means before these terrible actions
are tried!
So, then, Jonah did
not think of God all this time. Now at length the vessel begins
to creak, and seems as if she must go to pieces. Then they
cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. He is about to be
thrown into the sea. At that moment a pair of huge jaws open
wide, shut again, and swallow him up. "Where am I now?" says
Jonah, as he is taken down deep by the motions of this monstrous
fish, till the weeds come into the fish and wrap about his
head, and his life is only preserved by a miracle. Then, oh!
then Jonah thinks upon his God. "When my soul fainted within
me." Now why did his soul faint within him? Was it not because
he thought, "Now I am in a hopeless case; I shall never come
out of this; it is a wonder I am not drowned; it is a marvel
I was not snapped in pieces by those huge jaws; what a hopeless
case I am in! I will but linger a little while, then perish
I must in this horrible prison of a whale's belly." I dare
say he thought that never was man in such a plight before;
never a person that was alive inside a fish; and how comfortless
he must have felt with nothing but the cold deep round him.
Instead of garments, weeds were wrapped about his head. How
his heart throbbed, and his head ached, with no cheer, no
light, no friendly voice, no succour, no help; faraway from
dry land, out on the boundless deep, without a comrade to
sympathise with his strange plight.
Now when a child of
God goes astray, it is not at all unusual for God to bring
him into just such a state as that, a condition in which he
cannot help himself; forlorn and friendless, with no one that
can relieve or minister to him. This dreary thought will meanwhile
ever haunt his mind, "I brought it all upon myself!" Hast
thou not procured this unto thyself? Like a woman who has
left her husband's house, deserted her home, and betrayed
her kind and tender protector, what fruit can she expect to
reap of her wickedness? When she is ready to starve, when
the wind blows through her tattered raiment, when her face
is swollen with weeping, and her soul is full of anguish,
she has only herself to upbraid, as she cries, "I have brought
this upon myself; would God I had never left my cheerful homestead,
however humble the lodgings might have been; would God I had
never deserted the husband who loved me, and spread his aegis
over me, however roughly he sometimes spake! Oh! that I had
been more scrupulously obedient, and less prone to discontent!"
The afterthought of sinI think they call it remorse.
Thus it was that Jonah thought upon his God, when the shame
of his transgressions overwhelmed him.
Oh! how merciful our
God is to allow us to think about him, and turn to him when
in so pitiable a plight! "Yes," said a tradesman once to a
customer for whose favours he felt little cause to be grateful,
"you come to me, I know why; you have been to every other
shop in the town for the article you require, and you could
not obtain it; and now you come back to me whom you had no
good cause ever to leave, I shall not serve you." This is
not how the Lord speaks to us. He does not resent our ingratitude.
"My child, my poor child," says he, "though you have gone
and spent your substance; though you have been feeding swine:
though you are all black, and foul and filthy, yet you are
my dear child still, and my heart yearns towards you." Without
a word of rebuke, or even a taunting look, so soon as ever
a poor sinner comes back to the Father's house, the Father's
arms are round about his neck, and the kiss of pardon is pressed
on his cheek. "I remember thee well," says he; "I have blotted
out thy sins like a cloud, and like a thick cloud thine iniquities."
Now if there be a backslider hereand I know there are
severalI can only hope that God will bring you into
Jonah's peril. You shall have no pity from me if he does;
I will rather be thankful to God that he has brought you there,
because I shall know then that he has some designs of love
towards you. But when you get into the regions of despair,
do as Jonah didthink upon your God. What, do any of
you objects? Do you imagine that to think about God would
make you worse? Well, think that you were once his child,
and think again that he has found you out, and knows where
you are. Jonah felt that God knew where he was, because he
had sent the fish. God knows your whereabouts, my good woman;
he knows what quarters you are now in, my fellow-sinner. Remember,
too, that you are yet alive! what a wonder it is that you
are still permitted to hear the voice which says, "Return,
return; oh! backslider, return." God is immutable; he cannot
change; his covenant is steadfast; he will not alter it. If
he has loved you once, he loves you now. If I bought you,
I will have you. Come back to him, then; he is your husband
still. Return! return! he is your Father stillreturn!
return! But, oh! my hearer, perhaps you have no pretensions
to be a child of his! Perhaps you may have played the hypocrite
and made a profession in your own strength. You turned back
from the company of those who fear the Lord, because you never
were truly converted. If it be so, let the mercy, which God
shows to sinners, embolden you to cry to him. And may he break
you to pieces now with the hammer of his Word. So may he save
you, and so shall his praise be exceedingly great in your
salvation.
Though I have tried
thus to reach the backslider, it is likely enough that I have
missed my mark, honest as my intention has been. Oh! it seems
so dreadful that any of you should perish in your sins, who
know the way of hope! Some of you were candled on the knees
of piety. There are those now in heaven who look down upon
you, and could they weep, you might feel their tears dropping
on your brow. You know very well that time was when the hope
of a better world yielded you some kind of comfort and joy.
You do not think, at any rate, that you were feigning piety
then, but you did account yourself, a sinner. By the compassion
of the Most High, by the love of God, I pray you stop! Do
not drink the cup of devils after having drank the cup of
the Lord, and give not that soul to damnation which once seemed
to bid fair for salvation. Eternal life is too rich a prize
to trifle with. May the Spirit of God do what I cannot. May
he send home these things to the persons for whom they are
intended.
And now we have, in
the second place, to deal with the careless, the thoughtless,
the profligatewith:
II. THOSE WHO NEVER
WERE AWAKENEDmora1 or immoral in the world's reckoning.
Jonah did not remember God till his soul fainted within him;
and the reckless sinner, as a rule, never does remember God
till under the stress of law, or the distress of pain and
penalty; his soul is ready to faint within him. Now
I hope some of you will be brought to feel this faintness.
What kind of faintness
do persons who are under the saved discipline of the Spirit
of God generally feel?
There is faintness
of horror at their present condition. I can imagine
a person lying down on the edge of a cliff and falling asleep.
On suddenly waking up, having moved during his sleep, he finds
himself within an inch of the precipice, and looks down and
sees, far beneath him, the jagged rocks and the boiling sea.
How his nerves would quiver as he realized his position and
his jeopardy! Many a sinner has thus opened his eyes to discern
his terrible hazard. He has suddenly waked up to find that
he is on the brink of eternal wrath, standing where an angry
God is waving a dreadful sword, and certain to plunge it into
his heart before long. Every unconverted person here is poising
over the mouth of hell upon a single plank, and that plank
is rotten; he is hanging over the jaws of perdition by one
rope, and the strands of that rope are snapping every moment.
If a man does but apprehend this and feels it, I do not wonder
that he faints.
Faintness, moreover,
arises from a dread of horrors yet to come. Who can
conceive the heart-sinking of those poor passengers on board
that vessel which so lately foundered in the open sea, at
the prospect of being swallowed up alive, and sinking they
knew not whither! It would be no easy thing, one would think,
to keep from fainting at a time when such a doom was imminent.
So when God awakens the soul by the noise of the tempest,
it looks out and sees the ocean of divine wrath about to engulf
it. The cries of lost spirits appal it, and it says to itself,
"I shall soon mingle with those shrieks; my voice will aid
the wailings of their dolorous company ore long; I shall be
driven from his presence with a fiery sword at my heels before
many hours are over." Then the soul faints with alarm at the
thought of judgment to come.
Faint, too, is the
soul of the sinner through a sense of weakness. "I
cannot do anything to avert the catastrophe" seems to be the
leading idea of a person when he has fainted. Over the awakened
sinner there comes this sense of weakness. When a sinner does
not know himself, he thinks that being saved is the easiest
thing in the world. He supposes that to come to Christ to
get peace is a matter that can be done just as readily as
one snaps his fingers. But when God begins to deal with him,
he says. "I would believe, but I cannot"; and he cries out,
"Oh! God, I find that faith is as impossible to me as keeping
thy law, except thou help me!" Once he thought he could reform
himself, and become as holy as an angel; but now he can do
nothing, and he cries out for very faintness, "Oh! God, what
a poor, helpless, shiftless creature I am!"
And then there will
sometimes come over him faintness of such a kind as I must
call horrible. Well do I remember when I was in that
state! I thought I would give up prayer, because it seemed
of no use to pray, and yet I could not help praying; I must
pray, and yet I felt that I did not pray. I thought I would
not go to hear the gospel any more; there was nothing in it
for me, and yet there was a fascination about the preaching
of the gospel that made me go and hear it. I heard that Christ
was very gracious to sinners but I could not believe that
he would be gracious to me. Little did it matter whether I
heard a promise or a threatening. I liked the threatening
best. Threatenings appeared to me to be just what I deserved,
and they provoked some kind of emotion in my breast. But when
I heard a promise I shuddered with a gloomy feeling that it
was of no use to me; I felt condemned already. The pains of
hell got hold upon me, so tortured was my soul with the forebodings
of an endless doom. I heard, the other day, of a young minister
becoming an infidel, and I prayed for him. What, think you,
was the burden of my petition? I prayed that God would
make him feel the weight of his hand; for I cannot imagine
that a man who has once felt the weight of God's hand can
ever afterwards doubt his being, his sovereignty, or his power.
Believe me, brethren, there is such an unutterable anguish,
as a man could not long endure without becoming absolutely
insane, which God makes some people feel in order to crush
their love of sin, to purge them of their self-righteousness,
and bring them to a sense of their dependence on himself.
Some men can never be brought in any other way. I may be addressing
the patients I am describing. I sincerely hope I am. You are
feeling God's hand. The whole weight of it rests upon you,
and under it you are crushed, as a moth is crushed beneath
one's finger. Now I have a message from God for you. When
Jonah was in your case he remembered his God. Tell me, what
sayest thou, poor heartwhat sayest thou to remembering
thy God?
The case I am going
to describe is not exactly that of John Newton, but it is
from his experience that I gather my picture. There is a young
man with a very good father, a holy father. As the young man
grows up he does not like his trade: he cannot bear it, no
he says to his father, "While I succumb to your government
I mean to have my own way; other people enjoy themselves,
and so will I; and as I cannot do it under your roof. I will
follow my fancy elsewhere." He goes to sea. When he is at
sea he discovers that all is not quite to his taste; the work
he has to do is very different from what he had been accustomed
to; still, he doesn't flinch. At the first port he reaches
he gives loose to his passions. "Ah!" says he, "this is a
jolly life! This is far better than being at home with my
father, and being kept tied to my mother's apron-strings all
my days. I say a merry life is the thing to suit me, sir."
He goes on board again, and wherever the vessel puts in, each
port becomes an outlet for his vices. He is a rare boy to
swear and drink, and when he comes back to England he has
no words too bitter to utter against religion in general,
and against his father's scruples of conscience in particular.
It so happens that one day there comes on a dreadful storm.
He has to take a long spell at the pumps, and when that is
over he must begin to pump again, for the ship is ready to
founder, and every man must keep hard at it hour after hour.
There is a driving wind and a heavy tempest. At 1ast they
are told that nothing can save them; there are breakers ahead,
and the vessel will be on shore! He lashes himself to the
mast and floats about all night, and the next day, and the
next, with faint hope of life. He has some twitches of conscience
now; he cannot help thinking of his father and mother. However,
he is not going to be broken down by a trifle. He has a hard
heart, and he will not give way yet. He is crashed on shore,
and finds himself among a barbarous people. He is taken care
of by the barbarians; they give him food; albeit his meal
is scant, and he is presently set to work as a slave. His
master proves harsh to him, and his master's wife especially
cruel. He gets but little to eat, and he is often beaten.
Still, he bears up, and hopes for better days. But, half-starved
and hard worked, his bodily health and his mental energy are
reduced to a low degree. No marvel that fever overtakes him.
Who has he to nurse him? What friend to care for him? The
people treat him as a dog, and take no notice of him. He can
neither stir nor move. In vain he pines for a drop of water
in the dead of the night; he feels that he must die of thirst.
He lifts his voice, but there is nobody to hear him. To his
piteous appeal there is no answer. Then it is he thinks, "Oh!
God, if I might but get back to my father!" Then it is, when
he is at the last extremity, that he thinks of home.
Now what did happen
in the case of John Newton will happen, and has happened,
in the case of many a sinner. He never would come back to
God, but at last he felt that it was no use trying anywhere
else. He was driven to utter desperation. In this dilemma
his heart said, "Oh! that I might find the Lord." Hark, now:
I will tell you a tale. A lot of sailors were going to sea.
When about to start, the owner said, "There! I have bought
a lifeboat; put it on board." They reply, "No, never! We don't
believe in lifeboats; they are new-fangled things. We do not
understand them, and we shall never use one." "Put it on board,
and let it bide there," says the captain. "Well, captain,"
says the boatswain, "a tom fool of a boatisn't it? I
cannot think what the owner meant by putting such a thing
as this on board." Old tars, as they walk along the deck say
to themselves, "Ah! I never saw such a thing in all my life
as that! Think of old Ben Bolt taking a lifeboat with him!
Don't believe in such gimcracks!" Presently a stiff breeze
springs up, it comes to a galea hurricanea perfect
tornado! Now let down the lifeboat, captain. "No, no, no;
nonsense!" Let down the lifeboat! No; the other boats are
got out, but they are stove in, one after another, and capsized.
They bring out another; she cannot ride out the storm. There
she goes, right up on the crest of the waves and she has gone
over, bottom uppermost. It is all over with them! "What shall
we do, captain?" "Try the lifeboat, boatswain." Just so; when
every spar is gone, when every other boat is washed overboard,
and when the ship is going down, they will take to the lifeboat.
So be it. The Lord wash all your boats overboard. May it please
God to wreck your vessel; may he shiver every timber, and
make you take to the lifeboat. I fear me some of you will
never take counsel till you reach the crisis. May there come,
then, such a storm that you will be driven to take to Christ.
That done there is no storm you need ever fear. That done,
let the loudest tempest roar, you are safe; you have Christ
in the vessel with you. Two or three more words, and I have
done. God has been pleased to give his dear Son, his only-begotten
Son, to die a most dreadful death, not for righteous ones,
but for sinners. Jesus Christ came into the world to seek
and to save that which was lost. If you are a sinner, you
are the sort of person Christ came to save. If you are a lost
one, you are the sort of man that Jesus Christ came to seek.
Let your present sorrow comfort you, because it is an indication
that you are the kind of person that Christ will bless. Let
your despair deliver you from despair, for when you despair
there is hope for you. When you can do nothing, God will do
everything. When you are empty of your own conceits, there
is room for Christ to enter your heart. When you are stripped,
Christ's garments are provided for you. When you are hungry,
the bread that cometh down from heaven is provided for you.
When you are thirsty, the water of life is yours. Let this
broken-heartedness, this terror, this alarm, this faintness,
this weakness of yours, only lead you to say, "I am such as
Christ invited to himself. I will go to him, and if I perish,
I will perish only there"; and if you trust Jesus, you shall
never perish, neither shall any pluck you out of his hand.
May you trust him here and now. Amen.
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