New Park Street Pulpit · Sermon No. 86
Delivered on Sabbath Morning, June 15, 1856, New Park Street Chapel, Southwark.
“Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.”—Psalm 51:4.
YESTERDAY was to me a day of deep solemnity; a pressure rested on my mind throughout the whole of it, which I could not by any possibility remove, for at every hour I remembered that during that day one of the most fallen of my fellow-creatures was launched into an unknown world, and made to stand before his Maker. Some might have witnessed his execution without tears; I think I could not even have thought of it for long together without weeping, at the terrible idea of a man so guilty, about to commence that endless period of unmingled misery, which is the horrible doom of the impenitent, which God hath prepared for sinners. Yesterday morning the sun saw a sigh which sickened it—the sight of a man launched, by a judicial process, into eternity, for guilt which has rendered him infamous, and which will stamp his name with disgrace as long as it shall be remembered.
There is now agitating the public mind something which I thought I might improve this day, and turn to very excellent purpose. There are only two things concerning which the public have any suspicion. The verdict of the jury was the verdict of the whole of England; we were unanimous as to the high probability, the well-nigh absolute certainty of his guilt; but there were two doubts in our minds—one of them but small, we grant you, but if both could have been resolved we should have felt more easy than we do now. The one was concerning the criminal’s guilt, and the other was concerning his punishment. At least some few of our fellow-countrymen have been afraid, lest we may not have been justified when we spoke against him, and quite clear when he was judged. Two things were wanted: we should have liked to have had his own confession, and certainly we should have preferred something more than circumstantial evidence; we desired to have had the testimony of an eye-witness, who could swear to the deed of murder done. But, moreover, there is also a strong feeling in the mind of many, that the severity of the punishment is questionable. There are some who pronounce authoritatively, that the murderer’s blood must be shed for murder; but there are some who think the Christian dispensation has ameliorated the law, and that now it is no longer “eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” Many persons in England have shuddered at the thought of executing a penalty so fearful, on any man, however great his crime, seeing that it puts him beyond the pale of hope. I shall not enter into the question of the rightness of capital punishment; I have my opinion upon it, but this is not exactly the place to state it: I only wish to use these facts as an illustration of the text. David says, “O Lord, hear my own confession: ‘against thee, thee only, have I sinned,’ and by my own confession thou wouldst ‘be justified when thou speakest, and clear when thou judgest.’ And, Lord, there is something else besides my own confession. Thou, thyself, wast eye-witness of my deed. ‘Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight;’ and now thou art, indeed, ‘justified when thou speakest, and clear when thou judgest.’ And as to the severity of my punishment, there can be no doubt of that.” There may be doubt of the severity, when man executes punishment for a crime against man, but there can be no doubt when God himself executes vengeance for a crime that is committed against himself. “Thou art justified when thou speakest; thou art clear when thou judgest.”
Our subject this morning, then, will be, both in the condemnation and in the punishment of every sinner, God will be justified: and he will be made most openly clear, from the two facts of the sinner’s own confession, and God himself having been an eye-witness of the deed. And as for the severity of it, there shall be no doubt upon the mind of any man who shall receive it, for God shall prove to him in his own soul, that damnation is nothing more nor less than the legitimate reward of sin.
There are two kinds of condemnation: the one is the condemnation of the elect, which takes place in their hearts and consciences, when they have the sentence of death in themselves, that they should not trust in themselves—a condemnation which is invariably followed by peace with God, because after that there is no further condemnation, for they are then in Christ Jesus, and they walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. The second condemnation is that of the finally impenitent, who, when they die, are most righteously and justly condemned by God for the sins they have committed—a condemnation not followed by pardon, as in the present case, but followed by inevitable damnation from the presence of God. On both these condemnations we will discourse this morning. God is clear when he speaks, and he is just when he condemns, whether it be the condemnation which he passes on Christian hearts, or the condemnation which he pronounces from his throne, when the wicked are dragged before him to receive their final doom.