Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 910
“What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me?” Psalm 116:12.
DEEP emotion prompts this question. But where are the depths of love and gratitude that can meet its exuberant demands? You will perhaps remember an incident in the life of a famous soldier, who also became a famous Christian, Colonel James Gardiner. One night he was little thinking of Divine things, but on the contrary had made an appointment of the most vicious kind. He was waiting for the appointed hour when he saw, or thought he saw before him in the room where he sat alone, a visible representation of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the Cross.
He was impressed, as if a voice, or something equivalent to a voice, had come to him to this effect—“O sinner, I did all this for you. What have you done for me?” Some such representation as that I would put before the eyes of every person in this assembly. I earnestly pray that the vision of the Christ of God, the mercy of God, the love of God, may appear to all your eyes. And may a Voice say in your conscience, both to saint and sinner, “I did all this for you. What have you done for Me?” It will be a humiliating night probably for us all, if such should be the case—but humiliation may prove salutary—yes, the very healthiest frame of mind in which we can be found.
I. I shall first of all this evening, invite you to CAST UP A SUM IN ARITHMETIC. The text suggests this. “What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me?” Come, let us reckon up! Though I know that the number will surpass all human numeration, let us try to reckon up His benefits toward any one of us. I wish each one of you, distinctly and severally, would now endeavor to think of the mercy of God towards yourself.
First, let us call over the roll of our temporal mercies. They are but secondary, but they are very valuable. There is a special Providence in the endowment of life to each individual creature. David did not disdain to trace back the hand of God to the hour of his nativity. And Paul adored the Grace of God that separated him from the time that his mother gave him birth. Our gratitude may, in like manner, revert to the days when we hung upon the breast. Or in the case of some, you may thank the goodness that supplied the lack of a mother’s tender love.
Childhood’s early days might then make our thoughts busy, and our tongues vocal with praise. But here we are now. We have been preserved, some of us, these thirty or forty years. We might have been cut down and punished in our sin. We might have been swept away to the place where despair makes eternal night. But we have been kept alive in the midst of many accidents. By some marvelous godsend, death has been turned aside just as it seemed, with a straight course, to be posting toward us. When fierce diseases have been waiting round to hurry us to our last home, we have yet escaped.
Nor have we merely existed. God has been pleased to give us food, raiment, and a place where to lay our weary heads. To many here present He has given all the comforts of this life, till they can say, “My cup runs over, I have more than any heart can wish.” To all here He has given enough, and though you may have passed through many straits, your bread has been given you, and your water has been sure. Is not this cause for thankfulness?
You cannot think of a shivering beggar tonight in the streets, you cannot think of the hundreds of thousands in this unhappy country—unhappy for that reason—who have no shelter but such as the poorhouse can afford them. And no bread but such as is doled out to them as a pauper’s meager pittance, without being grateful that you have been, up to now, supplied with things convenient for your sustenance, and defended from that bitter, biting penury which palls self-respect, cows industry, damps the ardor of resolution, chafes the heart, corrodes the mind, prostrates every vestige of manliness, and leaves manhood itself to be the prey of misery and the victim of despair.
More than that, we have reason tonight to be very grateful for the measure of health which we enjoy. “It is indeed a strange and awful sensation to be suddenly reduced by the unnerving hand of sickness to the feebleness of infancy. For giant strength to lie prostrate, and busy activity to be chained to the weary bed.” Oh, when the bones begin to ache, and sinews and tissues seem to be but roads for pain to travel on, then we thank God for even a moment’s rest. Do you not
know what it is to toss to and fro in the night and wish for the day, and when the daylight has come, to pine for the night?
If there has been an interval of relief, just a little lull in the torture and the pain, how grateful you have been for it! Shall we not be thankful for health, then, and specially so for a long continuance of it? You strong men that hardly know what sickness means, if you could be made to walk the wards of the hospital and see where there have been broken bones, where there are disorders that depress the system, maladies incurable, pangs that rack and convulse the frame, and pains all but unbearable, you would think, I hope, that you had cause enough for gratitude.