Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1700
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, January 7th, 1883, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them. But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”— Romans 10:5-9.
YOU see by this mourning that our church has been bereaved. I have lost a friend tender and true to me, and my heart is too full for utterance.1 I scarcely knew what to preach from this morning; but at last I settled in my mind that I would raise a memorial to my departed friend by preaching a sermon which should be connected with himself. Therefore I cast about me, and I considered what subject he would wish me to preach from if he were sitting behind me this morning as he was last Lord’s-day. I had no difficulty in answering that question. His life and death pointed in one direction. He was a man of rare common sense, straightforward and downright in his aims, and most pithy in his speech, with such a mixture of mother-wit that he might have been taken for John Ploughman’s brother, as indeed he was. He cared nothing for oratory, which I have heard him call “a flash in the pan”; he delighted in the plain, solid gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that he would have said to me,—Give them Christ crucified, and salvation by grace through faith, as plainly as ever you can; for when he was sore sick and in the very agony of death, he repeated as his dying creed—
“Nothing in my hand I bring: Simply to thy cross I cling.”
and in his own quaint way he added, “They may talk as much as ever they like, but the whole of it lies in Jack the Huckster’s verse
‘I’m a poor sinner, and nothing at all But Jesus Christ is my an in all.’”
You will find that story in the first volume of my sermons.2 In Park-street early in my ministry I told the story, and it did my friend good, and helped to rest his soul all those years ago, so that he remembered it and repeated it at the last. For his sake let me tell it again.
This Huckster Jack was a poor, wicked fellow, who had gone about from village to village, swearing, drinking, huckstering and perhaps pilfering. Some thought him half-witted, but the story would show his wind to be sound enough. He heard a poor woman sing somewhere—
I’m a poor sinner, and nothing at all; But Jesus Christ is my all in all.”
He remembered the words, and what was better, he felt their sense; and he kept on humming them to himself till God’s good Spirit engraved them on his heart. There they were recorded, and Jack was a new man and a saved man. So he essayed to join himself unto the church, but the brethren looked suspiciously at him and enquired, “What is your experience?” He said he had no experience but this—
“I’m a poor sinner, and nothing at all But Jesus Christ is my all in all.”
The good elders very properly asked, “Are you converted? Have you been born again?” and Jack replied, “I do not know much about these things; but this I do know and am sure of—
‘I’m a poor sinner, and nothing at all But Jesus Christ is my all in all.’
They put him back for awhile, to try if he would grow in his knowledge, but he never went an inch beyond the first standard. He know what he did know, and to that he held fast—
“I’m a poor sinner, and nothing at all But Jesus Christ is my all in all.”
Well, they must take him into the church; they could not well refuse a man with such a confession of faith; and when he was in the church, walking with the brethren, he was happier than the rest of them, at which they greatly marvelled, and one said to him, “Brother Jack, don’t you sometimes feel doubts and fears? “Doubts,” he said, “what do you mean? I never doubt that
‘I’m a poor sinner, and nothing at all;’
for I have daily proofs of it, and why should I doubt that
‘Jesus Christ is my all in all’?
for he says he is, and I must believe him.” “Ah, well,” said one, “sometimes I enjoy good frames and feelings, and feel very happy, and then I lose them, and sink in spirit.” Jack answered, “I never get lower than I am, for I am down at the bottom—
‘A poor sinner, and nothing at all.’
I cannot get lower than that, can I? But I am also at the top,
‘for Jesus Christ is my all in all,’
and I cannot get higher than that, can I?” They tried him many ways with their blessed experience, of which you and I have got cart-loads, perhaps waggon-loads; but he could not be drawn out of his one firm position. They tried him with their various attainments, depressions, anxieties, quibbles, and questions; but still the huckster would not budge. He had bought the truth and would not sell it, and so he stuck to—