Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2536
“Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may you also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.” Jeremiah 13:23.
Jeremiah had a friend who was a black man. Ebedmelech, the Ethiopian eunuch, had a great and tender concern for Jeremiah when he was shut up in the miry prison. He took ropes and covered them with rags that they might not cut the poor Prophet’s armpits, and drew him up out of that filthy well into which he had been cast for the Truth of God’s sake. I suppose, from the way Ebedmelech afterwards treated the Prophet Jeremiah, that they were great friends. And as we usually talk of people of whom we are fond, it was natural that Jeremiah should use the Ethiopian as an emblem. I do not know that any other Prophet did so. Perhaps there was no other Prophet who took to a Negro so thoroughly as Jeremiah did, but, anyway, he had that black man’s face imprinted on his mind and when he was speaking to the people, the Holy Spirit moved him to use a simile with which he had become familiar. I wish that every thought and experience I have ever had could be used in speaking for my Lord. I would like to never set my eyes on anyone or anything without trying to turn all to good account for the Master’s work. And if those of us who are teachers of others will only go about with our eyes open, we shall find plenty of illustrations of the Truths we have to proclaim. There will not be a black man cross our path but we shall learn something or other from him.
Let us go at once to our text and notice that it contains a question which admits of only one answer—“Can the Ethiopian change his skin?” Of course he cannot! And this fact suggests to us a spiritual question—Can a man who is accustomed to do evil, so change himself as to do good? Of course he cannot, any more than the Ethiopian can change his skin! When we have talked over that question which admits of only one answer, I shall put another question which admits of the opposite reply In that latter part of our subject may the Lord be pleased to send comfort to those who are despairing and who know that they can no more change their own nature than the Ethiopian can change his skin, or the leopard his spots!
I. First, we are to consider a question which admits of only one answer—“Can the Ethiopian change his skin?”
No one ever heard of such a thing being done. Very wonderful things have occurred, but no one has ever yet heard of a blackamoor who has been able to wash himself white. It was an old fable of Aesop as to the absurdity of attempting to do anything of the kind and, often, when we want to point out that a thing cannot be done, we use this simile, and say, “You cannot change the blackamoor’s skin.”
There are some things that men can do. A white man may be made almost black, as far as his skin is concerned. There are certain medicines that operate upon the skin and give it a very strange color—you may have seen a few such cases in your lifetime. But, though you can put the color in, you cannot take it out. The man who is white, or the woman who is very fair, may, either of them, sit in the sun till they become browned so that they might almost say with the spouse in the Song of Solomon, “I am black because the sun has looked upon me.” But you could not turn a black man, white, though you can turn a white man black. You can do what you please by way of spoiling, but you can do nothing by way of mending. You can make yourself filthy by sin, but you cannot make yourself spiritually clean, do what you will! There is an ease about going down—you can jump down a precipice quickly enough, but who could stand at the bottom of a high cliff and leap to the top at one bound? Man can come down against his will, but he cannot go up even with his will. You can do evil all too readily—you can do it with both hands, greedily, and do it again and again and not grow weary of it—but to return to the right path, this is the difficulty!
As Virgil said about his arduous task when he went down to the land of shades, “Easy is the descent to Avernus, but to return to the clear air again—this is the work, this is the difficulty.” You have all seen persons make themselves black externally—the chimney sweep in pursuit of his lawful calling becomes quite as black as a Negro, yet, with a basin of water, he can change the look of his face very speedily because the blackness is only something outside of him which merely adheres to him for a time. But the question of our text is, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin?” That is a part of himself and he cannot alter it. The Ethiopian can wash himself clean and he ought to do so, it is his duty to do so. And a man can keep himself moral and he ought to do so, it is his duty. If the Negro is ever so black, he may be clean, but he cannot wash himself white, neither can a sinner cleanse himself from the stains of his guilt.