Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3085
“And when He was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this?” Matthew 21:10.
OH, that something would move this great city of ours! I am afraid that at least one-third of our population is settling down in stolid indifference to all religion. It is not that there are thousands of professed infidels, but without making the profession of being so, infidels they really are. It is not that they hate the Gospel—they do not care to hear it, or to know what it teaches. They have not enough interest in it to enter the sanctuary even for once in their lives, unless influenced by fashion or by fear they may attend some ceremonial observance. I think we can hardly form a conception of the fearful heathenism of this great metropolis. You might go down street after street and find that the larger proportion of the people, so far from making any profession of religion, did not even enter a place of worship and knew nothing more than what the city missionary or the Bible woman may have been helped to teach them. We are getting into a very, very, very sad state of things—we need something or other that will get at the masses and compel the city to be moved.
The theater services which have been lately attempted have no doubt proved a great blessing—the opening of cathedrals was a step in the right direction—but everybody can see that the effect of such departures from the ordinary routine is naturally transient. There will be no greater attraction in a theater than there will be in a chapel or church if the same Gospel is preached, after the novelty of its having been preached there shall have worn off. We can no more expect to see cathedrals crowded long together, now, than we might have expected it 20 years ago. The thing is good as an expedient, but it must be temporary in its results. We shall need something greater than this before we shall get at the masses of London! This is only, as it were, a little hammer—we need a hammer more massive than that of Thor to strike this island to make it shake from end to end! When you have three millions of people herded together, you cannot move them by simply opening half-a-dozen theatres, or by crowding a cathedral, or by filling some large place of worship.
What a hopeful sign it would be even if people were excited againstreligion! Really, I would sooner that they intelligently hated it than that they were stolidly indifferent to it. A man who has enough thought about him to oppose the Truth of God is a more hopeful subject than the man who does not think at all. We cannot do anything with logs— we feel that we could brace up our nerves to the charge amidst men possessed with devils while we have the Gospel to cast the devils out. It is when men have no spirit at all, but are simply dull, lumpish, thoughtless logs that we cannot get on with them. For my part, I do not regret the activity of Puseyism and Popery just now. Though I dread it as an awful evil in itself, I am thankful for everything that will relieve the awful stillness of religious stagnation. If it will only stir us up to oppose it, if it will only make the true Protestant spirit of England come out, I shall be grateful for the sanitary results, however much I deplore the devastating pestilence. We need something that shall again arouse this city and move it from end to end!
I. The text seems to me to tell us what will do it. WHAT IS THAT WHICH WILL STIR THE WHOLE OF
LONDON AS IT STIRRED UP JERUSALEM? A reigning Savior riding in triumph! Jesus Christ never moved Jerusalem till He mounted on that donkey, till they cast their garments in the pathway and strewed the branches and cried, “Hosanna!” Then it was, as He rode in triumph as King of the Jews, that the whole city was stirred. Oh, that we had a reigning Savior more distinctly recognized in all our churches! There is no use in mincing matters or hiding our shame—the shout of a King is not in the midst of the Church at large. The ancient Glory which rested upon the Lord’s chosen has in a great measure departed. Write Ichabod, for the Glory is departed! We have not now the lighting down of
the mighty arm, nor the strength of a present God—as once we had. The world knowsvery little about the Church and cares very little about her as long as Christ does not reign in her palaces! Unfurl the King’s flag, proclaim His entry, make known His residence and forthwith, “the kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and against His Anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.”
What was that Church which disturbed the dark ages? Why, a Church made up of men who hazarded their lives unto the death—men who stood up and preached in the dead of night to the few who were bold enough to gather to hear them—men who at other times could beard the tyrant and stand face to face with cardinal or pope and speak the Truth of God, come what might. These were men who had a reigning Savior in their midst! Yet few and feeble, that gallant host subdued the world! The Vatican trembled! The words they spoke, sustained by the character they bore, fell like thunderbolts about it. Would you enquire, my Brothers and Sisters, for the simple but saintly servants of God who brought a Reformation into England? They were men who recognized a reigning Savior! The Church was represented by those in whose hearts Jesus Christ really did dwell—such men as Wycliffe and his successors. From marketplace to marketplace they went with but half-pages or whole pages of the Word of God, as fast as they could be printed! They read them at the market. They went on from place to place, preaching the pure, unadulterated Gospel in homely language, with fiery tongues—and soon they set all England in a blaze!