LITMIR.BIZ

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which is a tautology, since glad tidings mean the same thing as gospel. The Greek has it, “The poor are evangelised.” Now, what is the meaning of this word “evangelised?” They talk with a sneer in these days of evangelical drawing rooms and evangelicals, and so on. It is one of the most singular sneers in the world; for to call a man an evangelical by way of joke, is the same as calling a man a gentleman by way of scoffing at him. To say a man is one of the gospellers by way of scorn, is like calling a man a king by way of contempt. It is an honourable, a great, a glorious title, and nothing is more honourable than to be ranked among the evangelicals. What is meant, then, by the people being evangelised? Old Master Burkitt, thinking that we would not easily understand the word, says, that as a man is said to be Italianised by living among the Italians, adopting their manners and customs, and becoming a citizen of the state, so a man is evangelised when he lives where the gospel is preached and adopts the manners and customs of those who profess it. Now, that is one meaning of the text. One of the proofs of our Saviour’s mission is not only that the poor hear the Word, but are influenced by it and are gospelised. Oh! how great a work it is to gospelise any man, and to gospelise a poor man. What does it mean? It means, to make him like the gospel. Now, the gospel is holy, just, and true, and loving, and honest, and benevolent, and kind, and gracious. So, then, to gospelise a man is to make a rogue honest, to make a prostitute modest, to make a profane man serious, to make a grasping man liberal, to make a covetous man benevolent, to make the drunken man sober, to make the untruthful man truthful, to make the unkind man loving, to make the hater the lover of his species, and, in a word, to gospelise a man is, in his outward character, to bring him into such a condition that he labours to carry out the command of Christ, “Love your God with all your heart, and your neighbour as yourself.” Gospelising, furthermore, has something to do with an inner principle; gospelising a man means saving him from hell and making him a heavenly character; it means blotting out his sins, writing a new name upon his heart — the new name of God. It means bringing him to know his election, to put his trust in Christ, to renounce his sins, and his good works too, and to trust solely and wholly upon Jesus Christ as his Redeemer. Oh! what a blessed thing it is to be gospelised! How many of you have been so gospelised? The Lord grant that all of us may feel the influence of the gospel. I contend for this, that to gospelise a man is the greatest miracle in the world. All the other miracles are wrapped up in this one. To gospelise a man, or, in other words, to convert him, is a greater work than to open the eyes of the blind; for is it not opening the eyes of the blind soul that he may see spiritual matters, and understand the things of heavenly wisdom, and is not a surgical operation easier then an operation on the soul? Souls we cannot touch, although science and skill have been able to remove films and cataracts from the eyes. “The lame walk.” Gospelising a man is more than this. It is not only making a lame man walk, but it is making a dead man who could not walk in the right way walk in the right way ever afterwards. “The lepers are cleansed.” Ah! but to cleanse a sinner is greater work than cleansing a leper. “The deaf hear.” Yes, and to make a man who never listened to the voice of God hear the voice of his Maker, is a miracle greater than to make the deaf hear, or even to raise the dead. Great though that be, it is not a more stupendous effort of divine power than to save a soul, since men are naturally dead in sins, and must be quickened by divine grace if they are saved. To gospelise a man is the highest instance of divine miracle, and remains an unparalleled miracle, a miracle of miracles. “The poor are evangelised.”

      11. Beloved, there have been some very precious specimens of poor people who have come under the influence of the gospel. I think I appeal to the hearts of all of you who are now present, when I say there is nothing we more reverence and respect than the piety of the poor and needy. I had an engraving sent to me the other day which pleased me beyond measure. It was an engraving simply but exquisitely executed. It represented a poor girl in an upper room, with a lean-to roof. There was a post driven in the ground, on which was a piece of wood, standing on which were a candle and a Bible. She was on her knees at a chair, praying, wrestling with God. Everything in the room had on it the stamp of poverty. There was the poor coverlet to the old stump bedstead; there were the walls that had never been papered, and perhaps scarcely whitewashed. It was an upper story to which she had climbed with aching knees, and where perhaps she had worked away until her fingers were worn to the bone to earn her bread at needlework. There it was that she was wrestling with God. Some would turn away and laugh at it; but it appeals to the best feelings of man, and moves the heart far more than does the fine engraving of the monarch on his knees in the grand assembly. We have had recently a most excellent volume, the Life of Captain Hedley Vicars; it is calculated to do great good, and I pray God to bless it; but I question whether the history of Captain Hedley Vicars will last as long in the public mind as the history of the Dairyman’s Daughter, or the Shepherd of Salisbury Plain. The histories of those who have come from the ranks of the poor always lay hold of the Christian mind. Oh! we love piety anywhere; we bless God where coronets and grace go together; but if piety in any place does shine more brightly than anywhere else, it is in rags and poverty. When the poor woman in the almshouse takes her bread and her water, and blesses God for both — when the poor creature who has not where to lay his head, yet lifts his eye and says, “My Father will provide,” it is then like the glow worm in the damp leaves, a spark the more conspicuous for the blackness around it. Then religion gleams in its true brightness, and is seen in all its lustre. It is a mark of Christ’s gospel that the poor are gospelised — that they can receive the gospel. True it is, the gospel affects all ranks, and is equally adapted to them all; but yet we say, “If one class is more prominent than another, we believe that in Holy Scripture the poor are most of all appealed to.” “Oh!” say some very often, “the converts whom God has given to such a man are all from the lower ranks; they are all people with no sense; they are all uneducated people that hear such-and-such a person.” Very well, if you say so; we might deny it if we pleased, but we do not know that we shall take the trouble, because we think it is no disgrace whatever; we think it is rather to be an honour that the poor are evangelised, and that they listen to the gospel from our lips. I have never thought it to be a disgrace at any time. When any have said, “Look, what a mass of uneducated people they are.” Yes, I have thought, and blessed be God they are, for those are the very people that want the gospel most. If you saw a physician’s door surrounded by a number of ladies of the sentimental school, who are sick about three times a week, and never were ill at all — if it were said he cured them, you would say, “No great wonder too, for there never was anything the matter with them.” But if you heard of another man, that people with the worst diseases have come to him, and that God has made use of him, and his medicine has been the means of healing their diseases, you would then say, “There is something in it, for the people that need it most have received it.” If, then, it is true that the poor will come to hear the gospel more than others, it is no disgrace to the gospel, it is an honour to it, that those who most need it do freely receive it.

      12. III. And now I must close up by briefly dwelling on the last point. It was the third translation, WYCLIFFE’S TRANSLATION. To give it you in old English — “Poor men are taking to the preaching of the gospel.” “Ah!” say some, “they had better remain at home, minding their ploughs or their blacksmith’s hammer; they had better have kept on with their tinkering and tailoring, and not have turned to preachers.” But it is one of the honours of the gospel that poor men have taken to the preaching of it. There was a tinker once, and let the worldly wise blush when they hear of it — there was a tinker once, a tinker of whom a great divine said he would give all his learning if he could preach like him. There was a tinker once, who never so much as brushed his back against the walls of a college, who wrote a Pilgrim’s Progress. Did ever a doctor in divinity write such a book. There was a pot-boy once — a boy who carried on his back the pewter pots for his mother, who kept the Old Bell. That man drove men mad, as the world had it, but led them to Christ, as we have it, all his life long, until, loaded with honours, he sank into his grave, with the good will of a multitude around him, with an imperishable name written in the world’s records, as well as in the records of the church. Did you ever hear of any mighty man, whose name stood in more esteem among God’s people than the name of George Whitfield? And yet these were poor men, who, as Wycliffe said, were taking to the preaching of the gospel. If you will read the life of Wycliffe you will find him saying there, that he believed that the Reformation in England was more promoted

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