FOOLS MADE WISE AND SATAN DEFEATED

A SERMON

Preached on Sunday Morning February 2nd, 1862

By Mister JAMES WELLS

At the Surrey Tabernacle, Borough Road

Volume 4 Number 163

“The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock s and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, says the Lord.” Isaiah 65:25

IF we take the word of God for our guide we shall be compelled to take these words, in the spiritual, in the figurative sense; and then, in taking them spiritually, we shall at once find ourselves not only in order and consistence with God’s truth, but we shall find in the words something that is practically instructive to us in our present circumstances, descriptive of that which is now going on, descriptive of that which shall go on down to the end of time.

Before I enter upon the subject, I may just give you a self-evident proof of the absurdity of taking these words in the literal sense. I may refer you not only to the vision granted to Peter, recorded in the 10th and 11th chapters of the Acts, where he saw, as yon are aware, wild beasts, and fourfooted creatures, and creeping things, and which we are not to take to mean these creatures literally, but to mean sinners; and that those sinners were to be transformed from that state into the likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ. But if you just notice, in the 60th chapter of Isaiah it says, “The abundance of the sea shall be converted unto you.” Now, surely you would not take that literally. Only imagine the absurdity of it, to take that literally, that the abundance of the sea, the fishes of the sea, are to be converted unto you. Surely no one would attempt to take that literally. But if you take this literally, you are bound, in order to be consistent, to take that literally also. But if we take the sea there to mean the Gentile world, and if we take the abundance to mean great numbers of Gentile sinners that are carried away from God by the tempestuous sea of sin, and error, and convulsions, and revolutions, and circumstances that take place in time, then you have a solid meaning. Also, you read in that same chapter of dromedaries and camels showing forth the praises of the Lord. Surely you would not take these dromedaries and camels literally. Also, in that chapter you read of doves flying to their windows. Surely you would not take the doves literally, but spiritually to mean those who are blessed with reconciliation to God, blessed with the wings of faith to rise above terrestrial things. And then, in that same chapter you read of the ships of Tarshish; which, if you read the Bible carefully, will soon convince you that the ships of Tarshish mean ships that are accustomed to long voyages, in contrast to the ships used in ancient times merely to cruise round the coasts; and that, therefore, these ships of Tarshish, that are to bring the Lord’s sons and daughters from afar, are not ships literally, but ships mystically and spiritually, namely, the truths of the gospel. And the truths of the gospel take very long voyages, and find out them that are afar off upon the sea and take up these poor shipwrecked sinners, and bring them mystically, and spiritually, and truly unto the new, not the old, Jerusalem, and unto the true Zion of God, where God’s presence is. So that myself, after paying, which I ought to do, all the respect possible to the opinions of learned, and industrious, and sober-minded men, I, nevertheless, am constrained to differ from the whole, and to believe that my text has a spiritual meaning, remember, that all things in the ultimate destiny of the church are to be gathered together in Christ Jesus; there all are to be gathered together, all is to be spiritual, the blessings are spiritual; the body is to be spiritual; the soul to be spiritual; the joy to be spiritual; it is all to be spiritual together; and that which is merely natural will have no more existence. That which was first was natural, but that which is second is spiritual, Christ Jesus the Lord.

Well, then, we have in our text three doctrines. The word doctrine means teaching; that is the proper meaning of the word. We do not always use it in that sense. We use the word doctrine very often to mean some particular article of our faith; when we use the word doctrines, we usually mean the articles of our faith. But the word properly signifies teaching, something taught. And so, the three doctrines, or threefold teachings of our text are, First, reconciliation; “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock.” Secondly, subjection; “And dust shall be the serpent’s meat.” And third, safety; “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, says the Lord.”

Now then, the first doctrine we have here is, that of reconciliation to God. When we read of the wolf, as in our text, and the lamb, and the lion, and the bullock, they are not intended as a comparison of persons, but as a comparison of state. They represent not persons, but qualities. Hence, the Lord Jesus Christ is called a Lamb; it signifies quality and relation. Hence, for instance, the lamb is sinless, submissive, and sacrificial; this was the character of the lamb that typified Christ. So, Christ is not a lamb literally; it is not comparing his person to a lamb, but only comparing certain qualities which belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, set before us by that character. So, Jesus Christ was sinless; and he was submissive; “He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so opened he not his mouth.” And so, as the lamb was sacrificial, so Christ was sacrificial. “Behold the Lamb of God, that takes away the sin of the world.” And our souls shall, I say, run to him as we see him in his sinlessness; there we rejoice that there is an end to our sin; and when we see him in his submissiveness, there is our justification; and when we see him in his sacrificial excellency, there is our victory and acceptance with God. And so, I would take the lamb in our text not to refer direct to the Savior, but to the believer, the true believer. Here is a poor sinner brought down to the feet of Jesus Christ, and he is blessed with faith in the Sinless One; and there stands that believer at the foot of the cross, and he says, “Here, by oneness with this Lamb of God, Christ Jesus, the Lord will not behold iniquity in me, nor see perverseness in me, but will continue with me.” And then the other quality will follow. Just so, sure as you are brought into this standing, where your sin is ended, submission will follow; there will be humility; the soul will be melted down under a sight and sense of that amazing grace that has delivered you from your former state, broken the neck of your pride, and brought you down to the footstool of his mercy. And as the lamb was sacrificial, so will you be too; you will offer the sacrifices of prayer and praise unto God; you will offer up from time to time spiritual sacrifices, acceptable unto God, and you will present your soul and your body a living sacrifice unto God, which is your reasonable service. Thus, then, if we take the lamb in its being a type of Christ, we see it is expressive of qualities and relations. So if we take the lamb as expressive of the character of a believer, for Christians are called lambs, “Feed my lambs;” and he gathers the lambs with his arm, carries them in his bosom; it is then expressive, I say, of their faith in Jesus Christ, their likeness to Jesus Christ, their submission to Jesus Christ, and their devotedness to the Lord Jesus Christ. But then we have to note the wolf, “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together;” that is, the man who has been a wolf, not one who is a wolf now. Hence, when the Savior said, “Tell John the things you have seen, how that the deaf. hear, and that the blind see, and that the dumb speak, and that the dead are raised;” now, of course, the Savior does not mean to speak in self-contradiction; he does not mean to say that the man who is now blind sees, nor that the man who is now deaf hears, nor that the man who is now dumb speaks; but he meant to say that the persons who were lepers are now cleansed, the persons who were blind now see, the persons who were deaf now hear, and the persons who were dumb now speak, and the persons who were dead are now raised. Thus, you will see that these persons are spoken of, not by what the Savior has made them, but by what they were before he took them in hand. Just so our text; here is the wolf; he is spoken of by what he is before the Lord takes him in hand; and then his feeding with the lamb, as I shall presently have to show, will show the transition that this man has undergone. Now there is nothing, perhaps, that the wolf more delights in than he does in destroying lambs; the enmity of the wolf, or rather his thirst for their blood, is insatiable. I could give you plenty of instances of this from the Bible; but seeing I must not enlarge, I will come at once to a point that you will all recognize, and I think a clear explanation of our text. It is said of Benjamin that he should raven as a wolf. And it is remarkable that Saul of Tarsus was of the tribe of Benjamin, and Saul of Tarsus certainly did raven as a wolf; he certainly did thirst with a thirst insatiable for the blood of the lambs of Christ, for the blood of the saints; he certainly did pursue them with all the malice and thirst, all that fiery thirst of hell, that sin and Satan could furnish him with. This: is a self-evident truth; none of you will deny this. And then there is another truth equally evident, that the dear Savior met this wolf, and stopped this wolf, and this wolf underwent a transformation, and a wonderful transformation it was. His thirst for blood was taken away, and a thirst for mercy put into the place of a thirst for blood; his enmity was taken away, and the love of God, the love of Christ, put into the place of that enmity; his pride was taken away, and deep humility put into the place of that pride; his blindness was taken away, and visual power to see that Just One was put into the place, of it. Ah, look at Saul of Tarsus breathing out threatening’s; and if we, when we were in a state of nature, did not do the same, it was not because we had not the capabilities of it, it was not because we were not sinful enough, or had not enmity enough, but because the Lord restrained us, and put us into circumstances where we could not do the same. But look at Saul of Tarsus breathing out threatening’s against the saints, and then look at him after he was a preacher. Ah, hear his testimony; hear him with trembling heart and with weeping eyes, saying, “I am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted, I was that blood-thirsty wolf that I persecuted the church of God; but by the grace of God I am what I am.” Ah, he says, “I am less than the least of all saints; and my sweet hope is that this is a faithful saying, worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.” Here the wolf is turned into a lamb; here he feeds with the lamb; here the humblest in the household of faith was not beneath his notice, he was willing to take the lowest place, yes, he tells us himself, that, looking at what the Lord had done for him, looking at what he had been, looking at what he was brought to now, and looking at the glorious prospects before him, he could say, and he could say so, too, in the midst of sufferings, it was not in a state of carnal ease, not when he had a good home, and good friends, and everything quiet and comfortable, but when he had not where to lay his head, when he had no certain dwellingplace, when he was tossed about on life’s tempestuous main, in perils and sufferings, to such an extent that he himself gives us only a sample thereof; and yet, great as were his sufferings, and trying as was the path which he had to walk, he could say amidst it all, and nothing but grace could have enabled him so to speak, “Neither count I my life dear unto myself, that I might finish my course with joy.” Never mind how rough the way be, if it be but calm at the end; never mind how dark the path be, if at eventide there shall be light; never mind how many enemies I may meet with by the road, if death is to be my last enemy, if there is no hell after that, if my sins are never to see me after that. “Neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.” And then, again, all of you must admit that while the apostle was a lover of everything morally excellent, and an example thereof too, yet you must admit he was a very high-doctrine man; not higher than the prophets were, nor yet than the Lord was, nor yet than the other apostles were, only the apostle Paul wrote more largely than the others. None of the others wrote more than two or three epistles, but Paul wrote fourteen epistles; and if Peter had written fourteen, had the Holy Spirit inspired Peter to write fourteen epistles and given them to us, as he inspired Paul, it strikes me that we should have found Peter as high as Paul; and if it had been the lot of James to have written fourteen epistles instead of one, it strikes me that you would have had a testimony in those epistles that would have stood by the side of the lofty flights, the splendid reasonings, and the deep revelations of the great apostle Paul. You would have seen a greater harmony than some men suppose there in reality existed among them. Thus then, my hearer, by nature we are like the wolf; we are wild, and our thirst is for any and for everything but the water of life; our hunger is for everything but the bread of life; and our desire is for everything but the God of life. But, oh, what a mighty change is wrought! And I have no doubt that the Lord has given us that one conspicuous account of the apostle Paul that it may be instructive as well as encouraging, and that down to the end of time; as says the apostle, “That in me, first Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting.” He, therefore, being a sinner saved, could speak well of the grace by which he was saved. Thus, then, the wolf, that is, the man who has been a wolf, a poor, wild, ignorant, prowling creature, after his prey hither and thither, he is thus brought to feed with the lamb; and the lamb feeds in the green pastures, on the tender grass, shall I say? just the sweet promises that come down to the little ones, “Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are the meek; blessed are they that hunger and thirst; blessed are the merciful; and blessed is he that is not offended in me.” Here the apostle could feed, and here our souls are brought to feed. Ah! when I can look sometimes to the evidence I do possess of belonging to the Lord, and lose sight of the things that are against me, for if you look at your own deceitful heart, and the ten thousand besetments you have therein, why, you will see everything against you; but if, amidst all things that are against you, you have a consciousness of poverty, spiritual poverty, and need of Christ, that you have a mourning after, sighing after him, and that you are humbled down at his feet, and that you do desire his righteousness, if you possess these excellencies, in however weak a degree, these excellencies unite you to Christ, and his perfection will cover all your faults, and failings, and sins. Oh, how dear the Savior becomes unto such! and thus they are brought, then, to feed with the lamb. I take the wolf then, I say, to mean the conversion of a sinner, as in the case of Saul of Tarsus; and although all are not converted after the same outward manner, they are all converted by the same grace, by the same Spirits by the same Jesus Christ; and they are all converted unto the same thing that Paul was. He was converted to Christ in the eternal perfection of Christ’s priesthood, as the Epistle to the Hebrews clearly witnesses; that he was converted to God in a covenant ordered in all things and sure, his writings clearly witness. And I should wish you to notice this, that the writings of the apostle Paul demonstrate, beyond all dispute, that he was converted to God in a covenant ordered in all things and sure. The Scriptures nowhere speaks more beautifully and more repeatedly of that covenant of which Christ is both the mediator and the surety, than in the epistles of the apostle Paul. Here, then, my hearer, we are not called to be apostles, but if we are called to be saints, then we have the same standing essentially, and the same destiny. And thus, then, the lambs feed upon those truths to which the apostle was converted. Thus, the one who was converted before, and the one who is brought now, feed together. There is the lamb, there is the wolf. “Why,” says the wolf, “I should like to tear that lamb all to pieces.” There may be some here, I can’t say, but we have had some of that kind. Persons have come to our place, and it has been difficult for them to retain their seats. One said, “I should like to shoot that man.” Another told one of his friends, “That fellow ought not to be allowed to preach, ought not to be allowed to speak at all.” And yet some of these very persons that have thus come full of enmity, full of malice, and would much rather see me die than live, much rather see me put down than go on, while their malice has been up to the boiling point, the Lord has sent an arrow in, and they have gone away wounded and brought down, and, by-and-bye, have confessed what they felt, and what they said, and what they thought; but, ah! the change is wrought, and then my prayer is, Father; forgive them, they knew not what they did; but you have opened their blind eyes; they see now that they were fighting against the very thing which alone can save them; that they were despising that very vital godliness which alone can deliver them from the wrath to come, and fit them for that inheritance with the saints in light which they shall forever enjoy. And besides, do we not, in common conversation, instinctively, in certain alterations that take place in men, use almost the language of our text? When we see a Savage, brutal sort of man, brought down by affliction, and there is a moral reformation, perhaps nothing spiritual, it is as common as possible to say, “Ah! that man was like a lion, and now he is like a lamb; that man was like a wild beast, and now he is tamed down, he has become a rational, reasonable, kind-hearted sort of man; good husband, good father, a good neighbor, a good citizen.” Well, then, if we use this language on the ground of mere reformations that do sometimes take place in those violent characters that we have seen, surely we may in the figurative sense, with more force and propriety, accept this representation as a declaration of that transition which the soul undergoes from its wolfish state by nature, into reconciliation to God, and by which it is brought to live in the green pastures of eternal truth, to be an enemy to God no more.

But here is a second representation, “The lion shall eat straw like the bullock,” as it says in the 11th chapter, “shall eat straw like the ox.” Now here is a transition, you see, from the carnivorous, the flesh-eating, to the graminivorous, or the grass-eating, from that which, is carnal, to that, shall I say? which is vegetable. Now every farmer’s boy knows that straw is the winter fare of the ox.

It opens our text as clearly as possible. Here is that lion-like man; he is so brought down that he is willing to winter with the ox. What a change is wrought in the man’s character! If a lion should come into the yard, and say, “I am tired of my life; I don’t dare kill another fellow-creature; I don’t dare be a murderer any longer.” “Well” says the ox, “if you come here the fare is very poor; there is only straw to eat.” “Ah, but that’s only winter fare; summer will come by-and-bye; we shall go into the meadows by-and-bye; it will be all right by-and-bye; I will winter with you.” And just so it is, my hearer. Here is a man through the pride of his heart will not seek God. God brings him down; gives him a new heart, and he begins to confess the name of Jesus, and he meets with some Christian man, who has nothing at all but trouble hardly. Ah, you will find it a trying path; don’t you think you are going on very easily; “You shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake;” and perhaps even they of your own household will be your enemies. You will have a trying path of it. Ah, says the man, trying as it is, I would rather suffer affliction with the people of God than enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. I would rather sit at the rich man’s gate, full of sores, with Lazarus, than I would be arrayed in purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day, and making merry with the devil’s servant, the rich man, within; for he will by-and-bye be in hell, and Lazarus will be in heaven. And therefore, says this man, who hitherto has been a lion-like man, malicious and strong, and determined against God and godliness, he is now willing to endure the winter fare. Ah, he says, if the fare, be winter fare, I will endure the winter; and if I can winter with you, I shall summer with you. “If we suffer with him, we shall also be glorified with him and if we can endure affliction for his sake, “he that endures unto the end shall be saved.” Now, we might bring this matter out in a very clear way; it is that that puts a man to the test. You will all recollect the fourth class of hearers, they on the good ground; when persecution came, they on the good ground were not offended; when tribulation came, they still endured; when persecution and loss, or whatever came, they would still hold fast. And so, my hearer, if your religion be real, you will be willing to winter with the people of God. But are the people of God ever called oxen? you say. Yes, in relation to quality. The ox is noted in the Scriptures for its patient devotedness; and they are very laborious creatures. The Lord’s people, then, for devotedness to the Lord, are compared to oxen. Hence one of the faces of the living creatures in Ezekiel was the face of an ox; and David says, “That our oxen may be strong to labor;” and again, “You shall not muzzle the mouth of the ox.” “Does God take care for oxen,” says the apostle, “or says he it altogether for our sakes?” For our sakes, no doubt, “this is written.” And so, this man, who is willing to endure for the truth’s sake, he does not care what he endures, if he may but get right at last. Now, you are aware the Scriptures very often represent that of which we are the subjects as our food. One says, “I have eaten ashes like bread.” Well, we cannot understand that he literally did eat ashes; ashes there, represent sorrow, mourning, tribulation, and so I have had nothing but sorrows to live upon. And another says, “My tears have been my meat day and night.” Now, we must not take that literally, but figuratively; nothing but troubles to live upon, and to endure. Still, I was going to say, every bitter thing is sweet. It is a remarkable thing that the Christian, especially the one that is just quickened by grace, if he has no troubles, he is very uneasy; if he has no sorrows he is very much concerned. Ah, I am afraid my religion is not real; I wish I felt more the burden of sin, the burden of guilt; I wish I felt more of what the Lord’s people describe; I am afraid I have no experience at all. So that there is a willingness to endure tribulation, so that they but know what the truth is. I am sure the poet is perfectly right, varying the imagery a little, when he says,

“More the treacherous calm I dread,

Then tempests bursting o'er my head.”

Here, then, is the wolf brought to feed with the lamb; that is, this man, this wolf-like man, has undergone a change that has brought him into oneness with the Lamb of God, brought him into oneness with the lambs of Christ’s fold. Second, here is the lion, here is this lion-like naan, has undergone a change, and he says, I have done many things for the devil, and now I am willing to suffer anything and everything for the Lord’s sake. He is united to the devoted ox. The ox, I have said, is noted for patient devotedness. By-and-bye the Lord comes in, and says, “The winter is past; the rain is over and gone;” and then they shall have better provender; they shall have something better than dry straw to live upon, something better than tribulations, something better than hard circumstances; they shall be brought into the heavenly meadows, and brought beside the still waters. And what a paradisaical scene is thus presented, when sinners of all shapes, and, shall I say? makes and qualities and a variety of characters; denoted by the bear; the wolf, the lion and the various beasts that are mentioned, when they are brought together to Christ. Then there is a center of unity that subdues all their differences, and makes them agree, and that center of unity is in Christ. “Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.” They do dwell in unity, and that unity shall hold them fast in the unity of the faith, until their wolfish nature, in a word, their mortality, with all its sinful tendencies, shall be swallowed up of everlasting life. Thus, then, what know we of undergoing this transition from a state of nature into this heartfelt, practical reconciliation to God? What know we of being willing to winter with the people of God, rather than summer with the people of Satan? What know we of willingness to suffer for the truth’s sake, rather than be severed for one moment from that truth. If we know something of this spirit, then, as we have been reading this morning, in the 30th Psalm, “weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” All this time the Lord is preparing us, by these tribulations, for those manifestations of his mercy which he has in reserve for us.

Now the next point is that of subjugation. I do think that our text taken spiritually comes in naturally, easily, without any violence; it requires no ingenuity; it is a kind of self-evident thing. You have, no doubt, all noticed that the Lord, as a general rule, there may be some few exceptions, but as a general rule the Lord takes similes to instruct us from those things that all ages and all nations are acquainted with. The lion and the wolf are the same kind of creatures now as a thousand years ago, or from the beginning; and they are the same, with the exception of the little climate sort of variations, in all countries; so that everybody would know what these creatures are. If the Lord had taken the chief part of his similes from merely temporary customs, or from mechanical achievements, or scientific discoveries, these we must first have made ourselves acquainted with before we could understand the similes used. But instead of doing this, the most illiterate has the same advantage as the most learned. The most illiterate knows what a wolf and a lion mean, and the most learned knows no more; they can both understand this. And thus how true it is that the gospel comes, shall I say, in infinite earnestness; it does not attempt to come in what is called excellency of speech, but it comes in power, in the demonstration of the Spirit, and in those words and similes which the Lord has been pleased to choose to illustrate those eternal things by which we are saved. But we must have a word upon the second point, and that is all this morning. “Dust shall be the serpent’s meat,” Where? Where shall dust be the serpent’s meat? Has the enemy always been confined to dust? I think not; no. Was mere dust the serpent’s meat when the Fall took place? No. That old serpent did swallow up Adam and Eve, and in a sense did eat, in the figurative sense of the word, the whole human race. Now, the word eat in the Scriptures sometimes signifies to destroy. And I wish to be careful upon this point because I want to get light into your understandings, and then I shall get warmth into your hearts. Numbers 24, the Holy Ghost there, speaking of, the victories .the Israelites should be blessed with, says that “He,” Israel, “shall eat up the nations his enemies, and shall break, their bones, and pierce them through with his arrows.” You will see, therefore, to eat them up means to destroy them. But here it says, “Dust shall be the serpent’s meat.” But dust was not the serpent’s meat when the Fall took place; the human race was his meat they all became his prey. There is not a man or woman, now within the sound of my voice, nor on the surface of the globe; that has, not been the prey of Satan. We are all by nature led captive by him, at his will, and we know not where he is leading us to. Dust was not his meat; he destroyed us. Second, was dust his meat, mere dust, when he wrought apostacy in the minds of the Jews and brought them into his own deep and, satanic counsels by which he made the Jews a prey to himself, destroyed their persons, their nation, their land, their city, arid their temple? Immortal souls become his prey. Was mere dust his meat there? No. Revelation 19, the ultimate judgment, where the fowls of the air, birds of prey, are commanded, “Come; and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; that you may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains and the flesh of mighty men and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond; both small and great;” meaning that all, that are found at the Savior’s left hand will be the prey of the devil to eternity; if you are lost, you will be his food to eternity, that is, in the sense I have just now stated; you will be his prey to eternity, he will rend and tear you about as he pleases to eternity. Ah! if it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, so it is a fearful thing to be given up to Satan. Satan is a murderous foe; he knows nothing of pity, he knows nothing of sympathy, he knows nothing of tenderness. Not all the groans of hell could ever move Satan to show any kindness. Ah, then in these three respects, in the fall of man, in the apostacy of the Jews, and in the-ultimate destination of the lost, dust will not be his meat. But if I take that view of it which it means, there is a beauty that no language can describe. In the first Adam he made us his prey; in the second Adam he can get at only our follies, and our faults, and our circumstances; he, can only eat the dust of our feet. In the first Adam, he made us his prey; in the second Adam the wicked one touches us not; there our life, and strength, and righteousness, and holiness, and everything remains. In the first covenant he made the Jews his prey; but in the new covenant, in connection with the new covenant, in this gospel dispensation, he can have nothing but dust. Says the devil, There is one I should like to eat. Who is that? Why, that Peter; I am afraid of that Peter; he is a stumbling sort of man, yet he is as full of fire as he can hold, and I am very much afraid he will preach a sermon someday, and tear my kingdom to pieces, and that five or six thousand souls will rush out of my kingdom at once into the kingdom of Jesus Christ. I am afraid of him; I should just like to get hold of him. Should you? You won’t have him, though; no. Simon, Simon, Satan has desired to have you.” What, me, Lord? Nasty old wretch, I don’t want him! “Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat;” sift every grain of wheat out of you. You have some grains of faith, and love, and prayer in you; and if he can sift all that wheat out of you, all your religion out of you, then he will get bold of you, he will make you his prey then you shall make a bit of dust, Peter. But he shall not have you, “for I have prayed for you, that your faith fails not.” Here, then, my hearer, in the fall of Adam, in the first covenant, and in the ultimate judgment, Satan, the old serpent, makes men his prey but here, in this new covenant, not one soul can he destroy; no, if one praying soul were lost, how would devils boast! As Mr. Hart says, “If one believer may be lost, it follows, so may all.”