---

How persevering is Divine love. God has voices which He uses in such a way that men must and shall hear.

I. So, then, first, let us begin with what is a very humbling consideration, namely, that MAN IS VERY HARD TO INFLUENCE FOR GOOD. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?" According to the text, before God Himself can save men, He has to open their ears: "Then He openeth the ears of men." Towards God, men's ears are often stopped. Original sin engenders in men great carelessness about Divine things. How quickly they are aroused by talk about politics! Their ears are stopped by carelessness. Often, too, there is another form of stopping, which is very hard to get out of the ear; that is, worldliness. "I am too busy to attend to religion!" In some cases the ear is stopped by prejudice. It would be a foolish thing for a man to prejudice himself into rags and beggary; but it is far worse when a man prejudices himself out of life eternal into everlasting woe. With a great many more the ear seems to be doubly sealed up by unbelief. They will not believe that which God Himself has spoken. It may also be stopped by self-sufficiency; when a man has enough in himself to satisfy him, he wants nothing of Christ. Then there is another difficulty. If we get through the ear, and the man is influenced to listen, his heart does not retain that which is good, he so soon forgets it. Hence the text says of the Lord, "He openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction." Ah! we think the child, the man, the woman, has learned that truth at last; but it is much as if we had written it on a blackboard, it is soon wiped out. How shall men be saved? We cannot impress them; or, if we do impress them, how often it ends in nothing! Another difficulty must be noticed: that is, the purpose of so many men; indeed, the secret purpose of all men; and from this purpose men have to be withdrawn. The purpose of most men is to seek after happiness, and their notion is that they will find it by having their own way. Ay, and there is one thing more which is, perhaps, the greatest barrier of all. It is not merely their deafness of ear, and their unretentiveness of spirit, and their resoluteness of purpose; but it is their pride of heart. Oh, this is like adamant; where shall we find the diamond that can cut a thing so hard as man's pride? God save us from that sin! It needs God to do so, for only He can "hide pride from man."

II. Now, secondly, though man is hard to influence, GOD KNOWS HOW TO COME AT HIM, and He does it in many ways. According to the text, He sometimes does it "in a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men in slumberings upon the bed." I have no doubt that many, many times, men's sleeping thoughts have been the beginnings of better things for them. You see, reason holds the helm of the vessel when we are awake, and as a consequence it keeps conscience down in the hold, and will not let him speak; but in our dreams, reason has quitted the helm, and then, sometimes, conscience comes up, and in his own wild way he begins to sound such an alarm that the man starts up in the night. Did you ever notice how God aroused Nebuchadnezzar, that greatest man, perhaps, of his age? Why, in a dream! God gets at other men in a different way, namely, by affliction, or by the death of others. So have I known men aroused by strange providences. If God does not come at men by strange providences, how often He does it by singular words from the preacher! Then God has a way of coming to men's hearts by personal visitations, without dream, without speech, without voice.

III. WHEN GOD DOES GET AT MEN HE ACCOMPLISHES GREAT PURPOSES. His purpose is, first, to withdraw man from his own purpose. "That He may withdraw man from his purpose." Sometimes a man has proposed at a certain moment to commit a sin, and God stops him from doing it. He also withdraws men from their general purpose of continuing in sin. I find the translation may be, that God withdraweth man from his work, from that which has been his life work; from the whole run and tenor of his conversation, God withdraws him. A man goes out after having received the Word of the Lord, and he is a different man from that hour. Then what else does God do? He hides pride from man. That is a very strange expression, certainly, to "hide pride from man." Did none of you ever hide away a knife from a child? Have you never hidden away fruit from your little children when they have had enough, and they would have eaten more if they could find it? God often hides pride from men because, if man can find anything to be proud of, he will be. Then. lastly, He thus secures man's salvation from destruction. "He keepeth back his soul from the pit, and his life from perishing by the sword." How wonderfully has God kept some of us back from what would have been our destruction if we had gone on!

( C. H. Spurgeon.)

---

---

KJV: In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed;

WEB: In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, in slumbering on the bed;