AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON TO THE MEMBERS OF MRS. BARTLETT’S CLASS ON THE
SABBATH AFTER HER LAMENTED DECEASE. f2a MY dear Friends, — On this occasion I will not try to comfort you, for I fear I might only aggravate your sorrow. I have already
attempted the painful duty on two occasions, both at the time of the funeral and also this morning; but your wounds are too new and too deep. May the Holy Spirit exercise his chosen office of Comforter, and then your griefs will be assuaged. I shall rather endeavor this afternoon to make practical use of the life and character of our beloved friend. I am sure if we could hear her wishes from her own mouth she would say, “Weep not for me, but follow me so far as I followed Christ” and she would not forbid my speaking of her if thereby any of you might be benefited, for she lived only for your good. In that respect her desires are unchanged;
even in glory she loves you still. Anything about her that would glorify Christ she would not wish me to withhold.
The Apostle Paul addressed the Hebrew believers in the thirteenth chapter of his epistle at the seventh verse, and said, on the behalf of teachers and [,asters (and Mrs. Bartlett was both of these), “Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God, whose faith follow.” Those last words shall serve me for a text, “WHOSE
FAITH FOLLOW.”
I could, this afternoon, have held up our departed sister as an example in a great number of points of character, but in selecting her faith I halve chosen that which lay at the root of all the rest. “Without faith it is
impossible to please God,” and therefore until we believe in the Lord Jesus
none of those things which, are pleasing to God are to be found in us. Faith is the boring-rod which taps the great “deep which lieth under” and enables the fountain of grace to well up in streams of Christian virtue. With faith we must begin, with faith we must continue, and with this we must close;
for, as the first sure token of salvation is faith as a grain of mustard seed, so its perfection is faith with the far-reaching boughs, beneath which the weaker ones find a shelter. “The just shall live by faith.” Hence the apostle in saying “Whose faith follow” means, in fact, that we are to follow them in every grace, only he points his finger expressly at that which is the center and kernel of all.
But; have you faith? Have you all believed in the Lord Jesus Christ? If you have not, why not? and wherefore? We are sometimes attacked by
unbelievers, and they seem to think it will be difficult for us to justify our faith: we do not find it so, but, on the other hand, you unbelievers have a task before you which you will never be able to accomplish, namely, to justify your unbelief. Many of you know that the gospel is true, you know that Jesus is the Son of God, you know that his blood taketh away sin, and yet you are not trusting in the cleansing blood, you are not believers in the Son of God, but you remain still without Christ, unpardoned, unrenewed.
How can you excuse your unbelief? How will you excuse it at the last great day? You have no faith, and therefore you are “condemned already,
because you have not believed,” and remaining as you are you must be lost;
for ever. I would to God that this afternoon you might follow Mrs.
Bartlett’s faith by resting as she did in the great sacrifice. Come to the Savior just as you are:, with all your sins and weaknesses, and tell him you are lost and undone without him, and that from his feet you will never go until he look upon you and say, “Thy sins be forgiven thee.” Come without fear, for Jesus has sweetly said, “Him that cometh to me I will in nowise cast out.”
There are some points about our beloved sister’s faith that I would urge you to follow, and the first relates chiefly to you who are young. Oh that you might follow her in the early birth of her faith. She was quite a child when the Holy Spirit wrought saving faith in her. I do not see many here so young as she was when she made a profession of her faith in our blessed Lord. I would urge upon you younger ones to pry in the language of the psalm, “O satisfy us early with thy mercy, that; we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” I have noticed that many of the most eminent saints were called early. Sin, even when repented of and blotted out, leaves a weakness
behind, but when the sour is preserved from falling into the grosset sins through early conversion there is often developed by the Holy Spirit a character of peculiar beauty aria a piety of special excellence. Your
Samuels, and Josephs, and Josiahs, and Daniels, are “men greatly beloved,”
and young women who give their hearts to Jesus when they are young are most likely to grow up into Christians who shall be like Deborah, who was
“a mother in Israel.” Those who give to God the morning of their youth shall find him doubly precious in the evening of their days. From seven to seventy makes a grand Christian life, and roughly speaking our beloved friend realized that joy. I am myself a living testimony to the sweetness of giving the dewy morning to Jesus. I was not vet; sixteen years of age when I was baptized into the name of the sacred Three, and I have never
regretted that with my mouth I thus early made confession of the Lord Jesus. Oh that I had sooner believed: It is, quite impossible for us to find eternal life too soon. It were well to be so soon converted as to have no bad example to regret,, no wasted years to mourn over, no formation of evil habits to lament, no memories of a conscience tampered with to
embitter the future. Oh, you who are very young, dear Mrs. Bartlett speaks to you, and from her grave reminds you that those who seek the Lord early shall find him.
I would new say follow her faith in the continuance of it. During all those long years our beloved friend was kept by the grace of God standing on the same rock on which she put her childish foot, looking up to the same Savior whom she, had saluted in her girlish days as Christ her Lord, growing in grace, becoming rooted and grounded and built up in him. She continued walking in the same way — the good old way — abiding steadfast in the fulfill even unto life’s close. We have been so stunned by the blow of her unexpected death that we have, perhaps, forgotten that it was almost time for her to go home. She had reached her threescore years and ten, so that hers was not a life terminated before its time. She has been gathered like a shock of corn fully ripe that cometh in its season.
Throughout that life which, according to the rule of nature, may be considered to be a complete one, she was enabled to press forward in the heavenly race with undiminished ardor. True to the last hour to her life- work, she spent the last gasp of her breath in her Lord’s service. She was for years what She used frequently to call herself “a dying woman,” but site labored on to the end. She lived until her work was done; we are sure of that, for had there been more for her to do her Master, and ours, would
have permitted her to remain to do it. Her work was finished; through divine grace and the power of the Holy Spirit it was finished: the last warning to you all she had. given, the last invitation to come to Jesus she had presented, the last prayer for you she had offered, and the last tear for you she had shed; and then she went home, and her Lord said to her, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Oh, my sisters, let us follow her faith in this. May we never be backsliders, never lose our first love, never turf.
aside to crooked ways. If any of you have clone so, return I pray you. By the prayers and tears of her you loved so well, return, return! And may the Lord so restore you and stablish you in the faith that from this moment until you are summoned home you may never desert your post, nor slumber at it. “He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.” Mrs.
Bartlett stood firm to the last; let us gird ourselves also with the same mind. “Be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.”
Another point in her faith which I earnestly commend to this class, and all here present, was its unalloyed simplicity. Ever since I have known my beloved sister, now with God, I have admired the way in which she has kept to the simplicity of the gospel, both in her own experience and in her teaching. Many have come and gone, but we have always known where to find her. I remember her tremblings when certain novel views were
introduced into the class by a good but unwise brother. Site came to. me and said, “ This will never do; those young people know nothing of those points, and do not need to know; they will be puzzled and led away from simply looking to Jesus.” I was of her mind, and rejoiced in her common sense, and in her holy resolve to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and him cruel-fled. In her time she, with me, saw the rise and fall of many wise ones, who had found out something new: — oh, so new, so wonderful, so delightful! I have seen others go after these will-of-the-wisps until they have plunged into the mire, but none of these things moved her.
There she stood, knowing in her soul two things, herself a sinner and Christ a Savior. You have heard, I dare say, a good deal of talk about higher 1ife and perfection; you never heard a syllable from her concerning any higher life than the life of faith upon the Son of God, and vet if ever woman possessed the higher life she had it, and because she had it she could not see it in herself, and would never have been so vain as to assert that she exhibited it. The spiritually ugly see beauties in themselves; but the beautiful in heart mourn over their spots and imperfections. She knew that
there is only one true life, namely, life in Christ, and there cart be nothing higher than that, for it is the life of God in the soul; and whoever strains after anything higher than that leaps at a shadow, and is in danger of missing the substance. Exalted views of their own spiritual attainments frequently crush men in despair when the bubble collapses. She kept to this
— “I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him.” You never heard from her any
“divers and strange doctrines.” I know that you have listened to everything that fell from her lips, some of you for many years, and you can bear witness that the end of her conversation was, as Paul puts it here, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and for ever.” If there was anything beyond Christ she did not seek it; if there was anything beside Christ, she did not desire it. Her motto was “Jesus only,” and this made her so safe a guide for young minds, and this made each one of you feel when you got anywhere under her lee like a ship in a quiet harbor. Now, dear young friends, and older friends too, imitate her faith in its simplicity. Be not dazzled with this or that. If any say, “Lo, here!” or “Lo, there!” say to yourself, and say to others too, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
I commend to you the faith of your departed teacher for its intensity. She heartily and thoroughly believed, what she taught. Intense faith is not very common. We are very apt to take things at second-hand, and put them down as orthodox, and consider that we believe them. So to believe that when you are on the borders of the grave you can steadily gaze upon eternity without fear, this is faith. So to believe that, like my dear brother, William Olney, we can realize death and feel nothing but pleasure at the thought, because we shall so soon be with Jesus: riffs is to believe indeed.
Often has Mrs. Bartlett in spirit skirted the <:casts of eternity, for she was frequently prostrated with pain, and by that extreme weakness which succeeds it,, and at; such times she has never displayed the slightest sign of doubt or dread. Her heart was fixed, trusting in the Lord. Her intense faith yielded comfort to herself, but it also affected others. She spoke because she believed, and her confidence gave her power. This is an age of
falsehood, and the good must expect to be abused, but I have never heard anybody hint that Mrs. Bartlett did not believe what she taught, or was not in earnest while teaching it: surely Satan himself dared not insinuate that.
Her pathetic pleadings have forced the tear from the eyes of strong, minded men, for she felt every syllable that she uttered, and made others feel it.
Through God’s Holy Spirit, her unstaggering reliance upon the Savior has led many of you to confide in him. You saw how she believed, you saw the joy which her faith brought to her, the calm rest and power which she obtained, and you were led to Jesus Christ, perhaps unconsciously to ourselves, very much through her example. She was a thorough and complete believer; downright in her convictions and rooted in her principles. She was immersed into the Lord Jesus, she had not, been content with a mere sprinkling of faith; and according to her faith so was it unto her.
Imitate her faith, next, in its activity. What a worker she was. Nobody will ever know until the books are opened at the last how much she did. Her Sabbath-day work was but a small portion of her holy toil: she almost looked upon it, as relaxation: her work continued all the day, and every day of the week. How many times she has come to me with the burden of your souls upon her, to speak of the tempted, the afflicted, and the backsliding!
How frequently, also, did she tell me glad tidings concerning souls
awakened and troubled ones brought to rest in Jesus. Your despondencies, your temptations, your failings, she carried them all on her heart. I do not believe that any mother in this place knows her children much better than she knew the members of this class; and, what is more, I believe that there are few children who would tell their inward feelings to a mother so frankly as many of you have unbosomed yourselves to her. There was about her a sympathy of heart and an affectionateness of manner, and. an absence of everything like reserve and haughtiness, which drew you towards her and held you fast. Her heart was large and her efforts incessant. If her son, Mr.
Edward Bartlett, were to rise and tell you what she did, which I am sure he cannot do, he would have a long story to tell. He himself has been fired by his mother’s zeal, and is one of the most industrious workers among us, and may God spare him long to labor on. She was a worker who neither needed the pastor’s praise to encourage her, nor his exhortation to enliven her. She needed the bit rather than the spur, for she went beyond her strength, and when ordered to rest she only went away and worked elsewhere. It is well to remember this, for this will make us see how long she lived: if we measure life by work rather than by years she lived as long as the ancients before the blood. My dear sisters, are there not some among you who love the Lord who could be equally active for him? I do not think we shall find her equal in all respects for many, many a day to come, but every working sister must be after her own order, and if you consecrate
yourself as perfectly as she did you may not be useful in her line of action, but you will succeed in some other. God will open a door of usefulness, and help you to enter in. Some of you who have the gifts and the graces qualifying you to lead, should give yourselves up to the Lord, and ask him to anoint you with fresh oil. Our ranks are thinned, close them up. A brave officer has fallen, let each private soldier see to it that; the fight does not falter. Be instant in season and out of season, and so follow her faith’s activity.
Again, imitate her in her self-sacrifice, though not exactly in the form it took. Few could rightly make so supreme a sacrifice as Mrs. Bartlett did When she first came among us she was in a good position, obtaining by her own efforts a considerable income, but when the class multiplied it; called for so much of her time and attention that she determined to give up all, and devote herself entirely to this work. Accordingly she east herself upon the providence of God, and the kindly support of her two loving sons: but, as in the order of God’s providence her sons did not prosper as we would have desired, she had much reason to regret the step which she had taken, and yet so possessed was she with the passion for soul-winning that I do not think such a thought ever crossed her mind. I marked her self-denial, and it. was my great privilege to help her in divers ways as best I could, always judging that anything I could[do for her was exceedingly well laid out. I rejoiced to know and help a woman who could, for Christ’s sake, relinquish everything, just; before she died, as you perhaps know, her son, whom God has greatly prospered in America, came over to this country.
She told me herself that he pressed her to return with him, as he could provide for her most comfortably in his adopted country; he also urged his brother to emigrate, for there would be good prospects before him. She told me last Sabbath week that she knew it would be for her temporal advantage, but she added, “How could I leave that dear class?” The mother would gladly have joined her son, but; the lover of souls was stronger than the mother, and she said, “How can I leave the class which God has given me? How could Edward leave his work at the Alms Houses? It is
impossible for me to go.” I rejoiced in both the mother and the son, and thanked God that I had such helpers. I am sure it was to Mrs. Bartlett a deliberate giving up of earthly comforts for your sakes when she resolved to abide with you She could not tell then, of course, that she was on the doorstep of heaven at that very moment when making, once again, a supreme sacrifice for her Lord and Master. She could not have made a