Short Sermons for the People Author:Gardiner Spring Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SERMON III. THE SINNER'S FRIEND. Matthew ix. 19. A friend to sinners. The sinner needs a friend, an all-gracious, all-sufficient friend. He needs such a f... more »riend, if it were only to comforf hifn under the trials of life, and carry him safe through them. He needs such a friend to counsel and guide him, because he is prone to evil, and is easily led astray. He needs some one to assist him, and help him on in the journey which has proved so fatal to thousands of his fellow-travellers. He needs help to enable him to overcome his habits of wickedness, to subdue his spiritual enemies, and disappoint all those who are doing what they can to lead him to destruction. He needs a friend at home and abroad, in sickness and in health; and more than all, when he comes to pass through the dark valley of death, when he goes up to the judgment, to enter upon his unalterable eternity, O then he needs a friend who will stand by him to cheer him, and make his cause his own. But is there on earth or in heaven any such friend as this ? Yes, there is One—one such friend, and only one in the universe. I hear some of you say, Who is he ? where is he to be found ? I wish I had such a friend as this! Well, I am to speak to you about him; to tell youwho he is, and where and how he may be sought and found. And you- may be assured that, however evil, sinful, guilty and wretched you may be, that if you come to him, he will in no wise cast you out. He never did refuse, and he never will refuse, any who come to him. You have often read in the Bible about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that great and gracious Being who "came to seek) and save that which was lost." He is "God manifest in the flesh;" the only Mediator between God and man, the great Immanuel, God with us. He it is who is " the friend of sin...« less