and you will find them.  Go for them—­that is Christ’s method.  Compel them to come in, for remember Christ’s ideal was, as Bishop Lightfoot so nobly put it, “the universal compulsion of the souls of men.”  And if your experience is like mine, you will find that there is strangely little compulsion needed to bring men and women to Christ.  I stood but lately in a house where fifty fallen women lived; I went there to rescue three of its unhappy inmates.  When the moment came to take these three women from their life of sin, their comrades lined the passage to shake my hand; there were tears and prayers, and messages like these, “Be good.  You’ll be a good woman,” “We wish we had your chance”; and these poor souls in their inferno wished me “a happy New-year.”  Compulsion!  There was small need for compulsion there!  I believe I could have rescued all of these fifty women at one stroke had I known where to take them.  But to the shame of the Free Churches in London I confess that, with the exception of the Wesleyans and the Salvation Army, I do not know a single Free Church Rescue Home in London.  And I put it to you this morning whether you can any longer tolerate that omission?  I ask you whether you really want a great draft of fishes, for you can have them if you want them.  Christ knows the business better than you do; and if you will come out of the cloister of the church and seek the people in His spirit, I promise you that very soon you will not be able to drag the net for the multitude of fishes.

IV.  “And Jesus said unto them, Come and dine.”

Dine on what?  Not the fish which they had caught.  They had caught one hundred and fifty-three great fishes; but notice Christ’s fire was kindled before they came.  Christ’s fish was already laid thereon, and all they had to do was to come and dine.  It is all you have to do, all the churches have to do.  Did not Christ so put it in the parable of the Great Supper?—­“Come, for all things are ready.”  Is not the last word of Scripture the great invitation?—­“The Spirit and the Bride say, Come, and whosoever will, let him come, and take of the water of life freely.”  Many a church can not say to a hungry world, “Come and dine,” because it will not let Christ prepare the meal.  It will not live in His spirit, it has no real faith in His gospel, it does not understand that its true strength is not in elaborate organization or worship, but in simple reliance on His grace.  And so there is the table covered with elaborate confections, which are not bread, and when it says, “Come and dine,” men will not come, for they know that there is nothing there for them.  Let Christ prepare the meal and all is different then.  When He says, “Come and dine,” there is “enough for each, enough for all, enough for evermore.”  And as Jesus spoke, I think there flashed upon the memory of these men the scene when Jesus fed the five thousand, and by that memory they knew their Jesus.  No one else ever spoke like that, with such certainty and such authority.  And the same Voice speaks even now to your hunger-bitten soul, to your famished heart, “Come and dine.”