Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

it prove to your souls the sleep of death. Were your house burning about you, were the flames bursting into your bed chamber, even at the dead of night, you would start up and fly with the risk of every thing to save yourself; were but your neighbour's house on fire, or one in the same street, or even in the same town, apprehension or sympathy would keep you awake. But your situation, O careless sinner, is a thousand times more dreadful; the flames of divine wrath surround you on all hands, and are ready to burst in torrents upon you, and yet you can indulge undisturbed repose. It is an inhuman disposition to wish to make a fellow creature unhappy; but would to God I could give any sinner of this character such a picture of himself as would day and night disturb his repose, till he sought and found rest only in the favour of a reconciled God. In your situation, the greatest cruelty is to spare; compassion, affection, apprehension upon your account, every motive of tenderness and concern are engaged to bring you to a proper sense of your danger. God has been visiting you year by year, in the language of the parable, in expectation of fruit, and has as long spared and admitted to further trials. God knows, you may now be in the last stage of your probation, and tremble to think of the next visit;

it may be to put in execution the dreadful sentence, "Cut it down, why cumbereth it the "ground?" Fly then, without delay, fly for refuge, to lay hold on the hope set before you; let it henceforth be the great study of your life to acquaint yourself with the way of salvation through a crucified Redeemer, that ye may be at peace; and that you may not be overtaken with the horrors of eternal night, while you are still at enmity with God. In the

Third and last place, I would address the exhortation of my text to the fallen backslidden children of God. Be of good courage, my friends, you have not to do with a harsh and severe master; but with a kind and tender-hearted parent, who does not cast off his children, though they "fall "from their first love." Ungrateful indeed you are, and ungrateful I am sure you think yourselves, to revolt against so mild a government, to throw off your allegiance to so gracious a sovereign; and meet it is that you should be humbled for your faults; meet it is that you should be laid low in the dust before your offended God and Saviour, and it is professedly with this intention that you came up hither to-day. Come then, with the returning prodigal, and say: Father, "I have sinned before heaven, and in thy sight,

66

" and am no more worthy to be called thy son;" and you may rest assured of the prodigal's welcome. Your heavenly father has already provided for you the best robe; the "rich cloth

[ocr errors]

ing, the wedding garment," with which Jesus is ready to invest you, is the unspotted robe of his own imputed righteousness.-Look then upon him whom by your sins you have pierced." Now is the season for you to enquire and examine into your hearts, that you may discover the traitor which betrayed you into folly, which stole your affections from your God and father, and let no blind partiality to your beloved lust incline you to spare or pity; it is for your life to discover where the plague lies. And now again, "join yourselves to the Lord in an everlasting "covenant," and let your resolution, through grace, be, "What have we any more to do with "idols? we will never again return unto folly." Do not risk the dreadful consequences of another departure from God. And let all of us be exhorted to "return to the Lord;" let it be our "hearts desire and prayer to God" this day, that he would, by the gracious influences of his holy Spirit, increase our faith and inflame our love; that he would fill our souls with that "godly sorrow which "worketh repentance;" that he would strengthen, confirm, and perfect our resolutions and en

[ocr errors]

deavours to love him more and serve him better; and " may the God of peace, that brought again "from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shep"herd of the sheep, through the blood of the "everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every "good work to do his will; working in you that "which is well pleasing in his sight, through "Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and 66 ever. Amen."

272

SERMON XXXII.

LAMENTATIONS iii. 33.

For he doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.

ON AFFLICTION.

DAILY experience affords a strong confirma

tion of this truth, that "man is born to trouble "as the sparks fly upward:" hence it was, that among several nations, the birth of a child was celebrated with mourning and loud lamentation, as the commencement of sorrow and distress; and, on the contrary, their funerals were accompanied with mirth and joy, as the glad termination of a miserable existence. Wherever we turn our eyes, if our own afflictions will permit us to look around, we behold nothing but scenes of woe, an innumerable tribe of ills extending their cruel devastations over the whole human race; sickness, and pain, and poverty wasting the bodies; anguish, and despair, and distraction overwhelming the minds of poor mortals; and from this view of

« AnteriorContinuar »