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THE CHRISTIAN TREASURY.

373

GOD'S JUDGMENTS, AND THEIR DUE EFFECT:
ON THE FAILURE OF THE POTATO CROP.

BY THE REV. J. D. HULL, HUNTLY.

in the way of his judgments; and then follows the reason: "For, when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness."

This passage, then, has a bright side as well as a dark. There is a smile on the edge of the cloud. While the words affirm the indisput able fact, that there is a God that judgeth in the earth, they further declare the blessed end and tendency of his chastisements, even the reformation of the chastised. O may he graciously grant that such may be eminently the result with respect to the judgment which induces our present remarks!

"When thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness "-ISA. xxvi. 9. WHEN the great Ruler of the world sends upon a land any signal and manifest expression of his anger, it becomes the especial duty of his ministers to take public and particular notice of it. This seems directly enjoined upon them in such passages as that, Ezek. xxxiii. 2-5: "Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman: if when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet and warn the people; then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warn-final cause: "Thy judgments." Whatever ing shall deliver his soul."

Now, my brethren, you will at once feel, I hope, that the present is even such a time as that contemplated in the foregoing passage. Until about a month since, never did the country present a more beautiful and promising appearance. There was the fairest prospect, not only of a most plentiful, but also of a most early harvest; when, suddenly, a strange and mysterious blight falls upon the potato crop. It spreads simultaneously over the whole kingdom; till, wherever one goes, instead of the grateful and luxuriant green that previously gladdened both eye and heart, the dismal sight occurs of dark patches, nay, extensive fields, withering under the Creator's frown.

Let us, then, consider the words before us in these two aspects: First, The judgments of God. Second, Their proper effect.

I. First, I would remark, that all calamitous occurrences are to be traced to God, as their

their nature, or their instrumental causes, they come at his direct permission and appointment : "Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it ?"—Amos iii, 6. There are, unhappily, those who deny the interference of God in the affairs of the world; whose language is, "The Lord will not do good; neither will he do evil;" but all who are acquainted with the Bible, and who believe it, will be ready to subscribe the not more-certain than consolatory declaration, that “God's never-failing providence ordereth all things, both in heaven and earth." Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without him. Alas! what a dark system is theirs, who, rejecting such a Disposer of events, consider all things to be left to the blind and random direction of chance or accident?

God's judgments are various. He has in his magazine an infinity of weapons; but four are especially noted in his Word, as being particu

wild beasts, the sword, and pestilence. See Ezek. xiv. 12-19.

It is impossible, then, that we can allow such a calamity to pass any longer unnoticed. It is most assuredly a loud call, yea, the very voice of God himself to us, to consider our ways, and wherefore he contendeth with us; and accord-larly terrible, and to be deprecated-famine, ingly, with the view of properly improving it, I have chosen as the subject of present meditation the passage already cited. It occurs in a chapter of peculiar preciousness and importance. In the portion immediately preceding my text, the Church is represented as still waiting upon God, and desiringly seeking him, No. 32. *

The Lord has, for several years past, been visiting us with judgments of various kinds— as typhus, cholera, influenza, seasons of drought and of wetness, accompanied by corresponding scarcity, though with years of plenty mercifully

interposed. Last year was one of remarkable humidity and gloominess, followed by a partial destruction of that esculent on which such numbers depend for sustenance, and which has experienced, this present year, a still more exterminating devastation.

Now, what may be God's design in sending us such judgments? Some cause, some design, and that of a most cogent kind, he certainly has; for "he does not afflict willingly the children of men." To brandish his thunderbolts, to cast abroad his arrows of destruction, with the mere view of displaying his power and inflicting misery, is most abhorrent from his nature; as well, indeed, as utterly inconsistent with the idea of a God of infinite goodness and wisdom. I would say, then, that his design is,

First, To bring us to consideration. When we are long left unvisited, we are wofully apt to go on frowardly in the way of our hearts, from bad to worse,neither regarding the work of the Lord, nor considering the operation of his hands, but sinning with a high hand; presumptuous, selfwilled, self-sufficient, stupid; like Moab (Jer. xlviii. 11): "Moab hath been at ease from his youth, and he hath settled upon his lees, and hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither hath he gone into captivity: therefore his taste remaineth in him, and his scent is not changed:" that is, he is still the same, as bad as ever he was. How great a calamity is unsanctified prosperity!

God complains of his own people: "The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider" (Isa. i. 3): consider, that is, their duty and their interest. This, then, is one important end of the Divine Being in correcting us, to force us to reflect and consider to make us feel our dependence, our intimate and absolute dependence upon him; also our sins and provocations wherewith we have provoked him to plague us. So Haggai i. 5, 6: "Now therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes." "In the day of adversity consider."-Eccl.

vii. 14.

Secondly, To humble us. Man is inveterately proud. He would be independent of God: "The wicked through the pride of his countenance will not seek after God. God is not in all • M. Henry.

his thoughts." Now, such a spirit as this God will not suffer. If there is one thing under heaven that he hates, it is pride. His treatment of Pharaoh, of Sennacherib, of Nebuchadnezzar, and of Herod, abundantly evinces this, that "God resisteth the proud." All his punishments, inflicted on individuals and communities, have this as one of their main ends "to humble" them-to "stain their pride.” How have we been going on, boasting of our skill in husbandry, and of the almost omnipotence of our exertions in draining, manuring, and so forth, to produce food to an unlimited extent! Well, mark what follows; in a season so favourable, that the like of it was not remembered, suddenly comes a visitation which sets all our skill at defiance, baffles every effort to remedy it, and overwhelms us with confusion. Was ever the poor vaunting of man more emphatically rebuked?

Again; the great Chastener sends these judg ments to bring us to repentance and reformation. Thus he says in Hosea (v. 15): "I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face: in their afflic tion they will seek me early." O how many and great are our sins, calling for repentance;||more especially taking into the account our pre-eminent advantages as a nation. Our unthankfulness, our ungodliness, our Sabbathbreaking, our drunkenness,* our immorality; in short, our wickedness of all sorts :—Oh, it is a painful, painful contemplation! We are a people laden with iniquity; our transgressions are multiplied before God; and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us, and as for our iniquities we know them; in transgressing and lying against the Lord, and departing away from our God-that God who hath done such great things for us. Do we thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise and shall he not visit for these things! shall not his soul be avenged on such a nation as this?

However piety may have beea progressing among the people, and I am far from denying that it has-nay, I cherish the persuasion with the most profound thankfulness-still, there has been a most grievous "departing away from our God"—a deplorable declension from right, and safe, and proper principles and sentiments, on

When we consider how vast a quantity of valuable grain is yearly consumed in ardent spirits, amounting in many places to several gallons to each individual, such a visitation as the present is by no means surprising. When we pervert God's blessings into a curse, it is no marvel if he "curse our blessings."

GOD'S JUDGMENTS, AND THEIR DUE EFFECT.

the part of the nation, as a nation. The opinion has got abroad—that politics and religion have nothing to do with each other; as if rulers were not commanded to rule in the fear of God; and righteousness did not exalt a nation; and the people were not happy whose God is the Lord.‡

While we have thrown the Bible aside in our legislative measures, we have permitted ourselves to become intoxicated with that very greatness and prosperity with which a most merciful God has continued to bless us. Our heart has been lifted up, and we have been but too content to forget the Author of our mercies in the enjoyment of his favours, not considering that it was He who gave us power to get wealth, and crowned our arms with success, and our commerce with success, and gave us corn and wine, and fruitful seasons. In short, like Jeshurun, we have waxed fat and kicked. Now, for all this God will most justly and properly punish us. He will deeply teach us our dependence upon him. He will force us to feel that we cannot despise or displease him with impunity, but that it is both an evil thing and bitter to forsake the Lord our God, and that his fear was not in us. He will let us see that however we may ungratefully and wickedly leave him out of our consideration, he is still the Being whom we must have to do with whom we must supremely regard, after all, as the one great Disposer and Arbiter of our destinies "the Governor among the nations”—that | those that honour him he will honour, but they that despise him shall be lightly esteemed."

These, then, seem to be the main ends of God in sending his judgments upon us, namely, to recall us to consideration, to humble us for our sins, and to bring us to repentance and amendment. And this appropriately conducts us to the second particular contained in the text.

II. The effect which his judgments should produce, namely, the teaching us righteousness: "When thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteous'ness;" plainly implying that, previously, they are unrighteous, and that their unrighteousness brings down God's judgments upon them.

There is a tendency in chastisements, at least when accompanied by divine influence, to subdue us to bend our stiff necks-to break the iron sinew, and induce us to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of him who 2 Sam. xxiii. 3. + Prov. xiv. 34.

Ps. cxliv. 15.

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inflicts them. And if this should happily prove the effect of the present visitation, then surely it will have been a blessing in disguise.

That it may do so, as far as the result may be in our power, my beloved brethren, let me offer some few suggestions.

1. First, then, we should acknowledge God's hand in the calamity. How slow we are to do this! ah, how slow! We will endeavour to account for such occurrences in a thousand ways, instead of taking the one short and true way-even tracing them at once to the hand of an offended Creator. What is the declaration of his word upon the subject? Micah vi. 9: "The Lord's voice crieth unto the city; and the man of wisdom shall see thy name: hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it."

Man errs and sins in a double respect. He will not own God, either in mercies or in punishments. He is fain to impute both to mere natural causes, forgetting that God is the Author and Director of nature; or rather, that nature is nothing more nor less than the operation of God. In this present judgment, however, he is, in a most marked manner, reproving this wicked propensity; shutting us up into the inevitable conclusion that it must be from him. As to any immediate natural cause of it, inquirers can come to no agreement; they appear completely baffled. The great Disposer of affairs would seem purposely to have hid it from us, as he did the body of Moses from Israel, lest we should worship it: lest, that is to say, we should ascribe to it what is attributable simply to his own direct agency.

What may be the cause or causes of this lamentable disposition to leave the Almighty out of consideration in our blessings and reverses? This appears a question of no common importance. I would say, then, that it is, first, that "carnal mind (which) is enmity against God," and which induces so many to live without him in the world, to their own great unhappiness. I would say that it is, secondly, pride, which refuses, on the one hand, to acknowledge obligations, and, on the other, to confess guilt. Thus, whether in weal or in woe, ungodly men repudiate the recognition of divine interference. "Lord, when thy hand is lifted up, they will not see; but they shall see." (Isa. xxvi. 11.)

2. Next to acknowledging God's hand in his judgments, it concerns us fully to confess and bewail those sins which have procured them; for, "as the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not

come." There is a cause. "A fruitful land maketh he barren for the wickedness of them that dwell therein." "O that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways! He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat; and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee." The grand thing, then, in order to a restoration of God's favour, is a serious laying to heart of those sins which have withheld it (see Jer. v. 25), and a full and feeling confession of them, with a view to their forgiveness. So Hosea xiv. 1-3: "O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity. Take with you words, and turn to the Lord: say unto him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips. Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses: neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods: for in thee the fatherless findeth mercy."

3. We should, as a people and nation, publicly and solemnly humble ourselves under God's mighty hand, and deprecate his wrath on this occasion. O that there were such a heart in us! O that the Lord would pour out upon us a spirit to do what is so plainly commanded in his own holy Word! Joel i. 10-14: "The field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth. Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your God, and cry unto the Lord." It is really most deplorable to observe the senselessness of the worldly portion of the community under a visitation so solemn and loud-voiced as the present. It cannot but be highly offensive and displeasing to God. See what he says, Isa. ix. 13: "For the people turneth not unto him that smiteth them, neither do they seek the Lord of hosts." And again, chap. xxii. 12-14: "And in that day did the Lord God of hosts call to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth and behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen, and killing sheep, eating flesh, and drinking wine: let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we shall die. And it was revealed in mine ears by the Lord of hosts, Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the Lord God of hosts."

How very strange and extraordinary that we hear nothing of a day of general humiliation! Surely the very Heathens may condemn us.

The Ninevites fasted and repented when God threatened them; but we go on, as if we had no reason in the world to apprehend his displeasure! Even that wicked Ahab, when he heard the denunciations of divine vengeance against his house for his sins, "rent his clothes, and put sackcloth, upon his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth, and went softly." And, feigned and hollow as his repentance was, a merciful God was so appeased that he said to Elijah, "Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself before me? Because he humbleth himself before me, I will not bring the evil in his days; but in his son's days will I bring the evil upon his house." (1 Kings xxi. 27, 29.)

O that the Lord, then, may graciously pour out upon those in authority a spirit of wisdom and piety! that, like the children of Issachar, they may be " men that have understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do." (1 Chron. xii. 32.)

4. Besides these things, there ought to be a general repentance, and rejormation. My brethren, it is only when we return unto the Lord, that we can expect Him to return unto us. As long as we walk contrary to him, He will walk contrary to us. If we continue to sin, He will continue to punish. "Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord"-" Break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniqui ties by showing mercy to the poor; if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquillity."*

When we neglect doing this, God is exceed ingly incensed. See Jer. v. 3: “O Lord, are not thine eyes upon the truth? thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved; thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return."

Let us, for our parts, individually examine ourselves, in a spirit of prayer for divine light, and try and find out our own respective sins, negligences, and ignorances. Let us, for example, question ourselves on the following points: Have we not been unthankful for mercies? Have we not been cold and formal inį devotion? Have we not neglected God's Word! Have we not undervalued the privilege of family worship, as well as public ordinances and means of grace? Have we not turned the back to God, and not the face; living more to ourselves and to the world, than to Him? Have { we not been indolent, self-indulgent, carnally

• Or, an healing of thine error.-Margin.

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spirit of repentance and amendment, which he requires as the condition of his returning favour and sparing mercy.

Let us, then, as we love our country, and desire to see good days, be most earnest and

and in the closet. Let us entreat that this visitation may be sanctified to us as a people; and that the promise of the text may be verified to us especially, "When thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness."

minded, careless? Have we not kept back more than was meet from the cause of God? | Hear how he reprehends his people of old on this point. Mal. iii. 7-12: "Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Re-instant in our pleadings with God, in the family turn unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return? Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith | the Lord of hosts. And all nations shall call you blessed; for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts."

O let us diligently examine ourselves on these and other points; withal imploring God to show us our sins and shortcomings, and wherefore He contendeth with us; and whereinsoever we have reason to apprehend that we have failed in our duty, let us earnestly entreat his pardon, and the aid of his Holy Spirit "to amend our lives according to his holy Word."

Let us also be most fervent in supplication, not only for ourselves, but for the country at large. Let us adopt the inspired prayer, for instance, of the Prophet Habakkuk: "O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy." Or that of Asaph: "Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts; cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved." Or that of another sweet psalmist: "God be merciful Punto us, and bless us; and cause his face to shine upon us. That thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations. Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us." (Ps. lxvii. 1, 2, 5, 6.)

Truly, it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon us. If this nation is to be saved from utter destruction, I verily believe it will be owing, instrumentally, to the earnest prayers of God's people in it. It is only PRAYER that can bring down that

It is said that plants grow much in dark weather. Be it our prayer, that, in this cloudy and dark dispensation, there may be a rapid growth of piety and holiness in our land. Oh! in that event, what a blessed chastisement will the present prove! Such a result were cheaply purchased at the expense of almost any sufferings.

5. In our miseries let us not forget our mercies, nor omit to be very thankful to God that he hath corrected us "in measure," and not suffered his whole indignation to arise. He has graciously and tenderly “reserved unto us the appointed weeks of harvest;" vouchsafed a large, and, I trust, ample supply of the kindly fruits of the earth, corn and hay, and other sustenance for man and beast; "crowning the year with his goodness." Thus may we "sing of mercy, as well as of judgment." O, let us see that we prove thankful, and evince our thankfulness with our lives as well as lips.

6. Let us be encouraged by the fact, that though in the aspect of affairs there is unquestionably abundant cause for concern, there are also several cheering features. For instance, it is a happy circumstance, that unprecedented exertions are being made to diffuse the Word of God and proclaim his Gospel throughout these and other lands. This proves that He is with us of a truth, and seems a good pledge that He means to continue with us; for whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and he shall have more abundance. To dispense the Gospel to others is the surest way to retain it ourselves. Indeed (I say it with humility and thankfulness, and in a deep sense of our great omissions and sins, notwithstanding), still I say it, that if we compare the present spiritual state of the country with that which presented itself half a century since, there is a revival of truth and pious energy, that is as life from the dead. Again, there is hardly an error or an evil in these lands of ours for which some appropriate remedy or corrective is not devised and put in

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