those ill-fated men, whom lately we saw expire on the gallows-could they, while marching out to the scene of death, have heard that a substitute was provided-could some one have approached them to strike off their fetters and bid them return once more to the life they had forfeited-what a transport of joy would have thrilled through their throbbing hearts! But all this, and more than this, has been done for the sinner. For him has Calvary been steeped in blood; for him has Jesus Christ himself gone to execution; and hardly do we see in return the decency of ordinary gratitude. And yet what is the most disgraceful and terrific death of the body compared with the death of the soul? What are the chains, the coffin, the soldiery, the fatal cord, the last signal, the choked and struggling breath, the strained and glazed eye, the convulsed and blackened featureswhat are these things to that withering sentence, "Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire!" Blessed be God, my hearers, I can tell you again that pardon may be found. A Saviour has paid the price of your ransom, and all things are ready. But remember that now is the accepted time-to-day is the day of salvation. If you postpone this hour, you may be in eternity the next. And when we have passed, unpardoned, the brink of the grave, there remaineth no more hope: the violated law of an incensed and holy God will take its course, and pour upon us the unrelenting severity of its most awful and most aggravated condemnation. SERMON XXX.* "He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night?" Isaiah, xxi., 11. You will recollect, my hearers, that Seir was a mountain near the southern frontier of the land of Palestine. In that quarter, as the allusion of our text denotes, it was employed for a post of military observation. The people of Israel were frequently annoyed by the incursions of their unfriendly neighbors in the south, till at last they resorted, when apprehensive of attack, to the expedient of throwing an army at once upon Mount Seir. The object was plain. From such an eminence, the whole of the circumjacent country might be overlooked. While, therefore, the troops were spread in the attitude of preparation along its base, the summit was covered with sentinels, to whom the leader of the forces is supposed, at proper intervals, to have addressed the inquiry I have read to you, " Watchman, what of the night?" Now, my brethren, we must be blind to the plainest lines of analogy, not to see that the import of our text is by no means restricted to the land of Palestine. None of us can doubt that the phraseology carries along with it an application directly and unequivocally religious. None of us can forget that Mount Zion is the Church of the living God; and that His ministers are the sentinels stationed upon it; and that they are honestly to answer, whenever the Saviour calls, What is the state of Christianity?-what are the spiritual signs of the times? All this is so clearly denoted by the words of the prophet, that the labor of argument would be useless. * Preached on the first anniversary of the opening of his church. But perhaps another question may come up, for which, at first sight, an answer does not so readily appear; and that is, why the language of the text is more appropriate to-day, than it would be upon any other occasion? Why now, more than at any ordinary period, is the minister of this particular congregation saluted with the call of the Saviour, "Watchman, what of the night?" I will tell you the reason, my hearers, and I trust you will not think it farfetched or ideal. This is the anniversary Sabbath of our infant Church.. A year has winged its flight, since first we assembled here for worship-a year, too, chequered with some of the heaviest visitations of God, and some of the most impressive and alarming motives to a preparation for eternity. Laying them, however, entirely aside, one thing is certain: it has been a year teeming to all of us with the offers, the persuasions, the urgencies of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Since these doors were first opened, who can say that he has not heard the voice of a Saviour's welcomewho that he has not been told of the magnificent provisions of Calvary-who that he has ever poured out before God the tears of an unregarded or an unavailing penitencewho, in short, can say, that he has seen for a single hour the glittering sword of the cherubim guarding the way of life, and repelling the approach of the broken-hearted sinner for pardon? Not one. The judge of quick and dead is our witness-not one! Rich and poor, bond and free, the disciple of fashion, and the tenant of obscurity-all have shared in the same proposals of mercy-all have listened alike to the news of God's salvation-and what has been the result? This is the point now to be settled. As a watchman upon the walls of Jerusalem, I am called upon to render to Jesus Christ an account of the year we have closed; and while I do so, I appeal to your consciences, in simplicity and godly sincerity, for the truth of my message as I go along. In the first place, I am solemnly bound to testify, that among the little band of the Saviour's professed disciples, the past year has witnessed a most affecting inactivity and stupor. The Church has seemed, almost without exception, like a body whose extremities were visibly alive, while the blood was cold and curdled, and the heart quivering in its last pulsations. When I reflect, my brethren, that some of us have taken our seats around the sacramental table,-when I remember that the vows of the heart-searching God are upon our souls, and the eyes of an expecting world upon our movements,-I tremble at the responsibility with which we are travelling on to the judgment-seat of Christ. I involun. tarily ask, with the apostle Peter, "What sort of persons ought we to be, in all holy conversation and godliness?" But I must speak the truth. We have all been slumbering at our posts. Have we ever felt that activity of devotion, that zeal for the souls of our fellow-men, which we ought to carry with us into every relation of life? Alas! we know too well the answer which the recording angel has registered in Heaven. Go to the family altar, and what testimony do we find there? Consult the solitude of the closet, and how has our secret religion been coming on? What means it, too, that our prayer-meetings have been attended by numbers so discouraging to those who were present, and so upbraiding to those who were not? Surely, if the venerable exile of Patmos were once more to revisit our world, he would speak to us as he did to the Church of Sardis, "I know thy works, that thou hast a name to live, and art dead;" and to this might be added, as it then was the declaration of Christ himself, " If thou shalt not watch, I will" verily "come upon thee as a thief in the night," and "thou shalt not know the hour" of thy terrible visitation. But I have it to say, in the second place, that parched and thirsty as the hill of Zion has been, we have seen a few -a very few, who, during the past year, have taken upon them the badge of visible Christianity. They have ven. tured to that table, so solemn in its import, and so impera. tive in its obligations, and received from it the symbols of crucifixion and blood. But how small has their number been?-scarcely enough to fill the seats of their departed companions who have fallen in the sweep of the pestilence, and whose corpses, insensible to the recollections, which this anniversary recals, are resting in the cold and silent house appointed for all living! And is it so, then, my brethren, that through the little cluster of the people of God, death cuts down in his annual havoc as many, or nearly so, as Divine grace supplies by the power of its renovation? Is it so, that the sepulchre is matched against the Gospel in competition for numbers-the one for votaries, and the other for victims; the one aiming to lay our heads in the dust, and the other to train us to the hopes of a Christian immortality? Yes-this is the literal arithmetic of fact: eight of our communicants fell in the last summer's desolation, and only nine have yet appeared to fill their places in the Church. Did I say only! O, if I know a feeling within me, I thank my God even for nine. But when I look through the pews where you are sitting, and see so many for whom the lashed and lacerated Saviour expired, that melancholy number nine strikes like a funeral knell upon my heart. I am constrained to ask, Are these all who are moving forward on the road to eternity? Are these all who bedew the tomb of Jesus with their tears, and return him their gratitude for his mercy ? Are these all who feel the meltings of repentance, when the dying groans of Calvary break upon the ear? |