God, for he is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.”

(3.) With this sorrow also must be joined a stedfast purpose to "turn away from all our transgressions, else iniquity will still be our ruin." "God is not mocked." Though He delivered his people at the Red Sea, though he opened the hard rock for them, and gave them bread from heaven, yet had he many ways left to punish them, when they fell from Him. And though we may escape the famine and the pestilence, yet are our enemies furbishing their arms; they are whetting their swords, and brandishing their weapons of war. A very spark would kindle Europe into a blaze. It was but a year ago, and the tide of war set in as it were with a spring flood to lay waste our possessions in the East. The Lord indeed fought for us, and by an almost miraculous interposition stemmed the torrent, and rolled back a sea of desolation. Yet the East is not quiet. Many an angry cloud is there, although the lightnings have ceased to play, and "the thunder of the Captains" is no longer heard. But if the East were bright, without a cloud; if Europe were calm as a summer's eve; if our barns were filled with all manner of store, and our sheep and oxen were multiplied exceedingly, yet the nation itself staggers with its own greatness, as a mighty man staggers by reason of drink. Therefore, our very prosperity, as it is said of fools, may destroy us, unless the Lord pour out upon us an excellent spirit of moderation; unless he give our senators wisdom, and keep the people from sin and madness. Let us then, I say, each one for himself turn from his evil way. Without a full purpose to do this our calamities, though stayed for a while, will surely come, and will not tarry. But for our encouragement, let me add that, should our repentance, I mean our personal repentance, be sincere, God in His mercy, may spare the nation for the righteousness of a few: saying, “ destroy it not, for ten's sake :" " destroy it not, for a blessing is in it." At all events, according to His promise, we shall deliver our own souls.

(4.) Surely I need not add that prayer is part of this repentance. While the priests wept between the porch and the altar, they were to cry, "Spare Thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach. Wherefore should they say among the people, where is their God?" And in our prayers let us mingle praise and thanksgiving. This has been done in form, and, I trust in spirit, in the services of this day. formed our part in them?

Have we duly perLet there be added, also, where it is

possible, prayer in the household, and in every case prayer in the closet; and may the Lord be entreated for the land, and the famine be stayed from us. So we Thy people, and the sheep of Thy pasture, O Lord, will give Thee thanks for ever, we will shew forth Thy praise to all generations.

THE

CONDITIONS OF NATIONAL PROSPERITY.

A SERMON

PREACHED BY

THE REV. PHILIP HALE, B.A.,

CURATE,

IN THE

CHURCH OF ST. JAMES, HATCHAM, SURREY,

MARCH 24, 1847.

"At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it: if that nation against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom to build and to plant it: if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them."-Jeremiah xviii. 7-10.

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THE word of the Lord which came to the Prophet Jeremiah with this important national lesson, bade him first "Arise and go down to the potter's house." (ver. 2.) There, whilst he beheld the simple operations of the workman, the spirit of inspiration caused him to hear the words of the Lord, and to detect in the easily moulded clay a type of the people of Israel. The potter wrought a work on the wheels " (ver. 4) and the Prophet saw one vessel "marred” in the act of formation, whilst another was made, as it seemed good to the potter to make it. This was the very image of passive helplessness, and it seemed to unite the will of the workman so closely with the destiny of the vessel, that its honourable, or dishonourable use, was a matter of inevitable necessity. "O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in my hand, O house of Israel." (ver. 6.) By this declaration the children of Israel were taught, that nations are in the omnipotent hand of the Lord, as the lumps of yielding clay in the hands of the potter; that all national elements are combined by Him; and that, as the potter

shaped the lifeless masses on his wheels, so the Lord shapes the destinies of kingdoms, and moulds their fortunes by the revolution of the seasons, and the other movements of His Providence, which turn as He directs. Although the parable of the potter's clay seems to convey the idea, that the dealings of the Almighty are arbitrary, yet the application of it, as exhibited in the text, shews clearly that His dispensations are regulated by the nature of those who are subjected to them. The potter, it is true, hath unlimited power over the clay, but he determines to be guided by the qualities which he discovers in the mass; and, according to its fitness, he moulds its shape, and designs its end and use. It is this invariable regard to the nature and fitness of the material which imparts such resistless force to the Apostle's question, "Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?" (Rom. ix. 20.) The introduction or subtraction of a constitutional element, by consequence, produces a change in the superintending guidance. If it were not so, no possible connexion could be discovered between the parable and our text. If it were possible that a nation once broken on the wheel of a gracious Providence, which had in vain tried to train it in holiness, should have a pious reverence of God, a strict morality, an active principle of faith worked into its character and institutions, and yet fail of Divine favour, then, indeed, national fortune and individual good alike must be hopelessly left as the results of a blind fatality. The simple reading of the words of the Prophet before us, must be sufficient evidence that national repentance shall be followed (as by a law of grace) by national prosperity, and that national sin shall end as certainly in national distress. With individuals this is not necessarily the case; prosperity and misfortune are not tests of moral worth, for the believer may smart under the keenest anguish when he is nearest to his reward, and the wicked boast himself most loudly in the most slippery part of his career. "But if that nation against whom I have pronounced turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them." Here then, brethren, we have no nice question of doctrine which must be developed with greatest care, and illustrated by laborious research; it is a plain assertion of Holy Writ, it is explained to us by the voice of history, and our present experience is a most serious comment upon its language. In order to understand these words, you have but to feel that nations may be dealt with as bodies; you have but to acknowledge the existence and power

of a discriminating God, whose voice is heard by all, either in the plain voice of revelation, or in the whispers of natural religion; and then it follows that to nations, for whom as nations there is no hereafter, temporal woes must follow disobedience, and temporal blessings may be expected from religious observance of the sacred commandments. Amongst

Heathen nations, we observe, that the most prosperous periods of their history are invariably those during which the dictates of natural religion were most clearly seen, and most closely followed; and with Christian states, that their darkest hours have been those when their spiritual talents were hidden or abused.

And how fearful is the converse of this proposition. You may listen unmoved by the theoretical position, that when nations err there is popular misery; but at time like the present, when distress, more or less, touches every man, when a burden seems to be growing to every shoulder; at a time when "the children and sucklings swoon in the streets of our distant cities, when they say to their mothers, where is corn and wine? and their soul is poured out into their mother's bosom." (Lam. ii. 11, 12.) At such a time, who but must shrink from the assertion, where there is national sorrow there is national guilt? Where judgment follows sin, the brand and stripe need no interpreter; and grief becomes the accuser of those who mourn. If, then, there be famine in our coasts, it is because there is sinfulness in our social customs; if there be poverty in our streets, it is because there is guilt in our hearts, and the gaunt spectres of hunger, fever, and neglect, which wander over so many parts of our land, point, with wasted finger, more to a neglected Church than to an impoverished country, and refer their misery to infidelity, blasphemy, and a lifeless faith, rather than to the blighted acres which refuse them food. Here, then, let us pause; let us know and feel that we have put into effective action all the secret springs which work a people's ruin. Have we not sinned? And is it not the hideous nature of sin that at every birth she produces twins, opposite in their habits, yet bound together, in discordant union, to roam through the world biting and devouring each other? Have not avarice and penury been inseparable long before the days of Dives and Lazarus? and do not the most abject multitudes crowd upon the sluggish steps of luxury? And thus may you couple in mutual harassment all the vices, and these are they which prey upon a nation's vitals, and fatten on her strength. The natural effects of sin are