A SERMON.

ISAIAH V. 4.

What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes ?

My brethren, let none of us forget, that humiliation before God for our sins, as individuals and as a nation, constitutes the great business of this day. We should not have the least reason to doubt of the divine protection against the assaults of all our enemies, did not our manifold offences against God render us deeply deserving of his righteous indignation.-Instead, therefore, of calling your attention to party-questions, which generally lead men " to fast for strife and debate," I would attempt to assist your meditations on such subjects as are connected with the great design of our assembling at this time.

The Old Testament is peculiarly useful in teaching us the grand principles according to which the Lord dealeth with nations, as such. Individuals will exist in another world; and "after death is "the judgment:" so that no exact retribution is

awarded to them in this life; for "the wicked are "reserved to the day of judgment to be punished:" but collective bodies will have no future subsistence; and therefore a recompense is here appointed to them. To ascertain the method of Providence in this respect, we must mark a very great difference between nations favoured with the light of revelation and the ordinances of God, and those that are destitute of them. "Where much

“is given, much will be required;" and the same degree of impiety and vice, when found in those peculiarly favoured with the means of instruction, is vastly more criminal, and tends to fill up the measure of iniquity much more rapidly, than when found in places destitute of such advantages.

In the passage of scripture from which the text is selected, God, by his prophet, in a most beautiful parable manifests his peculiar care and favour towards Israel, especially in respect of religious advantages: "He had given to them his statutes "and ordinances: he had not dealt so with any "nation; neither had the heathen the knowledge "of his laws." And, as the advantage of a parable principally consists in shewing, as in a mirror, the real state of the case, divested of men's own concern in it; so the Lord appealed to "the in"habitants of Jerusalem, and the men of Judah, "to decide betwixt him and his vineyard, and to "determine whether any thing could have been "done in it, which had not been done?" Why then did it bear only wild or poisonous grapes, when good grapes might have been expected from it?—A similar appeal will at length be made to every man; and though now self-love warps the

judgment, yet the Lord will at last condemn none who will not be constrained to condemn themselves, and to justify him in their condemnation.

Israel being thus brought in guilty, the Lord next proceeds to denounce sentence against the nation; declaring that he would "take away the hedge thereof, and it should be eaten up; and "break down the walls thereof, and it should be "trodden down; that he would lay it waste; that "it should not be pruned or digged, but that there "should come up briars and thorns! and that he "would also command the clouds that they should "rain no rain upon it." The sentence here pronounced was not executed till about two hundred years afterwards for Hezekiah, with Isaiah and other prophets, and afterwards Josiah and a pious remnant, by their labours and prayers prevailed for "the lengthening of their tranquillity;" but at length such efforts ceased, and then the sentence came upon the nation by the Babylonish captivity. Yet it was more awfully accomplished after the coming of Christ, and his crucifixion at the instance of the Jewish rulers, priests, and people, with the subsequent persecution of Christianity: for then the nation was cast out of the visible church, Jerusalem was given up into the hands of the Romans, and hath ever since been trodden under foot of the gentiles; the Jews have been scattered into all nations, and the Lord hath indeed "commanded "the clouds to rain no rain upon them," even to this day. Thus they are left to be reluctant preachers to the nations professing Christianity, of the truth of their holy religion and of the dreadful consequences of neglecting it.

Now should it be inquired, what people is the Israel of the Christian dispensation? I could not hesitate in answering, Britain, both in respect of advantages and of a rebellious ungrateful abuse of them. This may suffice to introduce our subject, and to warrant an entire application of the passage before us to our own case.

Let us then consider,

I. The peculiar favours with which Providence hath distinguished our native land:

II. The improvement which we ought to have made of them :

III. The "wild grapes," which the Lord finds in this his vineyard:

IV. The consequence that may be expected, unless something effectual be done to prevent it: V. To what we may attribute our preservation hitherto; and,

VI. What the duties are to which we are now called, according to our different stations in the church and the community.

I. We consider the peculiar favours with which Providence hath distinguished our native land.

We have long been exempted from the calamities of war, that tremendous scourge of a righteous God. Few of us know more of war than we have learned from the public papers, or the page of history. We feel it indeed, but how? Trade suffers a temporary check, and additional taxes are demanded; a number, often of not very useful members of the community, are furnished with a perilous or fatal employment, and a few more va

luable persons are exposed to the same dangers. But we have scarcely any other idea of war, as it respects ourselves and this has often a very bad effect on the minds of men; for they consider war no otherwise than as it affects their property, and are therefore prone to engage in it too lightly, when it yields a prospect of temporal advantage; without reflecting on its consequences to the lives and souls of their fellow-creatures, or on those regions that are exposed to its tremendous ravages.

Our situation happily renders us incapable even of conceiving those scenes, which are really exhibited on the theatre of war: the devastations of the open country, with all it productions, rendering abortive the labours, and disappointing the expectation of the husbandman, and destroying the bounty of Providence; the burning of cities; the cries of widows and orphans; the reeking blood and mangled bodies of the slaughtered; the groans and ghastly appearance of the wounded and dying: the penury and pining want of the survivors; the terrors of the night, and the horrors of the day; must baffle all description. So that the humane mind must weep over, not only the most splendid, but even the most needful victories; and war, in every case, must be regarded as the triumph or the harvest of the first great murderer, the devil. How great then is our obligation for exemption from this dire evil, during a term of years beyond what has been experienced by almost any other nation!

We have also been equally preserved from the dire judgments of famine, pestilence, earthquakes, and desolating hurricanes: plenty, health, and a