bridegroom cometh: go ye out to meet him"? Prepare to meet your Judge. Now he has given you a time for repentance; you have had a probationary season, and possibly now the sceptre of mercy is held out to you. Repent, or it will soon be said to you as Jeremiah said to the virgin, the daughter of Egypt, "In vain shalt thou use many medicines; for thou shalt not be cured;" or as in the parable, "I know you not." Have you no oil in your lamps? Delay not a moment; believe the gospel, and you will live; believe in the word of God; receive the love of the Bridegroom, and make no delay; for while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage, and the door was shut. O, think what must be the exercise of your minds when these things shall be real; when you will stand without and knock, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us. Again I ask, Will you repent, believe, and be saved? Are you determined to resist the truth until it is too late? Say, sinner, what think ye? "We will risk the consequence. We do not believe in your day you tell us of. The world is the same it always was; no change, nor ever will be; but if it should come, it will not this ten thousand years; not in our day, certainly. You do not believe yourself. If you did, we should call you a fool." Are these your arguments, sinner? Yes. Well, if I had brought no more, no stronger arguments than these, I would not blame you for not believing, for not one of yours can you or have you supported with a particle of proof. They are mere assertions; your believing or not believing will not alter the designs of God. The antediluvians believed not. The citizens of the plain laughed at the folly of Lot. And where are they now? Suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. LECTURE XVII. LEVITICUS xxvi. 23, 24. And if ye will not be reformed by me by these things, but will walk contrary unto me, then will I also walk contrary unto you, and will punish you yet seven times for your sins. We are in the habit of reading the judgments and threatenings in the word of God, as denunciations against some other people but ourselves. We are very fond of throwing back upon the Jews what, upon the principle of equity and justice, would equally belong to us Gentiles. By this mode of reasoning, wicked, unbelieving idolaters, murderers, whoremongers, adulterers, and all liars, may and do resist the force of God's word, and flatter themselves, in their lustful career, that the judgment is past, and that they may go on in sin with impunity, But it is not only this abominable class of mankind who pervert the word of God to their own condemnation, but many of those who profess to be pious, and even teachers and expounders of the word, do take the same unholy ground, to limit the Holy One in his justice and Judgment. And by this means they not only wrest the Scriptures to their own condemnation, but others, who follow their pernicious ways, are led into the same errors, and the way of truth is evil spoken of. This manner of expounding Scripture has been used as the last resort against my appeals to the heart and consciences of sinners, to prepare to meet God in judgment. Let me use what passage I please in the Scriptures, whether in the Old or New Testament, these wicked, lustful flatterers of mankind, are ready, with a host of learned commentaries, to show that it was applied to the Jews, and to them only; and then taunt me with this witty saying "What! you, an unlearned man, think to teach us, contrary to our great and learned commentators!" This, my friends, is the only argument that has ever been produced against my warnings, and proofs of God's near approach to judge the world in righteousness. And here, too, I pledge myself to show that many, and perhaps that, in many cases, a major part, of these commentators are on my side of the question. I know that, in the subject now about to be presented, this argument will be used-"O! that had reference to the Jews only;" and you will, like the wicked Jews, put far off the evil day, until you are caught in the snare, and perish in the pit. The Jews in the days of the prophets said, Ezek. xii. 27, "The vision that he seeth is for many days to come, and he prophesieth of the times that are far off." You see, in this sample given us of the Jews, that the same ungodly, wicked perverting, putting off on to others what belongs to us in the visions and threatenings of God against sin, was manifestly the character of the Jews in that day, as it is in ours. The difference is only circumstantial. They put it off a great while to come; we, a great while back. They cast it forward on to the backs of the Gentiles; we throw it back into the faces of the Jews. This is the wicked disposition of man in his natural state-self-righteous and self-justificatory. Therefore, use this weapon if you please; it will only discover to angels and men your true character, and God's justice in your condemnation. "He that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy," Prov. xxviii. 13. Yet we shall find some things, at least, true, - that the law of God and punishment for sin are the same in all ages, and will be the same in all eternity. If the sins of the old world brought the flood and destruction upon the ungodly, so will the sins of the present world, if committed in the same ungodly spirit, bring down similar judgments and destruction upon us. If Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities of the plain, were destroyed for their abuse of the blessings which God had given them, so shall we be destroyed for our abuse of similar ones. And if the Jews, for their pride, arrogance, self-sufficiency, idolatry, and departure from the known commands of God's house, were punished with the sword, pestilence, captivity and persecution; so, most assuredly, will the people of God, in every age, whether under Jews or Gentiles, suffer the like or similar judgments. This can be proved abun dantly in all parts of the word of God, and in the history of the church in every age. And did we not pervert the word of God to support our sectarian principles, and to gratify our lustful appetites, we might foresee the consequence of apostasy from God, his laws and commands; as we can foresee the effects of any or all the laws of nature, with which we are so well acquainted. When leaves put forth we know that summer is nigh. When the wind blows long from the south we know it will bring rain. Just so true are all the moral laws of God. Sin will bring death, and pride must bring a fall. The laws of God's house are equally as permanent as the laws of nature; and grace or mercy, call it which you please, are founded upon the law of cause and effect as strong as the laws of adhesion and repulsion. Go where you will, -climb up to heaven, or dig into the depths of hell, you will find an immovable, fixed, and an eternal law of cause and effect. Let a man love his Maker, obey his laws, and he is happy. Let him love self only, and disobey the laws and commands of God, and misery is the lot of his inheritance, although the world was at his command. Here, then, is the great secret, that mankind must be reformed, or they can never be happy; in one word, they must be born of the Spirit, or they cannot enter the kingdom of God. The text is a prophecy of God himself, given to Moses, and by him revealed to the people; and is a part of those lively oracles which has been continued as binding upon us, who live under the gospel light, as upon them who lived in the days of the typical priesthood. It is a prophecy of what would happen to the people of II. Show how they are punished; and, III. The time they will be punished. I. First, then, we are to examine the cause of their punishment. The text tells us that it is because they "will not be reformed by me by these things, but will walk contrary unto me;" that is, unto God. 1st. A perverse will. We should suppose that a man who has had his will subdued by the love and Spirit of God, could not be in possession of a will so diametrically opposed to the will of God. Yet history and facts show us plainly that it is so. David, a man after God's own heart, did perform, by his own will, that which was strictly forbidden in the law and commands of God. Peter, too, after his Lord told him he was every whit clean, and after he boldly asserted that, if all men should forsake Christ, he would not, immediately and willingly, as it is implied, cursed and swore, and said he knew not the man. I am aware that the theory of the present day is contrary to the idea that the Christian has two wills, carnal and spiritual; but, upon this theory, I cannot account for the idea of Christians being punished at all, either on the principle of justice or equity. Therefore ĺ am constrained to believe that, in the heart of a Christian, there are two wills. Sometimes he is in subjection to the will of God, and enjoys the sweets of reconciliation; and again his own will governs and controls his acts, and he must feel the chastising rod of his heavenly Father for his wilful disobedience or neglect of his religious duty. It cannot be the will of God that his people will not be reformed by him." Here is another idea conveyed in our text, which shows that the heart of a Christian is not wholly pure, "will not be reformed by God" showing the same independent spirit that our primitive father and mother did in the fall, "to be as gods." We cannot bear the idea of being dependent on God for our reformation. Let us have the power of doing it ourselves, and we will not reject it; but to say |