freedom of man, by annihilating the direct supremacy of God. They will cut what they cannot untie. They are not content to take these twin truths, as they are clearly revealed in this word of life, and leave the reconcilation of them to a world of loftier intelligence a state of profounder thought. But why need we thus distort and dishonour the simple word of God, and issue an edict of dethronement against our Maker, and plunge our spirits in all the chaotic horrors of an atheist's dream? Shall the superficial arguments of an unenlightened reason-of a reason, which, however clear it may see within the circle of its own proper vision, is encompassed on all sides by an horizon beyond which it cannot penetrate-avail to overturn a divine Sovereignty, the modes of whose operation lie hid in that world of spiritual existence, where the adventurous foot of no incarnate spirit has ever trode? It will be time for us to admit the justness of such reasoning, either when we feel within ourselves the clashing of God's working with our freedom, or, entering into the hidden laboratory of the Almighty, we discern there no efficient forces for the control of a moral universe. But until that time shall come, let not the insect of an hour criticise the operations of infinity and pronounce the clear developments of his word inconsistent with those of his works. "As if upon a full-proportioned dome, On swelling columns heav'd, the pride of art! And when, in the sublime language of our prophet, it is uttered from the throne; "I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil," then may we rejoice that there is a Providence above us, that extends itself not only to the good, but also to the evil; not only to mercy, but also to judgment; that the world is not surrendered to a soulless chance, blind, idiotic, senselesss; a chance which works without reason, is guided by no intelligence, and labours for no end. To the pious heart it is a pre-eminently consoling truth, that God reigns, and that we may repose beneath the broad canopy of his universal providence. If I am afflicted, it is no consolation to know that it is an accident; that I am the sport of a reasonless chance. I wish to know the purpose and the intent of my affliction; I wish to feel that a being, infinite in goodness and wisdom, has done it; to know that such an one has the power to limit the surges, and tame their fury; my whole soul pants to have God manifest himself, as the great operator, when I stand beside the bed of anguish, when I close the dying eye of friendship-when I witness the dread shock of conflicting forces-when I hear the shriek of agony as men in crowds, unshrouded and uncoffined, pass, suddenly into eternity-and when my own tabernacle shakes and sways to and fro before the breath of death. Then be can rejoice that God reigns; that never a blow falls unknown to him; that as we love him, every event of his providence shall chastise or discipline, testing our fidelity or working out for us an exceeding weight of glory. Here, on this blessed truth, thus explained, we can rest; secure though thousands fall around us; patient though cast into the furnace; joyful though encompassed by tribulation; calm and even jubilant, though death should come to rend asunder the mortal from the immortal. Into the mysteries of providence I seek not to penetrate. All human speculations here are profitless, save as they may give to this truth its just position before men. There will come a time, when, with a clearer intelligence, we shall study it profoundly; when, amid different scenes and from a loftier position, it will form no small part of the ecstacy of heaven, to behold the wisdom of the Almighty reveal itself through all these seemingly intricate, conflicting, and dark events of time. But while we remain here on the footstool, it will be to us a subject too deep indeed to be fathomed by the longest line of our reason, yet a delightful and a reviving truth, that our God doth exercise a providence wide as creation, and minute as the smallest and lowliest of his crea tures. We are now prepared to follow out the teaching of the second part of our text. "When thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness." It speaks only of that part of divine providence which has to do with judgments. Now, I understand the truth here asserted to be,that the designed effect, and in the main the actual effect, of the sterner providences of God, is to teach men the knowledge and the practice of righteousness. And in the devolopment of this truth, I ask you to consider, I. First, that the judgments of God are designed to set his moral government, in respect to sin, in a proper light before men. Amidst overflowing goodness, when borne on the flood tide of prosperity and wafted forward by gentle gales, men cease to regard their own sinful condition, and the character of that moral government beneath which they live. They hear the threatenings of the Bible with indifference, so long as they see around no mighty demonstrations of the divine purpose to punish the guilty. When no trouble visits them, when no plague affrights them then "pride compasseth them about as a chain," then "they set their mouth against the heavens and their tongue walketh through the earth." But when judgments come, they point men back to their sinful origin, and within to their sinful state. They are the clear teachings of a sin punishing God. They tell you, that it is only as man is guilty that he is condemned; that to set forth his character as righteous, and so unfold the righteousness of his government, God visits us with pain and plunges us into affliction. Judgment wonderfully invigorates conscience, and imparts to it somewhat of its ancient and rightful authority. Then it convinces men of sin ; then it arrays a violated law; then it echoes the declaration that the curse causeless shall not come. And thus the world learns to feel that under the just government above them, sin shall not go unpunished and crime shall yet be detected, and all the life of transgression shall meet with its fit and terrible reward. There is just here, however, a nice point in the providence of God. It is incumbent on Jehovah, since this is merely a state of preparation and not of retribution, so to adjust his judgments and so to administer his providence, as neither on the one hand to punish fully all crime, nor on the other to let it wholly escape. For if men were punished all that they deserved here, then what need of another world fitted up and set apart for the special purpose of retribution? And if men were to experience no judgments following hard upon the heels of crime, then the utter impunity of the wicked, would breed in them the conviction, that the bosom of the infinite Jehovah did not swell with a deep abhoraence of sin, and that he neither designed to maintain a strictly righteous government here nor justly punish the guilty hereafter. And, doubtless, this is in part the reason, why here there is such a mixture of mercy with judgment-why the wicked pass on in the enjoyment of so much prosperity, while every now and then a thunderbolt falls at their feet to teach them that God amidst all his kindness cannot forget, and will not have them forget, that they are sinners in need of repentance and the atoning blood of Christ, to save them from the approaching miseries of retributive justice. And this too is the reason why, although great and outrageous crime will in general, even in this world, bring down a measure of wo upon the guilty head, yet that sometimes we behold the contrast of a man most darkly depraved, passing prosperously through life and dying without pain, with that of a holy man living in the furnace and going up from the rack of suffering to the crown of glory. Henry the Eighth after a long reign, foul with pollution and wet with blood, goes out like a spent taper at the very summit of his prosperity; while Cranmer, the meek though imperfect christian, ascends to heaven in the flames of martyrdom. In all this we discern the wisdom of that providence which so distributes its judgments as to teach men both these great truths, that while this world is not a state of retribution, there is ahead of us, a scene of perfect retribution, when God the sin hater shall become the sin punisher, and judgment without mercy shall be suffered to carry into execution its full and fearful work. And every time you see or feel the divine judgments, you behold the demonstration of a holy moral government under which the transgressor must suffer in himself or by another. And every time you see a wicked man pass on prosperously and a good man greatly afflicted, then do you behold a providence which points you forward to another world, where the balance shall be rightly adjusted; where the prosperous sinner will descend into the surges of despair, while the afflicted saints ascends to his glorious throne. Thus by the manner of dispensing his judgments, does God clearly intimate to us the righteousness of his character, and by so doing he urges men to the practice of righteousness and the putting on of that which he hath provided through the atoning work of his beloved son. II. The judgments of God are sometimes designed to destroy an unwarranted confidence in man or in any of the great natural agents which he has subjected to his power. There is in us all a strong tendency to trust in an arm of flesh. And this disposition manifests itself not unfrequently in the too perfect repose we indulge in the power of man to control the forces of nature. As science and art increase our power to wield the great natural agencies for the advancement of our interest and the promotion of our pleasure; as one difficulty after another is overcome, and man, weak and insignificant though he be in stature, seems to have placed his foot upon the most tremendous forces of the physical creation, then distrust vanishes, then, forgetting a mighter handa sublimer intellect, the creature arrogates to himself the confidence and the power and the glory which belong solely to his Creator and Governor. And thus standing amid the triumphs of art, and elevated by the lofty flight of science far above the past, he treads the earth like one invested with omnipotence, to whose will or caprice the very elements are subject and whose fiat the most tempestuous of them all must play the part of an humble servitor. The wind and the ocean are two of the strongest elements, whose united forces have been the terror of all the past. But to such perfection have we carried the art of ship-building, so compactly as well as beautifully are our vessels constructed, to please the eye and yet bid defiance to the rage of the waters; so finished has become the art of the seaman, so rapidly and with such exquisite tact is the canvass spread or folded like the wing of some beauteous sea bird; so grandly does the noble craft walk the ocean as if instinct with a life of her own, yielding to the slightest impulse of the breeze, or the motion of her helm; so fully has the sailor explored the ocean and the shore, and carried so high the knowledge of the heavens and the means of diserning, through the instruments with which genius has provided him, his position amid a boundless sea, that men cease to fear, as they are borne on the billows, and trusting in their power to triumph over these mighty elements on which their vessel floats and by which she is impelled, they lift not up the heart of confidence to Him who ruleth supreme over winds and waves. Our ocean is a noble highway on which men embark by scores of thousands, fearless of the issue, because confident in an arm of flesh. And it must needs be that this broad deep of waters, the emblem of eternity, should now and then be stirred to its lowest depths in judgment, by the breath of the Almighty, and these grand and beautiful structures which art has willed to glorify as the highest reach of human skill in its mastery over these elements, should occasionally go down like lead into the bosom of the deep, for the very purpose of humbling the pride of man in his own works, and demonstrating the imperfection of that supremacy, which he boasts of wielding over the unfathomed ocean. Where now are the President, the United States, the Great Britain, with all of beauty, of intellet and manhood, that crowded their decks? Echo, from the cavern depths of the deep sea answers here; while the hoarse surges that beat and gambol above their submerged hulls, are the voice of God's judgment declaring the impotence of human might-the folly of human wisdom. And God designs that these significant and appaling providences should lead us to feel that he alone sits regent above the forces of nature-that to him alone these elements are submissive, and that man should learn righteousness in cherishing a simple hearted faith in him as alone supreme. Fire is an element of vital usefulness and vast force. Ordinarily it is regarded by man as wholly within his control. He employs it as his agent in ten thousand processes of art and comfort and luxury; at his bidding it ministers at his table, creates the heat of summer amidst the reign of winter, and drives his iron steeds and wooden leviathans, over continents and oceans. At times, warmed by the past, he fortifies himself against its too exuberant activity, by self-created protections; and relying upon policies of insurance he rises to a presumptuous confidence in his own security. Then cometh the triumph of this long manacled element. Defying our most sleepless vigilance, bursting away from our most guarded fireside, it seizes suddenly upon our most precious treasures, it devours with appalling greediness alike the monuments of art, the mausoleums of buried glory and the humbler abodes of the poor. As it leaps from dwelling to dwelling, rioting in the palace and the warehouse with a seemingly infernal joy, until its black footprints are the sole index where once flourished the imperial city, and the protectors and the protected-the insurers and the insured-are involved in one wide and utter ruin; then above the rear of that terrific power, is heard the voice of Jehovah rebuking the miserable confidence men have indulged in their own boasted mastery over this great element of the material world. New York and Pittsburg and Quebec on the land-the Lexington, the Pulaski, and the Missouri, on the water, are the fearful utterances of judgment addressed to the nation within a few years |