where importunity overcame injustice and indifference. And shall not God avenge his own elect, who cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you he will avenge them speedily." Let them remember the parable of the man who went to borrow bread at midnight, where importunity obtained what even friendship could not. Let them mark the success which attended the faith, the humility, perseverance, and importunity of the SyroPhenician woman. Let them contemplate the prayers of Jacob, Moses, Elijah, and Daniel, where perseverance and importunity had power with God, and prevailed. Let them remember the promises which God has made to answer prayer: "Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find," &c. "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, I will do it." "And this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us; and if we know that he hear us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him." "Before they call I will answer; and while they are speaking I will hear." With such promises as these before us, can we doubt the readiness of God to hear and answer prayer for a revival of religion? Let Christians get near the throne of grace, and wrestle with their heavenly Father, till he pour us out a blessing so great that there shall not be room to contain it.

SERMON CCCCLXVIII.

THE FATHERS AND THE PROPHETS.

BY REV. JOHN M. KREBS, D.D.

PASTOR OF THE RUTGERS-STREET PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NEW YORK.

"Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live for ever!"-ZECHARIAH, i., 5.

THAT is a most solemn and responsible charge, under which, the ministry of reconciliation exercise their important office: "Son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth and warn them from me. When I say unto the wicked, O, wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at thine hand. Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way, to turn from it, if he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity, but thou hast delivered thy soul." The business with which we are intrusted involves the destinies of eternity. Our function is to be exercised in such a manner that we may both save ourselves and them that hear us. Our message is not our own. We may not address to men any thing as from ourselves; neither may we invent the themes and words to be proclaimed, nor may we keep back any part of that word which is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness,-"the whole counsel of God"--the message which He has commissioned us to bear to men, with all the force and authority of a commandment from Heaven, saying, "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts."

In the exercise of our ministry, it is often our happy province to speak words of comfort and consolation: and the whole burden of our preaching is designed ultimately to publish glad tidings of good things, even the tidings of great joy. In the themes, the

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tenor and the spirit of this ministry, is included a dealing in patience and gentleness, such as that of a father with his children. And yet, it does not consist in the mere "preaching of smooth things." Its charity is that which "rejoices not in iniquity, but in the truth." It must reprove, rebuke, and exhort, albeit with all long-suffering and doctrine; it must warn men of their guilt and doom, if they remain impenitent,-yet with compassion and tears. In order to prepare men to appreciate its words of peace, it must show that there is no peace for the wicked, continuing such and that they may be induced to take hold on eternal life, it must disclose to sinners how their feet already take hold on eternal death, and urge them to escape for their lives, and to flee for refuge, to lay hold upon the hope which is set before them in the gospel.

In this work, then, the servants of God must often utter the most unpleasant truths-press the most alarming considerations -wake up the most affecting reminiscences-and present to the conscience and the heart the most moving, and sometimes the most tender, and even delicate appeals. Such was the position of the prophet Zechariah, in the circumstances under which he uttered the affecting inquiry contained in our text. He was associated with the prophet Haggai in forwarding the enterprise of building the second temple. The people to whom they prophesied had been some years returned from the captivity; and, already, their sluggishness, in regard to the rebuilding of the Lord's house, their selfish worldliness, and manifold provocations, gave melancholy token that they were forgetting their afflictions, and relapsing into the footsteps of their fathers, whose sins the Lord had so disastrously rebuked. Haggai appeared upon the stage, a few months earlier than Zechariah, and seems to have produced a very salutary impression upon the people by his preaching. And, in illustration of that word, "he that hath, to him shall be given," so, as they had improved, and were obedient to the word of the Lord in the mouth of Haggai, God blessed them with another prophet, whose labors were longer continued: and, by these conjoint efforts, a very happy reformation was commenced, and the temple of the Lord was rebuilt. Nevertheless, because, during these ministrations, a portion of the people continued unmoved, and all of them were inadequately remiss, and their perverseness demanded the correction and stimulus of a constant faithful reproof and warning,-the best of them needing to be admonished against the error to which they were prone, of returning to the evil ways of their fathers, the prophet Zechariah addresses himself to "reprove their sins, and to threaten God's judgments against the impenitent, while he encouraged those who feared God with assurances of the divine mercies which were in store for his Church, and especially of the coming of the Messiah, and the

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setting up of his kingdom in the world." In pressing his exhortations, he strengthens his appeal by a direct and specific reference to a most tender and delicate point,-the controversy which God had had with their ancestry and predecessors. His mind goes back to contemplate the former generations, and he brings them forth from their graves, in order that in the light of their example, their children might see their own sinfulness danger, and duty;-"The Lord hath been sore displeased with your fathers." And their history, and their own recent return from captivity, and the continuance, still, of a part of their nation in the land of their dispersion, were the melancholy and unanswerable proofs of the former delinquency, which they are now admonished not to imitate. By repentance they would cut off the entail of the curse, and, instead thereof, receive a blessing; -and this is the true use to be made of the judgments of God upon the guilty generations that went before us. He calls them to turn unto the Lord,-three times introducing, in immediate connection with the commandment, the authority and obligation which enforced it, as coming from the "Lord of Hosts," whose almighty power and sovereign dominion are thus set before sinners as an argument for their repentance unto new obedience. And the commandment itself now addressed to these backsliding people, is the very same which the prophets of old had often addressed to their progenitors. These all had passed away, but the word of the Lord, in its counsels, menaces, and promises, is the same in all generations and abideth for ever. It was their happiness that the same messages and exhortations still remained to address them, that they might be directed, urged, and encouraged to return unto God, be reconciled with Him, and He with them, and that they might possess His favor and friendship. It is the same message unto all men, and it speaks to us, in the same words with which it spoke unto the fathers by the prophets, and in the latter days by the Son of God himself.

This appeal to the conduct and condition of their fathers, was a most delicate and difficult part of the prophet's duty,-because, if there is any thing which men feel most tenderly, and which they are most apt to resent, it is such a reference to their parents as involves reproach, and implies that they suffered under the wrath of God, and, after death, endure the vengeance of eternal judgment. But it is most needful, in dealing with men, to warn them of this very fact,-because they are prone to follow the examples of their fathers, and to plead their authority for the sentiments they cherish and the conduct they pursue. But the prophet shrunk not from this duty. He knew too well that the authority of parents could not justify their children in wickedness and unbelief, and he felt his obligations to preserve their posterity from following in the same path to ruin. Therefore, he enjoins them, "Be ye not as your fathers, unto whom

the former prophets have cried, **** but they did not hear, nor hearken unto me, saith the Lord." For, what was the consequence of their rebellion? "But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers? and they returned and said, Like as the Lord of Hosts thought to do unto us, according to our ways, and according to our doings, so hath He dealt with us." It is as if the prophet had said, "While you may object that it does not become you to be wiser and better than your fathers, consider what happened unto them. Although God's messages by his prophets did not take hold of them so as to reform them, yet the judgments of God, which were the threatened sanctions of his words and statutes did take hold of them, (or overtake them, as it is in the margin,) and then they found by their own experience, that their unbelief could not make the word of God of no effect. When their calamities came upon them, they returned; some of them, perhaps, repented, and were saved; and others of them were convinced and awakened; and all of them changed their minds as to the truth and import of the teaching of the prophets; and, although it was too late to avert the ruin which came upon the nation, they were fain to confess that it had happened as it had been foretold; the Lord of Hosts dealt with them, as He had forewarned them He would do, according to their ways and doings; and in all that He did unto them, they were compelled to acknowledge both His truth and His justice. They were punished, and felt and confessed that it was in righteousness. And now let their children and descendants behold the agree ment and correspondence between the sin and the judgments of their fathers, and between the circumstances of their fathers and their own, lest they now, in turn, share a similar fate."

It is in the midst of this affecting recollection and expostulation that the preacher bursts forth with this impassioned and impressive exclamation-"Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live for ever?"

"What has become of your fathers? The whole generation is swept away, and the places that knew them shall know them no more. Let us think-they are gone through the world, and gone out of it. Here they were, in the places we now occupy, passing through the same streets, dwelling in these houses, trading in the same businesses, worshiping in the same churches. But where are they? They are not here;-they are gone;-but they are somewhere still. When they died, there was not an end of them. They are in eternity, in the world of spirits, the unchange able world, to which we are hastening apace. Where are they? Those of them who lived and died in Christ are in Paradise; and if we live and die in the Lord, as they did, we shall be with them soon, with them forever. And those of them, who lived and died in sin,-are in torment;-and we are warned by Moses and the