I the divine mandate to Ezekiel, Son of man, have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me. When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked man from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thy hand. There is, you perceive, no room left for discretion. The man has a message to deliver, and it must be delivered, as it was given to him, on the peril of his soul. God has taken the issue of his truth into his own hands; how it shall be received, and what the end shall be, is not for us to inquire. The aids of human prudence, and all the expedients of human wisdom, are but the efforts of human impertinence to direct his infinite wisdom, or to assist his almighty power. We have but one concern to mind, and that is, that we be found faithful. Now as all God's messages to sinful men are messages of the Infinite Sovereign to his deluded subjects, who have revolted far away from their allegiance, my next remark is, that, 2. In discharging his duty, the minister of God will come into habitual collision with the predilection, the opinions, the habits of many who hear him. It seems to be an established point with some who profess Christianity, that they have a right to entertain and publish what opinions they please. The first part of this proposition is, with respect to human control, above contradiction. But do they not often forget that the jurisdiction of divine authority spreads itself as much over the province of thinking as over the province of acting? that the world of spirits is as really a part of the divine government as the world of matter, only much larger, more comprehensive, and more important? We may then ask, who gave them a right to think contrary to the thoughts of God their Maker? to think what he has forbidden them to think? to cherish in their bosoms direct rebellion against him? and to imagine that all shall pass off unnoticed? In so far as God has revealed himself, he has not only decided what is truth, i. e. what is to rule the inward parts, but he has enjoined his servants to declare it. He that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord. And as thoughts are much more numerous than actions, as they are equally efficients of character in the sight of God, and reach over an immense field of agency, which actions can never touch, they furnish precisely the ground in which truth must have her most desperate conflicts with error; and on which man feels his pride great, and his responsibility little or nothing. To maintain here the truth of God, and to expose every deviation from it, are among the highest of the high duties which the man of God has to perform. It is here that the transgressor is to be convinced, humbled, converted, and made to sit in his right mind, clothed, and at the feet of Jesus. It is here that the fidelity of those who profess to be teachers of the gospel is chiefly tried; and that the true disciple of Jesus Christ is to keep his ground, unmoved, unshaken, though he stand alone, the single witness for his Saviour, among a faithless and perverse generation. He must encounter, as his Lord did before him, the contradiction of sinners; and the worst and most obstinate of all contradictions, that of philosophical sinners, who claim a bolder privilege than any others to make free with the word of God, to contradict its language, to fritter away its. sense, and to expunge everything which does not accord with the dictates of their corrupt, and falsely called, enlightened reason. They who are the objects of evangelical instruction and remonstrances, are also distinguished by their habits of transgression. God commands one thing, and they practice another. The moral law, in all the extent of its obligation, as a spiritual law, lies across their path. They are vastly fond of moral preaching, but that is, when it shuts out the salvation and the Saviour of God's providing; when it opens to them some avenue, something which lets in a glimpse of hope that they may be saved by works of righteousness that they have done. And to quote the words of one who was much abused for preaching the gospel of the grace of God, "O that men were as fond of doing good works, as of being saved by them!" But to urge upon them such moral conduct as the law of God requires, and the Spirit of God suggests, is at once to put them at variance with the world that lieth under the power of the evil one; is to call them to come out from among them, and be separate, and touch not the unclean thing: and the promise of God himself, that he will be a Father unto them, and they shall be his sons and his daughters, falls lighter than a feather upon their ear. It cannot be but that this contrariety between the commands of God and the practices of men, must produce a strong, though very possibly a smothered hostility, against the plain declarations of the one, and denunciations of the other. Sinners do not love to be told that the end of these things is death. They love, under a Christian garb, to be soothed, and flattered, and be assured that all shall be well at last. And though conscience side with the truth, they will rather side with the flatterer, and agree to count as an enemy him that tells them the truth. Their feelings are like those of the king of Israel, who hated Micaiah the son of Imla, because he never prophesied good to him, but always evil. Micaiah was a prophet of Jehovah; and Ahab a prince of pre-eminent wickedness who sold himself to work iniquity. There was therefore no room to prophesy good to him, for there was nothing good about him; and it was the work of the prophet to withstand him to the face. The case was not much different with the apostle of the Gentiles. For a while the Gentile converts were enthusiastically attached to Paul. They received him as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. So great was their affection, that if it had been possible, they would have plucked out their own eyes, and have given them to him. But after false and smooth-tongued teachers had crept in among them, and had gained their ear, all this blessedness disappeared: and the faithful apostle was suspected, traduced, treated as an enemy. It is doubtless no easy matter to declare the whole counsel |