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X.]

VISIONS OF RESTORATION. (C. IX.)

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heaven or hell; the eternal law has gone forth against them; it cannot be repealed. For is not the law His 'who buildeth His stories in the Heavens and has founded His troop in the earth; He that calleth the waters of the sea and poureth them out upon the face of the earth. The Lord is His Name.'

Yes! The Lord is His Name-and therefore Truth and Good must be maintained, Falsehood and Evil must fall. Because it is so there is still a lower depth beneath that which seemed to be unfathomable. "Lo," thus the shepherd of Tekoa winds up his prophecy, "Lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations like as corn is sifted in a sieve. Yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth. All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword which say 'the evil shall not overtake or prevent us.' In that day will I raise up the Tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof, and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old. That they may possess the remnant of Edom and of all the heathen which are called by My name saith the Lord that doeth this. Behold the days come, saith the Lord God, that the ploughman shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him that seweth seed, and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt. And I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel, and they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them, and they shall plant vineyards and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon the land and they shall no more be pulled up out of the land which I have given them saith the Lord."

Does it seem to you that a hope so confident is this—a hope of life arising out of death, light out of darkness, is in

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GROUNDS OF THE PROPHET'S FEAR. [Serm.

consistent with that vision of utter ruin which rose up a moment ago before us? Brethren, we shall not know the heart of the Jewish prophet-we shall not know our owntill we learn to see not only how these things are compatible, but why they are inseparable. Amos would not have left his sheepfolds to denounce the idolatries of Israel if he had not felt that men, that his own countrymen, were maintaining a fearful fight against a Will which had a right to govern them, and which could alone govern them for their good. He could not have been sustained in the witness which he bore if an ever brightening revelation of the Perfect Goodness,-of that Goodness, active, energetic, converting all powers and influences to its own righteous and gracious purposes,-had not accompanied revelations that became every moment more awful of the selfishness and disorder to which men were yielding themselves. From the observation of this strife, as history and experience present it to the mind of a man, earnestly loving his fellowcreatures, there come forth only the most fearful and despairing auguries. It is precisely because he has not only experience and history to guide him but the certainty of an Eternal God, present in all the convulsions of society, never ceasing to act upon the individual heart when it is most wrapped in the folds of its pride and selfishness; it is precisely because he finds this to be true whatever else is false, that he must hope. And oftentimes when his hope for himself is well nigh gone, it is renewed as he thinks of what God has done for his race, and is doing for it. This is no solitary experience of a single herdsman or prophet. Through the whole Epistle to the Romans St. Paul had been tracing out the sin of his countrymen; their rejection of the perfect Deliverer for themselves, their

X.]

GROUNDS OF HIS CONFIDENCE.

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refusal of Him to the Heathens; their desire to wrap themselves in a righteousness which would prove itself to be the very contrary of God's righteousness. He had seen and

declared that the fruit of these sins would be the utter excision of his kinsmen after the flesh from God's covenant. And yet he winds up all he has been saying in these words. "For God hath concluded all in unbelief that he might have mercy upon all. Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out. For who hath known the mind of the Lord and who hath been His counsellor? For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To whom be glory for ever. Amen."

SERMON XI.

THE VALLEY OF DECISION.

LINCOLN'S INN, QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY.-FEB. 22, 1852.

JOEL, II. 32.

"In Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call."

JOEL is probably an earlier prophet than Amos: I spoke of the latter first, because his message related to the revolted kingdom of Israel and threw great light upon the history of it. Joel is strictly a prophet of Judah. He does not merely belong to the south as Amos did; his words touch less upon the peculiar sins of the northern tribes than those of any other of the prophets previous to the Assyrian captivity. His book therefore recals us to Mount Zion and to Jerusalem.

The broad and obvious distinction between the history of the two tribes and that of the ten, is that the hereditary succession which was so continually violated in the one, is rigidly preserved in the other. Abijam succeeds Rehoboam; Asa Abijam, Jehoshaphat Asa. Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat, becomes connected with the house of Ahab. His son, Ahaziah, is destroyed with the rest of that house

XI.]

by Jehu.

ORDERLY CONDITION OF THE TWO TRIBES.

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A usurpation by the queen-mother for six years follows; the child Joash, the son of Ahaziah, is preserved and becomes king. Amaziah, Uzziah, Jotham and Ahaz succeed each other in strict order, though Joash and Amaziah both died by conspiracy, and Ahaziah became a leper.

If the regularity of royal succession is a point of difference, the regularity of the priestly succession and of the divine services is quite as remarkable a one. The feasts might be sometimes intermitted; the rights of the year of jubilee violated. But the temple which Solomon had dedicated was continually in sight of the people. The daily sacrifices went on there; it was the perpetual resort of seers who desired to know the innermost meaning of the covenant; to acquaint themselves with Him who had promised to fill the house with His presence.

An inference might be drawn from this outward regularity as to the inward state of the people which would lead us astray. We are told that in the days of Rehoboam "Judah did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that their fathers had done, for they built them high places and images and groves on every high hill and under every green tree. And they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord cast out before the children of Israel." Punishment followed directly upon their sins. "Shishak, the king of Egypt, to whom Jeroboam had fled, came up against Jerusalem, and took away the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king's house; he even took away all." Still" Abijam walked in the sins of his father which he had done before him." Asa is a reformer; he removes all the idols which his father had made, puts his mother away from being queen, because

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