SERMO N.

PSALM CXIX. 126, 127.

"It is time for thee, Lord, to work: for they have made "void thy law. Therefore I love thy commandments "above gold; yea, above fine gold."

THERE is no property of the divine nature which demands more, whether of our admiration or of our gratitude, than long-suffering. That the Lord is "slow to anger"-there is more in this to excite both wonder and praise, than in those other truths with which it is associated by the prophet Nahum. "The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked: the Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet." We have often told you that the long-suffering of God is wonderful, because it indicates the putting constraint on his own attributes; it is omnipotence exerted over the Omnipotent himself. So far as our own interests are concerned, you will readily admit that we are extraordinarily indebted to the divine forbearance. Those of us who are now walking the path of life, where would they have been, had not God borne long with them, refusing, as it were, to be wearied out by their perversity?

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Those who are yet "strangers from the covenant of promise," to what but the patience of their Maker is it owing, that they have not been cut down as cumberers of the ground, but still stand within the possibilities of forgiveness and acceptance? But it is a melancholy thing that we are compelled to add, that there is a great tendency in all of us to the abusing God's long-suffering, and to the so presuming on his forbearance as to continue in sin. We may be sure that a vast outward reformation would be wrought on the world, if there were a sudden change in God's dealings, so that punishment followed instantaneously on crime. If the Almighty were to mark out certain offences, the perpetration of which he would immediately visit with death, there can be no doubt that these offences would be shunned with the greatest carefulness; and that too by the very men whom no exhortations, and no warnings, can now deter from their commission. Yet it is not that punishment is one jot less certain now than it would be on the supposed change of arrangement. The only difference is, that, in one case, God displays long-suffering; and that in the other he would not display long-suffering-the certainty that punishment will follow crime is quite the same in both. And thus unhappily sin is less avoided than it would be, if we lived under an economy of immediate retribution; and "because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is

fully set in them to do evil." In place of being softened by the patience of which we have so long been the objects, we are apt to be encouraged by it to further resistance; calculating that he who has so often forborne to strike will spare a little longer, and that we may with safety yet defer to repent.

It is, therefore, of great importance that men be taught that there are limits even to the forbearance of God, and that it is possible so to presume on it as to exhaust. And this is evidently what the Psalmist inculcates in the first of those verses on which we would discourse. He seems to mark the times in which he lived as times of extraordinary depravity, when men had thrown off the restraints of religion. They have made void thy law." They have reduced the divine precepts to a dead letter, and refuse to receive them as a rule of life. The expression manifestly denotes that a more than common contempt was put on the commandments of God, and that men had reached a rare point of insolence and disobedience. And it is further manifest that, when wickedness was thus at its height, David expected that there would be an end of the forbearance of God, and that he would at length give scope to his righteous indignation. "It is time for thee, Lord, to work for they have made void thy law." As much as to say, men have now exceeded the bounds prescribed to long-suffering; they have outrun the limits of grace; and now, therefore, God must interfere,

vindicate his own honour, and repress the swellings of unrighteousness. This then is the first truth presented by our text-that it is possible to go so far in disobedience that it will be necessary for God to interpose in vengeance, and visibly withstand men's impiety. But what effect will be produced on a truly righteous man by this extraordinary prevalence of iniquity? Will he be carried away by the current of evil? Will he be tempted, by the universal scorn which he sees thrown on God's law, to think slightingly of it himself, and give it less of his reverence and attachment? On the contrary, this law became more precious in David's sight, in proportion as he felt that it was so despised, and set aside, that the time for God to work had arrived. You observe that the verses are connected by the word "therefore." They have made void thy law."-What then? is that law less esteemed and less prized by myself? Quite the reverse. "They have made void thy law; therefore I love thy commandments above gold, yea above fine gold." There is much that deserves our closest attention in this connection between the verses. It is a high point of holiness which that man has reached, whose love of God's commandments grows with the contempt which all around him put on those commandments. This then is the second truth presented by our text-that there is greater reason than ever for our prizing God's law, if the times should be those in which that law is made void. So that there are two great principles

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