SERMON XXI.

JOSHUA, c. xxiii. v. 8.

But cleave to the Lord your God.

THESE were some of the last words of Joshua, so renowned as the victorious leader of the hosts of Israel, when now "stricken in years," and sensible of his approaching dissolution, he assembled his countrymen, anxious before he left them to consolidate their happiness and prosperity on the only sure foundation, a steadfast adherence to the laws of God. Thus did this great and good man, by the last and most glorious act of his life, distinguish himself as the ardent lover of his country and the devoted servant of his God; and in proof of the deep impression made upon the people by his last solemn charge, it is recorded that Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and of the elders that outlived Joshua. How edifying an example to the rulers of a people,

and to all that are in authority under them! What can so effectually revive religion, and propagate that righteousness which exalteth a nation, as the strenuous exertions of the prince and the magistrate to enforce the laws of God as well as of man? Yet it is the doctrine of some politicians that rulers have no right to interfere with the religion of the people, a notion equally contradictory to the maxims of sound policy as to the word of God. There is not a nation under heaven which does not substantiate that scriptural truth, that "when the righteous are in authority the people rejoice, but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn." It shall be my endeavour in the following discourse, first, to explain, and secondly, to enforce the duty enjoined in the text, of cleaving to the Lord our God.

It was the acknowledgment of the great Lord Bacon, that he had sought God in courts, and fields, and gardens, but found him in his temples, which was in fact a confession that the acquaintance with God which he vainly sought in philosophy, he had obtained only by the light of scripture, and the exercises of devotion. The bible is the brightest mirror of the Deity; there we see not only what God is in himself, but what he is to us in his dispensations of grace and

mercy, a knowledge which neither nature nor Providence can teach us. Scripture alone can discover to us the God of Israel as in a sublimely federal sense our God, who has admitted us by baptism into that gracious covenant, of which the Mediator is our Lord Jesus. The motives then to adhere to his service, which Joshua urged upon the Israelites, apply with far greater cogency to us who are blest with the pure and sublime precepts of the gospel. Whilst then we cherish a grateful sense of our christian privileges, and rejoice in the powerful advocate by whom we have access to the Father, let us "not be highminded but fear," lest we forfeit our title to the heavenly inheritance. For proportioned to the greatness of the salvation will be the weight of the punishment inflicted on those who wilfully reject it. Deplorable as is the case of those who have not the knowledge of God, their ignorance if involuntary, will not debar them of his mercy; but they who having been educated in the way of righteousness, and brought to serious impressions of religion, if they totally fall away from christianity, and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ, their apostasy excludes almost the possibility of their repentance, since they not only renounce but blaspheme the means

of grace, the only remedy appointed for their recovery, and do thus, as far as in them lies, "crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame." Knowing the strong propensity of the Israelites to idol worship, and the temptations to relapse into it which the enjoyments of peace would expose them to, Joshua pressed them by every argument to "cleave unto the Lord their God." Idolatry, in its literal and theological sense, the worship of the creature instead of the Creator, has long been exterminated from the civilized parts of the world. But there is a spiritual idolatry of which all are guilty who render to the things of this world that service which is due to the living and true God. Those objects of intense desire and eager pursuit, which the scripture terms the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, are so many idols set up in the hearts of men, their devotion to which is in effect an idolatry as criminal in its nature and ruinous in its consequences as the worship of any object as God which is not God. And this is the scriptural doctrine. In that declaration of our Saviour, “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon," it is implied that all men are servants either of the God of heaven or the god of this world. By this criterion, they who love and

cleave to this world, in preference to God, and devote to its interests and pleasures exclusively their time and pains, their words and actions, their heart and affections, though they profess belief in God and make a solemn parade of his worship, are in reality estranged from his service through their idols, and living in the practice of spiritual idolatry, Accordingly the scripture pronounces covetousness to be idolatry, and the covetous man an idolater; for Mammon is the god he worships with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his strength; and with what bitter penance does he propitiate his golden idol! The priests who cut their flesh with knives and lancets "served Baal but a little," in comparison with those slaves of avarice who sacrifice health of body and peace of mind, present happiness and everlasting salvation, at the shrine of the unrighteous Mammon. Another idol of human worship is sensual pleasure. Persons who live absorbed in the gratification of their senses, St. Paul describes as "dead whilst they live;" they are spiritually dead, their moral feeling is dead, their pulse of religion is stopt, they have no spark of divine life, no communication with God, no desire of pleasing, no fear of offending him, In the vices of debauchery above all others, the