forget all the indignities which they have put upon his name. I have assigned a reason which makes it very hard for Christianity to thrive in a camp, or in a cabinet: and it is quite a rarity, an eighth wonder of the world, to find a godly soldier or statesman. How melancholy the reflection, that from the field of honor, in the very centre of their glories, our bravest men are often summoned in an instant to their eternal reckoning, without having perhaps, had in their lives one serious thought of the God with whom they have to do! Alas! what will the honor derived from men avail them at his bar! My heart sickens at the thought; and finds no relief but from the assurance that they are in the hands of one who will do them no injustice. 4. Finally, the sin of which I speak, making the honor that cometh from men, to compensate and supersede that which cometh from God only, cannot be excused as a sin of infirmity. The strength of physical passions, the suddenness and violence of temptation, have here no place. It is a sin of calculation. The whole soul enters into it; habits are formed by it; and habits do not spring up like mushrooms, they grow by slow degrees. The last, though at all times a feeble apology for crime, surprises, the being taken unawares, is swept away. It is a deliberate, systematic rebellion against God. It is the indulgence of wilful transgression, which is utterly inconsistent with every gracious princi ple, and where it reigns, marks, without a peradventure, an unbeliever in the Lord Jesus Christ. And now, my friends, if these things are true, and that they are is just as certain as that God hath spoken to us, how wide a scope and how terrible a necessity do they create for the examination of our own hearts! Who does not, in some shape or other, fall under the accusation of the text? Be persuaded to make diligent search; for while it stands against a single individual, it infallibly shuts him out of the kingdom of God.. Should an angel be commissioned by revelation to go among the hearers of the gospel-the professors of the religion of Jesus Christ-and put his mark upon the forehead of all who are under the ban of the text, whose forehead would be without a stigma! Would it be thine? Why, then, does thy bosom heave and thy heart palpitate? Why wilt thou not learn betimes to seek the honor that cometh from God only? How long shall the opinion of men usurp its place? How long will ye seek in political or fashionable life that applause which the Lord abhors, and may, and without his great prevention will, draw after it your eternal destruction? Where is the man who has made even honorable politics his pursuit whose religious sensibilities were not blunted, and his conscience of rectitude warped? Who has carried into the vortex of the political whirlpool a mind uncontaminated with the corruption that is in the world, and brought it out again equally pure? Among all the votaries of fashion in whom the religious sense is not wholly obliterated, who has attempted to conciliate the service of God with the honor that cometh one from another and succeeded? Whose garments have not smelt, whose visages have not been blackened, by the infernal fire which they have been compelled to approach? Who has not learned some maxims, or indulged some practice, which has put a wider separation between God and them, and prepared them for a deeper plunge into transgression when the next opportunity should offer? Shall I propose the question? Are there any whose lips have received the hallowed symbols of the body and blood of Jesus the Saviour, and whose feet, ere the taste of that holy pledge had died away, have gone greedily into the same excess of riot with those who walk in the vanity of their minds? In a word, are there none whose consciences whisper to them that the inspiring motive to all their religious appearance and profession has been the applauses of their fellow-men? What shall I say to them all? Awake! arise! flee! flee for your lives from this treacherous ground that stretches over the edge of the bottomless pit! Soon may the voice of that thunder be heard which shall shake it into fragments beneath your feet, and you are irrevocably ingulfed. Even now the cry of despair from some who were gay and careless as any of you can be, rings in my ear. They were taken unprepared and hurried away with all their reasonings, their decencies, their mistaken religion, and have found their error when the hope of redemption was past! See that this be not your case. See to it soon; see to it immediately. To-day is the accepted time; to-day is the day of salvation. Be not deceived. Yet a little while, and the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven in flaming fire, taking vengeance of those who know not God and obey not the gospel. The Lord grant that you may be able to stand before him in that final and fiery visitation! |