XV.]

CHRIST THE CENTRE OF UNITY.

265

pride and exclusiveness there. See men disputing, reviling, slandering, on all sides of you, about the faith that has been delivered to them. See while these things are going on among those who boast that they have the doctrine which can renew the world, what utter heathenism, brutality, atheism is reigning among the masses who are sealed with the seal of God's covenant. Do not trust to your own observation of these facts. Take with you the most scoffing infidel you can find to show them to you, to force them upon your notice, to draw his natural inferences from them. Let him point out to you the different plans of comprehension and reconciliation which wise and religious men have devised, and tell you, with infinite ridicule, how they have all come to nought. Let him show you how in fact each of these plans of compromise is really a confederacy among certain sections of the church, for the destruction of some other. Acknowledge the truth of his boast that each school and church is glad of help from statesmen whom they all denounce as oppressors, yes from the most absolute, godless tyrannies, to accomplish their own ends. Nay stop not yet. Go into some smaller circle of persons separating themselves from others and making the establishment of peace and unity among men their watchwords. Mark the jealousies, strifes, heart-burnings among them. Oh yet once more! See them in your own heart; those lusts that war in your members-they cause all the wars and tumults without.

And then ask yourselves whether you can meditate on such a world as this, whether you can explain how society has been possible in it, how families, nations, churches can have existed in it, how there has been order and fellowship amidst so much hatred and anarchy,-unless there were

266 THE DEMAND OF THE HEART SATISFIED. [Serm. XV.

a centre of unity, a divine source of life and regeneration such as Isaiah confessed when he cried "Unto us a Son is given, and the government is on His shoulder, and His name is Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." I know that there is a conscience and reason within us which say, 'Such a One there must be.' And, oh! are we to refuse to believe, because the Bible has said it, because the creeds of Christendom have said it, because myriads of suffering men and women in all corners of the earth have said it, 'Such a One there is'? Do you desire some new king or prophet to arise and tell you a truth which you never heard before? Kings and prophets we shall have if we need them; but they can only repeat the old lesson; they can only say, 'HE is come, and unto Him the gathering of the people shall be.' They can but do what each one of us in his own place and vocation may do now;-proclaim that the great Christian passover is prepared; that men of all habits, opinions, races are invited to sit down at it; that the poor, the halt, the blind will be welcomed by Him who lived with them and died for them; that upon them who sit in darkness and the shadow of death a Light has risen which no powers in earth or hell can quench.

SERMON XVI.

THR PROUD CITY DOOMED.

LINCOLN'S INN, 5TH SUNDAY IN LENT.-MARCH 29, 1852.

ISAIAH, XIII. 1.

The burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amoz did see.

In the seventeenth chapter of the Second Book of Kings, we find these words. "In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord; but not as the kings of Israel which were before him. Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his servant and gave him presents. And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea. For he had sent messengers to So king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king of Assyria as he had done year by year; therefore the king of Assyria shut him up and bound him in prison. Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and beseiged it three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the

268

THE SUCCESSIVE CAPTIVITIES.

[Serm.

Medes." Then follows a long enumeration of the sins which had brought this divine visitation upon the ten tribes, ending with the words, " So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day."

When we speak of two great captivities we allude to the one which is spoken of here, and to the one which took place after Nebuchadnezzar had plundered Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. But no one can read the history attentively without perceiving indications of a series of captivities. I alluded in a former lecture to those of which Joel speaks, captivities that had already taken place in his time, not into Assyria, but into the Isles of Greece in Phoenician ships. These, as I remarked, are to be separated from all that follow. Joel looks forward to a great judgment upon the Tyrians and Sidonians who had been concerned in them-a judgment to be brought about by the agency of some power, which was not discernible by his eyes. When kings of Assyria appeared in the land, it became clear to every divinely instructed observer, how the prediction of Joel, as well as that with which the book of Amoz opens, would be verified. This prophet said that the three and four sins of Tyre and Damascus, of Moab and Samaria, were bringing on their appointed punishment. He saw also in what manner this punishment would be executed. There might be a temporary imposition of tribute which the kings of the nations would pay as long as they were under the fear of an immediate invasion, which they would withhold whenever they had confidence in their own strength, or were encouraged by the promises of any powerful neighbour. But ultimately the rule of ancient oriental conquest would be enforced; the people would be carried away in smaller or greater portions into the land of

XVI. THE DREAMS OF A PERISHING PEOPLE.

269

the victors, and be reduced to slavery there. Accordingly, I read to you three Sundays ago in the II. Kings, c. 15, v. 29, an account of a captivity in the days of Pekah king of Israel, one which we are told affected Gilead and Galilee and all the land of Naphthali. The more complete captivity of Damascus which took place at the same time, is recorded in the ninth verse of the sixteenth chapter. The one under Shalmaneser was therefore merely the pursuance of a policy which had been already commenced. There was an interval during which the Israelites could still reckon themselves a nation, though a tributary one; but the sentence was hanging over them; it might be completely executed at any time.

This succession of events gives great force and reality to those often repeated words of Isaiah, "For all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still." The captivity under Tiglath Pileser, may have easily seemed to the people of Israel the fulfilment of all the threatenings which their prophets had pronounced against them. With their view of the character of God, they would naturally think the loss of a few cities and a portion of their people a sufficient satisfaction of His wrath for their transgressions. Looking at moral evil, not as destructive in itself, as that which makes men's lives wretched and the earth barren, they enquired-not what methods he would take to deliver men and the earth from it--but what amount of physical evil He might inflict as a compensation for the injuries which He had received. They did not therefore turn to Him that smote them. There was no earnest reformation. They sought help from Egypt; they talked of replacing buildings of brick with buildings of stone, houses of sycamore with houses of cedar. The prophet had need to tell them that