DISCOURSE LXV THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD MANIFESTED IN THE RISE AND FALL OF EMPIRES. Them that honor me I will honor; and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed. WHEN WE peruse the instructive page upon these occasions. It cannot be an unof history, we behold empires in the world, profitable one; since, by studying the ways like waves in the ocean, successively rising of him who is perfect in knowledge and and disappearing again. Exalted for a mo- happiness, we shall best learn to rectify ment, one glitters before our eyes in power and regulate our own. And it will be and majesty; but is suddenly overwhelmed and absorbed by the superior force of another, which, itself, perhaps hardly stays to be gazed at, but as quickly vanishes from the sight, and is no more. In silence we contemplate the affecting scene. We adore the providence of him who ruleth in the kingdoms of men; who putteth down one and setteth up another; ordering all things according to the counsel of his own will. From the sacred Scriptures we learn what that will is, and how gracious an aspect it always bears towards the servants of the true God. We see the most untractable things and persons secretly working together for good to them that fear and worship the Creator of the Universe. We perceive the potentates of the earth becoming subservient to the kingdom of the Messiah, and carrying on the dispensations of mercy and judgment towards his people, as their obedience, from time to time, pleads for the one, or their transgressions call for the other. Our hearts are filled and warmed with a sense of his goodness, who causeth the world and all that is in it to conspire in promoting the felicity of his chosen. Considered in this light, let us take a view of the divine economy in the government of the world from the beginning, by an induction of those particular facts, together with the grounds and reasons of the same, with which we are furnished by history, sacred and profane. Such a view, it it humbly hoped, will not be an unpleasant employment of the time usually alloted found peculiarly adapted to answer the end proposed by the wisdom and piety of our ancestors, when they ordained, that the solemn administration of justice should commence with due and devout meditation on the proceedings of that Being, concerning whom it is said, that, as mercy and truth go before his face, so righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne. A large and comprehensive, that is, a proper survey of the scheme of Providence, as formed upon the maxim laid down by God himself in the words of the text, must take its rise from that gracious purpose of saving mankind and bringing them to glory, which appears to have possessed the first place in the designs of Heaven. This we learn from the notices afforded in the Scriptures, that we are "saved and called according to the divine purpose, and grace given us in Christ Jesus, before the world began ;" that God hath "chosen us from the beginning" that the Lamb of God was slain, that is, intentionally and virtually slain, "from the foundation of the world." The world was enjoyed but for a little season by man in a state of innocence, and hath ever since sympathised with him in the misery of his fall. But it is still preserved, as the theatre on which the mighty work of redemption is carried on, until that work shall be accomplished. When "the fulness of the Gentiles shall be come in, and all Is† 2 Thess. ii. 13. 2 Tim. i. 9. rael shall be saved,"*" then the heavens | renowned of all others for power and learnshall pass away with a great noise, and the ing, became a scene of very remarkable transelements shall melt with fervent heat: the actions. The sighs and groans of afflicted earth also and the works that are therein shall Israel came up before the eternal throne. be burnt up:" + The Lord awaked as one out of sleep, and made bare his arm in the defence of his people. The persecutor still withstood that power which controlled all the operations of nature; and hardened his heart against that goodness, which, by so doing, called him to repentance. At length, the jaws of oppression were broken, and the people of God were delivered. The Egyptian sank, like lead, in the mighty waters; while Israel, triumphant on the opposite shore, sang hallelujahs to the Lord God Omnipotent. Ere we have have proceeded far in the most ancient and authentic of histories, we meet with a stupendous representation of that final destruction which awaits the present system, as well as of that complete salvation which shall be effected for the servants of the Most High. The earth was defiled by the abominations of its inhabitants. The sins of men burst the fountains of the great deep, opened the windows of heaven, and called forth a deluge of water to cleanse it from its corruptions; when neither the riches of the wealthy, nor the power of the mighty, nor the wisdom of the wise, could avail to preserve them from the hand of death. Then appeared the incomparable pre-eminence of religion, the inestimable privileges of the faithful. Safe under the protection of the Almighty, the holy family in the ark survived the storm that laid the world in ruins, and passed in perfect security over the wreck of universal nature. A new earth, as it were, arose out of the waters. The covenant was renewed. Men were commanded to look upon the bow in the clouds, and to remember the promise. The morning stars sang together, and the sons of God shouted for joy. Behold those ancient fathers of our faith, the patriarchs, because iniquity again abounded, called forth from their country and their kindred, to preserve true religion upon earth, "till the Seed should come, to whom the promise was made." "They were but few men in number, yea very few, and strangers in the land." But the presence of God was with them. "He suffered no man to do them wrong; yea, he reproved kings for their sakes, saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm." They were honored in the kingdoms through which they travelled. When injured, they by faith "put to flight the armies of aliens." They were permitted to intercede for cities, and when destruction became inevitable, yet such as belonged to them were sent out of the overthrow. They became instruments of preserving whole nations alive in the time of dearth. They informed princes concerning the will of Heaven, and taught senators true wisdom. They were revered by crowned heads, and Pharaoh disdained not to receive a blessing from Jacob. Egypt, a kingdom, in those days, the most Rom. xi. 25. † 2 Pet. iii. 10. Psalm. cv. 12. The descendants of faithful Abraham, thus brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand and stretched-out arm, were conducted through the wilderness, the same Lord being their light and their strength, their support and their comfort, and came to the borders of Canaan, at the precise time when the iniquity of the Amorites was full. The day of trial allotted to the idolatrous nations being expired, a gloomy and tempestuous night closed upon them for ever. The judgment determined in the decrees of heaven was executed by the sword of God in the hand of Joshua. The promise was made good—“I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee." The power of faith prevailed, to the casting down of strong holds; and the blast of trumpets, sounded by the divine command, was found sufficient to level the walls of Jericho. As often as the children of Israel, after their establishment in Canaan, rebelled against the Lord their God, he punished them by means of the neighboring nations. When they returned to him, his favor returned to them; the light of his countenance soon dispelled the darkest clouds of public calamity, and brake forth upon them, by means of deliverers, raised up to chastise the insolence of their enemies, and to restore tranquillity and happiness in the dwellings of Jacob. The prosperity of Israel was at its height in the days of Solomon, to whose court we see the sovereigns of the earth resorting, astonished at his glory, charmed and edified by his wisdom. Jerusalem was the praise of the nations, and the joy of the whole earth. Peace resided within her walls, and plenteousness within her palaces; while, in the midst of her, on the favored mount, shone, like the sun in the firmament, the house of the Lord her God, where he was worshipped in the beauty of holiness. Let us contemplate the noble idea, intended, surely, to be conveyed by this reign, of the state of things which is to take place when the last enemy shall be vanquished, and death swallowed up in victory; when the Son of David shall manifest himself in the new Jerusalem, as the Prince of Peace, and reign for ever and ever, King of kings and Lord of lords. After this period, we find the Almighty employing, in their turns, the celebrated monarchies of the world, to protect or to annoy, to cherish or to chastise his people, or each other, as there was occasion. The idolatries and iniquities of the ten tribes, consequent upon their defection from the house of David, and the service of the temple at Jerusalem, called for vengeance. And lo, the Assyrian stands in readiness to execute it, awaiting, as it were, his orders from above. At the time appointed, they are issued. The Lord lifted up an ensign to the nations from afar, and mustered the host to the battle, making them the weapons of his indignation to destroy the whole land. Because the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other Gods, therefore the Lord was angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight. They returned no more to that pleasant land, nor saw again their native country. the time was not yet come. A prince filled the throne, who knew whither to recur for assistance, and possessed the valuable secret of engaging Heaven on his side. Therefore, "the virgin, the daughter of Sion, despised the tyrant, and laughed him to scorn, the daughter of Jerusalem shook her head at him." * Suddenly, at midnight, without noise or violence, the flower of the Assyrian army is cut off at a stroke. The Almighty puts his hook in the nose, and his bridle in the lips of the raging monster, and leads him back, like a wild beast taken in the toils, contemned and hissed at by those who had so lately trembled at his power. But, at length, the hour arrived of Judah's chastisement. The transgressions of her kings, of her priests, and of her people, had made the whole head sick, and the whole heart faint. She was to drink deep of the cup of the Lord's fury, and the haughty Nebuchadnezzar was the person appointed to administer it. Jerusalem is laid in ashes, and her children go into captivity. In the school of affliction they are taught the lesson of repentance. 66 By the waters of Babylon they sat down and wept;" wept over their calamities, and the sins which occasioned them; "yea, they wept, when they remembered Sion ;" when they remembered what she had been, and considered what she then was. Desolate and forsaken, she now sits upon the ground, who was once exalted above the nations; she calls to the whole world, to every people in every age, "See if ever there was sorrow like my sorrow," and learn wisdom by my fall. The case of the Assyrian affords a remarkable instance of the manner in which God uses the instrumentality of man's free choice foreseen, and thus causes all the machinations of worldly politicians to work together for the accomplishment of his designs, while they attend only to the furtherance of their own. For thus God has been pleased to state the matter, once for all, by his prophet Isaiah: "The Assyrian is the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation. I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire in the streets. Howbeit, he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few."* The proud Assyrian knew not (what Isaiah could have told him) that Jehovah, having performed by his hand the work of correcting a rebellious people, would afterwards punish likewise his own stout heart, and the glory of his high looks: † he perceived not the absurdity of the axe For now, Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, presuming to boast itself against the person the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, that heweth therewith. View him before having performed her appointed task, was the walls of Jerusalem, at the head of an army to be overthrown as Sodom and Gomorrah. supposed to be invincible, opening his mouth in blasphemy against God, and already rioting in the fancied spoil of the holy city. But Isa. x. 5, 6, &c. † Ibid. ver. 12 Ibid. 15. Yet, even here, God left not himself without witness, nor his people without honor, in the land of the enemy. The irresistible monarch, almost ready to propose himself as an object of worship, is seen prostrate at the feet of a captive Jew. Daniel is exalted to power, and a prophet rules in the provine of Babylon; while the abasement of that proud prince, by the judgment of God, even to the condition of the beasts of the field, seemed to prognosticate the approaching downfull of the empire, which came to pass in the days of his grandson. The staff wherewith the Lord had smitten so many nations, the hammer which had broken the whole earth to pieces, was to be † Lam. 1. 12. Isai. xxxvii. 22. itself cut asunder and broken, while the sceptre of the world passed to the second great monarchy, that of the Medes and Persians. pire, which gave way, in its turn, to the third monarchy, erected on its ruins by the king of Græcia, or Alexander the Great. The anger of this prince against Jerusalem, To this end, a prince appears, with a dis-occasioned by a refusal of his demands, on position calculated to conciliate the affec- a sudden, at the sight of the high priest tions of different nations ranged under his coming forth in procession to meet him, was banners. That disposition is improved by converted into a reverence for the temple, a discipline which has been the admiration and an admiration of the prophecies of of every succeeding age. He is instructed Daniel, uttered so long before concerning in the best maxims of political wisdom, and him, which were shown to him, as those of his undertakings prosper in his hands. He Isaiah, in a former instance, had been shown takes Babylon, and puts a period to the to Cyrus. In them seeing himself and the Chaldean empire. Profane history relates rapidity of his conquests already described, this transaction at large; but the designs he led his forces against the Persians, as to of Providence accomplished by it, are un- certain victory ;† and having performed folded in the Scriptures, where God is re- the work whereunto he had been appointpresented as saying of Cyrus, by name, two ed, was thrown aside as a withered rod, dyhundred years before he was born, "He is ing at Babylon, in the thirty-third year of my shepherd, and shall perform all my his age. pleasure, even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built, and to the temple, Thy foundations shall be laid. I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways. He shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for price nor reward, saith the Lord of hosts. For Jacob my servant's sake, and for Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by name; I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me. When Cyrus took possession of Babylon, Daniel was there; and is said to have prospered not only "in the reign of Darius," but also in that of "Cyrus the Persian." It is hardiy possible, therefore, to conceive, that these prophecies of Isaiah should not be shown by him to the new monarch. And, indeed, the proclamation published by Cyrus in the very first year of his reign is worded in a manner, which demonstrates that this had been done. It is thus recorded at the conclusion of the second book of Chronicles-" Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, he made But when this once highly favored peoa proclamation throughout all his kingdom,ple had forsaken the word of their God, and put it in writing, saying-Thus saith going astray after their own traditions; Cyrus, king of Persia-All the kingdoms when they had filled up the measure of of the earth hath the Lord God of heaven their iniquities, by the crucifixion of the given me, and he hath charged me to build him an house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? The Lord his God be with him, and let him go up." Restored by this edict, the Jewish state grew up again to maturity, under the protection of the Persian empire, and at length arose superior to the envy and jealousy of its neighbors. Under the tyrant Ochus, it suffered some severities from the same em * Isaiah, xliv. 28, xlv. 4, 13. During the reign of Ptolemy Lagos, one of the successors of Alexander, the Jews were carried away in great numbers into Egypt, by which means the knowledge of the God of Israel was diffused among the nations, preparatory to their future conversion by the Gospel. The cruelties of Antiochus Epiphanes, another of those successors, served only to manifest the power of that God, and to call forth the glories of the Asmonean family, under which the kingdom of Judah was enlarged by new accessions, and enjoyed a long succession of halcyon days, very beautifully and affectingly described in the writings of the prophets. In the time of this family, as we learn from the book of Maccabees, the first league was made with the Roman power, which was then gradually rising into the fourth great empire of the world, and protected the Jews for some time against their adversaries, the kings of Syria. Son of God, and the persecution of his apostles; the Spirit of life passed from the law to the Gospel, and left their whole system a breathless carcass. Directed by Heaven, the Roman eagles flew to the prey, and Jerusalem suffered in a manner which astonished the soul of Titus himself, and which, from that day to this, hath made the ears of every one who hath heard it to tingle. * Daniel, viii. 21: Josephus, Antiq. Jud. lib. xi. ad fin. The Roman empire, by uniting all nations under its government, prepared the way for the universality of the true religion, which, receiving strength from every fresh persecution, at length conquered the conquerors of the world; and the cross became the ornament and glory of the imperial diadem. But a love of the old idolatry, and a zeal for the gods of Romulus, still possessed that great and powerful body of men, the senate, who continually importuned the Christian emperors to restore the ancient worship, and were only restrained by them from renewing the persecution, after the example of their ancestors.* This was the state of things in the fourth century, when God, calling to remembrance the repeated cruelties of the oppressor, and the unexampled sufferings of his faithful people, delivered up to the Barbarians that city, drunken with the blood of the martyrs. "New nations," says an elegant historian, "seemed to arise, and to rush upon unknown regions, in order to take vengeance on the Romans, for the calamities which they had inflicted on mankind." The unwieldy fabric of the empire shared the fate of its predecessors; it was overthrown with a mighty desolation, and divided into the kingdoms which now subsist around us, the invaders, by change of situation, becoming humanized, and having been converted to the faith of Christ. Among these western kingdoms, in the bosom of the church, and in the pretended name of Christ, hath arisen a tyrannical and oppressive power, exercising dominion over the undertakings and consciences of men, and arming itself with fire and sword for the punishment of all who presume to call in question the infallibility of its decisions. About the same period were laid the foundations of another power, destined to be the scourge of God to the corrupt and degenerate Christians of the eastern part of the Roman empire; the Pharaoh, the Nebuchadnezzar, and the Antiochus of latter times. These have their stated task to perform, after which, they likewise, according to the prophecies, recorded in the Scriptures (to the interpretation of which learned men are very commendably turning our attention, with increasing probability of success as the events predicted approach,) they likewise will go into perdition. "The Lord will consume them by the spirit of his mouth, and destroy them by the brightness See Bossuet's Universal History, ii. 184, and the authorities there referred to. † Robertson's History of Charles V. vol. i. sec. 1. of his coming." Then the happy day, foretold by the prophets, shall arrive, when all earthly rule and authority and power shall be put down, and "the kingdoms of this world shall become," in the most exalted sense of the words, "the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ." Thus, by going into the sanctuary of God, we see the end of all human glory. There taking our stand, we behold the empires of the world passing swiftly by us, and vanishing away, to give place to that kingdom which shall endure for ever; while the Almighty, by suffering them to continue no longer than they served his designs, affords us sufficient ground to apply to all, his own declaration concerning one of them: "For this cause have I raised thee up, to show in thee my power, and that my name may be declared through all the earth."* The fate of empires being interwoven with that of religion, it pleased God to communicate to his servants the prophets, the secrets of his administration with regard to them; and the view which we have now taken of it, demonstrates that they are so many instruments in the hand of Providence, to execute its designs of mercy or judgment on those who successively become the objects of either, according to the uniform tenor of the divine economy, from the beginning to the end of time. From a survey of God's proceedings, learn we to rectify and regulate our own. To punish wickedness and vice, to preserve and promote true religion and virtue, appears to have been the end and design of all his dispensations. Let it be the end and design of all our transactions, upon the present, and upon every other occasion. The series of events which has been exhibited points out the difference between that which is of the earth, earthy, and that which cometh from above; and directs us where to fix our choice. Not princes only, but empires, you see, are mortal. They sink, to rise no more. The Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Persian, the Grecian, the Roman-where are they? They are gone they sleep among the dead. And, what they are, the states now subsisting around us, which have so often disturbed the repose of Christendom, and with their numerous and well-appointed armies, threaten again to disturb it, shall one day be. All below is inconstancy and agitation. But the kingdom of God shall stand. Its foundations were laid before those of the world; Exod. ix. 16. |