statement, is, that a leading Uni- A SERMON. benefitted by the discipline, is enjoyed with new interest and increased forgetfulness of God. The death of a child often increases the attachment of parents to their surviving children, and, by a stronger attraction, draws their hearts away from God. As the shipwrecked mariner clings to the last plank with a desperation proportioned to its insufficiency to save, so do our hearts, when the world fails, and God is not our refuge, cling to the last fragment of worldly good. In all these cases, the providential instruction is lost, and the effort of heaven to withdraw the heart from idols, does 2 Cor. vii. 10-The sorrow of the but strengthen the destructive alli world worketh death. ance. 2. In other cases, the sorrow of the world destroys, by creating a powerful diversion of the attention from God and the concerns of the soul. By the sorrow of the world may be understood those griefs and afflictions of the present life, which are endured without religion. These may be Through the hardness of the heart produced by temporal calamity, or by the eye of the understanding becomes the illumination of the Spirit causing fixed exclusively upon second causes, conviction of sin. When it is declar- and the sufferer does but philosophize ed that these sorrows of the world and apply to the physician, when he work death, it is not to be under- should be seeking after God. The stood that this is always the fact. more he suffers, the more intensely Thousands have been rescued from are his thoughts fixed upon the causdeath by means of sanctified afflic- es and the remedy of his disease.tions, and all who are saved, experi- The louder the voice of God, the more ence doubtless more or less convic- profound is his deafness; the more tion of sin, which serves as a school- distressing the stroke of the divine master to bring them to Christ. rod, the less does the sinner regard But in these cases another influence the operation of the hand which interposes, and prevents the regular wields it. When the destroying ancatastrophe to which these causes gel enters towns and cities, then is not alone would have conducted the soul. the time for religion to revive, and It is therefore the tendency and ter- the souls of men to prosper. The atmination of these two streams of tentions to the sick and dying, with worldly sorrow, which it is proposed the panic influence of fear, withdraw to trace in this discourse. With rethe thoughts from eternity, and spect to the effect of unsanctified sor- "chain them down to sense." row, occasioned by temporal calamities, it is observed, 1. That it sometimes works death by increasing the attachment of the sufferer to the world. The loss of property, when it does not break the spirit, nor wean the heart from idols, augments the desire of gain, and quickens the energies of worldly enterprise. Health restored, after long sickness, if the heart is not In like manner, sudden reverses in worldly circumstances operate, where there is no religion to counteract the tendency. Such new and powerful demands are made upon the time, attention, and strength of the afflicted man, that he feels as if it were impossible to attend to the concerns of his soul for the present, and then his sor1ow worketh death. 3. Another common effect of the sorrow of the world, is hardness of heart. Instructions repeated and misimproved, harden the heart, and afflictions unsanctified have, upon the same principle, the same effect. At first the stroke of heaven may startle the conscience, but the design of the chastisement being at length disregarded, the conscience slumbers amid the sighs and tears of suffering. Thus were the chastisements upon the Israelites reiterated, till the whole head was sick, and the whole heart faint; being often reproved, they hardened their neck, and were suddenly destroyed. There is also an insensibility, the effect of sorrow, which results from the frailty of our animal nature. There is a limit to our capacity of feeling, and excessive grief often terminates in apathy. The man becomes a statue, and his heart, stone. 4. The sorrow of the world worketh death, in some instances, by producing a murmuring disposition, and rousing the enmity of the heart against God. In prosperity, such feelings were not perceived, nor the possibility of their existence suspected, as the unprovoked adder basking in sunshine feels no rage. But the repeated strokes of the Almighty try the heart, and rouse its latent malignity to contend with God. "What have I done to deserve such chastisement? Why should this affliction fall on me? Why should I suffer so much more than others?" And the feeling of the heart is, that God is unjust, and that the sufferer has cause to be angry. It may here be observed that this Spirit of daring controversy with God, becomes, in all the relations of social life, a spirit of petulance and vexation. The softer social affections seem to be drowned in sorrow, while all the malignant passions of the soul grow rank as in their most congenial soil. No object ministers comfort, but every object, directly or by assoéiation, occasions sorrow, and thus continued visitation of mental pain exhausts the patience, and winds up the nervous system to a state of unmanagable irritation. At length, perhaps, a dark cloud of melancholy settles upon the mind, and heart-withering discouragement unmans the soul. Exhausted nature sometimes fails and finds a respite in the grave. But in other instances, a still more deplorable result ensues.— Unmitigated anguish drives the sufferer to seek a momentary alleviation in inebriation; and he drinks though every exhilerating draught, augments the misery of his condition and shakes his soul with increased alarms. And now, pressed by woes, reason totters on her throne and yields her sceptre to madness or to idiocy; or if strong to suffer, no alleviation comes unsought, an alternative still more terrific remains. Goaded by suffering to desperation, the barriers of life are forced, and the tortured spirit urges its way from destruction on earth, to destruction in hell. II. With respect to that sorrow which results from the illumination of the Spirit, it may be proper to show that it is, strictly speaking, the sorrow of the world. The consideration that this sorrow is an effect of light which God has shed upon the mind, has led some to insist that it has something in it which God regards with complacency, and which renders the strivings of sinners, while under its sole influence, acceptable to God, and available for the attainment of further divine influence and even of conversion. Is it not, say they, an effect of what God has done, and will not the Divine Being be pleased with the effects of his own influence upon the heart? But the position, that God must needs be pleased with all the consequences which result from his power as exerted upon free agents, is most fallacious and absurd. Such agents always have the power of perverting his blessings, so that what God does for their good they may turn to evil. God upholds all the faculties of free agency, but is he of course, pleased with all the ways in which they are exercised? God sends mercies, but their tendency when perverted is to harden the heart. Is God therefore pleased with hardness of heart? He sends judgments, but misimproved they produce death. Is God pleased with death, because it is a consequence of an impression which he, by his providence, has made upon the heart? God exhibits instruction in his word and ordinances, and these often become a savour of death unto death. Has God any pleasure in the death, of him that dieth because it is accelerated and rendered more dreadful by what he has done? God by his Spirit convinces of sin. But this conviction of his Spirit, like the common light of his word, may be resisted and abused, and it is abused and resisted until the sinner yields to the energy of divine truth. Is God then, when he has awakened a sinner, pleased with his fears and terrors while he continues to rebel, notwithstanding his increased light and obligation. It might as well be inisted that he is pleased with the fers and the wailings which roll the tide of lamentation and woe through eternity. Conviction of sin, in its highest degree and most terrific consequences, will reign in hell forever; but God will see nothing in that dark world but objects of abhorrence. Salutary and indispensable as the conviction of the Spirit may be, however benevolent his design and pure his influence, this inestimable price to get wisdom may be in "the hands of a fool who has no heart to it" and who by his perverseness will make it, as well as the preaching of the word, a savour of death unto death. And we are to trace in the remaining part of this discourse, the melancholy process by which one of heaven's greatest gifts is made to accelerate the work of death. 1. It increases the extent and clearness of knowledge. This is especially the fact with respect to the spirituality of obedience or the claims of God in all his requirements upon the heart, and the impossiblity of rendering to God any service which he can accept, unattended in some form or other by that love which is the fulfilling of the law and the spring of every christian grace and evangelical duty. 2. This increased knowledge of the nature and extent of duty, causes the disclosure of a corresponding extent of guilt. By the law is the knowledge of sin. While the sinner reads and understands the letter only of the law, he feels as if he had only sinful actions to answer for-duties not done, or sins committed, as also that to balance these defects he has many good deeds upon record; but when the commandment of God brings its claims home to his mind and heart, sin revives, and he sees himself to have done nothing according to the true meaning and intent of the law. What things were gain to him, are now counted loss. The crime of spiritual disobedience which has attended every action of his life, sinks him in debt, where he verily thought he was forming a balance of good deeds in his favour. 3. This same illumination of the Spirit brings into view more clearly, and presses on the heart more powerfully, the motives to obedience. It sets before the sinner dangers of which he little thought, and which he felt still less; life far exhausted with all its uncertainties of continuance; God angry with the wicked every day, and determined by no means to clear the guilty; Christ pleading in vain, and the strivings of the Spirit resisted, or compensated with tears, and the repetition of resolutions unfulfilled; the soul awaking to its own majestic importance, still dying with the wounds of sin and still left to die without a single application to the Great Physician; and the Spirit, the sinner's last hope, warning him that he will not al ways strive. In this manner, fear literally comes upon him as desolation, and distress and anguish take hold on him. In this condition, Jesus, following the footsteps of the law, which has slain the sinner, comes to raise him and bind up his wounds. In accents of mercy, he sends over the wide extended field of groans and desolation, the invitation, "look unto me and be saved; come unto me and find rest. Love me for mine excellence, so much as to intrust your soul in my hand, and you shall not perish, but I will raise you up at the last day; for one exercise of true love I will save you from hell, I will give you heaven." And now is it strange that the sorrow of the sinner in this condition, who will not love, and will not repent, should work death? Does God require much of him to whom much is given? and to whom has He given more than to the sinner, rescued by his Spirit from stupidity and ignorance, made to see, with the beams of noon-day, his duty and his guilt, his danger and his remedy? And with all the terrours of the Lord arrayed against him, and all the mercies of the Lord in melting concert multiplying their expostulations and entreaties, may he still rebel and reject Christ, and resist the Spirit, and go back to stupidity, and his sorrow not work death? We do not say that the death will inevitably be eternal-that none who have once been awakened, and refused to believe in Christ, will never be awakened again; but from the word of God, and from experience, we are authorized to state the following as among the common effects of the stifled and unproductive efforts of the Spirit : 1. Apathy; a state of stupidity more profound and unfeeling than existed before. This is in part the necessary result of withdrawing the high mental excitement which had been produced by divine illumination. When this light is extinguished, or withdrawn, and former darkness returns, the soul, exhausted by its protracted wakefulness and exertions, falls back upon a long night of insensibility. Hence at the close of a powerful revival of religion, I should as soon go into the grave-yard with the expectation of raising the dead, as to preach in such a place, with the expectation of awakening those who had been awakened, and had lost their convictions. Another cause doubtless of the same unfeeling state is, that God has left them; the Spirit has let them alone, and a stone without power applied, will not be more motionless, than the heart of man abandoned to itself. 2. Another not unfrequent effect of the unsanctified sorrow produced by conviction of sin, is a settled hatred of the truth, and of all that love the truth. This will show itself by an untired propensity to cavil at the doctrines of the bible, which shall designate emphatically who it is that belong to the denomination of murmurers and complainers, who cannot inherit the kingdom of God. It will show itself also by a sleepless vigilance to watch for the haltings of the people of God, by a joy surpassing the joy of harvest when they fall, and in a trumpet tongue, never weary in giving publicity to the reproach which by such causes is brought upon Christ. Were I to select from the ranks of heresy, the most bitter opponents of the doctrines of the cross, or of the ministry of reconciliation, or to collect specimens of this kind from the printed page, or the daily record of invective which is kept in the book of God, I should probably find in every instance that the authors of this unrivalled obloquy are those who were once enlightened by the Spirit, so far as to see and feel their sin and their danger, and who with much trembling and importunity had once demanded what shall we do to be saved. 3. Another not uncommon effect of such convictions, is the belief of errour. Having trembled under the requirements of truth, and finding no rest, and having been too proud to submit, and fully set to do evil, they begin to fear that if these things are so, they shall never be saved, and as a despe rate alternative, begin to look around to see if there be not some other way of escaping the damnation of hell. In this condition, every voice which will cry peace is welcome, and is listened to with more than candour. The disciple enters the school of errour, desirous of believing another gospel. He rushes into it when he finds such a place of resort, with hopes raised to importunity, and he cries out as he approaches his master, 'Prophesy unto me smooth things, for all whom I have heard, I hate, because they never prophesy good concerning me, but evil. Now it makes but little difference who is the teacher, or what he teaches, provided he does not demand those affections of the heart which he will not give to God, and does not terrify him by the alternative, repentance or perdition. He will bear with zeal in the propagation of errour, which he would have scoffed at had it been displayed in the cause of truth; and he will patiently hear unanimated and uninteresting discourses, which from orthodox lips had been pronounced intolerable. He will give, and urge others to give upon a scale of liberality for the propagation of errour, although the same liberality manifested for the extension of truth, and the salvation of the world, would have filled him with apprehensions, and caused predictions that society would be reduced to bankruptcy by the intolerable drain. Those to whom God sends 'strong delusion that they might believe a lie,' are usually those who have once known the truth, by the illumination of the Spirit, and having no pleasure in it, but preferring the dictates of unrighteousness, have earnestly desired to disbelieve the truth, and to believe falsehood. Not a few of this description the sorrow of the world has made, and as revivals of religion multiply, will produce; for the greater the blessing perverted, and the obligation violated, the greater is both the calamity and the crime. 4. Another effect of the sorrow of the world in conviction of sin, is one which may not be apparent in change of character. It is the effect it has on the divine mind and determination with respect to ever granting the influence of the Spirit to awaken and to convert the soul. It has been taken for granted that the abuse offered to the Holy Spirit by the sinner's resistance, has no influence on the purpose of God to save or abandon, but it is a conclusion formed according to that which man's wisdom teacheth,' and not according to that which the Holy Ghost teacheth.' How often does God speak hypothetically of what he should have done, if sinners had done differently. "Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways, I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries." Some who have resisted the influences of the Spirit, may still remain in a degree solicitous respecting their spiritual condition, and all their lifetime, through fear of death, be subject to bondage, and yet never come from this bondage into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. Their education, their conscience, their situation in life, may render them attentive and respectful to religion, after the things which belong to their peace are hid from their eyes. Their sorrow has worked death by producing the determination, "they shall not enter into my rest.” Let those then who are young awake to their duty and their interest, and embrace without delay the religion of Jesus Christ. You are entering a road where temptations and dangers await you, and where, if you travel prosperously many days, the days of darkness will still be many. The loss of property, the loss of friends, the loss of health, the calumny of enemies, and the treachery of pretended friends, may come at an hour when you think not. Multitudes have been cast down by these adversities. The road before you is marked by the monuments of ruin, is whitened by the bones of those who have perished by the way. |