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that the church hath not one now, but three, to contend against ;-and also to shew how nothing availeth to keep her head above the water, and her heart full of confidence, but that instant voice of the Lord's coming, put forth under this vial. These subjects I intend to handle, I say, in many discourses, every Sabbath evening, in that church where the Lord hath required me to be a watchman; and thus I would, by his grace, shew my thankfulness to his goodness for having given us a secure place in the midst of this city, which I regard as one of the few unhumbled bulwarks of Zion. For, say what they please, brethren, it is impossible to handle these mysteries in the brief compass of a single discourse.

Now, be it known unto you, that this same Continental Society, which I am glad to serve, hath undertaken the help of the church of Christ upon the continent, distressed and all but buried under the combination and the conflict of these three spirits of darkness. They are attempting to throw succours into the besieged and famished city of our God. They are attempting to send messengers of God to the holy families which, like Lot, are almost suffocated with the abominations, and maddened with the blasphemies of the multitude. It is a godly errand, a wise and godly errand it is in all verity, to which we have addressed ourselves. Some call us rash and imprudent, while others blaspheme us as troublers of the peace, and raisers of insurrection, and undesigning enemies of those whom we would ignorantly succour. Nevertheless, believing that the time is short, and the work of destruction just about to begin; seeing the

storm all blackening, and the tempest's wing ruffling the dark waters, and swirling round the turbulent dust; hearing the underground growlings of the earth, and seeing the fiery rage of the heavens above, the glaring redness of the sun, and the flaring gleams of the upper lightnings, the burstings out of the volcanic fires, and amongst men witnessing the distraction of the rulers, and the madness of the people, and the silent, dreary, and gloomy expectation of all; what can we do but haste and hurry forward, plunge wrecklessly onward, and carry through the lands the pledge of salvation; saying, Haste ye, haste ye, haste ye! escape for your lives: out, out of the city; look not back; flee, flee: every man save his own soul. Come, come into the ark, ere the door be barred for ever. The deluge is descending, the mountain tops are wet with the torrents poured down from the opened windows of heaven, and the storehouses of the deep beneath are rushing through their caverns up to the realms of day: haste ye, haste ye, enter into your chambers for safety until the day of terrible wrath be overpast: hide ye, oh hide ye in the salvation of the wings of Jesus, until the seventh blast be blown, and the storm of the terrible ones be laid for ever, until the great statue of fearful oppression be ground into powder, and the powder carried away and scattered like the dust of the summer threshing floor. This is our work, this is our heraldry, this is our vocation: and will ye not help us, my dearly beloved brethren? or, rather, will ye not help the Lord, and the people of the Lord? Ye will, and the Lord will help you also. My beloved in Christ Jesus, ye will not only entertain the angels who

are gone forth to look on Sodom, and help them with a welcome on the way; but Abraham-like, seeing ye are the children of faithful Abraham, ye will intercede with the Lord, for the fifty, the forty and five, the thirty, the twenty, the ten, the five who may be in the city. We ask the refreshment of a kid dressed out of your fold, of a

cake roasted in the ashes, to be the welcome of the messengers whom we send into this Sodom of iniquity; and we ask your prayers and intercessions on account of the righteous kinsfolk in Christ Jesus who may be therein, that they may be delivered out of it with haste; with haste, before the Lord come down with any stroke of his judgment. Oh! my brethren, help, help us; for we are faint the archers have shot at us from the wall; they have sore grieved and galled us. yet we are not overcome; only we seek to be cherished of you this night upon our way, and to be holpen by the love and countenance of every one of you. And, in addition to the discourses which we have held with you, opening to you all these mysteries, we will now pray for the Lord to bless you with a share in that great deliverance with which he will deliver his people.

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DISCOURSE III.

(PREACHED UPON THE OCCASION OF THE GREAT PUBLIC DIS

TRESS WHICH CAME UPON THE PEOPLE AFTER THE FAILURE OF THE BANKS IN THE YEAR 1826, WHEN A PUBLIC COLLECTION WAS MADE IN THE CALEDONIAN

THEIR ASSISTANCE.)

CHURCH FOR

GOD'S CONTROVERSY WITH THE LAND.

JAMES V. 1-7.

Your riches are

Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the labourers which have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you. Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord.

It is now more than half a year, dearly beloved brethren, since the judgment, which now lieth

heavy upon the land, and for the removal of which we have this day undertaken to afflict our souls before the Lord, descended with terrible violence upon the kine or fatlings of Bashan; that is, the heads and leaders, and capital offenders in the commercial system; in which this country hath built its national confidence, and from which broken reed, the Lord, if it were possible, doth desire to remove the confidence of the nation unto himself. And when the first violence of the blow descended like an earthquake, your politicians and statesmen, and the thousand pens who uphold ungodliness, making traffic of the wits of the people, pronounced that it was but a squal in the heavens, such as were ever occurring, which would soon expend its strength, and leave the air more. salubrious, and the earth more fresh and fragrant, and the spirits of men more cheerful and happy than before. And when, from this place, which they would fain put to silence, that it should not presume to speak of God's national dispensations, for the sake of which it was appointed to utter truth, as well as for the private and the personal wellbeing of men, I dared to declare that the hand of God was to be seen manifested in the suddenness, and terror, and wide-spread calamity of the visitation, and that it behoved us to bumble ourselves for our own sins and the sins of the people, and to weep before the Lord, I know not what angry and venomous tongues were lifted up, as if I had an evil design against the country and the common weal, which I most zealously affect in desiring to restore to them the ark of their salvation, which is the fear of the living and true God. But, behold what hath come to pass, to the con

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