SERMON XXIX.

ON THE LOVE OF OUR COUNTRY.

1798.

PSALM XXXVii. VERSES 5 and 6. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget her cunning; if I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave. to the roof of my mouth; yea, if I prefer not Jerusalem in my mirth.

THE subject to which I mean to apply this passage from the Psalmist, is the love of our country-a duty not only incumbent upon every member of society, but congenial to the natural feelings of man, wherever chance has given him birth,

from the frozen regions of Iceland to the temperate climate we ourselves inhabit.

There is a strain of pathetic simplicity, truly characteristic of genuine sorrow, running through the whole of this animated composition; it describes the miseries of the Jews, during their long captivity, and though ignorantly supposed to have been written by King David, who died four hundred years before the event it records took place, was certainly the composition of one of the Jews after his return from Babylon, or rather the natural effusion of grief bursting forth from a heart oppressed with sorrow; for, whoever has studied human nature must have observed, that those who are describing the calamities of other people, are apt to launch out into a redundancy of expression and unnecessary flow of words, but true sorrow expresses itself in a language the most simple and pathetic.

To this subject, important at all times, but at this awful crisis particularly interesting, let me entreat the attention of all who hear me; and while he bestows a sigh of pity at the detail of sorrows so long past, let every man lay it to his own heart, and seriously consider how soon the sufferings of this captive tribe, their slavery, their oppression, and their lamentation may be his own--" By the waters of Ba"bylon," says the mourner, we sat "down and wept, when we remembered "thee, O! Sion." Figure to yourselves, my brethren, for you are concerned in the description-figure to yourselves the remnants of a once flourishing nation, sitting disconsolate by the banks of the Euphrates, (augmenting it with their tears) every man bemoaning his own private sufferings, the loss of something dear to him, but all uniting in one common calamity, the destruction of their country; the recollection of this affliction too, embittered

by reflecting on their own imprudence, how often they had slighted the warnings of God by his prophets, and had provoked the anger of the Almighty by their impieties; how frequently they had mocked at his threatenings, and rejected his gentlest admonitions! "Obey my voice," said he," and I will be your God, and ye "shall be my people. I have sent unto 66 you all my servants, the Prophets, daily ❝ rising up early and sending them; yet "they hearkened not unto me, nor in"clined their ear, but hardened their "neck; they did worse than their fa"thers."—"Oh! that my people would ❝ have hearkened unto me! for if Israel "had walked in my ways, I should soon "have put down their enemies, and "tamed my hand against their adver"saries.""By the waters of Babylon "we sat down and wept, when we re"membered thee, O Sion!" When it was too late to remedy the evils we had

brought upon thee when we had nothing left but unavailing tears to bestow upon the memory of thy former greatness, then we sat down and wept.

Thus it may happen to us, this may be our lot. When we have called down the wrath of God upon our iniquities, when we have provoked him to withdraw his protection, when we have rashly cast from us the blessings we have hitherto enjoyed; nay, I will go farther, when we have invited an enemy to take possession of our native land, then shall we sit down and weep-weep, for nothing more remains but to weep for the comforts we have lost, for the days that are past of affluence and prosperity, for the liberty we have wantonly bartered for slavery under a foreign yoke.

But the lamentation of the Psalmist applies to our situation with more force,