"And that lord answered the man of God, and said, Now, behold, if the Lord should make windows in heaven, might such a thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof."-2 KINGS, vii. 19.

ONE wise man may deliver a whole city; one good man may be the means of safety to a thousand others. The holy ones are "the salt of the earth," the means of the preservation of the wicked. Without the godly as a conserve, the race would be utterly destroyed. In the city of Samaria there was one righteous man-Elisha, the servant of the Lord. Piety was altogether extinct in the court. The king was a sinner of the blackest dye; his iniquity was glaring and infamous. Jehoram walked in the ways of his father Ahab, and made unto himself false gods. The people of Samaria were fallen like their monarch; they had gone astray from Jehovah; they had forsaken the God of Israel; they remembered not the watchword of Jacob, "The Lord thy God is one God ;" and in wicked idolatry they bowed before the idols of the heathens, and therefore the Lord of Hosts suffered their enemies to oppress them until the curse of Ebal was fulfilled in the streets of Samaria, for "the tender and delicate woman who would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness” had an evil eye to her own children, and devoured her offspring by reason of fierce hunger. (Deuteronomy, xxviii. 56-58.) In this awful extremity the one holy man was the medium of salvation. The one grain of salt preserved the entire city; the one warrior for God was the means of the deliverance of the whole beleaguered multitude. For Elisha's sake, the Lord

sent the promise, that the next day, food, which could not be obtained at any price, should be had at the cheapest possible rate, at the very gates of Samaria. We may picture the joy of the multitude when first the seer uttered this prediction. They knew him to be a prophet of the Lord; he had divine credentials; all his past prophecies had been fulfilled. They knew that he was a man sent of God, and uttering Jehovah's message. Surely the monarch's eyes would glisten with delight, and the emaciated multitude would leap for joy, at the prospect of so speedy a release from famine. "To-morrow," would they shout, "to-morrow our hunger shall be over, and we shall feast to the full !"

However, the lord on whom the king leaned, expressed his disbelief. We hear not that any of the common people, the plebeians, ever did so; but an aristocrat did it. Strange it is, that God has seldom chosen the great men of this world. High places and faith in Christ do seldom agree. This great man said, "Impossible!" and, with an insult to the prophet, he added, "If the Lord should make windows in heaven, might such a thing be?" His sin lay in the fact, that after repeated seals of Elisha's ministry, he yet disbelieved the assurances uttered by the prophet on God's behalf. He had doubtless seen the marvelous defeat of Moab; he had been startled at tidings of the resurrection of the Shunamite's son; he knew that Elisha had revealed Benhadad's secrets and smitten his marauding hosts with blindness; he had seen the bands of Syria decoyed into the heart of Samaria; and he probably knew the story of the widow, whose oil filled all the vessels, and redeemed her sons; at all events, the cure of Naaman was common conversation at court; and yet, in the face of all this accumulated evidence, in the teeth of all these credentials of the prophet's mission, he yet doubted, and insultingly told him that heaven must become an open casement, ere the promise could be performed. Whereupon God pronounced his doom by the mouth of the man who had just now proclaimed the promise, "Thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof." And Providence-which always fulfills prophecy just as the paper takes the stamp of the type-destroyed the man. Trodden down in the streets of Samaria, he per

ished at its gates, beholding the plenty, but tasting not of it. Perhaps his carriage was haughty, and insulting to the people, or he tried to restrain their eager rush; or, as we would say, it might have been by mere accident that he was crushed to death; so that he saw the prophecy fulfilled, but never lived to enjoy it. In his case, seeing was believing, but it was not enjoying.

I shall this morning invite your attention to two thingsthe man's sin and his punishment. Perhaps I shall say but little of this man, since I have detailed the circumstances, but I shall discourse upon the sin of unbelief and the punishment thereof.

1. And first, the sin. His sin was unbelief. He doubted the promise of God. In this particular case unbelief took the form of a doubt of the divine veracity, or a mistrust of God's power. Either he doubted whether God really meant what he said, or whether it was within the range of possibility that God should fulfill his promise. Unbelief hath more phases than the moon, and more colors than the chameleon. Common people say of the devil, that he is seen sometimes in one shape, and sometimes in another. I am sure this is true of Satan's first-born child, unbelief, for its forms are legion. At one time I see unbelief dressed out as an angel of light. It calls itself humility, and it saith, "I would not be presumptuous; I dare not think that God would pardon me; I am too great a sinner." We call that humility, and thank God that our friend is in so good a condition. I do not thank God for any such delusion. It is the devil dressed as an angel of light; it is unbelief after all. At other times we detect unbelief in the shape of a doubt of God's immutability: "The Lord has loved me, but perhaps he will cast me off to-morrow. He helped me yesterday, and under the shadow of his wings I trust; but perhaps I shall receive no help in the next affliction. He may have cast me off; he may be unmindful of his covenant, and forget to be gracious." Sometimes this infidelity is embodied in a doubt of God's power. We see every day new straits; we are involved in a net of difficulties, and we think, "Surely the Lord can not deliver us." We strive to get rid of our burden, and finding that we can not do it, we

think God's arm is as short as ours, and his power as little as human might. A fearful form of unbelief is that doubt which keeps men from coming to Christ; which leads the sinner to distrust the ability of Christ to save him; to doubt the willingness of Jesus to accept so great a transgressor. But the most hideous of all is the traitor, in its true colors, blaspheming God, and madly denying his existence. Infidelity, deism, and atheism, are the ripe fruits of this pernicious tree; they are the most terrific eruptions of the volcano of unbelief. Unbelief hath become of a full stature, when quitting the mask and laying aside disguise, it profanely stalks the earth, uttering the rebellious cry, "No God," striving in vain to shake the throne of the divinity by lifting up its arm against Jehovah, and in its arrogance would

"Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,

Re-judge his justice-be the god of God."

Then truly unbelief has come to its full perfection; and then you see what it really is; for the least unbelief is of the same nature as the greatest.

I am astonished, and I am sure you will be, when I tell you that there are some strange people in the world who do not believe that unbelief is sin. Strange people I must call them, because they are sound in their faith in every other respect; only, to make the articles of their creed consistent, as they imagine, they deny that unbelief is sinful. I remember a young man going into a circle of friends and ministers, who were disputing whether it was a sin in men that they did not believe the gospel. While they were discussing it, he said, "Gentlemen, am I in the presence of Christians? Are you believers in the Bible, or are you not?" They said, "We are Christians, of course." "Then," said he, "does not the Scripture say, 'of sin, because they believed not on me? And is it not the damning sin of sinners, that they do not believe on Christ?"

It could not have thought that persons should be so fool hardy as to venture to assert, that "it is no sin for a sinner not to believe on Christ." I thought that, however far they might wish to push their sentiments, they would not tell a lie

to uphold the truth; and, in my opinion, that is what such men are really doing. Truth is a strong tower, and never requires to be buttressed with error. God's word will stand against all man's devices. I would never invent a sophism to prove that it is no sin on the part of the ungodly not to believe; for I am sure it is, when I am taught in the Scriptures that, "this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light;" and when I read," he that believeth not is condemned already, because he believeth not on the Son of God." I affirm, and the word declares it, unbelief is a sin. Surely, with rational and unprejudiced persons, it can not require any reasoning to prove it. Is it not a sin for a creature to doubt the word of its Maker? Is it not a crime and an insult to the divinity, for me, an atom, a particle of dust, to dare to deny his words? Is it not the very summit of arrogance and extremity of pride, for a son of Adam to say, even in his heart, "God, I doubt thy grace; God, I doubt thy love; God, I doubt thy power?" Oh! sirs, believe me, could you roll all sins into one mass; could you take murder, and blasphemy, and lust, and adultery, and fornication, and every thing that is vile, and unite them all into one vast globe of black corruption, they would not equal even then the sin of unbelief. This is the monarch sin, the quintessence of guilt; the mixture of the venom of all crimes; the dregs of the wine of Gomorrah: it is the A 1 sin; the master-piece of Satan; the chief work of the devil.

I shall attempt this morning, for a little while, to show the extremely evil nature of the sin of unbelief.

And, first, the sin of unbelief will appear to be extremely hideous when we remember that it is the parent of every other iniquity. There is no crime which unbelief will not beget. I think that the fall of man is very much owing to it. It was in this point that the devil tempted Eve. He said to her, "Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden ?" He whispered, and insinuated a doubt, "Yea, hath God said go?" as much as to say, "Are you quite sure he said so?" It was by means of unbelief-that thin part of the wedge-that the other sin entered; curiosity and the rest followed. She touched the fruit, and destruction came into this world.