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rable companions of temperance disease and despair the inevitable consequences of strong drink and dalliance? Do you wish to see a new economy take place, in which it should be impossible for virtue to suffer or for vice to prosper?- Sanctified blasphemers! be content: Your just remonstrances are heard; you shall presently be friends with Providence: The God of judgment comes; he is at hand: He comes to establish the everlasting covenant of righteousness to silence all complaint vindicate his ways to man-to evince his justice in your destruction to inflict on you a death of which the agonies shall never end." All this reproach and all this threatening is conveyed with the greatest force, because with the greatest brevity, in those ironical expressions of the prophet, "The Lord, whom ye seek; the Messenger of the Covenant, whom ye delight in." But although these expressions are ironical, they contain a positive character of the person to come; for the true sense of irony is always rendered by the contrary of that which it seems to affirm: The Lord and Messenger whom infidels are ironically said to seek

and to delight in is the Lord whom they do not seek, the Messenger in whom they cannot take delight the Lord who will visit those who seek him not, the Messenger in whom they who have not sought the Lord can take no delight, because he is the messenger of vengeance.

upon

This then is another character of the person to come, - that he is to execute God's final vengeance on the wicked. But as this may seem a character of the office rather than of the person, it leads me to treat of what was the second article in my original division of the subject, the particulars of the business which the person announced in the text is said to come. There remains, besides, the application of every article of this remarkable prophecy to Jesus of Nazareth. These important disquisitions we must still postpone; that no injustice may be done to this great argument, on your part or on mine, on mine, by a superficial and precipitate discussion of any branch of it; on yours, by a languid and uninterested attention.

SERMON XXXII.

MALACHI, iii. 1, 2.

And the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the Messenger of the Covenant, whom ye delight in: Behold He shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth?

We have already considered the several characters by which the Messiah is described in this text of the prophet. He is the Lord of the temple at Jerusalem: He is, besides, the Messenger of that everlasting covenant of which the establishment is so explicitly foretold by the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel He is also the Lord whom the profane seek not-the Messenger in whom they delight not, that is, he is the appointed

judge of man, who will execute God's final vengeance on the wicked. We are now to consider the particulars of the business on which the person bearing these characters is to come.

It may seem that the text leaves it pretty much undetermined what the particular business is to be; intimating only in general terms that something very terrible will be the consequence of the Messiah's arrival: "But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth?" You will not wonder that the appearance of that "Sun of Righteousness, who hath arisen with healing on his wings," should here be spoken of in terms of dread and apprehension, if you bear in remembrance what I told you in my last discourse, that the prophet is speaking to the profane and atheistical to those who had nothing to hope from the mercy of God, and every thing to fear from his justice. To these persons the year of the redemption of Israel is to be the year of the vengeance of our God. The punishment of these is not less a branch of the Messiah's office than the

deliverance of the penitent and contrite sinner: They make a part of that power of the serpent which the seed of the woman is to extinguish. But the prophet opens the meaning of this threatening question in the words that immediately follow it; and which, if you consult your Bibles, you will find to be these: "For he is like a refiner's fire and a fuller's soap: And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: And he shall purify the sons of Levi, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. And I will come near to you to judgment; and will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, saith the Lord of Hosts." Here you see the Messiah's business described in various branches; which are reducible, however, to these, the final judgment, when the wicked shall be destroyed; a previous trial or experiment of the different tempers and dispositions of men, in order to that judgment; and something to be