place is Jerufalem. Thus faith the Lord. But what faith political expediency? She whispers in the ear of Jehu, as fhe whifpered to Jeroboam; If this people go up to do facrifice in the houfe of the Lord at Ferufalem; then shall the heart of this people turn again, and the kingdom shall return to the boufe of David (q). The choice of the king is at once decided. It is too much for you, he proclaims to the people, to go up to Jerufalem. Behold thy gods, O Ifrael, the golden calves of Bethel and Dan, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.. He who has recently been a pretended worshipper of Baal, now becomes a real worshipper of the golden calves. He who has been exalted to fovereign power for the express purpose of annihilating idolaters, converts his authority and his example into inftruments of upholding and perpetuating idolatry among his fubjects. But perhaps this heinous dereliction of God is the crime of a moment, the error of furprise, the delufion of unaccountable yet tranfient timidity; and is clofely followed by bitter contrition, by fignal public and faithful reformation. Vain is every attempt to (4) 1 Kings, xii. 26, 27, extenuate. 1 གས extenuate. The varnish but ferves to bring forth into ftronger prominence the native features of deformity. During a reign of eight-and-twenty years, unmoved by the recollection of antecedent mercies, unappalled by judicial calamities, wherewith in his latter days the Lord cut Ifrael fhort, and delivered the regions beyond Jordan into the hands of the Syrians; the obdurate monarch perfeveringly bows down with his people before the images erected in violation of the commandment of God, before the altars reared as antagonists and fupplanters of His temple. Behold Jehu's Zeal for the Lord. To that facred principle he is a ftranger. Hypocritically affuming the garb of the fervant of Jehovah, he is the flave of selfishness and ambition. It is thus that, by examining the character of Jehu, we may be taught completely to understand, and duly to estimate, the virtue of zeal; a virtue which that character has illuftrated in one point by fictitious resemblance, in many others by oppofition and contraft. The subject may not improperly be closed with fome reflections, partly addreffed to perfons who underrate the importance of religious zeal; and partly to those who, highly valuing the abstract. principle, imperfectly guard it, or apply it amifs. I. Let men of the former defcription bear with me while I afk; what is the fcriptural statement of the eftimation in which Zeal is held in the eyes of God? The Scriptures anfwer the queftion by precept and by example: and in each mode of reply their answer is unequivocal. It is good, pronounces St. Paul, to be zealously. affected always in a good thing (r). When the lukewarmnefs of the Laodiceans is ftigmatized with marked averfion by our Lord; what injunction is fubjoined? Be zealous, and repent (s). When St. Paul delineates the peculiar people for whom Jefus Chrift gave himself a facrifice; how does he characterise them? As zealous of good works (t). When he is anxious to describe his brethren the Jews in the most favourable terms confiftent with truth; what is his teftimony? I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not accord (r) Gal. iv. 18. (s) Rev. iii. 19. 1 ing to knowledge (u). When Ifaiah prophetically pictures the Son of God advancing as the destroyer of his enemies, as an interceffor and a Saviour for man; is it not among the most confpicuous parts of the reprefentation, that he is clad with zeal as a cloke; arrayed with zeal as a vefture enfolding his breaft-plate of righteousness and his garments of vengeance (w)? When the disciples beheld him regardless of the malice of the Jews, and refolutely bent on the immediate purification of the temple; did they call to mind no fimilar description from the pen of another prophet? They remembered that it was written; the zeal of thine Houfe bath eaten me up (x). Why was the priesthood rendered perpetual in the family of Phinehas? The Lord Spake unto Mofes, faying; Phinehas bath turned away my wrath from the children of Ifrael, while he was zealous for my fake among them. Wherefore fay, Behold I give unto him my covenant of Peace. And he fhall have it, and bis feed after him, even the covenant of an everlasting priesthood, because he was zealous for his God, and made an atonement for (w) Ifaiah, lix. 17. (u) Rom. x. 2. the the children of Ifrael (y). What is the dif tinctive characteristic of Noah, the preacher of righteoufnefs (x), of Abraham, of Mofes, of Samuel, of Elijah, of Daniel, of Shadrach, of Meshech, of Abednego, of other eminent fervants of the Most High ho noured in the facred records by fpecial tokens of His approbation? Zeal for the Lord; zeal evidencing itself by faith, by obedience, by holy fortitude, by strenuous exertions for the glory of God. Is not zeal extolled in Holy Writ as powerfully efficacious in exciting the languid virtue of thofe who behold it? Your zeal, affirms the Apostle to the Corinthians, bath provoked very many (a) to imitation. When the Old Teftament and the New, when the Apostles and their Divine Mafter, pronounce zeal to be acceptable in the fight of God, a badge of religious excellence, an imitation of Christ, the duty and the characteristic of the fervant of heaven: on what ground compatible with revelation, do you venture to regard it with averfion or with indifference? When in friendship, in patriotism, in conjugal, parental, filial, fraternal rela (y) Numbers, xXV. 10—13, (a) 2 Cor. ix. 2.. (z) 2 Pet. ii. 5.. |