Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

ings to give, of a still higher nature. Among them this is one, of supreme moment; that the Sabbath is the great mean of preserving in the world the Knowledge, and the Worship, of the one living and true God. Wherever the Sabbath is not, there is no worship, no religion. Man forgets God; and God forsakes man. The moral world becomes a desert, where life never springs, and beauty never smiles. The beams of the Sun of Righteousness never dawn upon the miserable waste; the rains of heaven never descend. Putrid with sin, and shrunk with ignorance, the soul of man loses its rational character; and prostrates itself before devils, men, beasts, and reptiles, insects, stocks, and stones. To these man offers his prayers, his praises and his victims; to these, he sacrifices his children; and to these, he immolates the purity and honour of his wife. A brutal worshipper of a brutal God, he hopes for protection and blessing from the assumption of every folly, and the perpetration of every crime.

If his mind becomes enlightened by science, and these absurdities, as they sometimes may, become too gross and too naked to be received by him; he becomes an infidel, a sceptic, an atheist. The absurdity, here, is not indeed less, but greater. The only material difference is, that it is less palpable, less exposed to vulgar eyes, less susceptible of ridicule. The former is the madness of a blockhead; the latter of a man of learning: that the folly of the clown; this of the man of fashion. In this case, the votary wanders through all the labyrinths of subtile disquisition; proves right to be wrong, and wrong to be right; and demonstrates, that there is nothing either right or wrong. Freed from these incumbrances, men of this character cast their eyes towards the enjoyments of this world, and covet their neighbour's house, and their neighbour's wife; his man-servant, and his maid-servant; his ox, and his ass; and every thing that is their neighbour's. Nothing, now, intervenes between themselves and the objects coveted, but the apprehension of resistance, and the dread of punishment. Elevate them to power, and the Sabbath is changed into the decade, and the house of God into a stable; the Bible is paraded through the streets on an ass, and consumed upon a bonfire; immortal existence is blotted out of the divine kingdom; the Reedeemer is postponed to a murderer; and the Creator to a prostitute, styled the Goddess of Reason. The end of this progress might be easily foreseen. Legalized plunder, legislative butchery, the prostitution of a kingdom, fields drenched in human blood, and cities burnt by human incendiaries, fill up the tremendous measure of iniquity; bewildering the gazing world with astonishment; awaken the shouts of fiends; and cover heaven itself with a robe of sackcloth.

But for the Sabbath, this assembly had now been prostrate before the stock of a tree, or sitting round the circle of a pawaw; or, frantic with rage and frenzy, had been roaming the mountains in

honour of Bacchus; or drowning with shouts and screams the cries of a human victim, offered up to appease the wrath of an imaginary Deity.

But thanks be to God for this unspeakable gift! The Sabbath, according to his abundant mercy, returns, at the close of every week, to shine upon us with its peaceful and benevolent beams. At the close of every week, with a still, small voice it summons us to the house of God. Here, we meet, and find, and know, and serve, our glorious and blessed Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Here, on the mercy-seat, he sits enthroned, to hear our complaints and petitions, to receive our praises, to accept our repentance, and to forgive our sins for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here, he makes known his pleasure and our duty. Here, he promises to those, who obey, divine and eternal rewards; and threatens those, who disobey, with terrible and never-ending punishments. Seen every week in these awful and amiable characters, God cannot be unknown nor forgotten. Accordingly, throughout the ages of Christianity, his presence and agency are understood every where, and by every person, who frequents the house of God. The little child is as familiarly acquainted with them, as the man of grey hairs; the peasant, as the monarch. All, in this sense, know God, from the least to the greatest; and there is no occasion for a man to say to his neighbour, Know the Lord.

Intimately connected with this vast and interesting subject, and in an important sense the effect of the Sabbath only, is the Attainment of holiness and salvation.

Man, an apostate, guilty and condemned, infinitely needs a renovation of his character, a reversal of his sentence, an escape from his punishment, and a reinstatement in the glorious privileges from which he has fallen. To accomplish these inestimable and benevolent ends, God, according to the language of the text, has hallowed, and blessed, the Sabbath. Through every age, and through every land, where the Sabbath has been kept holy unto the Lord, this blessing has, regularly, and uninterruptedly, descended. There, the glad tidings of salvation have been published, and received. There, men have sought, and found, JEHOVAH, their God; repented of their sins; believed on the Lord Jesus Christ; renewed their allegiance to their rightful Sovereign; obtained the pardon of their sins, and the justification of their souls; triumphed over death and the grave; ascended to heaven; and begun the possession of everlasting joy. Wherever even two or three have met together in the name of Christ, there he has been in the midst of them, and blessed them with his peculiar blessing. This holy, heavenly season has regularly opened the correspondence between this miserable world, and the world of life and glory, and preserv ed the connexion between God and men. To it, earth owes its chief blessings; and heaven no small part of its inhabitants, and of its unfading joys.

But where mankind have forsaken the assembling of themselves together, as the manner of some is, all these blessings have ceased. The fruitful land has been converted into marshes, and miry places, which could not be healed, and were therefore given to salt. In such places, the world, and sin, and Satan, take entire possession of the heart, and leave no room for God. All the thoughts and desires are the offspring of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Like Ahab, men sell themselves, to work wickedness: like Jeroboam, they sin, and make all around them to sin. There, no prayers ascend to heaven; no voice of mercy is heard from that happy world, inviting sinners to faith and repentance in the Lord Jesus Christ. God is neither sought, nor found. None ask for mercy; and none receive it. None knock at the door of life; and to none is it opened. All enter into the broad and crooked road, and go down to the chambers of death; while God, with an awful voice, proclaims, concerning them, Ephraim is joined to Idols: let him alone.

Pause now, for a moment, and recollect the number, the greatness, the glory, of these Ends; and tell me if the Institution, which unites and accomplishes them all, in perfect harmony, is not supremely wise, and worthy of God. How easily does it accomplish them; how perfectly; how wonderfully! How happy is the frequent, convenient, necessary return of this holy day! After how desirable intervals; with what useful regularity; with what sweet serenity! How necessary is it to the sinner, to call him off from the world, from stupidity, from sottishness! How necessary to awaken his attention to God, to holiness, and to heaven; to engage his thoughts on spiritual and divine objects; to begin his repentance, faith, and love; and to place his feet in the path, which leads to immortal life! How necessary to the saint, to rouse him from sloth; to recall him from sin; to remind him of his duty; to increase his faith and holiness, and to help him forward in his journey towards heaven! How necessary to Adam in his innocence; how infinitely necessary to all his ruined offspring! In a word, how plainly has the Sabbath been blessed, as well as hallowed! blessed, from the beginning to the present time; blessed, in a multitude of particulars; blessed, in every land, where it has been known, with the immediate and peculiar favour of God, with the nearest resemblance to the blessings of immortality!

2. The mind of a good man cannot fail, also, to be deeply affected with the Solemnity of this Institution.

When God had ended the glorious work of Creation, he rested the seventh day from all the work, which he had made. The creation was now fresh from the forming hand of JEHOVAH. The great Architect had builded his stories in the heaven; had numbered the Stars, and called them all by their names; had appointed the moon for seasons, and caused the sun to know his going down. He had filled the world with beauty and fragrance, with glory and grand

eur, with life and immortality. In the full view of this transporting, this amazing scene; in the strong apprehension of the infinite perfections, which it unfolded; the Morning Stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy: while the Author of all things beheld the works, which his hands had made, and pronounced them very good. The praise, begun by Angels, our first parents reiterated, on the first morning of their existence; and made their delightful residence vocal with hymns to their Creator. The first employment of Paradise, the first work done by man, was the worship of God. Thus the dawn of human existence was opened by the same divine employment, which will unceasingly occupy the everlasting day of heaven. When the command to remember this day was given, there were, in the morning, thunders, and lightnings; and a thick cloud, upon Mount Sinai, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke; because the Lord descended upon it in fire, and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole Mount quaked greatly. In the midst of this amazing grandeur, in the midst of these awful terrors, God, with his own voice, spoke this command, and wrote it with his own finger. With this example, and with these solemnities, was one day in seven consecrated to JEHOVAH.

When the new Creation was finished, the Creation of holiness in the soul of man, the creation of a Church, comprising immense multitudes of immortal minds, as a holy and eternal kingdom unto God; Christ arose from the dead to endless life and glory, became the first fruits of them that slept, and their forerunner into the heavens. On this divine occasion, the same exalted beings; who sang together, when the heavens and the earth were made, and pro claimed glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will towards men, when the Saviour of the world was born; now renewed their songs, and entered with Christ into the highest heavens, with all the pomp and splendour which invested Sinai, at the promulgation of the law.

On this day the Spirit of grace and truth descended upon the Apostles of our Lord and Saviour; baptized them with fire; endu ed them with inspiration, the gift of tongues, and the spirit of prophecy; gave them to understand the Gospel in its glorious mysteries; and enabled them, with wonderful miracles, to prove its divine origin, and thus to erect the spiritual kingdom of God in the world.

All these examples, the most august, the most amazing, which the universe ever beheld, leave their whole weight, their infinite authority, upon this institution. Every Christian, therefore, while he keeps the Sabbath holy unto God, ought, in order to quicken himself in his duty, to remember, that on this sacred day God rested; that his Redeemer rested; that the Spirit of Grace descended; and that angels repeatedly united together in enraptured VOL. III.

36

praise. Nor ought he, in any wise, to forget that no institution can plead so many, and so great things, done to solemnize and consecrate it as holy unto God, and as indispensably binding upon

man.

3. We learn from the observations already made, with what emotions the Sabbath ought to be regarded by us.

We assemble in the house of God, to glorify him in the religious worship which he has appointed; to seek the everlasting life of our own souls; to obtain and increase holiness in our hearts; to remember, admire, and celebrate, the wonderful works of the old and new creations, and the glorious perfections of the Creator and Redeemer. What emotions ought we to feel while engaged in this divine employment? Such, unquestionably, as Angels experienced, when these works were done, and these perfections were displayed.

Particularly, the Sabbath demands of all men profound Reverence and solemn Awe. All the things which have been mentioned are supremely great, sublime, and wonderful. The most awful of all beings is brought near to our hearts, and presents himself before our eyes, in manifestations of the most majestic and astonishing nature. Had we been present at the work of creation, and heard the awful command which brought into being the immense mass of original elements: had we seen the light at the bidding of the great Workman, disclose, and involve the formless confusion; the sea and the dry land separate; the grass, the herbs, and the trees, instantaneously arise, and clothe the earth in one universal robe of life and beauty; the sun, the moon, and the stars lighted up in the heavens; the various animals filling the world with living beings; and man the lord, the crown, and the glory of the whole, formed a Fational and immortal being, to understand, enjoy, and celebrate, the divine work: could we have failed to experience the most profound awe, amid this complication of infinite wonders, and to glorify the great Author of them with that fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom?

Had we again been present at the Crucifixion of our divine Redeemer, and beheld the earth tremble, the rocks rend, the veil of the temple part asunder, the graves open, the saints arise, and the sun hide his face in darkness; had we accompanied his body to the tomb, and watched the descent of the Angel, the convulsions of the second earthquake, the lightnings which streamed from his countenance, and the swooning of the guards who kept the sepulchre; had we seen our Lord resume his life, come forth from the grave to his doubting, trembling disciples; had we seen him rise from the earth, enter the bosom of the cloud of glory, and, with a solemn and magnificent progress, ascend to the heavens; must not the same awful emotions have been instinctively

renewed?

« AnteriorContinuar »