SERMON IX.

2 CORINTHIANS v. 11.

KNOWING THEREFORE THE TERROR OF THE LORD, WE PERSUADE MEN.

THE Bible, it has been well observed, is calculated for impression, beyond all other books in the world. 1 There is no book so suited to arrest the attention, to convince the judgment, to seize the imagination, to affect the heart, to alarm the fears, to excite the hopes, to console the sorrows, and to stimulate the exertions of mankind. It powerfully addresses itself to all the faculties and feelings of our minds, and leaves no method untried by which it may promote our salvation. At the same time, the air and spirit of truth so pervade every part of it, that there is no man who is not made to feel that he is acting wrong and unwisely, when he disregards its admonitions, or transgresses its commands. It ever approves

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1 Bishop Porteus.

itself to "the conscience," however the heart may fight against it.

In some of its sentences we discover at once an incomparable force and energy. A single word often calls up in our minds a world of reflections,all suited, I will not say to please, but to do us good.

Of this kind is the expression of our text: "the terror of the Lord." It is impossible to set before you all the solemn and awakening thoughts which this term may suggest. "The wrath of a

king," saith Solomon, "is as the messengers of death." And if this be true of an earthly king, what must be "the terror of the Lord?"

knoweth the power of his wrath?"

"Who

I shall endeavour to bring before you some of those exhibitions of "the terror of the Lord,” which may best assist your conceptions of it and then point out the practical use to be made of the consideration, as the Apostle speaks—“ persuading men.'

I. We speak of THE TERROR OF THE LORD." There are various views which may be taken of it, and various subjects to which the expression may be applied. We may justly say, indeed, that we are surrounded by "the terrors," as well as by "the mercies of the Lord." Wherever we turn

our eyes, whether inward into our own breasts, or outward upon the world; whether we look into the histories of past ages, or contemplate the events of present times,-monuments of "the terror of the Lord" present themselves.

It is not only in such tremendous instances as the old world desolated of its inhabitants by the flood, and Sodom and Gomorrah "suffering the vengeance of eternal fire; not only in thousands and ten thousands perishing at once by pestilence, or famine, or earthquake, that "the terror of the Lord" is seen: nor only in a Babylon, a Tyre, or a Jerusalem "swept with the besom of destruction, in pursuance of a known decree of heaven but if it be true, that there never is "evil (or affliction) in a city, and the Lord hath not done it," then do all the wars, all the calamities, all the miseries, that mankind have ever experienced, exhibit to us "the terror of the Lord."

Truly may we say unto God, "Thou, even thou, art to be feared and who may stand in thy sight when once thou art angry!" "My flesh trembleth for fear of thee, and I am afraid of thy judgments!" for the earth hath been always full of wars, calamities, and miseries. History, like the roll of Ezekiel, is "written within and without, with lamentations, and mourning, and woe."

But leaving these more public, and as it may be thought more extraordinary scenes, the ordinary course of things does really, and for that very reason that it is the ordinary course, set forth to the reflecting mind, if possible, in a still stronger light, "the terror of the Lord."

Every hospital, every sick room, every deathbed displays it. What hath become of all the countless millions who have inhabited this globe of earth before us? They are gone, and “ their place knoweth them no more!" Their memory

is perished with them!"

Man, so "curiously wrought," so ' fearfully and wonderfully made," both in his body and his soul,-after continuing here a few days without seeming to answer any end worthy of his creation, -"man dieth, and wasteth away, he giveth up the ghost, and where is he?" "As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down and riseth not again, till the heavens be no more." Upwards of three thousand of us, it is computed, are swept from the earth every hour that passes!" O say unto God, how terrible art thou in thy works!" "Thou turnest man to destruction:" thou sayest, "Return, ye children of men:" and, in consequence, are carried away as with a flood."

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The moral darkness in which God hath suffered

the world to be involved, as the consequence and the punishment of the sins of men, affords another awful exhibition of the terror of his indignation. What a dreary prospect does the world present, immersed, as almost the whole of it was for thousands of years, and as the far greater part of it still is, in ignorance of God and of eternal life, of the duty of man and the way of everlasting peace. To see rational beings created" after the image of God," formed to know him, and serve him, and enjoy his blessing,-to see them worshipping graven images, falling down to the stock of a tree," praying unto it and saying, "Deliver me, for thou art my God:" and, when they framed the idea of deities a little more exalted than these, to find them pourtraying their characters, such as would disgrace the human kind, and worshipping them with rites, the most contemptible, the most cruel, and the most impureis a sight deeply affecting, which constrains us to exclaim with the Prophet, "They feed upon ashes a deceived heart hath turned them aside, that they cannot deliver their soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in our right hand?"

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But this, we are further informed is to be considered as a punishment, as well as an indication of their wickedness. "He hath shut their eyes

that they cannot see, and their heart that they