THE APOSTATE; OR THE FORSAKEN OF GOD. My slumbers---if I slumber---are not sleep, There is a vigil; To look within; and these eyes but close and yet I live, and bear The aspect and the form of breathing man. 125 BY THE REV. JOHN LANGSTON, AUTHOR OF "THE DYING BELIEVER SUPPORTED WITH DYING GRACE." "THE SEPULCHRE," &c. SECOND EDITION. WANTAGE; Berk PRINTED AND SOLD BY JOSEPH LEWIS; SOLD ALSO BY J. MASON, 14, CITY-ROAD, LONDON, THE APOSTATE, &c. UP? 1 SAM. xxviii. 15. AND SAMUEL SAID UNTO SAUL, WHY HAST THOU DISQUIETED ME TO BRING ME AND SAUL ANSWERED, I AM SORE DISTRESSED---FOR GOD IS DEPARTED FROM ME, AND ANSWERETH ME NO MORE; THEREFORE I HAVE CALLED THEE THAT THOU MAYEST MAKE KNOWN UNTO ME WHAT I SHALL DO. PART THE FIRST.-To the venerable apparition of the holy prophet, Saul unbosoms a fearful secret, and proposes a soul-distracting question, "God is departed from me-what shall I do?" SECTION I. The words of the fallen king may be considered as the language of inquiry. For being forsaken of God, and having no friend in whose wisdom, in the disquietude of his soul, he could confide, hope seems to have told a flattering tale, that could Samuel be recalled from the invisible world, the vigour of old friendship would revive; and that while the counsel of the holy seer would extricate him from secular embarrassment, his intercessions would recover celestial benedictions, and that thus all painful forebodings would cease. Bowing before an offended God in prayer, but obtaining no reply, to his recollection happier times recurred, when "the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and gave him another heart; when he prophesied among the prophets; and when all that knew him aforetime," admiring the astonishing change, "said one to another, is Saul also among the prophets?" Bitter remembrance of lost happiness! મંદ Dark spirit what must be The madness of thy Memory !" Is there an individual who does not harbour within his mind the recollection of some incidents of so eventful a nature, that it requires but the shade of an association to bring them forward from their resting place, clear and cloudless as at the moment of their existence? Many there are who in the hours of solitude, might beseen to manifest symptoms of such reminiscences, and who amidst. the whirl of worldly affairs, and the hum and hurry of men, might be seen to start as if visions of things long gone by were again before them, and to shrink within themselves as if the spirits of olden times were passing before their face. Is there a lover of sin who does not frequently live over in imagination his past moments, and who wishes not to do so in reality? Not indeed from the pleasure and satisfaction furnished by the retrospection, but because from the vantage ground of the present, he sees the errors of the past, and the follies that would be avoided in making the journey of life a second time. The paths of vice are fraught with dangers, which allow of no intermission and which know no end nay, which throng and thicken with the progress of existence. Moral darkness surrounds the traveller on every hand. Sin opens its pitfalls beneath his feet; while a voice more terrific than many thunders bursts from the vengeful clouds rolling around his defenceless head, "Knowest thou not that it shall be bitterness in the latter end?" In these moments of guilt and gloom, of fear and foreboding, is there a votary of vice whose fierce thoughts flash not over the past with feelings pungent and unutterable? Yea, too many a sinner silvered with age, and hoary in crime, retraces a life of departure from God, and at its commencement beholds the form of one whose words might have been his sweetest solace in distress, and his unerring directory in the path of life; and who, knowing and dreading the onward career of sin, besought him with all the fervour of affection, "Oh go not on thus wickedly." The disregarded voice accompanied him through months and years stained with sin, but now the monitor sleeps with the silent dead. Many a son, and many a daughter arrived at years of maturity, look back on departed time, and deplore their inattention to the example, the advice, the prayers, the tears of a father and a mother; they are dead: distress flowing from their follies environs their minds, and gladly would they call the sleepers from the tomb, to utter before them their feelings of distress, and then to inquire-" What shall I do ?" Saul by his sins had reduced himself to this unhappy situation. The counsel of God and the instructions of the prophet were disregarded. Samuel grieved and mourned for Saul all his days. Nay, he went down to the grave mourning for him. Samuel died, and all Israel lamented him. Saul continued his career of transgression, till the iniquity of his heels encompassed him about. Then it was that he remembered that he once had a friend. He wished to call him from the slumbers of the grave, and he alone of all the sons of Adam was indulged with the gratification of his unearthly desires. "Then said Saul to his servants, seek me a woman that hath" a spirit at her command, by whose agency the apparitions of the dead appear, that I may once more see the friend whose counsel I forsook.-Lo! Samuel appears-majestically he rises as a God ascending out of the earth. Eager, impatient Saul exclaims, "Samuel! shall I do ?" My God answereth me no more, what SECTION II. Saul's address to the ghost may be considered as the language of regret and self-reproach. Samuel was a faithful friend to Saul. The minister of God for his good. Faithful to Jehovah and also to his king, he flattered him not. But holy instructions on Saul were lost. More attentive to his regal power, than to his spiritual welfare; he determines his own will shall triumph over that of God, though the only means of accomplishing the desperate purpose were perfidy and murder. Deeply does he deplore his madness; and the application to the sorceress to evoke Samuel from the invisible world, is melancholy, but palpable evidence of the sorrow and self reproach preying upon his mind. And who that has persevered in the paths of sin and error, against the solemn warnings of God, and the faithful admonitions of a friend, till despair meets him, but must regret his folly? Many a youth when brought to an untimely end: many a father whose profligate habits have entailed disgrace and ruin on his family: many a libertine whose cheek is pale with early riot: many an apostate who once adorned the profession of piety: many a sinner groaning in pain, and trembling at the approach of death: many a soul which has entered eternity unpurged and unforgiven, looks back with keenest anguish on admonitions unheeded, and on time mis-spent and lost. While health and strength are possessed, we put far off the evil day; but that day so distant-how rapid is its approach! and how much nearer than is admitted by the fears of guilt and the delusions of imagination! Then let not the counsel of the father and the friend be disregarded, lest thou also, like the fallen king of Israel, mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, and say, how have I hated instruction, and my heart de |