Page images
PDF
EPUB

away

unexpected as either may be the day of your death. How dreadful the thought if death, and consequently judgment, should surprise you in a careless, irreligious, carnal course! If you should be snatched from the very midst of worldly schemes and sensual pleasures to give account of yourself to God! Oh! be diligently engaged, I beseech you, in preparing yourselves a house of defence. The ark, that now saves us, you have heard of. The all-sufficient redemption, the unsearchable riches, of Jesus Christ, have been proclaimed to you. How shall ye escape if ye neglect so great salvation? Oh! neglect it not, I pray you, for your souls' sake; for the sake of your own eternal happiness in the world to come. Let me again remind you of the Apostle's testimony respecting Noah. "By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house." A similar warning of things not seen as yet, but surely coming on, is addressed to you. Oh! that a like salutary fear, a like influencing faith, may take possession of your mind, that so

you may spiritually enter into that Saviour, whom God has prepared for you, to the saving of your soul.

To all those, who have already by faith embraced the merciful proposal of the gospel, let me, in conclusion, observe, that the preservation of Noah affords to them the strongest assurance of safety. Does it not prove to you, that the Lord will not destroy the righteous with the wicked? and moreover that he knows how to deliver the godly from every danger? Surely he who shut up Noah in safety in the ark, will also keep you from the final destruction which awaits an ungodly world he who guarded that Saint of old in the raging tumult of the waters, will cover your head from the fires by which they will be consumed. Oh! yes, be assured, all ye who truly believe in and love your Redeemer, that that day, so full of terror to the impenitent and ungodly, will be to you a day of inconceivable magnificence and glory.

To you also exhortations are addressed. Holy Scripture has a word in season for every case and every character. Listen to the

"Seeing

language of the inspired volume. then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot and blameless." And let me add one more admonition, also from the word of God. "Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares."

SERMON VII.

THE RAINBOW.

GENESIS ix. 13.

I do set my bon in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.

IN the last sermon we saw a most tremendous judgment on the wickedness of men, the most tremendous with which God has ever visited the earth, involving the whole human race, and with them every living thing that had the breath of life, eight persons only, with an appointed number of other creatures, being preserved alive by the special interference and care of God. And since what has been may be again, the inhabitants of the earth, having had one instance of a universal deluge, might well fear a repetition. It would be easy to him, whose power controls all nature,

again to exert that power which he has once put forth. Were he to bid the tides to flow without an ebb for a few weeks, or command the clouds of heaven to pour out their waters without cessation, in the torrents which we have sometimes seen for a short time, what an overwhelming desolation would speedily ensue! Either of these causes, if allowed to operate, would be sufficient to produce another deluge; how much sooner and more terribly would it come, if both were united? Now these causes he holds in his hands, even he who formed the seas, and the clouds, and gave the heavenly bodies their powers of attraction, and first ordained the laws of nature under which they act in regular order. But the great omnipotent, who could again destroy the world with a flood, has assured us that he will not; and of this assurance he has given us a pledge in one of the most beautiful appearances in nature on which our eyes can look. The many-coloured bow, which gilds the rain-charged cloud, presenting its lovely and majestic arch to the beholder's view, becomes the appointed symbol

« PreviousContinue »