less, and often imperceptible; but in " its latter end doth greatly increase." We would unite large masses, and afterwards set about reforming them: His plan is the reverse. "Turn, O backsliding children, and I will take you one of a city and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion; and I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding. And it shall come to pass when

ye be multiplied and increased in the land—they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord, and all nations shall be gathered unto it to the name of the Lord *."

5. God sometimes facilitates and prepares the way for union by removing the occasions of offence and division. In righteous judgment he permits stumbling-blocks to fall in the way of professors of religion, which he afterwards mercifully removes. As long as the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel subsisted they were rivals, and policy concurred with a passion for idolatry in keeping up their religious dissensions. In overturning the kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians, he whose views are not limited to the accomplishment of a single end, intended not only to punish that people for their defection from his worship, but also to prepare the way for their coalescing with Judah into one holy society. "Yet a little while (says he) and I will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel. Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel

* Jer. iii. 14, 17.

be gathered together, and appoint themselves one head, and they shall come up out of the land*." Even the kingdom of Judah behoved to be dis solved, that every obstruction might be removed out of the way; and that "the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem might not magnify themselves" over their brethren. A long and violent quarrel had subsisted between the Jews and Samaritans, which turned chiefly on the question, Whether Jerusalem or Mount Gerizzim was the divinely appointed place of sacred service. The Jews were in the right on the merits of this question, though they allowed their zeal to carry them to a vieious extreme, in not only refusing to symbolize with a corrupt worship, but in also declining to have any civil or friendly dealings with the Samaritans. This was our Saviour's judgment; and yet he intimated to the woman of Samaria, that God was about to put an end to the dispute in a way which neither of the contending parties looked for. "Woman, believe me; the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what we know what we worship; for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers of the Father shall worship him in spirit and in truth +." It pleased God who " made peace by the blood of the cross," at the same time to reconcile Jews and Gentiles, and to abolish

*Hos. i. 4, 11.

Jo. iv. 21-23,

the ceremonial law which was a wall of partition between them, that they might become one holy family. Though the virtual abrogation of this law by the death of Christ set the consciences of Christians free from its observance, their union was not yet complete; the temporary regulations made by divine direction for preserving communion between Jews and Gentiles, though they allayed, did not put an end to all offences and divisions arising from this quarter; and therefore God provided for the consolidation of the union by destroying the temple, and thus rendering the peculiar service connected with it physically impossible.

Instances of the same kind, or at least analogous, might be pointed out in the subsequent history of the church. Dissentions, which had arisen among the early Christians during the severe and numerous persecutions which they suffered, were terminated on the overthrow of Pagan Rome. The law known by the name of the Interim, enacted in Germany soon after the Reformation, was not only the cause of much suffering, but also of violent disputes and great disunion among Protestants; while some of them pleaded the lawfulness of complying with its regulations, and others, more firm and consistent, condemned this as a sinful conformity. Of the same kind, during the last and sorest persecution in this country, were the disputes among Presbyterians, excited by the various ensnaring oaths and tests imposed by government, and the indulgences and tolerations which flowed from an Erastian supre

macy, were clogged with sinful conditions, and intended to pave the way for the establishment of popery and arbitrary power, All of these were abolished at the Revolution. I do not mean to say, that the simple abolition of these or similar impositions will in itself heal the divisions which they had occasioned, or, that it is a sufficient or proper reason for the immediate restoration of interrupted communion and harmony. As no external circumstance ought to mar the unity and peace of the Church, nor can it have this effect without the intervention of human imperfection and sin, so no change of external circumstances can restore what was lost without the cooperation of the grace of God, inclining the hearts of the parties to their duty and to one another. All that is meant is, that this is one of the means which providence is sometimes pleased to employ and bless; and that by removing temptations on the one hand, and occasions of offence on the other, it has a tendency to facilitate arrangements for peace, in which a regard to faithfulness and the public interests of religion is combined with a due respect to the convictions of brethren, and an enlightened consideration of the circumstances in which they may have been placed. I cannot help viewing the present non-imposition of that oath which at first occasioned a breach in the Secession body, as a dispensation of this kind, and which admits of being improv-` ed in the way just mentioned; provided the parties concerned were cordially attached to the common cause espoused by their fathers, and at one

as to the great ends and objects of their original association.

6. God prepares the way for union in his Church by causing the divided parties to participate of the same afflictions and deliverances. Having described the judgments inflicted on the kingdom of the ten tribes, God says to Judah: "Thou shall drink of thy sister's cup, deep and large, thou shalt be filled with drunkenness and sorrow, with the cup of thy sister Samaria *." Both the punishment and the deliverance of Israel and Judah are often spoken of by the prophets as one; and as intended equally for their reformation and reunion. shall the iniquity of Jacob be

"By this, therefore,

purged, and this is And it shall come

all the fruit, to take away sin. to pass in that day that the Lord shall beat along+ the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt; and ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel t."

Providence blesses their communion in suffering to fit them for communion in love and holy living. How can fellow-sufferers but have a fellow-feeling for one anothers? Having drunk of the same cup of suffering, must they not desire to drink of the same cup of blessing and thanksgiving?

* Exek. xxiii. 32.

A metaphor borrowed from the practice of hunters who beat the bushes along the banks of rivers to rouse and dislodge the wild beasts which took refuge there. Hence the phrase, Excutere cubilibus feras.

Isa. xxvii. 9, 12. See also Jer. 1, 17-20, 33. § 2 Cor. i. 7. 1 Thess. ii. 14.