Jesus Christ, assuring us that, through his name, whosoever believeth in Him' shall receive remission of sins. By which faith being justified, we have peace with God. Thus while He proclaims war against the rebel, He promises peace to the penitent. Will not a man open his ears to the sound of these proclamations? According as he hears them, so will he hear the trumpet of the last day, which shall proclaim the coming of the Prince of peace, with everlasting peace to the good, and everlasting war to the wicked. He will hear them therefore surely in obedience to the word of God which sends them forth. O let none to whom such sounds have come, and to all of us they have come, be indifferent to them; but let them tremble at the tremendous sentence which God pronounces against sin, and let them receive with joy the glad tidings of salvation!

Why will a man continue to seek peace where God has thus openly told him there is no peace, and there never shall be peace? Why will he believe his own corrupt and deceitful heart, rather than the word of the Lord? Is there any peace, can there possibly be any peace, in a state of rebellion? Let then a man forsake the sin of his heart, cast out all its wicked devices, and turn unto the Lord his God, and then he shall have peace; and let him seek and find peace before the God of

6 Acts x. 43.

mercy becomes a God of vengeance. He will not be mocked by feigned submission, He cannot be deceived by outward profession. Therefore a man must be resolute against his enemy, and God's enemy, to reject his service altogether, and watchful in resistance ever after. So he will become a son of peace, an heir of the peace of the world to come everlasting.

O how awfully have the words of the text been verified in the lives of the wicked! A wicked unbeliever has left on record the reflections which suddenly flashed across his heart in passing through a churchyard where a gravestone told that the dead looked for peace. O happy the dead, he cried: would that I could gain that prospect! And did he ever? Did he pursue this reflection, to which God in his mercy had wakened his heart? Alas! no, he would not know in his day the things which belonged unto his peace, and so they were hidden from his eyes. He forgot the precious warning. He went on to seek peace in the thoughts and deeds of sin, and died, in utter impenitence and unbelief, of a broken heart. So did God make good his word with him, and so will He with every one that thinketh and doeth wickedness. Has any one ever seen a notorious sinner whom he could pronounce happy, even in matters of this world? and has he not seen many such the most unhappy of men? For their sins scourge their

How

own backs, and sting their own hearts. ever they may hide them from their eyes, their sins find them out, and hunt them down, and deliver them fast bound to the tormentor.

Hear, then, every one, what his God saith, and let him make Him his God indeed by keeping his sayings. Let him hold fast the profession which he has made of the faith in Jesus Christ the Son of God, delivered for our own offences, raised again for our justification. In Him let him seek peace, in Him let him ensue it, by walking in newness of life, as dead unto sin, buried with Christ, and alive unto God. Then he will be on the way of peace: then the sea of the tossing waves of sin shall be quite calm for him, and shall cease to cast up before his eyes the foul dirt and mire of guilt and sin, and to convict him in his own eyes. His sins shall have lost their hold on him, and shall have been forgiven by God. And instead of the threat of God which saith there is no peace to the wicked, there shall be the promise. of God which saith there shall be peace to the righteous for ever and ever.

G

SERMON IX.

THE CORD OF SIN.

(Second Sunday in Advent.)

ISA. V. 18, 19.

"Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope: that say, Let him make it good, and hasten his work, that we may see it: and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it!"

We are still kept by the service of our WE Church in remembrance of the promise of the Lord's second coming, and are admonished of making due preparation for it. This chapter of the prophet Isaiah bears very closely on so solemn a subject, and is admirably suited to the occasion. There the Lord is represented as complaining of the ill return which his chosen people had made for all the benefits He had bestowed upon them. them. He compares them to a vineyard on which its owner had spent immense care and labour, and then, when he expected to receive the wages of the work of his hands, in plenty of ripe wholesome fruit of

grapes, it brought him forth worse than nothing at all-a crop of wild and poisonous berries, for such are what are called here wild grapes. He then proceeds to rebuke them for their many and manifold sins, which he tells them of openly one by one, and ends in threatening them with the coming of the Lord in judgment upon this thankless and disobedient people.

Among these upbraidings and threatenings come the words of the text, applicable to the whole body of offenders against God. They are at all times, and among every people, of especial interest, were it only on two accounts: (1) the easy thoughtlessness with which men begin their acquaintance with sin, and (2) the hardness of heart in which they are confirmed by its habits. These are represented under a very lively figure in the former of these two verses; and the desperate rebelliousness of spirit to which they are brought, so as to utter defiance against the judgment of the Almighty, is expressed to the life in the latter.

As looking forward to the second coming of the Lord in power and great glory, as professing to be carrying forward a state of suitable preparation for that coming, we are not a little concerned with the bearings of such a text. Let us then take it up for our serious consideration.

The figure under which the sinner is represented in the former of these verses is that of