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SERMON XXXI.

SUCCESS OF FAITH SHEWN IN THE CASE OF HEZEKIAH.

ISAIAH XXviii. 12.

To whom he said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest, and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear.

My intention from these words, with God's help, is, to lay before yoù the manner of acquiring the true rest and peace of conscience. It is a subject I have often spoken to; nor do I think it ever out of season. While souls are awakened to a sense of sin, and a desire of deliverance; while those who have once attained peace in God's way of justification are apt to lose it again, through carelessness or self-conceit; while a devil exists who sows tares among wheat, and darkens the truths of God by jumbling them together in an incoherent, ungospel-like manner; so long it will be needful for ministers to repeat again and again to their hearers, This is the rest for the weary, this is the refreshing:' though, still, many will "not hear," as the text complains. Those whose consciences have not

been seriously exercised with a sense of sin, may, indeed, think it not worth hearing; but I am persuaded, every soul that knows what God is, and what man is, will look on the Scripture way of rest as a great and heaventaught way, and that requires indeed (as it is in the chapter of my text)" precept upon precept" for men to understand and make use of it, so contrary is this way to all that human nature, in her present dark, corrupted state, would suggest. And, truly, by this it is that pulpit-work is a work of business and imimportance. What do we expect to hear from this place? Is it an agreeable piece of oratory; a pleasing discourse, which we may admire for the moment, and then think no more of it? Is it something to cavil at; something to compare with some other sermon or book; something to speculate on at ease? Truly, so to hear is to trifle with the Lord's ordinances. If we know what we are doing-we preachers and you hearers-we are to set forth, and you are to receive, that which gives true rest and peace to the soul, and fits it for the delightful service of God both here and hereafter. this end be not kept in view, you and we do worse than trifle: we mock and affront the Lord. Let, then, every man of us recollect, that he has business to do here. Let burdened consciences particularly consider, 'We should be hearing what may give us peace, and, by consequence, win us to the love of God.' If

If

one burdened soul shall receive profit by the representation of the way of peace, it will amply requite me for the sneers of hundreds of caviling disputants, for the scoffs of many unhumbled souls, who deride the ways of godliness altogether.

We will, then, 1st, endeavour to open the doctrine; and, 2dly, to apply it to different cases. But who will pray one moment with me?-O Holy Ghost, the Comforter, have mercy on us miserable sinners! We would be using thy means: but without thy influence we use them in vain. Shine on thy word: shew Christ therein to us: reveal him in us; that we, wretched, guilty sinners, may find in him a rest to our souls that will abide, and be fruitful in righteousness, to the honour of the Father and the Son, through eternity!

1. In the chapter of the text, and, indeed, for several chapters in succession, the immediate subject of Isaiah's prophecy is as follows. Sennacherib, king of Assyria, at the head of a mighty army, was desolating the countries. near to Judea, and threatened soon to carry away the remaining two tribes into captivity, as his father, Shalmanezer, had carried away the ten. Hezekiah, king of Judah, had no force at all to compare to that of the Assyrian : nevertheless, in the Lord he trusted; and, having a positive promise of deliverance by the mouth of the prophet Isaiah, he rested on

the word of God, and took all imaginable pains to persuade his princes and his people to stand out courageously against the Assyrian, mighty as he was, and to rely on nothing but the Lord against him. Neither his nobles nor his people were, in general, so simple and faithful in their adherence to the Lord God of Israel as the king was they are called "an hypocritical nation." Although they had joined in the reformation of the godly king, they had done it in hypocrisy. They had no idea of trusting to the word of the Lord; and therefore, notwithstanding the word of God, and the command of the king, like rebellious children "they took counsel, but not of God; they walked to go down into Egypt, and asked not at God's mouth; to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt." Though the Lord assured them (Isa. xxx.) that the strength of Pharaoh should be their shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt their confusion; that the Egyptians should help in vain, and to no purpose, and that their strength was to sit still; yet they regarded him not. In vain he proclaimed, "In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength;" or, in the words of the text, "This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest, and this is the refreshing" they would not hear. The scornful men that ruled the people in Jeru

salem, still made lies their refuge, and under falsehood hid themselves. Yet the Lord testified, "Behold, I lay in Zion, for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation; he that believeth shall not make haste"-shall not be in that confusion and dismay which causes a person to haste in trepidation. This living stone is the Lord Jesus Christ: in the second chapter of St. Peter's First Epistle you will find a beautiful comment on the words: "To them that believe" in him "he is precious" indeed. Now, it was on account of His merits, and the promises of God in Him, that the church in Hezekiah's time was to be preserved from Sennacherib: on His account alone it is that the church of God, before his time and since, in spiritual and temporal things, is saved and defended: and the right spirit with which Hezekiah was influenced, and with which his subjects ought to have been influenced, was a spirit of dependence on God through Christ. Though the object of this faith was afterwards more clearly to be revealed, yet the Saviour was the same, and the faith, in its substance, the same. There is, therefore, not only an analogy, or apt comparison, to be made between the faith of Old-Testament saints and those of the New Testament; but really it is the same faith: and when Christ calls (as he does in the New) all the weary and the heavy laden to come. to him for rest, it is a rest on the same founda