secret chambers, or on your wakeful beds, have you been forced to think of your souls, and to tremble for your eternal welfare through the secret whisperings of his still small voice, which with, perchance, a violent effort you have stifled, despised, resisted, until he left you to your folly more hardened than before? Oh! my impenitent friend, is not this doing despite unto the Spirit of grace? Would you not consider such contemptuous treatment to an earthly friend insulting, especially when that friend was possessed of all power, and came only with offers of kindness and love? Yet thus have you treated the Holy Spirit of God, God in his official character as pleader with your soul,-God offering, entreating you to accept, his love and pardon? And this not only once, but often-day after day, sabbath after sabbath, year after year, until some of you have grown gray, nay, bald, in your rebellious depravity. Oh! my hearers, if he that despised Moses' law died without mercy, of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, (I put it to your own consciences,) shall you be thought worthy who have thus done despite to the Spirit of grace?

My beloved, but unhappy, because impenitent, hearer, it is, indeed, my blessed privilege to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to you, and to beseech you in Christ's name, as though God did beseech you by me, to be reconciled unto God; yet it is equally my duty to warn you, that this gospel only brings greater damnation upon your soul, except you believe in Christ and repent of your sins, returning unto God. Without these, you have no part nor lot in the matter; and without these in the day of judgment, that blessed Son whose message I bear to you, that blood of atonement whose merits I offer you, that Spirit of grace which is pleading with you while I speak, will appear as swift witnesses to prove you worthy of far sorer punishment than if no Saviour had ever died, no gospel ever been preached, no spirit ever been sent into your hearts. Unhappy hearers, thus to change your greatest blessings into curses. Unhappy preacher, whose most earnest pleadings but enhance the ruin of those he loves.

Escape! how can ye escape? There was a sacrifice for sin, but you have rejected it, and there remains no more. There was a Saviour, but you have trodden him under foot; he is now your judge. There was a Spirit who

would have assisted your infirmities and restored you to life, but you have resisted and despised him, and he has left you to your folly. How can ye escape? What can those expect from God who have defied his justice by their sins, and rejected his mercy by their impenitence? Oh! my friends, there is neither Saviour, nor gospel, nor Spirit, in that eternal place of misery to which you are thus blindly hastening. I tremble for your sore punishment! Oh! then, trifle no longer! Yield now, while yet God waits. You cannot leave this house in impenitence, except ye break away from the entwining arms of the Spirit of grace, and thrust rudely aside the Holy Ghost. Go forth again to sin, and it must be with your foot red with the blood of the covenant, and over the trampled body of the Son of God.

Are

Next sabbath, the sacrament of the Lord's supper will be spread. Will you receive it? Why not? You are not fit? My friend, that table is not for the righteous, but the guilty sinner, who feels his need of pardon, and desires to return unto God. Are you not fit to be saved? you not fit to renounce your sins? Are you not fit to obey the dying precept of your blessed Saviour? not fit to need the gracious help he promises those who seek him in the means of grace himself hath appointed? Oh! then, for what are you fit but for rebellion, for wrath, and for hell? It is a feast in honour of the Son of God! Will you trample him under foot again? The sacred broken bread and poured-forth wine are emblems of his atoning mercy. Will you again count them as unholy things? The Spirit of grace invites you to come, and promises to meet you with blessings. Will you again do him despite? Oh, no! Come, and with his children taste the blessings of his love.

But I should do injustice to the text, did I not add that it is especially addressed to backsliding apostates, who having been in some degree enlightened by the truth, so as even to make a profession of religion, have forgotten their vows, and again live carelessly in their sins. Are there none such among us? Oh! my friends, let that solemn sacrament remind you of the vows you have made, despised, and broken. Let it remind you of your perjuries, in which you have trodden under foot the Son of God, and counted the blood of the covenant an unholy thing, and have done despite unto the Spirit of grace. Oh! how the blessed

Master bleeds afresh from the wounds you give him! What has he done that you should thus trample him under foot? Nor think that by staying away from the table you diminish your guilt. It may make your apostasy the more open, but your vows are still upon you, and you cannot shake them off. Cruel backslider, wound your Saviour no more; but humble yourselves in sincere repentance, and “ return" unto him, and he “will heal your backslidings and love you freely."

I conclude with the words which follow the text: "We know Him that hath said, Vengeance is mine, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Saviour, Jehovah, Jesus, take us into thine!

XLVI.

THE BALM OF GILEAD.

BY THE REV. S. THODEY.

JEREMIAH, Viii. 22—" IS THERE NO BALM IN GILEAD?”

EVERY one must feel that there is something exceedingly affecting in this pathetic lamentation of the prophet over the fallen fortunes of Judah, whose captivity he lived to witness, and over whose desolations he shed the tears of unfeigned sorrow. We are forcibly reminded of the tears of our Lord over Jerusalem, in after times, when he anticipated her destruction by the Romans, and reminded her with exquisite tenderness and delicacy, that her doom was awfully aggravated by her rejection of the proffered salvation: When he came near the city he wept over it, saying, if thou hadst known, even thou at least in this thy day, the things that belong to thy peace; but now they are hid from thine eyes. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen her chickens, but ye would not. So, in the verse following the text, Jeremiah exclaims, as though he had sat at the feet of Jesus-O that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears. For the hurt of the daughter of my people I am hurt: Is there no balm in Gilead?

The

harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. This was literally the case. The Chaldean army was now approaching: it had already entered the promised land, by its northern boundary. The snorting of his horses was heard from Dan. The summer and harvest had already passed away, which were the proper seasons of action and military enterprise to resist the invader, and no army had been raised, and no confederate troops from Egypt, or from any of their allies, could make their appearance; and the grief of the prophet was aggravated by the thought that the opportunity of relief was gone, and that the winter of their desolation and despair was set in. Hence his passionate and tender exclamation-" Is there no balm ?" no balm for the distressed church? no physician for the diseased land? no means left to recover the health of the daughter of his people? The daughter of my people is a common Hebraism, and it signifies the body of the people of Judah, forming God's visible church upon earth; and their hurt and distress seemed to affect the holy man in the most sensitive manner. He could not have witnessed the overthrow of any kingdom without emotion, but he felt both as a patriot and a prophet the extremest grief when the hopes of Israel were broken, and the daughter of Zion was covered with a cloud in the day of the Lord's anger.

In this connexion the simile of the text is singularly beautiful. Judea had long been celebrated for its healing balsam. The land of Gilead, on the other side Jordan, was the part of the country of Israel in which that plant grew. Naturalists say that this balm was a juice or oil of a fragrant and aromatic nature, which distilled from a certain shrub when its bark was cut, that grew especially about Jericho in the land of Gilead, and was of great value, as having a sovereign virtue to heal deep wounds, to cure the stings of serpents, to remove dimness of sight, and to recover from the most dangerous and desperate diseases. It was held in high repute among neighbouring nations. Egypt and Tyre traded for it; and we see in Genesis, that the Ishmaelites that bought Joseph carried balm from Gilead into EgyptThey traded in thy market for wheat, and honey, and oil, and balm, says Ezekiel, (xxvii. 17.) Jeremiah, when he would point out the incurable desolations of Egypt and Babylon, does it by suggesting that even the balm of Gilead could not avail for their recovery: Go up into Gilead, and

take balin, O veryen, the demonter of Egypt; in vain shalt thou use many medicines; for thou shalt not be cured. (Jer. xlvi. 11.) So, also, Jer, l. 8, 9; Babylam is suddenly fallen and destroyed; howl for her; take balm for her pain; if so be she may be healed. We would have kenied Babylon, but she is not healed: forsake her, and let us go every one into his own countrys for her judgment reacheth unto heaven, and is lifted up

unto the skies

Strabo, a heathen historian, makes mention of this plant, and of its healing virtue; and Josephus tells us, that in his time, during the last war between the Jews and the Romans, two plantations of it existed, for which both parties fought desperately; the Jews, that they might destroy them, the Romans, that they might preserve them from destruction. Since the Holy Land has been under the government of the Turks, the balm of Gilead has ceased to be cultivated in Palestine, though it is found in different parts of Arabia and Egypt.

It is generally thought that the question of the text, Is there no balm in Gilead points out, not the absolute deficiency and hopelessness of help, but the simple indisposition of the Jewish people to avail themselves, by faith and repentance, of the proffered means of cure; as though he should say, Is there but is there no physician?. Yes, there is. The incurableness of their disease is not owing to the want of a physician, or to the want of balm in the land, for God had provided these in abundance, but to their own impenitence and unbelief. If their disease be deadly, or their wound incurable, it must be owing to themselves and their wilful incorrigibleness in sin, and to their refusing to submit to the physician's directions and mode of cure. Matthew Henry's note upon the place is, If sinners die of their wounds, their blood is upon their own heads. The blood of Christ is balm in Gilead; his spirit is the physician there, both sufficient, all sufficient; so that they might have been healed, but would not.

This balm of Gilead, it may be observed, grew not in Babylon, not in Egypt, not in Athens, not in Rome, but within the sacred enclosure of the Holy Land; and the grand remedy provided for the sins and sorrows of a perishing world is the product, not of human philosophy, not of the researches of this world's wisdom, but of that Gospel which mankind are too ready to overlook and despise.