ADDRESS II. DEAR CHRISTIAN FRIENDS : I BELIEVE we are just as accountable for a spiritual famine, as we are for a famine of daily bread occurring by our neglect. If, in the latter case, we had omitted to do all, nay, if we had neglected to do any part of that which God had appointed by us to do, we should have been so far guilty ; so far the authors of our own destitution. And I believe that is just as awful a perversion in the Church as it would be in the world, for men to allege the sovereignty of God as a reason for disconnecting the end with the appointed means. If a farmer were to say, “I have no power to produce grain or any other crop in my fields; this must be the work of God; he must send the showers from heaven; he must scatter abroad the genial rays of the sun; he must cause the early and the latter rain to descend; he must protect the seed when cast into the ground, and the tender blade when it first appears; he must watch over it and ripen it to maturity; or a single grain will never grow;"—If he should say this, we should at once reply, All very true: this is a position which none will dispute.” But if the farmer should therefore say, “If God has decreed that barley shall grow in this field, and that wheat shall grow in that, , grow it Will, and there is no need for my labour, and anxiety, and toil :" and if he should act upon this principle, and neither plough the ground, nor sow the seed, and the land should be filled with famine, the folly and the wickedness would rest with man. The kingdom of God would go on; there would be no interference with the harmony of his plans or his purposes; but the people having neglected the appointed means of safety, would die. It is surprising how men have reasoned the sovereignty of God out of the natural, and confined it to the spiritual world. A famine of bread and of water, my dear Christian friends, is an awful thing; but what is this to a famine of the word of God? A man, with a large family, who lived in the midst of one of those spiritual dearths, where the word has no power; where there is no solemn exhibition of the truth; no weeping minister; no hearts bleeding with compassion for poor sinners, went to one of the deacons, and said, “I can endure this no longer; the minister does not wield the sword of the Spirit in power ; the weapons of the spiritual warfare do not prove themselves mighty through God to the pulling down of Satan's strong holds. I see souls dying around me daily : my own family are growing up in sin for want of the power of the Spirit of God on their hearts; we must have a revival of religion.” The old deacon listened with great attention; and then looking very calm and placid, said, “My dear brother, we shall have a revival, if God has decreed we shall have it ; but if it be man's revival, it will do no good.” The young man replied, “My dear father, no man is more diligent in his worldly business than you are, and yet no man believes more firmly in the Divine decrees. Now I want to know whether you stop your ploughman ; or whether you refuse to put your money into the bank, upon this principle? If God refuses to bless your exertions you will have no crop; and if he should withhold his care of your money, the bank will be no place of security. In this mode of reasoning, therefore, you have been betraying the worldliness and wickedness of your heart. You dare not trust the power nor the goodness of God in reference to temporal good, where your own diligence can secure it; but in reference to the concerns of immortal souls, you shel ter yourself behind the decrees of God, and you wickedly refuse to employ the means which he has directed in his word. In the natural world the sovereignty of God is no bar to your exertions; but in the spiritu al world it must be an extinguisher upon every effort.” That God saves the soul is true; and that the decrees of God are absolute, eternal, and immutable, we do not deny. His decrees cover every thing ; they reach from the movements of those vast orbs which roll through the regions of immensity, to the disposal of the minutest particle of matter. His decrees extend to the movement of my hand at this moment. There is not a spoke in the smallest wheel of the immense machinery but was seen by God from all eternity. There is nothing done without God. You plough up your ground, and you put your wheat in the field, under the surveillance of the God of heaven. His decrees, I repeat, extend to every thing; and I believe this as firmly as any man in existence can believe it. I speak not, then, against the decrees of God; but against that wicked inference which is drawn from them, that man is not a responsible and accountable agent. I bless God, that I never yet was able to quiet my conscience with such theology. Wo upon the preaching which suffers sinners to go down to hell, soothed with the idea that they were irresponsible beings. We, saints or sinners, are not straitened in God. The idea that man is not responsible for his want of holiness, is cherished by the indolent, and cold, and selfish, in the Church. I repeat it, I am not straitened in God. I believe, in reference to the inhabitants of London, in reference to the congregation now assembled in Surrey chapel, I believe that God is more willing to give us spiritual blessings than temporal. God thinks infinitely more of his spiritual garden, the Church, than he does of the fields of the husbandman or of the crops upon the hills. “If ye being evil,” says God, “know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give his Holy Spirit to them that ask him ?" You did not give your child, whom you dearly love, a stone when he asked you for bread; nor a scorpion when he asked you for fish. You gave him what he asked. “How much more shall your heavenly Father give his Holy Spirit to them who ask him ?" This one doctrine, then, rolls the whole guilt of neglecting perishing sinners upon the Church. The Church has not asked for the Holy Ghost as she ought. I have touched upon this topic this morning to bring down the awful guilt upon my own soul, and to do the same with you. I would fain expand this important subject; but it has already been keeping me too long from the topic on which I am anxious to dwell. It is presented to us in Mich. vi. 2: “Hear, O mountains, the Lord's controversy, and ye strong foundations of the earth : for the Lord hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel.” “The Lord hath a controversy with his people.” And do you ask me with whom? He has a controversy with me; and he has a controversy with every one of his ministers who is not willing to labour, and, if necessary, to die for souls. I feel painfully that God has a controversy with me. I have no right to look upon dying souls, standing at the open mouth of the pit of hell, with such feelings of heart as I do. God has a controversy with his ministers. Where are we to look for that bleeding compassion of heart which seeks out sinners, weeps over them, and beseeches and entreats them to fly to Christ? And you, my Christian friends, God has a controversy with you. And I am come to plead this controversy, and to have it settled. There is a solemn declaration in the prophecies of Amos, “that two cannot walk together ex : а cept they be agreed.” O, if God be not with us this morning, and if we are not agreed with him, we shall be talking to no purpose; our words will be without power. But if God be with us, we shall hear him saying, “Fear not, thou worm Jacob, for I will make thee a sharp threshing instrument, and thou shalt thresh the mountains and beat them small, and make the hills as chaff.” He can give such power to our lips that we shall make London tremble. O, when the heralds of the God of Israel go before his face, "he will smite the oaks of Bashan ; and all the high mountains and the hills that are lifted up shall be brought low; and the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of man shall be made low; and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.” But it is a dreadful thing to have an unsettled controversy with God; for two cannot walk together except they be agreed. My Christian friends, I am anxious to have this controversy settled ; and I am come this morning, I say, to plead the Lord's cause ; I commence with you, covenant people of God, and I beseech you never to look up to us as gods; never to suppose that we can do God's work without you ; never to imagine that any success will attend our exertions without your prayers : for if you do, God will utterly confound us before your face. Oh, brethren, idolize not man--idolize none of God's ministers; but get down into the dust and honour God. By our meetings in this place we aim to make a movement in the Church, and in the world, at which hell shall tremble. And our plan is simple : prayer to God for the descent of the Holy Ghost, and the manifestation of the truth to every man's conscience. It is vital piety, and not a great machinery, that we need for this contest. We must not go forth with Saul's heavy and cumbrous armour, but with the sling and pebbles, by which the Goli m |