Page images
PDF
EPUB

his fury upon him, and shall rain it upon him while he is eating. From this rain of condemnation, brought down by the law upon. the Jew, there was no escaping but by justifi-. cation in Christ Jesus, by whom all that believe are justified from all things, from which they could not be justified by the law of Moses'. Therefore said the Prophet Isaiah, foreseeing the justification of his people, A man shall be as an hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest, a place of refuge, and covert from storm and from RAIN. This hath been fully verified in our blessed Saviour. For as any place of shelter which protects man from the weather, is itself exposed to the heavens, and receives upon it the storm and the rain; so did he, our place of refuge, receive upon himself the curse of the law due to our transgressions of it; and when it was falling, like an angry tempest, upon mankind, interposed between us and heaven, and catched the force of it in his own body. Like Moses, who when there was thunder and hail in Egypt, and fire ran along upon the ground, went out of the city, exposing himself single and defenceless to the terrors of

a

* Job xx. 23.

b Acts xiii. 39.

c Isaiah iv. 32.

divine wrath, and spreading forth his hands· to make intercession for the sinful people of Egypt! On him its rage was spent; and there is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus; for we are not under the law, but under grace. This rain of wrath is over and gone; or, to use the words of Christ when he had borne it for us upon the cross-It is finished.

VI. Such was the deliverance of the Jew and Gentile at the Spring of the gospel and this the encouragement to them both to rise up and come away to the christian church; where the Gentile should no longer be left in his frozen state of nature, nor the Jew have any thing more to fear from the severity of the law; which was blown over as a black wintry cloud, giving place to a more clear and refreshing dispensation of mercy.

VII. The change that ensued, was the same with that which is wrought here before us in the earth, when the winter is past; and it is described to our senses under a succession of beautiful images, all belonging to the Spring-The flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.

VIII. First

VIII. First, the flowers appear on the earth; when the light of the gospel visited the world, mankind were thereby raised from a death of sin unto a life of righteousness; they, who lay buried in the earth of nature, sprang up as flowers, and arose from the dead when Christ gave them light. Being planted together with him, at baptism, into the likeness of his death, they were renewed unto grace, and flourished in the power of his resurrection. This was the natural consequence of their coming into the church of Christ; for let but a dry rod be laid up in the sanctuary, and it buds, and blossoms, and bears fruit. If we would know what it is to be made a member of Christ's church, and become an heir of glory, let us consider the flowers of the field, how they grow; and when we understand this, we cannot long be ignorant of the other. For the flowers of the field and the children of God are both raised up from a state of death to a new state of life and glory, and that by the like means. A flower rises from its grave in the earth by the operation of light and water. The tender grass (as the prophet David expresses it in his last words) springeth out of the earth by clear shining after rain. The rain moistens and prepares

the

the mould which supplies the plant with its substance, and the light forms it and brings it forward. Our senses tell us that this is the order of nature: let it but rain and shine in a due proportion, and the flowers are sure to grow and flourish. Thus it is with man in his birth and growth of grace; both of which are brought about by the operation of Christ and the Holy Ghost, represented to us in the scripture style by light and rain-water. The power of the Spirit residing in the Messiah was to come down like the rain into a fleece of wool, even as the drops that water the earth. The same is alluded to by the prophet Hosea in the following words-Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the LORD, till He come and rain righteousness upon you That is, till He come and rain the Spirit upon you, for the spirit is life because of righteousness. As the powerful operations, so the language, of the spirit, designed for the purposes of grace, is likened to the same natural agent-My doctrine (says Moses in his last song) shall drop as the rain; my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the flowers upon the grass. Hence the soul, when refreshed and supplied with the divine spirit, is compared by the

pro

prophet Jeremiah to a watered garden; and they who are destitute of grace are clouds without water, carried about of winds.

IX. As the Holy Spirit has rain for his emblem, so Christ is signified to us by the light, the other agent in vegetation. With the prophet Malachi, He is the sun of righteousness arising with healing in his wings. In the last words of David, He is compared to the light. of the morning; and he said of himself, that He was the light of the world-giving light and warmth to the soul as the sun does to the earth. The sun was darkened when his glory was eclipsed upon the cross: and Elymas the sorcerer was struck with blindness, not seeing the sun for a season, because he would not see Christ when He was preached to him. So that we have the same agents in the invisible as in the visible world; spiritual vegetation is conducted in the same manner as natural; man is raised up to a state of grace, as the flowers of the spring are made to arise from the earth: the flowers grow by light and rain; man by Christ and the Holy Spirit; whose blessed influences at the appearance of the gospel were shed abroad upon the whole Jewish and Gentile world. For as Christ was the glory of his people Israel, so was He a light

to

« PreviousContinue »