SERMON II.

THE JUDGEMENT ON NEGLECTING TO BUILD

THE LORD'S HOUSE.

HAGGAI I. 5—11.

Ye eat; but ye have not

Now therefore thus saith the Lord of Hosts: Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little. enough. Ye drink; but ye are not filled with drink. Ye clothe you; but there is none warm. And he that earneth wages, earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. Thus saith the Lord of Hosts: Consider your ways. Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the House; and I will take pleasure in it; and I will be glorified, saith the Lord. Ye looked for much; and lo, it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith the Lord of Hosts. Because of my House that is waste; and ye run every man to his own house. Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew; and the earth is stayed from her fruit: and I called for a drouth upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the corn, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labour of the hands.

THIS is a much longer text, than you are accustomed to hear at the beginning of a sermon. Mostly the preacher takes one or two verses, often no more than a few words out of one verse, as the subject of what he is to say to you; and here are seven. They all however relate to the same matter, and set forth the will of God, and the course which He is wont to take, with regard to one particular portion of our conduct, thus giving us a fuller and clearer insight into His workings. Therefore, although I might have pickt out one or two verses, which would have contained the main purport of the passage, I

have thought it best to read you the whole of Haggai's prophetic message. If you attend to the manner in which this portion of the prophecies will be found to bear throughout upon your own condition and duties, it may help you, when you are reading other parts of the prophetic books, to make out how they also are stored with rich treasures of wisdom, from which the lowest as well as the highest may draw many profitable lessons.

When I was speaking to you about the former verses of this chapter, we were reminded by the prophet's words, how we too in these days are all and each of us called to build the House of the Lord, both in our own souls, and along with the congregation of His people; and how we too neglect this duty, even as the Israelites did, and waste our lives in building and adorning what we choose rather to regard as our own houses. We e saw, how we are still apt to disguise our want of zeal with the selfsame hollow excuse, crying, The time is not come, the time for building the House of the Lord. And we further saw, how the word of God still scatters and shivers all such mock excuses, by the simple question, Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in cieled houses, while My House lieth waste?

But God is never content with confounding His enemies. He does not confound, to destroy: He confounds, in order that He may save. He strives with His enemies, to the end that He may not destroy them, to the end that He may compell them to return to Him, that He may compell them to turn back from the pursuit of those things, which, He shews them, end in death, to the paths of life and light, where they shall be blest with the riches of His grace. The courses by which He brings this purpose to pass, are various. The commonest perhaps is the one set before us

in the text. Seeing that the motive why we forsake His service is that we may give ourselves up to our own service,-seeing that self is the mask which Satan puts on, to lure us away from God, and that the baits with which he tempts us are the pleasures of sin, and the charms of selfindulgence, God mercifully shews us the vanity of those pleasures, the misery and deceitfulness of that self-indulgence. Hereby He tears off the mask which beguiled us, and proves to us that, in serving self, we are in fact serving Satan. He shews us that the pleasures of sin are only as it were a sprinkling of sugar over the brittle crust of hell ; which, while we are busied in picking up the sugar, cracks beneath us. To save us from falling into that gulf, He makes the crust split before our eyes, ere we have set our feet wholly upon it, and startles us with glimpses of the depths below. He sends us some heavy affliction to humble our pride, to prove to us that, in leaning on earthly things, we lean on a broken reed. He smites down the prop on which we rest. He bereaves us of that in which we have garnered up our hearts. He strips us, as with the blast of winter, of all our blossoms and our leaves, if so be that in our nakedness we may be brought to turn inward, and to put forth the buds of a new life, when He again sends the warm sun of spring to shine upon us. Then too, at the highth of our distresses, He sends His messengers to explain their meaning and purpose. He sharpens the stings of Conscience, which cries to us, Thine own sin has drawn down this thy misery upon thee; yea, and it will draw down more terrible misery still, more terrible and without end. He brings out the letters of His law, which before we had scarcely seen, even like the letters which the hand wrote on the wall of the palace of King Belteshazzar. When

our eye is offending us, and we cannot take courage to pluck it out ourselves, He plucks it out for us, teaching us at the same time that He plucks it out because it offended us, and because our other eye will be able to see more clearly without it. In the very midwinter of our souls, He allows us to hear the voice of the angels, proclaiming Glory to God, and Peace upon earth, and Goodwill toward all such as seek that Peace through Him who came to bring it. This is the way, many of you must be aware, in which God has often dealt with sinners, when He purpost to call them to repentance and in the same way He dealt with the children of Israel, when He sent the prophet Haggai to reprove them, and to call them back to their appointed task of building the House of the Lord.

They had just been delivered out of their captivity at Babylon, and brought home to Jerusalem and this was the glorious work, for the sake of which they had been delivered and brought home, in order that they might build the House of the Lord in the city of the Lord, and might dwell therein as the chosen people of the Lord. But from this glorious work they had turned aside. Satan, under his cunning mask of self, had drawn them away from it. He had beguiled them into building and adorning their own houses, while the Lord's House was left to lie waste. The riches which the earth brings forth, and wherewith it glorifies its Maker, calling upon man by its example to do likewise, and to employ those riches for the same purpose, the Israelites consumed upon themselves, feasting and reveling in cieled houses, while the Lord's House lay waste. They regarded the earth as their servant, spread out beneath their feet for no other purpose than to do their bidding, to feed their wants, and to

pamper their lusts. Wherefore God vouchsafed to shew them that the earth was not their servant, but His, that it was not spread out beneath the heavens to do their bidding, but His. He vouchsafed to shew them that, although the earth had been ordained by His lovingkindness to bring forth its fruits as food for man, and though, with the help of man's tillage, it had fulfilled this task readily and abundantly, year after year, and generation after generation, yet it did not accomplish this through any power of its own, or through any power that man could bestow on it; for that, if the sun and the rain were lockt up in the heavens, the earth would yield no increase, notwithstanding all that man could do to make it. Therefore the heaven over them was stayed from dew; and the earth was stayed from her fruit. And God called a drouth upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the corn, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labour of the hands. When the pride of the Israelites had thus been humbled, and their hopes baffled, and their confidence cast down, God sent His prophet to explain to them what was the meaning and purpose of these calamities. He tells them that all this was designed to make them consider their ways, to prove to them how, in the ways in which they were walking, although they were to sow much, they would only reap little,- although they ate, they would not have enough,-although they drank, they would not be filled with drink, that they might clothe themselves, but none would be warm,-and that the wages which they earned would be put into a bag with holes. He reminds them of the warnings they had received,