Parochial and Plain Sermons

DANIEL ii. 35. " he stone that smote the Image became a great Moutain, and filled the whole earth."

OUBTLESS, could we see the course of God's dispensations in this world, as the Angels see them, we should not be able to deny that it was His unseen hand that ordered them. Even the most presumptuous sinner would find it hopeless to withstand the marks of Divine Agency in them; and would "believe and tremble." This is what moves the Saints in the Apocalypse, to praise and adore Almighty God,—the view of His wonderful works seen as a whole from first to lt. " Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of Saints! Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? '' And perchance such a contemplation of the providences of God, whether in their own personal history, or in the affairs of their own country, or of the  Rev. xv. 3, 4.

neighbours, and increases by external collisions and a visible extension. But the propagation of the Gospel was the internal development of one and the same principle in various countries at once, and t]aerefore may be suitably called invisible, and not of this world. The Jewish nation did not "push westward, and northward, and southward;" but a spirit went out fi'om its Church into all lands, and wherever it came, there a. new Order of things forthwith arose iu the bosom of strangers; arose simultaneously, independently in each place, and recognisiug, but in no sense causing, the repetitions of itself which arose all around it. We know indeed that the Apostles were the instruments, the secret emissaries (as they might be called) of this work; but I am speaking of the appearance of things as a heathen might regard them. Who among the wise men or the disputers of this world will take account of a few helpless men wandering about from place to place, and preaching a new doctrine? It never can be believed, it is impossible that they should be the real agents of the revolution which followed. So we maintain, and the world's philosophy must be consistent enough to a.gree with us. It looked down upon the Apostles in their day; it said they could effect nothing; let it say the same thing now in common fairness. Surely to the philosophy of this world it must appear as absurd to ascribe great changes to such weak vessels, as to attribute them to some imaginary unseen agents, to the heavenly hosts whose existence it disbelieves. As it would account the hypothesis of Angelic interference gratuitous, so did it then, and must their thoughts set on their worldly business, on their gain or their pleasures, on their ambitious prospects and quarrels, warrior measuring his strength with warrior, politicians plotting, and kings banqueting, suddenly this portent came as a snare upon the whole earth. Suddenly, men found themselves encompassed with foes, as a camp surprised by night. And the nature of this hostile host was still more strange (if possible) than the coming of it. It was not a foreigner who invaded them, not a barbarian from the north, nor a rising of slaves, nor an armament of pirates, but the enemy rose up from among themselves. The first-born in every house, "from the first-born of Pharaoh on the throne, to the first-born of the captive in the dungeon," unaccountably found himself enlisted in the ranks of this new power, and estranged from his natural friends. Their brother, the son of their mother, the wife of their bosom, the friend that was as their own soul, these were the sworn soldiers of the "mighty army," that "covered the face of the whole e,rth." Next, when they began to interrogate this enemy of Roman greatness, they found no vague profession among them, no varying account of themselves, no irregular and uncertain plan of action or conduct. They were all members of strictly and similarly organized societies. Every one in his own district was the subject of a new state, of which there was one visible head, and officers under him. These small kingdoms were indefinitely multiplied, each of them the fellow of the other. Wherever the Roman Emperor travelled, there he found these seeming rivals of his power, the Bishops of the

Church. Further, they one and all refused to obey his orders, and the prescriptive laws of ome, so far as religion was concerned. The authority of the Pagan Religion, which in the minds of omans was identified with the history of their greatness, was plainly set at nought by these upstart monarchies. At the same time they professed and observed a singular patience and subjection to the civil powers. They did not stir hand or foot in self-dcfcncc; they submitted to die, nay, accounted death the greatest privilege that could be inflicted on them. And further, they avowed one and all the same doctrine clearly and boldly; and they professed to receive i fi'om one and the same source. They traced it up through the continuous line of their Bishops to certain twelve or fourteen Jews, who professed to have received it from Heaven. Moreover, they were bound one to another by the closest ties of fellowship; the society of each place to its ruler, and their rulers one with another by an intimate alliance all over the earth. And lastly, in spite of persecution from without, and occasional dissensions from within, they so prospered, that within three centuries from their first appearance in the Empire, they Ibrced its sovereigns to become members of their confederation; nay, nor ended there, but as the civil power declined in strength, they became its patrons instead of its victims, mediated between it and its barbarian enemies, and after burying it in peace when its hour came, took its place, won over the invaders, subdued their kings, and at length ruled as supreme; ruled, united under one head, in the very scenes of their former suffering, in the territory of the Empire, with lome itself, the seat of the hnperial government, as a centre. I am not entering into tim question of doctrine, any more than of prophecy. I am not inquiring how far this victorious Kingdom was by this time pervcrted from its original character; but only directing a-ttention to the historical phenomenon. How srange titan is the course of the:Dispensation! Five centm'ies compass the rise and fall of other ldngdoms; but ten were not enough for the frill aggrandizement of this. Its sovereignty was but commencing, when other powers have run their course and are exhausted. And now to this day, that original:Dynasty, begun by the Apostles, endures. Through all changes of civil affairs, of race, of language, of opinion, the succession of Rulers then begun, has lasted on, and still represents in every count W its original founders. " Instead of its fathers, it has had children, who have been princes in all lands." Truly, this is the vision of a "stone ctt ott without hands," smiting the idols of the worhl, "breaking them in pieces," scattering them "like chaff," and, in their place, "filling the whole earth." If there be a Moral Governor over the world, is there not something unearthly in all this, something which we are forced to refer to Him from its marvellousness, something which from its dignity and greatness bespeaks His hand? 2. Now, with this wonderful phenomenon before us, let us consider well the language of Christ and His Apostles. In the veW infancy of their Kingdom, while travelling through the cities of Israel, or tossed to and fro as outcasts among the heathen, they speak

Church amidst them, and reasons on all this as if already realized. "Now hath lie promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, 1,ut also heaven. And this word, yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things hich cannot 1,e shaken inay remain. Wherefore we receiving a Kingdom which cltlillOt be m,,ved, let us have grace, whereby v nmy sm've (h_d acceptably with revermee and gory fear."  The language, of which the above is but a specimeu, is the more remarkable, lmeause neither Christ nor His Apostles looked forward to these wonderful changes with exultation, but with a deep feeling of mingled joy and sadness, as foreboding those nfiserable con'uptions in the Church, which all Christians allow to have since taken place, though they ma.y differ in their account of them. " Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many sha wax cold..... There sha arise titlse Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they sha.ll deceive the very elect. Behold, I have told you before." "In the last days, perilous times sha come. For men slmll be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters,.... traitors, heady, high-minded.... having a tbrm of godlmSS, but denying the power thereof..... Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. ''e Now, if we had nothing more o bring forward than the two considerations which have been here sisted on, the singular history of Christianity, and the clear and confident anticipatio of it by its first preachers, we should have enough of evidence, one would think, to subdue the most dicult inquirer to a belief of its divinity. But, to-morrow we will see, please God, whether something nay not be added to the above view of it.

DANIEL ii. 35. "Th.e stone that smote the Image became a great Mountai, and filled the whole earth.'"

ESTERDAY I drew your notice to the outlines of the history of the Church, and the clear and precise anticipation of it, by our Lord and His Apostles. The Gospel Dispensation is confessedly u singular phenomenon in human affairs; singular, whether we consider the extent it occupies in history, the harmony of its system, the consistency of its design, its contrariety to the existing course of things, and success in spite of that contrariety, and lastly, the avowed intention of its first preachers to effect those objects, which it really has attained. They professed to be founding a Kingdom; a new Kingdom, different froth any that had been before, as disclaiming the use of force,—in this world, yet not of this world,—whfle it was to be, notwithstanding, of an aggressive and encroaching character, an empire of conquest and

The I(h:gdonz of the Saizls. 247 fact, already adverted to, of the prevalence of such predictions among the heathen at the time of Christ's coming. While such was the testimony of enemies and strangers to this destined rise of a prosperous Empire from Judma, much more fldl and varied are the predictions of it delivered by the natives of that country themselves. These, as contained in our holy book.s, have been again" and again illustrated by Christian writers, and neither need nor admit, of euumeration here. I will but cite one or two passages, by way of reminding you of them. "Ask of hie, and I shall give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." " Gird Thy sword upou Thy thigh, O most Mighty, with Thy glory and Thy majesty. And in Thy majesty ride prosperously, because of truth, and meekness, and righteousness: and Thy right hand shall teach Thee terrible things. Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the King's enemies, whereby the people fall under Thee..... Instead of Thy fathers shall Thy children, whom Thou mayest nake princes in all the earth." "The Lord shall send the rod of Thy strength out of Zion; rule Thou in the midst of Thine enemies..... The Lord at Thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of His wrath." " It, shall come to pass in the last days, that the Mountain t,f tile Lord's House shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it..... Out of Zion shall go forth the Law, and the Word of the Lord from Jeru-

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talent. And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation neither shall they learn war any more." "It is a light lhing that Thou shouldest be My servant to raise up the tribes (,f Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel. 1 will also give Thee for a light to the Gentiles, that Thou shouldest be My salvation unto the end of the earth." And almost iu lhe same words, the aged Simeon rccognises in the infmt Jesus the Lord's promised "salvation, a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of IIis people Israe]." In these passages the prediction of bloody revolution and of peace are as strangely combined, as in our Lord's account of Ilis Kingdom, as being at once a refuge and consolation, and a sword. Maintain, if you will, that they have not hitherto been so fully accomplished in its history as is conceivable; yet, iu matter of fact, has not this twofold character of the Dispensation been in such measure realized, as substantially answers to the words of the prediction? Consider only the wars and tumults of the Middle Ages, of which the Church was the occasion, and, at the same time, its salutary influence upon the fierce and lawless soldiers who then filled the thrones of Europe. Take the Prophecy, take the History; and say fairly, whether, in accordance with the Scripture prospect, we do not actually find in the centuries I speak of, a political power, making vassals of the kings of the earth, humbling them beneath its feet, affording matter of endless strife, yet acting as the very bond of peace, as far as peace was really attained. IIow truly have "the sons of them that afflicted " the Church, "come bending unto her; and they that despised her, bowed themselves at the soles of her feet, ''1 and "the enemies of Christ been made His footstool!" It may help us in entering into the state of the case, to consider what our surprise wouhl be, did we, in the course of our researches into history, find any resemblance to this prophetic ibrecast in the ammls of other kingdoms. Even one poor coincidence in the history of 1Rome, viz. of the anticipated and the actual duration of its greatness, does not fail to arrest or attention. We know that even before the Christian era, it was the opinion of the Roman Augurs, that the twelve vultures which Ronmlus had seen previous to the foundation of the city, represented the twelve centuries, assigned as the limit of its power; an anticil)ation which was singularly fulfilled by the event3 Yet what is this solitary fact to the series of varied and circumstantial prophecies which ushered in, and were fulfilled in Christianity? Extend the twelve centuries of Roman dominion to au additional half of that period, preserve its monarchical tbrm inviolate, whether from aristocratic or popular innovation, from first to last, and trace back the pre-  Isa. lx. 14. "- Vide Gibbon, ch. xxxv. fin. The ancient prediction concerning the fortunes of tlussia is a more remarkable instance. A brazen equestrian statue, which had been originally ill Antioch, is said, by historians of the beginning of the twelfth century, to be "inscribed with a prophecy, how the Russians in the last days should become masters of Constanti. nople."—lXde Gibbon, ch. l.

very nmch like an indication of design? Next, I remark that this dispersion was later than the predictions concerning the Christian Church contained in the Jewish Scriptures: which in consequence cannot be charged with borrowing the idea of it from auy actual disposition of things. And further, let it be observed that the disposition arose from the apparent fi'ustration of all their hopes; a signal instance, as it wouhl seem, of an overruling Providence, which wouhl not be defeated as regards its object, in spite of the failure t,f those instruments, in whi(.h alone a human eye could see the means of accomplishiug it. Before concluding, I must explain myself on one point which has been incidentally mentioned more than once in the tbregoing remarks, viz. as to the connexion between the temporal fortunes of the Church iu the Middle A.ges, and the inspired predictions concerning it. It may seem, before due attention has been given to the subject, as if none but members of the Roman Communion cotfld regard them as 1)arts of the Divine Dispensation; I therefore observe as follows:- There is a considerable analogy between the history of what are called the Middle Ages and that of the Israelitish monarchy. That monarchy was perversely demanded and presumptuously realized by the natio when God had not led the way; it terminated in th. dissolution of the federal union of the Tribes, the corruption of the people, and the ruin of their temporal power. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied, that in one sense that kingdom was the scope of the Mosaic Institntions, and  Deut. xvii. 1=i—20.

that gracious design, which would have been even more exactly accomplished, had Christians possessed faith enough to keep closely to God's revealed will. For what we know, it was intended that all the kingdoms of the earth should have been made subject to the spiritual rule of the Church. The infirmity of man defeated this purpose; but it could not so far defeat it, but some sort of fulfilment took place. The mustardplant, stopped in its natural growth, shot out irregular branches. Satan could not hinder, he could but weaken the Kingdom promised to the Saints. He could but seduce them to trust in an arm of flesh, lie could but sow the seeds of decay among them, by alluring them to bow down to "Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites." tIad it not been for this falling away in divers times and places, surely Christendom would not be in its present miserable state of disunion and feebleness; nor the prophecies respecting it have issued in any degree in defeat and disappointment. Still partial as is their fulfilment, there is more than enough, even in what is aud has beeu, to attest in the Church the presence of that Ahuighty Hand, whose very failures (so to say) a.nd losses are deeds of victory and triumph. As for ourselves, what was the exact measure of the offences of our forefathers in the faith, when they tired of the Christian Theocracy, and clothed the Church with "the purple robe" of Cmsar, it avails not o determine. Not denying their sin, still after contemplating the glories of the Temple which were contemporaneous with it, we may well bewail our present fallen state,—the Priests and Levites, and chief of the Fathers, all of us "weeping with a loud voice," though the many shout for:o- ".". y,— praising indeed, "and giviug thanks unto the Lord, because lie is good, for His mercy endureth for ever toward Israel," —not uudervaluing the hlessings we have, yet humbling ourselves as the sinflfi off, spring of sinflfl parents, who from the first have resisted and frustrated the ace of (lod, aud seeing iu the presen feebleness and blindness of the Church, the tt,kons of ]{is rig'hteous judgments upon us; yet withal, from I [is continued mercies towards us, drawing the comfortable hope, that for tIis Son's sake lie will not fi,rsake us in time to come, and cherishing a sure trust, that, if we "give Him no "rest" by our services of prayer and good works, He will at length, even yet, though doubtless in a way which we cmmot understand, "establish and make Jerusalem a praise in the earth."