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THE SWORD OF THE LORD IN THE LAND, 
 
 PROUD BOASTING OUR BESETTIXG SIN^ AS A NATION; 
 TWO SER3I0XS 
 
 PREACHED IX CHUIST CHURCH A\D ST. JOHN'S, 
 
 SAVANNAH, 
 
 Oa the 2d and 3d Saadaya in I^ent^ 
 
 IN CONNEXION WITH 
 
 THE AWFUL CATASTROPHE ON BOARD THE PRINCETON. 
 
 BY THE RT. REV. STEPHEN ELLIOTT, JR., D. D. 
 
 n 
 
 PUBLISHED AT THE UFQUEST OK THE VESTRY OP ST. JOUN'S. 
 
 SAVANNAH 
 
 W. T. WIM.IAMS. 
 
 IbU. 
 
 ■f 
 

 ■^■4 
 
CORRESrONDENCE. 
 
 S WANNAII, MARCH 12th 1844. 
 
 To THE Rt. Rev. Stephen Elltott, .In. 
 
 Bishop of .he Diocese of Georgia, 
 
 Dear Sin, — Tlie v\ aniens and Vestrymen of '>t. John's Church, have 
 appointed us a Committee, to solicit from you for publication, copies of 
 the two Sermons, recently delivered b> you in reference to the late 
 melancholy disaster tliat occurred on board tlie I'lUiceton. 
 
 We hope that you will yield to our wishes, as we believe that the pub- 
 lication of these Sermons will be useful. 
 
 We remain, with sentiments of the hij^hest respect and esteem. 
 Your friends, and obedient servants, 
 
 ROIJKIIT M. CH\RLTONr, 
 GEOKGF. R. HKNDUICIvSON, 
 
 H ardena Ht- John's Church. 
 
 SAWNVAH, M\RCH ISth 1844. 
 
 GsNTtEMEW, — Yours of yesterday requesting, in behalf of the Wardens 
 and Vestry of St, Jolin's ('hun h, copies for pulilicution of the two Ser- 
 mons delivered in reference to tlie late niclunclioly disaster on board the 
 Princeton, has just been received. SL 
 
 As you think the "Sermons may be useful, I cannot liesitate yielding to 
 the wishes of the \^ ardens and Vestry of St. John's Church. 1 will have 
 them immediately prepared Tor publication. 
 
 I remain, very sincerely, yours in the bonds of the Gospel, 
 
 STtl'ilKN ELLIOTT, JR, 
 
 R. M. Chahlton, } ... , . . r 7 > r'l I 
 
 ^ „ ,, ' > (} aniens ^t. John s thiirch. 
 
 ■i*. li, 11e»DI1ICK90>', ) 
 

SERMON I. 
 
 THE SWORD OF THK LOUD JX THE LAND. 
 
 O thou sword of the T,ort», how long' will it be ere thou be quiet ? Put 
 up thyself into thy scabbard, rest, and be still. JtRiWiAu, xlvii. 6, 
 
 Would to God that the jieople of this land were given the 
 heart to see that (4od had vvliet his glittering svv.ird ; and in the 
 proper spirit of humUiation to ask at his mouih the question of 
 the Prophet, "() thou sword (if tlic Lord, how long will it be ere 
 thou be quiet?" Until ihey do, they shad have no other .oiswer 
 than that whicli was given to the Prophet : " H(<w can it be 
 quiet, seeing the Loro hath given it a charge against Ashkelon, 
 and against the sea-sh»)re 1 there hath lie apjjoiiited it." Jer. 
 xlvii. 7. 
 
 -Aye, how can it be quiet, when the land is polluted with ini- 
 quity from the great river even unto the sea; when ungodliness 
 pervades the people Irora the humblest walks of life, even to the 
 highest places of p >wer ? How can it be quiet wiien the solemn- 
 est duty of the people, that of self-government, is exercised in tlie 
 midst of the vilest revelry, the shouts of drunkenness and profane- 
 ness, entering the ears of the Ijord God of 6abaoth as their only 
 thanksgiving fir the blessings ihey enjoy? How can it be quiet, 
 •when the Halls of Legislation are become the arena of violence, of 
 blasphemy, of blimd ? Huvv can it be quiet, vyhen God's light 
 hand is not only forgotten, but despised; not oidy despised, but 
 mocked ; not only m<jcked, but openly and scornfully ridiculed? 
 It cannot be quiet, for the Lord hath given it a charge against us, 
 and we must take up the voice of lamentation, and cry : " The 
 crown is fallen from our head : Woe unto us that we have sin- 
 ed!" Lam. V. 16. 
 
 Three times, within a.'' many years, hath the sword of the Lord 
 descended upon the rulers of this land, and each time hath it 
 
6 
 
 made a nation to stand in awe, so sudden hath been its stroke, so 
 awfully incongruous the time of its descent. Such a thing, once 
 happening, should make a people pause and meditate ; but when 
 God hath struck thrice, and every time in the same wondeiful 
 manner, may not the Prophet of the Lord proclaim unto the peo- 
 ple uf the Lord : "Hear ye, and give ear; be not proud : for the 
 Lord hath spoken." Jer. xiii. 15. 
 
 Three times hath the sword of the Lord descended upon the 
 highest places of power, and each time under circumstances so 
 peculiar, yet teaching s » precisely the same lesson, that the na- 
 tion must be judicially blind, if it read not the meaning of this 
 awful handwriting! Tiiese visitations have not been lessons for 
 individuals ; they are lessons for a nation, and should be inter- 
 pretedybr the understanding of a nation ; else will the next hand- 
 writing be not against the rulers of the land, but against the peo- 
 ple; ni)t against the Governors, but against the Government; be 
 *' Mene, Me.ve, God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished 
 it." Dan. v. 26. 
 
 Every time that the sword of the Lord hath fallen, hath it 
 taught, as I said just now, the same lesson, yet, under a varying 
 aspect, the lesson which the Psalmist hath pressed upon our no- 
 tice ; " It is better to tri:st in the Lord, than to put confi- 
 dence IN Man." Ps. cxviii. S. Each noble head, as it bowed 
 beneath the glittering sword of the Lord, was made to speak this 
 language to the nation It was first spoken from amidst the 
 peaceful halls of legislation ; then it rose above the shouts which 
 glorified man upon our country's first battle-field; it hath come 
 to us but yesterday in the awful discomfiture of man's vain at- 
 tempt to rest the defence of his country upon any other arm than 
 that of (iod ! 
 
 Theie has been probably no occasion in the history of our 
 country, in which the people weie looking more earnestly and 
 more confidmgly to an arm of flesh for deliverance from their 
 troubles, than in tlie last Piesidential election. Without enter- 
 ing at all into the politics of the country ; without pretending for 
 a moment to give any reasons for the condition of things which 
 prevailed in the land during the years immediately preceding it, 
 these facts are undisputed — that a general gloom and despoii- 
 
 I 
 
dency had overspread the country, — that war was harij^ing its ter- 
 rible cloud ominously over us, war with our own bretliinn of a 
 common blood and a common Christianity, — that ruin and bank- 
 ruptcy stared in the face every class of the community. What 
 was to be done ? There were two sources to which the people 
 mi^ht turn for help and deliverance, the arm of God, and the arm 
 of flesh. The choice was before them, to bow down m humilia- 
 tion before the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, confess their 
 sins, and find forgiveness ; or else to turn to man, and make a 
 God of him, and put their trust in his wisdom and in his power ! 
 I grieve to say the nation turned not to God. There was no 
 prayer as a nation. There was no huniiliiition as a nation. There 
 was no confession of national sins and iniquities. God was not 
 in all the thoughts of the people. They turned each and every 
 one to his own idol. The whole land met in bitter strife, brother 
 against brother, and father against son, and it rung on every hand 
 with revelry and fierce conflict. Was this, — 1 ask it of you all, — 
 the proper aspect of a Christian people under the circumstances 
 in which we were then placed ( How much more seemly would 
 have been crowded churches of God, than crowdeil places of 
 political meeting"? How much more appropriate would have 
 been a brotherly gathering together around the altar of the Lord, 
 to make inquiry at his mouth, than a gathering in wrath to lay 
 the blame of God's punishment for sin upon each other's heads ! 
 Perchance if ye had come in the spirit of sobeiness and truth. 
 and consulted your own hearts and the oracles of God, ye would 
 have found that it was sin, the sin of us all, that was covering 
 the land with the tokens of God's wrath, and scattering desr)la- 
 tion through its borders. But the pet)ple came not to God, and 
 therefore He came to them ; in the mi.lsl of their triumph, at the 
 very moment when they had })laced the man of their choice in 
 his place of power. He came, with his aword in his red right hand, 
 and taught the solemn lesson : " It is bettkr to tki;>t i.\ the 
 Lord, than to put confiuence in Man :" and when he had cut 
 down him whom they had set up in his room, — cut him down, 
 not because he hated him, for he was, as we are told, his child by 
 adoption and grace, — cut him down, perchance, because he lov» d 
 him, — he rolled off every cloud that darkened our horizon, rolled 
 
8 
 
 tliem off, " without hands," [Dan. ii. 45. ] as we may say, and Wb 
 fitid ourselves this day, thanks be to his mercy, once again in the 
 broad sunshine of prosperity. 
 
 Hut this was not enough ! We had not yet learned the lesson 
 that God is a je ilous (»od ; that the God of battles will not give 
 his glory to another ; that the monuments which a Christian 
 people is to erect, snust be monuments to Gi)d, and not to man ! 
 And God chose his ti ne to teach this second lesson ; selected 
 the victim who had that moment burst upon the nation with al- 
 most unrivalled renown for eloquence, foi letters, for the qualities 
 of a statesman. It was an unequalled scene of pomp. Hun- 
 dreds of thousands, of eveiy age and sex, had gathered to a na- 
 tion's festival ! Those who filled the highest stations of the land 
 deemed the occasion not unworthy of their presence, and among 
 those whose heaits fluttered in anticipation of that day's glory, 
 was he whom God had in irked as the lofiy head that was to bow 
 beneath his arm of judgmmt, to tell his people of their sins ! A 
 li'tle paragraph in the newspaper informed the natiim that the 
 indispositi(m of the Acting- Secretary of .State, kept him from that 
 splendid pageant ; another day comes, and the nation is awe- 
 struck with the intelligence that in the midst of that scene of fes- 
 tivity — at the very moment when n an was raising a monument to 
 glorify man — the swoid of the Lord had descended upon one of 
 the most conspicuous of men, and made the mtmument of his 
 supremacy as glaring as the monument of a nation's vanity ; nay 
 more — had taught the race of man, that he was frailer far than 
 the very maiblehe was piling over the ashes of the dead! What 
 an awful manifestation of the value which God set upon man was 
 the death of Leuake ; of the value which he intended that the 
 nation should set upon man! In that vast assemblage nothing 
 spoke of death save the marble that they were consecrating; and 
 the voices of life that echoed around it, drowned for the time its 
 utterance. But, in this world. Death overcomes Life, and the 
 memorials of death outlast the voices of Life. The marble which 
 that day spoke of death, hath already outlasted some of the no- 
 blest voices of the living, and will continue to speak of Death, for 
 asres after all that rent the Heavens that day with thrir tones of 
 life, shall have been gathered, j:.arth to £urth, Ashes to Ashes, 
 
9 
 
 Dust to Dust. The language of that day's glory was to give the 
 praise of a Nation's (Jeliverauce to the valour ofrntin ; God's lan- 
 guage was: " Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; 
 for wherein is he to he accounted of]" Isaiau ii. 22. 
 
 And here let me apply this individually to yourselves, resting 
 awhile from our national application of these mournful toj>ics. 
 Just as it was with this gifted man, shall it be with all of you ! 
 Some day shall the merchant be missing from his desk, and those 
 who seek for him will be told that he is sick, and another day 
 will come, and then that he is dead ! Some day the lawyer shall 
 be wanting at his office, and the student will tell his anxious cli- 
 ent that he is not well, and then that he is dead ! Some day the 
 soldier shall be absent from his muster-roll, and his comrades will 
 learn that he has a fever, or a cough, and when another day has 
 passed, the muffled drum shall beat him to his rest ! Some morn- 
 ing the mother shall be missing from her table, and the loving 
 children will be told that she has kept her bed, and then that they 
 are motherless ! Some night the gay girl shall not be seen in 
 the circles of gaiety, and it will be whispered that she is indis- 
 posed, and in a week that same gay throng will follow her to her 
 burial, and, while they pity her, leain not a single lesson of wis- 
 dom from her fall. Ves ! this is life ! We run a certain round 
 of duty, and some day we are missing from it, and then we are 
 carried to the tomb. Uur place fills up, and the world goes on, 
 and the man who takes the very chair we have vacated, or nes- 
 tles in the bed that we have died upon, measures not the number 
 of his days, but treads his path as careless and as unconcernetl as 
 if a departed spirit had not trodden it but a moment befoie him! 
 
 \ es ! this is Life ! It is not a year since the sword of the Lord 
 struck Lkgake from the Chair of State, and that same sword — 
 that unquiet sword, unquiet because of our hardness of heart — 
 bath struck another gifted man from the veiy same place of pow- 
 er! Is not this a veiification of the truth just uttered? and 
 what an awful verification! Struck not onlv him, but his gifted, 
 colleague, and the honored companions of their hour of exulta- 
 tion ! "Othou Sword of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou 
 be quiet ?" Another lesson for the Nation! Another repetition 
 of the same truth: "It is Dr/rxtn to tkust in Tiiii Lmrd, than 
 
10 
 
 TO PUT CONFIDENCE IN MAN." Oh God ! liow terribly hast thou 
 spoken ! Spoken again too, as if in mockery of man, in the very 
 moment of his festivity and boasting ! Oh Man ! can anything 
 be more clear than the meaning of God ] Had he written it in 
 letters of fire upon the blue vault of Heaven, could it have told 
 you more plainly not to trust in an arm of flesh ! What more 
 could he do, to impress this upon you, than to make the very en- 
 gine of destruction, which thou proudly boastedst was to changp 
 the whole face of war, and make thy country impregnable, the 
 instrument of the annihilation of the civil arm of the common- 
 wealth ! If you hear not this voice, coming to you from the wa- 
 ters as the former ones came to you from the land, making a mock- 
 ery of the one arm of your defence, — a dreadful mockery, but a 
 wholesome one if the nation will but take it to heart, — as it had 
 already made of the other, God will cease to teach, and will bare 
 his Holy Arm for a general vengeance ! The angel hath already 
 planted one foot upon the land, and another upon the sea, and 
 issued to the nation the pi'oclamation of Jehovah : " Thus saith 
 the Lord : Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh 
 flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord." Jer. 
 xvii. 5. 
 
 Oh that we were prepared to say to the sword of the Lord : 
 " Put up thyself into thy scabbard, rest, and be still." We may 
 say it, my hearers, but only when we are in a state of humiliation, 
 only when we shall have turned to the Lord with weeping, and 
 fasting, and mourning ! God hath given to his peo2'>le this pow- 
 er over the sword of the Lord, that, if they take warning, they 
 shall deliver their souls from its power. '* Son of man," saith 
 the Lord to Ezekiel, " speak to the children of thy people, and 
 say unto them. When I bring the sword upon a land, if the peo- 
 ple of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their 
 watchman : If, when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he 
 blow the trumpet, and warn the people : Then whosoever hear- 
 eth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the 
 sword come and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own 
 head. He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning, 
 his blood shall be upon him : but he that taketh warning shall 
 deliver his soul," Ezek, xxxiii. 2-5. Beloved brethren, the 
 
11 
 
 sword of the I^ord is in the land ! Our rulers are cut down suc- 
 cessively before our eyes, — they are swept off' as with a flood. 
 Take warning and deliver your souls. Enter not, I beseech you, 
 upon a fresh caieer of political sin. Begin not anew in the land 
 the bitter strife, and the cruel violence, and the mad revelry 
 which have brought down upon us the judgments of the Lord. 
 The sword of the Lord can never be quiet, until the people ac- 
 knowledge God, not only with their lips, but in their lives. Vio- 
 lated 8abbaths, angry passions, fierce contentions, blood meeting 
 blood, words of blasphemy, nights of revelry, arc not the spells 
 that will charm back the sword of the Lord into its scabbard ! 
 Take those same Sabbaths, and hallow them to the Lord ; sub- 
 due those angry passions beneath the influence of God's Holy 
 Spirit ; change those fierce contentions, into contentions for the 
 glory of God; let the blood which meeteth blood, be the blood 
 of Calvary washing you who have resisted, if needs be, even unto 
 blood; turn your words of blasphemy into songs of melody ; and, 
 instead of the chaste moon and the glittering stars being frighten- 
 ed from their propriety by the screams and yells of an infuriated 
 people, let the atmosphere be redolent with tlie incense of prayer; 
 and instantly will that sword obey the incantations of God's peo- 
 ple, and rest, and be still ! And especially do I warn you, com- 
 municants of the table of the Lord, to beware how you provoke 
 the Lord your God to anger. But for the soundness which God's 
 childi'en infuse into a corrupt world, the sword of the Lord would 
 break forth on the right hand and on the left, and glut itself with 
 the blood of an idolatrous people ! " Ye are the salt of the earth: 
 but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted V 
 IVIatt.v. 13. If ye take not warning when the watchman utters 
 his voice, who shall deliver their souls 1 Come out, my people, 
 come out from these excesses of the world. Do your duty as 
 citizens, but at the same time remember your duty as Christians! 
 You have a vast responsibility resting upon you. It is for you 
 to preserve the virtue of your country, not to corrupt it ! to train 
 the young after a lofty standard of morals, not to teach them how 
 to lose that which they have leairied around their fire-side ! It 
 is for you, by prayer, by self-discipline, by obedience, to avert 
 the judgments of the Lord from the land. If ye so act as to 
 
12 
 
 increase the evil, as to whet the vengeance of the Lord, ye shall 
 perish in your blood, and that blood shall be upon your own heads, 
 for, as a watchman set upon the high places of Israel, do 1 warn 
 you this day that the sword of the Lord is in the Land. 
 
 And terrible is the fate of a people when the sword of the Lord 
 goeth forth against them, — when the Lord says to aland : " Be- 
 hold, I am against thee, and will draw furth my sword out of his 
 sheath, and will cut off" from thee the righteous and the wicked." 
 " It shall not return any more. Sigh, therefore, thou son of man, 
 with the breaking of thy loins ; and with bitterness sigh before 
 their eyes. And it shall be when they say unto thee. Wherefore 
 sighest thou 1 that thou shalt answer, For the tidings ; because 
 it cometh : and every heart shall melt, and all hands shall be fee- 
 ble, and every spirit shall faint, and ail knees shall be weak 
 as water : behold, it cometh." £zek. xxi. 3-7. Let us sigh 
 now. beloved brethren, out of broken and contrite hearts, and per- 
 chance we may avert the sighing of misery in days to come. Let 
 us gird our loins now with sackcloth fur our sins, and perchance 
 there will be no breaking of loins for the judgments of God. Let 
 us invoke the sword of the Lord to rest, and be still ; invoke it 
 by all the means of grace, and by all the charities of life, by a 
 devotion to our Saviour, and a life to the glory of God! 
 
 That the sword of the Lord will never bequietso longas there 
 is sin in the land — sui.h crying sin as there is, sin going before 
 the people to judgment — is declared to you in the memorial 
 which we keep this day of the sacrifice of the death of Christ.* 
 It was for man's sin that the decree went forth frf)m the mouth 
 of Jehovah: "Awake, O sword, against my »Shepherd, and against 
 the man that is my fellow, saith the Loro of Hosts." Zech. xiii. 
 7. It was for the sin of man that that sword never returned into 
 its scabbard, until the Shepherd was smitten, and the Son of God 
 poured out his soul unto death. And if he spared not his own 
 Son, think ye that he will spate you ? if he permitted not that 
 sword to rest and be still until his violated law was satisfied, think 
 ye that it can be quiet, so long as that law is daily broken through 
 the length and breadth of the Mnd 1 It cannot be. That sword 
 will follow sin, wherever it rears its odious head ; will follow it 
 
 * It was the regular communion day of the Church, 
 
13 
 
 with judgment, and with vengeance, until judgment be mrtcu to 
 the uttermost farthing, aiul vengeance be gUitted in the blood of 
 the sinner ! And yet God willeth not the death of the sinner, 
 and this we likewise learn in the memorial we celebrate this 
 day. What are these elements tlie tokens of] Of a love passing 
 knowledge, of a compassion more uti-.oarchable even than his 
 judgments ! This bread and wine wiiich you gaze at, many of 
 you with so much unconcern, are voices of God, s[)eaking to you 
 of his vengeance and of his mercy, — of his vengeance against sin, 
 of his mercy for the repentant sinner! Let them not speak in 
 vain, but coming to you. as they do, simultaneously wilh this aw- 
 ful illustration of their meaning. 1ft us humble ourselves, and ask 
 in humiliation of the Lord : "O thou sword of llio Loid, how 
 long will it be ere thou be quiet V and let us pray ceeply, ear- 
 nestly : " Put up thyself in thy scabbard, rest, and be still." 
 
SERMON II 
 
 f ROUD BOASTING OUR BESETTING SIN AS A NATION 
 
 Talk no more so exceeding- proudly ; let not aiTog^ancy come out of 
 your mouth : for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions 
 are weighed. I. Samuel, ii. 3. 
 
 Although I touched, tlio last Lord's day, upon the judgments 
 of God which seemed to be abroad in the land, supposing that I 
 should liave no further opportunity of improving the subject for 
 you, yet as it was hastily done, and my sermon upon that occa- 
 sion partook more of a special than a general consideration of 
 God's dealings with national sins, I will renew the subject to-day, 
 for truly it needs a deep, permanent, and prayerful consideration; 
 and unless the impulse to that consideration be given from the 
 Temples of God, I know not whence we shall look for tlie trum- 
 pet sound that shall warn the people of the land that the sword 
 of the Lord is drawn, furbished, and whetted. 
 
 It is neither an easy, nor yet a safe thing, to read the judg- 
 ments of God upon individuals, let alone upon nations. The 
 more complicated the subject upon whom the judgment is in- 
 flicted, the more the relations and contingencies of which it ad- 
 mits, the more difficult is it to determine, in many cases, the con- 
 nexion between it and the dealings of God, But, nevertheless, 
 there are such judgments, and there are many, many instances, 
 in which the connexion between the sin of the people and the 
 avenging hand of the Lord is so plain, that it strikes at once u])on 
 the moral sense of the land, and forces from every tongue the 
 acknowledgement of that connexion. So far as the moral feolins 
 of the countiy has yet been borne to us, in view of the successive 
 strokes with which we have been visited, it is wonderfully unani- 
 mous in its confession of the hand of the Lord, and wonderfully 
 harmonious in the cause to which it ascribes these visitations. 
 All, with one accord, lay it at the door of our exceeding pride 
 
16 
 
 anrl arrogancy ; and therefore we utter to you, to-day, the words 
 of the Scripture, words spoken in view of the majesty and supre- 
 macy of Grod : " Talk no more so exceeding proudly ; let not ar- 
 rogancy come out of your mouth : for the Lord is a God of knowl- 
 edge, and by him actions are weighed." 
 
 This is the great lesson which we need to learn, — to learn, not 
 as a mere thing of the head, but to learn so as to believe it, and 
 feel it sensibly affecting our lives, — " that the Lord is a God f)f 
 knowledge, and by him actions ate weighed." As individuals 
 we do not realize it enough, but, as a Nation, we do not recog- 
 nize it at all. Because we could not adopt a State Religion, it 
 almost seems as if we considered ourselves as a Nation without 
 any religion at all ! And as the necessary result of our not ac- 
 knowledging God in Christ as a people, we have come to think 
 that God will not — nay, has no light to — interfere in our con- 
 cerns, either in the way of mercies or judgments. This view, 
 strange as it may sound, is much more nearly the truth than one 
 would imagine who has not weighed it well; more nearly the 
 truth, because it is merely adopting and. diffusing throughout the 
 mass, — making that general which before was individual, — the 
 common opinion of irreligious men, that because they have not 
 bound themselves to God, in liis Church, by direct personal vows, 
 they are, to a great degree, exempt from those spiritual respon- 
 sibilities and spiritual dealings which are operative between God 
 and his professing people ! 
 
 But this is a sad mistake, both as it regards individuals, and as 
 it regards a Nation : — sad, because it leads, in both cases, to 
 misery and ruin. Whether man, in his personal or in his social 
 capacity, recognizes or forgets his God, still is he — and no un- 
 godliness of his creatures can ever make it otherwise, — " a God 
 of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed." And it is no fault 
 of his that his creatures will not know this and consider it ; for 
 besides those manifest strokes of his wrath, — of which we spake 
 just now, and which the Pagans acknowledged and trembled at, — 
 he has given us a plain account, in the Old Testament Scriptures, 
 of his dealings with peoples as well as with individuals, — with 
 nations which lecognized him not, as well as with those whom 
 he chose and guided according to the purpose of his own will. 
 
\ 
 
 17 
 
 Tliat record is history written by the finger of God ; and as such 
 sh(juld bf studied by all who desire to understand the ways of 
 God, — by all who are not satisfied to look upon history merely as 
 the relation of nation to nation, but as a narrative of all the causes 
 which operate to elevate or depress a people in the scale of 
 things. And in this record we see the hand and the sword of the 
 Lord forever at work, dealing righteous judgment upon the right 
 hand and upon the left, rooting out, and pulling down, and de- 
 stroying, and building, and planting. Jkr. i. 10. Before us 
 does the inspired penman make all the great monarchies of the 
 Earth to pass in review, and upon their fate sheds a divine light, 
 which the spiritual mind appreciates, but which those who rule 
 nations, for the most part, scorn and ridicule. And as if to leave 
 man no excuse for disregarding him in the affairs of nations, he has 
 beforehand written, in prophetic characters, the history and fate 
 of many of them, that, when it came to pass, men might confess 
 his hand, and in their judgment of the causes of their decline and 
 fall, mingle his will and purposes with the secondary causes that 
 have operated to produce the effects which are seen upon the face 
 of the Earth. But this will, and these purposes of God, men 
 v/ill not take into the account, even Avhen the event has fully and 
 exactly verified the prophecy, but will rest altogether in the prox- 
 imate causes which God has used merely ah his means and instru- 
 ments, showing the aversion which they have to acknowledge his 
 immediate interference in the events of the world, and removing, 
 at the same time, by their pertinacious assertion of man's free 
 agency, the most plausible argument wherewith the Devil could 
 \ furnish them against turning unto the Lord as the Supreme Ruler 
 of the Universe in humiliation and prayer, — the argument of an 
 unchangeableness in the Divine decrees ! 
 
 If we believe the Bible, then, ray hearers, we must believe that 
 God weigheth the actions of nations; for it is there all done be- 
 fore our very eyes, and his judgment upon those actions exhibited 
 and executed If we believe the Bible, and the great mass of the 
 people throughout this land professes to believe it, we can resort 
 to it and see, as in a mirror, the sins which most provoked the wrath 
 of Jehovah ; and, in his punishment of those sins, lead I he fate 
 which awaits us, if we indulge ourselves in them. God's ways 
 
 3 
 
18 
 
 are without repentance, and the sins which he hated then, he 
 hates now ; and the sins which he punished then, will he punish 
 now The like pride and arrogancy which brought down the 
 stroke of his sword in those days, will cause it to descend upon 
 us, and we shall writhe under it until we confess the sin, and turn 
 aside the wrath ! May we be prudent in time, as a Nation, and 
 study those records which can make us wiser than all ancients 
 or teachers ! Ps. cxix. 93-100. 
 
 Among the sins which most surely brought down the vengeance 
 of God upon individuals and peoples, was proud boasting con- 
 spicuous. It was one of those national iniquities which God 
 •seems never to have passed over. When Pharaoh said, "Who is 
 the Lord, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go ? I know 
 not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go," Exod. v. 2. he was 
 soon made to know who he was, in his own discomfiture, and the 
 overthrow of his hosts. When Moses had brought the children 
 of Israel to the borders of the land of promise, and was pressing 
 upon them his dying admonitions, how frequently he dwelt upon 
 this theme: " Beware," was his language, "lest when thou hast 
 eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; 
 and wheu thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and 
 thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied ; then 
 thy heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which 
 brought thee forth out of the land of l^gypt, from the house of 
 bondage ; and thou say in thy heart. My power, and the might of 
 my hand, hath gotten me this wealth." And, if they did, what 
 was the doom predicted against them 1 "As the nations which 
 the Lord destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish !" Deut. 
 viii, 11-20. And when David numbered the people, provoked 
 to it, as the Scripture tells us, by Satan, this seemingly slight re- 
 liance upon the a7-m of jiesli brought down the displeasure of the 
 Lord upon Israel, and he sent pestilence upon Israel. " and there 
 fell of Israel seventy thousand men. And God sent an angel unto 
 Jeiusalem to destroy it : and as he was destroying, the Lord be- 
 held, and he repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that 
 destroyed. It is enough, stay now thy hand." "And David lifted 
 up his eyes, and saw the angel of the Lord stand between the 
 earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand, 
 
19 
 
 stretched out over Jerusalem." 1 Ciinox. xxi, 14-10. Althouj^h 
 God had led up Sennacherib against Jei'usalem, yet when he ut- 
 tered blasphemous words against him, despising God, aud setting 
 himself above him, saying to Hezekiah, " Let not thy God, in 
 whom thou trustest, deceive thee, saying, Jerusalem shall not be 
 given into the hand of the King of Assyria." " Have the gods of 
 the nations delivered them which my fathers have destroyed ]"— 
 Isaiah xxxvri, 10, 12. his answer was: "Whom hast thou re- 
 proached and blasphemed?" "By thy servants hast thou reproach- 
 ed the Lord, and hast said, By the multitude of my chariots am I 
 come up to the height of the mountains, to the sides of Leb- 
 anon; and I will cut down the tall cedai's thereof, and the choice 
 fir-trees thereof : and 1 will enter into the height of his border, 
 and the forest of his Carmel " "Because thy rage against me, and 
 thy tumult, is come up into mine ears, therefore will 1 put my hook 
 in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by 
 the way by which thou earnest." Isaiah xxxvii, 23,24, 29. And in 
 like manner, everywhere throughout the Old Testament, is this sin 
 of putting confidence in Jlesh, in our oion arm, in horses and chari- 
 ots, instead of trusting in the arm of the Lord, visited with the 
 uniform, unvarying displeasure of Jehovah. " The Lord thy 
 God is a jealous God," is written upon every event of that most 
 awful record of God's dealings with his creatures I 
 
 If there is one sin more than another for which we stand con- 
 spicuous, as a nation, it is this sin of speaking exceeding proudhj. 
 There is no limit to our vain boasting ! If it were the boasting 
 of a Christian people, rejoicing because the God of Israel is their 
 God, because the Redeemer promised to ages and generations is 
 their Saviour, because the laws and the statutes of a Holy God are 
 the provisions of their moral code, because all the blessings which 
 Christianity fetches in her train are richly showered upon their 
 heads, it would enter as sweet incense into the presence of the 
 Lord, and crown us and our children with a lasting and a benefi- 
 cial prosperity. But such is not our b(»asting! It is not in this 
 God of Israel that we put our trust. It is not in this Redeemer 
 that we rest as our strong tower and house of defence. It is not 
 in the lofty morality of Jesus that we look for our success. It is 
 pot in the amelioratioos of Cbriilianity that wc triumph and exult. 
 
20 
 
 No. Our idols are our political institutions; our oracles are our 
 frail, short-sighted fellow-creatures ; our tower of strength is our 
 numliers ; our shield is the immensity of our domain, and the vast- 
 ness of our resources ; our rule of life is a tyrannous public 
 opinion. Every day is the ear of God vexed with the arrogancy 
 of our mouths, with our exceeding proud talk. Let what may 
 be the subj'^ct, it ends in self-glorification ! Our public speak- 
 ers, from him that addresses himself to his fellow-citizens of the 
 same parish, to him that speaks for the ears of a Nation, all in- 
 dulge the same exulting strain, — nay, are obliged to indulge it, 
 for a national vanity craves it, and is not satisfied without it And 
 worse, the pulpit too, that which should humble man perpetually 
 to the dust, prostitutes itself to the same vile flattery, and fears to 
 speak to man the truths which he should hear and feel, if perad- 
 venture God may bless them to his soul. For these things God 
 will surely visit. Our sins will surely find us out. And have 
 they not already found us out 1 In what has our proud boasting 
 of the perfectibility of human nature under free institutions ended? 
 In our being the bye-word of the world as repudiators and faith- 
 less. In what has our arrogant talk of the supeiior acuteness of 
 our people resulted '( In covering the land from the one end to 
 the other, with cunning and roguery. In what has our haughty 
 maintenance of the freedom of opinion terminated 1 In every 
 man's being afraid of having any opinion of his own, so that virtue 
 and vice, justice and itijustice, morality and immorality, stand upon 
 the same platform, and are covered over with the same mantle; 
 and that, not a mantle of charity, but of fear. And so will it go 
 on, until we turn from these vanities to serve the living God, until 
 we trust not in refuges like political institutions, and mortal men, 
 and public opinion, but take the arm of the Lord for our defence, 
 and the word of the Lord for our rule of life, and the spirit of the 
 Lord for our counsellor and guide. Subject after subject of 
 boasting will be snatched from us by the withering hand (.f the 
 Almighty, until laws, institutions, country, shall all be mingled in 
 one common ruin. And as the nations which the Lord destroyed 
 before our face, so shall we perish. 
 
 The natural effect of this exceeding proud talk, is beginning to 
 be perceived in a growing contempt for the word of God, and 
 
21 
 
 the precepts of the Bible. No allowance is made tor the wi.siloir; 
 of a Being like God, who sees the end from the beginning, and 
 knows the effects of his jwsitive, as well as his moral airavgc- 
 ments, upon the characters and conduct of his creatures, and the 
 wisdom of a people so exceeding wise, as we are every day told 
 thai we are, is preferred to that wliich dictated the Bilile, and 
 promulped its morals. Nothing is bowed to, even though it 
 come from the Bible, even though it be writ there with a pen- 
 cil of liglit, unless it can be shown to be accordant with a limit- 
 ed reason, or a short-sighted utilitarianism. All the positive 
 instituti>)ns of religion are begin liiig to be sneered at. Tlje 
 Sabbaths are polluted, because man tijinks one day as gooi! as 
 another, although God has directly commanded its being hallow- 
 ed, and reckoned it among the chief sins of Israel, as ye have 
 heard read in the Sciiptures this day,* that they were not kept 
 sacred. The ministry is degraded, because man thinks one re- 
 ligious person is as good as another, although CJod has distinctly 
 set apart an order of men for that vocation, with whom he prom- 
 ised always to be, to the end of the world, and grievously pun- 
 ished those who assumed its functions, under that dispensation 
 where immediate rewards and punishments testified his approba- 
 tion or disapprobation. The sacraments are despised, thousands 
 going to their graves without baptism, or the sacrament of the suj)- 
 per, because man thinks faith in the heart is all that is necessary, 
 although Christ has said : " Except a man be born of water, and 
 of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God," Joun iii. 
 5. and," Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink 
 his blood, ye have no life in you." John vi. 53. And, from the 
 positive institutions of the Bible, be assured we shall very soon 
 pass over to the moral precepts ; — nay, have we not already as- 
 saulted, them ] and shall pronounce murder, and adultery, and 
 theft, not such crying sins as God would make us believe. Alas 
 for my country ; that it should so soon have run to such crying 
 corruption. Not yet a century old, yet vitiated to the core with 
 unbelief and immorality, and the people loving to have it so ! 
 Whereunto will all this come ? It will have first, my hearers, 
 
 * Ezek. XX. to v. 27, was the Morning Lesson for the 3d Sunday in 
 Lent. 
 
22 
 
 vmless the Spirit of the Lord raise a standard against the over- 
 whelming flood, a natural punishment, and then be visited judi- 
 cially by the Lord. These are two distinct results, as distinct as 
 the capital punishment which awaits the murderer at the hands 
 of the law, and the remorse of conscience which he suffers as the 
 natural consequence of his crime. The spirit of pride, leadin"- 
 to unbelief, to self-confidence, to a reiiance upon human wisdom 
 and natural virtue, will very soon cover the country with the 
 fruits of infidelity, and the works of the flesh, with lawlessness, 
 with adulteiy, with fornication, with uncleanness, with lascivi- 
 ousness, with hatred, variance, strife, envyings, murders, drun- 
 kenness, and such like, until all virtuous persons shall feel that 
 the natural punishment is so sore, they will long and pray for 
 a judicial visitation of the Loi'd, to purify and cleanse the foul- 
 ness which is all about them. And it will come, in some 
 shape or other, "for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him 
 actions are weighed," — in just such shape as shall be most humi- 
 liating to us, as shall cast our pride and our avrogancy to the dust. 
 God is not satisfied that evils shall run only to their natural re- 
 sults ; upon those results he superinduces, in all the arrangements 
 of his punishments, a positive wrath, which will fall in judgment 
 upon those whose actions he has weighed, unless they deprecate 
 his wrath and turn away his fui'v ! Although, for the moment, 
 we see not that wrath gathering around us, still all actions are 
 open before his eyes, all actions are weighed in his balances — the 
 balances of the sanctuary ; and when the sins of the people are 
 filled up, the sword descends, and they find the word"TEKEL" 
 written against them : " Thou art weighed in the balances, and 
 found wanting !" 
 
 That such may not be our fate, let us strive and pray my be- 
 loved fellow-Christians ! What should we do in an emergency 
 like this, — an emergency pressing every day more and more up- 
 on us, — but cry unto the Lord for help ! Although the prophe- 
 cy had gone forth against Nineveh, yet when the people turned 
 unto the Lord with all their heart, in repentance, and in sackcloth, 
 God forgave them the wickedness of their sin, and removed his 
 avenging angel from over them. Although he had led up the 
 Assyrians against Jerusalem, yet when his Servant turned unto 
 
23 
 
 him in earnest prayer, he sent his sword into the midst of his 
 enemies, and delivered them. Let us turn in like manner now. 
 We know not what may be ovci hanging us. We know not 
 what the Lord, whose eyes run to and fro in the earth, has seen 
 in us for punishment and wrath Our consciences fain tell us 
 that he has seen enough! His successive strokes upon our ru- 
 lers tell U6 that he has seen enough ! Let us take warning from 
 these glimpses which we have had ot his glittering svvcnd ! If 
 the gleam of that sword be so awful, what must be its full ven- 
 geance, when it is poured out in fury upon a people 1 God avert 
 it from us ! 
 
 But '• in vain shall we pray if we do nothing," says old Bishop 
 Hall ; " our prayers serve only to testify the truth of our desires; 
 and to what purpose shall we pretend a de-^ire of that, which we 
 endeavour not to effect r' Let us begin the remedy ! "Let us 
 talk no more so exceeding proudly. Let not arrogancy come out of 
 our mouths. Let us clear our skirts, at least, of this vain boasting, 
 of which the country is so guilty. Ten righteous men in Sodom 
 would have saved it, and a few determined Christians may avert 
 the wrath of the Almighty from this land. Will you be these 
 Christians % Will you humble yourselves before God, and give 
 him the praise and the glory of all the good which we enjoy, and 
 take to yourselves the shame and the confusion of face which be- 
 long to the guilty? If ye will, that humiliation will give power 
 to your prayers, and earnestness to your endeavours. If ye will, 
 ye may set an example that shall bless your homes for ages to 
 come. 
 
 One question more ; will ye add to this prayer and this humi- 
 liation, a Scriptural view of vice 1 Ah, my hearers, we are all 
 guilty in this particular, calling good, evil, and evil, good, — sweet, 
 bitter, and bitter, sweet. We do not make the distinctions which 
 we should do, in our conversation, in our actions, in our social in- 
 tercourse, between virtue and vice. Besides the punishment upon 
 vice wherewith God has promised to visit it, there is a punishment 
 which society is bound to inflict — steinly to infiict — else will that 
 society itself reap the bitter fruits of its neglect ! Every crime 
 which society lightly passes over, is, in so far, encouraged by so- 
 ciety ; for ofttimes the severest punishment of vice is the social 
 
24 
 
 punishment. Man can often better bear death, than the steru se-- 
 verily of the social circle; but that severity is needful, until re- 
 pentance and a sufficient probation shall have again opened the 
 door for the readmission of the contrite penitent. But the im- 
 penitent sinner should be frowned from its ranks! its doors should 
 be closed in his face, as the virtue of our own firesides is regard- 
 ed ! his name should never cross the lips of the virtuous, save for 
 reprobation, or for prayer. Hear, Christian, what the Epistle 
 for the day prescribes as your duty ! " And have no fellowship 
 with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them 
 For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of 
 them in secret." Is this so ] See to it that it be so, for if it be 
 not, God will draw his sword against the righteous and the wick- 
 pd together, and then shall it not return into its scabbard! 
 

 
 
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