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have been led, in respect of profession and communion, to take up your ground in the safe medium between the conflicting parties in the great controversy of the day, while you continue to testify against the corruptions of the churches established by law in our native land, and at the same time keep aloof from those who condemn all recognition of Christianity by public authority, and seek to withdraw the provision which has been made by the nation for religious purposes. I cannot flatter you with the prospect of the speedy removal of those defects in the national settlement of religion, or those practical abuses in ecclesiastical administration, which the body we are connected with have so long condemned, and which have excluded us from fellowship with the National Church in Scotland. I am sorry I cannot join with those who would give the name of reforming to the General Assembly, whose meeting is now drawing to a close. One party which has long had the management in the judicatories, and has ruled with sufficient rigour (I mean not against error or vice), has been defeated: how their successors will act remains still to be determined. In the mean time, their proceedings hitherto have not laid a foundation for sanguine hopes. One thing they have done which must meet our approbation, in removing that glaring anomaly on the Presbyterian constitution, chapels of ease. But an overture, involving a charge of error on a capital article of our religion, Justification by faith, has been dismissed simply on the declaration of the accused individual, that he was perfectly sound on that head. The decision on Calls, so much applauded by many, together with its strange but not unsuitable accompaniments, I can look upon in no other light but as an attempt to gull the people with a show of privilege, while it subjects them to be fettered, at every step, in the exercise of it, and involves them in the inextricable meshes of legal chicanery. And this boon is presented to them by the hands of those who have scornfully thrown out and rejected their petitions for relief from a grievance of which the Church of Scotland has always complained; and this at a time when the legislature, by which the yoke was imposed, had so far listened to similar petitions from the people, as to

appoint a committee to enquire into the grounds of complaint, and to put the country to no small expense in conducting the investigation. I say it is more than suspicious that the alleged boon should be presented by the hands of those who have summarily and haughtily thrown out the petitions of the Christian people against patronage. They say, they have muzzled the monster it is a mistake; they have only muffled him, and they have muzzled the people.

It gives me great pain to say these things, and I say them, not in anger, but in grief and in love. Nothing on earth would give more joy to my heart, than to see sure and decided symptoms of reformation in the National Church of Scotland-to see the Zion of God in our land rising from the dust and shaking herself, putting on her beautiful garments, and looking forth, as in the morning of her day, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners, to the confusion of those who would have quenched her light, and plucked her from that firmament in which she once shone with surpassing brightness. I would go seven times to the top of her highest mountain, to look out for the harbinger of her relief, though each time I should have to return with the message, "There is nothing," provided at last I could hail the appearance of "the little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand," the sure prelude of the plentiful rain, which shall refresh the weary inheritance, make her wilderness as Eden, and her desert as the garden of the Lord.

Do not despair, neither be discouraged, my brethren. There is abundance in the promise. Wait in faith and patience and prayer for its accomplishment. God hath done great things for Scotland; and he hath not suffered them to be forgotten. He hath reserved for himself a remnant, both in the Established Church and out of it, who think with gratitude and praise of his wonderful works. This is a token for good. And when he hath tried and humbled them, and led them to the exercise of prayer and confession,-" Then will the Lord be jealous for his land, and pity his people."

SERMON XIX.*

GRIEF FOR SINS OF MEN.

PSALM CXix. 136,

"RIVERS OF WATERS RUN DOWN MINE EYES, BECAUSE THEY KEEP NOT THY LAW."

It is no rare spectacle to see a person in tears. Man is the heir of trouble, the child of sorrow, which assails him in a thousand forms. If exempt for any time from suffering in his own person, his sympathies are continually called forth by the afflictions of others to whom he is linked by the bond of a common nature, and by the more tender ties of kindred and friendship. How often do we see the "face foul with weeping" for the loss of a parent, a brother, a child, or a husband; and scarcely has the mourner washed himself and dried up his tears, when some new calamity causes them to flow afresh! The enquiry which we are ready to make on such occasions, What ails thee? Why weepest thou? does not express our surprise at the sight, but our desire, whether dictated by curiosity or benevolence, to ascertain the cause of the distress.

But, my brethren, the text presents us with a spectacle which is rare indeed, and which, though far from unreasonable, is calculated to excite very general surprise—a man whose heart was pierced, and from whose eyes the tears streamed, not on account of any bodily pain, or domestic trial, or worldly loss, but on account of the violations of God's law which he witnessed around him. David had met with heavy calamities of a temporal kind, and on these occasions we behold the keen sensibilities of the man blended with the confidence and sub

*Preached on the occasion of a Synodical Fast, Feb. 1828.

mission of the saint. When persecuted by Saul as a traitor, when forced to flee from his capital by the unnatural rebellion of Absalom, or when informed of the unhappy death of that undutiful but beloved son, we can account for his grief on common principles. But when he composed this lengthened and beautiful piece of devotion, which expresses throughout the calm but intense breathings of delight in the law or revealed will of God, felt and cherished in the hours dedicated to uninterrupted and fixed meditation,-he appears to have been free from all the ordinary causes of distress and sorrow. The afflictions which he had suffered were recollected by him only as affording grounds of thanksgiving on account of the spiritual benefit he had derived from them. The attempts of his enemies, and the bitter scorn with which they had assailed him, were thought of only to enhance his esteem for those statutes, the study of which had made their envenomed darts to fall harmless at his side. Yet while enjoying that " peace which passeth all understanding," and which is the blessed portion of those who love God's law, there was one thing which pained him, which was an alloy to his happiness, which we find him repeatedly lamenting in the course of the Psalm, and which occasioned him more poignant grief than all the personal and domestic trials under which his heart had formerly bled. righteous soul was vexed from day to day by the frequent, open, bold, and persevering transgressions which he saw and heard of. “I beheld transgressors, and was grieved." "Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law."

His

Grief for sin is one of those charities of the heart, whose operation begins at home. He who has never seen his own sin, who has not been grieved for it, and wept over it, cannot feel grief for that of others. There is sympathy implied in sorrowing for the sins of others; and we cannot feel deeply for those distresses to which we are utter strangers in our own persons. Without this personal experience, we may weep, but will not grieve; and our tears will, at the very best, be theatrical and professional. Nay, they will pass for gross hypocrisy with Him who sees the heart. There is great danger of

self-deception here. We are apt to flatter ourselves that we hate sin, when we condemn or bewail it in the conduct of others, while, in reality, we are only indulging a splenetic, censorious, or fretful disposition. Self-love, too, conceals from us the guilt or turpitude cleaving to our actions, which we clearly see in the same or similar actions done by others. When David heard the story of the poor man and his ewe-lamb, he could not repress the sentiments of indignation which rose in his breast against the hard-hearted oppressor; but what an appalling discovery was made to him when the prophet said, "THOU art the man!" The spoiler of the poor man was forgotten, and his deed, base as it was, swallowed up and lost in that of the ravisher of Bathsheba and the murderer of Uriah. "I have sinned." He felt as if there had not been

another sinner in the world. The sacrifice of a broken spirit is pleasing to God; but it must be offered, like those of the priests under the law, "first for our own sins, and then for the people's."*

But this gracious principle, while it begins at home, must not end there. It must be liberal and diffusive; and its diffusiveness is one mark, and no small or accidental one, of its genuineness. The exercise described in our text was not peculiar to David. We find it displayed in the recorded experience of the most distinguished saints in Scripture. Of Lot we are told that he was " vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked; for that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds."† Isaiah exclaims, "Wo is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips." Jeremiah has been called the weeping prophet, because his writings were bedewed with tears, produced, not merely by "the destruction of the daughter of his people," but by the wickedness and rebellion which brought it upon her. "Mine eye," saith he, "runneth down with rivers of water-mine eye trickleth down, and ceaseth not, without any intermission."§ We see the same spirit manifested by Paul,

* Heb. vii. 27.

+ 2 Pet. ii. 7.

Is. vi. 5. S Lam. iii. 48, 49.

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