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SERMON,

&c.

ZEPHANIAH iii. 9.

"For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with one consent."

THE promises of Scripture which relate to the state of God's Church upon earth, afford to the believer a constant subject of the most exalted and the most delightful contemplation. In studying the volume of inspired truth, he finds, from the earliest times, a series of blessings guaranteed to that Church, by the express word of Divine revelation, which were to begin almost from the moment of the first curse, and were not to terminate until the consummation of all things: and, as he traces the succession of those promises onward, he finds them uniformly progressing alike in number and in excellence, as though the lovingkindness of the Lord, and His watchfulness over His people, instead of having been exhausted by their exercise, had waxed evermore stronger; and 12

had delighted to display themselves,-not only in the complete fulfilment of those blessings which had been predicted, but also in renewed assurances of still more glorious manifestations of power and love. He observes-and he observes with gratitude that, in accordance with those prophecies, God has never left himself without a witness" upon earth; and, though the Church has travelled through dark and troublous seasons, and though the "sons of Belial" may not unfrequently have borne a ten-fold, or even a ten-thousand-fold, proportion to the "children of God," and though idolatry and infidelity have ever been on the alert to raise their heads in this fair creation, and to lord over God's heritage; yet, nevertheless, that there has always been "a remnant left, according to the election of grace," men, whose "knees have not bowed down to Baal," and whose "lips have not kissed him," but who have stood like "shining lights," "in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation." And these are they to whom the promises of Scripture are addressed, and in whose favour they were pronounced: these are they that have been the objects of God's care from the fall of man even unto the present hour: these are "the branches of the true vine," of which the Lord Jesus speaks, which "abide in Him," and which derive all their strength, and all their fruitfulness, from the parent stock; these are the members of the

one great heavenly family, existing indeed upon earth at periods widely distant from one another, but all claiming a mutual alliance in Christ Jesus; all enjoying the same privileges; all drinking of the same Divine pleasures and comforts; "as out of a river;" all sharing the same grace, and all looking forward to an eternal inheritance in the same glory! And, I And, I say, that God has never failed in His promises to His Church upon earth. When they have been "few, and they strangers in the land," He has upholden them, and "has suffered no man to do them wrong;" when "the enemy" has appeared to be coming in "like a flood," to destroy them, "the Spirit of the Lord" has lifted up "a standard" in their favour; and when, in the hour of their distress, they have been almost tempted despairingly to exclaim, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?" He has proclaimed in the consoling accents of his prophet: "Fear not, O house of Israel, for even to your old age I am He; and even to hoar hairs I will carry you I have made and I will bear; even I will carry and will deliver you."

Now these promises of God to His Church, and the details of the remarkable and accurate manner in which they have been made good, appear on almost every page of the volume of inspiration. Do I read God's assurance, delivered in the presence of our first parents, that he would " put en

mity between the serpent and the seed of the woman," and that "the heel" of the seed of the woman should be bruised, while the serpent's "head" should be crushed? I find the Second Person in the Eternal Trinity, who was "sent forth" into the world, " made of a woman," carrying on, during his ministry on earth, an uncompromising warfare against the power of Satan; and though for a time seemingly overcome by him, yet, mounted at length upon " a white horse" (the emblem of victory), carrying "a bow in his hand,” and wearing "a crown upon his head," and going forth" conquering and to conquer." Do I hear the Almighty pledging Himself to Abraham, that “in him all the families of the earth should be blessed?" I find a great nation issuing forth from the loins of that eminent patriarch, distinguished for his sake by the favour of God through many generations, fed by His word, saved by His power, glorified by His presence; and, at length, I find the Lord's oath more gloriously fulfilled, when "the desire of all nations,", even Christ, who is

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I over all, God blessed for ever," appeared in the flesh, descended of the lineage of the father of the faithful. And once again, do I read the promise of the Holy Ghost, declared by the ancient prophets, that the knowledge of salvation, and of the ways of the Lord, which had previously been confined to the Jewish nation, should, under the dis

pensation of grace, be extended to the Gentiles; that the light of the "everlasting Gospel" should illumine the benighted " isles of the sea ;" and that strangers should flock together "from the east and from the west," and from the north and from the south," and should sit down with Abraham and with Isaac," and with Israel in the kingdom of Jesus? I find these prophecies abundantly fulfilled; I see "the wild olive tree grafted" into the stock of the Church, and made "to partake of the root and of the fatness of the olive tree;" I trace the steps of Peter and Philip, of Paul and Barnabas, into the dark regions, where they laboured mightily and successfully to evangelize the heathen; I mark in Asia the idols of silver and of gold, cast, by the hands of their very worshippers, "to the moles and to the bats;" I observe the deserts of Africa "rejoicing and blossoming as the rose ;" and I behold the banner of the cross waving triumphantly over countries, which previously had either been covered with the thick darkness of unrefined Paganism, or, what, it may be, rendered their inhabitants still more unfavourable to the reception of the seed of the word, infatuated by the mythological superstitions which prevailed in the ancient civilised world.

Now, when in looking back on the past history of the Church, we trace this uniform and unfailing agreement between the prophecy and the event,though hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of