The Crisis 4

II. But it is time to seek a source of CONSOLATION, and to enquire if there are not some grounds to hope that the Lord will yet arise and have mercy upon Britain. Thank God, there are many bright specks along the dark horizon to encourage our hopes that the clouds will yet be dispersed, and that we shall be preserved from the gathering storm. So far as secondary causes are concerned, I repose too much confidence in the good sense, loyalty, patriotism of the English people, ever to imagine that they will allow their invaluable constitution to be violently overthrown by anarchy on the one hand, or gradually undermined by tyranny on the other. I cherish a hope, that should the peace of the world continue, and especially our internal tranquility be restored, our commercial and financial difficulties will be surmounted, and the tide of our prosperity again flow. But our expectation must be from God, after all. We must not trust in an arm of flesh, but in the living God, "who delights in mercy, and does not willingly afflict the children of men." There are many reasons why we should balance our fears with our hopes, from which I select the following.

1. The long series of deliverances which God has wrought for this country. We have, indeed, ever been the nursling of his Providence—the records of our history are replete with instances of divine interposition on our behalf. In addition to our early emancipation, first, from the yoke of idolatry and afterwards from the dominion of Popery, what deliverances from each have we subsequently experienced! From the Reformation until the Revolution ceaseless efforts were made to rob the country of its most valuable privileges, by civil tyranny on the one hand, and ecclesiastical usurpation on the other. It has become almost obsolete now to talk of the Spanish Armada, and the gunpowder plot, but neither those deep laid schemes against the Protestant religion, nor the equally malignant designs of the Stuart Kings against our civil freedom, should be allowed to sink into oblivion. We deserve all the terrors which these events produced in the minds of our ancestors, if we allow the memory of them to perish. Let us often go back to that illustrious era, when our merciful God rescued Britain from the slavery to which her infatuated monarch was conducting her, and having banished him as an outcast from the country, gave us in lieu of him that illustrious Prince, who ascended the vacant throne, as with the bill of rights in one hand and the act of toleration in the other. The rebellions of 1545, in favor of the Pretender, are also seldom thought of by us, but they made our forefathers tremble for the safety of all that was dear to them.

To come to our own times, who can forget the alarms we have passed through since the French Revolution? Never had this country, since the period of the Conquest, such a struggle for her existence as an independent kingdom. An enemy arose whose power at one time seemed almost as boundless as his ambition, while both together were directing their uttermost efforts against us. Like Haman, who accounted all his honors but as nothing while Mordecai was not humbled, he regarded all his conquests with dissatisfaction while England was free. In subjugating the rest of Europe, he seemed to have no other object than to convert it into one immense storehouse, from which to collect the materials of our ruin. We saw his progress with dismay, and as he broke the power of one state after another, beheld the evil approaching nearer and nearer to our own coasts. Deliverance, however, at length arrived, and in a way that showed it to be entirely of God. "He sends His command throughout the earth; His word runs swiftly. He spreads snow like wool; He scatters frost like ashes; He throws His hailstones like crumbs. Who can withstand His cold? He sends His word and melts them; He unleashes His winds, and the waters flow. He declares His word to Jacob, His statutes and judgments to Israel. He has not done this for any nation; they do not know His judgments. Hallelujah!" (Psalms 147:15-20)

He let loose upon our antagonist all the terrors and forces of winter; he made the elements our allies, and poured upon him the hail and the snow which "he had reserved for the time of trouble, for the day of battle and war." It was not by human might nor power so much as by the agency of the Lord, that the pride of France was humbled, and our own deliverance effected. "It was the Lord's doing, and is marvelous in our eyes." At length, however, the mighty foe was completely subdued by the instrumentality of that kingdom which he had so often threatened to annihilate, and he was forsaken on the rock of Helena, and left to be the prey of his own reflections, like Prometheus beneath the beak of the vulture.

Now although we cannot peremptorily conclude from what God has done—that he will continue to do the same, especially as we so little deserve it. Yet may we imitate the conduct of the Psalmist, and in the midst of our difficulties "remember the years of the right hand of the Most High." Instances of past deliverance illustrate the power and mercy of Jehovah—and encourage us to trust in both. How often were the Israelites directed to strengthen their confidence in the Lord, by looking back upon all the way in which he had led them through the wilderness; and to prove by fresh acts of deliverence, that his arm was not shortened, nor his ear become heavy. The first duty we owe to God upon receiving a favor, is to be grateful; the next, to deduce from it a motive to trust him for the future. The pious suggestion of an Israelitish woman, may probably be applied, without presumption, to our case as a nation, "If the Lord were pleased to kill us, he would not have received a burnt offering at our hands, neither would he have showed us all these things."

2. The number of true Christians in the land is a pleasing and strong ground of hope. Amidst the aboundings of iniquity, thank God, we discover no small degree of genuine piety. Probably there is not upon the surface of the globe a spot, where, within the same limits, so many are to be found whom "the grace that brings salvation, has taught to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present evil world." By referring to the Scriptures, we learn this important sentiment, that God often confers favors upon the guilty for the sake of the righteous. In some cases divine judgments would have been altogether averted from a people, had there been among them but a small number of the friends of God. He would have spared Sodom for the sake of ten righteous, and said in after ages to Jeremiah, "Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, look and take note! Search her squares to see if you can find a man, one who does justice and seeks truth, that I may pardon her." Jeremiah 5:1.

Sometimes God's wrath has been deferred for the sake of the righteous. There was to be peace in Hezekiah's days, though dreadful times were to follow. Josiah was promised that he would go down to the grave in tranquility, and not see the evil which was then to come upon Judea. The vengeance of the Most High is frequently mitigated, and shortened in its duration—on account of the godly. "For the elect's sake," said Christ, in alluding to times of great tribulation, "those days shall be shortened." In one case we find a country delivered from the horrors of invasion, and the dread of impending subjugation, out of respect to a saint who had been dead almost three centuries. "For I will defend this city to save it," said Jehovah, when Jerusalem was threatened by the Assyrian army under Sennacherib, "for my own sake, and for my servant David's sake."

Temporal favors have been conferred on some people out of pure regard to the holy individuals with whom they were connected. Laban was prospered because Jacob was in his service, "and the Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake." And in how many instances have spiritual blessings been retained in cities, towns, and villages, on account of those who had sufficient piety to value and enjoy them. When Paul would have departed from Corinth, he was detained there by a revelation from God to this effect, "I have many people in this city." These are instances sufficient to establish the truth of the general principle, that the wicked are often blessed for the sake of the righteous, and to warrant a belief that if we could scrutinize the secrets of the divine government, we would be astonished to discover what an extensive influence the friends of heaven have possessed in the arrangements of providence and the destinies of nations. Nor is it difficult to assign the reasons on which this procedure is founded. Is it not a public testimony borne by Jehovah of his love for his people and his approbation of their principles? Nothing is more common among men than to confer a favor upon a stranger, or an enemy, on account of a friend; nor do we feel anything to be a stronger token of respect, than a kindness shown to another on our account. On this principle does the Lord act in reference to the righteous; they are the children of his adoption, and the favourites of his heart, at whose request, and on whose behalf, he will sometimes bestow his favors upon others. It is thus also that he honors prayer. "I sought for a man among them," he said to Ezekiel, "who should make up the hedge and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it." The righteous answer the description which is here given, and come up to the requisition of the Lord. They stand in the gap, through which his judgments are coming in upon the land, and surround their country with a hedge of prayers. They take the public calamities with them into the closet of private devotion, and make them in the seasons of holy seclusion the matter of their fervent supplication at the throne of grace; and as many a river which carries fertility and wealth through a land, is to be traced to a spring bubbling up in the concealed recesses of some thick embowering forest, or in the hidden cleft of some overshadowing rock, so are many of the streams of national blessings to be found issuing from the retirement where the Christian wrestles with his God.

The Scripture assures us that "the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much." There seems to be a very strong belief in the minds of men in general, that the saints have "power with God," and considerable interest in the court of heaven. Hence when the wicked are in circumstances of distress, and especially when death stares them in the face, they are most anxious to enjoy the prayers of the godly; Pharaoh entreated for the prayers of Moses; and Simon Magus entreated for the intercession of Peter. A person once told a monarch, who was complaining of an individual who had fallen into disfavor for his plain dealing, "that he had not a better subject in his dominions, since that man could have what he wished of God for asking."

The righteous have great influence on the destiny of a nation, by opposing and restricting that iniquity which brings the judgments of God upon the land. As it is the sin of a people which lays them open to wrath; they who would keep off vengeance must keep out sin. Who are the people that hinder sin most? The godly! They reprove it by their testimony, they discountenance it by their example, they repress it by their authority. Every holy man is an impediment to the universal prevalence of iniquity! As the tide of depravity approaches him, carrying desolation along with it, he in effect says to it, "thus far shall you go and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped."

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