The Crisis 5

And, in addition to personal holiness, he avails himself of every scriptural and rational means for the suppression of vice and error. And while the righteous, by doing everything to suppress iniquity, are lessening the causes of the divine displeasure against a land, they at the same time increase the objects, and strengthen the grounds of God's kind regard, by the propagation of true religion. Vital godliness, like every other living thing, contains a principle of dissemination, and its possessor never more perfectly exhibits or enjoys its influence than when actuated by the philanthropic desire of extending its benefits to others. A zealous concern for the glory of God, and the best interests of his fellow-creatures, prompts him to avail himself of every suitable opportunity to enlarge the dominion and increase the subjects of true religion. By this means he multiplies in the nation those who are the friends and favourites of God, and goes on raising up others around him whose praises and piety are continually ascending in clouds of incense to heaven, and returning again upon the land "in showers of blessings."

There is yet another reason why the righteous have such influence in bringing down favors upon others, and that is, to keep up an analogy between the order of providence and the doctrine of grace. It is the peculiar and identifying principle of the economy of grace—to confer benefits upon the guilty for the sake of the righteous. Has not God "made Christ to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him? By the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." What is the salvation of the sinner, upon the gospel plan, but bestowing eternal life upon the ungodly—for the sake of Him who was altogether holy? What unbounded glory and honor will it confer upon our crucified, risen, and ascended Lord, when the saints shall be seen at the last day casting their crowns at his feet, acknowledging with transports of gratitude—that it was for his sake they were all bestowed. Is it not then a striking analogy, that as spiritual and eternal benefits are conferred upon sinners for the sake of Christ—so the saints are honored in the arrangements of Divine providence, to have temporal benefits bestowed for their sake upon the world. With this view of the important and beneficial influence diffused by the saints over the interests of the countries in which they dwell, and at the same time remembering how great is their number in this land, I cannot but indulge a pleasing hope in the Divine mercy, that we shall yet be spared from those calamities which existing circumstances and the public apprehension might otherwise lead us to expect.

3. The great moral change which God is employing us to effect in the world, is another ground of hope. Work done for God seldom goes unrewarded. "He is not unrighteous to forget our work and labor of love." In alluding to the act of Phinehas in slaying Zimri and Cozbi, we find him using the following language, "Phinehas has turned away my wrath from the children of Israel, while he was zealous for my sake among them, that I consumed them not." We are also informed that upon Joshua's zeal in the detection and execution of Achan, "the Lord turned from the fierceness of his anger." There is but little doubt that Josiah's piety in reforming religion and destroying idolatry, wherewith the land was so generally overspread, had considerable influence in keeping off the judgments of the Lord during his life. The Scripture has gone even further than this, by informing us that the service of a heathen prince, in executing the judgments of the Lord upon his enemies, although he was actuated by no other motive than his own ambition, did not pass unobserved or unrewarded by the Almighty. ""Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon made his army labor strenuously against Tyre. Every head was made bald and every shoulder chafed, but he and his army received no compensation from Tyre for the labor he expended against it. Therefore this is what the Lord God says: I am going to give the land of Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, who will carry off its wealth, seizing its spoil and taking its plunder. This will be his army's compensation. I have given him the land of Egypt as the pay he labored for, since they worked for Me." This is the declaration of the Lord God." (Ezekiel 29:18-20)

Public acts of zeal then for God's glory and service, rendered to him in the way of accomplishing his purposes, appear to be peculiarly acceptable in the sight of God, and often bring down his blessing not only on those by whom they are performed, but also on others connected with them. The wicked are sometimes spared to assist the righteous in carrying on this work, as the Gibeonites were reserved to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, for the use of the congregation. That part of the apocalyptic visions is often realized, in which the earth was seen to help the woman. Many who are totally destitute of real religion may render essential service to the great work of propagating it in the world. Seldom has a more wicked man appeared than Henry the Eighth, yet he was the instrument of the reformation. Cyrus, a heathen, let go the captives of the Lord, to build the city and the temple. Darius, Artaxerxes, and Ahasuerus countenanced and supported Daniel, Nehemiah, and Mordecai, in their pious and zealous efforts.

England has long been an asylum to which, from all lands, the feet of the oppressed have directed their course for protection, and to which 'the imploring eye of misery' has been turned from almost every scene of human wretchedness. But she is not only the benefactress of the nations, she sustains a still higher, more sacred, and more important character, for she is their evangelist also. When Jehovah placed her upon her rocky seat in the middle of the ocean, and sent commerce to pour its treasures into her lap, and permitted her to take the East and the West for a possession, and made her to be feared through all the earth, and gave the arts and the sciences to be her attendants, and religious and civil liberty to be the children of her adoption, and put the Bible into her hand—it was with this most impressive admonition, "For this cause have I raised you up to be a light to enlighten the Gentiles, and to be my salvation to the ends of the earth."

In some measure faithful to her calling, she is at this moment bearing the torch of truth, kindled at the fountain of celestial illumination, into "the dark places of the earth," sending heralds of mercy to "the habitations of cruelty;" rending "the veil of the covering cast over all nations," and preparing for the famishing tribes of the earth "the feast of fat things in the mountain of the Lord." By her Sunday schools she is enlightening the minds and reforming the manners and morals of the lower classes at home; by her Bible societies she is aiding the same benevolent design, and at the same time awakening the slumbering churches of Europe, and sending the precious Word of God to the very ends of the earth; and by her missionary institutions she is turning the heathen nations "from their dumb idols to serve the living and the true God."

The successful efforts made at the present moment by British Christians of every evangelical denomination, to diffuse the light of Christianity over the face of the globe, find no parallel in the history of our religion—since its first ages. Nor are these operations at all suspended or diminished by the difficulties of the times. The funds of the different religious societies were never greater. In this season of our depression, when the winds and the waves seem no longer as formerly almost exclusively employed to bring us wealth; when our fleets are in the docks, instead of transporting our merchandise to every foreign port; when the weaver sits down to look with desponding eye upon the loom, in which the shuttle used to fly to the notes of his joy—now, is our country sharing with idolaters, the income of her poverty, and employing her diminished resources to extend the influence and the benefits of her faith. The missionary spirit is the guardian angel of our nation, and preserves a most auspicious token, to which the pious turn a hopeful eye; and as they view it, "thank God, and take courage." Not that these efforts warrant any claims upon God, in the way of merit, but they seem to interpret his dispensations, and disclose his designs.

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