The Standard Lifted Against the Enemy

ISAIAH lix. 19.

(Continued from page 5.)

WE have already made reference to some of the many forms in which the great enemy of God and man is coming in, like a flood, upon our country and professing Churches. We have pointed out that he is coming in with floods of sordid Materialism, unbelieving Rationalism, foolish Superstition, and open Immorality. It now falls to us to observe:

II.—The promise that “the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.” The prophet, as the mouthpiece of Jehovah, intimates that the enemy will not be allowed to pursue his course without resistance, but that at the very time when he comes in in such a powerful manner as that he seems likely to carry all before him, the Spirit of the Lord shall go forth to the conflict, and effectually resist his advance. There is nothing too hard for the Lord—He is all-powerful; and it is only because He sees meet, in His infinite sovereignty, and for wise and holy purposes, to give the enemy liberty for a time, that he is not driven for ever off the field into the bottomless pit. The Lord reigneth, and shall reign till all His enemies are made His footstool.

I. Let us notice the glorious Person who lifts up the standard: it is none other than “the Spirit of the Lord.” There are three Persons in the ineffable, undivided Godhead—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—and it is the office of the Third Person to be the channel of divine energy or power in the dealings of the Godhead with the children of men. Just as the activity of the Son of God in the flesh was the spring of merit for the purchase of redemption, so the activity of the blessed Spirit in His operations is the spring of power for the application of redemption in actual experience to sinners of mankind. The Father, indeed,
has given to the Son, as Mediator of the new covenant, all power in heaven and in earth—”power over all flesh”—that He may employ it in the interests of His kingdom, and He sends forth the Spirit, who is the efficient agent of the Godhead, to oppose the inroads of the devil, and to preserve and promote the cause of God in the world. It is no other than a divine Person, possessed of almighty power, who is promised to lift a standard against the adversary. Satan is stronger than any of the sons of men, bad or good, and none but the Spirit of the Lord can effectually cope with him.

The Spirit has certainly been pleased in all ages to employ men as co-workers in this great conflict, but men are only His instruments at best. All their intellect, energy, and effort can accomplish nothing apart from divine influences. “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.” Nay, more; such was the effect of the Fall, that not one member of our race is found outside the camp of the devil, or within the camp of Christ, until the Spirit of the Lord first puts forth His constraining and transforming power. And this has been, and will continue to be, one of the standing and incontrovertible evidences of the divine origin of the Christian religion—that a supernatural and matchless power has accompanied its teaching, wherever it has come, before which apparently unconquerable forces of iniquity have been effectually overthrown.

1. Observe the “standard” which the Spirit lifts up. A standard, as here referred to, is a signal used in war, mainly for two purposes: first, to give a visible sign of the special country or cause in whose interest a particular army is engaged; and, secondly, to afford a rallying point and a guide to the soldiers of the said army. What is the standard that the Spirit of God lifts up in the spiritual warfare? The standard is both one and many—essentially one, and yet diverse in certain respects.

The Spirit raises the standard of the Word as set forth in the Holy Scriptures. He has been pleased in all ages to employ His Word as a chief weapon in resisting the onsets of the enemy. It is spoken of in some places as “the sword of the Spirit,” and by its instrumentality He has pierced the heart of the King’s enemies, and subdued them to His sceptre. The Word of God, as contrasted with the word of man, has been the great rallying point of the true children of God in every generation. Never can there be any real success in the Lord’s army without it, and there never was a day in which there was greater need to hold this standard aloft than the present. The Lord Jesus Himself, in His wilderness temptation, employed this weapon in His combat with the enemy with complete success, and His people are called to follow His example.

The Spirit lifts up the standard of the Gospel of Christ. The Apostle Paul, as an inspired messenger, declares that the Gospel concerning “Jesus Christ and him crucified” is the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation, and he unfurled no other standard at Rome, at Athens, and at the other great cities of the Gentiles, which he visited on his missionary journeys. The Spirit of truth then attended the standard of the Gospel with irresistible saving power to many, and the floods of heathen superstition and wickedness were driven back before its triumphant march. The Lord has never promised to bless any other Gospel than that which His Word sets before us, and if He arises to check the dreadful floods of error and corruption that are over-spreading our country in the present day, He will employ the old Gospel, so unpalatable to the majority of modern tastes, but so sweet to those who are taught of the Spirit, for the accomplishment of this desirable end. Legion are the new methods for bringing the world to Christ, but they will prove utter and dismal failures. It is to be feared many of these devices are only the means of deluding sinners more and more to their eternal destruction.

The Spirit lifts up the standard of a special testimony against particular errors and sins, and on behalf of particular truths and duties. We observe the standard lifted up in this manner by the prophets in the Old Testament and by Christ and His Apostles in the New. They are the patterns for all subsequent generations. When the Spirit in those former days entered into conflict with the powers of darkness, and led forth judgment unto victory, He brought home to the minds of men not only the fact of sin and error in general, but the guilt of particular sins and errors—the crying evils of the special generation in which they lived. Did not the great Head of the Church, who preached in the power of the Spirit, leave a never-to-be-forgotten example in this respect? In like manner acted all His apostolic servants. There are many now-a-days who, in the interests of a supposed charity, decry a faithful, outspoken testimony against error and for truth, but their charity is not that of Christ or His Apostles. Who among the sons of men were ever fuller of the love of Christ than John and Paul, and who more faithful in the denunciation of false doctrine and sinful practice? Do we not see the same thing also clearly exemplified in sub-apostolic and Reformation times, when the Spirit, in an eminent measure, raised a standard against the enemy? Witness the historic toils and conflicts of Athanasius, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Knox, Ridley and Latimer, Henderson, Rutherford, Cargill, Renwick, and many others, who are now before the Throne. The names of these witnesses stand for all that is worthy and noble in the service of Christ. The Spirit honoured their testimony, and drove back the enemy on many a field by their instrumentality. When their example is set aside in this thing in which they followed Christ, it is by no means a sign of greater love to God or the souls of men, or of a richer measure of the Spirit’s presence, but of the very opposite—of less love and less of the Spirit. The Spirit has withdrawn, and the love of
carnal ease and popular applause has taken His place. The smooth-tongued sentimentalism and the indiscriminate charity of the present day are not from the Lord, but from the enemy, and they often co-exist in individuals with the greatest personal selfishness and coldness to what is truly good.

1. Let us notice, lastly, what the Spirit’s uplifting of the standard implies in the way of success. One rendering of this passage is “shall put him to flight,” which is to be found in the margin of our Bibles. It is plain that the Spirit has been acting in every generation against the arch enemy. He has never been without a standard in some part of the earth. The text clearly implies that the enemy shall never have a complete triumph, for when he comes in like a flood and seems likely to overspread the whole world then the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up the standard against him with more than ordinary power. This has been proved in the past, and it will be shown still more gloriously in the future.

A flood is a thing of degrees: it rises from one degree of height to another, and it gradually overspreads a larger and larger area. We know not when the limit appointed by the divine decree may be reached. But we are encouraged by the infallible testimony of the prophet to expect that, when things are at the worst, the Lord will command deliverance.

It is a great thing at any time in the history of the Church to have a standard uplifted on behalf of Christ and His truth, and it is this standard that is moving on to victory, whatever apparent reverses it may meet with in the interval. We cannot judge the decision of a battle till its close. The Divine Standard-bearer will yet cause the banner of truth to wave over all the nations of the earth. “And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever” (Rev. xi. 15).

George III. and the Royal Declaration.—Concerning the proposal to alter the Royal Declaration, we submit that the following commendable words of George III. are worthy of emulation on the part of King George V.—”Where is the power on earth to absolve me from the observance of every sentence of that oath, particularly the one requiring me to maintain the Protestant Reformed Religion? Was not my family seated on the Throne for that express purpose, and shall I be the first to suffer it to be undermined, perhaps overturned? No, No, I had rather beg my bread from door to door throughout Europe, than consent to any such measure. I can give up my crown and retire from power. I can quit my palace and live in a cottage. I can lay my head on a block and lose my life, but I cannot break my oath. If I violate that oath I am no longer legal Sovereign of this country.”—The Vanguard.

A Sermon.

BY THE LATE REV. JOHN KENNEDY, D.D., DINGWALL.*
“The Lord hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel.”—MICAH vi. 2.

* Preached at Dingwall on a Fast Day in 1854.

HE is always highly honoured who is called to plead for God. Such honour was Micah’s. He receives a commission to advocate the cause of God against His ungrateful people. Having called attention to the terms and authority of his commission, he at once proceeds to state the case for God. He addresses the “mountains” and “the strong foundations of the earth.” How powerfully may thus be rebuked the carnal ease and pride of Israel. He turns from an obdurate people to the strong mountains of their land, as if these were more likely to hear and to tremble than were they. Or these mountains, in their strength and fertility, as they fenced and furnished the home of His people, were called to witness to the power and goodness of the God of Israel and to the weakness and ingratitude of His people. Whether we thus interpret the prophet’s invocation, or see, through a figure, the fathers and rulers, and through them again the people of the land of mountains, standing before him as he pleads for God, it teaches us at least that such was the weighty import of the prophet’s pleading, and so awful the consequences of an unsettled quarrel with the Lord, that well might the strongest tremble at the announcement—“The Lord hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel.”

He who prosecutes in the case in which Micah is called to plead is none other and none less than “the Lord.” It is He who “hath a controversy with his people”—it is for Him the prophet is retained as advocate. The pending case is between God and Israel. He prosecutes. He will not allow the case to lie over any longer. He is resolved that it shall be tried—“He will plead with Israel.” He presses for a settlement. But ere He does so finally—ere the case issue in the execution of deserved judgment—the prophet is called to plead, with a view to a conviction in the conscience of the criminals, that they may feel themselves to be at the disposal of Him who is the party against them, and casting themselves on His mercy, may prove whether He will not yet spare and bless them.

As surely as was Micah then, the faithful servants of the Lord are called to make this solemn announcement now to His professing people. We are His professing people; with us “the Lord hath a controversy.” He is now pressing for a settlement of His case against us; and the time is not far distant when—if all overtures through His servants for a friendly adjustment of the quarrel have been rejected—the Lord Himself shall arise in His anger to plead with an impenitent nation.

Met as we are this day, professing to humble ourselves “under the mighty hand of God,” the text presents to us a suitable subject of meditation, which demands our serious and prayerful attention.

Let us then consider
I.—The parties in this controversy.
II.—The tokens of a present controversy with ourselves.
III.—Some of the grounds of the Lord’s controversy with us.
IV.—The right method of improving the announcement of the text.

I.—The parties in the controversy.—The parties at variance are God and His creatures. How infinite is the disparity between them! This is not a case between parties on an equal footing in point of dignity and rank—between two of equal authority and rights—between two alike subject to law. The illustrative case is a State trial. The prosecution here is at the instance of the Crown of heaven. Men are criminals at the bar, on a citation issued by the King of Glory. The prophet is the Crown counsel, to state the charges against the criminals, and to prove their guilt. The dignity of the party prosecuting is not compromised by such a trial; and infinitely low must be their footing who are summoned as criminals to the bar of the Most High.

Separated by sin from “the fountain of living waters”—deprived of the favour and exposed to the wrath of the Almighty—how awful to men must be a controversy with God. How important must it be, for it involves the rights of the government, the honour of the law, and the glory of the name of Jehovah! How infinitely strong an interest therefore must God feel in the decision, and how impossible it is that a settlement can be indefinitely deferred or the trial loosely conducted!

1. The righteous Lord of all “hath a controversy with” our nation. He who is “Governor among the nations” is the party against us. Omniscient to know, righteous to mark, and almighty to punish, our many aggravated sins, and wise to do so in the best time and way, He will settle His controversy with us as a nation here. The scene of a nation’s sin will be yet the scene of that nation’s judgments. Ere it cease to be a nation—or in ceasing to be so—the Lord shall smite it with the rod of His anger. The judgment will fall within the nation’s lifetime. Its age may consist of many generations, and long may it seem to prosper in its iniquity, but the “day of vengeance” will surely come at last. Time to accumulate guilt will but furnish the occasion of accumulated wrath. It may not be true of nations now—as of Israel of old—that the Lord does speedily and manifestly visit them with judgment. Such intimations of His oversight of
   nations may not be so necessary now as when no king intervened between Jehovah and His people. Nor are the strokes with which He smites the nations now so marked, direct, and frequent as in His dealings with Israel during all periods of their history. This is the result of there being less fatherliness in His dealings with nations now, not because He observes them less. How much more directly and speedily does the King, as a father, correct his child, than, as a ruler, he punishes his subject. Israel were emphatically and by distinction a people nigh to God; they only, of all the nations, were permitted to call Him Father. Just on this account they were all the more directly and frequently corrected. They were often punished because they were His children; they were speedily smitten, for they were “a people near unto Him.” The King Himself was more seen in the chastisement of Israel than in His dealings with outcast Gentiles. But although less frequent and less manifest are divine punishments of Gentile nations, not the less surely will “the day of vengeance” come.

2. The Lord hath a controversy with our nation as “His people” by obligation, profession, and engagement. It may not be true of us to the full extent to which it applied to Israel, that we are “the people of the Lord”; but as for them so for us hath the Lord done great things. From a very small beginning how has His enriching blessing caused us to grow! Look to our place on the map of the world. Our little islands—separated from the great continents—look like outcasts from the power and wealth of the world. Yet in these “isles of the sea” has grown, under Jehovah’s care, the nation now, by distinction, “great” among all the kingdoms of the earth. Provoking, by its seeming weakness at first, the contempt or rapacity, and, as it grows, by its advancing power, the jealousy, and by its spiritual revival, the hatred of other nations, how wonderful has been its preservation and its progress till now. How careful of us has the Lord been heretofore! And, first of all, the blessings He has given us! He bestowed on us the gift of “the glorious Gospel.” Early did its light shine in these distant isles of the sea, and long was that light preserved from being extinguished. Feebly it shone in favoured spots in our country when the rest of the world was almost wholly wrapt round with darkness. And though at last the feeble spark goes out of sight, and must be carefully searched for in the ashes of the past before it be discovered, how brightly did the light shine at the blessed Reformation, when “the glory of the Lord” arose upon our land. He then called it to arise out of its degradation and darkness, and the brightest witness for the truth—”the fairest daughter of the Reformation”—appeared in the Church of our fathers. Even till now, through many trials, changes, and sins, He has preserved a remnant of the faithful in our land, and, as nowhere else, the true light yet shineth amongst us. During the interval how many precious ministers of the Gospel did the Lord
   raise up; how many souls, ripened for glory, He gathered in our land; and how often, when their “soul” was “bowed down to the dust,” has He arisen, in the days of our fathers, to “redeem” them for His “mercies’ sake”!

As did Israel, so do we profess to be “the people of the Lord.” It does not become us, as it did them, to profess as a nation to be “his peculiar people.” We ought not to claim to be exclusively the Lord’s. But we do profess to be a Christian and a Protestant kingdom. By our very constitution we claim this character—this is our name among the nations—although too often ashamed to act up to our profession, and too often practically denying it. Such a profession implies an engagement to serve the Lord. But, besides this, we have once and again entered into a solemn league and covenant with God. If not called to do so in the same way as Israel was, our fathers were called by the Lord’s voice in His providence to league themselves together against His enemies, and solemnly to pledge allegiance to Him as they went to fight His battles. And whatever be our views of the descending obligation of the covenants, we must acknowledge other ties that bind us to be loyal to King Jesus. If we disallow the obligation of a covenant not proposed from heaven to our fathers, we must at least regard their example of faithfulness and zeal as a stimulus to the discharge of our duty to the Lord, and as a rebuke to our formality and treachery. But the time may not be distant when a crisis shall arise, such as that in which the Lord called our fathers to join in league together and to enter into covenant with Him, and when—if our nation be unfaithful to the Lord and to His cause—the few who fear His name shall be called anew to pledge by solemn vows their faithfulness to Him in resisting the advancing power of anti-Christ.

If the Lord has done so much for our nation—if we must be silent and ashamed as He asks us, “Oh, my people, what have I done unto thee, and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me”—if we profess as a nation to be “the people of the Lord”—and if, by the example of our fathers, if not by their covenants, and by our own continued profession, we are a people under engagement to serve Him—oh, how great must be the guilt of our sins, and how overwhelming the evidence to attest the justice of our punishment! How ought we to tremble in our place at the bar of God! How ought considerations of His greatness, sovereignty, goodness, and grace, and of His just and awful anger, of our infinitely strong obligations to serve Him, and of our disloyalty, ingratitude, and pride, to overwhelm us as, standing at His bar, we hear the announcement—”The Lord hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel.”

1. Foremost in guilt among the parties at the bar are those who have come there from the house of the Lord. Those who enjoyed the privilege of a preached Gospel, who had access to the means and ordinances of grace, who again and again renewed professions
   of faith in Christ and vows of allegiance to Him, stand charged with the chief share of the causes of controversy. On them especially is the Lord’s eye. With these, His professing people, the Lord has a special controversy; with them will He first plead. “Judgment must begin at the house of God.” We who “name the name of Christ” need not try to hide ourselves in the crowd that stand at the bar of God. We are first summoned to appear, and we must stand out from the rest when we come before Him. Ours is the place of chief sinners, for we, because of privileges, professions, and vows, are doubly guilty. To us especially is the announcement made—”The Lord hath a controversy with his people.” Let us beware of imagining that our profession and privileges can shelter us in a time of controversy. Out of His own house will the Lord summon all that would hide themselves there. They who are brought thence must be guiltier than all the rest, and because of their guilt, and to manifest the rigorous justice of the Lord, the execution of judgment must begin with the punishment of these.

2. Among the parties cited may be seen the very children of the King Himself. Even they are guilty of generation sins—even they may suffer from generation judgments. But it is their peculiar privilege that, though they may lose sight, as they stand in the midst of a guilty generation, of the smile of their Father in the frown of their Lord, although their generation sins shall be punished with generation judgments, and downcast and wounded though they may be when smitten in a time of sweeping judgment, their Father’s hand will raise and heal them. He will not gather their souls with sinners. And if, amidst generation judgments, death should overtake the remnant “who have not defiled their garments,” the result to them will be a speedier passage to their eternal home. The fire that comes to punish a generation’s sins will prove to them a chariot which their Father sends to carry their souls to glory.

II.—The tokens of a present controversy with ourselves.—If there were a quarrel between a man and his fellow that resulted in a trial at court, would there not be in their previous dealings with each other, or in the want of any intercourse between them, enough to make them feel they were at variance, and a sign to indicate this to observers? And if the Lord hath a controversy with us—if He is resolved to settle it, and if the time to plead is drawing nigh, shall we, who are in His hand, and are surrounded by the busy working of His providence, have no cause to feel even now that there is a quarrel between us and the Almighty? If we see not already tokens of His wrath, it is only because we are blind, and will not “discern the signs of the times.” If we feel not that He is angry, it is because of how profoundly we sleep.

We would now call your attention to a few of the tokens of the Lord’s controversy with us, which they discern whose eyes the Lord hath opened.

1. “The Hope of Israel” is “a Stranger” in the land. His gracious presence has been greatly withdrawn from us. Outpourings of His Spirit are withheld from our land. His power and glory are not seen and felt in “Zion’s gates” as in days of old; and “in the dwellings of Jacob” they who seek Him find cause to mourn His absence. Our churches are yet open—the means of grace are continued—the ordinances of the Lord’s house are dispensed—the Gospel doctrine is preached by many, and the Gospel truly preached by some—profession is abundant—much work is done, and never was there a greater bustle among the churches—but, after all, “Ichabod” is inscribed on our churches and homes, “the glory” of the Lord “is departed.” Oh, my dear friends, we need not look away from ourselves for abundant proofs of the Lord’s being a stranger. Why is it that our preaching is so lifeless? Why this desolation and darkness of spirit in seeking the Lord in “Jacob’s dwellings” and in serving Him in “Zion’s gates”? Why this pining of the few “trees of righteousness” yet planted amongst us? Why the cry, “My leanness, my leanness,” in the mouths of those whom the Lord has quickened? Why are “the things which remain” so “ready to die”? Why serve the witnesses of Christ so little the place of the “lights of the world” and of the “salt of the earth”; and why are not the ungodly more rebuked and awed by the holiness of their lives? Why is lifeless profession so common and so easy? Why can so many who make no profession to vital religion dare to join themselves to the Church of God? Why are hypocrites in Zion so bold? Why are the multitude so profoundly asleep? Why are none from among them seen flying “as a cloud and as doves to their windows”? Why do Gospel-despisers find it so easy to abide under the power and guilt of unbelief—under the impending wrath of God? And why is it so easy for us to endure all these things? Why do none of us truly stir ourselves up to lay hold of the Lord? All these things are so because the Lord is a stranger, and He is so because we have provoked Him to depart. We have sinned away from us the presence of the Lord; and although, for His name’s sake, He has not utterly disowned and forsaken Zion, there is scarce so much left us of life as will constrain Him to return and dwell with us. This token of His anger will not be felt nor seen by an unbelieving world. They are rather rejoicing in the stillness that results from the absence of the Lord, in the ease with which they are allowed to sin, and in the growing conformity to themselves of the witnesses of Christ. But surely the Lord is very angry when He has become a stranger even in His own house. Small may be the offence that will provoke one to forsake the house of another, but guilty must be the children who have banished their father from his home, and greatly offended is that father as he goes. And if the Lord has become a stranger even in His own house, where shall we seek for Him since we find Him not there? “In the dwellings of Jacob,” may be the answer of some. But hast
   thou found Him there? If so, hasten to “bring Him to” thy “mother’s house, and to the chamber of her that conceived” thee. But thou hast not found Him, for thou art too much unconcerned whether others find Him or not. Thy prayerless ease in “the gates of Zion” betrays thine estrangement in “the dwellings of Jacob.”

2. “The righteous perisheth” and “merciful men are taken away.” This is a sign of present controversy and of “evil to come.” These righteous ones are “men of mercy” to their generation while they live; their removal is a token of coming judgment. The righteous are the preserving salt of the earth, and the mass out of which they are taken will speedily ripen for judgment. They plead with God in behalf of a guilty people; the importunate pleaders are taken from between the judgment and the guilty. God, who will not refuse their cry, has raised them where no longer prayer but praise shall employ them. Some pleaders are left, but they are those who will not press for an answer. They will allow Him to perform “his strange work” of judgment. These, then, may remain even in a time of controversy. But the wrestling pleaders are removed; the “men of mercy,” who could not endure to see “evil come upon their people”; the men of prayer who would not let the Lord go without His leaving a blessing behind Him. The removal of these is indeed an intimation of such an evil coming as a favourite child must not even see. The haste in which the Lord is taking them away proves that the evil is speedily to come. If you saw a parent rush out from his door in haste, raise off the street and carry to his house a child whom you knew to be his, would you not at once conclude that the father saw some danger coming, from which he was in haste to save it? Such a sign has been given us in the dealings of the Lord in our day and our Zion. Alas! though many have seen it, few have considered “that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come.”

What were the feelings of Micah, as described in the next chapter, at such a time as the present. “Woe is me,” he saith, “for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits.” On looking over the church, he sees the places empty, or but ill supplied of those whom “his soul desired.” A few of the Lord’s people were left, but they were as the “grape gleanings” compared with the rich “summer fruits.” He feels desolate and lonely as he looks around. He discerns, dark with the power of God, the sky of providence above him; and before him, he sees the prospect, for around him are the signs of a stormy season of judgment. And oh, my dear friends, how bare are the branches of our own vineyard already! Where are the summer fruits? Have they not been hastily gathered because winter is nigh? Scarcely more than the “gleanings” are now left—the stunted fruit that was overlooked before. Have we not then cause to raise the lamentation of the prophet, and, with him, while feeling desolate
and lonely in a vineyard so stript, to tremble before the tokens of “the evil to come.”

1. The advance of Popery. That Popery is making progress in our land is universally allowed. It has greatly grown of late in boldness. This is ominous. May it not be because Satan is aware of the Lord’s estrangement from “His people,” and has discovered that communication is greatly interrupted between heaven and the few who are left to “contend for the faith?” What if it should be true that he knows better than ourselves that, though “the Lord’s hand is not shortened,” our iniquities have separated us from Him, and that, though “His ear is not heavy,” our “sins have hid His face from” us, “that He will not hear?” May it not be the inspiration of Satan’s courage because of this that emboldens “the man of sin” to raise his pretensions, and to utter his threats as in days of old? May it not also be because he has made more progress than we are yet aware of? It looks as if he had been successfully undermining, and were now challenging his opponents to provoke their advance on the ground which he had prepared for their destruction. Surely he would not be so bold if he had not reason to count on sufficient support in the event of the rupture he provokes from many in our land who are at present in disguise, as well as from the kingdoms that have lent him their power. And has not Popery of late made many proselytes? It is a striking fact that, in this age, which boasts of its enlightenment, a system of such monstrous absurdities in doctrine, of such abhorrent antecedents, and of such debasing tendencies, should make progress—should advance in Britain—and even there make proselytes among the noble, the educated, and the serious. Against its progress neither the refinement of rank, nor the acquirements of education, nor the sentimental fervour of a fashionable religion, have availed as barriers. We are thus taught in providence the lesson of Scripture, that all who “receive not the love of the truth” are the easy prey of Anti-Christ. And if it has advanced over every other barrier that seemed likely to arrest its course, have we not too good grounds to fear that, as another token of His anger, “strong delusion” has been sent by the Lord who “hath a controversy with our land?” Think of the withdrawal by the Lord of His Spirit, see His children fast following, and mark in the deserted land, subjected to the power of Satan, the working of a “strong delusion.” Surely with such a land “the Lord hath a controversy”—surely the people who dwell there are “the generation of His wrath.”

2. But the multitude are blind to these signs of controversy to which we have already adverted. Carnal and worldly men are unconscious of spiritual judgments. The very progress of these is marked by the measure of their ease and indifference; and as spiritual generally precede temporal judgments, the nearer the coming of the latter is the more careless and secure are the people on whom they are to fall. But even the most carnal and careless
   are without excuse if they do not discover from His dealings in providence that the Lord hath a controversy with us. Such tokens of His anger have been given as might be felt by flesh and blood. Famine has been of late in our land, wasting the strength and destroying the lives of thousands, and expelling by its terrors thousands more of our countrymen from their native land. “The plague is begun,” because “wrath is gone out from the Lord.” War has been raging in our colonies, and its rumours and sorrows have reached to disturb and afflict us at home. In the East a formidable war has arisen, and our country is involved in the strife.

But it may be said—”The famine was very partial; cholera, though virulent, has visited only a few towns, and, by its frequent recurrence, has lost its marked character of a visitation of judgment, and war is yet at a distance, and our plains may never be battlefields.” These, we believe, are the thoughts of many, and, because they are, they themselves continue at their ease. But is not such conduct a manifest abuse of the intimations of providence, and a great provocation of further judgments? True, the Lord has hitherto restrained these great wasting judgments, but they are at work. He has been telling us what might be if He removed His restraining hand, and what shall be if we provoke Him to do so. And shall we make light of such intimations of judgment, because they are yet mingled with mercy? Shall we learn to be coolly familiar with the tokens of His wrath, and make their very frequency a reason for denying that “the Lord hath a controversy with His people?” Shall the very progress of spiritual judgments, and the very frequency of temporal judgments, be the occasion of our blindness?

(To be Continued.)

Glasgow University and Andrew Melville.—In recent years Glasgow University has initiated the custom of commemorating its founders and benefactors. This year’s commemoration was devoted to Andrew Melville, Knox’s great successor, and one of the great names of Scottish Presbyterianism. The orator on this occasion was the Rev. Dr. John Smith, who took occasion to point out that Melville’s arts course of seven subjects continued down to the present generation. The subjects selected by Melville were Latin, Greek, Logic, Rhetoric, Mathematics, Ethics and Natural Philosophy, and they were taken by students in the very order in which they appear in Melville’s list until the changes which took place in the curriculum a few years ago. But it is as a leader in the Church that Melville will be longest remembered. With a heart that never seemed to know any fear but that of God, he stood forth as a born leader of men, and in the hour of crisis men looked to him as one whose loyalty to Christ never wavered in sunshine or storm.