ARTICLE IX.

SHORT SERMONS.

"For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted." — Isaiah lx. 12.

THE text is given as a reason for the future splendid triumph of Messiah's kingdom, which the prophet is here painting.

The object of the text is the clear and emphatic announcement of the fact that the law of God applies to Nations.

National governments as well as individual persons must keep the moral law. In their national capacity and public acts they must adhere to the letter and spirit of the Decalogue, or the God who gave it, and who stands behind it to enforce it, will grind them to powder in the constantly rolling mill of his providence.

The destruction of nations will of course be different from the destruction of persons, according to their difference of constitution and duration. Persons have a future state of being for which this life is probationary and disciplinary. Hence, contrary to the arguments of Job's friends, they never receive punishment in this world. The greatest offenders may be prospered through life. They have more than heart can wish, and there are no bands in their death. Not so with nations. It is thought no case can be found in history where a nation has prospered or long survived while setting the law of God at defiSuch is the evidence abundantly furnished in the familiar volume entitled "God in History."

ance.

The reason is plain enough. National governments exist for God and the accomplishment of his purposes. By his permission, and for the accomplishment of his kingdom, the magistrate bears the sword for the punishment of evil-doers.

If we inquire what constitutes a national refusal to serve God, the reply is at hand. The persistent disregard of any one of the ten commandments is clearly such a refusal. The law is the transcript of God and the rule for his service. It constitutes a unit. Every part is essential to every other part. If one may be allowed to disregard the sacredness of the Sabbath, stealing and murder cannot by any authority be prohibited, for the sacredness of property and life rests on the same authority with that of the Sabbath. Hence the Apostle declares, that the violator of one point of the law "is guilty of all."

In the light of this subject, the late battle in Virginia, offered so needlessly by our government on the Sabbath, is full of portent and

warning. May not that inexplicable panic just on the eve of victory be regarded as the finger of God's rebuke to call the nation to solemn consideration?

Moreover we are constrained to say that the violations of God's day are multiplying all around us in the government. With all our resources we cannot contend with God and prosper. Our only hope now is that the people of the land are repudiating the act, and will cry out against it; that our rulers will repent of it, and of all our national corruption and disregard of moral principles. Here hangs the great question now asked so anxiously by tens of thousands, Will the Constitution, the Government, and the Union right up again from the fearful tornado that, long gathering, has now suddenly burst upon us in all its fury? Will the good ship of State weather the storm and save its precious freight of freedom and equality for the world, or will she drift, break up, and go down?

"For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish."

"Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."— Isaiah i. 18.

Here the desperate persistency and incurableness of sin are set forth by comparing them to the deep and fixed colors so well known in the East. The prophet had just represented Israel as so stricken and bruised for his correction that there was no sound or sensitive spot left "from the sole of the foot even unto the head" on which a new wound could be inflicted. Neither multiplied blessings, nor long continued stripes and sufferings availed in the least for the eradication of sin and the purification of sinners. This permanent character of sin, therefore, is strikingly likened to those brilliant dyes which were wrought into the original fibres of cloth, and, among the ancients, regarded as ineradicable and unfading.

White being the common emblem of innocence and purity, guilt was naturally represented by that which is deepest stained. "Scarlet" is the bright red color which was obtained from the eggs of a small insect found on the leaves of the oak in Spain and in countries east of the Mediterranean. Cotton was dipped into it, and came out a livid, or blood red; some say it nearly resembled fire. It was worn by females in the time of Saul, and in later times was the distinguishing dress of kings and princes, and was finally adopted both by the Babylonian and Median soldiers. "Crimson" was the deep red slightly tinged with blue obtained from a shell-fish called "purpura," which

abounded near Tyre. It is the celebrated Tyrian purple, used for dying wool, and is commonly rendered in the Bible "blue." It was much employed in the construction of the Tabernacle, and in the garments of the high-priest.

The force of the metaphor lies in the admitted strength and fixedness, as well as depth and glariness of these colors. No usage, exposure, nor washings could remove them. Such is the nature of sin in man. No human power, no rights, no repentance, no resolves, no prayers, nor tears nor penances avail to remove or lessen its guilt. It is deep-fixed in the heart, as scarlet in the cotton and crimson in the wool.

"No bleeding bird, nor bleeding beast,

Nor hyssop branch, nor sprinkling priest,
Nor running brook, nor flood, nor sea,
Can wash the dismal stain away."

Sin is so fixed and incurable because its seat is so deep in the soul. In the centre of our moral being, where the will, the affections, the thoughts, imaginings, tastes, and aims, take their rise, there is its strong citadel and seat of government.

The guilty stain of sin is not in the actions, for the same actions may be right at one time and wrong at another. Nor is the crimson dye to be charged to the passions. For these may cool and change all the way from childhood to old age, and yet the soul constantly increase in guilt. The hot, impulsive passions of youth are certainly no more offensive than the more concealed and better controlled passions of manhood and age. The evil passions are but the outgrowth, the results of sin ruling in the heart and nature.

Nor yet is the source and seat of sin to be found in the direct, conscious choices of the soul. Paul speaks out the deeper experience of mankind when he says, (Rom. vii.) "The good that I would I do not; but the evil which I would not that I do. I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members." He closes by admitting his helplessness, and crying out for a deliverer.

David, in his confession, like Luther and Augustine, and thousands of eminent Christians, refers his guilt back to its deep native domination in the soul. "I was shapen in iniquity." An ancient and much

used confessional hymn runs,

"Lord I am vile - conceived in sin,

And born unholy and unclean;

Sprung from the man whose guilty fall
Corrupts the race, and taints us all.

"Soon as we draw our infant breath,
The seeds of sin grow up for death;
Thy law demands a perfect heart;
But we're defiled in every part.”

But though sin is so deep and fixed in our nature, though we are so helpless in its slavery, thanks be to God, he hath found out a ransom. The text contains a positive and glorious pledge of God, that sin can be eradicated on the conditions given. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."

ARTICLE X.

THE ROUND TABLE.

NEW WRECKS ON OLD ROCKS. When one of our contributors reviewed "The Theology of Plymouth Pulpit," and showed its vast deficiencies in some respects and glaring unsoundness in others, it was thought by some to be a work uncalled for. A part deemed the weekly teachings of that Pulpit at home and through the Independent and Traveller unworthy of any public notice, however unsound they were. Others thought the critique the outburst of an old school feeling, so splenetic and dogmatic and illiberal, that it could tolerate no teachings unless set forth in the ipsissimis verbis of the Westminster Catechism. Doubtless our contributor wrote in all kindness of feeling toward the incumbent of Plymouth Pulpit, and with a deep sense of responsibility to Christ and his doctrine and church. If he had any fears that he had overdone a painful duty, or excited undue alarm among the lovers of the ancient faith, recent disclosures of that pulpit, and disclaimers of its teachings must quiet him.

We are comforted, in the trying work we performed, by the fact that the new Boston Light, thus placed on Beecher's Rocks, is beginning to be acknowledged and used by some of those who had denied that there were any rocks in that channel.

A sermon of the Plymouth Pulpit on Justification, and published in the Independent of July 4, has alarmed even his publishers and friends. Mr. Beecher takes occasion to say in this sermon, that "theologians have put forth the absurd notion that God has made a plan of salvation." After caricaturing, in his inimitable way, this notion of a plan, he continues: "Is not the whole of this talk about a plan of salvation a mess of sheer ignorance, not to say nonsense?" "Not

on account of any arrangement he has made, not on account of any expedient he has set up, not on account of any settlement or plan that he has fixed, but on account of what he is, he looks upon a sinful man and says: 'I so love you that I accept you just as if you were not sinful.'"

The Independent confesses to be "somewhat surprised" at these sentiments of Mr. B.; admits that he "caricatures" the common theory of a plan of salvation, and "hardly mentions that which the Scriptures make the very essence of the atoning sacrifice the death of Christ upon the Cross as a propitiation."

And it admits, too, that it is led to make this rebuke only after "the views of Mr. Beecher in the sermon here cited are condemned by several religious journals as a dangerous heresy, and the Independent is censured for giving them publicity." It excuses it all, however, as a "rhetorical excursus" against strait theologians of the Princeton Repertory and Boston Review stamp. For ourselves we confess frankly to believing that God has a plan of salvation, and that we are, therefore, justly exposed to such a " rhetorical excursus," as "hardly mentions the very essence of the atoning sacrifice," when unfolding the doctrine of Justification by Faith. As yet we are so far Protestants evangelical as to hold with Luther to this "articulum stantis vel cadentis ecclesiæ."

The Chicago Herald is "alternately filled with admiration and consternation," as it confesses. It "grieves to see such loose theology circulated in the columns of the Independent." And then to show how the friends of the Independent in the West feel about the publication of such teachings, it quotes from a private letter to the editors of the Herald. The writer, it says, is a "progressive minister," and has been a stanch friend of the Independent. The letter says: "Is H. W. Beecher as much of a Unitarian as his last published sermon would indicate? What are we to do? Are the editors of the Independent themselves on the high road to Unitarianism? . . . Beecher may ridicule orthodoxy once a month the year round, and pitch into the doctrines we preach, and on which we rest our salvation, and not an editorial pen has one word of reply or rebuke. I am exceedingly distressed in view of that man's sermons. I have taken the Independent a long time, have recommended it, and aided to some extent its circulation. May God forgive me! All the religion that it now brings to its readers is in the sermon, and that is such a religion as our denomination did not formerly relish."

The Congregationalist echoes by quotation the gentle and apologetic caveats of the Independent, but has no original warning, or protest, or surprise.