By day, I'll ask him ;-and by night, in sleep's Dream-wakings at my heart, with anxious speech, “O Lord, remember, Thy church in the wilderness; Put on thy armour dress; And be their defender." O, beat under Their enemies pursuing them, Harnessed to ruin them For spoil and plunder! None is mightier In hosts of immortality : Thy dead and wounded follow thee: Who will dare fight thee here? Impenitency? Deadly hate? malign wishes? Ah! what impotency!!! OPENING ADDRESS. No more presuming to approach the awful mountain lightening with flaming wrath, and thundering indignation against the sinful and disobedient:-no more presuming to bear the glance, in our own merit, of that unclouded eye, which searches the hearts and tries the reins" of mortal man, discerning the distant thoughts and intending resolutions of each heart and mind, with frowning disapproval of evil, to the separation of the soul and spirit from the body; with jealousy consuming in vengeance fiercer than the grave;-let us now take heed to His resolves of pity and mercy, and boundless love; and B hastily escape, by favouring help, to that blest mountain, Sion spiritual: where the Messiah mediates for sinful, but deeply repentant and believing men;-makes in them efficacious his atoning blood, in their stead appeasing wrath present, and to come;-purges sin ;—and renders powerless, for faith, all the lusts and desires of the flesh; beating in haste the fiend of darkness down. What! will you yet hold fast as friends and allies of Satan there deceiving; and slily edging you into the burning lake? What! will you see the faithful, saved from the nations, take their seats in heaven's eternal kingdom; and be content to feel yourselves thrust out? Awake! I say, awake, from your long slumber! slumber, through generations ;-time, how long! from jubilee to jubilee ;-time, how dread! from century to century;-awful continuation! from a thousand to eight hundred;-terrible in length! How!-is not another half century enough to satisfy your insatiate unbelief, and yet opposive disbelief? And would you yet go on to spin, with faithless thread, the other halfcentury out? Awake! I say, awake!-but one look now dispels the horrid thrall; one look at Him,-Messiah,—of the past, and present; and, of endless time. |