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Thus, my dear friends, shall you give blessed evidence, that you have heard the joyful sound, and that you know it. I would earnestly hope and pray, by God's tender mercy and goodness, that you may be led seriously to lay these things to heart, and may the Lord the Spirit so bring in the witness of the gospel into you hearts, and so lay the precious blooď v vesus upon your consciences, that under the drawings of his love you may be able to say, "Here I am for this year, and all the years of my life, to be thine, and thine for ever."

DECISION FOR GOD IN YOUTH.

REV. J. FLETCHER, D.D.

STEPNEY CHAPEL, JANUARY 12, 1834.

My young friends, if your feelings on this solemn occasion are in any measure. in accordance with the language of the song in which you have been uniting—if you are prepared to sympathise with that choice that led the lawgiver of Israel to despise all the honours of Pharoah's court, and to choose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season -if you are on the Lord's side, and are disposed, under the influence of solemn impressions and believing convictions to act with decision and steadfastness in your Christian course-then you will at once be prepared to enter into the consideration of the subject that I shall this evening bring under your serious notice:

*And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him."-1 KINGS Xviii. 21. We have in this passage, and its connecting history, a spectacle, singular and unparalleled, presented to our notice. We behold two forces arrayed against each other, engaged in a contest of pre-eminent importance; a contest on the decision of which depended results of the highest moment to the people, and the national welfare of the thousands and tens of thousands assembled upon that occasion. The parties engaged were, as to their physical strength and political power, most unequal. On the one side there was Ahab, King of Israel—Jezebel, the idolatrous queen of Ahab-four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal, the god served and adored by the court of Ahab-four hundred prophets of the groves, the idolatrous worshippers of other divinities; for however idolaters could oppose the true God, they could form coalitions and unions with each other. On the same side there was the power of the court-there were the men of rank, and dignity, and office, and there was the multitude, usually disposed at all times, more or less, to follow in the train of authority, and power, and custom. Such were the forces on the one side in this unequal contest. On the other side was one man, a lone man, faithful amongst the faithless, unseduced, unterrified, a prophet of the Most High God; a man of singular courage, high daring, unexampled fidelity, and unshrinking decision; possessing in himself the true spirit of the martyr and the reformer; distinguished by his profound patriotism, but still more distinguished by his eminent devotion.

The great controversy, then, was, who was the true God-Baal or Jehovahthe God worshipped by Ahab, and Jezebel, and the court, and the prophets, and the multitude, or the Living God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. This was the question; this was the important point at issue; and the prophet of the Most High felt himself shielded by an invisible protection, strong in the Lord

and in the power of his might, possessing moral courage preparing him for the great conflict, and supported by the presence and the consolation which Jehovah imparted to his spirit, proposed an experiment, on the issue of which he leaves the great question to be determined. Baal was a name given to various idolatrous divinities; hence their worshippers are called, in various parts of the Old Testament, Baalites. The word Baal signifies ruler or lord: hence we read of Baalmeon, and Baal-zebub, and Baal-zephon: all these were the different, yet united, objects of idolatrous adoration at that period; and there is little doubt that there was a close identity and affinity between the Baal of the Ammonites, and Phænicians, and the Moabites, and the Saturn and Jupiter of the Greeks and Romans, and the objects of idolatrous worship amongst our British ancestors in the times of the ancient Druids. Some have supposed that Baal was a personification of the sun or the solar light. Other gods under this name were doubtless embodied types of the powers of nature, or supposed spirits of departed heroes. Whatever they were, they were in character, in principle, directly opposed to the claims and prerogatives of the true God: they were models of cruelty and lust, they were patterns of impurity and revenge. It might well be said that the people sacrificed to devils, and not to God.

Now the prophet proposed an experiment that decided the question. The worshippers of the solar fire might be expected to attach the highest importance to the decision of the question by fire. Elijah adopts that very principle of their idolatrous worship: arrangements are made; bullocks are prepared; and the priests and the prophets of Baal, as you have heard in the instructive narrative read this night in your hearing, employed their arts, and their howlings, and their incantations, and their self-inflicted tortures, for the very purpose of bringing down fire, for the very purpose of consuming the sacrifice they had thus prepared. In vain their entreaties, in vain their prayers, in vain their self-inflicted cruelties ; there were none that answered. The appeal was then made on another altar (for there can be no communion between God and Baal;) on another altar the bullock was offered by the prophet of the true God. And to prevent all possibility of collusion, all supposition of design by any of those private and sinister arts that the craft of men, the wicked craft of men, have employed in all ages to delude the unwary and the unenquiring-you find water surrounding the sacrifice, the trenches filled with water, even at the very time when there was a singular and unparalleled drought of water in all parts of the land. (Some infidel wits have asked, "Where did the water come from, if at this very period, for three years, there had been no water in the land of Israel?" forgetting, as they generally do when they offer sceptical objections, that Mount Carmel stood close to the sea-shore, where they found plenty of water for the purpose.) They supplied with water the trenches that surrounded the sacrifice prepared by Elijah, for the purpose of giving a more signal and decisive confirmation to the claims of the true God. You know the result: the appeal was made to Him who has all power in heaven and earth, and who never departs from the ordinary established course of nature in the general laws and arrangements he has appointed, but for the purpose of confirming his own authority, and accrediting, by miraculous agency, his own revelation, and indorsing the commission of his own inspired servants, and thus present a worthy object of confidence to the faith and love and adoration of his people. He who has all the resources of the universe, and all the laws and elements of nature, fire and storm and tempest, at his command caused that fire to descend which consumed

the sacrifice, and presented a visible and decisive confirmation in the view of the assembled thousands, that "Jehovah he was the God, Jehovah he was the God."

My friends, it was with peculiar fitness, therefore, that Elijah made the appeal to the people in the words of the text, when he reproved their pusillanimity, and their wavering, and their neutrality: "How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God follow him; if Baal, then follow him." I am anxious to apply the whole of this important argument; whatever of reason or appeal is involved in this question, to you my young friends. Let us therefore reflect first, on the alternative proposed, and secondly, on the decision required.

I beg your attention first, to THE ALTERNATIVE Proposed.

This implies, in the first place, opposition of claims. "If the Lord be God, follow him; if Baal, then follow him." Why, you say, and say justly, "There can be no doubt who was the true God; here we have decisive evidence, that the God of the Hebrews, the God of Elijah, the Lord God of the holy prophets, was the true God. This was the God that answered by fire; this was the God that gave visible signs of his presence, and his majesty, and his power: and therefore Baal we at once reject." Do you reject Baal? There are deities enthroned in the heart, as well as idols embodied to the eye. Every man in his natural estate is an idolater: whatever takes away the heart and the affections from God is an idol, whether carved by the cunning skill of the workman, or presented only in fantasy to the imagination; whether it be the object of desire in the heart, or the object of pursuit in the life, if it interfere with the true God, with the God of the Bible, with the claims and requirements of the true God, it is an idol and you know, my young friends, that there are rival claims here. The alternative, then, applies as much to you, and applies as much to the thousands and myriads of nominal Christians in Britain as it did to those who lived in the land of Israel. At this particular period there are Baals still. Whatever rules in the heart, whatever is lord of the affections, is an object of idolatry, if it interfere with God and his supreme claims.

There is the Baal of sensual indulgence and unhallowed gratification, before the shrine of which, thousands and millions bend the knee of senseless homage, to which genius consecrates her powers, and on which splendour, and taste, and opulence, lavish out their profuse and endless stores. And if the worship of the vilest objects of lust that Greece, or Rome, or Chaldea, or Babylon, or the ancient Moabites, ever embodied in their temples, were now again to be presented, there are amongst the rich, and the poor, and amongst all classes in nominal Christendom, and in nominal Britain, foul idolatries, idolatries of lust and sensuality, as gross as ever dishonoured the days of ancient paganism, and the impurities of ancient times.

There are the gods of Baal, of worldly acquisition, as well as of sensual indulgence; those who live for the purposes of accumulation, and worship at the shrine of Mammon, and think of nothing but the acquisition of this world's good, as the great object of their devotion.

There is the Baal of infidel speculation; men worshipping the powers of their own puny reason, aud rejecting the truth of God's Holy Word; saying, "We will think for ourselves;" and maintaining the pride of their own little shallow intellect, and setting this in proud defiance against the authority of the Oracles of God.

There is the Baal of human authority in religion. If men like not the religion of the Bible they try and make themselves a religion, and the very question they ask is, "Have the rulers of Baal believed?" and they take the religion which has upon it the image and superscription of Cæsar, and there they rest the question; and that is the Baal of their heart.

And there is the Baal of self righteous dependence, under the power and government of which thousands attend on the Sabbath to religious ordinances, and think that because they hear a sermon, and worship God once a week, and pay some external respect to the institutions of religion, they have a ground of hope, and a right to peace, and composure, and confidence; matters are settled for eternity; they think themselves good Christians, they regard themselves as possessed of all that can fit them for the enjoyment of immortality.

Now, these are all objects of idolatrous trust, idolatrous dependence, idolatrous adoration. You, my young friends, have these very objects, in one form or another, presented to you. Go where you will you are surrounded by the fascinations of idolatry; idolatry in the form of sensual indulgences; idolatry in the form of worldly acquisition; idolatry in the form of infidel speculation; idolatry in the form of human authority; idolatry in the form of self-righteous dependence; all opposing the God of the Bible, the religion of the gospel, the pure, and the simple, and the self-denying testimony that God has revealed to you in his Holy Word.

Now, this is the alternative, of which I have said it implies opposing claims. In the second place the alternative admits of no compromise. There were some in the times of Elijah who would have had no objection to have paid some respect to Jehovah, if, at the same time they could have connected this respect and regard with the religion of the court, and the worship of Baal, and paid some homage at least to the claims and requirements of this idol god. To such the prophet says, "How long halt ye between two opinions. If the Lord be God, follow him; if Baal, then follow him."

My friends, the religion of the Gospel has in all ages been an exclusive religion; it admits of no compromise. You are not the disciples of Jesus Christ, you are not the worshippers of the God of the Bible, you are not rendering Jesus Christ a supreme homage if you are trying to unite the world and its interests; so far as those interests are hostile to the claims of the true God, you are endeavouring to effect a reconciliation between opposite elements. You cannot serve two masters; our Lord has laid it down as a clear and decided principle, "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." There must be a supreme regard to the Bible, to the claims of the true God, to the revelation he has announced, to the claims he has unfolded, to the law he has enjoined, to the truth of the gospel he has revealed; and you cannot mix the one with the other, you must, therefore, in relation to every thing opposed or inconsistent with the claims of the true Jehovah, listen to that voice which says, "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty."

I remark of this alternative, which thus implies an opposition of claims, and admits of no compromise, that it allows of no delay. You are not, therefore, to imagine, that for a while you can serve the world, and its pleasures, and its forbidden interests, and by and bye, at a "convenient season," take up the true God and his religion. There are many of this class, I am fully persuaded, at all times, and in all ages. They think true religion, the religion of the Bible, the

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