we should behold all the degrading superstitions of heathen nations, and see what self-tormenting methods they practice for the obtaining of peace with their senseless deities of wood and stone. We should see also how the far greater part of those who call themselves Christians are blinded by ceremonies of man's invention, and debarred the use of those sacred oracles which are " able to make them wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." Some sense, we trust, many of us have of the value of a Saviour, through whom the vilest of sinners find access to God, and obtain all the blessings of grace and glory. But we must go up to heaven and behold the felicity of the Saints made perfect ; and go down to hell to behold the miseries of the damned, before we can fully appreciate that Gospel, by which we are quickened from death in trespasses and sins, and are " translated from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God's dear Son."]
2. An undeserved mercy —
[Hezekiah felt that he might justly have been deprived of these blessings, and been made to experience in his own person all the calamities which were denounced against him in his posterity. And what was Hezekiah's fault ? It was this: that when the ambassadors came to congratulate him on his recovery from a dangerous illness, he neglected to commend to them the God of Israel, by whom their souls, and the souls of their countrymen, might be saved; and sought rather to aggrandize himself by an ostentatious display of his own wealth and power. Now we are far from wishing to extenuate his guilt: it was doubtless exceeding great: and the pride of his heart merited from God the severest chastisement^. But what was his guilt compared with ours? We scarcely hear on any occasion the glory of our successes ascribed to God ; nor do we find one in a thousand who relies truly and simply on God for a conti- nuance of them : self-glorying, and confidence in an arm of flesh, are the leading featui'es of our whole jDCople ; so that we might justly have been left to experience defeats answerable to all our \dctories. And how is the " truth" improved amongst us ? As, on the one hand, there is not a nation under heaven wdiere it shines with purer lustre, so neither, on the other hand, is there a nation under heaven where it is treated with greater contempt. And as to those who profess to value it, how little are its fair and beauteous lineaments visible in their hearts and lives! Well indeed might our mis-improvement of the hght have long since provoked God to " take away his candlestick from us:" and it is a most unmerited mercy that " the glorious Gospel of the blessed God" is yet continued to us.]
a 2 Chron. xxxii. 25, 26.