Zeph. iii. 7, 8. I said, Surely thou wilt fear me, thou tvilt receive instruction ; so their dwelling should not be cut off, howsoever I punished them : but they rose early, and corrupted all their doings. Therefore wait ye upon me, saith the Lord, until the day that I rise up to the prey.
IN great national calamities we are apt, for the most part, to overlook the hand of God, and to trace events only to second causes, or to ascribe them to mere chance. But whatever there be either of "good
or evil in the city," God must be acknowledged as "the doer of it." Moreover, in whatever he does, he has some fixed design : and to answer that design should be the labour of all his creatures. Now the general design of his judgments is, to awaken the in- habitants of the earth from their torpor, and to teach them righteousness : and if smaller judgments pro- duce not this effect upon us, we may expect heavier to ensue. One very important object to be attained by cutting off the nations around Judaea, and by sending the ten tribes into captivity in Assyria, was to reform his more peculiar people, the tribes of Benjamin and Judah. And as his people were far from improving his judgments for that end, he declared that he would visit them in a way suited to display the enormity of their guilt, and the riches of that grace which they had so abused.
In order to accommodate this subject to the pre- sent occasion, we shall consider, I. What God has been expecting from us —
Dreadful have been the judgments which God has inflicted on the surrounding nations —
[To whatever part of Europe we direct our attention, we shall see that the different nations have, during the last twenty years, been visited with calamities of a most afflictive kind : but more particularly, the recent devastation of Russia, the destruc- tion of its ancient capital by fire, and the total annihilation of the French army in the space of a few weeks, are events that demand particular notice at this timea. Indeed, with the ex- ception of our highly-favoured land, there is scarcely a country to which, at some period of this war, we may not in a measure apply the words preceding our text ; " I have cut off the nations : their towers are desolate ; I made their streets waste, that none passeth by : their cities are destroyed, so that there is no man, that there is none inhabitant."]
And has not God been speaking to us by these great events ?
[Yes, surely : he has sought to reclaim us from our evil ways : he has " said with himself, Surely thou wilt fear me ; thou wilt receive instruction ; so that thy dwelling shall not be cut off", howsoever I punish thee." Of us this improvement of
a In October, 1813.