will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and everc." And is not this the proper resolution for us to adopt? Adopt it then, my brethren ; and may Almighty " God strengthen you" to fulfil it! and may your whole " walk" and conversa- tion, to your latest hour, illustrate and confirm it ! ]
c Mic. iv. 5.
Zech. xi. 8. My soul lothed them ; and their soul also ab- horred me.
THE judgments of God that from time to time are inflicted on mankind are standing proofs that man has offended his Maker, and that God is displeased with his creatures. In this view they are continually represented in the Scriptures ; and in this light the prophet taught his hearers to consider them. God had determined to " abolish that covenant which he had made with his people," and to destroy the Jewish polity, the sacred part of which he called " Beauty," and the civil " Bands." He speaks of himself as having already cut off (or perhaps, in prophetic lan- guage, as determined to cut off) three shepherds, the princes, the prophets, and the priests, in one month ; and assigns as a reason for it, that there was a mutual abhorrence between himself and them ; and that con- sequently there was abundant reason for the judg- ments he denounced against them.
The prophet, thoughout this chapter, personates the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom a part of it was very remarkably fulfilled, and to whom it is expressly applied in the New Testament a. But it is simply to the words before us that we would now draw your attention : and we will take occasion from them to shew,
I. What a deep-rooted enmity subsists between God and sinners —
a ver. 11, 12. with Matt, xxvii. 9, 10.