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of Almighty God, in pestilence and famine. More than a year and half ago, the warning was given by many Christians, who trembled at God's word. 'How far,'

it was said, 'the evil has reached we cannot tell at present; and it would be unwise to exaggerate its extent with uncertain alarms. But enough has occurred to remind us that not only the peace, but the very existence of Ireland and whole empire, depends every hour on the direct blessing of the God of heaven-that God, whose word the late measure has cast aside, and bid defiance to its plain warnings. When statesmen have once taken the seasons and harvests and secret influences of nature under their own control, then, and not till then, may they safely banish all regard to Divine truth from their national councils.' Surely those must be utterly blind, who can place these plain facts side by side, the oath which lies at the foundation of our Protestant State, the direct endowment formally, publicly, and deliberately given, by the rulers of the State, to idolatrous falsehood, the time which the judgment began to appear, and its present fearful extent, unparalleled, as our statesmen themselves allow, for centuries, and not inquire at least whether this is not the one main cause, which has filled the cup of our iniquity and made it overflow.

We know that whenever judgments are traced to specific national sins, many dishonest cavils will be raised, and some honest difficulties. There is a danger in dogmatizing rashly; but there is an equal danger, at the very least, of temporizing timidly, and blinding ourselves and others to the plainest lessons. There were some, who ought to have known better, who made a merit of giving an uncertain sound in the hour of public humiliation. We were to confess our sins, generally,

but to beware of the presumption of ascribing to any one national sin, a leading place among the causes of our trouble. What a miserable darkening of counsel, in those who ought to be God's witnesses to the people ! It is refreshing to turn, from such feeble and shallow sophistries, to hear the clear, manly sense of the pious and judicious Mede, in a Lecture on this very subject. A few extracts may perhaps be seasonable at the present hour. His subject is the temporal judgments of God, and his motto, the confession of Adonibezek-'As I have done, so God hath requited me.

The first general remark is on the peculiar object of temporal judgments. Their end is example, correction and warning, while strict personal retribution is reserved for the life to come. Hence temporal judgments

do not always light on the offender himself, but sometimes also on his 'posterity, his subjects, or servants ; for by both alike may mén see that God observeth the sins of men, and hath plagues in readiness for them that commit them. And by both alike will men be afraid of the hand of God; since most men do vehemently wish the good and happy condition of their posterity, and others having like relation to them, as kings the weal of their subjects, and fathers of their children.'

'But the chief thing,' he continues, ' to be observed in these words is the conformity between the sin and the punishment. Temporal punishments have for the most part a character stamped upon them, in which men may often read their sins as well as if they heard God himself to speak from heaven.'

Four kinds of conformity are then noted, of which three appear very applicable to the judgments we now suffer. The words written more than two centuries ago might have been designed to rebuke recent follies,

and to teach us one leading cause of the present severe visitation.

'The second kind is when we suffer, not the very same, but that which hath some analogy and resemblance with our sins. Thus when the Jews served other Gods besides their own, it was common for God to make them serve other lords and kings besides their own. This was the regular punishment of their idolatry (Jer. v. 19; 2 Chron. xii. 5). If we look into the condition of the Church since Christ's time, the way of God has been still the same. The Saracens who spoiled and subdued so great a part of the Church, were never heard of till six hundred years after Christ, when Christians began generally to fall to idolatry, and worship images, saints and angels. The Turkish fury. could never be stayed from casting more and more this yoke of bondage upon us, until Judah-I mean, the now reformed churches-began to put away their idols some hundred years hence. Again, when Solomon divided the worship due to the Lord alone between him and idols, the Lord to give him the same measure, divided his kingdom. He served God with an imperfect heart, and God left him an imperfect kingdom. He gave divine honour to the vassals of the Lord of heaven, and the Lord bestowed his honour on his servant Jeroboam.' The examples of Nebuchadnezzar, of Otho of Mentz, and Cyriacus are also given. May we not plainly add one more to the list? Our rulers have nationally withheld scriptural teaching; and provided spiritual poison, idolatrous teaching, for the millions of Ireland, and God has blighted the national provisions, and sent a literal famine upon that unhappy land.

"The third kind of conformity is that of the subject, when we are punished in that wherein and whereabout we

have sinned. Thus Adam sinned in eating the fruits of the earth, and he and his posterity are punished in the curse of the same, to eat of them in sorrow and toil all the days of their life. The Levite's wife in Gibeah, sinned by carnal lust, and died through the very same. Eli sinned against God by too much indulgence of his sons, and was punished in their being slain by the Philistines, and the ark taken which they had carried with them. David gloried in the number of his people, and was punished in the consumption of seventy thousand of them by the pestilence. Hezekiah sinned by ostentation, in shewing his riches to the ambassadors of Babylon, and had his punishment threatened in the same things, that all he had thus shewn should be carried away to Babylon. The Jews crucified our Saviour by the hand of the Romans, and had their city and temple razed by the same hands.' Thus also our rulers have made Ireland the scene of especial sin, and Ireland is especially the scene of judgment. The numbers of Irish Romanists were made the reason for the national patronage of Romish idolatries, and we have cause to fear that not seventy thousand, as with David, but more than ten times the number, will have been swept away in the year by pestilence and famine.

'The last head is conformity of circumstance, when the time and place of the punishment agrees with the time and place of the sin. In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, they licked the blood of Ahab and Jezebel. In the place where Baal's priests committed idolatry, their bones, being dead, were burned by Josiah on the altar at Bethel. At the same time of the year, when the Jews had crucified Christ, began their fatal and final siege by the Romans, when that curse fell on them. "His blood be on us and on our children." The

spies, who brought the evil report, spent forty days in searching the land; and therefore God for this sin, that time might agree with time, made them wander up and down forty years in the wilderness. Lastly, Pompey is said to have died miserably on the same day on which he triumphed for the spoiling of Jerusalem.' It is needless to apply this mark also to recent events, where the facts speak plainly for themselves.

The pious and able author then continues. 'Thus, as punishment in general bringeth sin to mind, which would else be forgotten, so the fashion and kind thereof, well considered, may lead us, as it were, by the hand, to know the very sin we are punished for. I have shewn that God's visible judgments have usually in them a stamp or mark of conformity with the sin for which they are inflicted. For either we suffer the same thing, or something resembling and like to it; or are punished about that same thing wherein our sin was, or lastly, in the place or time where and when we sinned. I am persuaded there is no judgment which God sends for any special sin, but it hath one of these marks in it. Come therefore to Adonibezek, and let us learn of of him, by God's stamp in our punishment, to find out what sin He aims at. Whensoever, therefore, any calamity befals us, let us not rebel against God with an impatient heart, but take a just account of our life past, and reason thus with ourselves. "This is none other

than the finger of God. I am punished, therefore I have sinned. I am punished thus or thus, in this or that sort, in this or that thing, in this or that place or time. Therefore God is angry with me for something I have done, the same that I suffer, or else like unto it; or because I sinned in this thing, at this time, or in this place, where I am now punished. As I have done, so

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