firmness of the British constitution, but disputed with a powerful invader; and the issue of the contest is dreadfully uncertain. And in such an age can there be so stupid a soul among us, as to be thoughtless and unconcerned? Sure, if we have any thing of the man, the patriot, or the christian within us, we must be deeply solicitous about these important interests, and anxious for a remedy to our bleeding country and nation.

I need not detain you with a particular account of the present mortifying and alarming situation of our public affairs. I need not tell you of slaughtered families, mangled corpses, men, wom en, and children held in barbarous captivity in the dens of savages; routed garrisons, demolished fortifications, deserted, desolated settlements, upon our frontiers. I need not remind you of defeated armies, blasted expeditions, and abortive schemes-of divided, dilatory councils on both sides the ocean-a jangling, unsettled ministry, and an uneasy, murmuring, clamorous people. I need not tell you that our enemies have pushed their conquests with surprising rapidity, and executed all their schemes; while all our attempts to stop their progress have issued in disappointment and mortification; and that they are now become formida ble, even in America, where a few years ago they were so contemptible. I need not tell you that our hopes are lowered as to our brave ally, the king of Prussia, who has lately been routed, and obliged to break up the siege of Prague; and who has almost the half of the powers of Europe for his enemies. He stands the single champion of the protestant cause upon the Continent; and should he be crushed, that important cause would probably fall with him, especially in Germany. I need not tell you, how gloomy and discouraging the prospect is before us, from the growing power of the French-from their great influence with the Indian savages-from the naked and defenceless state of our country from the dastardly, secure spirit that prevails among the generality, and from many causes that I need not name, These things are too public and notorious for me to enlarge upon them. Alas! who is ignorant of them? though but few lay them properly to heart.

The great inquiry I would now employ your time and thoughts about, is, What is the best remedy in this melancholy case? This, I think, we may clearly discover in the verses I have read to you.

F

.

1

At the time to which this prophecy seems principally to refer, namely, at the destruction of the Jews by the Babylonians, their iniquities were come to the full. It was inconsistent with the maxims of the divine government to delay their punishment any longer. Therefore, the Babylonians were commissioned as the executioners of divine vengeance to ravage their land, destroy their city and temple, and carry away the inhabitants by three successive captivities, till the land was left uninhabited, untilled, and desolate for seventy years. In this time was fulfilled the prophecy in my text: Upon the land of my people shall come up thorns and briers; yea, in all the houses of joy in the joyous city." The epithet joyous, is added with design to aggravate the calamity. "The houses of joy" are turned into heaps of rubbish. "The joyous city," is made a melancholy waste, overrun with briers and thorns. The men of sensuality and luxury, who were wont to riot in these houses of joy, and to spend their time in pleasure, are now stripped of all their possessions, and feel the reverse of their usual delights in a servile, dismal captivity; and to such, the calamities of war, poverty, and thraldom, are pecu. liarly painful and mortifying. These effeminate souls were never inured to hardships and self-denial, and therefore must sink the lower under their weight. I leave you, my brethren, to judge, whether the calamities we fear, should they fall upon us, would not fall the heavier upon multitudes of our countrymen on this account, who have been accustomed to live in luxury and pleasure, and are by these means enervated and unmanned. The epithet joyous may also intimate, that the extravagant luxury and love of pleasure that prevailed among the Jews, was one cause of the destruction of their country and nation. Their houses are laid in ruins, because they had been houses of guilty joy. Their city is made desolate, because it had been unseasonably and excessively a joyous city. So the words may be rendered: "Upon the land of my people shall come up briers and thorns, becauset of the houses

* Or, as some render the word, "Burning upon all the houses of joy," &c. is rendered burning in Isa. iii, 24; and it may bear the same version here. In this sense it was literally accomplished in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, when the city and all the houses of state and luxury within it, were burnt to ashes.

f כי על כל כתי משוש קריה עליה :

is generally rendered because. So it is rendered in the very next verse; and it may be so translated here, with the same propriety.

of joy in the joyous city." These houses of joy brought destruction upon the inhabitants. Their luxury and pleasure had a natural tendency to destroy them, according to the course of things. They produced thoughtless security and presumption. They turned the attention of the court and ministry from the concerns of their country, to sensual gratifications and amusements. They softened and unmanned the populace, and rendered them impatient of the generous dangers and hardships of soldiers in the field. They tempted them to lay out that substance in diversions and extravagant pleasures, which should have been expended in the defence of their country and luxury and pleasure provoked the God of heaven, who holds the scale of empire in his hand, and lets it rise or fall according to his pleasure. The unseasonable joy of this people at a time when the tokens of the Almighty's anger were upon them; their taste for mirth and pleasure, when he called them to repentance, brought his heavy vengeance upon them, and he determined to destroy a people that would not be amended by chastisement. Here also I leave you to judge, whether we and our nation be not in danger from the same quarter. Has not a deluge of luxury and pleasure almost overwhelmed all ranks from the highest to the lowest ? To eat and drink, delicately and freely to feast, and dance, and riot; to pamper cocks or horses; to observe the anxious, important, interesting event-which of two horses can run fastest; or, which of two cocks can flutter, and spur most dexterously :-these are the grand affairs, that almost engross the attention of some of our great men. And little low-lived sinners imitate them to the utmost of their power. The low-born sinner can leave a needy family to starve at home, and add one to the rabble at a horserace or a cock-fight. He can get drunk, and turn himself into a beast, with the lowest, as well as his betters, with more delicate liquors. On this account, I am afraid this fruitful year, with which a gracious God has blessed our guilty country, will prove a curse to many, who add to their guilt by ungratefully abusing the additional mercies of God towards them. How unseasonable is this taste for pleasure and diversions, at such a time as this! A time, when "the Lord of Hosts calls to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth ;" i. e. to all the solemn and public evidences of repentance. Now, if ever, these things are seasonable they are a kind of decencies in our present circumstances. But, alas! instead of these, "Behold,

joy and gladness, slaying oxen, and killing sheep, eating flesh, and drinking wine," that is, all the furniture of luxury and festivi. ty, as if they acted upon the epicurean maxim, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." And I wish the secret revealed to the prophet with regard to such, may not be equally applicable to our age and country : "It was revealed in mine ears by the Lord of Hosts, surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you, till ye die, saith the Lord of hosts."*

The prophet goes on to describe the desolation of Judea and Jerusalem, and to assign the reason why the land should be overrun with briers and thorns during the captivity; namely, “Because the palaces shall be forsaken, the multitudef of the city shall be left, and the noise of it shall cease; the forts and the towers shall be for dens forever:" that is, for a long time, which is sometimes all the meaning of this word. These places of strength and beauty shall be " a joy of wild asses, a pasture for flocks;" where they shall graze to the full, and lie down unmoJested.

UNTIL THE

When the prophet has thus described the utter desolation of the Holy Land, he fixes the time of its continuance, or informs the Jews how long it should last; and that is, SPIRIT BE POURED UPON US FROM ON HIGH. The holy Spir it of God is represented in the Scriptures as the original fountain of all the real goodness and virtue which is to be found in our degenerate world; the only author of reformation, conversion, sanctification, and every grace included in the character of a saint, or a good man. The POURING out of the Spirit is a scripture phrase, which signifies a plentiful communication of his influence to effect a thorough reformation. It is not a distilling, or falling in gentle drops, like the dew; but a copious effusion, or pouring out, like a mighty shower, or torrent, that carries all before it.

* Isaiah xxii. 12-14.

there translated multitude, signifies also the noise or tumult of the multitude the stir and hurry of a crowded city.

The word here rendered poured, () generally signifies to be made naked, i. e. to be revealed in full power. This may be illustrated by that expression in Isaiah lii. 10 : “ The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations;" that is, hath given an illustrious display of his power. The sense is the same, however we render it; namely, a full exertion of the power of the Spirit to produce a reformation.

Now, as the communication of the Spirit is necessary to produce a reformation, so a large communication, or outpouring of the Spirit, is necessary to produce a public general reformation; such as may save a country on the brink of ruin, or recover one already laid desolate. Without this remedy, all other applications will be ineffectual; and the distempered body politic will languish more and more, till it is at length dissolved. UNTIL this outpouring of the Spirit, says the prophet, "briers and thorns shall come up upon the land; and the houses of joy, the palaces, and towers, shall be heaps of ruins, dens for wild beasts, and pastures for flocks." UNTIL that blessed time come, no means can effectually repair a broken state, or repeople a desolate country,

But when that blessed time comes, then what a glorious revolution what a happy alteration follows! Then, says the prophet, "The wilderness shall be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest. Then judgment shall dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful field and the work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever: and my people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting places, when it shall hail coming down upon the forest." These are the blessed pacific effects of the outpouring of the Spirit; and these effectually cure all the ravages of war, and ensure a lasting peace, with all its blessings.

"The wilderness shall be a fruitful field;" that is, the country that had been reduced into a mere wilderness by the ravages of war, and the captivity of the inhabitants, shall again be tilled and improved, and become as a fruitful field, or a Carmel.*

"And the fruitful field shall be counted for a forest ;" that is, upon this happy turn of affairs, the country of the enemy, which had been a fruitful field, a mere Carmel, shall be laid waste in its turn, and made a mere forest, a wild uninhabited wood: it shall suffer itself what it had inflicted, and be made a wilderness, as it had made other countries so. This was remarkably accomplished upon Babylon, which had spread desolation through the country of the Jews, according to the prediction of Jeremiah :

* Carmel was the proper name of a very fertile mountain in Ju dea ; and hence it is here used appellatively, to signify a country fruitful like the proper Carmel: As if it had been said, The whole country of Canaan shall be one entire Carmel.' So the Septuagint render it : σε εναν ερημο ο Χερμελ.”