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efforts to appease the wrath of Heaven; the aged raised aloud their plaintive and trembling voices, the young poured forth a mournful and piercing cry; the daughters of Jerusalem lifted up their lamentations to heaven; the priests wept aloud between the porch and the altar, they said a thousand and a thousand times, Spare thy people O Lord, and give not thine heritage unto shame, Joel ii. 17. But the deed was done, the time was past, the Lord would not be found, and all this semblance of repentance, the smallest portion of which would perhaps, on another occasion, have sufficed to disarm the wrath of Heaven, was without effect. This is expressed in so noble and energetic a manner, that we would for ever imprint it on your memory. The Lord God of their fathers sent to them his messengers, rising up betimes and sending, because he had compassion on his people. But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, till the wrath of the Lord arose against his people. Therefore he brought upon them the king of the Chaldees, who slew the young people with the sword, and had no compassion on the young man, nor the aged, nor the infirm. They burnt the house of God, and demolished his palaces, 2 Chron. xxxvi. 15, 16, 17.

What happened to ancient Jerusalem, also happened to modern Jerusalem: by which Jerusalem I mean the city, as it stood in our Saviour's time. A thousand oracles had predicted the advent of the Messiah; the prophets had said that he should come; St. John the Baptist affirmed, that he was at the door; Jesus Christ came, in short, saying, Here I am. He walked in the streets of Jerusalem, he instructed them by his doctrine, he astonished them by his miracles, he influenced them by his example; he cried in their assemblies, Walk while you have the light, lest darkness come upon you. John xii. 35. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets. and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often

would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not. Matt. xxiii. 37. That was the time; but they suffered the precious moments to escape. And what did Jesus add? He wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. Luke xix. 42. Jerusalem was not, however, yet destroyed; the temple still stood; the Romans offered them peace; the siege was not commenced; more than forty years elapsed between the threatening and the stroke. But, ah! from that time these things were hid from their eyes; from that time their destruction was determined; from that time their day of grace was expired, and their ruin finally fixed. So true it is, that the longsuffering of God is limited, and that mercy cannot always be obtained at the expected period, and precise moment on which we had fondly relied.

But, my brethren, to whom do I preach? To whom do I this day prove these melancholy truths? Of whom is this audience composed? Who are those brands plucked from the burning, and come up out of great tribulation? By what stroke of Providence is the mass I now see convened from so many provin. ces? Whence are you? In what country were you born? Ah! my brethren, you are but too well instructed in the truths I now preach! The time of longsuffering is limited; need we prove it? Can you be ignorant of it? Are you not witnesses of it by experience? Are not our proofs sufficiently evident? Do you ask for arguments more conclusive ? Come, see; let us go to the ruins of our temples: let us survey the rubbish of our sanctuaries: let us see our galleyslaves chained to the oar, and our confessors in irons : let us see the land which has vomited us on the face of the earth; and the name of the refugee, venerable shall I call it, or the horror of the whole world? And

to present you with objects still more affecting; let us see our brethren at the foot of an altar which they believe idolatrous, mothers preserving the fortune of their families at the expence of their children's souls, whom they devote to idolatry; and by a sad reverse, preserving that same fortune to their children at the expence of their own souls.* Yield, yield to our calamities ye catastrophes of ages past! Ye mothers whose tragic memory appals posterity, because you were compelled by the horrors of the famine to eat the flesh of your sons, preserving your own life, by snatching it from those who had received it of you! However bloody your situation might be, you depriv ed them after all but of a momentary life, thereby saving both them and yourselves from the horrors of famine. But here both are precipitated into the same abyss. The mother, by a prodigy unheard of, if I must so speak, nourishes herself with the substance of her son's soul, and the son in his turn nourishes himself with the substance of his mother's soul.

Ah! my brethren, these are our proofs; these àre our arguments; these are the solutions we give of your objections; this is really the time in which the Lord will not be found. For, since your calamities, what efforts have been used to terminate them, and to soften the vengeance which pursues you! How many humiliations! How many fasts! How many intercessions! How many tears! How many protestations! How many disconsolate mothers, satisfied with the ruin of their families, have asked no spoil, but the souls of their children! How many Jobs, how many Samuels, have stood before God, and implored the liberation of his church! But all in vain. The time was past, the Lord would be found no more, and perhaps....perhaps....no more for ever.

* An edict was published by the King of France, commanding his officers to confiscate the goods of those who did not perform the acts of a good Catholic in their last hours.

Happy, in the extreme of our misery, if we may yet hope, that they will be salutary to those who have reached the shore in the shipwreck! For, my brethren, we consent that you should turn away your eyes from whatever is glorious in our exile, to look solely at that which is deplorable. What do you say to those distressed fugitives, and dismem bered families? We are sent by the God of vengeance. In banishing us from our country, he said go....go, unhappy people ;....go and tell the world the consequences of falling into the hands of an angry God. Teach the Christian world your bloody, but salutary lessons; tell my children, in every part of the earth, what may be their situation: except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Luke xiii. 3. But you yet stand, ye walls of this temple; you yet flourish, O happy provinces: though the longsuffering of God has its limits. But I check myself on the verge of this awful prediction.

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II. Merely enumerating the remaining subjects, I would say, that experience, in the case of hardened sinners, supplies us with a second example. It is a received opinion, and not without some foundation, that the period of repentance extends to the whole of life, and that God has no design in sparing us, but to promote our conversion. This is the sense of the Chaldee paraphrase; for so it renders the text; Seek ye the Lord while you have life, call ye upon him while you are spared upon the earth. We will not oppose the thought; meanwhile we confidently affirm, that we daily see among our hearers sinners whom grace seems to have forsaken, and who appear to be lost without resource.

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How often do we see people among us so habitu

ated to offend against the dictates of conscience, as to sin without remorse, and without repentance! If the things we preach to you were problematical ;...? if they were things which so far excited doubt and

uncertainty in the mind, that we could not be assured of their reality;....if they were merely allowed, or forbidden, we should not be surprised at this insen sibility. But do we not see persons in cold blood committing the most atrocious crimes, carrying on infamous intrigues, nourishing inveterate prejudices, handing them down from father to son, and making them the heritage of the family? Do we not see them committing those things in cold blood, and less shocked now at the enormity of their crimes, than they formerly were at the mere thought of them, and who are as insensible of all we say to affect them, as if we were repeating fables, or reciting frivolous tales? Whence does this proceed, my brethren? From the same cause we have endeavoured to prove in our preceding discourses, that habits, if not cor rected, become confirmed: that the Holy Spirit withdraws; that he ceases to knock at the door of our hearts, and leaves us to ourselves when we resist his grace. These are seared consciences; they are fascinated minds; these are men given up to a spirit of delusion. Rom. i. 21. Their hearts are waxed gross; they have eyes, and they see not; they have hearts, and they do not understand. Isa. vi. 10. If the arguments already advanced in the preceding discourses, have been incapable of producing conviction, do not, at least, dispute with us what you see every day, and what passes before your eyes. Preachers, be not astonished after this, if your arguments, if your proofs, if your demon strations, if your exhortations, if your most tender and pathetic entreaties have little effect. God him self fights against you. You demonstrate, and God blinds their eyes; you exhort, and God hardens the heart; and that Spirit....that Spirit who by his victorious power, endeavours to illuminate the simple, and make them that fear him to understand his secret....that Spirit, by the power of vengeance, har dens the others in their wilful insensibility.

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