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LECTURE I.

RUTH i. 1.

AND A

"Now IT CAME TO PASS IN THE DAYS WHEN THE JUDGES RULED, THAT THERE WAS A FAMINE IN THE LAND. CERTAIN MAN OF BETHLEHEM-JUDAH WENT TO SOJOURN IN THE COUNTRY OF Moab, HE, and his wifE, AND HIS TWO SONS."

I HAVE taken these words as my text, because they form the commencing verse of a chapter, the greater part of which I propose, God willing, to review, in this and two following discourses.

Amongst the various excellencies of the Scripture, it is not the least, that it alone can remove the veil, which shuts out from our view the history and occurrences of a remote antiquity. Led by the hand of that unerring guide, we can penetrate into those deep recesses of the past, to which no merely human records can direct our footsteps. And there we can contemplate life, with all its living interests, and character, in its most intimate shades and colours, fresh, as in the scenes and objects which form the present world around us. Nor is this magic power, by which the pen of inspiration can summon back the past, exercised

merely for our recreation and delight. It is by converse with things which have been, that we learn to anticipate things to come. It is from the experiences of the past, that the mind is furnished with the materials, out of which, alone, it can form the shapes, and mould the combinations, of what it pictures to itself, or hopes for, as future happiness.

Such is the correspondence between what has been, and what is to be, that we feel an instinctive tendency, whenever we travel back in thought, to relieve the painful sense that all is gone, by sending forward our intellectual spies, into the land of future promise. This inclination serves as a kind of pendulum or balance, to the soul. And it is wisely and mercifully given. For without it, who could bear the pangs of memory? Who could endure to see those visions of our early youth-of what was then our home-of the animated, beloved, and happy circle, which once were gathered there; --who could look on these bright forms, which reappear for a moment, and then vanish ;—who could bear the whisper of that voice, which tells us, that these are but shadows, and can no more be grasped ;—who, I say, could endure such retrospects, were it not that the sinking soul is propped, revived, and cheered, by the ever-blessed hope, that all that is pure, and lovely, and in harmony

with God's nature, here, will rise again to our transported view, and shine amidst the glories of "new heavens and a new earth?" Thus it is, that the soul, that bird of paradise, when it stretches out one wing into the past, stretches out another wing into the future; and then rises, on its pinions, into the anticipation of that eternity, where there is no past, nor future ;--where all is one present fulness of joy, one NOW of blessedness; where all is stamped with the image of the great I AM, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.

This chapter introduces us, at once, to the knowledge of a retired family, who lived at a distant period of this world's history; and makes us feel almost a party in their private concerns, interior movements, and domestic interests.

"It came to pass in the days when the judges ruled, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem-Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he, and his wife, and his two sons. And the name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife Naomi, and the name of his two sons, Mahlon, and Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem-Judah. And they came into the country of Moab, and continued there." (vv. 1, 2.)

These few Israelites, strangers in a strange land, represent to us the position, in which the

spiritual seed of Abraham must always stand. Their citizenship is in heaven. This is to them a foreign clime, and a country far from home. They are pilgrims in the earth, strangers and sojourners, as all their fathers were. Their whole deportment shows, that they look for a city, whose foundations are not built upon this transitory world. All their actions "declare plainly, that they seek a country." This, in fact, is the badge of their discipleship; the seal which makes their calling and election sure. Inhabitants of the most widely separated regions; members of every Christian denomination; differing from one another in outward professions; opposed to one another, in all but essential doctrines; they are, upon this point, indissolubly bound in the finest cords of sympathy;—" they are not of the world." Their characters are not moulded in the common fashion. They are a peculiar people. They are aliens in their native land. They dwell alone, and are not reckoned among the nations."

Were I asked, in what the salvation of a soul mainly consisted; I should say, in this separation from the world. The grounds and meritorious cause of our salvation, are not (need I say?) in ourselves, but in Him who reconciled God to sinners, by the blood and agony of his cross; who died, the just for the unjust, that pardon might be

extended to the guilty; that "

mercy and truth might meet together, righteousness and peace embrace each other." But we must be, not merely, admissible, in point of title: we must be connaturalized to the blessedness above; or it is plain to reason, heaven would be no heaven to us. And this suitableness, this preparedness of the soul, by which it is assimilated and attuned to a holy and spiritual constitution of things, may be fitly termed its salvation. And this salvation, I repeat it, mainly consists in our answering to that character, by which our Lord peculiarly designates his people; "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world."

I call this salvation, because it is deliverance out of the hand of our great enemy; it is victory in the grand contest, where all is at stake, and on which all depends. We are placed in a state of trial and probation, here: and what is the point to be tested, and made proof of? It is simply this: being placed between two attractions-solicited by two kinds of pleasurable allurements-invited to the love of two irreconcilably opposing principles and objects;—which of these will draw our affections, to which of them we shall yield our hearts. On the one hand, the world holds out her sensual baits, and soft enchantments; her pride of lifeher artificial lights-and glittering vanities.

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