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SERMON X.

THE POLITICAL ASPECT OF THE WORLD, FAVORABLE TO THE SPREAD OF THE GOSPEL.

EZEKIEL XXI. 27.

I will overturn, overturn, overturn it; and it shall be no until he come whose right it is; and I will give

more,

it him.

THE duties of the Christian ministry are wisely defined and clearly understood. It is the great business of the ambassadors of heaven to proclaim to rebel men the terms of reconciliation with a holy God. For this purpose they meet the congregated assembly from Sabbath to Sabbath, and urge upon the consciences and hearts of their immortal hearers, the imperative duties of immediate repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. But, although their first and

principal duty is to endeavor to bring sinners home to God, by direct and personal appeals to their hopes and fears, their love of happiness and their dread of misery,-it is not to be expected that their ministrations should be confined to those subjects that have a direct and immediate bearing upon the duties of faith and repentance, but that they occasionally take a more extended view of the moral and religious condition of man of the state of the world-and of the prospects of the future progress and glories of the Redeemer's kingdom.

There are times and occasions, when such topics seem more suitable for public discussion than at others. The Sabbath is, and ever ought to be, especially consecrated to prayer and praise, and those religious duties which more intimately concern the relation of man to his Maker,—and it is never without pain that we hear subjects discussed from the pulpit on the Sabbath, which, although indirectly, it is true, connected with religion, have not an immediate reference to the sinner's duty to return to that God from whom he has revolted—and to the privileges of Christians to contemplate the joys that arise from pardoned sin and the hope of glorious immortality.

But there are other occasions, and the present is one, when it has been customary for preachers of the gospel to direct the attention of their hearers to subjects, more apparently secular in their aspect, although intimately connected with religion, and to consider the political bearing of states and nations upon the influence of religion and the spread of the gospel throughout the world.

I make not these remarks by way of apology for preaching a political sermon-for the time for preaching political sermons, as they were called, has gone by; and I take my people to record, that in those days of excitement, I was never accustomed to add fuel to the flame, by advocating any set of political opinions.

The subject upon which I propose to address you this day, it is true, may be considered political; but it embraces no party politics; and I flatter myself that I shall advance nothing in which all the friends of rational liberty in a republican country are not agreed. My design is to call your attention to the present political state of the world, and the influence it is calculated to exert upon the cause of religion and the spread of the gospel.

The words which I have prefixed to this dis

course, were uttered in immediate reference to the approaching captivity of the Jews, and the dethronement of the last of their kings, Zedekiah, from whom the diadem and crown were to be removed, while he and his people were to be carried away captive into the land of Babylon. This revolution was to be followed by a series of others, all of which were to issue in the disappointed hopes of royalty, until He, whose right it is to reign, the Lord Jesus Christ, shall come, to whom the mediatorial kingdom shall be given. The sceptre was now to depart from Judah, and a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh, the Prince of peace, should come. All the revolutions that were now to take place in the history of God's ancient people, were to be overruled for the furtherance of that great event which was to bless the world with righteousness, -the advent of the Messiah and the prosperity and perpetuity of his kingdom. I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is, and I will give it him.

While the language of our text received its immediate accomplishment in the destruction of the Hebrew monarchy, and in the introduction of the Redeemer's throne, it may be expected to

have a more complete fulfilment in the changes that are taking place, and are yet to take place, in the governments of the world, and in the final and complete establishment of the kingdom of the Prince of peace.

No man of observation and reflection can have viewed the recent events that have taken place on the continent of Europe, with indifference and unconcern; nor without serious consideration of their probable results upon the character and destinies of the world. We have seen one of the most powerful and interesting nations of Europe, passing through a most astonishing revolution within a few critical and important days,dismissing the reigning monarch with the immediate expectants of hereditary royalty from the throne of their ancestors, and elevating to the vacant seat of regal power the man of their choice. We have seen, too, this most astonishing revolution speedily acknowledged, by the powers of Europe more immediately concerned in it and affected by it; and although, to the attentive observer of these singular scenes, there may appear to be some remains of revolutionary disquiet that yet threaten the repose of Europe, still it must be acknowledged on all hands, that a most important, and remarkable, and eventful