Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

SERMONS

ON

IMPORTANT SUBJECTS.

SERMON 64.

THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

3

LUKE XXI. 10, 11.....25, 26. Then said he unto them, Nation shall rise up against nation; and kingdom against kingdom; and great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pes tilences, and fearful sights, and great signs shall there be from heaven. And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth.

ALL the works of God are worthy of our admiring notice; and to overlook or disregard them, is at once an instance of stupidity and wickedness. It was a heavy charge against the an cient Jews, that they were sunk in luxury and pleasure, while the signals of divine vengeance should have cast them into the posture of anxious expectation. "The harp and the viol, and the tabret, and the pipe, and wine, are in their feasts; but they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of his hands."* And if all the works of God, even those that are ordinary and according to the known course of nature, are

B

* Isaiah v. 12.

worthy of observation and wonder; certainly much more so are those which are extraordinary-those which are done by the immediate hand of God, above the course of nature; or which are accomplished according to such laws of nature as are unusual, and intended to be carried into execution only in extraordinary periods, and for purposes of uncommon importance. To disregard these, is the more stupid and inexcuseable, as they have a natural and direct tendency to engage and fix our attention by their new and strange appearances: for things common and familiar to us, cease to be objects of our admiration and wonder, however great and surprising in themselves: whereas, things new and strange, attract the gaze of mankind, though not more astonishing or important than the former. And if these unusual works of God are also prognosticative; if these extraor dinary appearances in the natural world are signals and premonitions of some important revolutions in the moral world, for which our duty and our interest require us to prepare ;—I say, if this be the case, then, to disregard them is still more stupid, and aggravatedly wicked; it is highly ungrateful to God, who is kindly pleased to give us warning of the impending events, that we may put ourselves into a proper posture to meet with them : and it may be highly injurious to ourselves, who may feel, to our cost, the unhappy want of that preparation, which we might have obtained by timely notice of these monitory signs.

Now my present intention is to inquire, Whether unusual phenomena, or appearances, in the natural world, may not be really intended, by the great Ruler of nature, as prognostics or fore-tokens of some grand events in the kingdoms of the earth, and in the church, for which it becomes us to prepare ; and to prepare us for which, these monitory presages may be given us?

I own it has been with hesitation, that I have ventured to devote an hour of your sacred time to so unusual an inquiry. But after much thought, that which determined my fluctuating mind, was this consideration: That if these unusual commotions and appearances are intended by divine Providence to be premonitions and signs of some grand and interesting revolutions among mankind, they would miss their end entirely upon us, unJess we should regard them in that view; and we should be guilty of hardening ourselves against warnings kindly given us from heaven. But if we should be mistaken in looking upon

these things in this prognosticative view, still it would be a harmless, and even a profitable mistake, if it might render us more thoughtful and serious, and set us upon preparing for all events, whether presignified or not.

That which has turned my mind to this inquiry has been the late unusual and strange commotions and appearances in heaven and earth, which have been felt and seen in various parts of the world particularly in Europe and America. An earthquake of prodigious extent and violence has shaken half the globe, buried cities in ruins, split the earth into hideous chasms, which have swallowed many thousands of mankind in Europe and Africa, and tossed the ocean into an unusual ferment for thousands of miles. Great Britain has trembled from shore to shore, and some parts of America seemed to sympathize with it. Solid rocks have split to pieces, and huge unwieldy mountainous fragments have been hurled to some distance, while the ground a little way off was not affected; particularly a well-known ledge of rocks, called Whiston-cliffs, in Yorkshire, in England, where a horrid rumbling noise was heard for some days; and at length, sundry large pieces of rock were torn off and hurled through the air into a valley, one of which was about thirty yards high, and between sixty and seventy broad; and there did not appear to be any cavities in the rock, where air might be imprisoned to cause the rupture. But, (says one that saw it*) one part of the solid stone is cleft from the rest in a perpendicular line, and smooth as if cut with instru ments." Near this, two pieces of ground, thirty or forty yards in diameter, have been removed entire, without cracks, with all their load of rocks; "some of which (says the same relater) are as large as the hull of a small ship, and a tree growing out of one of them." In various parts of Europe a strange and unaccountable motion has been observed in the waters, not only that of the sea and the rivers communicating therewith, but even that in canals, ponds, cisterns, and all other large or smaller collections of water; and that without the least motion of the earth around, or of the vessels which contained the water. Strange meteors and appearances have also been seen in the aerial regions: a fiery bloody-coloured sky-the modern phenomenon of the Aurora

* Mr. John Wesley.-See his Thoughts on the Earthquake at Lisbon, an excellent and seasonable performance.

« ÎnapoiContinuă »