God, through the opposition of irreligious men, yet, now that he hath run his course, all acknowledge that his path has been "as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day;" and we know not that the breath of party, or of infidel malice, hath obscured its setting. And even when, in this case, party-passions, envy, or ignorance obscure the fair name of the good, the men of a future generation, except when the same causes may happen to be in operation to warp the judgment, usually accord to the faithful servants of God their due tribute of respect, and the " 'memory of the just is blessed." admire the condescension of that great Being who needeth not your homage, who is exalted above all praise, who hath all that is glorious, happy, and excellent in his own incomprehensible being, and yet solicits your honour, that he may give to you, the worms of the dust, his honour in return. Can you refuse? Then this great Being who created you and offers you happiness, declares on the other hand, that if you will not accept his terms, if you will not accept eternal honour and glory on the easy condition of honouring God, who is so worthy of honour, who asks none to serve him for nought, and so bountifully rewards his creatures for yielding what is his own, and justice demands that they should render-the loss shall be yours. "They that despise me shall be lightly esteemed." This I cannot now illustrate at any length. A few things must suffice. While there is nothing that men, espe cially the young, desire so much as honour, there is nothing they so much dread as disgrace and contempt-but this shall infallibly be the portion of all who neglect or despise God. But is it possible, we would ask, to despise God? Can the heart of man be so bold,presumptuous, senseless, and ungrateful? Let his conscience declare, and it will tell that it can. Well might the prophet call heaven and earth to be astonished, and to wonder at such amazing depravity. But let him remember he cannot despise God with impunity. And, my young friends, though we cannot all aspire at the fame which goodness may justly claim from men, when exhibited on the theatre of public life-though we cannot secure the honour of a David, a Paul, a Luther, or a Knox, or a Howard, and such other illustrious benefactors of mankind, yet a still higher honour have all the saints, and exhibited it shall be, on a nobler theatre, when they shall receive the approbation of the God of all, before the assembled universe-before angels and men. The obscurest individual, whose faith is strong, and love to God warm, and devotedness to the Redeemer sincere and active, shall be welcomed by the Judge of all, and rewarded with the incorruptible crown, the crown of righteousness that fadeth not away; declared incomparably more excellent than the loftiest and proudest of the wicked, by the judgment of the Most High, and in the according testimony of all holy creatures. He shall be placed on a throne at the right hand of God. " For," saith the Saviour, "to him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me on my throne, as I also As God himself declares, " that He will overcame, and am set down with my Father honour them that honour Him," so, it is deon his throne." Should we fail of the hon-clared on an authority as sure, that "they our that cometh from men, there is One that that despise Him shall be lightly esteemed." searcheth and judgeth, who marks our path None hath ever hardened himself against with the tenderest interest, and "will bring Him and hath prospered. It is impossible forth our judgment as the light, and our that they can in the nature of things. A righteousness as the noon-day;" and though man's life, his glory and his happiness, cona good name is better and more to be desir- sist not in the things which he possesseth, ed than riches, yet should we lose it in the but in righteousness and peace and joy i service of God, and, for the sake of Christ, the Holy Ghost. A man's goodness is his we may esteem it a small matter indeed, to glory. God is the fountain of honour-the be judged of man's judgment, "for whoso- Father of lights, from whom cometh down ever," says the Son of God, the judge of all, every good and every perfect gift, and if he "whosoever shall confess me before men, forsake this fountain, much more if he de him will I confess before my Father in hea- spise it, he cannot possibly be other tha ven." Are you desirous, then, of honour? lightly esteemed. God, whose favour is Seek the honour that cometh from God-life, holds him in contempt. Angels wh In the first place, he forfeits the honour of God's servants as we have described it, and incurs God's righteous and eternal displeasure. honour God, abhor his impiety and presumption, and the devils themselves will make sport of his folly. All good men shun him, or approach him with pity. His own heart is his enemy; and though he may be prosperous on earth-though he may arrive at high station, and receive external homage, though the good may honour his office in his person, or though the wicked and the vile and the interested may flatter and fawn upon him, and thousands may go at his bidding, and slaves tremble at his frown, yet he is indeed vile and worthless. His conscience will speak to his baseness, and there will be times, when the flattery of men will be as gall and wormwood to his own soul, and the humblest servant of God will exalt himself above him, and he will quail before the message of truth and of divine displeasure. Thus it was with the young men Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who nobly replied to the threatening questions of the Babylonish monarch, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace; and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known to thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up." Thus it was with Belshazzar, whose "countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another," when he saw the hand from God that wrote upon the wall his accusation and his doom. Perhaps by sudden changes and reverses of fortune, by unexpected revolutions, his prosperity is changed into poverty and misery, his honour into disgrace, and his glory and exaltation into humiliation and shame. Many such instances we have seen in our day, short as it hath been, and that in every rank, from kings and emperors, down through all the gradations of human society. True it is, that such revolutions are not always the lot of the wicked alone-sometimes they visit the just—but to the just they are blessings-their happiness and their hopes are not affected by them-they have God as their friend, and, deprived of all else, their portion is only more complete: whereas to the wicked such changes leave him desolate indeed. All in which he gloried is taken away 66 his tormentors and the vilest of men insult him. And if the wicked should escape all this, and their mountain stand strong till the day of their death, yet then their strength is brought down, like sheep they must be laid in the grave,―become the prey of corruption and dissolution—“ say to corruption thou art my mother, and to the worm thou art my sister and my brother." While the good are held in everlasting remembrance, the memoryofthe wicked shall rot"—become a by-word and a reproach the grave will not hide his iniquity and shame, for while the righteous shall rise to everlasting life, the wicked shall rise to shame and everlasting contempt. Brought before the tribunal of Him who searcheth the heart and trieth the reins, the judgment set and the books opened, the records of his heart and the picture of his life shall be unfolded-his true wickedness and meanness exhibited--and he shall be driven from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power, while a universe of spectators join in reprobating his iniquity and baseness. He hath dishonoured God, done despite to the Spirit of grace, and denied the Son of his love, and the Son of God will deny him and say, I never knew thee, thou worker of iniquity, depart from me, thou cursed, thou vile and miserable, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. This sentence being passed, the proudest of mortals who have exalted themselves against God, shall go away into everlasting punishment, and in the magnificent language of the prophet, "hell shall be moved to meet them at their coming," and its miserable inmates derisively ask, "art thou become weak as we? art thou become like unto us?" Such, my young friends, if the testimony of reason, conscience, and the unchangeable word of the Most High are to be believed, is the real condition respectively of those that honour God, and those that presume to despise him. Let me intreat you, therefore, not to be deluded by your own passions, nor by a vain world, to follow the path of the destroyer, or to swerve from the service of the living God. Let me intreat you ever to remember that everlasting decree of heaven"- Them that honour, me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed." Never," said Richard Baxter, "never did man dishonour God, but it proved the greatest dishonour to himself. 66 nature and of grace alike proceed from the free and unmerited bounty of the Most High; yet, in consideration of our condition, as dependent and needy creatures, endowed with capacities and desires of good, and powers of volition and activity, capable of being swayed by a great variety of subordinate motives, all tending to form the same character of love to God, and to lead to the same practical results of devotedness to him, the divine wisdom addresses to us promises and exhortations calculated to affect our minds, and to fix them with greater certainty and constancy upon Himself. Of all the subordinate principles of action in the human breast, there is perhaps none of more universal influence, or of more powerful efficacy, than the desire of honour. There is no class of men so high as to despise it, and none so low as to be incapable of feeling it. Princes and nobles, statesmen and warriors, lawyers and merchants, philosophers and poets, peasants and mechanics, are all sensible of its influence. To obtain it, they will submit to the heaviest toils, the greatest risks, the severest hardships, the most wasting anxieties, and the most alarming dangers. Under its influence have the most formidable obstacles been surmounted, and the greatest results effected. Even the love of gold, a passion deeply seated, and of great power in our degenerate nature, is weak, compared with the love of fame, honour, and applause. For it men will restrain their strongest passions, and exert their utmost energies. Its praises have been celebrated by orators, poets, and philosophers, and those who have affected to despise it as unworthy the regard of a wise man, express their contempt of it only as a more singular way of attaining it. In short, it seems to be an original principle of our constitution so much so, that you will see it budding forth in infancy, and actuating the child, as the most powerful principle of his actions. It is particularly powerful in the minds of youth, before they have been narrowed and hardened by the feelings of selfishness and avarice-which too often become so exclusive and prominent in more advanced years, and often render old age so cold, repulsive, and even disgusting and contemptible to the more open and generous minds of the youngand sooner than any thing else, sours them at the difficulties and disappointments of this world. A principle then so universal and so powerful, may justly be considered a principle : of our original constitution, and intended to serve the most important and beneficial purposes; and yet it is not to be concealed, that being directed-through the degeneracy of our nature, through the blindness of our understandings induced by sin, through the delusions of the devil, the god of this world, who blinds the minds of them that believe not-to foolish, vain, unsatisfactory, and forbidden objects, it has been productive of dissatisfaction, disappointment, regret, and bitter remorse to him who was actuated by it, as well as gross injustice, cruelty, and op pression to others. To gratify it, strange as it may seem, many have been guilty of the most contemptible meannesses, arrogated praises for what did not belong to them, and have even become so degraded, as "to glory in their shame”—and so thirsted for the possession of its object, as to go to it through seas of blood, and the desolation of nations. Though a principle of our nature, then, and capable of producing the most extensive results, it is plain, that before these results can be beneficial or allowable, as means of acquiring honour, they must be such as the laws of God, the principles of justice, truth, and goodness will allow; hence God says, "Let not the rich man glory in his riches, let not the mighty man glory in his might, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom; but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, which exercise loving-kindness, judgment,and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I delight, saith the Lord." "God forbid," said Paul, "that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world;" and in our text, "them that honour Me, I will honour." If you seek, then, the honour that cometh from God-if you seek it with the principles, feelings, and views which God can approve-in those pursuits which are agreeable to righteousness, truth, and mercy, which alone reason and conscience can commend, which promote the glory of Him who is all and in all, the good of mankind, and the salvation and happiness of your own immortal souls, then assuredly it is a lawful, and proper, and dignified, principle of action, and shall, on the authority of God himself, be amply gratified and rewarded; and who but a debased, and perverted, and grovelling mind, would seek it in any way that is contrary to God and reason, to the dictates of an enlightened conscience, to the welfare of his race, and his own safety and happiness? There are such men, and such men in vast numbers, but they are the children, not of light, but of darkness-whose views are limited and confined-whose conceptions are low and earthly—and their affections and passions vain, capricious, light, sensual, and incapable of rising to God, or piercing into eternity; and being directed to those things that are as fleeting as they are worthless, must assuredly fail of their promised honour, as one who sows the wind, will reap the whirlwind." covet, even to a weakness, to be thought persons of illustrious extraction and rank; now God promotes those who honour Him to the rank of his children, makes them “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ"—heirs of an eternal inheritance, of a kingdom that cannot be moved-and even amid all the mistakes and prejudices of this world, and the contempt and suffering to which the righteous are often exposed, still there is a majesty and loveliness in their character that infallibly secures the esteem of all whose esteem is worth the having-of the pious, the good, and the truly wise-and even forces an unwilling tribute of respect from the worthless and the vile; for God, as an author hath finely said, "hath made goodness a noble and a stately thing." Even the wretched slave of the Devil, and the But if the honour that cometh from God he the object of your desire, and pursued in the way we have pointed out, you cannot be disappointed. I believe there are few of the young persons before me who are insensible to the feeling of honour; if there are any such, they must be lower than the gener-poor worldling who affect to hate and desality of the young-even with all the depravation which sin hath wrought in our nature. If, then, you will have the largest desires and aspirations after true dignity and honour gratified, direct them to God-the most glorious object-the centre and source of all excellence the fountain of honour. The riches and splendours of the earth, the glories of all worlds, and the dignities of principalities and powers, of cherubim and seraphim, are all emanations of his bounty, feeble reflections of his ineffable glory, and it is his own declaration-his everlasting decree-" them that honour me I will honour." of pise it, do it often through envy, and sink abashed and awed in its presence; and the Almighty so arranges his providence, that at the last, and often in this world, the character of the righteous is duly appreciated and honoured, and though clouds and obscurity may have veiled them for a time, they come forth pure and unsullied, and often rise to eminence and respect even in this life; and misjudging as the world is, perhaps there never was an old man who had passed his life in a consistent course of piety to God, and justice and benevolence to men, who did not at last go down to the grave full of The word of the living God is thus pass-honours as of years, with the testimony of ed, that if you honour him, in other words his followers, that it is indeed a good thing devote yourselves to a life of faith and holi- to serve the Lord. In the cases ness, he will honour you. And He who is many Scripture saints, such as Job, Joseph, God over all, almighty in his power, and Samuel, David, Daniel, and others, how infinite in his resources, cannot want the strikingly have the words of wisdom, Prov. means of fulfilling his promise-" Riches iii. 16, and of Hannah, in the opening of and honour come of Him, for he ruleth over this chapter, been verified, Length of all in his hand is power and might in his days is in her right hand; and in her left hand it is to make great, and to give strength hand riches and honour;" "He raiseth up unto all." Even the very act of honouring the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the the God of all, to whom all creation does beggar from the dunghill, to set them among homage, and to proclaim whose glory, in princes, and to make them inherit the throne prostrate adoration, is the employment and of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the delight of the highest intelligences, is itself Lord's, and he hath set the world upon an illustrious honour. If men count it hon- them." In our own day, in the case of the our to serve an earthly prince, and to extend christian patriot Wilberforce, whose rule of his name and renown, shall we not esteem public and private life was the law of his it an honour to glorify God, by "whom God, though he met with obloquy and rekings reign, who is the King of kings, and proach, and was sneered at by frivolous men the Lord of lords ?" as a saint and an enthusiast, and was often forced, even in the senate of a christian It is considered an honour to be made as 66 God, through the opposition of irreligious | admire the condescension of that great Being men, yet, now that he hath run his course, all acknowledge that his path has been "as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day;" and we know not that the breath of party, or of infidel malice, hath obscured its setting. And even when, in this case, party-passions, envy, or ignorance obscure the fair name of the good, the men of a future generation, except when the same causes may happen to be in operation to warp the judgment, usually accord to the faithful servants of God their due tribute of respect, and the "memory of the just is blessed." who needeth not your homage, who is ex- 66 This I cannot now illustrate at any length. A few things must suffice. And, my young friends, though we cannot all aspire at the fame which goodness may justly claim from men, when exhibited on the theatre of public life-though we cannot secure the honour of a David, a Paul, a Luther, or a Knox, or a Howard, and such other illustrious benefactors of mankind, yet a still higher While there is nothing that men, espehonour have all the saints, and exhibited it cially the young, desire so much as honour, shall be, on a nobler theatre, when they shall there is nothing they so much dread as disreceive the approbation of the God of all, grace and contempt-but this shall infallibly before the assembled universe-before angels be the portion of all who neglect or despise and men. The obscurest individual, whose God. But is it possible, we would ask, to faith is strong, and love to God warm, and despise God? Can the heart of man be so devotedness to the Redeemer sincere and bold,presumptuous, senseless, and ungrateful? active, shall be welcomed by the Judge of Let his conscience declare, and it will tell all, and rewarded with the incorruptible that it can. Well might the prophet call crown, the crown of righteousness that fadeth heaven and earth to be astonished, and to not away; declared incomparably more ex-wonder at such amazing depravity. But let cellent than the loftiest and proudest of the him remember he cannot despise God with wicked, by the judgment of the Most High, impunity. and in the according testimony of all holy creatures. He shall be placed on a throne at the right hand of God. " For," saith the Saviour, "to him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me on my throne, as I also As God himself declares, "that He will overcame, and am set down with my Father honour them that honour Him," so, it is deon his throne." Should we fail of the hon-clared on an authority as sure, that " they our that cometh from men, there is One that that despise Him shall be lightly esteemed." searcheth and judgeth, who marks our path None hath ever hardened himself against with the tenderest interest, and "will bring Him and hath prospered. It is impossible forth our judgment as the light, and our that they can in the nature of things. A righteousness as the noon-day;" and though man's life, his glory and his happiness, cona good name is better and more to be desir- sist not in the things which he possesseth, ed than riches, yet should we lose it in the but in righteousness and peace and joy in service of God, and, for the sake of Christ, the Holy Ghost. A man's goodness is his we may esteem it a small matter indeed, to glory. God is the fountain of honour-the be judged of man's judgment, "for whoso- Father of lights, from whom cometh down ever," says the Son of God, the judge of all, every good and every perfect gift, and if he "whosoever shall confess me before men, forsake this fountain, much more if he dehim will I confess before my Father in hea- spise it, he cannot possibly be other than ven." Are you desirous, then, of honour? lightly esteemed. God, whose favour is Seek the honour that cometh from God-life, holds him in contempt. Angels who In the first place, he forfeits the honour of God's servants as we have described it, and incurs God's righteous and eternal displeasure. |