With the volume of inspiration in our hands, and the concurrence of innumerable facts confirming the evidence which it adduceth to the certainty of the preceding truths; let us, upon the present solemn occasion, First, take a view of some of those tremendous works of Jehovah, which, while they speak his existence and interposition, proclaim his wrath; and then, secondly, consider, in what light, and with what temper, we should contemplate such portentous dealings. “Come, behold the works of the Lord; what desolations he hath made in the earth.”
I. There are some works of Jehovah, which proclaim his benignity and tender mercy. All his dispensations are big with a display of these most attractive and endearing attributes. They crown his providence, and shine forth with brightest lustre in the boundless riches of grace. Every land is witness to his patience, and equally so to the vast profusion of his all-bounteous munificence. The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord; and all nature smiles under the tender mercies of our God. And, were this the proper place, or would the reference of our text admit of the digression, we might take a view of that beautiful scene, painted by an inspired hand, and in the most sublime imagery, in Psal. lxv. 8–13. We might meditate, with rapture and with profit, on those works of paternal goodness, which “the outgoings of the morning and the evening rejoice” to publish; when the Father of Mercies makes his “paths to drop fatness on the pastures of the wilderness,” and “crowneth” the opening and closing “year with his goodness;” when pastures clothed with flocks, and valleys covered over with corn, “make the little hills rejoice on every side,” give an universal festivity and gaiety to the face of nature, and “shout for joy” in praise of nature’s God. Or we may pass to a contemplation of a still more enrapturing scene, which the former but faintly pictures; I mean that of the human heart emerging from darkness and from barrenness under the propitious rays of the “Sun of Righteousness,” softened by the dew of divine grace, watered by the divine Spirit, that “river of God which is full of water,” clothed with that best robe, the Redeemer’s righteousness, and transformed from a wilderness into a little Eden, flourishing like the garden of God. Or, we might fix our meditations on that most gracious and most stupendous work of infinite mercy, the redemption of sinners through Jesus Christ. A work this, which is the great labor of the skies, and the grandest work of God; on which the believer employs his sweetest meditations, and from which he derives his brightest hopes.
But the subject of the text, as well as the solemnity of the day, calls us, for the present, to consider other works, in which, not the olive-branch of peace, but the rod of vindictive justice, is held forth; where not the goodness, but the severity of God, is the chief object; in which the desolation of the earth is his awful purpose; and by which he speaks, not in the still small voice of mercy and benignity, but in accents more awful than the noise of conflicting elements, and more tremendous than the sound of ten thousand thunders. “For, behold the Lord cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity; therefore let all the earth keep silence before him.” Isa. xxvi. 21. Hab. ii. 20.
Whether we consider the desolating works themselves, or the instruments, by which they have been accomplished, we shall have abundant cause, in either view, to acknowledge the finger of God, and to confess, that “he ruleth in the kingdoms of the earth, and is very greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints;” that he is “glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders.”
1. As to the works themselves, they reach as far as the utmost extent of the terraqueous globe, and are as numerous as the several countries, kingdoms, or insular districts, into which it is divided by intervening mountains, or intersected by the currents of the ocean. There is not a spot of any considerable extent upon the earth, that has not, in some period or other, experienced the desolating hand of Jehovah; nor can the history of any nation be produced, whose annals do not record some awful visitation, through which he hath “answered” its inhabitants “by TERRIBLE THINGS in righteousness;” Psal. lxv. 5, and forced even pagan nations “that dwell in the uttermost parts of the earth to be afraid at the TOKENS” of his existence and indignation. Indeed, what is the earth, but one vast theatre, on which have been exhibited the successive scenes of mercy and of judgment? bearing, under its various revolutions, visible inscriptions of a divine hand, and visible traces of divine power? and in such phenomena, as might make even an atheist to cry out, “Thou, even thou, art to be feared; and who may stand in thy sight when thou art angry?” Psal. lxxvi. 7.
But, if we consult the sacred writings, those infallible records of God’s works and ways; in them we shall meet with the most numerous and prominent testimonies to the truth before us. There we read of that great work of desolation, produced by an universal deluge; when the earth suffered the most dreadful disruption of its parts; when “the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened;” Gen. vii. 11; when descending cataracts from the clouds meeting with ascending torrents from the great abyss, formed that vast congregation of waters, which overspread the earth, and covered the summits of its loftiest hills; when sin received an indelible mark of its abominable nature, the inhabitants of the earth met with the just desert of their accumulated iniquities, and the earth itself was reduced to such a state of desolation, as can only be exceeded by the terrors of that day, when a different element shall be employed to consummate its final and total wreck; when a flood of fire shall finish, what a deluge of water began, and intermediate desolations have been carrying on for thousands of years; and when God shall accomplish all his works of judgment and of mercy, to the eternal ruin of the wicked, and the complete redemption of his own people.
Although Jehovah hath set his bow in the clouds, as the significant symbol of that covenant, which he made with Noah, for the security of the earth from another general inundation, and of a better covenant established through Christ, whereby the salvation of his people from a deluge of divine wrath is ascertained; yet, if we examine the subsequent dispensations of Jehovah, they will evince, that post-diluvian wickedness has received marks of divine displeasure, in a constant succession of desolating judgments. Of this let the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah be a standing proof; whose inhabitants, for their unnatural lust, were visited with a judgment which served as a prelude and a pledge of that “vengeance of eternal fire,” Jude 7, which they were to “suffer” as the reward of their crimes; while all the cities of the plain, converted into a fetid lake, or dead sea, whose foul exhalations spread barrenness and death all around it, exhibit, as long as the earth itself lasteth, an awful memorandum of the effects of sin, and the judgments of a sin-avenging God.
Or, if the truth require further illustration, let us visit Egypt, and see what “signs Jehovah wrought there, and what wonders in the field of Zoan,” Psal. lxxviii. where he “smote all their first-born and the chief of their strength in the tabernacles of Ham;” where a succession of plagues, desolating their country, and depopulating its inhabitants, terminated at last in the destruction of Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea. What a scene must that land exhibit, wherein the nutritive parts of creation were impregnated with poison and death! the most innocent creatures became a dreadful annoyance! the most useful animals were visited with sickness! the very dust of the ground converted into loathsome insects! the light of heaven changed into “darkness that might be felt!” the first-born of man and beast cut off in a night! the survivors trembling for themselves, and shrieking for the dead! while every element was armed with vengeance, and conspired to complete the desolation. Yet such was the scene, when God sent tokens and wonders into thee, O thou land of Egypt!
But the time would fail me to tell of Moab, and of Babylon; of populous Nineveh, or of imperial Rome; and of Jerusalem, the city of the great King; of the various nations, tribes, and people, to which these mighty cities gave names of pomp and distinction,—of the various revolutions which they have severally undergone, in the course of providence;—of the captivities of some, the conquests of others, and the desolation of all. The history of Israel from their Exodus out of Egypt, to their settlement in Canaan, with their journeyings through the wilderness inclusive, principally contains a narrative of their sins and of God’s judgments; nor does the history of the Jews, through their several captivities, and defections from the Lord, diminish, but rather swell, the dreadful account; as we view them, from the revolt and dispersion of ten tribes, down to the final subjection of the residue to the Roman yoke; an event, which, by a judicial chain of providence, rapidly brought on the melancholy catastrophe, which ended in the ruin of their city and temple, and marked that awful æra, in which they ceased to be a people. “How unsearchable are God’s judgments, and his ways past finding out!” Rom. xi. 33.
Admitting that there is a God, who created and now governeth the universal frame of nature, a truth, as we have seen, founded upon the most incontestable evidence both of his word and works—it follows of course, that He can never be at a loss for expedients to assert his sovereignty, and vindicate his injured laws. As the heavens and the earth are his property, he can, with as much equity as ease, summon either or both to act in his controversy with a guilty world. His own creation will, at all times, furnish him with ample materials for conducting his judicial dispensations; insomuch, that every creature might be armed against us, and every element be made the vehicle of destruction; or the divine appointment might make the very food we eat, or the air we breathe, the channels to convey instantaneous death. But our business is not now to consider these ordinary incidents, by which “the King of terrors” is continually peopling the regions of the dead, and to which the constitution of our frame is subject; but rather those awful instruments of divine visitation, which are scourges of the Almighty to a guilty world. And one of the most fatal of these, is