Sermons for the Christian Seasons.

SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

GOD'S WILLINGNESS TO SAVE.

EZEKIEL Xviii. 23. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?

GOD Himself puts this question to the sons of men, as if it were in the power of men to answer it; as if we could so far know the mind of God as to judge on this matter what His pleasure was; as if we could ourselves decide whether it were likely to grieve or to rejoice Him to see men perish. "Have I any pleasure at all, that the wicked should die ?" speak to Me, He says, yourselves, ye sons of men, ye sinners, ye people who know My will. He appeals to us for an answer. He is not content to bear witness concerning Himself, but He wants us to speak as to His feeling towards men from His past, His present dealings, from all that He has said and done,

from all that our fathers have told us of His dealings of old, from all that we know ourselves, from all that He has taught us and wrought among us. We have enough, He knows, by which to form a judgment.

Even the Jew of old, to whom His Prophet was first sent to put this question from the Lord, with the long history in his mind of mighty deliverances, of signs and wonders, of forbearance and long-sufferings, of countless mercies shewn unto his fathers, with all his own experience in his own day of the love and pity of the Lord, of His slowness to wrath, His readiness to forgive, His bounties both to body and soul poured down abundantly from heaven, could not but know and could not but confess that the Lord had no pleasure, yea, had great grief, great sorrow, in the death of the wicked, in the destruction of the sinner, in the loss of even one soul out of His flock, the flock called in another passage so touchingly the "beautiful flock." The Church of the Jews could not but lift up its voice, as the voice of one man, and give answer before the Lord, that all, from the least to the greatest; all, from the worst to the best, knew His desire to see the wicked repent, that they might obtain forgiveness and live. The mercies shewn towards their

fathers and towards themselves, the mercies that crowded upon their memories, mercies countless as the stars in heaven and the sand upon the seashore, pressed one loud answer from their lips, and made the land almost as it were thunder forth its conviction that the Lord hating iniquity loved the sons of men with love unsearchable, that the Lord wept as it were over wandering souls, that it cut Him to the heart to cast off and to condemn, that He waited in wondrous patience and still waited on before He could speak the word of condemnation and cut off the sinner's life. Many a word of Scripture must needs have risen to their minds, testifying to this compassion of the Lord. "What more," He says, in one passage, "could I have done in My vineyard. that I have not done in it ?" "All the day long," He says in another, “have I stretched forth My hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people." And again, "Hear ye, and give ear; be not proud for the Lord hath spoken. Give glory to the Lord your God, before He cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and, while ye look for light, He turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness. But if ye will not hear, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride; and mine eye shall

:

weep sore, and run down with tears, because the Lord's flock is carried away captive." "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon."

What witness was there to the Jewish Church in such passages as these, these too strengthened ten thousand fold by the things seen and done and felt among them.

When then the Lord thus spoke from heaven and then claimed answer as to His own people' judgment of His desire to see repentance, it was but a strong mode of declaring through their own mouths His love, His anxiety for the salvation of the sinner. It was a strong mode of convicting the impenitent of the exceeding sinfulness of their impenitence, and of drawing away from them, by their own confession of His love, every excuse for continuing in sin. "I do not Myself at first," the Lord seems to say, "assert My desire that all the wicked and disobedient, all the proud and worldly, all the drunken and the blasphemers, all the lovers of pleasure and the lustful, should repent and turn unto Me and seek for life; but ye yourselves, even the most sinful and most godless, know and feel and are constrained to own in

answer to My word, from all that is within you and without, from all ye have had done unto you, from all ye have known done unto others, from all the marks of My mind written in the world, or written in your hearts, that I greatly desire your life, greatly long for the return of wanderers, greatly sigh over the stubbornness of sinners, and have no pleasure, but the sharpest grief, that any should perish.

And thus having as it were forced the conscience of His people on their part, and with their own mouths, to bear witness to His love, then later on in the same chapter He says plainly of Himself, "I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth? saith the Lord God; wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye." Man on earth and God in heaven, both proclaim the unwillingness of God to kill and to destroy.

Yes, I say, man on earth; not the Jew only, or the Jewish Church, but much more the Christian Church, the new flock and fold of Christ, still more loved, still more favoured, still more blessed, possessing still greater gifts, greater tokens of God's desire to heal and to sanctify and save, greater assistances in the heavenward work, more moving and affecting calls to repentance, as the Cross of Christ, and the sorrows of