The text presents to our notice two topics, first, The Duty of nations; and secondly, The Punishment by which the neglect of this duty will be avenged. The consideration of these may be subservient to the appreciation of our position and responsibilities as a church of Christ.
We turn to Psalm 87 which bears the title “A Psalm for the sons of Korah.” The notation tells us that it was explicitly written for public worship in the Temple. We are not told when it was written, and some scholars have attributed it to David. Others locate it in the days of Hezekiah, and others argue it was written after the return from captivity. So the date is uncertain, but what is clear is that it speaks to all these historical eras as well as to the Church today. Indeed, it takes us beyond all these to our eternal hope. The theme of Psalm 87 and our address is Zion, the City of God and specifically the glorious things God has said of her.
An event had taken place at Jerusalem, in which every son of Adam on the wide surface of the earth was interested, which was to bring unnumbered multitudes to Heaven, and thus greatly to influence the records of eternity. And Christ, looking steadfastly upon the faces of his chosen followers, and thinking of the multitude of sinners which then thronged this miserable world, and of the countless generations then unborn, who afterwards were to be blessed by his salvation, uttered these most emphatic words: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.”
The estimate formed of the state of religion in the present day will, of course, entirely depend on the views we form of what true religion is, and on the standpoint we occupy when we examine the religious aspect of society. If we think of religion as embodied in the men who profess it, if we judge of it entirely by the attainments in the knowledge and experience of its living representatives, our estimate of its present state must not, we fear, be a very favourable one. As compared with the divines of other days, what dwarfs are those who represent the theological attainments of the present!
Dr. William Blackadder was born in 1647. He was sent to the University of Edinburgh in 1665 and went over to Holland to graduate at Leyden in 1680. In Holland, he appears to have formed an acquaintance with some of the illustrious refugees and other diplomatic characters, and to have been much in their confidence. He came over with the Earl of Argyle in his unfortunate expedition in 1685, and was taken prisoner in Orkney.
Much honoured and very dear Sir, I do by this line salute much in the Lord yourself and your worthy yokefellow and companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, whom he is graciously pleased to keep yet together when he hath made many sad separations and divorces between other husbands and wives, partly by violent, partly by natural deaths, which I know mightily alarms and provokes you to more than ordinary and more than ever diligent, careful, and conscionable improvement of one another’s fellowship, to the best spiritual advantage.
It is now many years since Mr. Stewart of Liverpool called the attention of Christians to the important duty of united and earnest prayer for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, for the purpose of reviving true religion at home, and promoting its dissemination throughout the world. At that time he recommended ministers to preach upon the subject, and in other ways to diffuse information with regard to the person and work of the Holy Ghost.
In this article, we consider one of the most remarkable post-Reformation revivals in Scottish church history. It concerns what happened at the General Assembly of the Scottish Reformed Church, in 1596. It is little known by Christians in Scotland today; it was a long time ago. Yet one contemporary historian, David Calderwood (1575–1650), was to write that “This year [1596] is a remarkable year in the history of the Kirk of Scotland.”
In Brown of Wamphray’s ministrations, we have not obtruded on our famishing souls that oily sentimentalism, or that iced intellectualism, which so abound in this epicurean age of the church—but we have the true bread, just as it has been gathered, wholesome and nutritious. Oh, that amidst the multitude of our popular and evangelical preachers and writers, we had but a phalanx of godly and spiritual men like him—men of heart, men of business, who would, in right earnest, negotiate between the Prince of Life and dying men, and not merely transact between a dead doctrine and a blind intellect; men who will not ever be substituting the vague idea of “religion” for the living person of the Son of God, or “moral influence” for the personal operation of the Holy Ghost!
At the induction of Dr. Thomas Smith as successor to the late Rev. Dr. Duff in the chair of Evangelistic Theology, in the New College, Edinburgh, Dr. Begg, who addressed the newly appointed professor, made the following very admirable remarks on the true source of ministerial usefulness and success.
