The Apostle Paul assures us that all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. There seems to be a necessary connection between godliness and persecution. There is an enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. In the words of the text, persecution appears to be one of the great tribulations through which they pass. They all suffer persecution in some shape or other.
The providences of God towards his people are most remarkable, and fraught with the most weighty instructions: they are no doubt intended for the benefit of all generations, and preserved in the Scriptures for that purpose. The history of Abraham, the friend of God, and father of the faithful, is most remarkable and interesting. That part of his life and that severe trial of his faith to which the text refers, we have an account from the beginning of this chapter, and in the text, a remembrance is kept of it.
Some of the most noted triumphs of the gospel have been among those that were the despised of this world. God has chosen the weak things of this world to confound the things that are mighty. He has chosen the base things. He has chosen things that were not that he might bring to nought things that were, that no flesh might glory in his presence. One such trophy of gospel power and grace lived in the Highlands fifty years ago, and the memory of Angus of the Hills is still fresh among the people of the North Western Islands.
Messages from the Lord are always true and seasonable, whether his words are those of rebuke or those of comfort. In each case too, the authority of the message is divine, and should not therefore be challenged. And the tenor of the messenger’s feelings must be according to the words which he speaks in the name of the Lord to his own generation, which was in a sadly degenerate condition. Its spiritual state, and the kind of message which the Lord gave him to deliver, caused his being distinguished as “the weeping prophet.” In times of backsliding, all who speak in the Lord’s name, and according to His mind, must be like him. The view which they have of the times they live in, and the kind of message which the Lord directs them to deliver combine to make them sad. The woeful condition of things around them casts its dark shadow on their face, and causes the gloomy and austere aspect for which they are condemned by those whom the Lord constrains them to rebuke.
Beloved, you may remember, I have preached ten sermons upon the glorified condition of the saints in heaven. It is now in my thoughts to speak of the tormented condition of the damned in hell, that if the former sermons about glory have not gained your affections, this of hell might startle your consciences. Ministers, as having a mixed people, must mix their doctrine, somewhile with comfort and sometimes with terror. You have heard ten sermons upon the former text; you may haply hear so many more upon this subject.
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.
To die to the Lord, we apprehend, is to have a view to the glory of God in all that pertains to our death. It is to consult for God’s glory, in the state of our views and feelings in the prospect of death.
There is one thing I have to observe, from the Lord’s way with me in my journey heavenward; it is up the brae and down the brae. . .Alas! my predominant sin was like my shadow, it never left me. O the confusion that in a short time it brought me under! till at last, I concluded my spots were not the spots of God’s children; for I thought I was one of the most abominable creatures that ever was born.
First of all, then, on behalf of human hymns, it has been said, “We live now under a better and brighter dispensation than that of the Old Testament, therefore the inspired Psalms of David, and other Psalms in Holy Scripture, are insufficient.” But the question is not whether the dispensation under which we now live is better and brighter than that which preceded it, but whether, under this better and brighter dispensation, there is any security for better and brighter hymns than the Psalms of David, and whether there is a promise given to any man, or any body of men, of a richer unction of the Spirit—and not a richer unction only, but a specifically inspiring action of the Spirit, for the purpose of composing hymns for the public worship of God in the church than was given to him of whom it is written that, in his blessed swan song, he spoke as follows: “David, the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet Psalmist of Israel, said, The Spirit of the LORD spake by me, and his word was in my tongue” (2 Sam. 23:1). Is there any modern hymnologist in circumstances to say that? Dr. Adam must tell us who he is, before his argument from the greater brightness of the New Testament dispensation is of any worth, otherwise it is an argument, not only on behalf of hymns, but against the Book of Psalms.
Very little thought is given these days to the question of the propriety of using instrumental music in public worship services. It is not questioned. The fact that instrumental accompaniment was more or less unknown in Presbyterian Church in Scotland up to the end of the 19th Century comes as a surprise to people, as does the knowledge that the great Baptist preacher of the Victorian era, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, never used instrumental accompaniment in the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London.
