A SERMON,

PREACHED IN THE

PARISH CHURCH OF ASHBY-DE-LA-ZOUCH,

ASHBY-DE-LA-ZOUCH: W. & J. HEXTALL.

LONDON: J. C. AND F. RIVINGTON.

SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS.

M.DCCC.XXXIX.

A SERMON.

LUKE XVIII. 8.

When the Son of Man cometh shall he find faith on the earth?

A FITTER time for asking this question we cannot have than the present, when we are closing the last Sunday of the Advent season; any time however, is a fit time to ask it, at least as respects ourselves individually, for the next hour for anything we know, may be the Lord's Advent to any one of us. You will find the words at the conclusion of our Lord's Parable of the Importunate Widow, wherein he represents an ungodly partial judge overcome by the unwearied appeal of a poor widow, and resolving to do her that justice to get rid of her importunity, which neither a fear of God or regard for man, that is, neither religion or uprightness, could constrain him to render to her before. And then argues our Lord, if it be so that for very weariness, a hard-hearted godless magistrate at last grants his suitor's request, shall not God avenge his own elect which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? that is, shall not God, who is all holy and just and merciful, receive and answer the prayers of his children which go up before him in their troubles and adversities, though he seemed for a length of time to overlook them. I tell you,

says the Son of God on his own conclusive authority, I tell you that he will avenge them, that is, hear and deliver them, and that speedily. Nevertheless, for all this revelation of his justice and mercy,-for all this contrast between the Father who

is in heaven, and the unrighteous earthly judge I have told you of,—for all my express declaration that God's elect ones are heard and shall in the end be answered, by deliverance from their afflictions, by triumph over their enemies, by entrance into their own promised, purchased inheritance,—nevertheless for all this will men so act as though they believed it? will they who hear of God and his grace and his righteousness, be urgent with him in their prayers? will they be besetting the mercy-seat with daily and unwearied importunities for years if needs be, if for years they get no answer to their cry? will they be returning, as it were, to the assault as though conscious that heaven must be won at last by such holy violence? will it be so practically, habitually, universally, in the successive ages of christianity? will it be so when with lightning speed the judgment shall burst upon the astonished world? When the Son of Man cometh shall he find faith upon the earth?

It is my purpose, brethren, and may God's Holy Spirit aid both you and me as though this were, what it may be, the last word between us e're that awful day; it is my purpose to apply this enquiry to our own times generally, to our own kingdom, to our own households, and lastly, if I can-for I know this is a harder matter, but yet God can enable me-lastly, I say, to our own hearts. And I shall apply it at large as it stands in the words of the text with respect to faith generally and not limited as to the exercise of prayer, for this is only one out of many proofs of faith's vitality.

But first, I would premise a few words on the subject of our Lord's coming, that you may see the question is an urgent one to every soul that hath ears to hear. For on this subject, as on many others, errors are entertained of two opposite extremes: first, that of those who venture to give particular predictions thereon; and, secondly, that of others who overlook it entirely. Now, of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the Son himself, saith our blessed Lord, but the Father only, and therefore gave he this perpetual watchword to his church to

the end of time: What I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch. Yet there have been and are men, who in misguided zeal, it appears to me, have ventured practically to my view to gainsay this declaration by interpreting the dark sayings, and lifting up with an over-venturous hand the mystic veil of prophecy, even to the proclaiming of the time, yes, and all but the very year, of the end of all things; men who are prying, I believe, unbidden, and I fear presumptuously, into the hidden things of the Lord our God, as though they would fetch forth materials from the depth of his secrecies, and master by mortal efforts the mysteries of the world to come, and all to build up for themselves, as it were, a monument of untempered mortar; a system of prophetic declarations, explained, and arranged, and accommodated by their own ingenuity,-God's predictions unequally annexed by man's interpretations, which some of them have in their own brief lifetime beheld falsified and crumbling to the dust. Such, brethren, in spite of the Son of Man's own testimony there are and have been, and you may meet with them or their writings, and as penetration into futurity is a fond and seductive thing to our weakness, you may be tempted to give ear to their curious surmises, I would however warn you to build nothing thereupon, or rather to leave them for things more profitable to godliness, viz. those that are revealed and belong to us and our children; for surely it cannot be God's will to make these men prophets through their much learning above the lowly and prayerful readers of his word and expectants of his kingdom, whenever it may come; surely he cannot will that any man should know when and in what direction the lightning flash shall cross the heavens, for such will the coming of the Son of Man be. No-brethren, but rather do we behold therein a work at least of inutility, an effort to be wise above what is written, as powerless as though one would raise a feather from the earth to trace characters on the firmament of heaven; and rather do we read what seems to us an actual prohibition of such unhallowed curiosity, yea, a rebuke and an overthrow to the vanity of these rash conjec