THE MIDDLE PASSAGE. A Sermon DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MAY 18TH, 1879, BY AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. (In commemoration of the completion of the Twenty-fifth Year of his Ministry over the Church meeting in the Tabernacle.) "O Lord, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid; O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy."-Habakkuk iii. 2. HABAKKUK had the sadness of living at a time when true religion was in a very deplorable state. The nation had to a great extent departed from the living God; there was a godly party in the kingdom, but the ungodly and idolatrous faction was exceedingly strong. The Lord threatened judgment on the people on account of this, and it was revealed to the prophet that an invasion by the Chaldeans was near at hand. The prophet, therefore, was filled with anxiety as to the future of his country, because he saw its sinful condition and knew where it must end. The book of his prophecy begins with the earnest question of intercession, "O Lord, how long? His spirit was stirred within him at the sin of the people, and his heart was broken by a vision of the chastisement which the Lord had ordained. It becomes all who bear witness for God thus to be stirred in soul when they see the name of God dishonoured, and have reason to expect the visitations of his wrath. A man without bowels of compassion is not a man of God. Yet Habakkuk was a man of strong faith, a happy circumstance indeed for him in evil times, for if faith be wanted in the fairest weather much more is it needed when the storm is gathering; and if the just must live by faith even when the morning begins to break, how much more must they do so when the shadows are deepening into night? Those who have tender hearts to weep over the sins of their fellows need also brave hearts to stay themselves upon God. Habakkuk's name by interpretation is the embracer, and I may say of him truly that he was one who saw the promises afar off, and was persuaded of them and embraced them. He took fast hold upon the goodness of the Lord and rested there. In reading his prophecies No. 1,474. one is struck by the way in which he realized the presence of God. Fitly does he entitle his book " the burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see," for in the vividness of his apprehension he is eminently a "seer.' He perceives the presence of God, and bids the earth keep silence before him. He beholds the divine ways in the history of the chosen people, and feels rottenness entering into his bones, and a trembling seizing him. God was very real to him, and the way of God was very conspicuous before his mental eye. Hence his faith was as vigorous as his reverence was deep. It is in his prophecy that we read that wonderful gospel sentence upon which Paul preaches many sermons, "The just shall live by faith"; and it is in this prophecy too that we find that notable resolution of faith when under the worst conceivable circumstances she says or sings, "Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." Now, beloved, it will be well for us if we have much of Habakkuk's spirit, and are grounded and settled by a strong confidence in God; for if so, while we may have sombre views both as to the present and the future, we shall be freed from all despondency by casting ourselves upon him whose ways are everlasting. His goings forth of old were so grand and glorious that to doubt him is to slander him, and his nature is so unchangeable that to reckon upon the repetitions of his gracious deeds is but to do him the barest justice. In the text which I have selected this morning with an eye to the celebration of the twenty-fifth year of our happy union as pastor and people, I see three points upon which I wish to dwell. The first is the prophet's fear," O Lord, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid "; the second is the prophet's prayer, "O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known"; and the third is the prophet's plea,-" In wrath remember mercy," coupled with the rest of the chapter in which he practically finds a plea for God's present working in the report of what he had done for Israel in the olden times. I. First, then, I want you to notice THE PROPHET'S FEAR: "I have heard thy speech, and was afraid." It is the fear of solemn awe; it is not dread or terror, but reverence. Read it in connection with the twentieth verse of the preceding chapter: "But the Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him. O Lord, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid." All else was hushed, and then amid the solemn silence he heard Jehovah's voice and trembled. It is not possible that mortal men should be thoroughly conscious of the divine presence without being filled with awe. I suppose that this feeling in unfallen Adam was less overwhelming because he had no sense of sin, but surely even to him it must have been a solemn thing to hear the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. Though filled with a childlike confidence, yet even innocent manhood must have shrunk to the ground before that majestic presence. Since the fall, whenever men have been favoured with any special revelation of God they have been deeply moved with fear. There was great truth in the spirit of the old tradition that no man could see God's face and live; for such a sense of nothingness is produced in the soul by consciousness of Deity that men so highly favoured have found themselves unable to bear up under the load of blessing. Isaiah cries, "Woe is me! for I am undone; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts"; Daniel says, "There remained no strength in me "; Ezekiel declares, "When I saw it, I fell upon my face"; and John confesses, "When I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead." You remember how Job cried unto the Lord: "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye sceth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." Angels, who climb the ladder which Jacob saw, veil their faces when they look on God; and as for us who lie at the foot of that ladder, what can we do but say with the patriarch, "How dreadful is this place"? Albeit that it is the greatest of all blessings, yet is it an awful thing to be a favourite with God. Blessed among women was the Virgin Mother, to whom the Lord manifested such high favour, but for this very reason to her it was foretold, "Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also." Blessed among men was he to whom God spoke as a friend, but it must needs be that a horror of great darkness should come upon him. It is not given to such frail creatures as we are to stand in the full blaze of Godhead, even though it be tempered by the mediation of Christ, without crying out with the prophet-"I was afraid." "Who would not fear thee, O King of nations?" Habakkuk's awe of God was quickened by the "speech" which he had heard-"O Lord, I have heard thy speech," which is by some rendered "report," and referred to the gospel of which Isaiah saith, "Who hath believed our report?" But surely the meaning should rather be looked for in the context, and this would lead us to interpret the " report" as relating to what God had done for his ancient people, when he came from Teman, cleaving the earth with rivers, and threshing the heathen in anger. The prophet had been studying the history of Israel, and had seen the hand of God in every stage of that narrative, from the passage of the Red Sea and the Jordan on to the casting out of the heathen and the settlement of Israel in Canaan. He had heard the speech of God in the story of Israel in the silence of his soul; he had seen the deeds of the Lord as though newly enacted, and he was filled with awe and apprehension, for he saw that while God had a great favour to his people yet he was provoked by their sins, and though he passed by their transgressions many and many a time, yet still he did chasten them, and did not wink at their iniquities. The prophet remembered how God had smitten Israel in the wilderness till the graves of lust covered many an acre of the desert; how he had smitten them in Canaan, where tyrant after tyrant subdued them and brought them very low. He recollected the terrible judgments which the Lord had sent one after another thick and threefold upon his guilty people, fulfilling that ancient word of his " You only have I known of all the nations of the earth, therefore I will punish you for your iniquities." He saw that burning text, "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God," written in letters of fire all along the history of Jehovah's connection with his elect people, and so he cried, "O Lord, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid." Probably, however, Habakkuk alludes to another source of apprehension, namely, the silent speech of God within his prophetic bosom, where, unheard of men, there were intimations of coming vengeance which intimations he afterwards put into words and left on record in the first chapter of his book. The Chaldeans were coming up, a people fierce and strong, a bitter and a hasty nation, terrible and dreadful; swifter than leopards and fiercer than evening wolves. These were hastening towards Judah as mighty hunters hurry to the prey, and in the spirit of prophecy Habakkuk saw the land parched beneath the firehoofs of the invading horses, princes and kings led away into captivity, the garden of the Lord turned into a desolate wilderness, and Lebanon itself shorn of its forests by the hand of violence. The fear of this frightful calamity made him tremble, as well it might, for Jeremiah himself scarce found tears enough to bewail the Chaldean woe. Now, my brethren, when the Lord leads his servants to look from their watchtowers, and to guess the future by the past, we also are afraid. When we see God's chastisement of a sinful people in years gone by, and are led therefrom to prognosticate the probable future of a sinful people in the present day, then do our hearts fail us for fear lest the Lord should avenge himself upon the guilty nation in which we dwell. We are afraid for ourselves also with great fear, for we also have sinned. Thus, you see, the prophet's fear was made up of these three things: first, a solemn awe inspired by the near presence of the Lord, who cannot look upon iniquity, lest haply he should break forth upon the people as a consuming fire; secondly, an apprehension drawn from the past report of God's ways which he made known to Moses, and his acts to the children of Israel, lest he should again smite the erring nation; and then, thirdly, a further apprehension which projected itself into the future, that the Lord would execute the threatenings which he had so solemnly uttered by his prophets, and permit the Chaldeans to treat his people as though they were so many fishes of the sea, to be taken in their net, and devoured. Putting those three things together, I advance to the prophet's special subject of fear, which has been generally overlooked but is very conspicuous in the text. The prophet was afraid because of the particular period of national life through which his people were passing. They had come, if I read his prayer aright, to "the midst of the years," or the middle period of their history. Habakkuk's ministry was not exercised in the first ages when Moses and Samuel prophesied, nor yet in these latter days wherein we live, upon whom the ends of the earth have come. He probably ministered six hundred years before the coming of Christ, somewhere in the very centre of human history, if that history is to make a week of thousands as to its years as many have imagined. With regard to the Israelitish people, they were now far removed from the day "when Ephraim was a child"; they were in their middle life when the best things ought to have been developed in them. The heroic age was gone, and that unpoetical, matter of fact era was come in which men laboured in the very fire, and wearied themselves for very vanity; and therefore, like a tender intercessor, the prophet cries, "O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known." The application to ourselves which I want to make this morning is drawn from the fact that we also, as a church, have reached "the midst of the years." Under the present pastorate we are like mariners in mid ocean, distant twenty-five leagues, or rather years, from the place of our departure, and making all sail for the further shore. As to any service we may expect personally to render we are certainly in the midst of the years, if not near to their end. In the course of nature we could not expect that more than another twenty-five years of service could be compassed by us, nor are we so foolish as to reckon even upon that: we have at any rate come to middle life in our church relationship, now that we celebrate our silver wedding. 66 Brethren, there is about "the midst of the years" a certain special danger, and this led the prophet, as it shall lead us at this time, to pray, “O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known." Youth has its perils, but these are past; age has its infirmities, but these we have not yet reached; it is ours then to pray against the dangers which are present with us "in the midst of the years." The middle passage of life with us as individuals, and with us as a church is crowded with peculiar perils. Have you never noticed how previous dispensations have all passed away in their prime, long before they had grown grey with years. Upon the golden age of paradise and perfection the sun went down ere it was yet noon. The patriarchal period saw a few of its hoary fathers wearing the veneration of centuries, but in a few generations men with lengthened lives had grown so skilled in sin that the flood came and swept away the age ere yet it had begun to fade. Then came the Jewish state with its judges and its kings, and scarcely have we read that Solomon built a great house for the Lord, ere we perceive that Israel has gained the zenith of her glory, and her excellence declines. Even so was it in the Christian church of the first ages, so far as it was a visible organization. It began well, what did hinder it? It was in fullest health and strength when it defied the lions and the flames, and laughed emperors to scorn, but ere long Constantine laid his royal hand upon it, and the church became sick of the king's evil, the cruelest of all diseases to the church of God. This malady, like a canker, ate into her very heart and defiled her soul, so that what should have been a spiritual empire, chastely wedded to the Lord Christ, became the mistress of the kings of the earth. Her middle ages were a night of darkness, which even yet casts its dread shade across the nations. It seems as if the middle passage of communities cannot be safely passed except by a miracle of grace. The morning comes with a dawn of bright beams and sparkling dews, but ere long the sun is hot and the fields are parched, or the sky is black with clouds, and the glory of the day is marred. This is a matter of constant anxiety to the lover of his race, who knows the jealousy of God and the frailty of his people, lest in the midst of the years the people should turn aside from their faithfulness and forget their first love, and, therefore, the Lord should be provoked to remove their candlestick and leave them to their own devices. O Lord, my God, grant this may not happen unto this thy church. What, then, are the dangers of this middle passage? First, there is a certain spur and stimulus of novelty about religious movements which in a few years is worn out. I well recollect when we were called "a nine days' wonder," and our critics prophesied that our work would speedily collapse. Such excitement had been before and had |