The Leafless Tree

“But yet ini*; shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and it shall be c-ftten “AS & teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in tnem, when they cast th«13 ..eavos; so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.” — Isaiah, vL 13.

Our first business to-night will be briefly to explain the metaphor employed in the text. The prophet was told that despite all the remonstrances he was instructed to deliver, and notwithstanding the eloquent earnestness of his lips, Wiiicb had been just touched by a live coal from off the altar, still the people of Israel would persevere in their sins, and would therefore be certainly ‘destroyed. He asked the question, “Lord, how long?” that is. How long will the people be thus impenitent? How long will thy sore judgment thus continue? and he was informed that God would waste and destroy the cities and their inhabitants, till the land should be utterly desolate. Then it was added, for his comfoit, “Yet in it shall be o tenth.” And so it happened; for when “iJ’ebuchadnezzar carried away all Jerusalem,” the historian gives this reservation — ’ none remained save the poorer sort of the people of the land.-’ They were left by the captain of tha guard, “to be vine-dressers and husbandmen.” Thus in it there was a tenth; this Bifiall remnant of the people, however, was to be nearly destroyed too. “It shall return and shall be eaten;” the sense is, eaten up or consumed. The poor creaturGs left in the land, many of them fled into Egypt at the time of the conspiracy of Ishmael (not Ishmael, the son of Hagar, but an unworthy member of the voyal fomily of Judah), and there in Egypt most of them were cut off and perished. “But,” says God,” although this tenth only shall be preserved, and then evea this small part dball y)e subjected to many perili yet Israel

BhaJ not be dcstvoyed, for it shall be as a terebinth tree and ua an oak;” their “substance is in them, when they cast their leaves,” and so lose their verdure and their beauty; thus, in like manner, a holy seed, a ohosen remnant, shall still be the substance of the children of Israel, when the fruitful land is stripped of its foliage, and that fa?’” garden of earth is barren as the desert.

The figure is taken, first of all, from the terebinth or turpentine tree — here translated the teil tree. That tree is an evergreen, with this exception, that in very severe and inclement weather it loses its leaves; but even then the terebinth tree is not dead. And so of the oak; it loses its leaven every year, of course, but even then it is not dead. “So,” says God, “you have seen the tree in winter, standing naked and bare, without any sign of life, its roots buried in the hard and frozen soil, and its naked branches exposed to every blast, without a bloom or a bud; yet the substance is in the tree when the leaves are gone. It is still alive, and it shall, by and by, in due season, bud and bloom; so,” says he, “Nebuchadnezzar shall cut off all the leaves of the tree of Israel — take away the inhabitants, only a tenth shall be left, and they shall well nigh be eaten up; still the church of God and the Israel of God never shall be destroyed; they shall be like the terebinth tree and the oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves; so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof”

I hope I have made the meaning of the passage as plain aa words can make it. Now, then, for the application — first, to the Jews; secondly, to the Church; thirdly, to each believer.

I. First, TO THE Jews.

What a history is the history of the Jew! He has antiquity stamped upon his forehead. His is a lineage more noble than that of any knighta or even kings of this our island, for he can trace his pedigree back to the very loins of Abraham, and through him to that patriarch who entered into the ark, and thence up to Adam himself. Our history is hidden in gloom and darkness; but theirs, with certainty, may be read from the first moment even down till now. And what a checkered kistory has been the history of the Jewish nation.

Nebncljadnezzar seemed to have swept tlicm all away with the huge broom of destruction; the tenth left was again given over* to the slaughter; and one would have thought we should have heard no more of Israel; but in a little time they rose ph(Bnix-like, from their ashes. A seoond temple was builded Mid the nation became strong once more, and though often »wept with desolations in the mean time, yet it did not abide, and the scepter did not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh came. And, since then, how huge have been the waves that have rushed over the Jewish race! The Roman emperor razed the city to the ground, and left not a vestige standing; another emperor changed the name of Jerusalem into that of Eliah, and forbade a Jew to go within some miles of it, so that he might not even look upon his beloved city. It was plowed and left desolate. But is the Jew conquered? Is he a subjugated man? Is his country seized? No; he is still one of earth’s nobles — distressed, insulted, spit upon; still it is written, “To the Jew first, and afterward to the Gentile.” He claims a high dignity above us, and he has a history to come which will be greatei and more splendid than the history of any nation that has ye»r existed. If we read the Scriptures aright, the Jews have a groat deal to do with this world’s history. They shall be gathered m; Messiah shall come, the Messiah they are looking for — the same Messiah who came once shall come again — shall come a* they expected him to come the first time. They then thought he would come a prince to reign over them, and so he will when he comes again. He will come to be king of the Jews, and to reign over his people most gloi’iously; for when lie comes, Jew and Gentile will have equal privileges, though there shall yet be some distinction afibi-ded to that royal fam. ily from whose loins Jesus came; for he shall sit upon the throne of his father David, and unto him shall bo gathered al nations, 01

“To choson Goed of Israel’s race,
A ronmant weak and small,’’

ye may indeed,

•’ Hail him who saves you by his grace,
And crown bira Lord of all;’’

50 tiil: 7.kafi.ss.’5 ticks;.

your church shall never die, and your race shall never become extinct. The Lord hath said it. “The race of Abrahani shall OTidure for ever, and his seed as many generations.”

But why is it that the Jewish race is preserved? We have OMr answer in the text: “The holy seed is the substance tl)creof.” There is something within a tree mysterious, hidden, and unknown, which preserves life in it when every thing outward tends to kill it. So in the Jewish race there is a secret element which keeps it alive. We know what it is: it is the “remnant according to the election of grace:” in the worst of ages there has never been a day so black Dut there was a Hebrew found to hold the lamp of God. There has always been found a Jew who loved Jesus; and though the iTtce now despise the great Redeemer, yet there are not a i’ow of the Hebrew race who still love Jesus, the Saviour of the uncircuracised, and bow before him. It is these few, this holy seed, that are the substance of the nation; and for their Bake, through their prayers, because of God’s love to them, he still says of Israel to all nations, “Touch not these mine anointed, do my prophets no hai’m. These are the descendants of Abraham, my friend. I have sworn, and will not repent; I will show kindness xmto them for their father’s sake, and for the sake of the remnant I have chosen.”

Let us think a little more of the Jews than we have been wont; let us pray oftener for them. “Pray for the peace of Jwrusalem; they shall prosper that love her.” As truly as any great thing is done in this world for Christ’s khigdom, the Jews will have more to do with it than any of us have dreamed. So much for the Hrst i)oint. The Jewish nation is like “a terebinth tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in fchem, when they cast their leaves; so the holy seed shall be ‘the substance thereof.”

n. And now, secondly, the Church of Christ, whereof the Jewish people are but a dim shadow’, and an emblem.

The church has had its ti’ials; trials from without and trials within. It has had days of blood-red persecution, and of fiery trial; it has had times of sad apostacy, when an evil heart of unbelief and departing from the living God has broken out, and a root of bitterness spnnirinjr up has troubled may, anr’ fchoreby they have been defiletl. Yut, blessed be God, throiifrh all the winters of the church she still lived, ani she gives signs now of a sweeter spring-tide, a fresher greenness and a healthier condition than she has shown before for many a day. Why is it that the church is still preserved, when she looks so dead? For this reason; that thei’e is in the midst of her — though many are hypocrites and impostors — a “chosen seed,” who are “the substance thereof.” You might have looked back a hundred years ago upon the professing church of Christ in this land, and what a sad spectacle it would have exhibited! In the Church of England there was mere formality; in the In dependent and Baptist denominations there was truth, but it was dead, cold, lifeless truth. Ministers dreamed on in their pulpits, and hearers snored in their pews; infidelity wah triumphant; the house of God was neglected and desecrated. The ctmrch was like a tree that had lost its leaves: it was in a wintry state. 13ut did it die? No; there was a holy seed within it. Six young men wei’e expelled from Oxford for praying, reading the ])ible, and talking to poor people about Christ; and these six young men, with many others whom the Lord had hidden by fifties in the caves of the earth, secret and unknown — these young men, leaders of a glorious revival, came out, and though ridiculed and laughed at as Methodists, they brought forth a great and glorious revival, almost equaliiig the commencement of the gospel triumphs under Paul and the apostles, and very little inferior to the great Reformation of Luther, of Calvin, and Zwingle. And just now the church is to a great degree in a bai’ren and lifeless state. But will she therefore die? You say that true doctrine is scarce, that zeal is rare, that ihei’e is little life and energy in the {)ulpit and true devotion in the i)ew, while formality and hypocrisy stalk over us, ami we sleep in our cradles. But will the church die? No; she is like a teil tree and an oak; her substance is in her ■”vhen she has lost her leaves; there is a holy seed in her stili that is the substance thereof. Where these are we know not; »ome, I doubt not, are here in this church — some, I hope, are to be found in every church of professing Christians: and woe worth the day to the church that loses her holy seed; for she must die, like the oak blasted by the lightning, whose heart i?

‘J^ THK LEAFLESS TREE.

scorched out of it — broken down, because it has no substance in it.

Let lue now draw your attention, as a church connected with this place, to this point — that the holy seed is the substance of the church. A great many of you might be coinpared to the bark of the tree; some of you are like the big lirabs; others are like pieces of the trunk. Well, we should foe very sorry to lose any of you; but we could afford to do *iO without any serious damage to the life of the tree. Yet there are some here — God knoweth who they are — who are the substance of the tree. By the word “substance” is meant the life, the inward principle. The inward principle is in the tree, when it has lost its leaves. Now, God discerns some men in this church, I doubt not, who are toward us like the inward principle of the oak; they are the substance of the church. I would feign hope that all the members of the church in some degree contribute to the substance; but I can not think so. I am obliged to say I doubt it; because when one hath fallen and another, it makes us remember that a church hath much in it that is not life. There be some blanches on the vine that be cut off, because they do not draw sap from the heart of it, they are only branches bound on by y)rofession, y)retended graftings that have never struck root into the parent stock, and that must be cut off, and hewip down, and cast into the fire. But there is a holy seed in the church that is the substance of it.

Please to note here, that the life of a tree is not determined Dy the shape of the branches, nor by the way it grows, but it is the substance. The shape of a church is not its life. In one place I see a church formed in an Episcopalian shape; in another place I see one formed in a IVesbyterian shape; then, again, I see one, like ours, formed on an Independent principle. Here I see one with sixteen ounces to the pound ot doctrine; there I see one with eight, and some with very little clear doctrine at all. And yet I find life in all the churches, in some degree — some good men in all of them. How do I account for this? Why, just in this way — that the oak may be aHve, whatever its shape, if it has got the substance. If there be but a holy seed in the church, the church will live; and it is

THE LEAFI^SS TREE. 33

iistonishing how the church will live under a thons.ind ekroro, if there be ]jut the vital principle in it. You will find good men among the denominations that yon can not receive as being sound in faith. You say, “What! can any good thing oome out of Nazareth?” and you go through, and find that tliero are even in them some true Nazarites of the right order. The very best of men found in the worst of churches! A church lives not because of its rubrics, and its canonsi, and its articles; it lives because of the holy seed that is in it as the substance. No church can die while it has a holy seed in it, and no church can live that has not the holy seed, for “the holy seed is the substance thereof”

Observe, again, that the substance of the oak is a hidden thing; you can not see it. When the oak or the terebinth is standmg destitute of leaves, you know that life is there somewhere. But you can not see it. And very likely you can not and do not know the men that are the holy seed, the su.bstance of the church. Perhaps you imagine the substance of the church lies in the pulpit. Nay, friend! Let us pray to Gud that such of us as are in the pulpit may be a part of that, substance; but much of the substance of the church lies where you don’t know any thing of it. There is a mine near Plymouth, where the men who work in it, two hundred and fifty feet below the surface, have a little shelf for their Bibles and hymn-books, and a little place Avh’ere every morning, when they go down in the black darkness, they bow before God, and praise him whose tender mercies are over all his works. You never heard of these miners, perhajis, and do not know of them; but perhaps some of them are the very substance of the church. There sits Mr. Somebody in that pew; O! what a support he is to the church. Yes, in money matters, jierhaps; but do you know, there is poor old Mrs. Nobody in the aisie that is most likely a greater pillar to the church than he, for she is a holier Christian, one who lives nearer to her God nnd serves him better, and she is “the substance thereof” Ah! that old woman in the garret who is often in prayer; that old 7nair on Lis bed who spends days and nights in supplication; such people as these are the substance of the church, O! you may take av ay y< ur piehitcs, your orators, ?nd the

best and greatest of those who stand among earth’s mighty men, and their place could be supplied; bat take away our iiitercessors; take away the men and women that breathe out prayer by night and day, and like the priests of old offer t)ie morning and evening lamb as a perpetual sacrifice, and you kill the church at once. What are the ministers? They are but the arms of the church, and the lips of it. A man may bo both dumb and armless, and yet live. But those, the heavenly peed, the chosen men and women who live near their God, and serve him with sacred fervent piety — these are the heart of llio church; we can not do without them. If we lose them wo must die. “The holy seed is the substance thereof.”

Then, my hearer, th.ou art a church member. Let me ask tbeo — ai’t thou one of the holy seed? Hast thou been begotten agabi to a lively hope? Has God made thee holy by the sanctifying infjuence of his Spirit, and by the justifying righto ousness of Christ, and by the application to thy conscience of the blood of Jesus? If so, then thou art the substance of the church. They may pass by thee and not notice thee, for thou irt little; but the substance is little; the life-germ within the gi-aui of barley is too small for us, perhaps, to detect; the life within the egg is almost an aninialcula — you can scarcely see it; and so the life of the church is among the little ones, where we can scarcely find it fmt. “Rejoice, if you are much in prayer; you are the life of the church. But you, O you proud man, pull down your grand thoughts of yourself; you may give to the church, you may speak for the church, and act for the church, but unless you are a holy seed you are not the substance thereof, and it is the substance which is in reality of the greatest value.

But here let me say one thing before I leave this point. Some of you will say, “How is it that good men are the means of preserving the visible church?” I answer, the holy seed doth this, because it derives its life from Christ. If the holy seed had to preserve the chui’ch by its own purity and its own strength, the church would go to ruin to-morrow; but it is because these holy ones draw fresh life from Christ continually that they are able to be, a? it were, the salvation of the body, and by their influence, di 3ct and indirect, shed llib

»ver the whole visible church. The prayers of those Uving ones in Zion bring down many a blessing upon us; the groans and cries of these earnest intercessors prevail with heaven, and bring down very argosies of mercy from the gates of pai — adise. And besides, their holy example tends to check us and preserve us in purity; they walli among us like God’s own favored ones, wrapped in white, reflecting his image wherever they go, and tending, under God, to the sanctifying of believers, not through their vaunting any self-righteousness, but by stirring up believers to do more for Christ, and to be more like him. “The holy seed shall be the substance thereof.”

III. And now I come to the third point. This is true of EVERY INDIVIDUAL BELIEVER: his substaucc is in him when he hag lost his leaves.

The Arminian says that when a Christian loses his leaves he IS dead. “No,” says God’s Word, “he is not; he may look as if he were dead, and not have so much as here and there a leaf upon the topmost bough; but he is not dead. Their substance is in them even when they lose their leaves.”

By losing their leaves allow me to understand two things. Christian men lose their leaves when they lose their comforts, when they lose the sensible enjoyment of their Master’s presence, and when their full assurance is turned into doubting. You have had many such a time as that, have you not? Ah! you were one day in such a state of joy, that you said you

could

“Sit and sing yourself away
To ovorlasting bliss.”

But a wintry state came, and your joy all departed, and you stood like a bare tree, after the wind had swept it in the time of v>’iuter, with just perhaps one sere leaf hanging by a thread on the topmost bough. But you were not dead then; no, your substance was in you, when you had lost your leaves. You could not see that substance, and good reason why, because your life was hid with Christ in God; you saw not youJ signs, but you had your substance still, though you could not discover it. There were no heavings of faith, but faith was there; there were no lookingsout of hope, but though hopu a eyelids were Biiut, the eyes were there, to be opened afler. wards; there was no lifting, perhaps, of tt.e hand of ardent prayer, but the hands and arms were there, though they hung powerless by the side. God said, afterwards, “Strengthen the feeble knees, and lift up the hands that hang down.” Your substance was in you when you had lost youi leaves. Good Baxter says — “We do not see graces, except when they are in exercise; and yet they are as much there when they are not in exercise as when they are.” Saith he, “Lot a man take a walk into a wood; there lieth a hare or a rabbit asleep imder the leaves; but he can not sec the creature until it is frightened, and it runneth out, and then he seeth it to be there.” So if faith be in exercise you will perceive your evidence, but if faith be slumbering and still, you will be led to doubt its existence; and yet it is there all the while.

“Mountains when in darkness hidden,
Aro as real aa in day,”

Bald one; and truly the faith of the Christian, M’hen shrouded fcy doubts and fears, is just as much there as when he lejoiceth devoutly in the display of it.

It is a common error of young converts that they attempt fiO live by their experience, instead of tracing their life up to its precious source. I have known persons rejoicing in the fullest assurance one day, and sinldng into the deepest despondency the next. The Lord will sometimes strip you of the leaves of evidence to teach you to live by faith, as John Kent says —

‘If U^ ‘”^y bo deigns to bless us

“WitQ a sense of pardoned sin;
Ha to-morrow may distress us.
Make us feel the plague within;

All to make us
Sick of self and fond of him.”

But, ah! there ia a worse phase to the subject than this. Some Christians lose their leaves not by doubts, but by sin. This is a tender topic — one which needs a tender hand to touch. O I there are some in our churches that have lost their leaves by lust and sin. Fair professors once they were j

THE LKAPLKSS TU£E, 37

they stood green among the church, like llio very loaves of paradise; but in an elil hour they fell, the slaves of temptation. They were God’s own people by many infallible marks and signs; and if they were so, though it is grievous that. they should have lost their leaves, yet there is the sweet consolation, their substance is in them still: they are still liie Lord’s, still his living children, though they have fallen inli7 the coma of sin, and ai-e now in a tainting lit, having gv.’tie astray from him, and having their animation suspended, whiio lift; is still there. Some, as soon as they see a CIn-istian io any thing inconsistent with his profession, say, “That man ia no child of God; he can not be; it is impossible.” Ay, but, sir, remember what he thought who once said — “If a brother err, ye that are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit ot meekness, considei-ing thyself, lest thou also be tempted.” It is a fact, deny it who will, and abuse it, if you please, to your own wicked purposes; lean not help it — it is a fact that Kome living children of God have been allowed — and an a^- ^ul allowance it is — to go into the very blackest sins. Do you ‘Junk David was not a child of God, even when he sinned? It is a hard subject to touch; but it is not to be denied. He had the life of God within him beibre; and though he sinned — O! horrid and awful was the crime I — yet his substance was in him when he lost his leaves. And many a child of God has gone far away from his Master; but his substance ia in him. And how know we this? Because a dead tree never lives again; if the substance be really gone, it never lives; and God’s holy Word assures us, that if the real life of grace could die out in any one, it could never come again; for saith the apostle, “it is impossible, if they have been once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have been made ()’irLakers of the Holy Ghost” — if these fall away — “i is impossible to renew them again unto repentance.” Their tree is “dead, plucked up by the roots.” And the apostle Peter eays — “For if, after they have escaped the corruption that is ill the world through lust, they are again turned back, their last end shall be worse than the first.” But now take David, or take Pete*, wh.ich you please. Peter we will have. O! how foully di 3 he curse his Master! With many an oath he denied lum. But had not Peter the life cf God in lun then? Yes; and how do we know? Because when his Mat’tct looked upon him, he “went out and wejit bitterly.” Ah! if he had been a dead in an, hardened and without the substance iU him, his Master might have looked to all eternity, and lir-i would not have wept bitterly. How know I that David wafyet alive? Why, by this — that although there was a long long winter, and there were many prickings of conscience, like the workings of the sap within a tree, abortive attenipr.s to thrust forward here and there a shoot before its time, vet when the hour was come, and Nathan came to him and said, “Thou art the man,” had David been dead, without the life of God, he would have spurned Nathan from him, and might have done what Manasseh did with Isaiah, cut him in pieces in his anger; but instead of that he bowed his head and wept before God; and still it is written, “The Lord hath put away Ihy sin, thon shalt not die.” His substance was in him, when iie lost his leaves. O! have pity upon poor fallen brethren. 0! burn them not; they are not dead logs; though their .eaves are gone their substance is in them. God can see gi-ace in their hearts when you can not see it; he has put n life there that can never expire, for he has said, “I give unto my sheep eternal life,” and that means a life that lives for ever; “the water

that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up intv everlasting life.” You may choke the well up with big stones, but the water will find its way out yet, and well up notwithstanding. And so the heir of heaven may, to the grief of the church and to the injury of himself, most grievously transgress — and weep, my eyes, O weep for any that have done so, and O bleed, ray heart, and thou hast bled, for any that have so sinned — but yet their “substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed” — that is, Christ within them, the Holy Ghost within them, the new creature within them — ‘’ the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.” Poor backslider! here is a word of comfort for you. I would not comfort you in your si-ns; God forbid! But if you know your sins and hate them, let me comfort you. Thou art not dead! As Jesus said of the damsel, “She is not dead, but sleepeth,” so let me say of thee, “Thou art not. dead; thou shalt jet j..” Dost thou repent? Dost thou grieve over thy svn? That is the bud that shows that there is life within. When a common sinner Bins he rersnts not, or if he doth repent it is with a legal repentance. His conscience pricks him, but he hushes it. He does not leave his sin and turn from it.

But did you ever see a child of God after iie had been washed from a foul sin? He was a changed man. I know 3nch an one, who used to carry a merry countenance, and many were the jokes lie made in company; but when I met him after an awful sin, there was a solemnity about his countenance that was unusual to him. He looked, I should say, something like Dante, the poet, of whom the boys said, “There is the man that has been in hell;” because he had written of hell, and looked like it — he looked so terrible. And when we spoke of sin there was such a solemnity about him; and when we spoke of going astray the tears ran down his cheeks, as much as to say, “I have been astray too.” He seemed like good Christian, after he had been in Giant Despair’s castle. Do you not remember, beloved, the guide who took the pilgrims up to the top of a hill called Clear, and he showed them from the top of the hill a lot of men with their eyes put out, gro])ing among the tombs, and Christian asked what it meant. Said the guide, “These are pilgrims that were caught in Giant Despair’s castle; the giant had their eyes put out, and they are left to wander among the tombs to die, and their bones are to be left in the court-yard.” Whereupon John Bunyan very naively says, “I looked, and saw their eyes full of water, for they remembered they might have been there too.” Just as the man talked and spoke that I once knew. He seemed to wonder why God had not left him to be an apostate for ever, as the lot of Judas or Demas. He seemed to think it such a startling thing that while many had gone aside altogether from God’s way, he should still have had his substance in him, when he had lost his leaves, and that God should still have loved him. Perhaps, beloved, God allows some such men to live, and sin, and afterward repent, for this »’eason. You know there are some voices needed in musio that are very rare, and when, now and then, such a voice is to

40 THE LEAFl.ESS tllKE.

be heard, every one will go to hear it. 1 have thought that perhaps some of these men in heaven “will sing soprano notes before the throne — choice, wondrous notes of grace, because they have gone into the depths of sin after profession; and yet he hath loved them when their feet made haste to perdition, and fetched them up, because he “loved them well.” There are but few such; for most men will go foully into sin j they will go out fiom us because they are not of us, for if they hud been of us they would doubtless have continued with u&. But there have been a few such — great saints, then gi-eat backsliding sinners, and then great saints again. Their substance was in them when they had lost their leaves. O! you that have gone far astray, sit and weep. You can not weep too much, though you should cry with Herbert —

“0, who will give me tears? Come, all ye springs, Dwell in my head and eyes; come, clouds and rain I My grief hath need of all the watery things That nature hath produced.”

You might well say,

“Let every vein
Suck up a river to supply mine eyes,
My weary, weeping eyes; too dry for mo,
Unless they get new conduits, new supplies,
To bear them out, and with my state agree.”

But yet remember, “He hath not forsaken his j)eopIe, neither nath he cut them ofi’; for still he says,

“Return, 0 wanderer, return,

A.nd seek an injured father’s heart.”

cletnrn! return! return! Thy Father’s bowels still move for thee. He speaks through the written oracles at this moment, saying, “How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? How shall I deliver thee, O Israel? How can I make thee as Admah? How can I set thee as Zeboim?” My bowels are moved; my repentings are kindled together; for I will heal thou backslidings, I will receive them graciously, I will love them freely, for they are mine still.* As the terebinth and ag the oak, whose substance is in them when they cast their leaves, even so the holy seed within the elect and called vea sels of mercy, is still the substance thereof.

THK LKAFLESS TKKE. 4»

And now, what liavo I to say to some of you that live m Mdck sin, and yet excuse yourselves on account of the recorded falls of God’s people? Sir, know this! Inasmuch aa you do this, you wrest the Scriptures to your own destruction. If one man has taken poison, and there has been a physician by his side so skillful that he has saved his life by a heavenly antidote, is that any i-oason why thou, who hast no physician and no antidote, should yet think that the poison will not kill thee? Why, man, the sin that does not damn a Christian, because Christ washes him in his blood, will damn you. Said Brookes — and I will repeat his words and liavo done — “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, said the apostle, be his sins never so many; but he that believeth not shall be damned, be his sins never so few.” Truly your sins may be little; but you are lost for them without Christ. Your sins may be great; but if Christ shall pardon’ them, then T’ou shall be saved. The one question, then, I have to ask of thee, is — Hast thou Christ? For if thou hast not, then thou f-ytist not the holy seed; thou art a dead tree, and in due tune thou shalt be tinder for hell. Thou art a rotten-hearted tree, -dl touch-wood, ready to be broken in pieces; eaten by the tV’orms of lust; and ah! when the fire shall take hold of thee, what a blazing and a burning! O! that thou hadst life! O! that God would give it to thee! O! that thou wouldst now repent I O 1 that thou wouldst cast thyself on Jesus! O! that thou wouldst turn to him with full purpose of heart! For then, remember, thou wouldst be saved — saved now, and saved for ever; for “the holj’ seed” would “liie substanc thereof.”