SERMON XI.

THE LORD'S CONTROVERSY.

MICAH Vi. 1—8.

Hear ye,

*Hear ye now what the Lord saith; Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice. mountains, the Lord's controversy, and ye strong foundations of the earth: for the Lord hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel. my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me. For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of servants; and I sent before

* To assist the reader, the whole passage, attempted to be elucidated, is prefixed as a text. This, in preaching of course would be impracticable.

thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. O my people, remember now what Balak king of Moab consulted, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him from Shittim unto Gilgal; that ye may know the righteousness of the Lord. Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

MICAH, the Morasthite, received this distinguishing epithet from the name of a small village, in the tribe of Benjamin, in the country of Judah, where he was

born. He lived in troubled and tempestuous times, when the kingdom of Judah was in a state of progressive decay, and the kingdom of Israel menaced with instant dissolution. The cause of this decay, the indirect author of this approaching ruin, was the profligacy which, to an almost unheard of degree, pervaded all classes of society; indeed, to so melancholy a pitch had these excesses attained, that the only hope of reformation that yet survived, the last solitary link, that seemed, as it were, to connect the father of all living with the subjects of his peculiar regard, was either rudely blighted, or on the point of being wantonly destroyed. They who had been educated in the schools of the prophets,-for, with regard to such as were destined at some future period to feel the influences of the Spirit of God, a preparatory course of life was pursued, of a nature to qualify their minds for the re

ception of the powers with which they were to be invested,-they who had mingled in these holy choirs, and had from infancy attuned their voices to celebrate the praises of their Maker, they abused the authority with which they had been entrusted, and became traitors to the master whom they pretended to serve. Yet, as there is scarcely any age so utterly abandoned as not to present to the eye of the beholder some scattered spirits worthy of a purer and more holy race, so were there in these days a few burning and shining lights, which cheered with their blaze, and adorned with their brightness, a world, but for them lost in darkness and in gloom. Such was Isaiah, moving in palaces; Amos, taken from the sheepfold; Micah, dwelling among herdsmen. The writings that have been transmitted to us by these distinguished persons, vary in length, vary occasionally in sublimity, vary in boldness and energy

of thought, vary in depth and richness of colouring, vary in power to touch, to subdue, to fascinate the heart; but of all that have escaped the wreck of time, a more powerful and affecting remonstrance, a more simple and heart-piercing appeal, a more beautiful and engaging. spectacle, than is conveyed to us in a passage which I will now endeavour (by God's assistance) to recommend to your notice, the human hand, guided by the overpowering influences of the Spirit of Jehovah, never traced. The prophet represents the eternal Father deeply wounded with the ingratitude of his children, yet loth to cast them entirely off from his protection, as having descended from his throne on high, and being about to hold a controversy with his people. The spot selected for this tremendous interview is a vast and magnificent plain. In the one part are the hosts of Israel, in the other the terrors of the Almighty.