LECTURE I. REHOBOAM; OR, THE RESULT OF AN IDLE WORD. 2 CHRON. X. 13—16.(1) And the king answered them roughly; and king Rehoboam forsook the counsel of the old men, And answered them after the advice of the young men, saying, My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add thereto : my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions. So the king hearkened not unto the people: for the cause was of God, that the Lord might perform His word, which He spake by the hand of Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nebat. And when all Israel saw that the king would not hearken unto them, the people answered the king, saying, What portion have we in David? and we have none inheritance in the son of Jesse : every man to your tents, O Israel; and now, David, see to thine own house. So all Israel went to their tents. I HAVE invited you, brethren, on this and the following Sundays, to consider with me the biographies of certain of the kings of Judah, and to institute a sort 1 With this Lecture the following chapters should be read: 1 Kings xi. xii. xiv. ; 2 Chron. x. xi. xii, xiii. B of analysis of their actions and general character. I shall not, however, deviate, nor shall I wish you to deviate, in the very slightest degree from the course of thought and employment which is held to be appropriate to Lent. I shall hope, under God's blessing, so to put before you the careers of men of old, so to point out the causes through which those men failed after a struggle, or without a struggle, were weak when they might have been strong, or strong when we should have expected them to be weak, or out of weakness were made strong, or endured without any great fall-as to lead you from them to yourselves. You will be occupied with a portion of Scripture, the historical portion, which is not so generally known as it well deserves to be. This circumstance, I trust, will induce you, in order that you may thoroughly go with me in these sketches, to peruse beforehand the particular chapters in the Bible from which the biography to be treated of on each Sunday will be drawn. You will thus, at any rate, read more Scripture than you ordinarily do. Perhaps you will open unexplored veins of thought in it. How, for instance, the parallel records in the books of Kings and Chronicles are calculated to illustrate each other, as clearly as each one of the Gospels to illustrate the other three; how men of whom you had merely a vague notion that they were good or bad, or were led irresistibly in one track or the other, possessed, like yourselves, an individuality of character-had, like yourselves, definite aids which they accepted or rejected, definite temptations to which they either, through their own fault, succumbed, or by God's grace, rose superior; and how you may extract some leading encouragement or warning from the lives successively presented to you. And then, unless, which I can never suppose, you have resorted hither merely to be amused or entertained, you will place yourselves in the position of those men. "As they were, such are we," will be your mental remark. But you will advance further than this; you will reflect that the same Mind which penetrated their thoughts, the same Eye which scanned their actions, the same judicial calmness and impartiality which enunciated through inspired annalists their record in Scripture, is within you, is on you, is even now registering an account of you in the indelible archives of heaven. "He who was their God, is our God," will be your enforced acknowledgment. Then may your practical conclusion be, "whereinsoever you shall perceive yourselves to have offended by will, word, or deed, there to bewail your own sinfulness, and confess yourselves to Almighty God, with full purpose of amendment of life." 1 But let us come, without further preface, to the subject proposed for to-day, 1 First Exhortation in the Communion Service. |