secret alms of those who seek to please Him only. It is thus that, when in a time of what appeared a universal abandonment of God, the prophet Elijah complained that he only was left alive of Jehovah's worshippers, he was told by that still small voice which visited him in Horeb, "Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him 1." It is thus that Isaiah allows that in the land of Judah, amid the multitude that went astray, "the Lord of Hosts had left a very small remnant2;" and that he now addresses this remnant with words of comfort, as ye that follow after righteousness." And it is thus that Christ has promised that, amid the different offences, divisions, and apostacies by which the Christian world has been and is still to be afflicted, He will still keep to Himself a faithful Church with whom His Spirit shall to the end of the world abide, and against whom, however small in number or humble in circumstances, "the gates of hell shall not prevail 3."

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A due consideration of this truth will be, in many respects, most useful to us. It will give us a better and more comfortable trust in the goodness and protection of Providence to know that, however to mortal apprehensions "the whole world lieth in wickedness," however the tares which the enemy hath sown may overspread and overshadow the

1 1 Kings xix. 18.

3

St. Matt. xvi. 18.

2 Isaiah i. 9.

4 1 John v. 19.

fields, there still is good corn there which is known to the Lord of the harvest, for whose sake His dews may still fall, and His suns still shine, till the day of harvest be come, and the wheat and the weeds shall be separated from each other everlastingly.

It will teach us, also, a more comfortable and more charitable opinion of our fellow-creatures and fellow-servants, of whom, even under the most unfavourable circumstances, we learn that a certain proportion is always favourably regarded by the Most High; and instead of looking, as good men are sometimes tempted to do, on our neighbours and fellow-countrymen as profane, as worldly, as outcasts from grace, to hope the best of every man, and to regard every man either already a child of God, though we may not know it, or as one who may yet be made so by our kindness, our advice, our good example, and our prayers. And, above all, the reflection that we are not alone or friendless in the great battle which we are called on to wage against the powers of evil, that there are others who strive by our side, though the darkness of our present condition may prevent our discovering their numbers, that the same afflictions which we pass through are also "accomplished of our brethren that are in the world';" this reflection, I say, may strengthen our feeble hands, and confirm our weary resolutions; and we may feel

ashamed to shrink from temptations and trials which others around us, with no more advantages than ourselves, have felt and are feeling, have endured and are enduring, have conquered and are conquering.

That the world then, bad as it may seem, and bad as it would be if left to the consequences of its natural corruption, has yet, through grace, been never left without a certain proportion of those, who, if not sinless, were yet faithful and accepted by God, is the first consideration which arises from the perusal of this chapter of Isaiah. Another is the fact that, however this small number of righteous persons are sharers, to a certain extent, in the general calamities which the sins of the many draw down on the communities to which they belong, they are not less the beloved of the Lord, and have, from Him, their many peculiar comforts in which the world does not partake, and with which, as a stranger to their hopes and principles, the world does not intermeddle.

It is probable, indeed, (and this is the reason of my saying that the righteous are only to a certain extent sharers in the general calamity of a wicked nation) it is probable that in very many instances the calamities themselves are tempered, as they fall, by God's providence in their particular cases; that His blows when they seem most undistinguishing, nevertheless strike those the hardest whose sins cry loudest for punishment, and that the sword of the destroying angel, though it does not spare

entirely, yet passes more lightly over the houses of the humble and the penitent. Thus Jeremiah, and thus Daniel, still more, though captives like the rest of their countrymen, found favour in the eyes of their conquerors, and thus when Jerusalem, after Christ's decease, fell a sacrifice to the sword of the Romans, the Christians who were in the place were so wonderfully delivered that not a hair of their heads perished. And thus in the greatest danger of our life of every day, the angel of the Lord is said to encamp about those who fear Him, to preserve them, if not from every evil, yet from the worst of those evils to which, without His help, they are liable.

But besides this greater share of God's mercy and protection in this life, (which is then of most value when the judgements of God are visibly walking abroad), besides this private and personal ground of comfort, the righteous have a still more blessed consciousness in the season of public distress and danger, inasmuch as their example, their prayers, and the acceptable service which they render to the Almighty, is often useful to others besides themselves, and may contribute in no small degree to the preservation of their families, their friends, and their country. If there had been ten such in Sodom the city would have been spared; and in the greatest and most terrible calamity that ever befell, or ever will befall a nation, the siege and ruin of Jerusalem, already mentioned, we know from Him who cannot lie, that not only the Christians

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were themselves preserved, but their unbelieving countrymen, for their sakes, were punished with less enduring misery. Except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved; but for the elects' sake whom He hath chosen, He hath shortened those days." Nor can a stronger inducement, in its class of motives, be offered to any man who loves his friends and country to apply himself to lead such a life as God approves of, than the hope that his earnest endeavours after holiness may give his prayers for them a value in the sight of that pure and holy Being, with whom the "fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much;" who gave a favourable answer to Daniel on the banks of Ulai, and who granted to St. Paul the lives of all them that were shipwrecked with him.

There is yet a consideration which must naturally tend to give courage and hope to the righteous in a season of general calamity, the recollection, namely, that all things which befall them are ordained by a wise and most merciful God, who knoweth what is best for His creatures, and can at any time, when He sees good, deliver them from the troubles by which they are now surrounded, or make those troubles themselves work to them for good, and to the bringing forth of an exceeding weight of future happiness and glory. Nor is this all; for as the faithful Israelite looked forwards, in

1 St. Mark xiii. 20.

2 James v. 16.