Ezekiel 6:14

REFLECTIONS

READER! amidst numberless subjects, which arise everywhere and in every part of the word of God, some there are, which from their vast importance, arrest the mind more earnestly, and call up the warmest attention. Such in an eminent degree, is what is here said, of the remnant the Lord would leave among his people in the worst of times. It was so in the Church of God in the Prophet's days: and the same is so in ours. Never, I believe, did the waters of the sanctuary run at a lower ebb, than in the present period of the Gospel; but yet, even now the Lord hath not left himself without witness. He hath a seed that serve him: a people near to himself, that dwell alone, and are not reckoned among the nations. And indeed, we may well exclaim with the Prophet, and say, Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah!

Shall not you and I be anxious to know whether we are of this happy number? Surely it is a momentous concern. Behold here then, in this Chapter, are their characters faithfully and clearly drawn by Jehovah himself. The Lord saith, that they are a remnant among a multitude, and such as have escaped. They are brought into an acquaintance with themselves, and know the plague of their own heart; and from this conviction, they loath themselves for all the evils which they have committed, and for all their abominations. They are brought to remember the Lord also, and are made acquainted with his salvation. And from the grace of Jehovah manifested to them, and the conscious state of their own undeservings; they discover, that their mercy all flows from Jehovah's covenant relations, and in that discovery they learn to know the Lord. My brother! say, hath the Lord thus wrought for his great name's sake in your soul? Oh! the blessedness of God the Holy Ghost's teaching, in convincing of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. It is thus that all the Lord's remnant are taught of God as his children, and great then is the peace of his children!