Hosea 4:19

REFLECTIONS

BLESSED Lord! cause my soul to read this solemn Chapter with an eye to what thou hast said, that thou hast declared in it that thou hast a controversy with thy people. Oh! gracious Lord God! And what do all thy controversies lead to, but to bring back thy people? Wherefore doth Jesus in his adorable grace, and love, and mercy, send forth his ambassadors, but that they should pray his people, as though God did beseech them in Christ's stead, to be reconciled to God. Surely the Church hath reason to be humbled in the dust before thee, when she calls to remembrance, that the land mourns for the sins of it; and that the great and crying sins are the transgressions of the Lord's people. And if the Lord in the days of the Prophet, declared that his people were destroyed for lack of knowledge, what shall be said of the present hour, but that it is a Christ-despising generation, who know not the Lord. Lord, take to thyself thy great name, and come forth for thine own cause, arid turn back the captivity of Jacob!

Oh! ye deluded sons and daughters of Adam! ye who take pleasure in the infirmities of God's people, and eat up their sin. Jesus will plead for his redeemed, when he seeth that their power is gone. He will revive his chosen; he will take up their cause; he will yet make them a name and a praise among the people of the earth, to whom they have been a reproach, in the day when he bindeth up their breach and healeth their wound: even in the day of his great power. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.