Joel 2:32

REFLECTIONS

READER! let us both pause over this most striking Chapter, and looking up for the fulfilment of the sweet promise at the close of it, in our own personal interest beg that we may indeed, and in truth, realize and enjoy the precious blessings there contained. Let us observe what is here said, then look to the Gospel and mark the full confirmation of it; and then, as souls convinced of divine truth, ponder well the sacred contents, and see to it that we neither of us fail of this grace of God.

Behold how solemn and how sure the great day of God is proclaimed. There is, there must be a day coming, in which all these alarming judgments, which the former part of this Chapter relates in figure, will be manifested in reality! Oh! for grace to sanctify the solemn truths in our houses, and families! Ye ministers of my God! do ye not find cause, in the present awful hour, when the Lord's judgments are in the earth, to blow the trumpet in our British Zion, and to sound an alarm in God's holy mountain! Yea! do ye not weep between the porch and the altar, and bear testimony to the truths of your Lord in an holy jealousy and zeal for his honor; crying out with one of old; mine eyes run down with water because men keep not thy law! Ye fathers and mothers of the rising generation! will ye not gather your little ones, and present yourselves with the very infants that hang at the breast before the Lord, to implore the Lord's mercy in the present impending evils, that the Lord may be jealous for his land, and pity his people. And oh! ye humble followers of the Lord Jesus, on whom this spirit of grace hath been poured out, the sure token of Jesus' love, and your interest in him! See to it, that ye manifest a spirit of grace and supplication, hath been given you, and is continually in your daily walk, by besieging the throne with earnest cries and prayers, that will take no denial for Zion in her present alarming state of languishing. Go, my brethren, go into the very retirings of a covenant God in Christ, seeing that you have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus; and give him no rest nor peace, until he establish and make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. Oh! for the Holy Ghost, in his infinite mercy, to pour out of his sevenfold gifts, in a copious fulness, upon all the Lord's heritage, now Jesus is returned to glory, that all the redeemed may be earnest at the throne, until there shall be a deliverance in Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call. Amen.