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Have respect unto the covenant: for the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty. O let not the oppressed return ashamed: let the poor and needy praise thy name. Arise, O God, plead thine own cause: remember how the foolish man reproacheth thee daily. Forget not the voice of thine enemies: the tumult of those that rise up against thee increaseth continually.
Thus by the strange and unusual assaults of the tempter, my soul was like a broken vessel driven as with the winds, and tossed, sometimes headlong into despair, sometimes upon the covenant of works, and sometimes to wish that the new covenant and the conditions thereof might, so far forth as I thought myself concerned, be turned another way and changed.
She, and she alone, should win to the Redeemer the soul of this fair creature that had walked so resolutely in the ways of the heathen; this was required of her as the condition of the covenant that she felt she had made with Him, it was with the price of this labor that she hoped to purchase her own child's eternal happiness.
It is noteworthy that in the section of which our first text is the centre, there is no mention of the divine Name, and even the well-known title, 'the Holy One of Israel, is truncated, so as to leave out reference to the people of Revelation; whereas in this section He is not only designated as God and Creator, but as Jehovah, the God who has made a covenant with Israel, and made known His will and to some extent His nature.
Those Covenanters were the broadest men of their day. The Covenanters would not receive Gospel services from ministers who had broken Covenant with them and with God. Sixteen years this flock was in the wilderness without a shepherd. They came together in societies for spiritual fellowship and the worship of God. The Lord sustained them, and maintained their cause.
A tree that hath a root shall bear fruit, while the tree that hath none, no matter how high and hardy it may be, will eventually wither, perish and become but a log fit for the fire. The Covenant of God is like unto a vast and fathomless ocean. A billow shall rise and surge therefrom and shall cast ashore all accumulated foam.
Thou canst not be saved by the righteous Law of God, the first covenant, because that, together with this thy miserable state, by original and actual sins, before thou didst follow the law, since thy turning to the law thou hast committed several sins against the law "In many things we offend all." And this Paul knew full well, which made him throw away all his righteousness.
Thus all will clearly understand that even though that sacred and mysterious Being has laid aside the garment of His mortal life, even though that Bird of eternity has abandoned the cage of this earth, still is His spirit in our midst, still is He watching over us all from the realm of the All-Glorious, ever is He gladdening the hearts of the beloved, and to the souls of those who are fast-rooted in the Covenant, ever is He bringing tidings of great joy.
"Pshaw, pshaw!" said Lucifer, "if I am rightly informed, the covenant itself is under a cloud, and you are no longer what you were. And now I have one thing to tell the whole of you which is, that, whatever ye may do in other kingdoms, I will not permit you to trouble mine. Therefore rest peaceably, under penalty of worse torments corporeal and spiritual."
The language was as precise, and was as carefully chosen, as the language of a legal deed; but in an unhappy crisis which arose in 1916, in circumstances which no one in the world could have foreseen in 1912, there were some in Ulster who were not only tempted to strain the interpretation which the Covenant as a whole could legitimately bear, but who failed to appreciate the significance of the amendments that had been made in its text at the instance of the Presbyterian Church.
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