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"I'll have a gin-and-potash, Sophie," he had said on this occasion, with reference to the second dose, "and do make haste. I wish you'd go yourself, because that girl always drinks some of the sperrits." "What! go to the gin-shop?" "It's a most respectable publican's, just round the corner." "Indeed, I shall do nothing of the kind. You've no feeling about your daughters at all!"
But hold, dost thou do it with the Publican's heart, sense, dread and simplicity? If not, thou dost but abuse the Publican and his prayer, and thyself, and his God; and shalt find God rejecting of thee and thy prayers, saying, The Publican I know, his prayers, and tears, and godly tears I know; but who or what art thou? And will send thee away naked and wounded.
The altered tone of the miller's moiety corresponded very much with this supposition. "Nay, indeed, and forsooth," she said, "her house was Liberty Hall; and so should every publican's be. What was it to her what gentlefolks ate or drank, providing they paid for it honestly?
If you meet an old friend, his first greeting is, 'Come and have a nobbler! No bargain can be concluded without it. If it is a warm day, you must have a nobbler to quench your thirst; if it is freezing, to keep the cold out. There is no trade at which more fortunes have been made here than the publican's.
And it is the love of Christ that constraineth to live to him; 2 Kings vi. 13-23; 2 Cor. v. 14. Many other things might possibly be urged, but at present let these be sufficient. The SECOND thing that we made mention of in the Publican's prayer, was an imploring of help against this malady: "God be merciful to me a sinner." In which petition I shall take notice of several things.
There was no appeal from the honest publican's fiat; so, in a quick and laconic manner, it being Attie's favourite dogma that the least said is the soonest mended, the warrior sung as follows: Air: "He was famed for deeds of arms." I never robbed a single coach But with a lover's air; And though you might my course reproach, You never could my hair.
Why they were found "saying to a stock, Thou art my father; and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth." But this was not the Publican's shame; this shame brings not a man into the temple to pray, to stand willingly, and to take shame before God in prayer. This shame makes one rather to fly from his face, and to count one's self most at ease when they get farthest off from God.
I suppose that his postures were much the same with the Publican's, as were his prayers, for the substance of them. O however grace did work in both to the same end! they were both of them, after a godly manner, ashamed of their sins. "He would not lift up so much as his eyes to heaven."
This uncommon arrest had engaged the curiosity of the publican's family, who stood at the door to observe the consequence, when all of a sudden appeared a person in canonicals, well mounted, who, riding up to those who maltreated the driver, bestowed upon one of them such a blow with the butt-end of his whip, as laid him sprawling on the ground; and, springing from his saddle upon the box, took the reins into his own hand, swearing with great vehemence, that he would murder every man who should attempt to obstruct the hearse.
Meantime they pretend great humility and acknowledge a certain degree of sinfulness for which they soulfully join in the publican's prayer, "God be merciful to me a sinner." But the real significance and comfort of the words "for our sins" is lost upon them. The genius of Christianity takes the words of Paul "who gave himself for our sins" as true and efficacious.
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