If great and good men are to be regarded as the blessing of God to a people, their continuance must be signal of his favor, and their removal of his displeasure. Their fall can be considered in no other light than a public calamity. It has in it a warning voice, and should excite lamentation. This solemn fact is exemplified in the histories of Greece, Rome, and all other ancient nations, which approximated the nearest in civil government to that charter of equal rights, which Heaven donated to man. From their highest eminence of republican glory and plebeian freedom, these nations commenced their downward aim, in the loss of those great men, whose sterling knowledge and equanimity of soul enabled them to establish and direct their destinies to glory and renown; and terminated their mad career in ruin, under the dominations of men ruling in power rather than right; whose ambition and self-adulation acted the most destructive influence on the liberties of the people, and even on the national existence. But God, in his sovereign and good pleasure, has afforded to some nations a long and happy succession of great and good men to rule over them, by which they are distinguished in the scale of nations, as the preserved of the Lord. But evils seldom come alone; and so in the fall of nations there is often a fearful concatenation of evil events. When great men of renown are taken away by the stroke of the Almighty, it is frequently followed by the ingress of men whose pusillanimity and vile habits render them to the nation a double curse. Thus when God announces his displeasure against Israel, in taking the mighty man and the man of war, the judge and the prophet, the prudent and the ancient, and the honorable man, and the counsellor, and the eloquent orator, he threatens
[p. 191]
to give them children to be their princes, and babes to rule over them. And as a cousequence of such a calamitous state of things, he declares the people shall be oppressed one by another, and the child in politics shall behave himself proudly against the ancient; and the base ruler against the honorable. Thus Israel was given up to the scourge of her own sins, and chastised by national corruption. Her rulers were the rulers of Sodom, corrupters, oppressors, and even murderers. The whole body politic became diseased. The whole head was sick, and the whole heart faint. There was no soundness, and the wound was incurable. And the nation was devoted to ruin - such a ruin as whosoever heard the report of it, both his ears should tingle. Thus the death of great and good men has in it a warning voice. The flight of doves to their windows indicates approaching storms - when nations go to war, they call their envoys home. When God calls his ministers of state away, it suggests troubles at the door. Thus saith the prophets: "The righteous perish, and no man layeth it to heart; and the merciful men are taken away, none considering the righteous are taken away from the evil to come." The warning continues - "The good man perisheth out of the earth; there is none upright among men; they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net. That they may do evil with both hands in earnest, the prince asketh, and the judge asketh for a reward; and the great man (in wickedness) uttereth his mischievous desire; and so they wrap it up." "The best of them is as a briar, and the most upright sharper than a thorn hedge: the day of thy watchmen, and of thy visitation cometh; now shall their perplexity be."======== [From Joseph Belcher, editor, The Baptist Pulpit of the United States: Eloquent and Instructive Passages . . ., 2nd edition, 1853, pp. 190-191. Document from Google Books On-line. Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall]
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