Extract From a Sermon on Fast Days.
Alas! we live amid many dark and dismal days of wrath,
wherein God is frowning upon our mother-church, and frowning on all her
children. 0 may we have one glorious day of the Son of man amongst all our
gloomy days. May the Sun of righteousness range the clouds and dart a beam of
light upon this assembly. 0h for a thick shower of heavenly influences to make
a glorious communion in this place! Does not the dry ground of our hearts need
such a shower, especially on a humiliation.day? We come to set our parched and
withered souls under the drop of Thy ordinances. Lord, if we have a Bochim on
the fnst.day, may we not expect a Bethel on the feast-day?
A shower of
influences would make a shower of tears among us. Lord, come and thunder out of
Sinai upon the dead and obstinate hearts that are here, to prepare them for
coming to Mount Zion, the city of the living God. Lord, take Thy bow in Thine
hand, and shoot off the arrows of conviction to pierce the heart of the enemies
of the King. Our time will soon be at an end, - our praying time, our preaching
time, our hearing time, our communion time will soon be at an end. Death will
in a little cut our breath, and send us to eternity, and part us and ordinances
for ever, if we be not joined to the Lord in ordinances now, then in a little,
God and we must part for ever and ever; but if God and we meet together
graciously in time, then we shall be together gloriously in eternity. 0 send
forth Thy light and Thy truth ; let them lead us to Thy holy hill, and to Thy
tabernacles. Amen.
Rev. Ralph Erskine, M.A.
(Found among Eskine's
memoranda. Preserved here as a relic of the past all the more worthy of being
preserved that first the laity of Scotland have since abolished Fast Days as
such, and that the clergy have since abolished them as holidays.)