their assurance, not for God's, that no second Flood should come; but they said, No, we will not believe that sign, and therefore we will act just as if there were no such promise confirmed by any such pledge. Do we ever feel and manifest this spirit? There is in the Lord's supper a standing pledge, like the rainbow, that Jesus suffered, and that God spared him not, but delivered him up for us all. Do we, notwithstanding, sometimes doubt that fact, and feel as if God had never given a Saviour? God says, "Behold, the Lord cometh: he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also that pierced him." Do we not sometimes doubt, and say, "To-morrow shall be as this day," and, "Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning?" Such is the unbelief of the Babel builders, and if their sin is ours, for retribution exists on earth as truly as it will exist hereafter, their punishment will be ours also. Whatever is undertaken without God, or in disbelief of God's word, or in defiance of God's power, will never prosper. In national constitutions, in national legislation, in the foundation of palaces, and in the building of cottages, in drawing up great charters for a people, and in writing small leases for a house, the great element of coherence, strength, endurance, safety, prosperity, honor, is the recognition of God, and in so recognizing him, the feeblest shall be strong, the fewest shall be conquerors. All Scripture, confirmed by all history, shows that institutions laid in God are lasting as the stars, institutions built in defiance of him perish and dissolve like frostwork in a night. Let us therefore carry, into the sequestered nooks of private life, what we ought to see developed in the greatest and most conspicuous places of public life a sense of dependence on Him who looks on. Let the merchant sit down at his desk with as solemn feeling as that wherewith he says, Most he sits down at the Lord's table. Let him enter his countinghouse with a sense of responsibility to God, as real as that with which he enters the sanctuary; and let him write his ledger with just as deep and sensitive a mind, as that with which he reads his Bible. I believe that a besetting heresy of the day is not Calvinism, nor Arminianism, nor any other ism, but the practical separation of what is religious, and what is secular. I never can accept such separation. Education without religion is no education at all. Business without religion is Babel building, and it will have a Babel issue. So minute is the requirement of God's word, that "Whatever ye do, whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God." But the besetting and the very popular idea is, religion is religion, and it is fit for the church; business is business, and it only is fit for the market. certainly, do not carry your business into your religion, and make religion a matter of profit and of loss; but you ought to carry your religion into your business, that your business may be beautiful before God, and just and honorable in the sight of man. When we come to the sanctuary, we come to be taught what religion is, and how deep, and how high, and how far religion ought to reach. When we go out into the counting-house, the market, the warehouse, the place where mammon's traffic is, we go there to show how religion can make us to differ. The merchant who drinks in the lessons of the Bible on the Sunday, will not go to the Royal Exchange and preach there; but he will in his transactions make it be felt by others that there is such honesty about that man, such integrity, right-heartedness, and truth, that he must have some spring to feed it, some hidden manna, some source of persistency and power that we know not of; we will go where that man goes, his people shall be our people, we will hear what his minister says. The minister who has some twenty or thirty thorough Christianized men going out into the world, acting out their Christianity in the world's business without show, pretence, or talk, or cant, or any thing approaching to it, will soon have a crowded congregation, because other people will inquire into the secret of this superiority to all around, and they will go to learn where and what that secret is, and they will say at last what some said to the woman of Samaria, "Now we believe, not because of thy saying; for we have heard him ourselves." We learn another lesson from the Babel builders; whatever man attempts without God, or in spite of God, or in disobedience of God, or in disbelief of God, in order to attain a given end, is almost sure to issue in the opposite. These men set about building this tower to do what? To "get a great name," to become the illustrious engineers and architects of the world, so that after ages should quote them as men of the grandest genius, and the greatest powers, and their name should be pronounced with veneration when their dust was sleeping in the grave below. That was their design, this was their object-did they accomplish it? Instead of gaining an illustrious name, they are bywords; when we see some wild enthusiast fail, we call him a Babel builder; when we meet a fanatic attempting some wild scheme, we say, he is a Babel builder. They have got fame, but it is the fame of contempt; and the fragments of their tower, and the memorials of its erection, still endure, to show that they who set out to get reputation in spite of God, will only get shame, discredit, and contempt. But this was not their only object—they had another in view. It was to prevent themselves being scattered over all the face of the earth; it was to be a central rallying tower to retain the unity of the masses. Did they accomplish it? Just the reverse -the very thing they deprecated was the very thing they provoked. The very scattering that they raised the tower to prevent, was the very scattering-violently and not gently, as it would have been - which they really brought in all its severity upon themselves. How truly does Obadiah speak of them when he says, "The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground? Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord." God resisteth the proud, he giveth grace to the humble. We do not need a space of five hundred yards to build our Babel; in many a nook and sequestered place is a tower of Babel attempted still. Who has not felt, more or less, that when you have set your heart upon something, without taking in the sense of God's presence, or your responsibility to him, or the contingency that he might interpose, and when you have gained the very thing that your heart was set upon, how often it has been found another thorn in your pillow, a corrosive and a cankering thing in your heart! Many a man has set his heart upon making a fortune, and without a thought about God-not taking means that are dishonest, yet atheistically—he has set his heart upon making a fortune, and God allows him to succeed. What is the result of it? Just when he has made the fortune, he is laid upon a sick-bed from which he never rises. I have seen this in the extremest degree, when the fortune was magnificent, beyond counting. Or you have set your heart upon a fortune, and you have obtained it, and learned how unsatisfactory it is, and that you have been spending your money for that which looked like bread, but which is not bread, and your labor for that which you thought would satisfy, and, lo, it satisfieth not. Many have made a fortune in which all seemed to be prosperous and merry as a marriage bell, and yet that very fortune has occasioned them such torment, disputes, bitterness of heart, and anxiety of mind, that they have wished to God that they had never had a fortune at all. I heard of one who set his heart upon a fortune with all his might—an irreligious, atheistic, ungodly man: he made the fortune, and one day he was met going to commit suicide-such was the satisfaction it gave to him. Whatever we attempt against God, or without God, either will be contradicted in its issue, or if we obtain the object we had in view, that object will be a thorn, a calamity, and a curse. A crown reached in the face of God will be but a burning circlet; a throne, or a presidential chair, attained by violation of the laws of God will be but a restless seat; reputation and renown achieved in the spite of God will be poor enjoyment to him who has it. That little word "God," the exponent of a grand element in a man's heart, gives vigor to the hand that wins the fortune, and it gives repose to the heart to enjoy that fortune after it is won. Therefore, merchants, tradesmen, soldiers, sailors, all men, whatever be your position, whatever your profession, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all other things shall be added unto you. How beautiful is that! It is like the law of gravitation-all falls under it, clusters around it, becomes holy and prosperous just by its being in the heart and actuating all. All humanity is suffering under the curse incurred by the Babel builders. We need not quarrel with that great law of God's providential dealing, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children. You need not say, it is unjust. I do not stop to discuss its justice; I assert simply, it is a fact, and a fact written in the Bible, and acted out in providence every day. The question is not, Is the thing true? for we feel it; and therefore to quarrel with the Bible for asserting it, is to quarrel with God's word for speaking truth. These Babel builders built this tower in defiance of God, or in |
