that if God should dig up her very foundations, and cast her into the sea, she would well deserve it. Our streets at night present spectacles of vice that cannot be equalled. Surely there can be no nation and no country that can show a city so utterly debauched as this great city of London, if our midnight streets are indications of our immorality. You allow, in your public places where you go, — I mean you, my lords and ladies — you allow things to be said in your hearing, of which your modesty ought to be ashamed. You can sit in theatres to hear plays at which modesty should blush; to say nothing of piety. That the ruder sex should have listened to the obscenities of La Traviata {a} is surely bad enough, but that ladies of the highest refinement, and the most approved taste, should dishonour themselves by such a patronage of vice is indeed intolerable. Let the sins of the lower theatres escape without your censure, you gentlemen of England, the lowest bestiality of the lowest hell of a playhouse can look to your opera houses for their excuse. I thought that with the pretensions this city makes to piety, for sure, they would not have gone so far, and that after such a warning as they have had from the press itself — a press which is certainly not too religious — they would not so indulge their evil passions. But because the pill is gilded, you suck down the poison: because the thing is popular, you patronise it: it is lustful, it abominable, it is deceitful! You take your children to hear what you yourselves never ought to listen to. You yourselves will sit in jovial and grand company, to listen to things from which your modesty ought to revolt. And I would fain hope it does, although the tide may for a while deceive you. Ah! God only knows the secret wickedness of this great city; it demands a loud and a trumpet voice; it needs a prophet to cry aloud, “Sound an alarm, sound an alarm, sound an alarm,” in this city; for truly the enemy grows upon us, the power of the evil one is mighty, and we are fast going to perdition, unless God shall put forth his hand and roll back the black torrent of iniquity that streams down our streets. But God is slow to anger, and does still restrain his sword. Wrath said yesterday, “Unsheathe yourself, oh sword”; and the sword struggled to get free. Mercy put her hand upon the hilt, and said, “Be still!” “Unsheathe yourself, oh sword!” Again it struggled from its scabbard. Mercy put her hand on it, and said, “Back!” — and it rattled back again. Wrath stamped his foot, and said, “Awake oh sword, awake!” It struggled yet again, until half its blade was drawn out; “Back, back!” — said Mercy, and with manly push she sent it back rattling into its sheath: and there it sleeps still, for the Lord is “slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.”
14. Now I am to trace this attribute of God to its source: why is he slow to anger?
15. He is slow to anger, because he is infinitely good. Good is his name; “good” — God. Good in his nature; because he is slow to anger.
16. He is slow to anger, again, because he is great. Little things are always swift in anger; great things are not so. The silly cur barks at every passerby, and bears no insult; the lion would tolerate a thousand times as much; and the bull sleeps in his pasture, and will endure much, before he lifts up his might. The leviathan in the sea, though he makes the deep to be hoary when he is enraged, yet is slow to be stirred up, while the little and puny are always swift in anger. God’s greatness is one reason of the slowness of his wrath.
17. II. But to proceed at once to the link. A great reason why he is slow to anger is because he is GREAT IN POWER. This is to be the connecting link between this part of the subject and the last, and therefore I must beg your attention. I say that this word great in power connects the first sentence to the last; and it does so in this way. The Lord is slow to anger; and he is slow to anger, because he is great in power. “Why do you say that?” — one asks. I answer, he who is great in power has power over himself; and he who can keep his own temper down, and subdue himself, is greater than he who rules a city, or can conquer nations. We heard only yesterday, or the day before, mighty displays of God’s power in the rolling thunder which alarmed us; and when we saw the splendour of his might in the glistening lightning, when he lifted up the gates of heaven and we saw its brightness, and then he closed them again upon the dusty earth in a moment — even then we did not see anything except a hint of his power, compared with the power which he has over himself. When God’s power does restrain himself, then it is power indeed, the power to curb power, the power that binds omnipotence is omnipotence surpassed. God is great in power, and therefore he does restrain his anger. A man who has a strong mind can bear to be insulted, can bear offences, because he is strong. The weak mind snaps and snarls at the little: the strong mind bears it like a rock; it does not move, though a thousand breakers dash upon it, and cast their pitiful malice in the spray upon its summit. God marks his enemies, and yet he does not move; he stands still, and lets them curse him, yet is he not wrathful. If he were less of a God than he is, if he were less mighty than we know him to be, he would long before this have sent forth the all of his thunders, and emptied the magazines of heaven; he would long before this have blasted the earth with the wondrous mines he has prepared in its lower surface; the flame that burns there would have consumed us, and we would have been utterly destroyed. We bless God that the greatness of his power is just our protection; he is slow to anger because he is great in power.
18. And now, there is no difficulty in showing how this link unites itself with the next part of the text. “He is great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked.” This needs no demonstration in words; I have only to touch the feelings and you will see it. The greatness of his power is an assurance, and an insurance that he will not acquit the wicked. Who among you could witness the storm on Friday night without having thoughts concerning your own sinfulness stirred in your hearts? Men do not think of God the punisher, or Jehovah the avenger, when the sun is shining, and the weather is calm; but in times of tempest, whose cheek is not blanched? The Christian often rejoices in it; he can say, “My soul is well at ease amidst this revelry of earth; I do rejoice for it; it is a day of feasting in my Father’s hall, a day of high feast and carnival in heaven, and I am glad.”
The God that reigns on high,
And thunders when he please,
That rides upon the stormy sky
And manages the seas,
This awful God is ours,
Our Father and our love,
He shall send down his heavenly powers
To carry us above.
But the man who is not of an easy conscience will be ill at ease when the timbers of the house are creaking, and the foundations of the solid earth seem to groan. Ah! who is he then that does not tremble? That lofty tree is split in half; that lightning flash has smitten its trunk, and there it lies for ever blasted, a monument of what God can do. Who stood there and saw it? Was he a swearer? Did he swear then? Was he a Sabbath breaker? Did he love his Sabbath breaking then? Was he haughty? Did he then despise God? Ah! how he shook then. Did you not see his hair stand on end? Did not his cheek blanch in an instant? Did he not close his eyes and fall back in horror when he saw that dreadful spectacle, and thought God would strike him too? Yes, the power of God, when seen in the tempest, on sea or on land, in the earthquake or in the hurricane, is instinctively a proof that he will not acquit the wicked. I know not how to explain the feeling, but it is nevertheless the truth; majestic displays of omnipotence have an effect upon the mind of convincing even the hardened, that God, who is so powerful, “will not at all acquit the wicked.” Thus I have just tried to explain and make bare the link of the chain.
19. III. The last attribute, and the most terrible one, is, “HE WILL NOT AT ALL ACQUIT THE WICKED.” Let me unfold this, first of all; and then let me, after that, endeavour to trace it also to its source, as I did the first attribute.
20. God “will not acquit the wicked”; how do I prove this? I prove it thus. Never once has he pardoned an unpunished sin; not in all the
