ere is a controversy
only to be terminated--first, by your submission, your repentance--and,
thank God, He has prepared a perfect and suitable method for our
submission, and for our repentance. If He has a controversy with us, He
wills it to be terminated in such a mode as shall secure the original
purpose of his great love, which our sin has outraged. Christ has
appeared in our behalf, and for this purpose has offered a full, perfect,
and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for our sins. For
this purpose the Divine Spirit waits in all our assemblies, and now in
this place, that any of you who are now enemies to Him by wicked works,
being pricked in your hearts on account of your sins, and groaning under
your condemnation, may fly for refuge to the hope set before you in
Christ Jesus our Lord. So God would have this controversy terminated.
So He invites you in his great mercy to terminate it. And for this
purpose we are ministers of reconciliation, and "we pray you in Christ's
stead, be ye reconciled to God."

There is but one other way of terminating this controversy, and that is
by our destruction. If we will abide in our controversy, if we will wage
the battle to the end, this destruction must ensue, here is no method
else--no escape any where between the one extreme and the other; it is
submission and life, it is battle and death--death eternal. O that death
eternal! What is it? Not the annihilation of your souls. What is the
death of a soul? The loss of the life of God--the loss of communion with
God. The soul is made for such a communion: this is its true life; it
has no satisfaction apart from this enjoyment. There cannot be communion
without love; that is the soul of communion; and if you renounce the
reign of love, and come under the dominion of enmity, you cut yourselves
off from the life of God, you die, and must endure the bitter pains of
eternal death. I pray God that you may terminate this controversy, and
thank God that you may do so, by the submission of your hearts to his
merciful provision of salvation, that so you may live in hallowed
Christian blessedness here, and inherit perfect fellowship and communion
with God hereafter.

We should humble ourselves in the presence of that great calamity which
has fallen upon our flocks and upon our herds. I think it is well in
times of public calamity that public attention should be called to these
things; and our attention has been c