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THE KING’S BUSINESS
“ That word ‘now’ touched my heart as with divine power, and encouraged the sweet hope that the set time was really now at hand. I read without comment but with solemn feelings, the account o f the conver sion o f the three thousand on the day o f Pentecost; and this account, I am told, affected some o f the people considerably. When we prayed a second time, specially imploring that the Lord would open on us the windows o f heaven, I preached from the words (Psalm 110:3) : ‘Thy people shall be willing in the day o f Thy power.’ This subject I had studied and preached on at Dundee without any remarkable effect; and though I was so much enlarged on this occasion in discoursing from it, I have not been able to treat it in the same manner, or with the same effects, at any subsequent time. “ The following was the plan o f the remarks which I was led to make upon the words: I. The persons spoken o f—they are God’s elect—those given to Christ of the Father. II. The promise o f the Father to Emmanuel regarding these ' persons— ‘they shall be willing.’ 1. Willing to be saved by Christ’s righteousness alone. 2. Willing to take on His yoke. 3. Willing to bear His cross. III. The time o f the promise—the day o f Emmanuel’s power. 1. It is the day o f His exaltation at the Father’s right hand, (verse 1) i. e., the latter day. 2. It is the day o f free preach ing o f the Divine word. 3. It is the day in which Christ crucified is the center and sum o f the doctrine taught. 4. It is the day o f the outpouring o f the Holy Spirit— ‘The Lord shall send,’ &c. LIKE PENTECOST “I was led under this last particular to allude to some o f the most remarkable out pourings o f the Spirit that have been granted to the church, beginning from the day o f Pentecost; and in surveying this galaxy o f Divine wonders, I had come to notice the glorious revelation o f Jehovah’s right hand which was given at the Kirk o f Shotts .in 1630, while John Livingstone was preaching from Ezekiel 36:26, 27,
Lord’s work, on that memorable day, yet I remember in general that I had an intense longing for the conversion of souls and the glory o f Emmanuel, that I mourned under a sense o f the awful state o f sinners without Christ, their guilt in rejecting Him as freely offered to their acceptance, my own total inability to help them by any thing that I could do, and my complete unfitness and unworthiness to be an instru ment in the hands of the Holy Ghost in saving their souls; while at the same time my eyes were fixed on the Lord as the God o f salvation with a sweet hope of Hrs glorious appearing. I had since heard that some o f the people o f God in Kilsyth who had been longing and wrestling for a time o f refreshing from the Lord’s presence and who had during much o f the previous night been travailing in birth for souls, came to the meeting not 'bnly with the hope, but with well-nigh the certain anticipation of God’s glorious appearing, from the impres sions they had had upon their own souls of Jehovah’s approaching glory and majesty, especially when pleading at His footstool. The morning proved very unfavorable for our assembling in the open air, and this seems to have been a wise providential arrangement; for while, on the one hand, it was open air, in order to collect the great multitude; on the other hand, it was very needful, in order to the right management o f so glorious a work as that which fol lowed, that we should be assembled within doors. At 10 o’clock I went down to the middle o f the town and with some others drove up before us some stragglers who were remaining behind the crowd. When I entered the pulpit, I saw before me an immense multitude from the town and neighborhood filling the seats, stairs, passages and porches, and all in their ordinary clothes, and including many o f the most abandoned o f our population. 1 began, I think, by singing the 102d Psalm, and was affected deeply when in reading it I came to these lines: “ ‘Her time for favour which was set, Behold, is now come to an end.’
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