"See, Therefore And Know, That It Is An Evil And A Bitter Thing To Sin Against The LORD!"

This city has so aroused MY anger and wrath!

(John Angell James, "The Crisis--or, Hope and Fear Balanced, 

in Reference to the Present Situation of the Country" 

Sunday Morning, Nov. 28, 1819)

LISTEN to audio!  Download audio

"From the day it was built until now, this 

city has so aroused My anger and wrath 

that I must remove it from MY sight!" 

Jeremiah 32:31

Let us devoutly acknowledge both the source 

and the justice of our calamities.
The origin of the evils that afflict us is often 

to be found in the sins which disgrace us.

Sin is the only thing in all the universe 

which GOD hates, and this HE abhors 

wherever HE discovers it.

With our limited understanding and 

feeble powers of moral perception--

it is impossible for us to form an adequate 

idea of the evil of sin, or the light in which 

it is contemplated by a GOD whose 

understanding is infinite, and whose 

purity is immaculate. 

That law which men are daily trampling upon, 

equally without consideration, without reason, 

and without penitence--

is most sacred in HIS eyes as the emanation 

and the transcript of HIS own holiness. 

HE is also omnipresent and omniscient. 

There is not a nook or corner of the land 

from which HE is excluded. Of every scene 

of iniquity, HE is the constant though invisible 

witness. The whole mass of national guilt 

with the every minutest particular of it, 

is ever before HIS eye!

HIS justice, which consists in giving to all 

their due, must incline HIM to punish iniquity--

and HIS power enables HIM to do it!

HE is the moral governor of the nations, 

and concerned to render HIS providence 

subservient to the display of HIS attributes. 

And if a people so highly favored as we are, 

notwithstanding our manifold sins, escape 

without chastisement--

will not some be ready to question the equity, 

if not the very exercise of HIS administration?

HIS threatenings against the wicked are to be 

found in almost every page of holy Scripture. 

Nor are the threatenings of the Bible to be 

viewed in the light of mere unreal terrors, 

as clouds and storms which the poet's 

pencil has introduced into the picture--

the creatures of his own imagination, and 

only intended to excite the imagination 

of others. 

No! They are solemn realities intended 

to operate by their denunciation as 

a check upon sin; or if not so regarded, 

to be endured in their execution as 

a punishment upon our sins! 

Scripture gives us many examples 

in which this has happened. It has 

preserved an account of the downfall 

of nearly all the chief empires, kingdoms 

and cities of antiquity; and that, not as 

a mere chronicle of the event, but as 

a great moral lesson to the world. 

Scripture carefully informs us that 

sin was the cause of their ruin!

Volcanoes terrify with their eruptions, 

and submerge towns or cities beneath 

their streams of lava!

Earthquake's convulsive throes bury 

a population beneath the ruins of their 

own abodes!

Hurricanes carry desolation through a country!

Famine whitens the valleys with the bones 

of the thousands who have perished 

beneath its reign!

Pestilence stalks through a land, hurrying 

multitudes to the tomb, and filling all that 

remain with unutterable terrors!

Wars have been agents in the unparalleled 

scenes of bloodshed and misery!

Scripture proclaims that these are to be 

regarded as a fearful exposition of the evil 

nature of sin, written by the finger of GOD 

upon the tablet of the earth's history!

Visit, in imagination, my countrymen, 

the spots where many of these cities once 

stood, and you shall see nothing but desolation 

stalking like a specter across the plain, lifting 

its eye to heaven, and exclaiming, amidst 

the silence that reigns around, 

"The kingdom and the nation that will 

not serve YOU, shall utterly perish!" 

(Isaiah 60:12)

As you stand amidst the moldering fragments 

of departed grandeur, does not every breeze, 

as it sighs through the ruins, seem to say, as 

a voice from the sepulcher, 

"See, therefore and know, that it is an evil 

and a bitter thing to sin against the LORD!"

(Jeremiah 2:19c)

Let us devoutly acknowledge both the source 

and the justice of our calamities. The origin 

of the evils that afflict us, is often to be found 

in the sins which disgrace us.

"From the day it was built until now, this 

city has so aroused MY anger and wrath 

that I must remove it from MY sight!" 

Jeremiah 32:31