Transcribed from the 1868 Bell and Daldy edition by DavidPrice.
A SERMON
PREACHED INTHE
PARISH CHURCH OF DONCASTER,
ON SUNDAYEVENING, AUGUST 30, 1868,
ON THEOCCASION OF THE FIRST OFFERTORY IN
LIEU OF A CHURCH-RATE.
BY
C. J. VAUGHAN, D.D.
VICAR OFDONCASTER.
Published by Request.
LONDON:
BELL AND DALDY, YORK STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.
1868.
This Sermon was preached in thecommon course of the Sunday Services, and without any idea of itsbeing noticed beyond the circle of its hearers. As,however, the interest of the subject, far more, certainly, thananything in its treatment, has called some attention to theSermon since its delivery, I have thought it right to comply withthe request of some respected members of the Congregation, andcommit it to the chances of publication. In so doing, Ihave made no attempt to supply its many deficiencies, nor have Ieven removed from its opening sentences an allusion to otherSermons of which it formed the continuation.
Doncaster,
September4, 1868.
Why repair ye not the breaches of the house?
2 Kings xii. 7.
The House is the Temple. Wehave travelled, therefore, from the north to the south ofPalestine, from the capital of Israel to the capital ofJudah. As soon as the two great prophets, Elijah andElisha, are no more, the interest of the story centres no longerin the kingdom of the ten tribes: it reverts to the stock ofDavid, and finds its latest gleam of beauty and glory in thenational reformations and personal pieties of Hezekiah andJosiah.
Elisha is not yet dead: but he has ceased to occupy the sacredpage after the anointing of Jehu, until he appears once more, andfinally, in the striking incidents of his death-bed and hisgrave.
Meanwhile that Baal-worship which Jehu has extirpated in thenorth, has found refuge in the p. 6southern realm, under the fosteringpatronage of a daughter of the house of Ahab. Jehoram, sonof Jehoshaphat, had married a second Jezebel, in the person ofher daughter Athaliah. Jehoram reigned eight years, and wassucceeded by his son Ahaziah, who perished, as we read lastSunday, with his uncle Jehoram, son of Ahab, king of Israel,under the hand of the avenging Jehu, the scourge of God.
Then Athaliah, seeing that her son was dead, determined toreign for herself. She was one of those masculine spirits,one of those heroines of pride and crime, who can brook no puny,infant sovereigns; she could not live to be ruled by agrandchild; and so she took the decisive step of destroyingall the seed royal, after which, it is said, Athaliah,late the queen-mother, did reign over the land.
But it is seldom, on this earth—which is stillGod’s, however much, at certain