I say arranged, because the facts in this case prove long-concerted arrangement.  He was to preach a sermon that day.  Word must have been sent to him weeks before.  After reaching the village, every hour had been occupied in exciting spectacles and engrossing experiences, filling his mind with the fanatical enthusiasm requisite to give force and fire to the delivery of the discourse.  He could not possibly have written it after coming to the place.  He must have brought it in his pocket.  It is a thoroughly elaborated and carefully constructed performance, requiring long and patient application to compose it, and exhausting all the resources of theological research and reference, and of artistic skill and finish.  It is adapted to the details of an occasion which was prepared to meet it.  Not only the sermon but the audience were the result of arrangement carefully made in the stages of preparation and in the elements comprised in it.  The preceding steps had all been seasonably and appositely taken, so that, when the regular lecture afternoon came, Lawson would have his voluminous discourse ready, and a congregation be in waiting to hear it, with minds suitably wrought upon by the preceding incidents of the day, to be thoroughly and permanently impressed by it.  The occasion had been heralded by a train of circumstances drawing everybody to the spot.  The magistrates were already there, some of them by virtue of the necessity of official presence in the earlier part of the day, and others came in from the neighborhood; the ministers gathered from the towns in the vicinity; men and women came from all quarters, flocking along the highways and the by-ways, large numbers on horseback, and crowds on foot.  Probably the village meeting-house, and the grounds around it, presented a spectacle such as never was exhibited elsewhere.  Awe, dread, earnestness, a stern but wild fanaticism, were stamped on all countenances, and stirred the heaving multitude to its depths, and in all its movements and utterances.  It is impossible to imagine a combination of circumstances that could give greater advantage and power to a speaker, and Lawson was equal to the situation.  No discourse was ever more equal, or better adapted, to its occasion.  It was irresistible in its power, and carried the public mind as by storm.

The text is Zechariah, iii. 2:  “And the Lord said unto Satan, The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan! even the Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee:  is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?” After an allusion to the rebellion of Satan, and his fall from heaven with his “accursed legions,” and after representing them as filled “with envy and malice against all mankind,” seeking “by all ways and means to work their ruin and destruction for ever, opposing to the utmost all persons and things appointed by the Lord Jesus Christ as means or instruments of their comfort here or salvation hereafter,” he proceeds, in the manner of those days, to open his text and spread out his subject, all along exhibiting great ability, skill, and power, showing learning in his illustrations, drawing aptly and abundantly from the Scriptures, and, at the right points, rising to high strains of eloquence in diction and imagery.