Renewal, and thou takest no pains about putting from thee even outward sin.

Again, "When thou sawest a thief thou consentedst unto him, and hast been partaker with the adulterers." Thou hast hasted to be rich. Thou hast taken part in dishonest gains. Thou hast defrauded, adulterated, overreached, when there was opportunity, and detection was next to impossible. Thou hast broken My law of purity. Thou hast not remembered that when thou wast baptized thou wast made a member of Christ, and thy body a temple of the Holy Ghost; and thou hast not kept that body in temperance, soberness, and chastity; or thou hast secretly envied those who thus sinned against me, and hast chafed against my law, which withheld thee from sinning openly as they. "Thou hast let thy mouth speak wickedness; and with thy tongue thou hast set forth deceit." Thou satest and spakest against thy brother, and hast slandered, if not thy actual brother, one or perhaps many of thy brethren in Christ. Thou hast been pleased when thou hast been able to dig up the long-forgotten faults or sins of thy neighbours; and thou hast had pleasure in listening to calumny and detraction.

My brethren, could not God speak thus to some in this very church, who take His new and better covenant on their lips? Is it not the feeling that you are in some of these ways open to His just reproof, which keeps so many

of you from ratifying at His table your covenant with Him with the "Blood of that new and better covenant shed for many for the remission of sins ?"

And now we come to the summing-up, as it were, and the sentence-a sentence, as we shall find, terrible, yet merciful.

"These things hast thou done, and I held my peace." I have let thee go on, to prove thee, to see how far thou wouldest go, how thou wouldest excuse thy way and thy life both to thyself and to Me, and thou hast excused thyself by yet further dishonouring Me, thy Holy God. For "thou thoughtest wickedly that I am even such an one as thyself."

This, brethren, is the evil of sin indulged in. It destroys all belief in God as a Holy, sinhating God.

It is often said that men believe what they wish to believe; now the wilful sinner must secretly wish to believe that God is such an one as himself, because if God be not, it will be a fearful thing in the end for him. So in his secret soul he seeks to rob God of His holy character. He may not perhaps seek to rob God of His existence, and say with the reprobate fool, "There is no God." The proofs of God's existence and providence are too powerful for that. But he secretly-very secretly, it may be in the very depths of his soul, so that

the thought is almost hidden from himself—still, there it is doing its evil work, underground as it were—well, he very secretly persuades himself to think that God has some sympathy with sin; that He does not abhor, and hate, and detest sin so much as He says over and over again in His word that He does-so that God will indulge the sinner in sin, because He does not care so very much about it.

The sinner, in whose heart sin dwells, has no dislike of sin, either in himself or in others, provided, of course, that the sin of others does not hurt him or go against his interest. Then he is virtuously indignant, and talks about the good of society, and so forth.

But the sinner, when the sin of another does not hurt him, has no fear of it. He rather secretly likes to hear of it, because it proves that he is not alone in his sin; that others are equally involved in it; that it is a common evil; and, because common, therefore venial. God might take vengeance on one, he thinks, or two, or even on hundreds or thousands; but when it comes to a matter of tens of thousands or millions; when it is a matter of the whole world, then he entertains a hope that the world will be too many for God; that God will be afraid of condemning and punishing so many, just as weak-minded men are awed and cowed by numbers. And so the sinner in whom sin reigns, secretly persuades himself that God

will in the end be found to be such an one as himself; not so very holy, not so stern, not so uncompromising, not so jealous of His honour. The sinner persuades himself that God will indulge the sinner in his sins, rather than aid him to uproot it. Fatal thought! rather is it not as the Prayer-book version has it, a wicked thought-"Thou thoughtest WICKEDLY that I am even such an one as thyself?" The Prayer-book version here follows some old versions which introduce the word 'wickedly," which the Hebrew, as we read it, omits. And it must be a wicked thought which would pull God down to our level. If it be a wicked thought, the injection of the enemy, to imagine God, as the heathen imagine Him to be, like to some bird, or four-footed beast, or creeping thing, because such a thought degrades the Best and Highest of Beings, is it not equally wicked to imagine Him ever so secretly to be like our sinful selves, to rob Him of His justice, and holiness, and truth?

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And now we come to the sentence.

What sentence is it? Is it such an one as the sinner deserves? Is it retribution, or is it correction? Is it in vengeance, with no hope to alleviate it; or is it in love, as yet at least with a view to our profit, that we may be "partakers of His holiness ?"

Thanks be to God, at present it is the latter. There follows a further and terrible threat of

the former of the vengeance of God-when it is said, "Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I pluck you away, and there be none to deliver you." But previous to this, the sinner is dealt with, not as a condemned criminal, proved unreclaimable, but as a son, who may be reclaimed. "I will reprove thee, and set before thee the things that thou hast done."

And think not, O sinner, that the reproof of God is a light matter.

It often makes the sinner, not yet hardened in guilt, well-nigh sink into the earth when his righteous brother reproves him. He cannot meet-he quails beneath, the eye of his loving but justly angry father, or of his kind and considerate, but incensed or injured employer or master; what then must the sinner feel when the eye of God is opened upon him in reproof? There is no turning away then-no escape, no hiding of the face-for the look of God pierces through the soul, and lays bare to the sinner what he himself knew not of his past sin and follyhis ingratitude, his hypocrisy, his waste of grace.

For the reproving look of God is ever accompanied by the setting before the man of the things he has done. The sinner's whole life seems profitless, utterly wasted. His years have been years of sin. He has lived without God in the world, without Christ in the very Church of Christ. What is he to do, what is he fit for, what use can God make of such an one? How