were astonished. They were filled with wonder at His mighty works. But they were not converted. They lived in the full noon-tide blaze of the Sun of Kight- eousness, and yet their hearts remained hard. And they drew from our Lord the heaviest condemnation that He ever pronounced against any place, except Jerusalem : " Thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell ; for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of So- dom in the day of judgment, than for thee." (Matt. xi. 23, 24.)
It is good for us all to mark well this case of Ca- pernaum. We are all to apt to suppose that it needs nothing but the powerful preaching of the Gospel to con- vert people's souls, and that if the Gospel is only brought into a place everybody must believe. We forget the amazing power of unbelief, and the depth of man's enmity against God. We forget that the Capernaites heard the most faultless preaching, and saw it confirmed by the most surprising miracles, and yet remained dead in trespasses and sins. We need reminding that the same Gospel which is the savor of life to some, is the savor of death to others, and that the same fire which softens the wax will also harden the clay. Nothing, in fact, seems to harden man's heart so much, as to hear the Gospel regularly, and yet deliberately prefer the ser- vice of sin and the world. Never was there a people so highly favored as the people of Capernaum, and never was there a people who appear to have become so hard.