ever. His o£Pers and invitations are wide, and broad, and sweeping, and universal. He gives every church its day of grace and time of visitation. (Luke xix. 44.) But if men persist in refusing His counsel, He has nowhere promised to persist in forcing it upon them. People who have the Gospel, and yet refuse to obey it, must not be surprised if the Gospel is removed from them. Hundreds of churches, and parishes, and families, are at this moment in the state of the Gadarenes. They said to Christ, '^ Depart from us,'' and he has taken them at their word. They were joined to idols, and are now " let alone." (Job xxi. 14 ; Hosea iv. 17.)
Let us take heed that we do not sin the sin of the Gadarenes. Let us beware lest by coldness, and inattention, and worldliness, we drive Jesus from our doors, and compel Him to forsake us entirely. Of all sins which we can sin, this is the most sinftd.* Of all states of soul into which we can fall, none is so fearful as to be *'let alone." — Let it rather be our daily prayer that Christ may never leave us to ourselves. The old wreck, high and dry on the sand-bank, is not a more wretched sight, than the man whose heart Christ has visited with mercies and judgments, but has at last ceased to visit, because He was not received. The barred door is a door at which Jesus will not always knock. The Gadarene mind must not be surprised to see Christ leaving it and going away.
Let us observe, in the second place, that the man out of whom (he demk were departed, besought our Lord that he might he with Him ; — but his request tioas not granted. We read that Jesus sent him away, saying, '^ Betum to