to Him, from whom you have deeply revolted. Then there may yet be hope both concerning you and your nation.'
In this view of the prophecy, we see, I. In what way men treat the Divine testimony —
The spirit shewn by the inquiring Edomite is pre- cisely that which has obtained in every age, and which the Apostle Peter teaches us to expect as still more prevalent in the latter days : " There shall come, in the last days, scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying. Where is the promise of his coming ? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation^." This, I apprehend, was the way in which the predictions of Noah relative to the deluge were treated by the scoffers in the antediluvian world : and persons of a similar spirit abounded in Isaiah's days ; whom he describes as teeming with atheistical defiance, and saying, '' Let him make speed, and hasten his work, that we may see it ; and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it"." To such an extent did this impiety prevail in the time of Ezekiel, that God speaks of it as actually passed into a proverb : '' Son of man, what is that proverb that ye have in the land of Israel, saying. The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth?" And it is worthy of particular observation, that the answer which Ezekiel was commanded to give to the scoffers of Israel, is precisely to the same effect with that which Isaiah had given to the Idumean inquirer: " Tell them, thus saith the Lord God ; I will make this proverb to cease ; and they shall no more use it as a proverb in Israel : but say unto them. The days are at hand, and the effect of every vision"."
Thus it is that men treat the Divine testimony at this day: they speak of it,
L With unbelieving indifference —
[As God's ambassadors to a guilty world, we are constrained to denounce his judgments against impenitent transgressors
a 2 Pet. iii. 3, 4. •' Isai. v. 19. « Ezek. xii. 22, 23.