entangled therein, and overcome" by it, without any danger to their souls ? Let them know, that they are fatally deluded ; and that, if they do not awake from their stupor, " their last end will be worse than their beginning." If the mercy of God do not stimulate us to an unfeigned renunciation of all sin, and an unremitting activity in his service, we shall in vain hope that it shall be exercised towards us in the day of judgment.]
4. Enjoy it —
[What reason have you to admire and adore the goodness of your God ! O, let a lively sense of it be ever on your minds. Be meditating daily how you shall most acceptably express your gratitude towards him. Labour to glorify him to the uttermost. Commend him to your fellow-sinners. Let your "ways" be such as shall be well-pleasing in his sight. Let your " thoughts " be devoutly occupied in praises and thanksgivings to him. And let your fellowship with him become daily more sweet, more intimate, and more abiding. Thus shall his mercy, which has already abounded towards you, be displayed in yet richer communications to all eternity.]
god's ways above ours.
Isai. lv. 8, 9. My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my tvays, saith the Lord : for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my tvays higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
MEN are apt to judge of God by themselves, and to suppose him restricted by such laws as they deem proper for their own observance. The wicked almost reduce him to a level with themselves in a moral viewa: and even the godly form very inadequate conceptions of his ways and works. Of this God himself apprises us in the words before us ; which we shall elucidate by shewing how different his thoughts and ways are from what we should have expected with respect to,
I. The objects of his choice —
[If we thought to take a person into the nearest relation to ourselves, we should be inclined to prefer one of high rank : if we undertook to instruct a person, we should select one who
a Ps. 1. 21.