have been secured in that time, if all those Sabbaths had been sanctified to the Lord! and what judgments does not he merit, who has wasted all of them in a wilful neglect of God ! Little as we think of Sabbaths now, we shall find ere long, that the profaning of them has greatly increased our guilt and misery. The Lord grant that this clay may not pass away as so many others have done, unprofitably to our souls ; but let it be to every one of us a preparation for our eternal rest !]
Isai. lix. 8. They have made them crooked paths : whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace.
THIS chapter deserves especial notice, not merely on account of its historical import, but particularly on account of the use made of it by the Apostle Paul. As written by the prophet, it seems descriptive of some peculiarly abandoned characters, who com- mitted all manner of iniquity. But, as quoted by the Apostle, it is descriptive of mankind in general, and marks the entire depravity of our fallen nature. Now, in reading the Epistle to the Romans, we are apt to wonder how an inspired writer could deduce such a doctrine from passages which appear to afford so little foundation for it : for it seems strange to say, that because some pre-eminently wicked persons, of one age and country, were guilty of the most flagrant enormities, all persons, in all ages and countries, must have the same propensities. But I hesitate not to say, that the Apostle's inference is just : for, if any persons enjoying the light of revelation were, not- withstanding all their advantages, so wicked, the fault was not in their accidental circumstances, but in their nature itself; and, consequently, all who possess the same nature must be partakers of the same propensi- ties : and if they yield not to those propensities in the same manner as others, they must owe it, not to any superior goodness of their own, but to the preventing grace of God. It is not my intention to prosecute the subject before us to the extent that the Apostle's