Should we be content with calling it folly ? Should we not soon find for it a more appropriate and humi- liating term ? Let us take this then as a glass wherein to view our own likeness : it is no exag- gerated representation, but the precise view in which God sees our conduct. We are aware, that the idea suggested implies such a degree of infatuation as almost to provoke a smile : but the more humiliating the picture, the more need there is that we should contemplate it : and my labour will not have been lost, if a few only of the present assembly be led to bear it in remembrance, and to meditate upon it in their secret retirement.
We have further to remark, that these evils are represented in the text as terrible also in their conse- quences. Men do not like, in general, to hear of this : they wish rather to have it kept out of sight. But it is melancholy that they should so labour to deceive their own souls. If, by concealing the consequences of sin, we could ward them off and prevent them, we should be the last to bring them forward to your view : but if it be the surest way to draw them down upon you, surely we should deserve ill at your hands if we forbore to warn you of them. It is not thus that the Prophets and Apostles acted : nor is it thus that God would have us act. He bids us to " warn the wicked of their evil ways:" and declares, that if we neglect to do so, he " will require their blood at our hands." In order then that the danger of such sins as are here laid to our charge may appear, consider what are the representations given of it in the Holy Scriptures. If there be one image more terrible than another, it is that of lying down in a lake of fire and brimstone, ever to be consuming and unconsumed: yet that is the image repeatedly employed by Christ himself, in order to represent the misery that awaits the impenitent and unbelieving world. This will account for the extreme anxiety and sorrow which holy men of old expressed when contemplating the danger to which their fellow- creatures were exposed : " Rivers of waters run down mine eyes," says David, " because men keep not thy