punished in his children, where is there, on the face of the whole earth, a person who has not merited all that has ever come upon him? and who has not reason to acknowledge that " God has punished him far less than his iniquities have deservedk?" Whatever may have been the primary occasion of our troubles, there is abundant ground for them within our- selves: " A living man can have no just reason to complain1:" for, if we had had our just desert, there is not one amongst us that would not have been in the very depths of hell, long, long ago. Those who have been partners in iniquity may, and will, reproach each other in that place of torment ; but none shall be able to reproach their God: every one of those un- happy spirits shall be constrained to say, " True and righteous are thy judgments, Lord God Almighty1":" and the day that is appointed for assigning to men their respective doom, is on this very account declared to be " the day of the revelation of the righteous judgment of Godn." This proverb, therefore, when uttered with a view to justify man as innocent, or to reproach God as unjust, must be regarded as profane and impious in the extreme.]
The answer given to it in my text is singularly important,
II. As a declaration of God's established rule of pro- cedure in all ages —
Sin, by whomsoever committed, shall not go un- punished. It shall be followed with evil,
1. In this world — [" A sour grape," whether eaten by one or many, " will set the teeth on edge : " and sin, whether of a more open or secret kind, will be followed with evil to the soul. Let the profligate and abandoned sinner, the drunkard, the whore- monger, the adulterer, say, whether what he has followed with such avidity, and regarded as such a source of exquisite de- light, has not, in the issue, been productive of pain ? Let the injury which he has sustained, in his name, his health, his property, be taken into the account, and he will be constrained to acknowledge that " the way of transgressors is hard0." We may appeal with confidence to every sinner in the universe ; " What fruit had ye, even at the time, of those things whereof ye are now ashamed? " Verily, not an hour had elapsed after your sweetest gratifications, before they were embittered with shame, and fear, and self-reproach.
k Ezra ix. 13. l Lam. iii. 39. m Rev. xvi. 7.
n Rom. ii. 5. ° Prov. xiii. 15.