that it is sin alone which is the cause of sorrow, and ignorance alone that is the source of melancholy to persons seeking after God. In vain we tell them, that religion, properly understood and practised, is a spring of the purest and most lasting joy. The very comparison which the Jews made between Jehovah and the Queen of heaven, these persons will make between true piety and their own formal services : God's ways being condemned as productive only of evil ; and their own com- mended, as replete with good.]
3. The hypocritical professor —
[He, if you will believe his words, is all that you could wish : but if you examine his actions, he is like fruit, fair to look upon, but rotten at the core. Press him on the side of his besetting sins, and you shall find him, in deeds, if not in words, as determined a transgressor as either of the foregoing characters. I know not whether he be not the least hopeful of them all. His very " conscience is seared ;" and " even the light that is in him is darkness." Whether his sin be pride, or worldliness, or intemperance, or impurity, he finds excuses for all; or, if self-condemned, "turns the grace of God into licentiousness." Ah ! what shall I say to such persons ? These, above all, resemble Johanan and the Jews. They make the greatest professions of piety, and sin against the greatest light and knowledge ; and cast most dishonour upon God whilst vindicating themselves. Verily, such persons, above all, have need to go along with me in my last considera- tion; namely,]
III. The certain issue of such conduct —
The Jews would venture upon the line prohibited, and prosecute their own ways, in defiance of the judgments with which they were threatened. But God told them that " they should see whose word should stand, his or theirs1."
I ask then, How did it fare with them ?
[Did not Divine vengeance follow them ? Could Pharaoh afford them the protection which they sought? yea, did not both he and they fall under the Chaldean yoke, and speedily experience all the calamities that had been predicted™ ?]
And how shall it fare with you ?
[Is not the time coming when the Lord will say, " Bring hither those that were mine enemies, who would not that I should reign over them, and slay them before me n ? " Yes ;
1 ver. 28. m ver. 12, 13, 14, 29, 30. n Luke xix. 27.