raise altar against altar, to set God at variance with himself, and to " provoke to jealousy " the Holy One of Israel ? We can scarcely conceive any thing worse than such conduct as this. For, shall God be denied the honour which is paid to man ? Shall he alone be treated with contemptuous neglect ? Shall he be ex- cluded from the minds of those whom he created and upholds ? Shall all the wonders of redeeming love be requited in no better way than this ? Shall we refuse to him the homage which we exact from our fellow-creatures, and which we even pay to those who are authorized to receive it ? Would not God be justly indignant, if he were only placed on a footing of equality with men ? How much more then, when he is degraded so far below them ! Surely every mercy he has ever vouchsafed to us, but especially the gift of his dear Son, will dreadfully enhance our guilt and condemnation, if our obligations to him do not operate to produce in us a reverential honour of him as our Father, and an unrivalled obedience to him as our Lord and Master.
This mode of arguing is very common in the Scrip- tures. God is pleased frequently to suggest the rela- tion subsisting between himself and his people with the same view as in the passage before us. Some- times he does it to raise our expectations from him ; and at other times to shew the reasonableness of his expectations from us. In the former view he says, " Which of you, if his child should ask for bread, would give him a stone ? How much more then will your heavenly Father give good things to them that ask him ! " In the latter view he says, " We have had fathers of our flesh who corrected us, and we gave them reverence : shall we not much rather be in sub- jection unto the Father of spirits, and live?" Pre- cisely thus does he speak in the text ; with this only difference; that the conclusion drawn from his state- ment is not merely an appeal to our reason, but a re- proof for our misconduct. The interrogations are extremely pointed : they intimate a mind justly in- censed : they express the highest indignation against