2. Contemplate the probable issue of sin, even in this life —
[It is in the future world that sin will receive its full reward. But it not unfrequently receives a tremendous recom- pence even here. How many have their health impaired, their fortunes injured, their reputation blasted, and their peace destroyed, by their own folly and wickedness ! How many
c Phil. ii. 4. d Zech. xii. 10. <* 2 Cor. iii. 18. John vi. 40.
mothers have lived to see the child, which they once fondled with the tenderest affection, become a source of unutterable grief : insomuch that they have envied the wombs that never bare ! And how many have so embittered their lives, that they have wished for death, and would have been glad to have a rock or mountain to crush them to atoms ! There is not a town, or scarcely a village, that will not afford some instances of persons, who, from having ruined their health, their reputa- tion, their fortune, or their peace, do not wish that they had never been born. What is it that makes suicide so common ? You will almost invariably trace it to this source : the person's sins have made him so miserable, that life itself is become a burthen to him : so true is that repeated declaration of the prophet, " The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it can- not rest ; whose waters cast up mire and dirt : there is no peace, saith God, to the wicked f."
Such are the means by which God often punishes sin in this life. Not unfrequently it happens that the partners of our guilt are made the instruments of our punishment. Thus, in the history before us, the Romans were employed by the Jews in putting Jesus to death ; and they were afterwards employed by God in punishing that whole nation, to an extent unpar- alleled in the annals of the world. Thus also it is often found, that those who have administered to our fraudulent gains oi licentious pleasures, are the very persons through whom God visits our iniquity upon us.
Let then the connexion between sin and misery be con- sidered: and learn, that in holiness alone is pleasure to be found without alloy.]
3. Look forward with awe to the future judgment —
[If the Jewish matrons were bidden to weep for them- selves and their children, on account of the calamities that should be endured in the siege of Jerusalem, much more may every thoughtful person weep in the prospect of that day, when all shall stand at the judgment-seat of Christ. Then shall every man be recompensed according to his works. How they who have made light of sin in this world will feel in that day, we are informed by God himself; who assures us, that sinners of every rank, from the highest to the lowest, will " cry to the rocks to fall upon them, and the hills to cover them from the wrath of the Lamb g." The inference which our Lord draws from his own sufferings, in reference to the Jewish nation, may with equal propriety be drawn from his people's sufferings in reference to the world at large. They are, in their measure, persecuted like him; and "'if these things be
f Isai. lvii. 20, 21. a Rev. vi. 15—17.