Lord, I will not hearken unto it 1 ?" Our blessed Lord has told us what he will say to such persons in the last day : " Bring hither those that were mine enemies, who would not that I should reign over them, and slay them before me." " Those who knew not their Lord's will," and sinned through ignorance, are chargeable with guilt, and will be visited with punishment; because they had the means of instruction, and did not dili- gently improve them : but if " the servant who knew not his Lord's will shall be beaten with few stripes, be assured, that the servant who knew his Lord's will and did it not, shall be beaten with many stripes1"."]
Verily this is a solemn truth, and deeply to be weighed by every child of man. Let me therefore proceed,
II. To suggest some reflections arising out of it —
Who that duly considers it must not see,
1. What ground we all have for humiliation before God—
[I will suppose that we have never committed any enor- mous sin, and that in respect of the letter of the law we have been as blameless as ever Paul was previous to his conversion : still, are we not sinners ? There has been no doubt on any of our minds whether we had occasion for the acknowledged duties of repentance, faith, and obedience: but have we dili- gently performed these duties? Have we from day to day humbled ourselves before God, and wept in dust and ashes? Have we laboured to find out all our past transgressions, to spread them before God with penitential sorrow, and to im- plore with all earnestness the remission of them ?
Have we fled to the Lord Jesus Christ for refuge, as to the hope that is set before us? Have we pleaded before God the merit of his sacrifice, and sprinkled our souls with his all- atoning blood? Is this the daily habit of our minds; and
the only source of peace to our souls ? And have we
given up ourselves to God without reserve, to fulfil his every command, and to live altogether to his glory ? Do we for this end study his blessed word with all diligence, that we may know his mind? and do we labour incessantly to " stand per- fect and complete in all the will of God?" We have known these things to be right; but have we done them? Can we appeal to the heart-searching God, that this has been, and yet is, the daily tenour of our lives ? Must we not rather acknow- ledge, that no one day of our lives has been so occupied with
1 Jer. xliv. 16. m Luke xii. 47, 48.