Ver. 7.-Correspondence of crime and requital. The crime of Adoni-bezek was against not any special national law, but humanity. It was one calculated to create and foster the most cruel disposition, the moral sense being rendered callous by habituation to a spectacle of abjectness and suffering dishonouring to our common nature. Frequent amongst the heathen nations of the East, it was all the more necessary that it should be punished in an emphatic and exemplary manner, "Thumbs were cut off to incapacitate the hand from using the bow; great toes to render the gait uncertain." The circumstance stands forth here as an ancient "instance" of an eternal law, which may be thus expressed:- I. THERE IS A CLOSE CONNECTION BETWEEN EVERY SIN AND ITS PUNISHMENT. This may be taken as n conviction more universal in its influence than religion itself. Yet it is not wholly reducible to experience. It is as truly rooted in faith as any othe1 axiom of the spiritual life. In order to reinforce it we have (1) what may be termed pi,ctorial illustrations of it. The traditions and histories of the world are full of these. Neoptolemus murdered at the altar, and at the altar he was murdered (' Pausanias,' iv. 17, 3); Phaleris roasted men in a brazen bull, and in like manner was lie himself punished (' Gesta Rom.,' xlviii. ). Bajazet carried about by Tamerlane in an iron cage, as he intended to have done Tamerlane. Cardinal Beaton, upon whom ,vishart's sufferings were avenged in a violent death, &c., &c. This affects the popular imagination more powerfully than any direct proof; and hence the crowd of real or fancied instances that have been recorded. It is in the light of this con- ception probably that Exod. xviii 11 is to be interpreted. (2) The principle reve11;ls itself in tlte hi-story of nations and individua/,s. Ishmael is the grand type of this. The story of the mutineers of the Bowity is still fresh in memory. And how many family records would show the family likeness of sins and their Nemesis, and the natural connection and development of the one from the other I In Judas tho betrayer it shines with tragic grandeur. (3) The confessions of sinners themselves strervJt,hen the beluf II. TUE JUSTICE OF Goo IS FAITHFUL AND EXACT. "When the Olympian," says Homer "does not speedily punish, he still does it fater '' (' Iliad,' iv. 160). 11 The ,A.lmigl{ty may not pwiish this week or next, my Lord Cardinal," said Anne of Austria to Richelieu, "but at the last be punishes." In the incidents of human life we seem to see links of an almost invisible chain connecting sin. with judgment, as cause with effect. And if in the few cases we know the punishment is so finely, even dramatic ally, adjusted, are we not justified in believing that beneath the surface there is even a finer and more inevitable equivalency observed? It is here too we have another evidence of the superior moral influence of the doctrine of providence as compn.rod l'lrith fate. Both are inevitable, but tl1e form~r rationally and rectorially so, OH, I. 1-7.] THE BOOK 01<' .roDGES. 7
III. BUT nr AWAl<ING REFLECTION AND REPENTANC,'E OUR PUNISHMENT MAY BECOME oun SALVATION, There is a gleam of something mor~ than fatalism in Adoni-bezek's confession. It is just possible thu.t it betrays an unfeigned repentance. The higher lnw of grace may step in to rescue us from th11 law of vengeance. Many a soul !ms dmwn back before 1.ho hideous vision of "sin when it bringeth forth."-M.