great plea.sure-seekers have e.lwe.ys acknowledged that the end of all indnlgence is satiety. 'l'he cry of the sensualist is for" e. new/lea.sure;" but the cry is vain. New pleasures are not forthcoming. Sensualists trea the same weary rounrl over and over again, with less of satisfaction each time it is traversed, and with a growing feelinr; that they are slaves, compelled to grind perpetually on the same futile treadmill. Almost every passion dies out after a time. If any one remains, it is avarice, which reduces its victim to the most miserable condition possible. III. THE PLEASURES OF BIN SEPARATE FROM Go». If God is, as even the heathen acknowledged, the supreme good; and if man's highest good is, as some of them also allowed, communion with him,-then anything whatsoever that separates from him is weighted with a disadvantage which must necessarily overbalance all possible good that it can possess. Were the pleasures of sin ten thousand times greater than they are, and were they absolutely permanent, instead of being, as they are, fleeting and evanescent, the single fact, here mentioned by Isaiah (ver. 2), that they erect a barrier between man and God, should render them utterly unsatisfactory to a reasonable being. To be cut off from God is to be cut off from the source of all joy and peace aud happiness ; it is to be shut out from light, to lose contact with the Life which sustains all other life, and to be left to our own miserable selves for the remainder of our existence. Nothing could possibly be a compensation to man for such losses. Vers. 14, 15.-Truth the foundation of morality. Surprise is sometimes expressed at there being no distinct prohibition of all lying in the ten commandments. "False witness" alone is forbidden. But the reason may be that truth is assumed as too fundamentally necessary for any one to suppose that it could possibly be dispensed with. Similarly, piety is assumed as a duty in the commandments, where men are not bidden to worship God, but warned against worshipping more than one God, and against worshipping him in an improper way. Truth throughout Scripture appears as a quality assumed to be possessed by men, rather than as a virtue which they are to be exhorted to "put on." It lies, in fact, at the root of all real goodness. I. TRUTH LmB AT THE ROOT OF JUSTICE. The administration of justice consists primarily in a series of·efforts to find out the truth. There is al ways a question before the court, and the first question is one of fact, " Has the thing charged been done or no'!" What is the truth of the matter? When this has been decided, if decided on the affirmative side, then a second question arises, "What is the degree of the guilt?" It is essential for the judge to have the most earnest desire to discover the truth, and the highest power of eliciting the truth. Nor is this all. To every one concerned in a cause-whether prosecutor, defendant, witness, counsel, or attorney-the sole object ought to be the discovery of the truth. The importance of veracity in the witnesses is universally admitted; but veracity is really incumbent on all concerned. A prisoner who knows himself guilty would do best to confess his guilt. It is no real benefit to him to be acquitted unless he is innocent. 'l'ruth ought to govern all the utterances of counsel, who are not entitled to mnke any suggestions but such ns they think may be true. Chicanery, quibbles, special pleading, are unworthy of those who take part in the administration of justice and exercise whe.t is really a sacred function. The first requisite of all those who bear pa.rt in the solemn work of "doing justice" is that they should be "men of truth" (Exod. xviii. 21). II. TRUTH LIKS AT THE ROOT OF KINDNESS, The desire to be kind is independent of truth; but the moment that the desire has to pass into action, considerations of truth come in. Am I prompted to praise a person? But if I praise him when he is deserving of blame, I am doing him the greatest unkindness. If I even overpraise him when he deserves praise, I am doing him an unkindness to a certain extent--a.n unkindness and a wrong. I am helping him to content himself with a low standard of goodness. Again, suppose that I am prompted to relieve a person who appears to me poor and distressed. To decide aright whether I ought to relieve him at all, and, if so, to what extent, I require a true knowledge of his circumstances. I do him 11n injury if I e.llow him to impose upon me. I do him an injury if I repr6ss efforts that he would otherwise have me.de to help himself. In all the kindly acts that we seek to do to others there is always room for, and generally much need of, careful oonsideration of fe.cts, discovery of the exactly true state of the case, before we allow ourselves to follow our impulse., 890 THE DOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAtAB'. [011. LIX. 1-21.
Otherwise we may make great blunders, and, while striving to be kind, be guilty of many an unkindness. III. TRUTH LIES AT THE ROOT OF PU:TY. Piety is a feeling of love and reverence towards some being, or beings, whom we fed to be superior to ourselves, and believe to afford us help and protection. It is impossible to say that many of the heathen, many even of the grossest idolaters, were not, in a certain sense, pious. But for piety to attain it.s fu_ll proportions, and to be the virtue that it was intended to be, it needs to rest upon a basis of truth. We need to have true cunceptions of the nature of that whic:h is the object of our love and reverence. Until we conceive of that" eternal somethino- outside us that makes for righteousness" as One, as a Person, as the Creator of all things as omnipotent, as omniscient, as beneficent, and as perfectly good, we cannot have the feelings towards him that we ought to have, or worship him acceptably. 'l'rue piety is the worship of the true God. The votaries of false religions possess only a semblance of piety-a dwarfed and cramped, sometimes a distorted, imitation of it.