"restore your souls and lead you in," etc. But first, as when Hezekiah cleansed the temple, you must cast c,ut the manifold uncleanness that is there. '!'here must be a thorough purging, a real repentance. God will not come back to a sin-inhabited and evil-loving soul. You must "throughly amend your ways." This is indispensable. See how in.this chaprer and throughout his Word God insists upon this. And then, as the high priest was wont to do, come bearing the blood of atonement into the presence of God; come, that. is, plead mg the Name of Jesus for acceptance and pardon and restoration,-and you shall behold, in the shrine of your soul, the cloud of glory once again shining there and the presence of God a-":i.in manifested there. Thus come day by day, and you shall find how Christ saves "to the uttermost all that," etc. But are you of those whom God is now forsaking? Is the dread process of crowding out God by the bringing into the shrine of yonr heart those many things God hates and with which he will not abide, going ou in you? Ah !;that may be so. .As others, so you were once the temple of the Holy Ghost, and perhaps there came a day when more than ever you welcomed him as your Ruler, because hb ·1iad taken of the things of Christ and had shown them unto you. You made your open confession and avowal of your desire to be ruled and governed by him; yon pledged yourself by his help to be Christ's faithful servant always. And for a time you were so: you were careful, conscientious; you remembered your Lord's word, "Watch and pray ; " you readily abandoned all that stood between you and the doing of his will ; you walked with God. But a change has come over you. One by one yon received into your heart likings, and desires, and beliefs, and dispositions which were contrary to the Spirit of Christ. These suggestions you listened to, their counsels you obeyed. .And so the love of the world fastened on you, propensities and habits which war against the sou1 took hold of you, and now you, whose heart was once a shrine of God, will, if the sad process I have spoken of goes on much longer, be forsaken of him altogether. Oh that the consideration of the doom of Shiloh may fill us with a holy fear, and lead us to such prayer as that which the well-known verse expresses!-
" Search me, 0 Lord, and try my heart, For thou thnt heart C!l.nst see, .And tum each cursed idol out That dares to rival thee."
But some of you are to be congratulated that you are still temples of God, still shrines of the Holy Ghost. Well, then, cherish his presence as the greatest joy of your life. For" he is your life." You would not invite to meet and abide with a dear and honoured earthly friend those with whom you well knew he had no sympathy nor they with him, who were distasteful and hostile to him. You would not treat an earthly friend so. Be careful, then, not so to treat the Spirit of God, who now dwells within you. Be full of solicitude not to grieve him, yet more to do nought that would drive him from 7ou. "Walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." So shall God dwell in you and yon in God, and that more and more to your ever-increasing strength and purity and joy. Thll.8 thouah, as we have now done, you may go in devout thought to Shiloh, and behold what God has done there, yet you shall be able with thankful joy to know that never, never shaJ.\. you be as that God-forsaken shrine.-0. Vers. 1~16.-The Divine long-suffering worn out. The above section brings before us, as do many other Scriptures, this very certain and very serious truth of God's patience being not only exhaustible, but exhausted. We observe- !. THE DIVINE LONG-BUFFERING I8 A VEBY PBEOIOUB FA.OT. Nations, Churches, indi- viduals-have not we ourselves ?-have been examples of it. What have not all of us owed to the fact that the Lord is long-suffering, and "willeth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should turn," etc. ? But-- II. THIS TBUTil HAB VERY OFTEN BEEN MUCH ABUSED, 1. In men's thoughts; for they have allowed themselves to pervert the truth of the" eternal hope," and to think that in no way can the finite will of man exhaust the infinitude of mercy whic_h there is in God. 2. And in their words also they have so set forth the long-suffermg of God as to leave on men's minds the impression that it was practically infinite, We love to ting such Yere-es as those which tell how oa. vn. 1-34.) THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET JEREMIAH. 205
"None oan measure out thy patience By the span of human thought, None can bound the tender mercies Which thy holy Son bath wrought."