"The clergy, when wicked, e.re the worst of all men; none so cruel and bloody." It is time for the people to be taught that e. pulpit is not necessarily a Christian or a useful thing. It ml\y be-ale.a I it sometime~ is-the corruptest ancl the most pernicious thing in the neighbourhood in which it has a place. A man is not a saint because he calls himself a Christian; e. building is not the "house of God" because it is called a church, a c)iapel, or e. tabernacle; e. forum is not sacred to the utterance of gospel truth because it is called e. pulpit. Things called "sermons" may sometimes have more wickedness in them than infidel tracts ; places called the "houses of God" may some- times serve more effectually the cause of the devil than the theatres of pleasure-seekers or lecture-balls of ftceptics. Mere names must not rule our judgment. It is the policy of the devil in these days to baptize his instr.uments with Christian titles. He is never more powerful than when he occupies the sacred desk, writes religious books, and quotes the Word of God. There are wolves in sheep's clothing, and Wl!8 prophets now as ever.-D. T. Ver. 11.-NaturaZness of retri'bution. "Also, 0 Judah, he bath set a:i harvest for thee." Dr. Henderson ends the chapter with this clause and begins the nexc chapter with the latter clause of this verse. Some regard the harvest here as used in e. good sense, as pointing to the ingathering of the people of God. But such a view i~ scarcely admissible. It evidently refers to punishment, and some suppose to that terrible punishment that fell on Judah as recorded in 2 Cbron. xxvi. 6-!1. Divin" punishment for sin is elsewhere spoken of as a harvest: "Put ye in the sickle, fur th" harvest is ripe:· come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great." "Another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, 'l'hrust in thy sickle, and reap : for the time is com" for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe." '.l.'he imagery suggests- I. That retribution is natural in its SEASON. There are the "appointed weeks of harvest." These weeks come round with an undeviating regularity, and they corn" because the immutable One has decreed their advent. "Seed-time and harvest shall not fail." Punishment comes to the sinner naturally, so far as the proper time is con- cerned. In this life the sinner has many harvests. Every transgres.~ion is a seed, and the seed sometimes grows rapidly and ripens fast. In truth, to some extent man reaps to-day morally what he sowed yesterday; not the whole crop, it is true, for every sin is awfully prolific, but some portion. The law of memory, babit, causation, render this constant reaping inevitable. No man ce.n do a wrong thing anywhere or anywhen, withoui its bringing to him sooner or later a harvest, even in this life. But in the after-world there is a full and complete harvest. .All the sins committed are there ripened into crops of corresponding miseries. Yonder is the harvest; there .is the reaping-reaping-reap- ing, and little else than reaping for ever. The wicked there reap "the fruit of th~ir own doings." · II. That retribution is natural in its RESULTS. In harvest, the man reaps the kind of seed he has sown, whatever it may be, barley or wheat. .Also as a rule the amount. 1f he he.s sown sparingly, he reaps sparingly; if witb abundance, he will reap abundantly. He gets what he wrought for. It is just so in the retributive ministry of God. "What- soever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." The cheat shall be cheated, the oppressor shall be oppressed, the malicious shall be hated. "·with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." The sinner in every pang of suffering will recognize the fruit of some sinful act of his. He will feel evermore that his misery has grown out of such a sin, and this out of that, e.nd so on. Hence he will never be able to blame either God or his creation for his wretched destiny; he reaps " the fruit of his own doings." III. That retribution is natural in its APPROACH. As soon as the seed is sown and germination begins, it proceeds slowly and silently from day to day, week to week, and month to month, towards maturition, its harvest state. 1t is just so with sin; iG proceeds naturally to work out its results. "Lust, when it is conceived, bringeth forth sin; sin, when it is finished, brinaeth forth death." Punishment for sin does not require the positive and direct interposition of eternal justice; it comes-comes as the harvest comes--comes by the established laws of the moral universt'. In truth, sin is 111ore certain to ripen thnn the seed of the husbandruan. U ogenia.l soil, foul weather, ;nipping frosts, scorching rays, destructive insects, may destroy the seed in tht" ground, me THE BOOK OF HOSEA. [OB. 'ff, 1---11.
so that it may never spring even to blade. But ~iu, unless uprooted by God's redcmµ- t1ve hand, cannot be destroyed, must grow, and ripen into a harvest of misery. "Be sure your sins will find you out."