nscribecl; tho ngont, e. prophet whom God honoured in a.ccomplisbing hiR high purpoRe for the bcnollt of hiR people. III. RF.TnlllU'l'ION THRF.A'l'P:NED, PuniRhment is slow, but ~ure. 1. Nr,twithetandin:z nil tbo warnings nnd instructions and remembrancers, Ephraim persi~ted in sin, rmd that of tho most/rovoking kind. Instead of good grapcR being produced in the hiuhJy favoured vineyar of the Lord, Ephraim's grapes were grapes of gall and cluRte~ of bHterness. Clod here speaks after the manner of men who are provoked by the ~oss misconduct and nff'ronts from their fellow-men, especially from those whom they have served e.nd benefited. In like manner, despite is said to be done to the Spirit of grace, and the Son of God put to an open shame. How dreadful this misconduct of man, a worm of the dust in relation to God, that infinite Spirit! 2. Ruin irremediable cannot fail to be the result. 'fhe ruin, too, is self-procured. So with sinners still : they he.ve themselves, not God, to blame; God will not hold them guiltless, yet the fault lies at their own door; their blood is on their own head; their life is forfeited, but it is their own doing; they are moral suicides. 3. Ephraim by iniquity and idolatry had brought dishonour on the Name and people of God. Sinners cause God's Name to be blasphemed; they bring reproach on our holy religion. This reproach must be rolled away; but it shall at the same time be rolled over or hack on those who have occasioned it. Those that bring contempt on religion shall have the finger of scorn and contempt pointed at themselves in the end; those that despise God shall be lightly esteemed; and those who bring reproach upon his cause shall have that reproach returned unto themselves even in this world, while in the eteme.l world they shall awake up to shame and everlasting contempt. APPLI0ATION. 1. Prosperity confirms sinners in their evil ways, and so their hearts are hardened and their consciences become seared. 2. "It is folly to call the riches of this world substance, for they are things that are not." 3. It is folly to attribute our richea to our own industry or ingenuity, as if we made ourselves rich, and as if it were the might and power of our own hand that gets us wealth. 4. It is folly to think our riches are our own, for ourselves, and that we may do what we like with our own. We are only stewards, and shall one day be called to give an account of our stewardship. 6. It is folly to boast of our riches as if they were a permanent possession, or as if they were evidence of peculiar merit in the possessor. 6. "It is folly to think that growing rich in a sinful way either doth make us innocent, or will make us safe, or may make us easy in that we.y ; for the prosperity of fools deceives and destroys them."
HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Oh. xi. 12-:xii. 6.-Jacob an ea:ample to his descendants. In this passage the prophet exposes the degeneracy of the Hebrew nation by contrasting their ungodly ways with those of their ancestor Jacob, and strives to win them back to the service of God by reminding them of the mercy e.nd grace of which that patriarch had been the recipient. I. THE DEGENERATE JACOB. (Oh. xi. 12, and xi. 1, 2.) The entire Israelitish people had proved unfaithful to Jehovah, It was especially so with: 1. Ephraim. The career of the ten tribes he.d been one of faithlessness e.nd falsehood. The whole life of the northern kingdom was a lie. Its people hnd renounced the Divine authority. They had lied to God by revolting from the dynasty of David; by rejecting the priesthood of the sons of Aaron; by worshipping the golden calves of Jeroboam; by abjuring Jehovah to do homage to Baal and Ashte.roth; by loosening the bonds of morality in their social life (eh. iv. 1-3); and by seeking help in times of national distress, at one period from Assyria and at another from Egypt (ver. 1). And yet all the while they claimed to be still the Lord's people, and boasted that Jacob had been their father. Ephraim's apostasy, Hosea says, brou"ht the people no satisfaction; it was like "feeding on wind." Their career of ~ational hypocrisy involved them in "desola- tion;" it proved as disastrous as for a caravan of travellers to "follow after" the simoom, which bears on its wings the hot poison of death. The degeneracy of the nation hnd also at Inst begun to affect: 2. Judah. Although the guilt of the southern kingdom we.a by no means so great as thRt of Ephraim, Yet. Judah was now following THE DOOR OF HOSEA. [CR, XIJ, 1-11,