be all adulterers—an assembly of treacherous men."" "Take ye heed every one of his neighbour, and trust ye not in any brother: for every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbour will walk with slanders: and they will deceive every one his neighbour, and will not speak the truth."'

The expostulation conveyed in the text, therefore, may be thus interpreted. 'Is there no hope of reformation remaining amongst my people—no remedy for their errors? Is there no preacher— no one, to remind them of the true spirit of their law ?—no one, who will interest himself for their return to righteousness? If there is actually no defect of warning—no scarcity of preachers; how is it, that they cannot be recovered from this miserable state of depravity V

This pointed question, He, who is here understood to propose it, has not dismissed without a decisive answer, from his own certain view and infallible knowledge. In a subsequent passage we find him thus resolving it: "Because they have forsaken the law which I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, neither walked

"Jer. ix. 2. 'Ibid. 4.5.

therein:"" and the same solution is given byIsaiah: "They have forsaken the Lord ; they have provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger."*

The Morals of this people, therefore, were abandoned, because they had first lost their sense of Religion. Neither had they the excuse of ignorance, or want of warning. From time to time, preachers, not only highly gifted, but miraculously authenticated, were commissioned to admonish and reclaim them: but they "believed not the report," and even persecuted those who delivered it. Thus was their case precisely one of those, in which the physician is at his post, the cause of disease ascertained, the remedy prescribed and provided: but, after all, the patient, having no faith in its efficacy, obstinately refuses the medicine, rudely repulses the friendly hand that presents it; and, in short, continues to be sick, because he will not suffer himself to be healed.

Throughout the history of the Israelites, every grosser period of prevailing profligacy may be traced either to their adoption of some false, religion, or to their corruption of the true one. The

.

"Jer. ix. 13. * Is. i. 4.

impurities, connected in many instances with profane worship, and indeed the very attributes of the Deities, to whom it was paid, had a direct and plain tendency to the destruction of good morals: and, amidst the outward profession of the true religion, the want of sincere faith and genuine piety would (more gradually, perhaps, but with a fatal certainty) obliterate all motives to right conduct, but the fear of immediate penalties.

To those, who are conversant with the prophets of Israel, it may seem superfluous to remark, that, even when idolatry was least prevalent in this people, they manifested a strong and perverse propensity to set the ceremonial part of their law above its moral injunctions; insomuch that not only at the coming of the Messiah, but many centuries before that event, they were accused of neglecting, on that principle, the most important duties of life. Thus their spiritual disease, founded in irreligion, and confirmed by long habits of sin, at length re-acted upon itself; rendering them daily more blind to their own morbid state, and more averse to the remedy: in other terms, less capable of returning to that belief in God, and to that just sense of his attributes, which alone could move them to serve him in spirit and in truth.

Does not this representation affect us Christians also? Are not our practices too analogous to theirs? Are we not addicted, like them, to boast of spiritual health, when, in fact, we are sorely diseased ;—to close our eyes against our most urgent wants; and, with equal folly and ingratitude, to slight and despise the vast benefits proposed to us? Would to God that we could shake off this charge!

Long have we possessed the true balm of Gilead; the inestimable cure for every spiritual evil. The great physician of souls, unknown to the more ancient Israelites, and rejected by their descendants, has not only seen and pitied our corrupted state, but gratuitously, and at his own heavy and bitter cost, provided for us this sovereign and universal remedy. To quit the allegorical language of the prophet, we are admitted, nay, invited, to the invaluable blessing of Redemption. To every soul is freely offered that full and comprehensive atonement for sin, through which we are no longer at enmity with God; but, without which, our whole race must have been delivered over to eternal death. Such was the compassion of our Lord and Saviour for our lost condition, that he submitted to purchase our salvation with his own blood upon the .cross: and no means has he omitted, to make us sensible of this benefit, and dispose us to accept it with grateful hearts. ...

The sacred volumes, laid open to our perusal, display at once the corruption of our nature, and the appointed means of regeneration and grace; nor does the Gospel set before us the terms of our salvation only, but the proof required, of our having willingly and sincerely embraced them: being nothing less, than a strenuous and unremitted endeavour to lead a Christian life. It abounds also with precepts (not a few of them from the mouth of our blessed Lord himself) for the excitement and guidance of our efforts to that end. The natural fruits of Christian faith, as there described to us, are—gratitude to God, for his unspeakable mercy; and, consequent upon that, a more exalted and constant sense of devotion;