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ting against a Wisdom that seems some times to hesitate and fail; but never is that Wisdom more profound than in the moments of seeming perplexity, and if we yield to flattering hopes of victory, our final overthrow will only be the more complete and irreparable for these protractions of the conflict. In contending with God we are warring with a Power that ever and anon seems baffled and beaten; it seems to retreat, it allows us to win skirmishes here and there—only the more conspicu ously to crush us in the decisive battle, if we persist to fight it out to the bitter end. In contending with God we are provoking a Justice which sometimes seems incapable of asserting itself; but inveterate perversity discovers in the event that all such hesita tions and delays were the whettings of a sword which needs not to smite twice. Slowly, it may be, but surely, do w(e ripen for judgment; ánd when once ripe, how little a thing is necessary to precipitate the calamity! When our health has fallen away to a certain point, a breath of bad air will throw us unto a fever, the prick of a pin poison our blood, a sudden emotion stop our heart for ever. So we ripen for judgment, and when the moment comes, which God only knows, the sinner, appar ently triumphant, falls a ready victim to the wounded man. As the Hindoos say, “When men are ripe for slaughter, even straws turn into thunderbolts.” MERCY IS A FACT 4. Let us improve the gracious respite. How different the issue would have been if Zedekiah and his people had listened to Jeremiah, and humbled themselves before God for their unrighteousness! We, too, amid deserved judgments, are granted kind reprieves; let us heartily avail ourselves of them. Many rebel altogether against the doctrine of grace, sternly insisting on inexorable law, justice, retribution; they utterly reprobate the ideas of repentance, forgiveness, and salvation. But mercy is a fact as much as justice is .' Within that great system of severities we call nature there are ameliorative arrangements soften-
on English Literature.] But the fact is, that what Milton pictures in Satan we see every day in men around us; we find it in ourselves. It appears strange, when we are suddenly called upon to contemplate it in poetic beings, that they should array themselves against Omnipotence, but it is what we ourselves are doing constantly; the difficulty of comprehending an angel who enters on a conflict with God can hardly be insurmountable to that humanity which perpetually wages a similar conflict with Him. It may to pure thought and logic be contradictory to know God and yet attempt rivalry with Him, but it is a sad fact to which there is abundant evidence outside pandemonium, and we are com pelled to regard the contradictory idea as part of the mystery of iniquity. Men do enter into conflict with the laws of the world; they marshal their petty forces against the constellations; they set at defiance the profound arrangements of nature, society, and mind, and fancy that by some chance or other they will strew the firmament with ruin and plant their throne above the stars. As we say, it is the mystery of iniquity that creatures can be the victims of such a mighty illusion. But the truth is, man has a vast power of self-deception, he has always at hand a variety of sophistries, and so he persuades himself that he may with advantage chal lenge Eternal Wisdom, Justice, and Power. And one of the causes of his sad blindness is found in his misinterpretation of those pauses which occur in the government of God. “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” Brethren, let us not thus misconstrue the order of events and the delay of justice. “Deceive not your selves, saying, The Chaldeans shall surely depart from u s : for they shall not depart. For though ye had smitten the whole army of the Chaldeans, . . . yet should they rise up every man in his tent, and burn this city with fire.” Final success in evil is impos sible. In contending with God we are plot
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