?' (ii.
14). And even the gracious invitation, 'Return unto Me, and I will
return unto you,' evokes not penitence, but the stiff-necked reply,
'Wherein shall we return?' (iii. 7). In this sermon we may deal with the
first of these three cases, and consider, God's Indictment, and man's
plea of 'Not guilty.'

I. God's Indictment.

The precise nature of the charge is to be carefully considered. The Name
is the sum of the revealed character, and that Name has been despised.
The charge is not that it has been blasphemed, but that it has been
neglected, or under-estimated, or cared little about. The pollution of
the table of the Lord is the overt act by which the attitude of mind and
heart expressed in despising His Name is manifested; but the overt act
is secondary and not primary--a symptom of a deeper-lying disease. And
herein our Prophet is true to the whole tenor of the Old Testament
teaching, which draws its indictment against men primarily in regard to
their attitude, and only as a manifestation of that, to their acts. The
same deed may be, if estimated in relation to human law, a crime: if
estimated in relation to godless ethics, a wrong; and if estimated in
the only right way, namely, the attitude towards God which it reveals, a
sin. 'The despising of His Name' may be taken as the very definition of
sin. It is usual with men to-day to say that 'Sin is selfishness'; but
that statement does not go deep enough unless it be recognised that
self-regard only becomes sin when it rears its puny self in opposition
to, or in disregard of, the plain will of God. The 'New Theology,' of
course, minimises, even where it does not, as it to be consistent
should, deny the possibility of sin: for, if God is all and all is God,
there can be no opposition, there can be no divine will to be opposed,
and no human will to oppose it. But the fact of sin certified by men's
own consciences is the rock on which Pantheism must always strike and
sink. A superficial view of human history and of human nature may try to
explain away the fact of sin by shallow talk about 'heredity' and
'environment,' or about 'ignorance' and 'mistakes'; but after all such
euphemistic attempts to rechristen the ugly thing by beguiling names,
the fact remains, and conscience bears sometimes unwilling witness to
its existence, that men do set their own inclinations against God's
commands, and that there is in them that which is 'not subject to the
law of God, neither