's lips a more sharply-pointed accusation, and a solemner warning
that none should 'deal treacherously against the wife of his youth,'
'for I hate putting away, saith the Lord.' We may dismiss any further
reference to the circumstances of the text, and regard it as but one
instance of man's way of treating the voice of God when it warns of the
consequences of the sin of man. Looked at from such a point of view the
words of our text bring before us God's merciful threatenings and man's
incredulous rejection of them.

I. God's merciful threatenings.

The fact of sin affects God's relation to and dealings with the sinner.
It does not prevent the flowing forth of His love, which is not drawn
out by anything in us, but wells up from the depths of His being, like
the Jordan from its source at Dan, a broad stream gushing forth from
the rock. But that love which is the outgoing of perfect moral purity
must necessarily become perfect opposition to its own opposite in the
sinfulness of man. The divine character is many-sided, and whilst 'to
the pure' it 'shows itself pure,' it cannot but be that 'to the froward'
it 'will show itself froward.' Man's sin has for its most certain and
dreadful consequence that, if we may so say, it forces God to present
the stern side of His nature which hates evil. But not merely does sin
thus modify the fact of the divine relation to men, but it throws men
into opposition in which they can see only the darkness which dwells in
the light of God. To the eye looking through a red tinted medium all
things are red, and even the crystal sea before the throne is 'a sea of
glass mingled with fire.'

No sin can stay our reception of a multitude of good gifts appealing to
our hearts and revealing the patient love of our Father in heaven, but
every sin draws after it as certainly as the shadow follows the
substance, evil consequences which work themselves out on the large
scale in nations and communities, and in the smaller spheres of
individual life. And surely it is the voice of love and not of anger
that comes to warn us of the death which is the wages of sin. It is not
God who has ordained that 'the soul that sinneth it shall die,' but it
is God who tells us so. The train is rushing full steam ahead to the
broken bridge, and will crash down the gulph and be huddled, a hideous
ruin, on the rocks; surely it is care for life that holds out the red
flag of danger, and surely God is not to be blamed if in sp