ite of the
flag full speed is kept up and the crash comes.

The miseries and sufferings which follow our sins are self-inflicted,
and for the most part automatic. 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that'--and
not some other crop--'will he also reap.' The wages of sin are paid in
ready money; and it is as just to lay them at God's door as it would be
to charge Him with inflicting the disease which the dissolute man brings
upon himself. It is no arbitrary appointment of God's that 'he that
soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption'; nor is it His
will acting as that of a jealous despot which makes it inevitably true
that here and hereafter, 'Every transgression and disobedience shall
receive its just recompense of reward,' and that to be parted from Him
is death.

If then we rightly understand the connection between sin and suffering,
and the fact that the sorrows which are but the echoes of preceding sins
have all a distinctly moral and restorative purpose, we are prepared
rightly to estimate how tenderly the God who warns us against our sins
by what men call threatenings loves us while He speaks.

II. Man's rejection of God's merciful threatenings.

It is the great mystery and tragedy of life that men oppose themselves
to God's merciful warnings that all sin is a bitter, because it is an
evil, thing. He has to lament, 'I have smitten your children, and they
have received no correction.' The question 'Wherefore?' is asked in very
various tones, but none of them has in it the accent of true conviction;
and there is a whole world of difference between the lowly petition,
'Show me wherefore Thou contendest with me,' and the curt,
self-complacent brushing aside of God's merciful threatenings in the
text. The last thing which most of us think of as the cause of our
misfortunes is ourselves; and we resent as almost an insult the word,
which if we were wise, we should welcome as the crowning proof of the
seeking love of our Father in heaven. We are more obstinate and foolish
than Balaam, who persisted in his purpose when the angel with the drawn
sword in his hand would have barred his way, not to the tree of life,
but to death. The awful mystery that a human will can, and the yet
sadder mystery that it does, set itself against the divine, is never
more unintelligible, never so stupid, and never so tragic as when God
says, 'Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die?' and we say, 'Why need I die?
I will not turn.'

The 'Wherefo