;" so do we. They liked glitter and show, and the world's
fashions. "Give us a king like the nations," they said to Samuel; so
do we. They wished to be let alone; they liked ease; they liked their
own way; they disliked to make war against the natural impulses and
leanings of their own minds; they disliked to attend to the state of
their souls, to have to treat themselves as spiritually sick and
infirm, to watch, and rule, and chasten, and refrain, and change
themselves; and so do we. They disliked to think of God, and to
observe and attend His ordinances, and to reverence Him; they called it
a weariness to frequent His courts; and they found this or that false
worship more pleasant, satisfactory, congenial to their feelings, than
the service of the Judge of quick and dead; and so do we: and therefore
we disobey God as they did,--not that we have not miracles; for they
actually had them, and it made no difference. We act as they did,
though they had miracles, and we have not; because there is one cause
of it _common_ both to them and us--heartlessness in religious matters,
an evil heart of unbelief, both they and we disobey and disbelieve,
because we do not love.

But this is not all; in another respect we are really far more favoured
than they were, they had outward miracles, we too have miracles, but
they are not outward but inward. Ours are not miracles of evidence,
but of power and influence. They are secret, and more wonderful and
efficacious because secret. Their miracles were wrought upon external
nature; the sun stood still, and the sea parted. Ours are invisible,
and are exercised upon the soul. They consist in the sacraments, and
they just do that very thing which the Jewish miracles did not. They
really touch the heart, though we so often resist their influence. If
then we sin, as, alas! we do, if we do not love God more than the Jews
did, if we have no heart for those "good things which pass men's
understanding," we are not more excusable than they, but less so. For
the supernatural works which God showed to them were wrought outwardly,
not inwardly, and did not influence the will; they did but convey
warnings; but the supernatural works which He does towards us are in
the heart, and impart grace; and if we disobey, we are not disobeying
His command only, but resisting His presence.

This is our state; and perhaps so it is that, as the Israelites for
forty years hardened their hearts in the wil