on returning God evil for good, and
ungratefully and basely presume on His patience and love to do the things
which He hates, what must you expect? God loves you, and you make that
an excuse for not loving Him; God does everything for you, and you make
that an excuse for doing nothing for God; God gives you health and
strength, and you make that an excuse for using your health and strength
just in the way He has forbidden. What can be more ungrateful? What can
be more foolish? Oh, my friends, if one of our children behaved to us in
return for our care and love a hundredth part as shamefully as most of us
behave to God our Father, what should we think of them? What should we
say of them?

Oh, beware, beware! God is a righteous God, strong and patient, and God
is provoked every day, and bears it according to His boundless love and
patience. But "if a man _will not_ turn," says the same text, "He will
whet His sword." And then--woe to the careless and ungrateful sinner.
God will cut him down and bring him low. God will take from him his
health, or his money, or his blind peace of mind; and by affliction after
affliction, and shame after shame, and disappointment after
disappointment, teach him that his youth, and his health, and his money,
and all that he has, are his Father's gifts and not his own property--and
that His Father will take them away from him, till he feels his own
weakness, till he sees that he is really not his own but God's property,
body and soul, and goes back to his heavenly Father and cries, "Father, I
have sinned against heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be
called Thy son. I have taken Thy gifts and gone away with them from Thy
house unto the far country of sin, and wasted them in riotous living,
till I have had to fill my belly with the husks which the swine did eat.
I have had no profit out of all my sins, of which I am now ashamed. I
have robbed Thee and abused Thy gifts and Thy love. Father, take me
back, for I have sinned, and am not worthy to be called Thy child."

XVIII. EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY WISDOM; OR, STOOP TO CONQUER.

"The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he
established the heavens."--PROV. iii. 19.

Did it ever strike you as a very remarkable and important thing, that
after saying in Proverbs iii. that Wisdom is this precious treasure, and
bidding his son seek for her because (verse 16) "Length of days is in her
right