we are
safe: but these people--these idolaters, these drunkards, these
covetous, tyrannous, profligate people round, to whom we preach, and
who know not the law--they are accursed.' If they had, they would
have said just what the Pharisees said afterwards. And what came of
their saying so? Instead of knowing the Lord Christ, when he came
they crucified him, showing that they were really worse at heart
than the ignorant common people, instead of better.

No, my friends, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Daniel, were, better men
than those round them, just because they had the humble and contrite
heart; because they confessed that the root of sin was in them too,
as much as in their fellow-country men; because they took their
share of the public blame, their share of the public burden.

And their work and wish was, to breed in their fellow-countrymen the
same humble and contrite heart which they had; to make them confess
that their only hope lay in turning back to God, and doing right.
But they could not succeed. Sin was too strong for them. So as
Isaiah had warned the Jews, God did the work himself. God took the
matter into his own hands, and arose out of his place to punish
those Jews, and to make short work with them, by famine, and
pestilence, and earthquake, and foreign invasion, till they were all
carried away captive to Babylon: to see if that would teach them to
know that God was the Lord; to see if that would breed in them the
humble and contrite heart.

But God says to these poor Jews, Do not fancy that I have taken a
spite against you. Not so. I will not contend for ever. I will
not be always angry; for then the spirit would fail before me, and
the souls which I have made. I have made you, God says; and I love
you. I wish to save you, and not to destroy you. If God really
hated any man, do you suppose that he would endure that man for a
moment in his universe? Do you suppose that he would not sweep that
man away, as easily and as quickly as we do a buzzing gnat when it
torments us? Do you fancy that God lets you, or me, or any man, or
any creature live one single instant, except in the hope of saving
him, and of making him better than he is; of making him of some use,
somewhere, some day or other? Do you suppose, I say, that God
endures sinners one moment, save because he loves sinners, and
willeth not the death of a sinner, but that he should be converted
and live? No. 'God our Saviour,' says St