blood Jesus has opened up a way to
peace. He has come, but not "to swallow up and destroy." Blessed Lord,
He came to save, not to destroy. "O earth, earth, earth," cried the
prophet, "hear the word of the Lord;" and be it known to the world's
utmost bounds that God willeth not the death of the sinner, but
rather that he would turn to Him and live. With her flaming sword, red
with the blood of men and angels, Justice holds to us no other
language but that of Joab, "Deliver up your sins only, and I will
depart!" and, inspired of God with the wisdom that chooseth the better
part, and maketh wise unto salvation, let us say, "Better my sins die
than I; better Satan be cast, than Jesus be kept out of it; better
strike off the heads of a thousand sins that have lifted up their
hands against the King, than that I should fall--sparing my sins to
lose my soul!"

_PART V._

Ahab and Jezebel, two of the worst characters in sacred story, had a
son; and with such blood as theirs in his veins, no wonder that Joram,
on succeeding to the throne of one parent, exhibited the vices of
both. His mother does not seem to have had a drop of human-kindness in
her breast. Yet he was not altogether dead to humanity, as appears by
an incident which occurred during the siege that reduced his capital
to the direst extremities. The ghastly aspect of a famished woman who
throws herself in his way with a wild, impassioned, wailing cry of
"Help, my lord, O king!" touches him; and he asks, "What aileth thee?"
Stretching out a skinny arm to one pale and haggard as herself, she
replies, with hollow voice, "This woman said unto me, Give thy son,
that we may eat him to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow. So we
boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day,
Give thy son, that we may eat him; and she hath hid her son." Struck
with horror at the story, Joram rent his clothes. He had pity, but no
piety.

"Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will but revolt more and
more." Never were these words, never was the fact that unsanctified
afflictions have the same hardening effect on men which fire, that
melts gold, has on clay, more strikingly illustrated than on this
occasion. So far from rending his heart with his garment, and humbling
himself before the Lord, Joram flares up into fiercer rebellion; and
turning from these victims of the famine to his courtiers, he grinds
his teeth to profane God's name and vow vengeance on hi