er into
judgment with you quickly, and all the more quickly because he loves
you. Because there is some right in you--because you are on the
whole on the right road--the Lord will visit you with disappointment
and affliction, and make your own sins your punishment.

If you deceive other people, other people shall deceive you, as they
did Jacob. If you lay traps, you shall fall into them yourselves,
as Jacob did. If you fancy that because you trust in God, God will
overlook any sin in you, as Jacob did, you shall see, as Jacob did,
that your sin shall surely find you out. The Lord will be more
sharp and severe with you than with Esau. And why? Because he has
given you more, and requires more of you; and therefore he will
chastise you, and sift you like wheat, till he has parted the wheat
from the tares. The wheat is your faith, your belief that if you
trust in God he will prosper you, body and soul. That is God's good
seed, which he has sown in you. The tares are your fancies that you
may do wrong and mean things to help yourselves, because God has an
especial favour for you. That is the devil's sowing, which God will
burn out of you by the fire of affliction, as he did out of Jacob,
and keep your faith safe, as good seed in his garner, for the use of
your children after you, that you may teach them to walk in God's
commandments and serve him in spirit and in truth. For God is a God
of truth, and no liar shall stand in his sight, let him be never so
religious; he requires truth in the inward parts, and truth he will
have; and whom he loves he will chasten, as he chastened Jacob of
old, till he has made him understand that honesty is the best
policy; and that whatever false prophets may tell you, there is not
one law for the believer and another for the unbeliever; but
whatsoever a man sows, that shall he reap, and receive the due
reward of the deeds done in the body, whether they be good or evil.

SERMON VII. JOSEPH

(Preached on the Sunday before the Wedding of the Prince of Wales.
March 8th, third Sunday in Lent.)

GENESIS xxxix. 9. How can I do this great wickedness, and sin
against God?

The story of Joseph is one which will go home to all healthy hearts.
Every child can understand, every child can feel with it. It is a
story for all men and all times. Even if it had not been true, and
not real fact, but a romance of man's invention, it would have been
loved and admired by men; far more