cised, that man may be saved—if by love and tender expostulation, all the better; if by terror and threatening in the first instance, it is soon seen that this is the means best adapted to reach the sinner, and that "God moves in a mysterious way," to recover, if possible, even by fire and apparent threatening. His lost child. The covenant of the Lord with man is one in which the creature is the only gainer. Nothing is so destructive to the impure pleasures of the evil man as the spiritual truth of the Lord's holy Word; and this Word is indeed the Sword of the Spirit—and hence the wicked strive continually to destroy it. And yet nothing will do the creature more good, and nothing can more strongly evince the divine love of the Lord, than that this sword should come upon him; for it may be, if the sword pierce him, or if the truth discover to him his inward state, he will tremble at the disclosure, and repent; and then, what a blessed discovery will it have opened up for the man! The sword of the Lord is quick and powerful, but it never wounds, except to heal and save us.
If, however, man fights against the Lord, opposes the Word of Truth, stifles conviction, refuses in his own obduracy the only means of safety, the Word itself will condemn him when he enters the eternal world; for the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, will avenge the quarrel of His covenant.
There is no man in the love and practice of evil but that seeks to entrench himself with a show of reason that he is right, and his arguments, or opinions, are to him the stronghold of his city. The scoffer at things sacred and divine dwells in the city of his own scepticism, and its walls are built of the brick of self-
