number many go forward, and taking pity on their own souls, are turned with great earnestness to do things pleasing unto God. For not all by reason of the longsuffering of God treasure up unto themselves wrath in the day of wrath, of His righteous judgment; but many this same longsuffering of the Almighty leads to most wholesome sorrow of repentance." At such time the Collect well befits us, "That we, being not like children, carried away with every blast of vain doctrine, may be established in the truth of Thy holy Gospel." Let none rejoice in their hearts that they at least have escaped this furnace; that they have cast off the restraint which the vows of God lay upon those who are bound in them: for though they escape the furnace, they thereby shut themselves out of the city of God, and little joy have they to have refused the furnace through which God brings His own dear children; for there is yet another furnace, of which to speak is to speak with shuddering, a furnace from which they cannot escape, of which it is said, He shall cast them into the furnace. Perhaps you were once under the constraint of these vows, but you have thrown them off, and cast them from you, and you are glad of your freedom. "They come in no misfortune like other folk; neither are they plagued like other men. And this is the cause that they are so holden with pride, and overwhelmed with cruelty."* Let me pray you to reconsider the broken vow, the forfeited blessing, as it is said in this chapter, "Turn ye unto Him from whom the children of Israel have deeply revolted." "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." * Psalm lxxiii. 5, 6 (Prayer-Book Version). You cannot bear the searching words of a man, a fellow-sinner, how shall you endure the strict search and scrutiny of Him whose eyes are as a flame of fire ? Would that you might yet feel how infinitely the promised blessings outweigh the light bondage of the yoke! "Thy vows are upon me, O God: I will render praises unto Thee. For Thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not Thou deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living ?"* *Psalm lvi. 12, 13. 44 XXII. God's Thorn-hedges, and their Gracious Purposes. HOSEA ii. 6, 7. Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths. And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them: then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now." GOD OD'S way is a way that goes on broadening and brightening unto the end. The world's way, on the other hand, goes on darkening and narrowing, till, at length, those that will persist in walking in it find the truth of God's warning, "His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins."* And the whole Book of Hosea is like a map upon which these two roads are sketched out for us, that we may see what marks distinguish these two roads, what countries they lead us through, what company we may expect to meet with in them, what directions they take, and what their end is. Or we may look at the Book of Hosea in another light, and call it the opening of God's heart to the backsliding, the yearning of His soul after the wandering and lost. There are stabs in it as with a sharp knife, which cut the sinner's heart to the quick, yet none can tell (but those who study it thoughtfully *Prov. v. 22. pro for themselves) what words of healing and comfort there are in it, what soothing balms are shed from God's own lips on the souls which His reproofs have wounded. The whole people of the Jews are spoken of in this chapter under the image of an adulteress. Israel's departures and backslidings from God, her revoltings and rebellions, were in His sight as whoredoms from Him: "Which covenant they brake, though I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord." Thus had the Lord by another prophet remonstrated with them, signifying that not in name only was He their husband, but in truth and faithfulness, in tenderness and forbearance, in confidential converse and rich vision. He had done all a husband's part toward them, yet they had done shamefully in playing the harlot against Him; they had slidden back with a perpetual backsliding. Such was the nation and church as a whole; yet there was, and would be, the Lord declares, “a remnant according to the election of grace." There was, and would be, a part of the Jewish Church sound and faithful, true-hearted and whole in their allegiance. And this remnant that continued sound when the great mass was rotten at the core, is set forth under the image of the two daughters, Ammi and Ruhamah; Ammi, signifying my people; Ruhamah, she that hath obtained mercy: and these two were to be God's witnesses; they were to plead with degenerate and faithless Israel: "Plead with your mother, plead; for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband." And the Lord is pleased to instruct His people in the text and in the verses that ollow it, in some of the methods He would employ in restoring Israel from her backslidings. The loving Jer. xxxi. 32. + Rom. xi. 5. Hosea ii. 1, 2. * 66 skilfulness with which He would allure her would fix her wavering, unsteady heart, and reunite her scattered affections in Himself, the true source of her satisfaction and peace and joy. The instruction which the text contains may be divided into three heads. (a) The shamefulness of the soul's departure from God. (b) That God causes the soul to find great bitterness in it. (c) The sweetness that comes of that bitterness. May the Lord the Spirit be pleased to make use of the text to recall us, if we have wandered, and to bind us in firmer and more inseparable bonds to Himself and His blessed service! Israel in her declension and estrangement of heart from God is likened to one who has left her first husband and followed after her lovers. The text implies, too, an utter abandonment of heart to these new and unlawful objects of attachment; an infatuated, deliberate, reckless determination to follow on and on in her career of faithlessness and treachery; to heed no remonstrances, and take no counsel. Regardless of the love of her first betrothals, the sacredness of her espousals, she will snatch, at all hazards, at the shortlived fruits of present gratification. The greatness and goodness and kindness of her Lord is forgotten ; she thinks to slake the parched, fevered thirst of her soul by drinking the "stolen waters" of worldly and carnal delight; and that though in her very home, and ready to spring up within her very heart, is the fountain of living waters. It is not so much the guilt, then, as the shamefulness of Israel's departure from her God, which is dwelt on |