The bulk of men persist in thinking of God as if he were such a One as themselves. Rejecting the revelation of God's nature contained in Scripture, they conceive of him as a man greatly magnified the infirmities of man magnified, as well as his virtues. They know the proneness of man to threaten and not to perform; hence they conclude that the judgments of God, because delayed, will evaporate in empty words. God will not be hastened. Proportionate to his immeasurable power is his immeasurable patience. Nevertheless, equitable justice will be meted out. The wrath accumulates as in a thundercloud, until it is overburdened, and the storm all the more violently breaks forth. Never yet in the history of men has God failed to vindicate his righteousness. Never yet has the transgressor escaped, and never will he. As surely as the sun shines, vengeance wilt come.

I. RETRIBUTION, THOUGH APPARENTLY TARDY, HAS ITS OWN SET TIME. For the most part it is not according to human expectation. "God seeth not as man seeth." A thousand things enter into God's calculation which do not enter into man's reckoning. The clock of heaven does not measure days and years; it measures events and necessities. The well being of other races has to be pondered beside the race of men. Very often the doom of the ungodly is a fixed and irreversible fact long before that doom is felt and endured. From that moment gracious help is withdrawn, and the doomed man becomes the victim of his folly. To God's eye, the end is seen long before it is seen by man. While he is yet promising himself much delight, lo! by an invisible thread the sword is suspended over his head.

II. RETRIBUTION IS NOT A HAPHAZARD ACCIDENT. It is the outcome of infallible wisdom and righteous deliberation. The Supreme Ruler of heaven says, "I send." As nothing is too great for his management, so nothing is too minute to engage his notice. He who nourishes myriads of myriads of blades of grass, and clothes the hills with majestic forests, counts every hair of our heads. Too often men are so stunned with the blow of retribution that they count themselves only the victims of a great catastrophe, and look on every side for sympathy. But when conscience awakes, and connects the calamity with previous sin, then at length - too late to avert the crushing evil - they confess that it is "the Lord that smiteth." "God is not mocked." The seed we sow today will bear its proper fruit tomorrow.

III. RETRIBUTION FROM GOD IS MOST EQUITABLE. There are no scales so delicately true as those in the bands of God. The judgment is precisely" according to thy ways." It is exact "recompense for all thine abominations." Often men are so blinded by the deceitfulness of sin that they do not perceive this. But when the transient pleasure of sin has ceased, men awake to the fact that the retribution is well deserved. This will be the keenest sting of the suffering - that it is a just desert. If men could only persuade themselves that they were unjustly treated, it would be an alleviation of the woe - it would be a sweet consolation in their misery. But such alleviation is denied them. Their own consciences will confirm the sentence, an l out of the dark abyss the cry will rise, "Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints."

IV. RETRIBUTION, IS CLEARLY FORESEEN BY THE RIGHTEOUS. The unbeliever has no eye with which to see the kingdom of God. The organ of vision he has first blinded, then destroyed. So, too, he is blind to the significance of passing events. He does not perceive the moral aspect of things - does not see that God's hand is behind the smoke and din of war. But the man of God has learnt to see God in everything. In all the sunshine of life he sees God, whose presence gives a brighter lustre to all earthly joy. And in all the adversities of life he learns to see the rod and the hand that wields it. Standing by the side of God, and in full sympathy with him, Ezekiel saw clearly every minute detail of the retribution that was preparing, and, until the latest moment, implored them to escape. But he foresaw also that they would delude themselves to the very last - would buoy themselves with false hopes.

V. RETRIBUTION, WHEN IT COMES, IS MOST COMPLETE. On every side there is bitter disappointment. The earthly props on which men were wont to rely, fail them. All the bonds of society relax and dissolve. To resist invasion the summoning trumpet is blown; but, alas! none respond. Anarchy is everywhere. The day itself becomes night, and every fount of joy is poisoned. Amid previous corrections and afflictions there were many forms of gracious compensation - silver linings on the black cloud. But no relief comes now. There is defeat and disaster on every side. Weeping endures through a long night, without any prospect of joy in the morning. It is darkness without a beam of light, despair without a vestige of hope. Not even shall there be the sweet relief of tears; for the hearts of men have been rendered insensible by the cursed power of sin. They are at length "past feeling" - incapable of repentance. "Neither shall there be any wailing for them." it is abasement the most profound. The first has become the last.

VI. THIS RETRIBUTION IS THE NATURAL FRUITAGE OF SIN. Our wise and gracious God has constructed his universe on this principle, that every form of rebellion shall bear in itself the seed of penalty. The pivot on which everything turns is righteousness. There is no occasion for God to issue any code of penalties commensurate with acts of transgression. Sin and punishment are one and the selfsame thing. Retribution is simply full-grown sin. It is often sweet in the bud, but the ripened fruit is bitterness absolute. As gunpowder is, in its nature, explosive, so that it is madness to set alight to it and expect it not to explode; so sin is, in its very nature, destructive, and can lead to nothing else than destruction. Love cements and unites; transgression dissolves and separates. And separation from God is ruin. Where God is, there is life; where God is not, there is death. Where God is, there is heaven; where God is not, there is blackest hell. - D.

Now the Jews recovered from all their former captivities; but from this one they never can recover. Where is their tribal register now? My object, therefore, will be to set before you a fourfold contrast between the covenant that is passed away and the covenant that shall not pass away.

1. The first contrast I notice is the passing away of the Jewish land, and the sure continuation of a better land in its place. In the second verse of this same chapter where our text is it saith, "An end, the end"; — that is a remarkable form of speech — "An end, the end," — the ultimate end, as it means, the final end — "is come upon the four corners of the land." Let us then see what we have to put in the place thereof, after just observing that that land was to pass away by violence, by war, famine, and pestilence, and everything that was awful. Now we go to the 60th of Isaiah, and we get something to put in the place thereof. There is a land of which it is written, "Violence shall no more be heard in thee," etc. And what land is this? Why, the land spoken of in the 1st chapter of the First Epistle of Peter, — "an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away." Here, then, by Jesus Christ, we have a land into which no violence can come. No sin can defile the Saviour, and no sin can defile the people as they stand in Christ, and no sin can defile that heavenly land into which He hath entered. There is therefore no violence. "Violence shall no more be heard in thee." Jesus is not crucified there, but glorified; the people are not persecuted and hated there, but universally loved. The people have no pain, no sorrow, no sigh, no tear there. And this blessedness, in place of the old land, is by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And now mark, — "Thou shalt call thy walls salvation"; that is, "salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks"; so that God will take care of you as a citizen by salvation; He is round about you by the perfect work of Jesus Christ. Can you think of a position so lovely as this?

2. The second contrast I give is that in ver. 11 — "Violence is risen up into a rod of wickedness; none of them shall remain," etc. Here is a positive declaration. Now go to the Saviour's day, and see how literally this is fulfilled. Was not the government of the Pharisees, as described in the 23rd of Matthew, a sceptre or rod of wickedness? They must be taken away, and taken away forever. Now let us look at the contrast to this. Let us come to the new covenant, and hear what is said there. In the new covenant the Lord speaketh thus: — "For as the new heavens" — meaning the Christian economy of eternal salvation "and the new earth" — meaning in substance the same thing — "which I will make" — and which were made when Christ was on the earth, for when Christ was on the earth He made, as it were, a new earth; that is, He established a new life, a new inheritance, a new kingdom, a new heaven, old things passed away, all things become new; — "As the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before Me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain." All now is spiritual. "The time is come when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him."

3. The third contrast I notice is, I think, a very strong one. "The seller shall not return to that which is sold." Now, this seems a simple declaration, but it means a great deal more than may at first sight appear. Under the Old Testament dispensation when a man waxed poor, he sold his inheritance, but he sold it only up to the day of jubilee. Then, when the jubilee came, that man. without money, without price, by virtue of the order of things that God had established, returned to his inheritance. Now, this chapter says "The seller," alluding to that same circumstance, "shall not return to that which is sold." The meaning of it, therefore, is, — there shall never be another jubilee, and there has not been from that day to this, and there never will be down to the end of time. Where shall I now find the true jubilee? Why, in Christ. He has paid the mighty debt we owed; He has set the prisoners free; He brings His brethren into the inheritance.

4. Is there from the first chapter of Matthew to the last of Revelation a single hint about the restoration of the old Jerusalem? The Saviour says, "Your house is left unto you desolate." Does He say it shall some day be restored? Does He say, "Your house is left unto you desolate till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord"? No, He says no such thing. He says, "Ye shall not see Me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." If I should get an invitation to preach in some Jewish synagogue, where they wanted to hear the Gospel, what would that be but their saying, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord"? that is, in the name of Jesus Christ. And if God were to open their eyes, and they should see Jesus, what would they say then? Ah, they would say, let the shadow go; let us have the substance. Let the ceremonial go; let us have the vital, the living, the eternal. They would turn their backs upon the temporal, and look at those things which are eternal.

(James Wells.)