causeth the dayspring to know its place, and setteth a bound to darkness and the shadow of death. All things are supported by the power of his hand, and there is nothing without him. If he withdrew his might, back to annihilation must all things go. Just as a moment's foam subsides into the wave that bears it and is lost for ever, so would the universe depart if the eternal God did not daily sustain it. Nor has this incessant working diminished his strength, nor is there any failing or thought of failing. He doeth all things, and when they are done they are as nothing in his sight. But strange, oh, passing strange, marvellous, miraculous among miracles, sin burdens God, though the world cannot; and iniquity presses the Most High, though the whole tremendous load of providence is as the small dust of the balance. Ah, ye careless men, sons of Adam, ye think sin a trifle; and as for you, ye sons of Belial, ye count it sport, and say, "He regardeth not; he seeth not; how doth God know? and if he knoweth, he careth not for our sins." Learn ye from the Book of God, that so far is this from being the truth, that your sins are a grief to him, a burden and a load to him, till, like a cart that is pressed down with sheaves, so is he pressed down with human guilt.

I think this will be very clear if we meditate for a moment upon what sin is, and what sin does. Sin is the great despoiler of all God's works. It was sin that turned an archangel into an arch-fiend, and angels of light into spirits of evil. It was sin that looked on Eden and withered every leaf in its garden, and blasted all its flowers. Ere sin had come, the Creator said of the new-made earth, "It is very good;" but when sin had entered, it grieved God at his very heart that he had made such a creature as man. Nothing can despoil the beauty in which God delighteth so much as sin, for sin mars his image, and erases his superscription.

Moreover, sin makes God's creatures unhappy, and shall he not, therefore, abhor it? God never designed that any creature that he made should be miserable. He made the creatures on purpose that they should be glad; he gave the birds their song, the flowers their perfume, the air its balm; he gave to nature the smiling sun, and even to night its coronet of stars, for he intended that smiles should be his perpetual worship, and that joy should be the atmosphere which his creatures breathed; but sin has made God's favourite creature a wretch, brought down his most glorious offspring, made in his own image, to become naked, and poor, and miserable, and lost; and therefore, God hateth sin, and is pressed down under it, because it maketh the objects of his love unhappy at their heart. All the unhappiness that we have this morning, comes from sin directly or indirectly. Iniquity is the mother of every human pang. Oh, how well may God hate it when he sees his own dearly beloved children made to wear furrows on their brow and tears in their eyes, because of this vile, this abominable thing called sin.

Moreover, remember, beloved, that sin attacks God in all his attributes, assails him on his throne, and stabs at his existence. What is sin, sinner? Is it not an insult to God's wisdom? God biddeth thee do his will; when thou doest the contrary it is because thou dost as much as

say, "I know best what is good for me." You do in effect declare that infinite wisdom is in error, and that you, the creature of a day, can judge better than your God which shall be the path of happiness for you. Sin impugns his goodness; for by sin you actually declare that God has denied you that which would make you happy, which is not the part of a good, tender, and loving Father. A generous God denies nothing to his creatures but that which is harmful; but inasmuch as you think sin to be pleasant and profitable, you cast a slur upon the benevolence and lovingkindness of God; and when he is such a God, so full of tenderness that his very name is "Love," this is no slight burden to his holy soul, to feel when he perceiveth that you think you could do better for yourself than he is willing to do, and that he has cruelly robbed you of pleasure and denied you that which would be for your good. Sin cuts at the Lord's wisdom with one hand, and at his goodness with the other.

And see, sin also abuses the mercy of God. When you, as many of you have done, sin with the higher hand because of his longsuffering towards you;-when, because you have no sickness, no losses, no crosses, therefore you spend your time in revelry and obstinate rebellion-what is this but taking the mercy which was meant for your good and turning it into mischief? It is no small grief to the loving father to see his substance spent with harlots in riotous living; I tell you it is no slight thing to the father of the prodigal to see him fain to fill his belly with the husks the swine do eat. This touches him at the very quick; he cannot endure it, that his children should be thus degraded as to turn even the mercy which would woo them to repentance into a ground why they should sin the more against him. Besides, let me remind the careless and impenitent this morning, that every sin is a defiance of divine power. In effect it is lifting your puny fists against the majesty of heaven, and defying God to destroy you. Every time you sin, you know that sin will lead to your soul's destruction, if then you beard the omniscient One even to his face, and while under the hand that can crush you, yet dare to revolt and to transgress, you do as much as dare and defy the Lord to prove whether he can maintain his law or no. Is this a slight thing, that a worm, the creature of a day, should defy the God of ages, the God that filleth and upholdeth all things by the word of his power? Well may he be weary, when he hath to bear with such provocations and insults as these! Mention what attribute you will, and sin has blotted it; speak of God in any relationship you choose, and sin has cast a slur upon him. It is evil, only evil, and that continually, in every view of it it must be offensive to the Most High. Sinner, dost thou know that every act of disobedience to God's law is virtually an act of high treason? What dost thou do but seek to be God thyself, thine own master, thine own lord. Every time thou swervest from his will it is to put thy will into its place; it is to make thyself a God, and to undeify the Most High. And is this a little offence, to snatch from his brow the crown, and from his hand the sceptre? I tell thee it is such an act that heaven itself could not stand unless it were resented; and if this crime were suffered to go unpunished, the wheels of heaven's commonwealth would be taken from

their axles, and the whole frame of nature would be unhinged. Such a treason against God shall certainly be punished.

And to crown all, sin is an onslaught upon God himself, for every sinner is an atheist at heart. Let his religious profession be what it may, he hath said in heart, "No God." He wishes that there were no law and no supreme ruler. He desires that God might be forgotten. God is not in all his thoughts. Is this a trifle? To be a deicide! To slay God! To desire to put him out of his own world! For the creature to declare war against the God that made him, and to wish that God might cease to be-is this a thing to be winked at? Can the Most High hear it and not be pressed down beneath its weight? Ah, I pray you do not think that I would make a needless outcry against sin and disobedience. It is not in the power of human imagi nation to exaggerate the evil of sin, nor will it ever be possible for mortal lips, though they should be touched like those of Esaias, with a live coal from off the altar, to thunder out the ten-thousandth part of the enormity of the least sin against God. Think, dear friends! We are his creatures, and yet we will not do his will. We are fed by him, the breath in our nostrils he gives to us, and yet we spend that breath in murmuring and in rebellion.

Once more, we are always in the sight of our omniscient God, and yet the presence of God is not enough to compel us to obedience. Surely, if a man should insult law in the very presence of the lawgiver-if the king were insulted to his face, that were not to be borne with; but this is your case and mine. We must confess, "Against thee, thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight." And we must remember that we are doing all this though meanwhile we know what we are doing. We are not sinning like the Hottentot; we are not pulling God's law to pieces like some blind New Zealander; we, in England, sin against extraordinary light and sevenfold knowledge; and is this a light thing? Can you expect that God shall wink at us and pass by such offences as these? Oh that these lips had language, that this heart could burn for once! for if I could declare the horrible infamy of sin it would make the blood chill in even a haughty Pharaoh's veins, and proud Nebuchadnezzar might bow his head in fear. It is a great thing indeed to have rebelled against the Most High. God have mercy upon his servants and forgive them. This is our first point, but I cannot teach you it, God can teach it by his Spirit. O that the Holy Ghost may make you feel that sin is exceeding sinful, because it is grievous and burdensome to God.

II. Secondly, SOME SINS ARE MORE ESPECIALLY GRIEVOUS TO GOD. The connection of our text will help you to see the force of this observation.

There is no such thing as a little sin, but still there are degrees of guilt, and it were folly to say that a sinful thought hath in it the same extent of evil as a sinful act. A filthy imagination is sinful-wholly sinful and greatly sinful, but still the act has attained a higher degree of provocation. Now, there are sins that especially provoke God. In the connection of the text we read that licentiousness does this. The people seem, from the 7th verse, to have gone to a very high degree of

fornication and lecherousness. This sin is not uncommon in our day; let our midnight streets and our divorce courts be the witness. Perhaps the saddest proof that society is far from pure is found in the fact that seducers and fornicators, if they be but gentlemen, may enter respectable society. Brand the miscreants, I say. If the woman be shut out as a harlot, what shall be done unto the lustful maker and cherisher of harlots? If hell burns hotter at one time than another it is for those who make what should have been a temple of the Holy Ghost, into an instrument of rebellion against both man and God.

Oppression, too, according to the text, is another great sin. The prophet speaks of selling the poor for a pair of shoes; and there are such who would grind the widow and the orphan to the last extreme, and make their labourers toil for nought. How many business men we have, who never knew what "bowels of mercy" were. Men form themselves into societies, and then exact an outrageous usury upon loans from the unhappy men who fall into their hands. Cunning legal quibbles, and crafty evasions of just debts, often amount to heavy oppression, and are sure to bring down the anger of the Most High.

Then again, it seems that idolatry and blasphemy are most certainly offensive to him, and have a high degree of heinousness. He says that they drank the wine of false gods; so if any man set up his belly as his god, or his gold, or his wealth, and live to these instead of living to the Most High, he hath offended by idolatry.

Specially is blasphemy a God-provoking sin. For blasphemy there is no excuse. As George Herbert says, "Lust and wine plead a pleasure;" there is gain to be pleaded for avarice, "but the cheap swearer from his open sluice lets his soul run for nought." There is nothing gained by it; there can be no pleasure in cursing, blasting one's limbs and damning one's soul; this must be offending for offending's sake, and hence this is a high and crying sin, which God doth pardon, which he is willing to pardon now, but which nevertheless weigheth upon his heart, and he cannot suffer it to go unpunished unless it be repented of. Some sins make the Lord very weary of man. Now, I do not know who you are, many of you this morning, but I have no doubt there are some among you to whom this word may be a personal accusation. Do I address the lecherous, or the oppressive, or the swearer? Do I address the profane? Ah, soul, what a mercy God hath borne with thee so long; the time will come, however, when he will say "Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries,” and how easily will he cast you off, and appoint you an awful destruction. Again, whilst some sins are thus grievous to God for their peculiar heinousness, many men are especially obnoxious to God because of the length of their sin. That grey-headed man, how many times has he provoked the Most High? Why, those who are but lads have cause to count their years and apply their hearts unto wisdom because of the length of time they have lived in rebellion; but what shall I say of you that have been half a century in open war against God-and some of you sixty, seventy, what if I said near upon eighty years? Ah, you have had eighty years of mercies, and eighty years of forgetfulness; eighty years of bounty, and eighty years of ingratitude and insult! O God, well mayest thou be wearied by the length and number of man's sins.

Furthermore, God taketh special note and feeleth an especial weariness of sin that is mixed with obstinacy. Oh, how obstinate some men They will be damned; there is no helping them; they seem as if they would leap the Alps to reach perdition, and swim through seas of fire that they may destroy their own souls. I might tell you cases of men that have been sore sick of fever, ague, and cholera; they have recovered from all, and have only recovered their health to return to their wallowing in the mire. Some of them have had such troubles in business, thick and threefold. They were once in respectable circumstances, but they spent their living riotously, and they became poor; they still struggle on in sin; they are growing poorer still; most of their clothes have gone to the pawn shop; but they will not turn from the gin shop and the haunt of vice. Another child is dead! Ah, has that man yonder a dead child at home? and the wife is sick, and nothing but starvation looks the family in the face; but they have gone on still with a high hand and an outstretched arm. This is obstinacy, indeed. Sinner! God will let thee have thine own way one of these days, and that way will be thine everlasting ruin. But God is weary of all here who have thus set themselves to do mischief, and who against warnings, and invitations, and entreaties, and light, and knowledge, have determined to go on in sin.

The context seems to tell us that ingratitude is intensely burdensome to God. He tells the people how he brought them up out of Egypt; how he cast out the Amorites; how he raised up their sons for prophets, and their young men for Nazarites; and yet they rebelled against him! Oh, dear friends, this was one of the things that pricked my heart when I first came to God as a guilty sinner, not so much the peculiar heinousness of my outward life, as the peculiar mercies that I had enjoyed. How many of us have been detestably ungrateful! What a life has our life been! Oh, how generous God has been! Why, there are some of us who never had a want. All our wants have been supplied. God has never cast us into poverty, nor left us to infamy, nor given us up to evil example, but he has kept us moral, and made us love his house even when we did not love him, and all this he has done year after year: what poor returns have we made! To you, his people, what joy he has given, what deliverances, what love, what comfort, what bliss-and yet after all this, to think that we should sin to his very face! Oh! well may he be as a cart that is pressed down, that is full of sheaves. O my hearers, I know I address some to whom this may come home very pointedly. What, when you were nearly drowned, were you snatched from the jaws of death? What, were you rescued from sickness? What, were you blessed with that godly mother, and did that companion plead with you? Have you a tender conscience? Do you feel that you cannot sin as others do, for something checks you? All this is God's love; but if you will still rebel against him, despite all this, well may he arise in his wrath, and shake himself in his hot displeasure. He will not always strive with man. Justice shall soon have its day.

Let me observe, before I leave this point, that it seems from our text, that the Lord is so pressed, that he even crieth out. Just as the cart when laden with the sheaves, groaneth under the weight, so the Lord crieth out under the load of sin. Have you never heard those accents?