for their beholding the glorious sight. He said to them in words which they could not misunderstand, (Prov. i. 23,)" How long, ye simple ones, will ye love. simplicity, and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?" (ver. 24.) "Turn you at my reproof; behold I will pour out my Spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you." He wished to have gathered them “ as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and they would not," (Matt. xxiii. 37). He was willing, they were unwilling. He wished them, as all, "to be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth," (1 Tim. ii. 4); and it is because they opposed his will, and would not come to the knowledge of the truth; it is because they resisted the truth, and the Spirit of truth, the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; it is "because he has called," (Prov. i. 24,)" and they refused, He has stretched out his hand, and they have not regarded," (ver. 25,) because "they have set at nought all his counsel," because "they would have none of his reproof," (ver. 29,) "for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord," that they are lost, and "their house is left unto them desolate." "They eat of the fruit of their own way, they are filled with their own devices." (Prov. i. 31.) They shut their eyes in opposition to the glory of God, upon the light revealing eternal life, and therefore their deserved doom is the darkness of eternal death. Nay, perhaps, it will be found, on the day of the revelation of all things, that their unbelief is not only the cause, but is the chief element of their perdition; that their sin is its own punishment; and that

the carnal heart of enmity against God which shuts their eyes to the brightness of the divine glory shining from heaven in the only-begotten Son, when that only begotten Son, whom they have despised in the day of his grace, shall be revealed a second time in the day of his glory, shall be its own tormenter, its own hell; when the immortal spirit, aroused from the slumber of spiritual death, shall awaken, amid the upbraidings and self-condemnation of remorse, to the dread reflection, "I have trodden under foot the Son of God; I have counted the blood of the covenant wherewith I was sanctified an unholy thing; I have done despite to the Spirit of grace." (Heb. x. 29.) What else is the meaning of the cry, which they raise in vain to the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb." (Rev. vi. 16.)

Who then is the author of that resistance which they make to God, revealed in the glory of his grace, when he shines in the face of the only-begotten Son?

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Not God himself, as they blasphemously allege, when they make the doctrine, "we can do nothing of ourselves," we must live in the hope that God will give us a new heart," an excuse for continuing an hour in unbelief and ungodliness. Who makes them unbelievers, and therefore ungodly? Who blinds their minds? Not God himself, says the text, but the enemy of God, "the god of this world." We wonder when we perceive that the light is shining from heaven all around, and life eternal set before sinners, and yet men on whom it shines, acknowledging that they are

sinners, are sitting in darkness and the shadow of death. We wonder that the Gospel, of which such glorious things are spoken in the prophecies of the Old Testament, leading us to expect that the times of the Messiah would be times of peace, and love, and blessedness; "the wolf and the lamb dwelling together, the sword of the warrior turned into a plough-share, and the wilderness rejoicing and blossoming as the rose;" that this Gospel, of which it is said, (Ps. lxxxix. 15,) "Blessed are the people that know the joyful sound, they shall walk, O Lord, in the light of thy countenance, in thy name shall they rejoice all the day, and in thy righteousness shall they be exalted," is treated as a thing of nought, and trifled with as it is and we ask, is this the Gospel which the men of our day are, almost universally around us, professing? Is this a blessedness which the Christians of our day are enjoying, or are even expecting to enjoy? We read, that "the Word of God is quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and being a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart" (Heb. iv. 12); that it is "the wisdom of God, and the power of God unto salvation" (Rom. i. 16. 1 Cor. i. 24); and yet we see, perhaps without wonder, because it is so common that it has ceased to be wonderful, this omnipotent Word, by those who acknowledge its truth, listened to with listlessness, and treated, if presented in its simplicity, as foolishness. We see that, unless it is adorned with the ornaments of human rhetoric, and rendered attractive by the wisdom of words, it is accounted

and

insipid, common-place, contemptible. And why is it so, if it reveals the glory of God? Why, but because the enemy of God is at work, and in opposing the illumination of sinners by the light of Christ is performing his proper and peculiar work? We wonder, because we forget that there is a devil in the world, and because we are ignorant of the devil's devices and the devil's power. We forget that there is a power spirit of darkness, as well as a Spirit of power and light, and that every soul which is brought into the kingdom of God's dear Son, must be translated from darkness to light, and-turned from the power of Satan to God. We forget that there is an hour as well as a power of darkness; an hour of temptation (Rev. iii. 10), which should come upon all the earth, to try, as the Israelites were tried in the wilderness, them that dwell upon the earth, and profess to be travelling towards heaven. Those souls whom we behold in a Christian land, where the image of God is in Christ revealed, without the righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, which characterise the kingdom of heaven in contradistinction from the world, are so many trophies of the devil's power, and the multitude of these is the triumph of his power. All that power is directed to one end-opposition to the glory of God and the salvation of man; and since it is in the Gospel of Christ that the glory of God shines, and through the Gospel of the glory of Christ that men are made heirs of salvation, the single aim of the enemy of God and man is to darken the Gospel truth, or blind the minds of those to whom it is revealed, that they may not see in

it the glory of God, nor be transformed by the sight into the image of Christ. In this view, mark the emphasis of the text, which unmasks the devil's peculiar policy. All his efforts are directed against the light of the Gospel of Christ. There is no light but in Christ; no soul lost except that to which the light of Christ is hid. All the resources of the kingdom of darkness are therefore turned against the light of the Gospel of Christ. As the seed which the Son of Man sows, or sends his messengers to sow, is" the word of the kingdom," (Matt. xiii. 19,) the devil, whose object is to maintain the kingdom of darkness, goes, or sends forth his messengers, to steal away the Word, to persecute on account of the Word, to choke the Word, but, in whatever way they work, to render the Word of the kingdom unfruitful.

How then, we now inquire, in the third place, does the god of this world work in blinding the mind, or preventing those to whom the Gospel shines from beholding the glory of Christ, and believing in the truth?

To this the answer of the text is

of" the god of this world as his instru

III. That it is in the character world," and therefore through the ment, that Satan blinds the minds of the lost; so that the opposition, wherever the Gospel is preached, is between the darkness of the world and the light of the Gospel; between Satan, the god of the world, the prince of darkness, and Christ, the Lord of the kingdom of heaven and earth, the prince of light,