been tamed of mankind: but the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison." The situation of Miriam during her exclusion from the camp suggest an observation on the debasing nature of sin. When engaged in the exercises of religion, and taking the lead in the celebration of the overthrow of the Egyptian army by the interposing providence of God, she appears the glory of her sex and the ornament of her country; but from the moment she indulges a guilty passion, her honour is tarnished, her dignity degraded, and her pre-eminence lost; the moral defilement she has contracted is marked by an external deformity, and issues in a degrading separation. Miriam is deeply conscious of her guilt, and confounded at its bitter consequences: she feels that she is a sufferer because she was a sinner; and would no doubt have made any sacrifice could it have been possible to regain the forfeited paradise of peace and innocency. But we have here a specimen of the inevitable consequence of sin. It does not indeed generally incur immediate and temporal punishment; but it degrades the perpetrator of it in the eyes of God, in the opinion of others, (especially the wise and good,) and in his own sight: it lowers him in the scale of being, at once diminishing his reputation and contracting his means of usefulness. If the face of Miriam recovered its beauty, and the eyes of Israel could discern no external blemishes, it is questionable whether a scar would not ever after be discernible upon her character: and even should her indulgent friends have forgotten, and God have graciously forgiven her past iniquities, Miriam, as a true penitent, would scarcely ever forgive herself: the very consciousness of pardoning mercy would often renew the sensations of penitence; and moments of holy joy would ever after be bedewed with tears of humiliation. From this example it is further obvious, that the hope of escaping the divine displeasure on account of sin, under the notion of being the professed people of God, is altogether delusive; sin is detestable in the eyes of perfect purity _wherever_ it exists, and can neither escape detection nor elude chastisement. Its perpetration by his own people is rather a reason for more signal and exemplary chastisement, than for any kind of exemption from it; because the motive to obedience arising from gratitude and other sources is proportionably stronger; and because a contrary proceeding would tend to disparage the divine government, by affording a plausible pretence to the doctrine of salvation _in_ sin, and not _from_ it. The eminence of Miriam rendered her disgrace the more requisite as a punishment, and the more salutary as an example: the leprosy in her face was a practical lesson, which every Israelite could not fail of understanding, and probably would not soon or easily forget.