It is, besides, not only the necessary tendency of sin to procure its own punishment, but such is the appointment of God: it constitutes an essential part of the great system of his moral government to unite them together; and no mortal power can disconnect them. Sooner or later every transgressor must be humbled; he _must_ fall--by judgment, or by penitence--before the sword of excision, or into the arms of mercy. Happy for us if external visitations produce internal prostration of spirit; if, instead of stiffening ourselves into resistance, we bend to the inflictions of parental chastisement; and if present and temporary sufferings excite a feeling which will supersede the necessity of future and more awful visitations. If, again, Miriam were so severely visited for speaking against _Moses_, how fatal will prove the consequences of resisting _Christ!_ The secret whisperings of envy and ambition against the _servant_ of God, occasioned a public and awful punishment: what tremendous wrath may not they expect who reproach or disregard his beloved _Son!_ "If they escaped not, who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven." This remarkable manifestation to Miriam, Aaron, and Moses, may remind us of that period which is hastening on the rapid wings of time, when the descending Judge of the universe will "come in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory," "the glory of the Father and all the holy angels," to summon every class, and all the generations of mankind, to his tribunal, and pronounce their final, irreversible, everlasting doom: then, like Moses, his servants will be vindicated from every charge, honoured by witnessing celestials, admitted through the gates into the city of the New Jerusalem, be emparadised forever in the embraces of their God. Then, like Miriam and Aaron, a guilty race, which has plotted against the righteous, and opposed by their impenitence, if not their actual persecutions, the prosperity of his cause and people, will be driven, not into temporary exile and disgrace, but into ever-during darkness. "These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." The pride of Miriam was intelligibly marked upon her smitten countenance; and the sin of transgressors will be written by the finger of God in appropriate and conspicuous characters upon their immortal destinies. Thus will the perfections of the Deity for ever blaze in the flames of perdition, and irradiate the temple of glory!