hypocritical mockers in feasts they gnashed upon me with their teeth.” Which was fulfilled in the same abominable characters; for the psalm belongs to Christ, and contains a complaint of the conduct of the enemies of his person, mission, miracles, work and truth. In Job’s days there were many; yea, congregations of them—the congregation of hypocrites shall be desolate. These persons are also called the tabernacles of bribery, who hope to bribe divine justice with a few dead works of their own—too proud to submit to the righteousness of the mediator—staying themselves on their own supposed goodness, they hope to be saved in whole or in part by it; “but the hope of the hypocrite shall perish.”—Job viii. 19. And as he reject the mediator between God and man, “an hypocrite shall not come before him.”—Job xiii. 16. He may indeed rejoice in his good name and false confidence, but that lamp will be out in death and leave him in possession of all his guilt unpardoned. “For what is the hope of the hypocrite when God taketh him away, although he has gained the applause of the world?”—Job xxvii. 8. “The joy of the hypocrite is but for a moment.” Job xx. 5. And every spiritual man who is divinely acquainted with the truth shall oppose such characters and their false foundations. Job xvii. 8—“The innocent shall stir up himself against the hypocrite.” For as he is an hypocrite in profession, in heart and in life, so also in the church and in the world; for if a man is not sound in heart, towards God and truth, he cannot be very sincere towards his neighbour; and whence arise so much slander, backbiting and evil speaking in the churches but from such characters. These troubled the churches in the apostles’ days. Paul, Peter, James, John and Jude bore their testimony against them; for “an hypocrite with his mouth destroyeth his neighbour.”—Prov. xi. 9. And although many such may be in great power, and have obtained that dignity either in a nation or in the church, by their pretended humanity, care and tenderness towards a people, as Absalom did, when he rose up in rebellion against his father, and by a pretended affection for the people, and speedily vindicating their cause—yet he reigned not long. Job xxxix. 3—That the hypocrite reign not, lest the people be ensnared. Such in a profession got into the churches of Corinth and Galatea, and was no small affliction to the mind of Paul; for by artful insinuations they raised a prejudice in the minds of the churches against the very apostle who had been the means of their conversion. Thus, like their father, the devil, they did his work first by insinuation, (for a whisperer separateth chief friends) and then more openly; but I would they were cut off that trouble you. Let not the hypocrite reign lest the people be ensnared, which was the case in both churches, and is the very case at the present day. Nearly twenty times in the New Testament our Saviour accused the Pharisees of hypocrisy,