family to provide for, or one’s party in politics to serve; one must obey the laws of trade, the usages of society, the interests of one’s class;” and so forth. And so an excuse is found for every sin, by those who know in their hearts that they are sinning; for every sin; and among others, too often, for that sin of Pharaoh’s, of “_not letting the people go_.” And how many, my friends, when they come to church, harden their hearts in the same quiet, almost good-humoured way, not caring enough for God’s message to be even angry with it, and take the preacher’s warnings as they would a shower of rain, as something unpleasant which cannot be helped; and which, therefore, they must sit out patiently, and think about it as little as possible? And when the sermon is over, they take their hats and go out into the churchyard, and begin talking about something else as quickly as possible, to drive the unpleasant thoughts, if there are a few left, out of their heads. And thus they let the Lord’s message to them harden their hearts. For it does harden them, my friends, if it be taken in this temper. Every time anyone sits through the service or the sermon in this stupid and careless mood, he dulls and deadens his soul, till at last he is able coolly to sit through the most awful warnings of God’s judgment, the most tender entreaties of God’s love, as if he were a brute animal without understanding. Ay, he is able to make the responses to the commandments, and join in the psalms, and so with his own mouth, before the whole congregation, confess that God’s curse is on his doings, with no more sense or care of what the words mean, and of what a sentence he is pronouncing against himself, than if he were a parrot taught to speak by rote words which he does not understand. And so that man, by hardening his own heart, makes the Lord harden it for him. But there is a third way, and a worse way still, in which people’s hearts are hardened by the Lord’s speaking to them. A man is warned of his sins by the preacher; and he says to himself: “If the minister thinks that he is going to frighten me away from church, he is very much mistaken. He may go his way, and I shall go mine. Let him preach at me as much as he will; I shall go to church all the more for that, to show him that I am not afraid.” And so the Lord’s warnings harden his heart, and provoke him to set his face like a flint, and become all the more proud and stubborn. Now, young people, I speak openly to you as man to man. Will you tell me that this was not the very way in which some of you took my sermon last Sunday afternoon, in which I warned you of the misery which your sinful lives would bring upon you? Was there not more than one of you, who, as soon as he got outside the church, began laughing and swaggering, and said to the lad next him: “Well, he gave it us well in his sermon this afternoon, did he not? But I don’t care; do you?”