4. _Intemperate excesses._--"Drunkenness, revellings, and such like" (ver. 21). These are the vices of a barbarous people. Our Teutonic and Celtic forefathers were alike prone to this kind of excess. The Greeks were a comparatively sober people. The Romans were more notorious for gluttony than for hard drinking. The practice of seeking pleasure in intoxication is a remnant of savagery which exists to a shameful extent in our own country. With Europe turned into one vast camp, and its nations groaning audibly under the weight of their armaments, with hordes of degrading women infesting the streets of its cities, with discontent and social hatred smouldering throughout its industrial populations, we have small reason to boast of the triumphs of modern civilisation. Better circumstances do not make better men (_Findlay_). +III. Exclude the sinner from the kingdom of God.+--"They which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God" (ver. 21). How poor life seems outside that kingdom! How beautiful and glorious inside its gates! If I tried to tell you how Christ brings us there, I should repeat to you once more the old familiar story. He comes and lives and dies and rises again for us. He touches us with gratitude. He sets before our softened lives His life. He makes us see the beauty of holiness and the strength of the spiritual life in Him. He transfers His life to us through the open channel of faith, and so we come to live as He lives, by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. How old the story is, but how endlessly fresh and true to him whose own career it describes (_Phillips Brooks_). Exclusion from the kingdom of God is man's own act; it is self-exclusion. He _will not_ enter in; he loves darkness rather than light. +Lessons.+--1. _Sin is an active principle whose works are perniciously evident._ 2. _Sin is the primal cause of every possible vice._ 3. _Sin persisted in involves moral ruin._ _GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._