III. The next thing that Paul tells us is +that by nature we are children of wrath.+--In the state of nature we are in the way to bear the wrath of God. Yet God is not wrath; He is infinite love. The eternal severity of His nature does not feel our passions, He remains for ever calm; yet such is our nature that we must think of Him as wrath as well as love: to us love itself becomes wrath when we are in a state of sin. God must hate sin and be forever sin's enemy. If we sin He must be against us: in sinning we identify ourselves with evil, therefore we must endure the consuming fire. So long as there is evil, so long will there be penalty. Sin, live according to the lusts of the flesh, and you will become the children of God's wrath; live after the Spirit, the higher nature that is in you, and then the law hath hold on you no longer.--_F. W. Robertson._ _The Worst of Evils._ +I. By nature all are the children of wrath.+--1. Because we want that original righteousness in which we were created, and which is required to the purity and perfection of our nature. 2. Because all the parts and powers of our soul and body are depraved with original corruption. Our understandings are so bad that they understand not their own badness, our wills which are the queens of our souls become the vassals of sin, our memories like jet good only to draw straws and treasure up trifles of no moment, our consciences through errors in our understandings sometimes accusing us when we are innocent, sometimes acquitting us when we are guilty, our affections all disaffected and out of order. 3. Some may expect that as the master of the feast said to him that wanted the wedding garment, "Friend, how camest thou in hither?" so I should demand of original sin, "Foe, and worst of foes, how camest thou in hither, and by what invisible leaks didst thou soak into our souls?" But I desire, if it be possible, to present you this day a rose without prickles, to declare plain and positive doctrine without thorny disputes or curious speculations, lest, as Abraham's ram was caught in the thicket, so I embroil you and myself in difficult controversies. Let us not busy our brains so much to know how original sin came into us, as labour in our heart to know how it should be got out of us. But the worst is, most men are sick of the _rickets_ in the soul, their heads swell to a vast proportion, puffed up with the emptiness of airy speculations, whilst their legs and lower parts do waste and consume, their practical parts decay, none more lazy to serve God in their lives and conversations. Transcriber's Note: Baptism is not a sacrament that confers salvation. It is an ordinance that serves as a public statement that salvation has already taken place. Parents are to raise their children in the "nurture and admonition of the Lord" (Eph. vi. 4).