_Application._--1. True reverence for God will lead us to accept with equal implicitness all the disclosures which He has been pleased to give of His character He will be to us neither a God all mercy nor a God all justice. In Him both these high qualities are found in equal perfection: they are not opponents, but allies. Each is always in absolute harmony with the other. 2. True reverence for God will lead us to tremble in view of His threatenings, as well as to rejoice in view of His promises. 3. It is with the God of the Bible, and not with the God of our own sentimental fancies, that we shall have to deal with at the last. 4. If we take nature as our guide to the interpretation of revelation, we shall find it easier to believe in God's severity than in His benignity. In nature there are appalling indications of sternness. The world in which we now are is full of suffering.[2] 5. It is in mercy that the threatenings of God's justice are now set forth.[3] FOOTNOTES: [1] If Scripture be certainly true, then the most terrible passages in it are certainly true; nothing is more hardly believed by men than that which will be most tormenting to their minds, when it is believed that none shall be saved but the regenerate and holy; and those that live not after the flesh, but the Spirit, and love God in Christ above all the world, even their own lives; and that, besides these few, all the rest shall be tormented in hell for ever. This is the doctrine that flesh and blood will hardly down with. They say or think they will never believe that God will be so unmerciful; as if God must needs be less merciful than man, because He is more just and holy, and will not be so indulgent to their flesh and sin as they are themselves, and would have Him to be. And I have known even godly men, through the remnant of their corruption and darkness in the things of God, and the violence of temptation, much troubled with their unbelief in this particular. But God cannot lie the Scripture being true, and the Christian religion certainly true, every part of it must needs be true. But because sensual nature looks for sensible demonstration or proof, let me ask the unbelievers this one question--"Do you believe that which you see and feel, and all the world feels as well as you?" You know that all mankind liveth here a life of trouble and misery; we come into the world in a very poor condition, and we pass through it in daily labour and sorrow, and we pass out of it through the dreadful pangs of death. What incessant labour have the most of them, how much want and misery, how much care and grief! Do you not see and feel how sicknesses do torment us? When one pain is over, another is at hand. Have you not seen some under such terrible fits of the gout, or stone, or other diseases, that they thought no