+III. The Divine patience is often tried.+ Sins against it are common. In this respect Ahaz does not stand alone. Men commit such sins without compunction. Have we not done so? With what contempt and indifference we have treated God's expostulations with us! We have deferred the duty of repentance. Why? Very much because we know that God is patient, and will not be swift to take vengeance upon us. We have practised on His forbearance, and thus have been guilty of the basest crime that is possible; we have deliberately sinned against love. Yet we are not troubled; so possible it is to drug conscience; so delusive is peace of conscience in the impenitent. But let us look at our conduct as God must regard it, as any reasonable and holy intelligence must regard it, and let us humble ourselves before Him against whom we have sinned so basely.[2] +V. Those who tire out the Divine patience shall find themselves righteously confronted by the Divine justice.+[3] God will not be permanently mocked. He would be unworthy of His position if He permitted sin to go unpunished.[4] What the punishment of sin is we do not know, because we are now living in an economy in which justice is tempered by mercy. Yet in the calamities and unspeakable woes that here and now befall obdurate transgressors, we have some faint intimation of what will be their doom when, having rejected mercy, they find themselves given over to the unmitigated rigours of justice. Of these things God has spoken because He would save us from them. All the threatenings of Scripture are merciful warnings.[5] Let us give heed to them, and return to Him who has declared with equal clearness and emphasis that He will by no means clear the guilty, and that He has no delight in the death of the sinner.[6] FOOTNOTES: [1] H. E. I. 2295. [2] H. E. I. 2250.