minor diseases which are best left to "nature;" it is like a cancer or a malignant fever--if it is left to run its course, it will kill us. There is in us no _vis medicatrix_ capable of overcoming and expelling it. If we are to be restored to moral soundness, it must be by a Power external to us. 2. _Should lead us to accept with gratitude the proffered help of the Great Healer._ We all need His help. Without it we shall grow worse day by day. His help will avail for us, however desperate may be our case; as it was in the days of His flesh physically, so it is now morally and spiritually (Matt. iv. 23, 24; xiv. 36). +IV. Moral depravity brings on physical misery.+ The desolation set forth in vers. 7, 8, was the natural consequence of the depravity denounced in vers. 5, 6. By an everlasting and most righteous decree a bad character and a bad condition are linked together, and can be only for a very little while disassociated. This is true both of nations and individuals. Sin inevitably leads to sorrow. Of this fact we have ten thousand evidences in this present world. Hence also the realm of unrelieved wickedness in the realm of unmitigated woe. Were man always reasonable beings, the fearfulness and the certainty of the consequences of sin would be sufficient and prevailing arguments for repentance and amendment of life. Let them prevail with us (Ezek. xviii. 30, 21). FOOTNOTES: [1] It is not only the inferior powers of the soul which this plague of sin has seized, but the contagion has ascended into the higher regions of the soul. The most supreme, most spiritual faculty in man's mind, the understanding power of man, is corrupted, and needs renewing. To a carnal understanding not enlightened by the Word, this always has been and is the greatest paradox. Indeed, when blind reason, which thinks it sees, is judge, it is not strange that this corruption of the understanding should be a wonder to it. The reason, being the supreme faculty of all the rest, which judges all else, and is judged by none but itself, because of its nearness to itself, it least discerns itself. As a man's eye, though it may see the deformity of another member, yet not the bloodshot that is in itself, but it must have a glass by which to discern it. And so, though even corrupt nature discerns the rebellions of the affections and sensual part of man by its own light, as the heathens did, and complained thereof, yet it cannot discern the infection and defilement that is in the spirit itself, but the glass of the Word is the first that discovers it; and when that glass is also brought, there had need by an inward light of grace, which is opposite to this corruption, to discover it.--_T. Goodwin,_ 1600-1679. GOD'S RELUCTANCE TO PUNISH.