at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years together; and, under all these displays of goodness and severity, to be so rooted in unbelief as to offer their sacrifices to devils, after whom they went a whoring, Levit. xvii. 7; and so to harden their hearts in infidelity, as to turn a deaf ear to the voice of God, both in his mercies and in his judgments. These things are left upon record as the greatest of provocations, and to warn all professing people, in the days of the gospel, against their bad example. To day, while the sun of righteousness shines, "To day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: when your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work. Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their hearts, and they have not known my ways." That the heart-error, in my text, is unbelief, is plain, both from the Old Testament and the New. "And the Lord said unto Moses, How long will this people provoke me? and how long will it be ere they believe me, for all the signs which I have shewed among them? I will smite them with the pestilence." Again, "And when the Lord saw it, he abhorred them, because of the provoking of his sons, and of his daughters. And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith," Deut. xxxii. 19, 20. Again, "The

Lord your God, which goeth before you, he shall fight for you, according to all that he did for you in Egypt before your eyes; and in the wilderness, where thou hast seen how that the Lord thy God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son, in all the way that ye went, until ye came into this place. Yet in this thing ye did not believe the Lord your God."

"Without faith it is impossible to please God," because unbelief is a giving God the lie in all that he says, and in all that he does. It gives God the lie in all he says. "He that believeth not God, hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son." It gives God the lie in his works also, as he complains. "How long will it be ere they believe me, for all the signs which I have shewed among them?" And it is surprising how many wise and learned heads have laboured and toiled at that display of divine power which God put forth in dividing the Red Sea, in order to lessen and eclipse the glory of God in it. They endeavour to prove that, at certain seasons, a powerful wind blows in one direction, and this performed the operation. Others, that, at low water, one part is fordable; and that Moses was acquainted with these things, and knew the times, and so embraced the opportunity of crossing it at those seasons. So fearful are these sons of infidelity that God should have any glory from his own works. But truth tells us that God divided the Red Sea into parts. This is the truth of God;

and that faith which comes from God believes it; for, as Mr. Bruce says, we may just as well deny that God made the sea, as to deny that he has power to divide it.

It was this sin of unbelief that kept Israel out of the promised land, according to Paul's epistle to the Hebrews; for he asks, "And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief." This sin not only kept them out of the promised land, but it procured their eternal destruction. For, "The Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not," Jude 5.

That which makes this sin of unbelief so very aggravating is, that the unbeliever doth not give the God of truth that credit that he gives to frail man; though God be true, and every man a liar. The Egyptians, that could not believe the reality of the miracles of Moses, believed the miracles of the magicians; and the Israelites, that could not believe the report that God gave of the promised land, of its flowing with milk and honey, yet they credited and firmly believed all them that brought up an evil report upon the good land: and their faith in these lies was attended with such zeal, that they even threatened to stone Joshua and Caleb for contradicting it. An unbeliever will not give that credit and that hearty assent to truth as he will to lies; nor give that honour to God which

he gives to Satan. "I am come," says Christ, "in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive." And they that came in their own name, were sent by Satan. Hence it appears to me, that that branch of unbelief which was the destruction of the Jewish nation, was not, strictly speaking, the want of that faith which is peculiar to God's elect; for no man can exercise a grace which he never possessed. But their unbelief was this, that they did not give that credit and honour to Christ which they gave to men, and to men notoriously evil. They did not give that hearty assent to the words of the Son of God, nor confess him, nor receive him, nor honour him, with that affection, regard, fear, and homage, which they paid to men, to deceivers, hypocrites, impostors, and even to devils.

The Jews had in their hands the oracles of God, the law, covenants, prophecies, and promises. They had the line and genealogy of Christ from his birth to his session at the right hand of God; the families he was to descend from, even from Adam to Joseph and Mary; the doctrine he was to preach, the miracles he was to perform, the death he should die, and the glorious redemption of his people by it; the glory that should follow, and the salvation of Jews and Gentiles by it. And those very men who were the writers and expounders of these oracles, and the masters and teachers of the people, and who boasted so much

of their light, understanding, and wisdom, as to ask Christ himself, "Are we blind also?" and assert, that this people, who knoweth not the law, are cursed; that this people, who alone were intrusted with the oracles of God, and who had these to guide them, and these to try every pretender from a true prophet by, Deut. xviii. 22; and yet these very men, with all their boasted light, acted contrary to all that they read, and pre tended to believe and revere; as it is written, "For they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their ru lers, because they knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning him. And though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain. And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulchre. But God raised him from the dead," Acts xiii. 27-30. But it appears that their infidelity was magnified still higher in that our Lord's holy, spotless, and obedient life; his scriptural vindications of himself, his character and conduct, by which he had always put them to silence; the miracles of mercy that he wrought, the gracious change that appeared in his poor followers, his continual labour in doing good; were so evident, powerful, and convincing, that even their own consciences bore witness to hin; so that, "When the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him,