GOD'S METHOD OF HEALING. 624 case into its hand, and saith, I will heal hire. I might bid my sword of vengeance awake ; awake, Omy sword, against the backslider ! but I will let my sword alone, saith God, and lay aside my rod too. Justice would cut him asunder, but mercy desires a little delay. The vengeance of God is ready to say, Why is he not slain ? I will destroy all mine enemies: but sovereign grace in- terposes, and the Lord saith, I pity him and hism adness, and I will recover him to his right mind ; I will have mercy, and heal him ; I will not suffer him to destroy himself utterly. Suchgreat graceas this is, is not mani- fested in every page of scripture ; to me it seems a pecu- liar text, filled with mercy above,most of its fellows in scripture. Let us then see what this kind word means, I will heal. I. I will enlighten his darkened understanding. I have done it once already, saith God, but he has shut his eyes again ; he is not sensible of his departure from me, but I will opén his eyes to let him see at what a dreadful dis- tance he is run fromme, and he shall return to his father again : he has forsaken the path of holiness, but I will shew him the path of holiness and display its beautiful character to him ; he shall return to it once wore. I , might have cast judicial blindness upon hirn, but I will enlighten his eyes lest he sleep the sleep of death. Let every soul of us now say, hast thou ever been thus reco- vered? O ! adore that grace that plucked you, though unwillingly, from the mouth of eternal torments. II. I will heal hirn ; that is, I will soften his heart. It was once hard as the neither millstone, and I softened it; or rather, I. took it away and gave hint another soft one ; but now he has suffered hard scales to grow over it, and I might, indeed, pronounce sentence against him, and say, thou hast thus long hardened thyself againt ma, and be thou for ever hardened. But, saith God, I will have mercy, my bowels yearn within me, and my repen- tingsare kindled together, and I will return him to his fa- ther's love again. He is fallen into a spiritual lethargy; cuttings and burnings I have tried, but he took no notice : well, I will -now look upon him with an eye of love, atd apply mollifying medicines, and make him relent in tears ; he shall feel the power of my sovereign grace the threatnings of my rod havenq force upon him, but I.
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