opinion which is cited in the text is the most forcible Eastern mode
of expressing contempt. When one man spits in the face of another, no
one, and least of all the suffering party, can have the slightest
doubt of the esteem in which the one holds the other. If an insolent
enemy were to spit in the face of a slain foe, the dead man might
almost be expected to blush or to rise and avenge the insult. But
comparing His methods with such a method as this, God awards the palm
to His own for explicitness and emphasis. He speaks of the most
emphatic and unambiguous of human methods with a "but," as if it
could scarcely be compared with His expressions of displeasure. "If
her father had _but_ spit in her face"--if that were all--but
something immensely more expressive than that has happened to her.

God, therefore, would have us ponder the punishments of sin, and find
in them the emphatic expressions of His judgment of our conduct and
of ourselves. He resents our shamelessness, and desires that we
consider His judgments till our callousness is removed. The case
stands thus: God. is long-suffering, slow to anger, not of a
fault-finding, everchiding nature, but most loving and most just; and
this God has recorded against us the strongest possible condemnation.
This God, who cannot do what is not most just, and who cannot make
mistakes, this unfurious and holy God, whose opinion of us represents
the very truth, has pronounced us to be wicked and worthless; and we
seem scarcely at all impressed by the declaration. God's judgment of
us is not only absolutely true, but it must also take effect; so that
what He has pronounced against us will be seen written in the facts
bearing upon and entering into our life. But, although we know this,
we are for the most part as unmoved as if in hearing God's judgment
pronounced against us we had heard but the sighing of the wind or any
other inarticulate, unintelligible sound. There is a climax of