but it is not the whole truth. We know only too well that sorrows and
judgments do not work infallibly, and that men 'being often reproved,
harden their necks.' We know, too, more clearly than any prophet of old
could know, that the last arrow in God's quiver is not some unheard-of
awfulness of judgment, but an unspeakable gift of love, and that if that
'favour shown to the wicked' in the life and death of God's Son does not
lead him to 'learn righteousness,' nothing else will.

But while this is true, the prophet's aspirations are founded on the
facts of human nature too, and judgments do sometimes startle those whom
kindness had failed to touch. It is an awful thought that human nature
may so steel itself against the whole armoury of divine weapons as that
favour and severity are equally blunted, and the heart remains unpierced
by either. It is an awful thought that there may be induced such
truculent obstinacy of love of evil that, even when in 'a land of
uprightness,' a man shall choose evil, and forcibly shut his eyes, that
he may not see the majesty of the Lord, which he does not wish to see
because it condemns his choice, and threatens to burn up him and his
work together. A blasted tree when all the woods are green, a fleece dry
when all around is rejoicing in the dew, a window dark when the whole
city is illuminated, one black sheep amid the white flock, or anything
else anomalous and alone in its evil, is less tragic than the sight, so
common, of a man so sold to sin that the presence of good only makes him
angry and restless. It is possible to dwell amidst the full light of
Christian truth, and in a society moulded by its precepts, and to be
unblessed, unsoftened thereby. If not softened, then hardened; and the
wicked who in the land of uprightness deals wrongfully is all the worse
for the light which he hated because it showed him the sinfulness of the
sin which he obstinately loved and would keep.