it had been through their thoughtlessness of divine dictates and warnings,
if they did not _know_ that such proceedings must provoke such an
infliction.

How one portion of knowledge admitted, with the exclusion of other truths
equally indispensable to be known, may not only be unavailing, but may in
effect lend force to destructive error, is dreadfully illustrated in the
final catastrophe of that favored guilty nation. They were in possession
of the one important point of knowledge, that a Messiah was to come. They
held this assurance not slightly, but with strong conviction, and as a
matter of the utmost interest. But then, that this knowledge might have
its appropriate and happy effect, it was of essential necessity for them
to know also the character of this Messiah, and the real nature of his
great design. But this they closed up their understandings in a fatal
contentment not to know. Literally the whole people, with a diminutive
exception, had failed, or rather refused, to admit, as to that part of the
subject, the inspired declarations.

Now comes the consequence of knowing only one thing of several that
require to be inseparable in knowledge. They formed to themselves a false
idea of the Messiah, according to their own worldly imaginations; and
they extended the full assurance which they justly entertained of his
coming, to this false notion of what he was to be and to accomplish when
he should come. From this it was natural and inevitable that when the
true Messiah should come they would not recognize him, and that their
hostility would be excited against a person who, while demanding to be
acknowledged in that capacity, appeared without the characteristics
pictured in their vain imagination, and with directly opposite ones. And
thus they were placed in an incomparably worse situation for receiving
him with honor when he did appear, than if they had had no knowledge that