Page:Sermons preached in the African Protestant Episcopal Church of St. Thomas', Philadelphia.djvu/209

Rh direction as in the other, but solely because he will not—he will not be wise. The Scriptures represent man's unwillingness to accept the offers of mercy as made to him in the gospel, as the chief cause of his final ruin. "Ye will not come to me" says Jesus, "that ye might have life." "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate."

"Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded: But ye have set at nought all my counsel and would none of my reproof I also will laugh at your calamity: I will mock when your fear cometh: when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I