Page:Sermons preached in the African Protestant Episcopal Church of St. Thomas', Philadelphia.djvu/210

201 ''will not answer, they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me. For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord. They would none of my counsel, they despised all my reproof Therefore, shall they eat of the fruit of their own tvay, and he filled with their own devices.''" We pass on to consider. II. The unwillingness of men to be wise in those things which involve their highest interest, affords matter for deep lamentation. To see a man dwelling close to a perennial spring of water, and yet with great labor and fatigue hewing out first one broken cistern, and then another, and after multiplied disappointmentsto die of thirst, could not fail to excite our pity for his consummate folly. In this, we have a faint picture of the conduct of men generally. The fountain of living waters, is within the reach of