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The very idea of punishment, according to the strict sense of the word, implies the notion of guilt or ill-desert in the person upon whom it is inflicted. It is suffering inflicted on an offender, on account of his real or supposed personal guilt.

It acts merely upon those who were not, and never could be made, the objects of mercy; and it acts upon these according to the full measure of their ill-desert, as well as according to the exigencies of the moral empire of God. It has no limits, except those which circumscribe and bound the objects of infinite justice.

Beneficence is the ornament that embellishes the building; Justice the main pillar that supports it. It is for the observance of Justice that we need that consciousness of ill-desert, and those terrors of mental punishment, growing out of our sympathy with the disapprobation of our fellows.

The sense of ill-desert is too apt to be confused and shallow, in the human soul. Man is comparatively ready to acknowledge the misery of sin, while he is slow to confess the guilt of it. When the word of God asserts he is poor, and blind, and wretched, he is comparatively forward to assent; but when, in addition, it asserts that he deserves to be punished everlastingly, he reluctates.

For the official representatives of the divine order of worship to mourn the deaths of its assailants would have seemed to indicate their murmuring at God's judgments, and might have led them to participate in the sin while they lamented its punishment. It is hard to mourn and not to repine. Affection blinds to the ill-desert of its objects.

In like manner, that consolation will come in its noblest and most sufficing form to those who take their outward sorrows and link them with this sense of their own ill-desert.

It is manifest to every careful student of the Bible, that one class of servants, was on terms of equality with the children and other members of the family. Would our Lord have put such language upon the lips of one held up by himself, as a model of gospel humility, to illustrate its deep sense of an ill-desert?

"If I have not ventured to speak, dear Madge, will you not believe that the consciousness of my own ill-desert has tied my tongue; will you not at least give me credit for a little remaining modesty of heart? You know my life, and you know my character, what a sad jumble of errors and of misfortunes have belonged to each.

"You are very enigmatical, Mr. Clifford. Must I be present while you perform this terrible duty?" "I think you know what I must confess already, and have a world of scorn in store for me. Do not judge me harshly. Whatever the end may be, and my sense of ill-desert is heavy indeed, I shall begin on the basis of absolute truth. You shall know the worst.

Is it a quality to inspire the soul with a rational worship, or to fill it with a horror which casteth out love? Another argument to show the infinite ill-desert of some men, is drawn from the scientia media Dei.