garment, was speechless.

And thus we may

remark,

4. We have an emblem of the day of judgment.— We have the judgment day in miniature, in the case of Ananias and Sapphira. Their secret wickedness was brought to light, and they were condemned upon conviction. Thus will God at last, with equal ease, expose all the guilty transactions of a wicked world, and not condemn sinners by arbitrary will, and silence them by his terror, but by the convictions of their own consciences. "Every mouth shall be stopped, and become guilty before God." There will be no denial, no excuse to make, nor palliation to suggest; but every condemned sinner will become absolutely speechless.-We proceed to notice,

FOURTHLY, The awful judgment that followed."Ananias, hearing these words, fell down and gave up the ghost."" Then Sapphira fell down. straightway at Peter's feet, and yielded up the ghost; and the young men came in and found her dead, and carrying her forth, buried her by her husband." In our view, there seems something awfully severe in this sentence, thus to cut them off without space for repentance or reflection. But God's judgments are "a great

deep." He is "righteous in all his ways."This judgment, then, was a righteous judgment. The crime was peculiarly great, a gross instance of hypocrisy, a most flagrant display of covetousness and worldly-mindedness, and immediate insult to the omniscience and holiness of God. Such a judgment seemed necessary, to vindicate the honours of the Holy Spirit, which had been so glaringly violated. So gross and glaring an affront immediately after the extraordinary effusion on the day of Pentecost, seemed to require divine interposition.-Again, This judgment might be inflicted to deter others from making a false profession. Some might be induced to join the Christians, that they might share in the common purse; and such a judgment as this would tend materially to check this dishonest practice. Indeed, it is expressly said, "Great fear came on all them that heard these things." "And of the rest, durst no man [that is, no unconverted man, no base hypocrite,] join himself to them."Again, This judgment might be intended as a convincing attestation of the integrity of the apostles, in their management of the public money. It might be insinuated, that they applied it to their own private purposes. But certainly, Peter would not have had the assurance to pronounce, and much less would he have had the power

to execute such a sentence as this, if he himself had been guilty, in any degree, of a similar fraud.--This awful event teaches us,

1. How peculiarly odious to the Holy Spirit is the sin of lying!-He is the Spirit of "truth," and hates falsehood. For one deliberate lie

he visited Ananias and Sapphira with immediate destruction. Elymas the sorcerer, for speaking against the gospel, was simply struck blind. And Simon Magus, for desiring to buy the miraculous influences of the Spirit, was merely pronounced to be in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity, and exhorted to pray to God that the thought of his heart might be forgiven him. But for a deliberate lie, you see, instant death is executed, intimating that lying is a sin particularly hateful to the blessed Spirit, and one that calls with peculiar loudness for the divine vengeance. Indeed, there is no sin that argues deeper depravity of heart than lying; there is nothing that shows a more deep-rooted love of impurity; and there is no vice against which such wrath is denounced: "All liars shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone." And "whosoever loveth and maketh a lie," is expressly excluded from the heavenly city. Indeed, it does not appear that any one vice to which human nature

is subject, is a more certain proof of a thoroughly unrenewed heart and a condemned state, than the vice of lying. There is no vice more opposed to the nature of the blessed God; or to the nature of the gospel, which is all truth; or to the nature of religion, which is all sincerity, uprightness, and faithfulness. So that let a man have the talents of an apostle, and the zeal and fervor of an angel, if he is a liar he is "in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity," and all his professions are but as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal."-But this awful subject teaches us farther,

2. That God deems every species of fraud and deceit to be lying, though not put into words.There are persons who indulge in quibbles and equivocations, and yet it is to be feared deceive their own souls by taking refuge in the thought that they cannot be accused as downright liars, in so many words. I call upon all those who are conscious that they are guilty of this practice, to observe, that it does not appear, from the history, that Ananias told a downright lie, in express words. He brought a certain part of the price under colour of its being the whole, with an intention to deceive; and God so far considered this intention to deceive a lie, as

to punish him with instant destruction. There

punish him with instant destruction.

There

are multitudes who would scruple to tell a direct lie in express words, who yet quibble and prevaricate, and resort to petty evasions and equivocations to impose upon others, and fancy all the while they are clear from the guilt of lying. But let them observe, that it is an intention to deceive that constitutes the lie, brings guilt upon the conscience, and exposes the soul to divine vengeance. How many, there is reason to fear, are liars in the sight God, guilty of habitual deceit in their common transactions and their daily conversation, who yet flatter themselves they are secure, since they are not chargeable with uttering direct falsehoods in plain and express words. But surely this is running a dreadful risk: deceit habitually indulged constitutes a man a liar, and exposes him to God's judgments.-This part of the subject teaches us,

3. That those who have been partners in guilt will be partners in punishment.-God is no respecter of persons. If Sapphira had not been privy to the fraud of her husband, she would have been exempt from the judgment; but having been a joint contriver of the plan, a sharer in the guilt, she is a partner in the punishment. "The soul that sinneth it shall