Those who have found mercy cannot refrain from mourning over those whom they see hardening themselves in sin; nor should they cease to warn them from their way, and to cry to God in their behalf.  But their attention is not wholly taken up from home; it often reverts thither, and stirs them up to grateful acknowledgments of divine goodness to themselves.  WHO is he that maketh me to differ from the thoughtless sinner? is a consideration which often rises in the good man’s mind, while looking on the careless and secure.  It is a proper and a profitable consideration—­tends to keep him humble and mindful of his dependence.

Sense of past dangers serve to enhance the value of present safety.  The greater dangers we have escaped, and the more wonderful our deliverances have been, the greater should be our love to our deliverer, and the greater our care to make him suitable returns.  If we entertain just views of these things, such will be the effect.  Those to whom most is forgiven love the most.

By reflecting on the riches of divine mercy, we should stir up our souls to love the Lord.  If witnessing the unconcern of others, while in the broad road, serves to excite us to gratitude for divine goodness shown to us, “the wrath of man is thereby made to praise the Lord.”  Such was the effect which a view of Israel’s hardness had on Paul—­May all Christ’s disciples cultivate the same temper.

III.  In Paul’s conversion we see God distinguishing among his enemies, and calling one into his kingdom who was, from principle, a destroyer of his saints.  Paul was a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee.  No sect among the Jews was more bitter against Christ—­no other so eager and active in their endeavors to crush his cause and subvert his kingdom.  Yet numbers of that sect obtained mercy.  The same did not happen respecting the Saducees.  No instance of a Saducee brought to repentance, can be adduced.  Why this discrimination?

There may be reasons not revealed; but some are discernible.

The Pharisees “had a zeal for God, though not according to knowledge.”  Saul, the Pharisee, “verily thought, that he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus”—­he did not sin against the light of his own mind.  The same was doubtless the case with many others of that sect.  The Saducees were devoid of principle—­had rejected first principles—­those taught by the light of nature.  While first principles are retained, such was the belief of a divine existence—­a difference between good and evil—­a future state, in which men will receive the deeds done in the body, and the like, there remains a foundation on which religion may rest; but where these are rejected, the foundation is destroyed.  Of the former who have erred in lesser matters of faith, and been thereby seduced into practical errors, many have been reclaimed, and brought to repentance:  Not so the latter.  “One among a thousand have we not found.”  And those whose sentiments border on atheism, or infidelity, are seldom called of God.