V. 31.— It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.It is a fearful thing. God is called the living God, which gives peculiar force to the language of the Apostle. If we fall into the hands of an enemy we may cherish the hope that he may be removed, or that we may make our escape; but no such hope can visit those who fall into the hands of the living God, in whom we live and move and have our being, in whose hand is our breath and whose are all our ways. He executed terrible vengeance on the nations of old. He drowned Pharaoh and his hosts in the Red Sea— He blotted out the name of Amalek from under heaven— He destroyed the seven nations of Canaan. Where are now the Philistines, the Moabites, and Ammonites? Where is the proud Assyrian! Where is Babylon the great? They have all perished. But what is all this when compared with the worm which never dies, the fire which never shall be quenched? There has mercy been mingled with every temporal judgment, however severe; but those who have professed the faith and drawn back into perdition, have thus trodden under foot the Son of God, have rejected His propitiatory sacrifice and blasphemed the Holy Spirit, shall drink abundantly the wine of the wrath of God poured out into the cup of His indignation for ever and ever, To such His mercy is clean gone for ever, and He will be favorable no more. We read that all Israel that were round about them fled at the cry of Korah and his company when the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them up, and all that appertained to them; but what was this in comparison of being cast into the bottomless pit, into that place where hope can never enter?