to! But you need not wait long to find out all about this; today you will be in eternity, and then you will see how matters stand. Do you know what kind of a reproof Jephte gave his countrymen when they came to him for help? Read the eleventh chapter of the Book of Judges. Jephte was a valiant warrior who was banished out of the city by the ancients of Galaad. Shortly after the Ammonites began to wage war on the Israelites and pressed them hard, as the latter had no one to take command of their forces. In this strait the ancients saw the fault they had been guilty of, and went suppliantly to Jephte: “And they said to him: Come thou and be our prince, and fight against the children of Ammon,” whom we cannot conquer. See what necessity is able to do. They sought now as their prince and chief one whom a short time before they were unwilling to tolerate as their fellow-citizen. Yes, said Jephte scornfully to them, you can find friendly words for me now! “Are not you the men that hated me, and cast me out of my father’s house, and now you are come to me constrained by necessity?”[1] You ask me to help you against your enemies, when you should rather expect punishment from me.
Similarly explained by other examples. Such, too, was the reproach uttered by the emperor Charles V, when lie had after a blood y battle taken Prisoner John Frederick, Duke and Elector of Saxony, who had taken Luther’s part against the emperor. The captive prince fell on his knees before him and begged pardon for having so wantonly violated the fidelity he owed his lawful sovereign. “Most clement emperor,” he said, amongst other things, “now I am in thy power!”[2] Indeed! said Charles disdainfully, am I the emperor at last? Before I was only the Austrian Charles, but now that you are a captive and cannot defend yourself I am your most gracious emperor; you will be treated as you deserve. And he passed up on the rebel the sentence of death. Truly impressive are those words of Jephte and Charles! But still more impressive will they be when heard from the mouth of the Emperor of heaven, and when He addresses them to the presumptuous sinner, who in the last extremity begs of Him for the first time the grace of forgiveness and a happy death. What, He will say, are not you the man that hated Me during your life? Are not you he who
