chapter xxxvi:26-17. The Lord pleads with them to acknowledge their

sinfulness; He speaks to their conscience. "Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions, so iniquity shall not be your ruin. Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed, and make you a new heart and a new spirit; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?" But in chapter xxxvi Grace speaks and promises to bestow, as a gift, what a righteous God demands. "A new heart also will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them." The result of this gift of grace, a new heart and His Spirit, is true repentance. "_Then_ shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations" (chap. xxxvi:21). It was Augustine who said, "Give what Thou requirest and then require what Thou will." All what God requires He bestows in His infinite Grace through Jesus Christ our Lord and then in possession of what Grace gives we can be what God requires. But the thirty-sixth chapter, where God no longer saith "make you a new heart," but promises to give a new heart to His people, awaits, as regards God's chosen people, its fulfilment. Here God pleads with them to convince them that they were a sinful people and that He is a just God.

In the last verse of this chapter the Lord answers the question of verse 23, "Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?" His own answer is, "For I have no pleasure in the death of Him that dieth, saith the Lord God, wherefore turn yourselves and live." And yet all these gracious pleadings were not heeded.

LAMENTATION OVER THE PRINCES OF ISRAEL.