The heath in the wilderness.
Such will the sinner be; for, like it, he will be:
1. Barren. No rich, strength-sustaining fruit does the heath bear. A mere hard berry. The camel and the ass may browse thereupon, but it is no food for man. "Can men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" And thus barren of good is the sinner.
2. Unlovely. There is no form nor beauty about the heath; a stunted, misshapen shrub. Its wood can be used for no manufacture. It is fit only to be burned. And when our eyes are opened to see things as they are, sin and the sinner will appear in all moral unloveliness; all present outward charm gone, and only their evil deformity seen.
3. Alone. Surrounded by drear expanse of sand; no companion trees to form it into a grove or a verdant mass of plant life. And so will the sinner be one day. Christ goes with the believer down the dark valley, but the sinner goes forth alone. He stands at the bar of God with no advocate. None of all his old companions can redeem his soul or give to God a ransom for him. Alone; helpless.
4. The gracious influences of Heaven do him no good. The dew and the rain, the sun's warmth, come upon it; but it remains the unlovely, solitary, barren thing it ever was. So the impenitent man is visited by the influences of Heaven, the pleading of the Spirit, the varied means of grace; but they avail him not.
5. Soon to perish. The driving sand, the scorching heat, the browsing camel, the encampment fire, all threaten its life, and by one or other of them it soon perishes. And they who are like to it are never safe. "How are they destroyed as in a moment!" Conclusion. But the godly are not so. "He shall be like a tree planted by," etc. (Psalms 1:1-6.).—C.