Yet just so are you under the particular care and
watchful concern of Almighty God!
But now, say you, you begin to feel the difficulty
of believing it possible that the great God of the
Universe takes this tender interest in such insignificant
and sinful creatures as men and women.
Consider, then, that we are told that “God is
Love;” and if He loves us, there is no difficulty
in believing that He feels all this interest in us.
Do not judge Him by earthly Kings and Potentates.
These are Giants who cannot see carraway seeds.
We do not blame them, for it is impossible they should
be interested for every body. But very very different
is both the power and the feeling of the King of Kings!
Still we have not got over the difficulty yet, for
of all the wonderful truths we are commanded to believe,
no one is so wonderful and so incomprehensible as
the Love of God to the sinful human race.
And yet it is a truth, and of all truths the most
important and most comfortable; and therefore it is
much to be desired that we should thoroughly believe
it: and I think I can make you understand
that it is possible, by something which you feel
in your own hearts. I think God has placed
even in our own hearts a witness of the possibility
of this great Truth.
My idea is this. We know that God has
been merciful to us—(His very creation
of man was an act of mercy), and therefore we
know that He loves us. He loves us because He has
been merciful to us. If you cannot see why
this should be, I refer you to the following story,
and advise you to try for yourselves.
Only be kind to any living creature, whether a human
being, or an irrational animal, and see if you can
keep your heart from loving it! Certainly
it does not become us to try to search out the unsearchable
mind of God, but I think it is permitted us to hope,
that the remarkable fast of Kindness engendering
Love, which we experience in our own hearts, is
intended to lead us upwards as by a holy guiding thread,
to some comprehension of the Love of that God, who
in Christ Jesus actually gave Himself for us.
Lift up the curtain!
In a baronial hall, not of the size and grandeur of
that at Warwick Castle, which those who have never
seen should try to see before they die: but still
in a hall as antique and interesting in style, fits
a young man reading.
It is evening, though the sun has not yet set, but
it is evening, and the young man is sitting at a small
oak table in a recess in one of the ancient windows,
and before him lies open a book, and on the book,
which he touches not with his hands, but on which his
eyes, blinded by tears, are fixed, there lies a faded
primrose.
The book is the Bible, and the faded primrose lies
on that verse in the Psalm, “Oh that men would
therefore praise the Lord for his goodness, and declare
the wonders that he doeth for the children of men!”
and some hand had placed a slight pencil mark before
these words.
