CHAPTER XII. PATERNAL PITY. "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.”—Psalm ciii. 13. How beautiful is this relationship! How gracious is the God that creates it! We are not only sinners brought within the range of his mercy, but we are also made children, embraced by his adopting love, reposing on his bosom, and there enjoying the peace that passeth all understanding. He teaches us alike to feel and say, "Our Father." The deep spring of paternal love is but the faint index of that ocean of love and fatherhood which is in our Father. A father's love to his offspring, purified, ennobled, elevated, to an infinite excellency and an eternal duration, is the way by which we can best gather an estimate of what God is to us; and having done so, we have reached only a faint conception of the inexpressible love of the Eternal Father. "Our Father" begins our purest prayers; "Our Father" begins our warmest praises. "Our Father" is the rich chord that runs through both the under-song of earth,the anthem peal of heaven. "Our Father" is the key-note, the fixed principle, that gives modulation, harmony, and melody to all. It is only when we recollect that it is a Father we pray to, and a Father whom we praise, that we enter into the full blessedness and taste the perfect enjoyment of the Gospel of Christ. Never let us forget that when you draw near to God and confess your sins, you draw near as sons to a father, not as criminals to a judge. "Our Father" is the God of nature, providence, and grace. Each missive from the skies bears this august superscription. In all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth, in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment, it is true, "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." How comforting to me is this blessed conviction, that in my severest trials, there is ever cast upon me a father's pitying eye! You know there are seasons when the soul feels unspeakably sad, though you know not why; times when the heart seems overburdened with a load which it can neither explain nor remove; solemn, secret, and meditative moments, when every thing, as if instinct with a new significance, tends to convince you that all is vanity and vexation of spirit; and a voice within you seems to say, that "this is not our rest; it is polluted." Such moments are those when the soul reasserts its own grand origin, its glorious being, its immortal destiny, and shows that "Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return," was not spoken of the soul. is at such moments that the believer's heart, when thus overloaded and oppressed, flies with perfect confidence to the Father's bosom, in which every human joy and grief has a resounding echo, and thence draws a sustaining comfort, a deep peace, a presentiment of bliss, a reinvigorated trust, which prompts It his soul and all that is within him to sing, "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." It is thus that our darkest moments, paradoxical as it may sound, are our brightest. The Christian has his night, but he has, what the world knows not, his songs in the night; and a Christian's night, even when it is darkest, is far brighter than a worldling's noon-day. A Christian's night is like some of those glorious ones in northern climes, of which a southern inhabitant cannot well conceive when the sun has retired, and the cold shades of night have closed around, when the aurora borealis breaks forth, covering the wide horizon with unspeakable brilliancy, till the whole heavens are telling of the glory of God, and that God our |