A SHORT SERMON.

IN the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to the Apostle Matthew, and at the ninth verse, are these words: "OUR FATHER."

Yes, brothers and sisters, "Our Father" is the name by which we address God Almighty by his own desire; and we come to Him as his children-disobedient, wicked children we may have been, or may still be, but yet his children-not, perhaps, in heart, yet in fact; not, perhaps, loving Him, yet loved by Him. All the love, all the goodness is on his side, to begin with; all the enmity, all the badness is on our side; and, therefore, all the blessedness, all the glory is on his side, to begin with. But that does not satisfy Him. He gave us life as our Father; we have life from Him as his children. But the life of seeing, hearing, feeling, is not the life He intends for his children, unless they see what is really beautiful, and hear what is really true, and feel what is really happiness.

While men do not see how good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity; while they do not listen to God's own holy teaching, which shows them that this would be beautiful and happy; while they do not feel inclined to love their Father and all his children, every one; while this is so, they are selfish; each wanting to please himself, without a care whether his Father or his brothers are pleased or hurt. And then none are really happy, nor can be; for one wants what another has; one likes to do what does harm to another; one

takes by dishonesty, or by violence, what another has got by honest industry. And for want of love to God and man, the laws of God are broken, and misery and destruction follow; which is very like as if men were told not to touch fire, not to eat poison; but were told to warm themselves, and to eat wholesome food; and yet they would go against that order, and so bring suffering and destruction upon themselves.

And their Father is grieved when they do so. He is grieved when it can be said, "Behold how bad and how miserable it is for brothers and sisters to dwell together at variance and enmity."

And it can be said now.

All by reason of people (who are really God's children, and so all brothers and sisters) doing wrong before God, and doing wrong to each other.

This doing wrong, in thought, word, or deed, is "sin."

And this sin has got to be such a habit among us, that we almost think it must always be so.

But people begin to do wrong from a false idea that they will please themselves.

God knows it is a false idea, a lie. God knows how to please himself; and so He is good to all, and loves and serves even those who do not love Him; and it is a false idea that keeps people going on doing wrong, as if there was no cure for it.

There is, indeed, no cure for misery and destruction while people go on wickedly. Rich people may be clothed in purple and fine linen, and may fare sumptuously every day; but if they are not good, they cannot be happy. And poor people, if they were to get possession of all that the rich have got, would not be happy

unless they were good. "There is no peace, saith my

God, for the wicked."

Yet there is hope for the world.

For God loves the world.

Why?

Because God is good.

But the evil spirit in people leads them to doubt if God is good.

"If He is good," they say, "why does he not make us all happy?"

A very proper and reasonable question, and one that God will surely show us the answer of, if He is good, and if we really try to know why.

Because God is our good Father, nothing can satisfy Him but being good to us, and doing us good; and as we are his children, nothing can satisfy us, or make us really happy, till we are good to Him, and good to one another.

If God loved us less, and was contented to be our Maker and Master only, He could make us as obedient to his will as the earth, and the sun, and the moon are, and all would go on smoothly as it does with these.

But these are not God's children; He is not their Father; He does not want them to be like children to Him, nor like brothers and sisters to each other. They do his will beautifully and peaceably; but they do not do so, because they see the truth, how He loves his children; and they do not so because they love Him, and delight to please Him, nor because they love each other, and delight to please each other. So they have no happiness. And God our Father cannot be satisfied till we have happiness.

Nw, it is plain that, if He loved us less, He might

at once make us as good as the sun and the moon are, and leave us no choice in the matter.

But because He has loved us with an everlasting love, therefore He draws us by his loving-kindness.

"Oh, draw the wicked world with loving-kindness! that is a wondrous thing to think of; that will never be done."

So some may say. But it shall be done.

God will never give up his work till it is done.

"But the world does not love God. And, it seems, God does not love the world; for He punishes its sins sorely." Do you say so?

Nay, though the world of sinners does not love God, yet He does love the world, and therefore He punishes sinners.

We have fathers here who punish their children when they do wrong; and we know it is the loving father that punishes his child, while every pain he causes to the child grieves his own soul. Would he be good, if he turned away one stroke of his punishment while he thought the child needed it? Yet our fathers may often make a mistake, and punish wrongly. But He, our heavenly Father, makes no mistakes; He does not, indeed, like to afflict and grieve us; but He does it for our good, that we may be partakers of his holiness, and so of his blessedness too.

If He was to keep us from doing bad things, without letting us choose, He would put us into the place of things that He has made, like the sun and moon; but He means something far higher than that for his children. And if He was to cease to punish us as long as we go on doing wrong, or if He was to let any one turn away our punishment, which is for our good, He

would not be good to us; He would be leaving us in destruction and misery, when He knows how good and pleasant it is for his children to dwell together in unity.

No punishing, at the time we suffer it, seems joyful, but grievous; and so we begin to think, if we could be saved from the punishment any way, it would be quite happy for us. But we know what a child will think, when it grows up, of a parent who was persuaded to lighten the punishment, or to put away the chastisement that was fit to be laid on the child.

The grown-up son has often been found to say, with truth, that the saving of him from punishment was the selling of him to destruction.

So, because our Father loves his children, He would not save them from their punishment, but would save them from the destruction and misery proceeding from doing wrong—that is, from sin and its fruit.

Punishing alone can never do this.

For the root of all the wrong we do is this, that we do not love our God who is good, nor love each other as our God loves us all, bad and good.

He loves the bad, and so He is grieved with their badness, and punishes them while there is need of it. He loves the good, and is pleased with goodness, and delights to have them happy as He is happy.

So He wants to have the bad ones good, that the unhappy ones may be happy.

And in order that they may know the truth, how He delights in goodness; and also that they may know the truth, how He loves them, and desires and determines to have them happy by their loving like Him, that they, too, may delight in goodness; he, their God and Father, came to them as their brother and servant,

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