Undoubtedly we must judge of the attributes of God from the stand-point of our own nature, but from our spiritual, and not from our animal nature. We know what love is, and we know what goodness is, in the soul, yet we never give to either form and substance. To us the spirit of man is invisible, and yet we may judge of its attributes from the effects that it produces. So also may we judge of God as far as is needful. When we speak of him as a Father, it does not follow that we should give him substantially the form of a human father. We look upon a human father as kind, affectionate and tender to his offspring, yet those beautiful elements, kindness, affection and tenderness, are not visible to the eye, and as far as they exist in the bosom of another we can judge of them only as they effect others or ourselves, or by like elements existing in our own bosoms.

In the minds of the mass of men, though none perhaps would acknowledge the fact, the Deity wears the form of a human sovereign wielding a scepter upon a throne. Such is the impression that will glide in. It comes in part from early teachings, from the manner in which the Deity is spoken of in figures of speech, and from attributing to him the baser passions of our im

perfect humanity. When we hear God spoken of as a being capable of feeling emotions of hatred, wrath and revenge, we are likely to associ ate him with the most unlovable of our own race, with those who oppress and injure us; and when we read that "For the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels were predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained unto everlasting death," we cannot refrain from thinking of the selfishness and injustice of hu man tyrants; and hence he gradually becomes corporealized in the mind and is looked upon as a kindred tyrant, but infinitely more powerful and terrible.

The sculptor carves from the ideal that exists in his mind, revealing it in marble to the outward eye. What if the Christian,who is endeavoring to convert the Pagan, should carve in wood or stone his ideal of the God that he worships, and set it up where he might render it daily homage! Is there any essential difference between worshiping the ideal in the mind, and the ideal in the stone? The Pagan transfers his ideal, his image, through the medium of the chisel, and hence he is called a Pagan. But his God is no more a false God than is the God of many a Christian. Let every Christian who shall read

this examine his own mind and ascertain if he has not an image there the image of a being as unnatural and terrible as any Pagan godand let him ask himself why he condemns the poor ignorant Pagan.

But the heart has desires and longings that reach out for something more than a Force that flows in the sap of trees and gives to the flowers their tinted colors, and that require to be satisfied something better than a great image modeled after the human form and representing as is generally the case an infinite tyrant, an awful monster, under whose uplifted arm ready to smite them with a terrible blow if they offend him, his poor children must cower and moan, a being the very thought of whom makes one sick at heart. But this thought I shall take up in the Discourse that is to follow.

VI.

THE DIVINE PATERNITY.

Have we not all one Father?-MALACHI ii. 10.

Be ye therefore followers of God as dear children,EPHESIANS V. 2,

THESE

HESE texts are significant. There is a simplicity and an earnestness about them that remind one of the language of a pure-hearted child. "Have we not all one Father?" There is something near, and dear and home-like about it. Simple as it is, it does what many a grand passage cannot do. It touches and unseals a little spring deep down in the heart that is filled with life's purest waters.

To those who have been blest with a happy home, and kind parents, the name of Father is peculiarly endearing. Around it cluster many of our brightest and holiest memories. It is spoken but to call up sweet visions of the past.

The ties that exist between parent and child

are among the purest and noblest that human nature is capable of forming. They are the tendrils of an eternal love, if birth can be given to such love in a world like this. Hence the pathos and yearning tenderness of those passages of Scripture in which God is spoken of as a father, and man, frail, sinful and erring man, as his child. They are not great and grandthey come from too deep a source to be ornamented with the flowers of language. But they are warm as though the blood of a great heart had circled about them before they were spoken. Always they are hopeful and cheering—yet sometimes they have produced a sensation in my breast like that which follows after a strain of low and plaintive melody. It is not depression, nor can I call it sadness, but a half-defined yearning for something more beautiful and tender, and something holier than I have yet known or seen.

While reading such passages as these I feel as if I were going toward heaven. If I have hatred it disappears-if I have malice and evil thoughts they pass from me. Like the spirit in the fable, love has come and twined its soft arms about my heart. I am ready to forgive and to forget. There is not a being in the world