which is in you; for that was originally made in the likeness of God’s Spirit, and by it rebellious sons arise and go back to their earthly fathers, and trust in them when they have nothing else left to trust, and say to themselves, ’Though all the world has cast me off, my parents will not.  Though all the world despise and hate me, my parents love me still; though I have rebelled against them, deserted them, insulted them, I am still my father’s child.  I will go home to my own people, to the house where I was born, to the parents who nursed me on their knee, I will go to my father.’

Fathers and mothers! if your son or daughter came home to you thus, though they had insulted you, disgraced you, and spent their substance in riotous living, would you shut your doors upon them?  Would not all be forgiven and forgotten at once?  Would not you call your neighbours to rejoice with you, and say, ’It is good to be merry and glad, for this our son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found?’ And would not that penitent child be more precious to you, though you cannot tell why, than any other of your children?  Would you not feel a peculiar interest in him henceforth?  And do you not know that so to forgive would be no weak indulgence, but the part of a good father; a good, and noble, and human thing to do?  Ay, a human thing, and therefore a divine thing, part of God’s likeness in man.  For is it not the likeness of God Himself?  Has not God Himself, in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, declared that He does so forgive His penitent children, at once and utterly, and that ’There is more joy among the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance?’ So says the Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God.  Let who dare dispute His words, or try to water them down, and explain them away.

And why should it not be so?  Do you fancy God less of a father than you are?  Is He not The Father, the perfect Father, ’from whom every fatherhood in heaven and earth is named?’ Oh, believe that He is indeed a Father; believe that all the love and care which you can show to your children is as much poorer than the love and care God shows to you, as your obedience to your earthly parents is poorer and weaker than the love and obedience of Jesus Christ to His Father.  God is as much better a Father than you are, as Jesus Christ is a better Son than you are.  There is a sum of proportions; a rule-of-three sum; work it out for yourselves, and then distrust God’s love if you dare.

And believe, that whatsoever makes you distrust God’s love is neither the Spirit of God who is the spirit of sonship, nor the spirit of man:  but the spirit of the Devil, who loves to slander God to men, that they may shrink from Him, and be afraid to arise and go to their Father, to be received again as sons of God; that so, being kept from true penitence, they may be kept from true holiness, and from their duty to God, which is the duty of sons of God to their Father in heaven.