children, having seen them come to some disgraceful end—­a state prison, or even the gallows.  This, instead of being true tenderness of heart, was infatuation and the worst species of hardness and insensibility to the welfare of their offspring.  On the other hand, we ought never to suffer a spirit of revengeful indignation to slumber in our bosoms, ready on every trivial occasion to awake into resentment and retaliation.  In fine, we ought to imitate our God in feelings and conduct towards each other, as it is expressed in our text.  But many suppose that God is filled with feelings of revengeful indignation towards his creatures, and that the period is rolling on when he will cease to be merciful, and will commence torturing us in the future world for the sins committed in this, and that too, when punishment can do no good to the sufferer—­when reformation will be out of his reach.  To torment a frail dependent creature, under such circumstances, would be the most degrading species of revenge.  And if this is the conduct of God, then we must practice the same, because we are commanded to imitate him.  Our text says—­“Be yea kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another; even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”

In this passage, our Father in heaven is held up to the world as the model of kindness tenderness and forgiveness, that mortals are to imitate.  God is the moral standard to which every bosom ought to aspire.  The highest perfection and loveliness of man fall infinitely short of the intrinsic loveliness and divine perfection’s of Jehovah.

If he is the standard of moral excellence which we are to imitate, then we must admit that the copy far exceeds the imitation.  If man is called upon to act like God in order to improve his character and affections, then God is better than man, and every opposing objection must, forever, fall to the ground.  Perhaps it may be said, that all denominations of men allow him to be so.  This is not correct.  It is true, they say this in so many words.  But words are one thing, and what a doctrine involves is quite another.  I might believe, and most rigidly maintain, that an earthly father had prepared a palace of comfort for his five obedient children, and a furnace of fire to torture his five disobedient children; and suppose he had dealt with his ten children as above stated;—­with what propriety could I step before the public, and contend that he was the best man in America?  Even were I persuaded, in my own mind, and firmly believed him to be the best man in existence, would either my belief or acknowledgment make it a fact?  No; every man of common sense, and common humanity would think me deranged.  My saying that he was good, and even believing him so, could not alter the awful reality, but would be an evidence of my want of consistency and propriety.  He would still be a bad unfeeling man, and in no comparative sense so good as that father, who should punish his children in mercy, and for their future amendment and benefit.