But do not you do so, my friends.  Fix it in your hearts and minds; and fix it now, before you fall into the deep, as most are apt to do before they die; lest, when the dark day comes, you have no time to learn in adversity the lesson which you should have learnt in prosperity.  Fix in your hearts and minds the blessed Gospel and good news—­“There is mercy with Thee, O God; therefore shall Thou be feared.”  There is mercy with Him, pity, tenderness, sympathy; a heart which can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; which knoweth what is in man; which despiseth not the work of His own hands; which remembereth our weak frame, and knoweth that we are but dust:  else the spirit would fail before Him, and the souls which He has made.  Think of God as that which He is—­a compassionate God, a long-suffering God, a generous God, a magnanimous God, a truly royal God; in one word, a Perfect God; who causeth His sun to shine on the evil and on the good, and sendeth His rain on the just and on the unjust; a God who cannot despise, cannot neglect, cannot lose His patience with any poor soul of man; who sets Himself against none but the insolent, the proud, the malicious, the mean, the wilfully stupid and ignorant and frivolous.  Against those who exalt themselves, whether as terrible tyrants or merely contemptible boasters, He exalts Himself; and will shew them, sooner or later, whether He or they be the stronger; whether He or they be the wiser.  But for the poor soul who is abased, who is down, and in the depth; who feels his own weakness, folly, ignorance, sinfulness, and out of that deep cries to God as a lost child crying after its father—­even a lost lamb bleating after the ewe—­of that poor soul, be his prayers never so confused, stupid and ill-expressed—­of him it is written:  “The Lord helpeth them that fall, and lifteth up all those that are down.  He is nigh to all that call on Him, yea, to all that call upon Him faithfully.  He will fulfil the desire of those that fear Him, He also will hear their cry and will help them.”

Yes.  To all such does God the Father, God who made heaven and earth, hold up, as it were, His only-begotten Son, Christ, hanging on the Cross for us; and say:  Behold thy God.  Behold the brightness of God’s glory, and the express image of God’s person.  Behold what God gave for thee, even His only-begotten Son.  Behold that in which God the Father was well pleased:  in His Son; not condemning you, not destroying you, but humbling Himself, dying Himself awhile, that you may live for ever.  Look; and by seeing the Son, see the Father also—­your Father, and the Father of the spirits of all flesh; and know that His essence and His name is—­Love.