which breathes nought but kindness: " Sion said, the Lord hath forsaken me, and the Lord hath forgotten me:" to which God answers, " Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb? And if she should forget, yet will not I forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee in my hands." [1]
Indisputably as these passages establish this truth, yet, to bring home to the minds of the faithful an absolute conviction, that at no time does God forget man, or withdraw from him the offices of paternal love, the pastor will add to the evidence of this truth, by introducing the example of our first parents, by which it is so strikingly illustrated. When you hear them sharply reproved for having violated the command of God; when you hear their condemnation pronounced in this awful sentence, " Cursed is the earth in thy work: with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life: thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herbs of the earth;" [2] when you see them driven out of Paradise; when, to extinguish all hope of return, you read that a fiery cherub was stationed at the entrance, brandishing " a flaming sword, turning every way;" [3] when you know, that to avenge the injury done him, God consigned them to every affliction of mind and body; when you see and know all this, would you not be led to pronounce that man was lost irrecoverably? That he was not only deprived of all assistance from God, but also abandoned to every species of misery? But, although the storm of the divine wrath burst over his guilty head, yet the love of God shot a gleam of consolation across the darkness that enveloped him. The sacred Scriptures inform us, that " the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins, and clothed them," [4] a convincing proof, that at no time does God abandon his creature man.
That no injuries offered to God by man can exhaust the divine love, is a truth contained in these words of David, " Will God in his anger shut up his mercies?" [5] And Habaccuc, addressing himself to God, distinctly says, " When thou art angry, thou wilt remember mercy." [6] " Who is a God like to thee," says Micheas, "who takest away iniquity, and passest by the sin of the remnant of thy inheritance? He will send his fury in no more, because he delighteth in mercy." [7] When, therefore, we imagine that God has abandoned us, that we are deprived of his protection, then, in an especial manner, does he, of his infinite goodness, seek after and protect us; for in his anger he stays the sword of his justice, and ceases not to pour out the inexhaustible treasures of his mercy.
The creation and government of the world, therefore, display, in an admirable manner, the singular love and protecting care of God; but amongst these, the great work of redemption
