in heaven.' All Christians do so; and a preacher, in his opening instructions, would teach and exhort the untutored savage to believe in and speak to Him as such.
" God is the Father of all men and eminently a perfect Father. We could not imagine such a father casting out, expelling from his home forever a child, until he had tried the proper means to keep him with himself — until the child deserts him, or, by wilful, obstinate, persistent disobedience to his father's will, necessitates his own expulsion. Such a father will do all he well can for the welfare of his children — do everything short of violence to enable his children to succeed in all that is for his own and their good. The dominant desire — wish — will — of such a father must be to make his children happy; his dominant dread and horror, that one of them should be unhappy.
" Our Lord tells us how easy and swift true repentance can be in the case of the publican — the notorious and typical sinner — who by making an act of sorrow for his sins, in seven words, went home to his house justified. God is far more ready and generous in forgiving the worst than men — even good men — are in forgiving each other, and bad would it be for the best of us if He were not.
" By way of showing the effect which can be produced by the very thought of God Our Father, and belief in Him as such, I may give a fact told to me by the person concerned — now dead for some years. He fell into a state akin to despair about his salvation. A confessor, to whom he opened his mind, told him to go, take his Bible, and write out all the texts in which God calls Himself his Father. He did so, and was blessed with calm and peace before he had written twenty." — Fr. Nicholas Walsh, S.J.
