h an one as
themselves, and an approver of their sin.

But it is worth while to inquire whether the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ be in this respect anything different from the Hebrew Jehovah, or
whether the gospel has in the least degree lessened his displeasure
against iniquity. Paul thought not that he was a different person, when
he said:

"_We know him who hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will
recompense, saith the Lord._"[168] Jesus thought not that he was more
lenient to sinners when he cried, "_Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto
thee, Bethsaida! * * * Thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven,
shalt be brought down to hell * * * It shall be more tolerable for the
land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee._"[169] It is not in
the Old Testament, but in the New, that we are told that Jesus himself
shall come "_In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God,
and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall be
punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and
from the glory of his power._"[170] It is not an old, bigoted Hebrew
prophet giving a vision of the Hebrew Jehovah, but the beloved disciple
who leaned on Jesus' breast, picturing the Savior himself, who says:
"_He was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood; and his name is called
the Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon
white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his
mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations; and
he shall rule them with a rod of iron; and he treadeth the wine-press of
the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God._"[171]

Let no man imagine that the New Testament offers impunity to the wicked,
or that the Old Testament denies mercy to the repenting sinner, or that
Christ exhibited any other God than the God of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob--the same Hebrew Jehovah who _commands the wicked to forsake his
way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and to return unto the Lord,
and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly
pardon_.[172] It is exceedingly strange that those who dwell upon the
paternal character of God, as a distinctive feature of Christ's personal
teaching, should have forgotten that the hymns of the Old Testament
church, a thousand years before his coming, were full of this endearing
relation; that it was by the first Hebrew prophet that the Hebrew
Jehovah declar