care that, like Esau, you hereafter find no room for
repentance, though you seek it carefully with tears! It is a
fearful thing to despise the mercies of the living God; and when you
are called to be His sons, to fall back under the terrors of His
law, in slavish fears and a guilty conscience, and remorse which
cannot repent.

And do not give way to false humility, says St. Paul. Do not say,
'This is too high an honour for us to claim.' Do not say, 'It seems
too conceited and assuming for us miserable sinners to call
ourselves sons of God. We shall please God better, and show
ourselves more reverent to Him, by calling ourselves His slaves, and
crouching and trembling before Him, as if we expected Him to strike
us dead, and making all sorts of painful and tiresome religious
observances, and vain repetitions of prayers, to win His favour;' or
by saying, 'We dare not call ourselves God's children yet; we are
not spiritual enough; but when we have gone through all the
necessary changes of heart, and frames, and feeling, and have been
convinced of sin, and converted, and received the earnest, God's
Spirit, by which we cry, Abba, Father! _then_ we shall have a right
to call ourselves God's children.'

Not so, says St. Paul, all through this very Epistle to the
Galatians. That is not being reverent to God. It is insulting Him.
For it is despising the honour which He has given you, and trying to
get another honour of your own invention, by observances, and
frames, and feelings of your own. Do not say, 'When we have
received the earnest of God's Spirit, by which we can cry, Abba,
Father! _then_ we shall become God's children;' for it is just
because you _are_ God's children already--just because you have been
God's children all along, that God has taught you to call Him
Father. The Lord Jesus Christ told men that God was their Father.
Not merely to the Apostles, but to poor, ignorant, sinful wretches,
publicans and harlots, He spoke of their Father in heaven, who,
because He is a perfect Father, sends His sun to shine on the evil
and the good, and His rain to fall on the just and on the unjust.
The Lord Jesus Christ taught men--all men, not merely saints and
Apostles, but all men, when they prayed--to begin, 'Our Father.' He
told them that that was the manner in which they were to pray, and
therefore no other way of praying can we expect God to hear. No
slavish, terrified, superstitious coaxing and flattering will