help
you with God. He has told you to call Him your Father; and if you
speak to Him in any other way, you insult Him, and trample under
foot the riches of His grace.

This is the good news which the Bible preaches. This is the witness
of God's Spirit, proclaiming that we are the sons of God; and, says
St. Paul in another place, 'our spirit witnesses' to that glorious
news as well. We feel, we know--why, we cannot tell, but we feel
and know that we are the sons of God. When we are most calm, most
humble, most free from ill-temper and self-conceit, most busy about
our rightful work, then the feeling comes over us--I have a Father
in heaven. And that feeling gives us a strength, a peace, a sure
trust and hope, which no other thought can give. Yes, we are ready
to say, I may be miserable and unfortunate, but the Great God of
heaven and earth is my Father; and what can happen to me? I may be
borne down with the remembrance of my great sins; I may find it
almost too hard to fight against all my bad habits; but the Great
God who made heaven and earth is my Father, and I am His son. He
will forgive me for the past; He will help me to conquer for the
future. If I do but remember that I am God's son, and claim my
Father's promises, neither the world, nor the devil, nor my own
sinful flesh, can ever prevail against me.

This thought, and the peace which it brings, St. Paul tells us is
none of our own; we did not put it into our own hearts; from God it
comes, that blessed thought, that He is our Father. We could never
have found it out for ourselves. It is the Spirit of the Son of
God, the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, which gives us courage to
say, 'Our Father which art in heaven,' which makes us feel that
those words are true, and must be true, and are worth all other
words in the world put together--that God is our Father, and we his
sons. Oh, my friends, believe earnestly this blessed news! the news
of Christmas-day, that you are not God's slaves, but his sons, heirs
of God, and joint-heirs with Christ;--joint-heirs with Christ! In
what? Who can tell? But what an inheritance of glory and bliss
that must be, which the Lord Jesus Christ Himself is to inherit with
us--an inheritance such as eye hath not seen, and incorruptible,
undefiled, and that fadeth not away, preserved in heaven for us; an
inheritance of all that is wise, loving, noble, holy, peaceful--all
that can make us happy, all that can make us like