e things lend infinite meaning to the word "Father" when uttered by
Divine lips. Like as a father pitieth his children, the Father pitieth
and beareth with us: "he knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are
dust." It is a father's compassion, tenderness, and equity which we
need, to be the basis of our confidence and hope. A father considers
with fatherly care, interest, and love our individual endowments,
difficulties, and temptations, in ruling and in judging us; and He will
ordain our eternal state with a merciful wisdom, which has to satisfy
not a rigid justice only but the hopes and yearnings of a paternal
heart. If it were not for the belief that the bar of judgment before
which we shall stand is a wise and righteous fatherly heart, the best
endowed might well faint under the burden of existence, while the worst
would moan under its agony and curse the day on which they saw the sun.
There are some very terrible sentences in the word of God, which utter
the moan, not of the worst men, but of the best and noblest with whose
history it deals. "_After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.
And Job spake, and said, Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the
night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived. Let that day
be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light
shine upon it. Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a
cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it. As for
that night, let darkness seize upon it; let it not be joined unto the
days of the year; let it not come into the number of the months. Lo, let
that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein._" (Job iii.
1-7.) "_Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto
the bitter in soul; Which long for death, but it cometh not: and dig for
it more than for hid treasures; Which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad
when they can find the grave? Why is light given to a man whose way is
hid, and whom God hath hedged in? For my sighing cometh before I eat,
and my roarings are poured out like the waters. For the thing which I
greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come
unto me. I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet;
yet trouble came._" (Job iii. 20-26.) "_Cursed be the day wherein I was
born: let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed. Cursed be
the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man child is born