He had never created us; He would not be less
happy though we were all blotted out again from creation. But He is
the God of love; He brought us all into existence, because He found
satisfaction in surrounding Himself with happy creatures: He made us
innocent, holy, upright, and happy. And when Adam fell into sin and
his descendants after him, then ever since He has been imploring us to
return to Him, the Source of all good, by true repentance. "Turn ye,
turn ye," He says, "why will ye die? As I live I have no pleasure in
the death of the wicked." "What could have been done more to My
vineyard that I have not done to it[1]?" And in the text He
condescends to invite us to Him: "O taste and see how gracious the Lord
is: blessed is the man that trusteth in Him." As if He said, "If you
would but make trial, one trial, if you would but be persuaded to taste
and judge for yourself, so excellent is His graciousness, that you
would never cease to desire, never cease to approach Him:" according to
the saying of the wise man, "They that eat Me shall yet be hungry, and
they that drink Me shall yet be thirsty[2]."

This excellence and desirableness of God's gifts is a subject again and
again set before us in Holy Scripture. Thus the Prophet Isaiah speaks
of the "feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees; of fat
things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined[3]." And
again, under images of another kind: "He hath sent Me . . . to
give . . . beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment
of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may be called Trees of
Righteousness[4]." Or again, the Prophet Hosea: "I will be as the dew
unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as
Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the
olive-tree, and his smell as Lebanon. They that dwell under his shadow
shall return; they shall revive as the corn, and grow as the vine: the
scent thereof shall be as the wine of Lebanon[5]." And the Psalmist:
"O that My people would have hearkened unto Me . . . the haters of the
Lord should have been found liars, but their time should have endured
for ever. He should have fed them also with the finest wheat flour,
and with honey out of the stony rock should I have satisfied thee[6]."
You see all images of what is pleasant and sweet in nature are brought
together to describe the pleasantness and sweetness of the gifts which
God gives