nd says: There, that is your pattern,
and a child who loves his Father will try to copy his ways and be made
like Him by his love. So Morality passes into Religion, and through the
transition receives power beyond its own. The perfection of worship is
imitation, and when men 'call Him Father' whom they adore, imitation
becomes the natural action of a child who loves.

A dew-drop and a planet are both spheres, moulded by the same law of
gravitation. The tiny round of our little drops of love may be not all
unlike the colossal completeness of that Love, which owns the sun as
'His sun,' and rays down light and distils rain over the broad world.
God loves all men apart altogether from any regard to character,
therefore He gives to all men all the good gifts that they can receive
apart from character, and if evil men do not get His best gifts, it is
not because He withholds, but because they cannot take. There are human
love-gifts which cannot be bestowed on enemies or evil persons. It is
not possible, nor fit, that a Christian should feel to such as he does
to those who share his faith and sympathies; but it is possible, and
therefore incumbent, that he should not only negatively clear his heart
of malice and hatred, but that he should positively exercise such active
beneficence as they will receive. That is God's way, and it should be
His children's.

The thought of the divine pattern naturally brings up the contrast
between it and that which goes by the name of love among men. Just
because Christians are to take God as their example of love, they must
transcend human examples. Here again Jesus strikes the note with which
He began His teaching of His disciples' 'righteousness'; but very
significantly He does not now point to Pharisees, but to publicans, as
those who were to be surpassed. The former, no doubt, were models of
'righteousness' after a rigid, whitewashed-sepulchre sort, but the
latter had bigger hearts, and, bad as they were and were reputed to be,
they loved better than the others. Jesus is glad to see and point to
even imperfect sparks of goodness in a justly condemned class. No doubt,
publicans in their own homes, with wife and children round them, let
their hearts out, and could be tender and gentle, however gruff and
harsh in public. When Jesus says '_even_ the publicans,' He is not
speaking in contempt, but in recognition of the love that did find some
soil to grow on, even in that rocky ground. But is n