Can a Woman Forget?
sometimes feel that he fulfils that word; “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.” The Father is the refuge of his own. They feel his everlasting arms underneath them, they feel his eye watching over them, they feel his love pouring down upon (hem like a stream of light from heaven. The Holy Spirit is within them. They sometimes feel his breathing, they sometimes feel that they have the Spirit within them, crying, “Abba, Father.” Oh! this heaven upon earth, full, satisfying joy. Sometimes it pleases God to withdraw from the soul, chiefly, I believe, 1st, To humble us in the dust; 2d, To discover some corruption anmortified; 3d, To lead us to hunger more after him. Such was /he state of David when he wrote the 42d psalm: “I will say dnto God, my Rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? As with a word L”1 my bones, mine enemies reproach me, while they say laily unto me, Where is thy God?” “As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.” Ah far more than the natural thirst of the wounded deer for the clear-flowing brook, is the spiritual thirst of the deserted soul after God. Such was the feeling of Job when he cried; “The arrows of the Almighty are within me;” and again: “O that 1 knew where I might find him; O that it were with me as in months past!” He has a bitter remembrance of his past enjoyment, a bitter sense that means cannot bring his soul back again to rest. Such was the feeling of the bride: “By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, bvjt I found him not.’’ — Song i»., 1. Ah! brethren, if ever you have known anything of this you will know the wretched feeling of distance from God, of having mountains between the soul and him, implied in these words: “The Lord hath forsaken me, and my God hath forgotten me.”
II. God cannot forget a soul in Cf* ’ “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she shouK ve compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may -et will I not forget thee.”
1. It is like a mother’s love. — ^’s world like
a mother’s love. It is a free, i However
much pain she has suffere’’ ver
many troubles she has to ‘Vit
hangs upon her brea.c is a something in he even to her idiot b<~ than this love, a fafcher pitk him.” ’ not account for it. You cannot change it. You must break to pieces the mothers heart before you can change her love to her child. And yet there are some poor souls so disfigured by Satan, their hearts so brutalized, that they c.an forget their children. The Indian mother can dance over her infant’s grave, and the murderess can lift her hand against the life of her little one: “They may forget; yet will 1 not forget thee.”
The love of God to a soul in Christ is a natural love. It is a love engrained in his nature. The Father loveth the Son; and it is the same love with which he loves the soul that is in Christ. He cannot forget him. He loves him because he is altogether lovely, he loves him because he is worthy to be loved, he loves him because he laid down his life for the sheep. All that is in God binds him to love his Son, his holiness, his justice, his truth; and so all that is in God binds him to love the soul that is in Christ.
Be not cast down, brethren, in affliction. Deserted souls, God’s love cannot change unless his nature change. Not till God cease to be holy, just and true, will he cease to love the soul that hides under the wings of Jesus.
2. The Father’s love is full love. — A mother’s love is the fullest love which we have on earth. She loves with all her heart. But there is no love full but that of God toward his Son; God loves Jesus fully; the whole heart of the Father is, as it were, continually poured down in love upon the Lord Jesus. There is nothing in Christ except what draws the infinite love of God. In him God sees his own image perfect, his own law acted out, his own will done. The Father loves the Son fully; but when a soul comes into Christ, the same love rests on that soul: “That the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them.” John xvii., 26. True, a creature cannot receive the love of, God as Jesus can; but it is the sai “e that shines on us and him; full, satisfying, unbounded i TVhen the sun pours down its beams on the wide ocean av le flower at the same time, it is the same sunshine tl :nto both, though the ocean has vastly large’* its glorious beams; so, when the Son of his Father, and a poor guilty worr love that comes both on the £•” able to contain more.
s? If God fully loves
forget thee. A crea-
“,lay vessel, a breath
1 again. But the
bject infinitely
Back, he finds his aged mother changed, her head is grey, her venerable brow is furrowed with age; still he feels, while she clasps him to her bosom, that her heart is the same. But, ah! far more unchanging is the love of God to Christ, and to a soul in Christ: “I am the Lord; I change not.” The Father that loves has no variableness. Jesus, who is loved, is the same, yesterday, to-day, and for ever. How can that love change? It flowed before the world was; it will flow when the world has passed away.
If you are in Christ, that love shines on you: “I have loved thee with an everlasting love.” “I am persuaded that neither deatfi, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
(1.) Comfort downcast believers. Many of you may be cast down, and your souls disquieted. You think God has dealt bitterly with you; he has written you childless; he has met you as a lion and as a bear bereaved of her whelps; or he has blasted your gourd; or he has deserted you, so that- you seek him, and find him not. Look’still to Jesus; the love of God shines on him; nothing can separate Jesus from that love; nothing can separate you. At the very time when Zion was saying,” “My God hath forgotten me;” at that moment God was saying: “I will not forget thee.”
Your afflictions and desertions only prove that you are under the Father’s hand. There is no time when the patient is an object of such tender interest to the surgeon, as when he is under his knife; so, you may be sure, if you are suffering from the hand of God, his eye is all the more bent on you.” The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.’’
(2.) Invite poor sinners to come and taste of this love. It is a sweet thing to be loved. I suppose the most of you have tasted a mother’s love. You know what it is to be rocked in her arms, to be watched by her gentle eye, to be cheered by her smile; but, oh! brethren, this is nothing to the love of your God. That dear mother’s eye will «lose in death; that cjear mother’s arm will moulder in the dust. Oh! come and share the love of Him who cannot die. There is one spot alone on -tfhich the love of God continually falls unclouded; it is the head #f Je«ns: The Father loveth the Son.” He loves him from his t ery nature; so that the perfections of God must change before thj» love can change. He loves him fully. The whole treasures of love that are in the infinite bosom of Jehovah are pouring (VHitinually into the bosom of the Son He loves unchangingly J/io cloud can ever come between; no veil, no distance. But vit is this to me? Everything to you, sinner. Jesus stands ‘o lefuge for sinners, ready to receive even thee. Flee into him,“iinner; abide in him, and that love shall abide on you. You are a worm; but you may cntei into the joy of your Lord. You may share the love of God with Jesus in a way that holy angels cannot do. Oh! sinner, had you rather remain under the wrath of God? “He that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” “God is angry with the wicked every day;” but, ah! “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into ‘the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.”
Oh! it is sweet to pass from wrath to love, from death to life. That poor murderess would leap in her cell, when the news came that she was not to die the murderer’s death ;* but, ah! ten thousand times sweeter would it be to you, if God were, this day, to nersuade you to embrace Christ freely offered in the Gospel.