The Limit to Divine Retribution

“I will correct thee with judgment.” — Jer. xlvi. 28 (R. V.).

The love of a good father is as much seen in his punishments as in his rewards. We all recognise the truth that the reward given to a child should be on the lines of the child’s nature. No father would recompense a boy of seven by giving him a copy of Matthew Henry’s Commentary; we should call that a reward without judgment. But parents do not so often recognise the fact that a child’s penalty should be also on the lines of his nature, that he should not be corrected without judgment. A boy transgresses on the Sabbath day; you send him to write out the hundred and nineteenth psalm. What is the objection to this? It is too much, you say. That is not the objection; the evil does not lie in the quantity. It is not that the penalty is too much, but that it is too inappropriate. It is actually helping the child’s heart to transgress against the Sabbath; it is fomenting his dislike of religious ordinances in

general and of the Bible in particular; it is a correction without judgment. A girl tells you a lie through fear; you lock her in a dark room. Is that a wise correction? No; you are developing that very element which has caused her to err — the overmastering power of fear. Or, instead of the dark room, you confront her thenceforth with a perpetually dark countenance — a face which says: You know I can believe nothing from you,”’ Is that correction wise? No; it is telling her she is measured by a low standard; and when she realises that, she will soon come to measure herself by a low standard. Never tell a child that you expect nothing from him; that is the way to get nothing. At the time of the flood, never forget to show the rainbow, for the rainbow is never so needed as then. It is in the hour of penalty that we need the promise. Innocence can dispense with vision; Eden can bloom without prophecies; but the heart of fallen Adam must be cheered with the prediction of the serpent bruised.

There is always a light in Thy valley, O Lord; Thy correction is ever tempered with judgment. I have heard that every sin deserves Thy wrath and curse. No, every sin deserves Thy penalty and Thy promise. The stroke and the star, the 153 retribution and the rainbow, the pain and the pity, the smiting and the smile — that is what my erring soul requires. Thou wilt never send the stroke without the star, the smiting without the smile. The famine and the swine-husks alone could not send the prodigal home; it required the attraction of Thine eye — the eye that followed him when he was yet afar off. The pain of my sin comes not from the rod, but from the rose — the ‘’awful rose of dawn.” I cannot feel my chain till I hear the voices of liberty. It is when I see in the distance the warm fire of Thy love that I learn how cold I am. It is from Thy sunbeams that my stripes must come. Nothing but light can lash my sin. Nothing but beauty can burn my corruption. Nothing but revelation can rend my heart. It was when he saw Thy look of love that Peter wept bitterly. My sin can only be punished by a sense of Thy mercy; correct me by Thy mercy, O Lord I