Page:A Defence of Revealed Religion.pdf/14

14 us that nought can cause Him to withhold His love, that nought can so reverse His nature as to make Him angry with us. "The Lord has not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities." He gives to us according to our necessities rather than our deserts; and at no time do we need His love so much as in the day when we have succumbed to the allurements of sin. "As our days, so shall our strength be"—in our hour of need He will be with us though we have rejected Him. This is our ideal of a perfect Deity; and we cannot picture God in too loveable a guise, for He is the Author and the Origin of all that is pure and holy. "He is the Father of lights, in whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning"—pleading ever that we would avail ourselves of His mercy and taste His love.

It is indeed a noble purpose to try to present the world with such a conception of God as will awaken a higher reverence and a deeper love for Him in the hearts of men, and to aid in the dissipation of those views of Deity which have induced an aversion in the minds of men towards their Father in heaven.

In the commonly accepted views concerning the Fall and Atonement, Mr. Voysey recognizes stumbling blocks standing in the way of man's approach to God as his loving Father.

Firstly:—The Fall. That man has fallen away from purity, and heaven, and God, is a fact that none can question. The humanity of our day is prone to