Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/65

40 from all the earth, has fed them with his bounty, has treated them as his well-beloved vineyard, has taken the nation as it were to wife. And so, if the people offend against the law of righteousness that is written in their hearts and known through the words of prophecy, they are guilty not alone of dangerous revolt against irresistible might, but also of something far worse, namely, of the basest ingratitude. Their sin is unheard of in all the earth. The heathen forsake not their wretched gods, that are yet no gods, and shall Israel turn against the will of its living, almighty lover? The waste vineyard, the unfaithful wife, these are the types of the iniquity of the people. Their sin is a miserable state of utter corruption. What the very beasts do, to know the masters that feed them, Israel forgets, whose master is not only the maker of all things, but also the loving spouse of his chosen nation.

This sanction for morality, not the might so much as the tender love of God, is by Jesus extended in range and deepened in meaning. Every man stands before God as beloved son. If he wanders, the Father would fain seek him as the shepherd would a lost sheep; would fain, like the prodigal’s father, fall upon his neck and kiss him, if he will but return; would fain feed and clothe him with the best; would not forget him amid all his sins. And the Father’s rain and sunshine are for just and unjust. Deeper and tenderer is this thought than the prophetic idea, because the relation is no political one, but a close personal one. To be conscious of it means, according to Jesus, to wish to live in