Why, then, did He not send them? He must have foreseen that men would fail in giving the Gospel to the heathen. But was the eternal destiny of the great majority of our race to depend on the whim of men? If God provided salvation for the heathen, would He not convey it to them in some way? Evidently, He has not done so in this life. Do we not begin, then, to see that there must be some other time, or some other means, of effecting His purposes? For "His purpose will stand, and he will do all his pleasure." And when we consider the eternity of His being, and of our own, nothing is more reasonable than that He has ordained a fitting opportunity beyond the boundary of time. Let us only rid ourselves of our insular, contracted ideas, and we will see how worthy of the Infinite Wisdom is such a scheme of grace. Then there is another consideration. God loves every soul of man. And every man was endowed with a capacity of worshipping Him, and of having communion with Him to all eternity. If any failed from any cause whatever to rise to this great experience, would not God's own happiness be curtailed? I know that it has been an orthodox doctrine that God cannot suffer. I have long had my doubts of it. To be sure, we read that He is "without variableness or shadow of turning." Does not that apply to His character? In that respect He is absolutely unchangeable. It is no infringement of that great truth to believe that He can suffer. I spoke of this matter lately to a minister of profound mind. He replied: "I would not think much of Him if He could not suffer." I have even thought that in the incarnation and death of Christ, the Father suffered equally with the Son. It is a great mystery; I do not press it. But my thought has been that there was such infinite sympathy between them that the Father actually suffered as much as the Son. If a child is sick, does not the mother suffer as much as the child? And do we not all suffer if our children are in pain? Now, we inherit as much of the Divine nature as is possible to be communicated to human nature. The root of such suffering is love. And is not God's love for His children infinitely greater than ours? Therefore, would not His happiness be curtailed by seeing His children in pain? We know that "He doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men." Can He, then, contemplate with changeless equanimity the wickedness and final suffering of the great majority of our race? So far as I know, there is no such idea in Scripture; and it is certainly not suggested by our own human nature in its highest development.