To all this there was one simple but conclusive answer--"Ye are the children of the Lord your God." This fact altered every thing. The poor ignorant and uncircumcised Gentiles around them might cut and disfigure themselves, inasmuch as they knew not God, and were not in relationship to Him; but as for Israel, they were on the high and holy ground of nearness to God, and this one fact was to give tone and character to all their habits. They were not called upon to adopt or refrain from any particular habit or custom _in order to be_ the children of God. This would be, as we say, beginning at the wrong end; but _being_ His children, they were to act as such. "Thou _art_ a holy people unto the Lord thy God." He does not say, Ye _ought to be_ a holy people. How could they ever make themselves a holy people, or a peculiar people, unto Jehovah? Utterly impossible. If they were not His people, no efforts of theirs could ever make them such. But God, in His sovereign grace, in pursuance of His covenant with their fathers, had _made_ them His children, _made_ them a peculiar people above all the nations that were upon the earth. Here was the solid foundation of Israel's moral edifice. All their habits and customs, all their doings and ways, their food and their clothing, what they did and what they did not do--all was to flow out of the one grand fact, with which they had no more to do than with their natural birth, namely, that they actually were the children of God, the people of His choice, the people of His own special possession. Now, we cannot but acknowledge it to be a privilege of the very highest order to have the Lord so near to us, and so interested in all our habits and ways. To mere nature, no doubt--to one who does not know the Lord--is not in relationship to Him, the very idea of His holy presence, or of nearness to Him, would be simply intolerable: but to every true believer--every one who really loves God, it is a most delightful thought to have Him near us, and to know that He interests Himself in all the most minute details of our personal history and most private life; that He takes cognizance of what we eat and what we wear; that He looks after us by day and by night, sleeping and waking, at home and abroad; in short, that His interest in and care for us go far beyond those of the most tender, loving mother for her babe. All this is perfectly wonderful; and surely, if we only realized it more fully, we should live a very different sort of life, and have a very different tale to tell. What a holy privilege--what a precious reality, to know that our loving Lord is about our path by day, and about our bed by night; that His eye rests upon us when we are dressing in the morning, when we sit down to our meals, when we go about our business, and in all our intercourse from morning till night! May the sense of this be a living and abiding power in the heart of every child of God on the face of the earth.