the everlasting misery and ruin into which we have thrown ourselves, we may turn those pleadings of God’s Spirit, by our own evil wills, into a darker curse than all which have gone before. We may refuse to believe that God is love, and fancy Him as hard, and cruel, and proud, and spiteful, and unloving as we ourselves are. We may refuse, though Scripture, Prayer-book, sacraments, preachers, assure us of it, that God is our Father still; and deny His covenant of baptism, and blaspheme His holy name, by fancying Him our tyrant and taskmaster, who hates us, and willeth the death of a sinner, and has pleasure in the death of him that dieth. And then we may behave according to the lie which we ourselves have invented, and all sorts of inventions of our own to escape God’s wrath, when, in reality, it is He who is wishing to turn His wrath away from us; and to win back His favour, when, in reality, it is not we who are out of favour with Him, but He who is out of favour with us, who dread Him and shrink from Him; we may try to deliver ourselves from Him, when all the while it is He, the very God whom we are dreading and flying from, who alone is able and willing to deliver us; and with all our fears, and self-tormentings, and faithless terrors, and blasphemings of God by fancying Him the very opposite to what He has declared Himself, we shall get no peace of conscience, no deliverance from sins, or from the fear of punishment, but only a fearful and fiery looking forward to judgment, which is hell. That is superstition; hell on earth; when men have so utterly forgotten the likeness of God, which He manifested in His Son Jesus Christ, that they look on Him as a stern and dreadful taskmaster, a tyrant, and not a deliverer. Hell on earth, which may and must lead to hell hereafter; a hell of fear, and doubt, and hatred of Him who is all lovely; the hell whereof it is written, that its worst torment is being cast out from the sight of God: unless the hapless sinner opens his eye and believes the covenant of his baptism, and sees that God cannot lie, God cannot change, cannot break His covenant, cannot alter His love; that though he have left his Father’s house, and wandered into far countries, and wasted his Father’s substance in riotous living, he is still his Father’s son, his Father’s house is still where it was from the beginning, his Father’s heart still what it was from the beginning; and so arises and goes back to his Father’s house, confessing that he is no more worthy to be called His son, willing to be only as one of His hired servants; and then—sees not the stern countenance, the cruel punishments which he dreaded: but—“While he was yet afar off, his Father saw him, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him!”