[3] Is there any human being who so hates the sin of a child, or the companion of that friend? To whose eye so much as to the eye of the lover is a defect a thing to be abhorred? Is there anywhere in the world such compassion as is found in a father or in a mother over the sin or fault of the child? Yea, with evil associates, with growing bluntness of feeling, with accumulating evasions and deceits, with a development of serpent passions, with a life by day and by night that emasculates manliness, the mother sees her boy going steadily down, step by step; and in her nightly vigils, with strong crying and tears, she pours herself out before God, abhorring with unutterable detestation all these terrible evils that threaten the life and immortality of her son; and for years she carries in her soul the suffering that ought to be in his, and bears his sin, his sorrow, and his shame, and lies humiliated, and bowed down in the dust, the just for the unjust.--_Beecher._ God hates sin, because it destroys what He loves. He could live high and lifted up above all noise of man's groaning, all smoke of his torment; but His nature is to come down after man--to grope for him amid all the dark pollutions of sin, and, if possible, to rescue and cleanse him. God hates sin very much, as mothers hate wild beasts. One day a woman stood washing beside a stream. She was in a wild frontier country, and the woods were all around. Her little, only child was playing about near her. By and by she missed the infant's prattle, and, looking about, she called its name. There was no answer. Alarmed, the mother ran to the house, but her babe was not there. In wild distress the poor woman now fled to search the woods, and there she found her child. But it was only its little _body_ that she clasped to her heart. A wolf had seized her treasure, and when, at last, she rescued it from those bloody fangs, its spirit had gone. Oh, how that mother hated wolves! And do you know that this is the very figure Christ uses to show what feeling He has towards the sin that is seeking to devour His children?--_Beecher._ It makes a difference to God how we act. His happiness is affected by the conduct of His children; for His heart is the heart of a father. If, when my child sins, a pang goes through my own soul, and I fly to rescue him from further iniquity, it is because God struck into my breast a little spark of what in Him is infinite.--_Beecher._