Him, asking for the help they need. The severity of God toward sinners endures only so long as they refuse to acknowledge their guilt. His harshness with them, like that of Joseph with his brethren, is but love in disguise; and as soon as they are brought to own their guilt, that which before was the anger of God is swiftly turned into His love and mercy. Christ did not come to destroy, but to save. He will not crush the broken reed, nor extinguish the smoking flax.(77) “As a father hath compassion on his children, so hath the Lord compassion on them that fear him; for he knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust.”(78) But there is also the love of the world, which enslaves so many. So numerous and so bewitching are the attractions of the present life that they are loath to leave them. It is a beautiful world, this universe of ours, so deep, so wide, so vast! It is filled with pleasures and allurements and graced with myriad charms; and he, indeed, seems cold of heart who can easily turn from its enchanting beauties, and close his ear to its manifold voices. Ponder for a moment the richness of nature, its similarity and variety, its sameness and its diversity; consider the abundance of the harvest—the glowing fruits, the green and golden crops, the sweet-scented flowers and gift-bearing grasses; see the stars above and the waters beneath—all the wonders of earth and sky; and then when you have ranged over fields and waves and mountains, when you have climbed up the steeps of the sky and gazed on the marvels of the heavens, descend again to earth and consider the human form—the chiefest work of the Almighty hand, and the crown of the natural world. What beauties are here concealed! What a mingling of material and spiritual, of human and almost divine! What words can express, what lines portray the beauty of the human countenance? Who can describe or adequately define the loveliness that streams from human eyes, or echoes from the human voice? And yet these are but the outer fringes and dimmest glimpses of the beauties of the soul that dwells within. How painful, then, it is for the worldly to forsake the beauties and pleasures of this present life. Bound down to their beds of clay by the things of sense, they are grieved to part with a life so full of diverse attractions. How can they think undismayed of closing forever their eyes and ears to these charms of color and sound! It is such a difficult thing, and so hard to nature, to abandon these scenes of enticing pleasure, to bid farewell to those that are dear and be hurried away alone and forlorn to the chill and gloom of the grave.