They have been taught—too many are taught still—not merely that God will punish the wicked, but that God will punish nine-tenths, or ninety-nine-hundredths of the human race. That He will send to endless torments not merely sinners who have rebelled against what they knew was right, and His command; who have stained themselves with crimes; who wilfully injured their fellow-creatures: but that He will do the same by little children, by innocent young girls, by honourable, respectable, moral men and women, because they are not what is called sensibly converted, or else what is called orthodox. They have been taught to look on God, not as a loving and merciful Father, but as a tyrant and a task-master, who watches to set down against them the slightest mishap or neglect; who is extreme to mark what is done amiss; who wills the death of a sinner. Often—strangest notion of all—they have been told that, though God intends to punish them, they must still love Him, or they will be punished—as if such a notion, so far from drawing them to God, could do anything but drive them from Him. And it is no wonder if persons who have been taught in their youth such notions concerning God, find it difficult to love Him. Who can be frightened or threatened into loving any being? How can we love any being who does not seem to us kind, merciful, amiable, loving? Our love must be called out by God’s love. If we are to love God, it must be because He has first loved us. But He has first loved us, my friends. The dark and cruel notions about God—which are too common, and have been too common in all ages—are not what the world about us teaches, nor what Scripture teaches us either. Look out on the world around you. What witness does it bear concerning the God who made it? Who made the sunshine, and the flowers, and singing birds, and little children, and all that causes the joy of this life? Let Christ Himself speak, and His apostles. No one can say that their words are not true; that they were mistaken in their view of this earth, or of God who gave it to us that it might bear witness of Him. What said our Lord to the poor folk of Galilee, of whom the Scribes and the Pharisees, in their pride, said, ‘This people, who knoweth not the law, is accursed.’—What said our Lord, very God of very God? He told them to look on the world around, and learn from it that they had in heaven not a tyrant, not a destroyer, but a Father; a Father in heaven who is perfect in this, that He causeth His sun to shine upon them, and is good to the unthankful and the evil. What of Him did St. Paul say?—and that not to Christians, but to heathens—That God had not left Himself without a witness even to the heathen who knew Him not—and what sort of witness? The witness of His bounty and goodness. The simple, but perpetual witness of the yearly harvest—‘In that He sends men rain and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness.’