In this passage, our Father in heaven is held up to the world as the model of _kindness tenderness and forgiveness_, that mortals are to imitate. God is the moral standard to which every bosom ought to aspire. The highest perfection and loveliness of man fall infinitely short of the intrinsic loveliness and divine perfection's of Jehovah. If he is the standard of moral excellence which we are to imitate, then we must admit that the copy far exceeds the imitation. If man is called upon to act like God in order to improve his character and affections, then God is better than man, and every opposing objection must, forever, fall to the ground. Perhaps it may be said, that all denominations of men allow him to be so. This is not correct. It is true, they _say this_ in so many words. But words are one thing, and what a doctrine involves is quite _another_. I might believe, and most rigidly maintain, that an earthly father had prepared a palace of comfort for his five _obedient_ children, and a furnace of fire to torture his five _disobedient_ children; and suppose he had dealt with his ten children as above stated;--with what propriety could I step before the public, and contend that he was the best man in America? Even were I persuaded, in my own mind, and firmly believed him to be the best man in existence, would either my _belief or acknowledgment_ make it a fact? No; every man of common sense, and common humanity would think me deranged. My saying that he was good, and even believing him so, could not alter the awful reality, but would be an evidence of my want of consistency and propriety. He would still be a bad unfeeling man, and in no comparative sense so good as that father, who should punish his children in mercy, and for their future amendment and benefit.