let Him Like as a

us, as this Father, in whom we live and move and have our being. In His light do we behold our trespass? Does His spirit cause our inward plague to smart? Be it so look upon our sin, for He alone will restore us. father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth those that fear Him. Ever-blessed be that Goodness which leaves us not to ourselves, which sees and averts the hidden peril, beholds and corrects the secret sin, leads us safely with the hand of unerring love through the dark and lonesome places in the way of life, where the solace of human sympathy is denied, and terrors compass us about!

He is our Father in secret; it must be allowed that sometimes it is in secret that He is our Father. We observed that, from the extent of our knowledge of God, our finite ken cannot embrace it all at once: when we behold Him in one aspect, we lose sight of Him in another. God has always existed; but His existence has not always been known. Always He has been our Father; but multitudes have owned His creative and preserving power, without recognizing His paternal love. As we walk on earth and think it flat, and only by science ascertain that it is round,—and then we forget science, and speak as though it were flat, all the while that the proofs of its roundness remain unshaken; so there are times in which the Heavenly Father is revealed to us, and we believe and rejoice,—and then it is all forgotten, or the difficulties rise up terribly and blind us, and we see so little, and not from a heavenly point of view. For surely it happens to most of us, that when the world's dust beclouds us, we see no God; and when its thorns pierce us, we feel no love; and when misery rends us, and vice assails us, if we believe in God, we cry, "Help Thou our unbelief; for canst Thou be our Father and look on, and not deliver us ?" Yes! there are times when we seek to behold the Father's face beaming upon us with the radiance of heavenly love, yet seem to seek in vain. God is around us; but the Father-He is in secret. "Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel,

the Saviour," exclaimed Isaiah ;* and there are dreary seasons, when the Saviour for whom we pray seems withdrawn: that aspect of Deity has become obscured from us, and mournfully we await its return. We must not fear that the Father has

gone away and left us; still less that, as regards us, His Fatherhood is lost. Once it was a secret, that God is our Father; but that is now revealed by His Son, and the Christian's faith in it should never waver. If our Father,-my Father, thy Father. It may be a great mystery how He has that perfect parental love towards each spiritual being in the host which no man can number. But we believe. His affection is never distracted, as that of the most tender mother may be when each child needs her separate care: it is not that He is now watching over one, now cherishing another: His boundless love embraceth all. Every instant that He is God, He is Father also: to every being to whom He is God, He is Father also: God perchance in secret to His creature, Father perchance in secret to His child; but God and Father everywhere and for ever.

When this thought of Him fills the soul, how changed is our sense of His secret watchfulness! We rejoice to feel Him near us—fain would we in purity of heart behold Him; but when we neither see nor feel as in happier, diviner moments we have done, we have yet a calm assurance, if not the rapturous consciousness, that in ways which we know not He is providing for us; and the very secretness of His love is not without its own marvellous attraction. Towards a parent whom we had never seen, our attachment might be cold; but when we know him, his occasional absence does not chill us. We love to hear from him; his distant letters have not the charm of his inspiring voice, and yet they have a value of their own. We love to feel that he is thinking of us, when he is neither speaking nor writing nor acting for us. Love shines upon the surface; but its greatest warmth is within: it abides in secret.

* Ch. xlv. 15.

FATHER is but one name for God: God is Love: His love infinitely transcends that of a human parent. Yet when we recall the tender emotion which the affection of an earthly father inspired, it is no unfit emblem of what should be our feeling towards the Father in heaven.

The man loathes the prying inquisitiveness of a so-called "Paternal Government:" he does not recognize its paternity; he feels that he is no more a child than those who profess to manage for him; that this profession is insincere, because they are really striving to manage for themselves at his expense. How different is our relation to God! Without Him, we are more helpless and hopeless than orphans. The child does not shrink from his own father's eye: he feels safe when near him; and, when out of sight, his secret nearness assures him still. He lays him down in peace, and sleeps, because in the hours of darkness he trusts that his father will protect him whilst he slumbers, his father comes and stands by his bed-side. When he is convulsed by some childish grief, his father's soothing hand is laid upon him. When he is at his play, he looks up, hoping to meet his sympathizing smile; and whe. he is full of thoughtless daring, his father appears to save him from a sudden peril. When he leaves his home, he finds that his father has been before him to his new abode; his father knows the strange teacher to whom he is intrusted, loves to read not only his own brief childish letters, but whatever his master and his friends may communicate concerning him. His father seems to be acquainted with all that relates to him, to know more than he does of himself. His crude thoughts, his half-formed wishes, his perils, his temptations, seem clearly pictured in the parental mind. He desires to keep nothing back from one who loves him so well: there is a load on his heart till he has confided it to him: it saves him from so many snares to feel that he must needs tell his father all; and when, in his childish remorse, he thought his fault too great to tell, how his courageous confession is rewarded when he finds that his wise father had already discerned it, or

had so read his heart that he was prepared to forgive it! The belief that his father is watching over him in secret, does not harass and degrade, but soothes and strengthens him. When he has become a man and puts away childish things, he loves still to feel as a child to his father, whilst he bears himself towards the world with manly independence. Who can know him like a parent, whose nature he partakes, who has watched him from the cradle, who forewarned him of his peculiar dangers, and foretold his successes ?

Now the earthly parent feels that his child exaggerates his knowledge; but who can over-estimate that of God? He does not come to steal a glance at us when we are wrapped in slumber: He is always by our side: the darkness, which enshrouds everything in secrecy, is even as the light to Him. He does not look down at us from heaven, His dwelling-place, and see us in the remote distance; surely He dwelleth in our dwellings and visits our hearts. He depends on no stranger for tidings of us; He knoweth the way that we take—yea, His hand leads us, His right hand holds us. Do we receive instruction ?—we are taught in His home; His children are our teachers; yea, as we look up to Him, we know that “ we are taught of God." Are we corrected?—it is His hand that chastens us. Do we go forth to our work?-we find that it is the Father's business. He does not ponder on our words and interpret them by our tones and looks, and thus fathom the mysteries which we fain would have concealed, which are not wholly revealed even to ourselves: we are altogether transparent before His eye. He hath searched and seen us through. In our sports and in our tears, in our triumphs and in our troubles, in our fulness and in our hunger,-when we would hide ourselves, or when we grieve that He seems to be hidden from us,-when we feel that we are His children and living on His bounty, or when in some momentary madness we assert our independence and ignore His providence,-when we go up to what we call His house, or when, with imbecile presumption, we strive to shut Him out from ours,-He is still close to us,

the Father in secret, yet affecting no disguise and no concealment; we have but to tear the veil from our eyes, we behold Him,- -we but open our ears, His voice penetrates there,—we wake from our bad dream, it is He who breathes into us our breath of life, and we feel that we are living souls.

The well-beloved Son, in whom He was well pleased, experienced the secrecy of His love in the temptation of the desert, in the trials of his ministry, when the bitter cup was offered him, and when, as he drank it, he seemed forsaken. He felt its sweetness when he said, "I am not alone, for the Father is with me;" "the Father heareth me always;" and, at last, when he exclaimed, "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit:" and through eternity the secrecy melts into light, as the love shines forth unclouded. And in that Heavenly Father's presence are, it may be, our earthly parents, and at least some of our dearest friends, who knew so many of our secrets, and secretly aided and blessed us; and as they are living in Him, even now the secret influence of their love pervades us, not in holy memories only, but in a divine assurance that, if they are beholding their Father's face, they bear us also in their thoughts; and who shall say but what, by some secret influence of celestial love, they may prove our benefactors still?

There are many who do not yet behold with open face the glory of the Lord: they are in our hearts, but where they live, and how they live, may be secrets to us. Concealed from us are their dangers, perplexities and griefs: savage enemies may be threatening their lives, relentless disease may have its hold on their children. The speediest tidings might not help us to enter their unapproachable loneliness; but the message may traverse foreign lands and unknown seas for weeks, ere it bows us in useless anguish. Perhaps never again shall we hear of them, or they of us. Oh! what peace to believe that they too have the Father in secret; that He without whom not even the sparrow falleth to the ground, who numbers the hairs of our head, enfolds them in His arms; that as He listens to our secret cry, He also heareth theirs;