1 T. G. Selby.
3ii THE FATHER'S PITY
^ Will you say to a mother, Why do you waste such love on
t poor cliild ? Do you not see that he is a cripple, has
1 vaturt' of ttie spine, always will be acripi)le? See the little
How creeping on his hands and knees ! The doctor says that
le can never be strong; always will be a source of anxiety to
\<)u; most likely never will be able to walk. Why worry so over
liin? What good will he ever be? Ah, if you spoke thus, she
"uld give you a look that would shrivel you.
My silent boy, I hold thee to my breast,
Just as I did when thou wast newly born. It may be sinful, but I love thee best,
And kiss thy lips the longest night and morn. Oh, thou art dear to me beyond all others,
And when I breathe my trust and bend my knee For blessing on thy sisters and thy brothers,
God seems the nighest when I pray for tliee.^
6. God's intimate knowledge of our weakn'ess is the sure pledge of tender parental treatment. It is certain that a very great part of the harshness of judgment which passes among men is the result of imperfect knowledge. You do not know the man you are speaking about; you do not know the natural infirmities, the bodily hindrances, the constitutional causes which affect the person whom you are blaming. You cannot take into your calculation all the circumstances, all the pressure, all the tempta- tion. You cannot read his motives, you cannot dip into the secret processes going on in that man's mind. If you could see all this, your feelings would be very different, and your sentiments would be reversed.
Now, of all upon earth, a parent can best estimate these things in his own child. Has he not watched him from the first passages of his dawning life ? Has he not seen the moulding of his frame ? Has he not become intimate with the secret frame- work of his being ? Can he not take a more comprehensive view of him than any other man can ? And this pity flowing from parental knowledge is the shadow of that love of God. He sees what no other eye sees, and His calculations include all the extenuating circumstances — the health, the position, the conflict, the effort, the struggle, the sorrow, the penitence. " He knows "
^ M. J. McLeod, Heavenly Ilarmoniesfor Earthly Living, 110.
PSALM cm. 13, 14 313
and — blessed be God for the kind word, a word very rarely known to ua — " He remembers." And so pity is the child of knowledge. " Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame ; he remembereth that we are dust."
Not as one blind and deaf to our beseeching,
Neither forgetful that we are but dust, Not as from heavens too high for our upreaching.
Coldly sublime, intolerably just : —
Nay but Thou knewest us, Lord Christ Thou knowest, Well Thou rememberest our feeble frame,
Thou canst conceive our highest and our lowest, Pulses of nobleness and aches of shame.
Therefore have pity ! — not that we accuse Thee,
Curse Thee and die and charge Thee with our woe;
Not thro' Thy fault, 0 Holy One, we lose Thee, Nay, but our own, — yet hast Thou made us so!
Then tho' our foul and limitless transgression Grows with our growing, with our breath began,
Eaise Thou the arms of endless intercession. Jesus, divinest when Thou most art man ! ^
7. The Psalmist based the pity of our Heavenly Father on His special knowledge of our frame — such knowledge as only the Framer of it can possess. But to know man's frame, to know what is in man, even to search and try with Divine inspection the heart and spirit of a man, is after all something less intimate and perfect than to be a man. To learn a child's lessons, feel a youth's passions, think a man's thoughts ; to be actually tempted to evil as men are tempted, and find out by trial how hard it is for them to be good ; to undergo the moral probation and discipline peculiar to a human creature, impossible to the Creator ; this must give — or, if we are to think about the subject at all, it must be supposed by us to have given — to the Son of God a fresh acquaintance with human experience, of quite another sort from the omniscience of the creating Father. At all events, who can help feeling this, 1 F. W. H. Myers, Saint Paul.
314 THE FATHER'S PITY
that, if it is possible for any one to know us, understand us, and do us justice, Jesus Christ is that One ; since, as oar Maker, He both knows what He made us fit to be and to do and, as our Fellow-Man, has learned through what hindrances and temptations we have become what we are ?
^ An obelisk, originally brought from Egypt, stands in the piazza of St. Peter's at Eome. It was put into its present position in the sixteenth century. It weighs a little short of a million pounds, and required the strength of eight hundred men, one hundred and fifty horses, and forty-six cranes, to lift it on to its pedestal. The crowds who witnessed the feat were forbidden to speak under pain o^ death. As the ropes were tugged by hosts of workmen, and the huge obelisk slowly reared itself like a waking giant, the movement suddenly stopped and the ropes threatened to give way. The huge mass was about to fall crashing upon the pavement. An old sailor in the crowd, familiar with the humours of ropes and the methods of treating them, broke the silence and cried, "Pour water on the -ropes!" The advice was quickly followed, the ropes tightened, and the obelisk slowly rose again and settled securely upon its base. In our past life how often have strain, tension, and peril come to us ! The ties by which we were knit to goodness, to truth, to purity, to faith, were sorely tested, and seemed ready to snap and plunge us into ruin. Some temptation arose out of all proportion to the staying power of our trust in God, some shock fraught with impending disaster to the character, some partial alienation from right paths threatening to strand our lives in uselessness. But the eye of infinite wisdom was watching, and God remembered the weakness of the tiesh. From within the unseen there came a voice that saved us, and the peril was overpast. The strain eased off, character strengthened itself to the emergency, and we were kept in the plane of our providential lot. And through this wise, watchful pity of our infirmities we come to find our- selves with a place in the living temple, monuments of the gentleness, the sympathy, and the upholding power of the God who pities the frail. In the moments which show most our weakness the Lord remembers that we are but dust, and fortifies us against the strains and hazards which belong to our earthly course.^