are told, " His soul was grieved for the misery of Israel f." And when once they were liberated from their bondage, what incessant kindness did he shew them, administering to all their wants, and fulfilling all their desires ! This was the conduct which the Hebrew masters were to imitate : and this tender- ness, this compassion, this sympathy, this love, is to charac- terize his people to the end of time. Remarkable is that direction given us by the Apostle Paul ; " Be ye followers (imitators g) of God, as dear children ; and walk in love, as Christ has loved us." Here the same principle is established : we are to imitate God in all his imitable perfections, and especially in that which is the crown and summit of them all, unbounded love. We are, as far as it is possible for finite creatures to do it, to tread in the very steps of Christ himself, and to follow him even in that stupendous effort of love, his dying on the cross ; for St. John, having spoken of his " love in laying down his life for us," adds, " And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren11." What an object for our ambition is here ! O that we might be satisfied with nothing short of this ! that instead of admiring ourselves on account of more common exercises of love, we might rather see how de- fective we are even in our best duties ; and might learn to over- look all past attainments as nothing, and to be pressing forward for higher degress of conformity to our God and Saviour1 !]
2. As a motive for our exertion —
[The mercy vouchsafed to the Jewish nation was to operate on all of them as an incentive to obedience ; and, as God has required acts of love to our brethren as the best evidence of our love to him, it is in that more especially that we must endea- vour to requite the loving-kindness of our God. The man that grudges a few pence to a fellow-servant after having been forgiven by his Lord a debt of ten thousand talents, can expect nothing but indignation from the hands of Godk. The true spirit of God's redeemed people was well exemplified in the Apostle Paul, when he declared, " The love of Christ con- straineth us, because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead ; and that he died for all, that they who live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them, and rose again." If then we have any hope that we ourselves have been partakers of mercy, let us feel our obli- gations, and say with David, " What shall I render unto the Lord for all the benefits that he hath done unto me?" and, if we have in ourselves an evidence that God hath " bought us
'^j
f Judg. x. 16. 8 /xifitfrai, Eph. v. 1, 2.
h 1 John iii. 10. J Phil. iii. 13—15. k Matt, xviii. 32—34.