9 Hath El forgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies? Selah.

Let us not allow our shortcomings to lessen our affection for God. They have this tendency—they are apt to lead us to dread rather than love Him. This result is wrong and illogical. God has plainly said that He will overlook our deficiencies and abundantly forgive our sins, provided we confess and forsake them.

Is not God "tender" and "rich" and "great" in mercy? Is He not "the Father of Mercies?" It is not God's will that we should run away from Him from fear. He would have us keep very near to Him, and approach Him always with boldness. Men who take an opposite attitude to this dishonour God. "But I fear," says a brother, "that my failings are too numerous and too great for God to overlook."

This self-impeachment sounds very serious, but is our brother's feeling reliable? Is our brother in love with the truth? Yes. Is he prepared to make sacrifices for it? Yes, many. Does he strive to overcome his failings by supplicating God's help in prayer, and the reading of His Word, and by keeping out of temptation? Yes. Does he know that as the months roll on he is ascending, though very, very slowly, the scale of perfection? Yes. Then let our brother cheer-up—let him raise the hands which hang down and strengthen the feeble knees. Let him have faith in God's mercy. There is ground for assurance and not misgiving.

That a greater acquaintance with the Scriptures should lead our brother to more fully realise now than on first obeying the truth, the wideness of the gap between his degree of perfection and Christ's, is a good rather than a bad sign.

"But," continues our brother, "is there not such a thing as presuming on the mercy of God?" Unquestionably there is, but our brother is not the type of man who would be guilty of this. Men who thus presume are men who hold the truth in unrighteousness, who seize any and every excuse for neglecting its requirements, who wilfully sin. Such men study how frequently they can absent themselves from the meetings, how little they can give for the truth, how close to the world they can steer. It was in reference to these that Paul said—

"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."

Bro AT Jannaway

The Christadelphian, Dec 1889