XI. What is God's purpose in punishment? To bring his wandering children to him in penitence. — HEB. 12:5-7. save. HE purpose of the pain to which God subjects the wrong-doer is always and invariably the good of the sinner and the universe. The severity of God is the severity of love. God exacts penalty, not for vengeance' sake, but for mercy's sake. He is exacting in order that he may When a man attempts to pass the boundaries of right he encounters some form of pain. The farther he goes, the more he suffers. The pity of God is shown in this, that he will use even severity to keep his child from straying, or to turn him back when once started in the evil way. God does not punish us through spleen, or anger, or offended pride. He affixes penalty to sin in order to show his own inevitable and necessary hatred of evil, to warn and arrest the sinner, to make the way of transgressors hard, and help to induce them to turn. The final aim, then, of punishment is to help in the saving of mankind. It is doubtless intended to show God's indignation against sin; but it means more than that. It is plainly a protection to the moral world; but it means still more than that. It has last of all and most of all the reform of the offender as its object. It is a part of God's great scheme to educate, train, and win man into righteousness. It is one element and method of the moral education of mankind. The divine retributions for sin give the sinful soul no respite. It must move on toward its goal. God's severity will not leave us till it has brought us to the gates of repentance and fitted us to enter the streets of the heavenly city. Then welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids, nor sit nor stand, but go! Be our joys three parts pain! Strive, but hold cheap the strain: Learn nor account the pang; Dare, never grudge the throe! XII. What is God's unchangeable purpose? The final harmony of all souls with himself. — Isa. 45: 22-24. P AUL affirms the divine purpose when he writes to Timothy that God "will have all men to be saved and to come unto a knowledge of the truth." To secure this end is the aim of God's moral government. To this end all the energies, forces, and processes of the creation are pledged. "For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God." To produce a soul in man was the goal of the whole lower creation; to perfect and develop that soul in the life of righteousness and love is the goal of the moral creation. If any of his children fall short of that goal, God's purpose will be defeated and the universe will be a failure, for there will be no such harmony as long as there is a single sinner in the creation. The conquest of evil does not consist in imprisoning and chaining up the evil souls of the creation. As long as they are evil the creation has come short of the purpose of him who is its First Cause. Evil can never be conquered save as it is cured. The conquest of evil is the establishment of good. The conquest of sinners is their conversion. The harmony of the creation consists in the disappearance of discord. The harmony of all souls with God means their reconciliation to his will, their adoption of his way. His love will triumph only when it is met by man's answering love. Through sins of sense, perversities of will, Through doubt and pain, through guilt and shame and ill, Wilt thou not make, Eternal Source and Goal, John G. Whittier. XIII. What is man? A child of God created in his Father's image. GEN. 1:26. JAN is God's child by virtue of his creation, his nature, and his destiny. When God made man he endowed him with life out of himself. That life made man capable of recognizing his Father, sharing his thought, entering into his affections, co-operating in his activities. In his reason, his intelligence, his heart and his will, man is the offspring of God in a sense which is not true of any of the lower creatures. Moreover, man is intended for a higher estate than he has attained. He is not a true son, a son in the full sense that Jesus Christ was, until, like Jesus, he renders God a filial obedience, doing his Father's perfect will. But this is what God intends him to be, the end to which he is training and educating man. And so by what he is to be, as well as what he is, and by the source of his life, man is God's child. At present, in his sinfulness and imperfection, man is like an heir who has not come of age; he has not entered into full possession of his heritage. He is only the heir-apparent of the heavenly |