with his friend; who blest him by giving him a son in his old age,
that he might be the father of many nations. He is the Lord who, on
Mount Sinai, gave those Ten Commandments, the foundation of all law
and right order between man and God, between man and man:--'Thou
shalt honour thy father and thy mother. Thou shalt do no murder.
Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt
not bear false witness in courts of law or elsewhere. Thou shalt
not covet thy neighbour's property.'

This is The Lord. Not a God far away from men; who does not feel
for them, nor feel with them; not a God who despises men, or has an
ill-will to men, and must be won over to change his mind, and have
mercy on them, by many supplications and tears, and fear and
trembling, and superstitious ceremonies. But this is The Lord, this
is the babe of Bethlehem, this is He whose way John the Baptist came
to prepare--even He of whom it is written, that He possessed wisdom,
the simple, practical human wisdom, useful for this everyday earthly
life of ours, which Solomon sets forth in his Proverbs, in the
beginning before His works of old; and that when He appointed the
foundations of the earth, that Wisdom was by Him, as one brought up
with Him, and she was daily His delight; rejoicing alway before Him;
rejoicing in the _habitable_ parts of the earth; and her delights
were _with the sons of men_.

In one word, He is the Lord, in whose likeness man is made. Man's
justice is a pattern of His; man's love is a pattern of His; man's
industry a pattern of His; man's Sabbath-rest, in some unspeakable
and eternal way, a pattern of His. Man's family ties are patterns
of His. God the Father is He, said St. Paul, from whom every
fathership in heaven and earth is named, that we may be such fathers