to our children as God is to us. God The Son is He who is not
ashamed to call us brethren, and to declare to us the glorious news,
that in Him we, too, are the sons of God, that we may be such sons
to our heavenly Father--ay, and to our earthly fathers also, as the
Lord Jesus was to His Father.

Yes--and even more wonderful still, and more blessed still, the Lord
is not ashamed to call himself a husband. Our human wedlock and
married love is a pattern of some divine mystery. 'Husbands love
your wives, as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for
it, that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not
having spot or wrinkle, but that it should be holy and without
blemish.' Blessed words, which we cannot pretend to explain or
understand, but can only believe and adore, and find, as we shall
find, in proportion as we are loving and faithful in wedlock, that
God's Spirit bears witness with our spirit, that they are
reasonable, blessed, true; true for ever.

This, then, was the Lord who was coming to judge these Jews; not
merely a god, but _The_ God. The Lord, in whose likeness man was
made; who had appointed men to be fathers, sons, husbands, citizens
of a nation, owners of property, subject to laws, and yet _makers_
of laws; because all these things, in some wonderful way, are parts
of His likeness. He was coming to this nation of the Jews first,
and then to all the nations of the earth, to judge them, Malachi
said, with a great and terrible day. To lay the axe to the root of
the tree; to cut down from the very root the evil principles which
were working in society. His fan was in His hand; and He would
thoroughly purge His floor; and gather His wheat into the garner,
for the use of future generations: but the chaff, all that was