That our relations with God are 'strained,' and that men are 'enemies of
God,' is often repelled as exaggeration, if not as directly false. And,
no doubt, the Scripture representation has often been so handled as to
become caricature rather than portraiture. Scripture does not deny the
lingering presence in men of goodness, partial and defective, nor does
it assert that conscious antagonism to God is active in godless men. But
it does assert that 'God is not in all their thoughts,' and that their
wills are 'not subject to the law of God.' And in such a case as man's
relations to God, indifference and forgetfulness cannot but rest upon
divergence of will and contrast of character. Why do men 'not like to
retain God in their knowledge, 'but because they feel that the thought
of Him would spoil the feast, like the skeleton in the banqueting
chamber? Beneath the apparent indifference lie opposition of will,
meeting God's 'Thou shalt' with man's 'I will not'; opposition of moral
nature, impurity shrinking from perfect purity; opposition of affection,
the warmth of human love being diverted to other objects than God.

II. The entreating Love that is not turned aside by hostility.

The antagonism is wholly on man's part.

True, man's opposition necessarily turns certain sides of the divine
character to present a hostile front to him. Not only God's physical
attributes, if we may so call them, but the moral attributes which guide
the energies of these, namely, His holiness and His righteousness, and
the acts of His sovereignty which flow from these, must be in opposition
to the man who has set himself in opposition to God. 'The face of the
Lord is against them that do evil.' If it were not, He would not be God.

But still, God's love enfolds all men in its close and tender clasp. As