Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/176

176THE HALLIG.

declares him to have done through Jesus Christ. I
go still further. I call man not only insignificant,
weak, helpless, ephemeral, but self-blinded, and stained
with sin. There is none, no not one, who is found just
before God. Our hearts are stained with unholy de-
sires, and in our lives we are indifferent to the truth,
and disobedient to God's commands. Every thought
of God, the holy and just Judge of all, should be a
confession, a prayer for mercy, from which all confi-
dence in our own merits and our own righteousness
must be banished. Not only then for a puny creature,
standing on a little point of God's vast universe, but
also for a self-ruined, and daily self-raining race, hath
God done so great things — for such is his love ! And
if on this earth there had been but a single soul, in-
stead of all these millions, capable of receiving his call
and his blessing, for this single soul would he have
moved heaven and earth in their axes to draw it back
to its Father's heart, for such is his love ! And, even
if this soul were to have fallen seventy times seven
times back into its darkness and rain, he would seventy
times seven times have moved heaven and earth to
bring it again to the kingdom of righteousness, joy and
peace, for such is his love ! We speak of his omnipo-
tence and his omniscience which fill immensity with
their witness ; we see the smallest worm of the dust as
delicately and artistically framed, and as little forgot-
ten of God, as the seraph whose hallelujah resounds
through heaven ; and shall not the love of God be as
perfect as all his other attributes ? Shall that know
limitation, confinement, restraint, when his power and
his wisdom know none ? It can and ought never to be