will not be able to stand. "Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the day that I shall deal with thee?" Oh! sirs, you think it a small thing to be Christless this day; you can talk lightly of it, and jeer and jest about it; you can sleep soundly withal; but there is a day coming, when your bitter cry will be heard throughout all the caverns of hell: Woe is me! I am Christless, I am Christless! Amen.

SERMON XL.

CAN A WOMAN FORGET?

"But Zion said, The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me. Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget; yet will I not forget thee."-Isaiah xlix., 14, 15.

THESE words apply, first of all, to God's ancient people, the Jews. Before their final conversion, I believe their eyes will be opened to see their sin and misery. They will look upon him whom they have pierced, and mourn. When they hear the glorious offers of mercy, they will not be able to believe them: "Zion will say, The Lord hath forsaken me, and my God hath forgotten me." But God will answer them, that notwithstanding all their past sins and afflictions, still he will love them, and be their God:" Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget; yet will I not forget thee." These words are equally true of all believers.

I. Inquire into those times when believers think themselves forsaken.

1. In times of sore affliction.-So it was with Naomi. She had lost her beloved husband and her two sons in the land of Moab. And now, when she returned, leaning on her daughter-in-law, up the hill of Bethlehem, the whole town was moved, and they said: "Is this Naomi ? But she said unto them, Call me not Naomi; call me Mara; for the Lord hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty. Why, then, call ye me Naomi, seeing the Lord hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted me?" So with Hezekiah. When the Lord said to him: “Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die, and not live, Hezekiah turned his face to the wall, and prayed to the Lord; and Hezekiah wept sore. Like a crane or a swallow so did I chatter; I did mourn as a dove; mine eyes fail with looking upward. O Lord, I am oppressed;

undertake for me." So with Job. When Job lost his flocks and herds, and his ten children in one day; when his bodily health was destroyed, and he sat down among the ashes; then Job opened his mouth, and cursed his day: "Let the day perish wherein I was born. Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul? O that I might have my request, and that God would grant me the thing that I long for: even that it would please God to destroy me, that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off."

Ah! it is a sad thing when the soul faints under the rebukes of God. They were intended to lead you deeper into Christ; into a fuller enjoyment of God. Do not faint when thou art rebuked of him. When a soul comes to Christ, he expects to be led to heaven in a green, soft pathway, without a thorn. On the contrary, he is led into darkness; poverty stares him in the face, or bereavement writes him childless, or persecutions embitter his life; and now his soul remembers the wormwood and the gall. He forgets the love and wisdom that are dealing with him; he says, "I am the man that hath seen affliction. The Lord hath forsaken me, and my God hath forgotten me."

2. When they have fallen into sin. As long as a believer walks humbly with his God, his soul is at peace. The candle of the Lord shines on his head. He walks in the light as God is in the light, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth him from all sin. But the moment that unbelief creeps in, he is led away into sin; like David he falls very low. A believer generally falls lower than the world; and now he falls into darkness.

When Adam fell, he was afraid: and he hid himself from God among the trees of the garden, and he made a covering of leaves. Alas! when a believer falls, he also is afraid; he hides from God. Now, he has lost a good conscience; he fears to meet with God; he does not love the house of prayer; his heart is now filled with suspicions. If I had been a child of God, would God have given me up to my own heart's lusts? He refuses to return. "There is no hope; no; for I have loved strangers, and after them will I go." Though God has never been a wilderness nor a land of darkness to the soul, yet he says: "We are lords; we will come no more unto thee." "The Lord hath forsaken me, and my God hath forgotten me." Ah! this is the bitterest of all kinds of desertion. If you put away faith and a good conscience, you will make shipwreck.

3. In time of desertion.-Desertion is God withdrawing from the soul of the believer, so that his absence is felt. The world knows nothing of this, and yet it is true. God has ways of revealing himself to his own in another way than he doth to the world: The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him, and he will show them his covenant. Jesus is often with his own. They feel his presence, their hearts burn within them. They

sometimes feel that he fulfils that word; "I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you." The Father is the refuge of his own. They feel his everlasting arms underneath them, they feel his eye watching over them, they feel his love pouring down upon them like a stream of light from heaven. The Holy Spirit is within them. They sometimes feel his breathing, they sometimes feel that they have the Spirit within them, crying, "Abba, Father." Oh! this heaven upon earth, full, satisfying joy. Sometimes it pleases God to withdraw from the soul, chiefly, I believe, 1st, To humble us in the dust; 2d, To discover some corruption unmortified; 3d, To lead us to hunger more after him. Such was the state of David when he wrote the 42d psalm: "I will say unto God, my Rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me, while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?" "As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." Ah! far more than the natural thirst of the wounded deer for the clear-flowing brook, is the spiritual thirst of the deserted soul after God. Such was the feeling of Job when he cried; "The arrows of the Almighty are within me;" and again: "O that I knew where I might find him; O that it were with me as in months past!" He has a bitter remembrance of his past enjoyment, a bitter sense that means cannot bring his soul back again to rest. Such was the feeling of the bride:" By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not."-Song iii., 1. Ah! brethren, if ever you have known anything of this you will know the wretched feeling of distance from God, of having mountains between the soul and him, implied in these words: "The Lord hath forsaken me, and my God hath forgotten me."

II. God cannot forget a soul in Christ: "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget; yet will I not forget thee."

1. It is like a mother's love.-There is no love in this world like a mother's love. It is a free, unbought, unselfish love. However much pain she has suffered on her child's account, however many troubles she has to bear for it, by night and by day, while it hangs upon her breast, still it is more precious than gold. There is a something in her heart that clings to her weak, sickly, nay, even to her idiot boy. God's love to a soul in Christ is stronger than this love. The Psalmist compares it to a father's: "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." And Mal. iii., 17: "I will spare them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him." Again, Isa. Ixvi., 13: "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you."

This love of a mother to her child is natural to her. She can

not account for it. You cannot change it. You must break to pieces the mother's heart before you can change her love to her child. And yet there are some poor souls so disfigured by Satan, their hearts so brutalized, that they can forget their children. The Indian mother can dance over her infant's grave, and the murderess can lift her hand against the life of her little one: "They may forget; yet will I not forget thee."

The love of God to a soul in Christ is a natural love. It is a love engrained in his nature. The Father loveth the Son; and it is the same love with which he loves the soul that is in Christ. He cannot forget him. He loves him because he is altogether lovely, he loves him because he is worthy to be loved, he loves him because he laid down his life for the sheep. All that is in God binds him to love his Son, his holiness, his justice, his truth; and so all that is in God binds him to love the soul that is in Christ.

Be not cast down, brethren, in affliction. Deserted souls, God's love cannot change unless his nature change. Not till God cease to be holy, just and true, will he cease to love the soul that hides under the wings of Jesus.

2. The Father's love is full love.-A mother's love is the fullest love which we have on earth. She loves with all her heart. But there is no love full but that of God toward his Son; God loves Jesus fully; the whole heart of the Father is, as it were, continually poured down in love upon the Lord Jesus. There is nothing in Christ except what draws the infinite love of God. In him God sees his own image perfect, his own law acted out, his own will done. The Father loves the Son fully; but when a soul comes into Christ, the same love rests on that soul: "That the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them." John xvii., 26. True, a creature cannot receive the love of God as Jesus can; but it is the same love that shines on us and him; full, satisfying, unbounded love. When the sun pours down its beams on the wide ocean and on a little flower at the same time, it is the same sunshine that is poured into both, though the ocean has vastly larger capacity to receive its glorious beams; so, when the Son of God receives the love of his Father, and a poor guilty worm hides in him, it is the same love that comes both on the Saviour and the sinner, though Jesus is able to contain more.

How can God forget what he fully loves? If God fully loves thee, he has not forgotten thee; he cannot forget thee. A crea ture's love may fail; for what is a creature? a clay vessel, a breath of wind that passeth away, and cometh not again. But the Creator's love cannot fail; it is full love towards an object infinitely worthy of his love, in which thou sharest.

3. It is an unchanging love. A mother's love is, of all creaturelove, the most unchangeable. A boy leaves his father's roof, he crosses a thousand seas, he labors beneath a foreign sky; he comes

back, he finds his aged mother changed, her head is grey, her venerable brow is furrowed with age; still he feels, while she clasps him to her bosom, that her heart is the same. But, ah! far more unchanging is the love of God to Christ, and to a soul in Christ: "I am the Lord; I change not." The Father that loves has no variableness. Jesus, who is loved, is the same, yesterday, to-day, and for ever. How can that love change? It flowed before the world was; it will flow when the world has passed

away.

If you are in Christ, that love shines on you: "I have loved thee with an everlasting love." "I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

(1.) Comfort downcast believers. Many of you may be cast down, and your souls disquieted. You think God has dealt bitterly with you; he has written you childless; he has met you as a lion, and as a bear bereaved of her whelps; or he has blasted. your gourd; or he has deserted you, so that you seek him, and find him not. Look still to Jesus; the love of God shines on him; nothing can separate Jesus from that love; nothing can separate you. At the very time when Zion was saying, "My God hath forgotten me;" at that moment God was saying: "I will not forget

thee."

Your afflictions and desertions only prove that you are under the Father's hand. There is no time when the patient is an object of such tender interest to the surgeon, as when he is under his knife; so, you may be sure, if you are suffering from the hand of God, his eye is all the more bent on you. "The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms."

(2.) Invite poor sinners to come and taste of this love. It is a sweet thing to be loved. I suppose the most of you have tasted a mother's love. You know what it is to be rocked in her arms, to be watched by her gentle eye, to be cheered by her smile; but, oh! brethren, this is nothing to the love of your God. That dear mother's eye will close in death; that dear mother's arm will moulder in the dust. Oh! come and share the love of Him who cannot die. There is one spot alone on which the love of God continually falls unclouded; it is the head of Jesus: "The Father loveth the Son." He loves him from his very nature; so that the perfections of God must change before this love can change. He loves him fully. The whole treasures of love that are in the infinite bosom of Jehovah are pouring continually into the bosom of the Son. He loves unchangingly; no cloud can ever come between; no veil, no distance. But what is this to me? Everything to you, sinner. Jesus stands a refuge for sinners, ready to receive even thee. Flee into him, sinner; abide in him, and that