viii Chrisfs appeal to Conscience. 151 



remain in safety. 1 A parable asserts nothing; but 

 the suggestion of this parable is, that as God's power 

 is not limited by space nor His knowledge by time, 

 so His mercy and His love are not limited by 

 number; and that He cares for each one of His 

 intelligent creatures as if it were the only one in the 

 universe. And when we are told that for a large 

 part perhaps the majority of mankind, it would 

 have been better not to have been born, we have a right 

 to say that the yoke of Christ is easy and His burden 

 is light, 2 and He cannot require His people to bear the 

 overwhelming and crushing burden of such a belief. 



Such sayings as these are as decisive of the 

 infinity and universality of the grace of God, as is 

 the declaration " I am the God of Abraham " of the 

 truth of immortality : these are ground enough for 

 eternal hope, even without the more definite de- 

 clarations on which we have dwelt in a previous 

 chapter. But besides declarations of this kind, Our 

 Lord's appeal remains "Why even of yourselves 

 judge ye not what is right?" 3 declaring that the 

 revelation of God is not meant to supersede, but to 

 evoke, the naturally-given power of discerning truth 

 from falsehood and good from evil. And certainly 

 it is worthy of the Divine character, that we should 

 trust God to be not less but more gracious than even 

 His own words to fulfil all, and more than all, the 

 hopes which His most gracious words excite. It is 

 only from human goodness that we can form any 

 1 Matt, xviii. 12. 2 Matt. xi. 30. 3 Luke xii. 57. 



