My Prayer Book_LASANCE - the Catholic Kingdom!

58 The Saved and Lost
in heaven.' All Christians do so; and a preacher, in
his opening instructions, would teach and exhort the untutored
savage to believe in and speak to Him as such.
"God is the Father of all men and eminently a perfect
Father. We could not imagine such a father casting
out, expelling from his home forever a child, until
he had tried the proper means to keep him with himselfuntil
the child deserts him, or, by wilful, obstinate,
persistent disobedience to his father's will, necessitates
his own expulsion. Such a father will do all he well
can for the welfare of his children - do everything
short of violence to enable his children to succeed in
all that is for his own and their good. The dominant
desire - wish -will - of such a father must be to
make his children happy; his dominant dread and
horror, that one of them should be unhappy.
" Our Lord tells us how easy and swift true repentance
can be in the case of the publican - the notorious and
typical sinner - who by making an act of sorrow for
his sins, in seven words, went home to his house justi-
fied. God is far more ready and generous in forgiving
the worst than men -even good men - are in for-
giving each other, aud bad would it be for the best of
us if He were not.
" By way of showing the effect which can be produced
by the very thought of God 01tr Father, and belief in
Him as such, I may give a fact told to me by the person
concerned - now dead for some years He fell into
a state akin to despair about his salvation. A confessor,
to whom he opened his mind, told him to go, take his
Rible, and write out all the texts in which God calls
Himself his Father. He did so, and was blessed with
calm and pace before he had written twenty." - FR
NICHOLAS WALSH, S. J.
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