THE PITY OF GOD | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 26, 1869

THE PITY OF GOD.

The following extract from an article in the Independent, on the tender mercies of God that are over all his works, is as poetical in language, as it is grand and truthful in conception:

“God’s pity is not as some sweet cordial poured in dainty drops from some golden vial. It is not like the musical water-drop of some slender rill murmuring down the sides of Mount Sinai. It is as wide as the whole cope of heaven. It is abundant as all the air. If one had the art to gather up all the golden sun-light that to-day falls wide over all this continent—falling through every silent hour; and all that is dispersed over the whole ocean, flashing from every wave; and all that is poured refulgent over the northern wastes of ice, and along the whole continent of Europe, and the vast outlying Asia, and torrid Africa; and if any one could, in any wise, gather up this immense and incalculable outflow and treasure of sunlight that falls down through the bright hours, and runs in liquid ether about the mountains, and fills the plains, and sends innumerable rays through every secret place, pouring over, and filling every flower, shining down the sides of every blade of grass, resting in glorious humility

upon the humblest thing—on stick, and stone, and pebble; on the spider’s web, the sparrow’s nest, the threshold of the young foxes’ holes, where they play and warm themselves—that rests on the prisoner’s window, that strikes radiant beams through the slave’s tear, that puts gold upon the widow’s weeds, that plates and roofs the city with burnished gold, goes on in its wild abundance up and down the earth, shining everywhere, and always, since the day of primal creation, without faltering, without waste or diminution; as fresh, as overflowing to-day, as if it were the first day of its outplay—if one might gather up this boundless, endless, infinite treasure, to measure it, then might he tell the height and depth, and unending glory of the pity of God! In light—in the sun, its source—you have God’s own figure of the immensity and capaciousness of his mercy and compassion. Psa. lxxxiv, 11, 12; Isa. lv, 6–12.”