whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He recieveth." People
II. THE GREATEST SENTENCE THAT WAS EVER WRITTEN
about two years—but before she died, Nellie Conroy stood up before a great audience in Cooper State, and told them how God had saved her. Tears were streaming down the faces of all. A little while after she lay dying, and as my friend came into the room, she said: "Uncle Charlie—he was not her uncle, but she called him so for the love she bore "I will soon see, in a few hours, little Florence, and I will see Jesus." And Nellie Conroy, the pardoned and blood-washed sinner, went up to behold the King. There is not a man or woman in Edinburgh that God will not save the moment they turn from their sin.
2. God shows His Love by taking account of Sin, and punishing it.—Hebrews xii. 6: "For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He recieveth." People think God will allow sin to go on unchecked, unrebuked, unpunished. "God is love" and therefore He takes account of and punishes sin. There are fathers who are so selfish that they will not punish their children when it is necessary for their good. It hurts their feelings, as it does to all true fathers; and they are so selfish that they sacrifice the welfare of the children in order to spare their own feelings. That is not love but consumate selfishness.
One of my children disobeyed me. I said to myself, "That child must be punished." Oh, how I studied to find some way out, but I could not do it. I knew that for the child's highest welfare, punishment must be administered, and the child was punished. I suffered a great deal more than the child, but I loved the child enough to sacrifice my feelings for the child's welfare. God suffers when you and I are punished; but He loves us so much, that when we need to suffer He administers the suffering Himself.
A gentleman with whom I was staying said to me one day, "Would you like to take a drive?" We went out to a cemetery, and came to a place where there were three graves. One was long; it was an adult one, and in it his wife was buried. In the two short graves were the bodies of his two daughters, all he had except a baby boy. We knelt and prayed by the side of the graves. As we were driving back to town the gentleman said, "I pity the man that God has not chastened." What did he mean? He meant that he had been a man of the world, an upright man, but not a Christian. One night when he came home his wife said, "Porter, one of the children is sick." In a few days she was cold and dead; and, as she lay in the casket, he knelt down and promised God to take Christ as his Lord and Master. But he lied to God, and forgot all about his resolution. Some time after he came home again, and his wife said, "Porter, the other child is sick." In a few days she also lay cold and dead. Once more he knelt down and promised God that he would become a Christian, and accept his word. All the holiest, deepest, purest joys of life had come from his great sorrow.
Are you in sorrow? It is because God loves you. Are there some here resisting the entreaties of God's mercy and grace? I beseech you to repent. I tremble for some men and women, for those who know the way of life, with whom God is striving by His Holy Spirit, but who will not come to Him. I tremble for them, because I know that God loves them. You think that is a very strange reason for trembling for a man. No, I know God loves you,