knowledge of the truth.

But a God of wrath likewise. We must never forget that. A merely
indulgent God would be an unjust God, and a cruel God likewise. If
God be just, as he is, then he has boundless pity for those who are
weak: but boundless wrath for the strong who misuse the weak.
Boundless pity for those who are ignorant, misled, and out of the
right way: but boundless wrath for those who mislead them, and put
them out of the right way. All through St. Paul's Epistles, as
through our blessed Lord's sayings and doings, you see this wholesome
mixture of severity and mercy, of Divine anger and Divine love, very
different from the sentimentalism of our own times, when men fancy
that, because they dislike the pain and trouble of punishing evil-
doers, God is even such a one as themselves, who sits still and takes
no heed of the wrong which is done on earth.

No. The Christians were to tell men of both sides of God's
character; for both were working every day, and all day long, about
them. They were to tell men that God had, by their mouths, revealed
from heaven his wrath against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of
men, at the same moment that he had revealed the good news that men
might be purified by the blood of Christ, and saved from wrath
through him. They were to tell men of a God who so loved the world
that he gave his only-begotten Son to die for it; but of a God who so
loved the world that he would not tolerate in it those sins which
cause the ruin of the world. Tribulation and anguish upon every soul
of man that doeth evil, and glory, honour, and peace to every man
that worketh good--that was to be their message, that was to be their
weapon, wherewith they were to strike, and did strike, through the
hearts of sinners, and convert them to repentance that they might die