the same, and will at the last send them all into everlasting fire,
unless they take a great deal of care, and give up a great many
natural and pleasant things, and beseech and entreat Him very hard
to excuse them, after all. This is the thought which most people
have of God, even religious people; they look on God as a stern
tyrant, who, when man sinned and fell, could not satisfy His own
justice--His own vengeance in plain words, without killing some one,
and who would have certainly killed all mankind, if Jesus Christ had
not interfered, and said, "If Thou must slay some one, slay me,
though I am innocent!"

Oh, my friends, does not this all sound horrible and irreverent?
And yet if you will but look into your own hearts, will you not find
some such thoughts there? I am sure you will. I believe every man
finds such thoughts in his heart now and then. I find them in my
own heart: I know that they must be in the hearts of others,
because I see them producing their natural fruits in people's
actions--a selfish, slavish view of religion, with little or no real
love to God, or real trust in Him; but a great deal of uneasy dread
of Him: for this is just the dark, false view of God, and of the
good news of salvation and the kingdom of heaven, which the devil is
always trying to make men take. The Evil One tries to make us
forget that God is love; he tries to make us forget that God gives
us all things richly to enjoy; he tries to make us forget that God
gives at all, and to make us think that we take, not that He gives;
to make us look at God as a task-master, not as a father; in one
word, to make us mistake the devil for God, and God for the devil.

And, therefore, it is that we ought to bless God for such Scriptures
as this 104th Psalm, which He seems to have preserved in the Bible