it some of our
sweetest consolation to slip from our grasp. To be merely pitied does
not go so kindly or so powerfully about our hearts as to be loved;
Christ's regard for fallen men is not merely the compassion of one who
is loftily independent. When an infant is lost in a forest, and all the
neighbours have, at the mother's call, gone out in search of the
wanderer, it would be a miserably inadequate conception of that mother's
emotion to think of it as pity for the sufferings of the child: her own
suffering for want of her child is greater than the child's for want of
his mother; and by the express testimony of Scripture, we learn that the
Saviour's remembrance of his people is analogous to the mother's
remembrance of her child. If you press the likeness too far, you destroy
the essential character of redemption, by representing it as a
self-pleasing on the part of the Redeemer; but if you take away the
likeness altogether, you leave me sheltered, indeed, under an Almighty
arm, but not permitted to lie on a loving breast. My joy in Christ's
salvation is tenfold increased, when, after being permitted to think
that he is mine, I am also permitted to think that I am his. If it did
not please him to get me back, my pleasure would be small in being
coldly allowed to return. No: the longing of Christ to get the wanderer
into his bosom again, for the satisfaction of his own soul, is the
sweetest ingredient in the cup of a returning penitent's joy.[78]

[77] You may measure a square surface and find it to contain so many
feet of superficial area: suppose you discover afterwards that it
has depth as well as length and breadth; to take in also this new
measurement does not diminish the old. If we discover that, for his
own sake, the Redeemer accomplished his saving work, it was not on
that account less for our sakes.

[78] "In the centre of all lies the profound thought, that in God
and Christ love is one with self-interest, and self-interest one
with love; no such contrariety existing between them as is found in
the case of man."--_Stier, Words of the Lord_.

3. The shepherd left the ninety and nine for the sake of the one that
had wandered. I find no difficulty in the interpretation of the parable
here. The doctrinal difficulty which some have met at this point, has
been imported into the field by a mistake in regard to the material
scene. The leaving of the ninety and nine in the wilderness, while the