ed, "_Israel is my son, even my first-born; and I say unto
thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me_;"[173] and that by the last
of them he urges Israel to obedience by this tender appeal: "_If I be a
father, where is mine honor?_"[174] It was not Christ, but David--one of
those gloomy, stern, Hebrew prophets--who penned that noble hymn to our
Father in heaven, which Christ illustrated in his Sermon on the Mount:

"The Lord is merciful and gracious,
Slow to anger and plenteous in mercy.
He will not always chide,
Neither will he keep his anger forever.
He hath not dealt with us after our sins,
Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities;
For as the heaven is high above the earth,
So great is his mercy to them that fear him;
As far as the East is from the West,
So far hath he removed our transgressions from us.
Like as a father pitieth his children,
So the Lord pitieth them that fear him."--Psalm ciii.

It is utter ignorance of the Old Testament which prompts any one to
imagine that it presents any other character of God than "_The Lord, the
Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in
goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and
transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the
guilty._"[175] This is the name which God proclaimed to Moses, and this
is the character which he proclaimed in Christ, when he cried on the
cross: "_My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? But thou art holy, O
thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel._"[176] Justice and mercy are
united in Christ dying for the ungodly.

It is untrue to say that the prophets of the Old Testament were actuated
by a spirit of malice, or of revenge for personal injuries as such, in
praying for, or prophesying destruction on the inveterate enemies of God
and his cause.[177] Of all Scripture characters, David has been most
defamed for vindictiveness; but surely never was man more free from any
such spirit, than the persecuted fugitive, who, with his enemy in his
hand in the cave, and his confidential advisers urging him to take his
life, cut off his skirt instead of his head; and on another occasion
prevented the stroke which would have smitten the sleeping Saul to the
earth, and sent back even the spear and the cruse of water, the trophies
of his generosity. When cursed himself, and defamed as a vengeful
shedder of blood by the Benjamite, he c