The designs that God our Father had devised for the happiness of His children were frustrated by their own guilt and folly. Our first parents, and in them all their descendants, revolted against God, their Father and benefactor, and forfeited their claim to all the good things that He had promised them. But God had foreseen this, and in His wonderful mercy had provided a remedy. "God so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son, that all who believe in Him may not perish, but may have life everlasting." What love could be greater than this?

When God sent His co-equal Son in the form of man, for the sake of us His children, how was He received? We should have expected all the world to come and pour their treasures at His feet, and adore Him with the most devoted love, gratitude and loyalty. Instead of this they rejected Him, persecuted Him, and at last put Him to the most ignominious death then inflicted. If I had lived then, I had good reason to fear that I should have joined with these thankless brutal enemies of God.

Yet our Father did not turn away from us in disgust. He made the very malice of the persecutors of Jesus the means of rescuing us His children from our debased condition. The shedding of the Blood of Jesus has redeemed all mankind, if they will accept the salvation offered them. It has redeemed me. It has saved me from Hell, opened Heaven to me, forgiven my sins. All this is the manifestation of the infinite love of God my Father for me. What can I do to show my love and gratitude?