So saying, Emma stood by her grandmother’s chair, and, without a mistake, repeated from the 10th to the 15th verse of the eighth chapter of Romans. The last one was this, “Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father!”
“I am happy, my dear child,” said old Mrs Allan, “that these have been your verses to‐night, as they refer to the very subject I should like now to speak to you about.
“You remember what I explained to you last Sabbath?”
“Yes, grandmamma,” said Emma. “It was about Justification. God the Great Judge trying the sinner at His bar, and sending him away freely forgiven for the sake of Christ.”
|Of Adoption.| “You are right, my dear; and we are now going to speak about Adoption. I wonder if you know what that is.”
“Oh, no. I have often wondered what that word can mean, and I long to hear from you.”
|Difference between Justification and Adoption.| “Well, then, my child, as in Justification God acts as a Judge, so in Adoption God acts as a Father.”
“How I should like to hear about this, grandmamma! There is something terrible about the thought of a Judge; but there is nothing but love and joy in the thought of a Father!”
|Of our State by Nature.| “It is true, my dear,” said her grandmother; “but by nature none of us are in the family of God; we are called ‘children of wrath;’ ‘children of the devil;’ ‘enemies!’ God puts a very solemn and striking question about us—‘How shall I set thee among the children?’ He sees that we are such poor miserable sinners, that if He had dealt with us as we have deserved for our sins, we should have been for ever ‘children of wrath!’”
“What, then, could have made God adopt us into His family?” said little Emma.