The Lord had been charged with receiving sinners, as though His ministry did not secure righteousness, but gave liberty to evil.

Of course He might have pleaded various answers to this. He might have defended His grace to sinners on the ground of the necessity of the case, or on the ground of God's glory. But in Luke xv, from beginning to end, in each of these lovely parables, He vindicates it simply on the ground of the joy that He, and the Father, and all Heaven itself, were finding in it.

Only think of this, beloved. If the Lord God be asked a reason for His ways of salvation with you and me, He says He takes delight in them :they make Him and His glorious habitation to rejoice. Let us cherish the thought deeply in our souls-the gospel of our peace is the spring of joy to Him who planned and accomplished it ; that our God has done nothing less than this, laid the scene of His own happiness in our salvation, as the parables of Luke 15:testify to us. J. G. B.