August 21

Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. - Isaiah 49:15.

OBSERVE, first, The improbability of the fear thus affectionately reproved. “Zion said the Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me;” but, by a striking and touching metaphor, God here shows us how unreasonable and unrighteous were those fears. “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?” It is not probable that she should, but it is possible. It is the honour of females, that they are not only the fairer but the tenderer sex.

The young of all creatures are lovely and attractive always; but let us survey the image here. Here is a child, a harmless object, a helpless object, an endeared object, and towards which any one may feel compassion and tenderness. But we may observe that the child here is the mother’s own, “the son of her womb,” lately a part of herself, and endeared by the anxieties of bearing it, and the pain and peril of bringing it forth. Nor is this all; for the mother is a nursing mother, and the child is a sucking child, looking up with ineffable satisfaction to his benefactor, and with his little hands stroking the cheeks of her who feeds him.

This is the image, and therefore you must allow that it is not likely that a woman should “forget her sucking child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb.” But then, though it is improbable, it is a possible case. “Yea, they may forget.” More than one of them: “they may forget.” There are two supposable cases here. The first is, the mother may be bereft of reason, or not survive, and so not be able to remember. And the other, that she may be criminally and unnaturally led to hide herself from her own flesh. The instances are not rare in which the wretched mother has destroyed her own offspring- sometimes under the pressure of want, and sometimes to hide her shame.

When, therefore, we apply images to God, we must strip them of all their imperfections; we must apply them to him completely, and as far as possible divinely. The feelings of nature are nothing compared with the kindness of God. The heart of a Thornton and Howard was all ice and all steel compared with the benevolence of our God. He inspires all the tenderness that creatures feel; and he infinitely surpasses them himself. “If ye being evil,” says he, “know how to give good gifts unto your children; how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give his Holy Spirit to them that ask him.” “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you,” says he, “yea, and much more abundantly; “she may forget, yet will I not forget thee.”