Softened, broke, and melted your heart'

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"I drew them with cords of human kindness,
with ties of love."  Hosea 11:4

When God draws His people near unto Himself, 
it is not done in a mechanical way. They are drawn, 
not with cords of iron, but with the cords of kindness; 
not as if God laid an iron arm upon His people to drag 
them to Himself—whether they wished to come or not.
God does not so act in a way of mechanical force. 

We therefore read, "Your people shall be made willing 
in the day of Your power." He touches their heart with 
His gracious finger, and he communicates to their 
soul both faith and feeling. He melts, softens, and 
humbles their heart by a sense of His goodness and 
mercy—for it is His goodness, as experimentally felt 
and realized, which leads to repentance. 

If you have ever felt any secret and sacred drawing 
of your soul upward to heaven—it was not compulsion, 
not violence, not a mechanical constraint—but an arm 
of pity and compassion let down into your very heart, 
which, touching your inmost spirit, drew it up into the 
bosom of God.

It was some view of His goodness, mercy, and love, 
with some dropping into your spirit of His pity and 
compassion towards you, which softened, broke, 
and melted your heart. You were not driven onward 
by being flogged and scourged, but blessedly drawn 
with the cords of kindness, which seemed to touch 
every tender feeling and enter into the very depths 
of your soul.

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