children so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him." But a spiritual affinity which should unite God and man by a tie of love, and reveal God to man in an actual, immanent, and personal sense, was not dreamed of. When we come to examine carefully what is implied by the words of Jesus, we are left in no doubt. Nothing in any religion approaches this relation of Jesus to the Father. It is absolutely alone. It cannot even be described by terms borrowed from any other quarter; for each expression of it has a complete originality which could not have been anticipated. Everything is perfectly simple and limpid, and, being now very familiar to us, is apt to pass unnoticed. But consider what is implied by the authoritative assertion, Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven,1 or the majestic, Every one who shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father which is in heaven,2 or the mediatorial intimacy of Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister and mother. The confidence of a complete harmony with the Father's thought is expressed in Every plant which my heavenly Father planted not shall be rooted out, and of unbroken fellowship with Him in, My Father which is in heaven revealed it unto thee. We might continue quoting these references to the Father throughout the Gospels. They are all alike; they are all unlike anything else. A deep inner con3 Matt. xii. 59. 1 Matt. vii. 21. 4 Matt. xv. 13. 2 Matt. x. 32. sciousness unites Him with His Father, in a reverence, a love, a lowly sense of equality which could not be presented in words more distinctly than it is here conveyed by the habitual language of Jesus. The note which is struck in these sayings of Jesus had never been struck before, nor has it ever been struck since. Even the best, the most saintly, of Christians has hesitated to use the words of assured intimacy which came naturally to His lips. Many of the holiest of the earth habitually speak of the Almighty with a sense of awful distance. They who have caught the spirit and words of Jesus will think and speak of God as our heavenly Father. In the secret passages of the soul a devout man may say specifically "My Father "; but how different is the implication of the "my"! With him it will be a profound submission of spirit, an adoration, a trembling tenderness, which thrills with joy and yet hesitates as it rejoices, to use this bold familiarity with God. In Jesus there is no trace of such a misgiving. What shocked and outraged the Pharisees in His mode of speech was an unmistakable fact, however little it furnished a proper ground of offence. He spoke of the Father, "making Himself equal with God." It was the tone which in England we sometimes hear when a father has lived in close and sympathetic companionship with his son, and the two are comrades and friends. The son behaves to his father with a perfect sense of equality, though with a reverence which is begotten of knowledge. If therefore we allow ourselves to perceive what is implied by this trait in the self-consciousness of Jesus, we become aware that the words "My Father" on His lips are in effect a complete theology, a theology which rendered all the elder systems immediately antiquated, a theology which left nothing for later theologies to add. A new idea had glided into the world, and a new possibility was thrown open to man. Whoever saw Jesus, that calm untroubled mirror in which the face of Another was reflected, might henceforth say, as had never been possible before, that he had "seen the Father." III. No man could know the Father save he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him. A strange thing happens if a man takes up his position for awhile side by side with Jesus. He sees at once that God is Father, his Father, and yet that he is not God's son. A cry will presently escape his lips: "What though God is essentially Father, even my Father, if the width of the heavens is between us, and I see on His face nothing but outraged love and offended majesty?" Nor is it left to the working of his own conscience. Jesus is explicit in assuring him-and us all-that something has to be done, some moral change has to take place, a kind of spiritual birth must be effected in order that ye may become children of your Father in heaven.1 This double revelation of the mind of Jesus is very remarkable. Doubtless God is our Father. Fatherliness is a quality in Him which we are at liberty to interpret through the best fatherhood we know. If ye, being evil, says Jesus, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more 1 Matt. v. 45, ὅπως γένησθε υἱοὶ τοῦ Πατρὸς ὑμῶν. shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him.1 Yes, but sonship is a lost quality in us. The fountains of our filial love are dark with vice, or frozen with pride. They do not flow, or flowing they emit poison. Somehow no man knows the Father save he to whom Jesus reveals Him.2 Thus Jesus, directly He opens His lips, begins to make a powerful impression upon us. Man as He is, He belongs to heaven, that better upper region, peopled with happy spirits, where the will of God is done. We belong to earth, where the Will is violated. Or rather we are creatures with two natures in us which strive for mastery, the one earthly, the other heavenly. It is useless to suppose that we can be at home on earth, for we are afflicted with a great Heimweh. Yet it is equally idle to think that we can win to heaven. We have but to listen to Him to be assured of this. On the other hand, we have but to listen to Him to be assured of a beneficent purpose within Him. Sinless, He is here to make us sinless; the Son, He is here to make His words exactly interpret us to ourselves. What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world and to forfeit his life ?3 Evidently nothing. Yet, it is not us sons. 1 Matt. vii. II. 2 The filial feeling which seems sometimes to be innate in sweet clear spirits like Rahel, Richter, Emerson, who yet do not share the Christian faith in Jesus, can be explained in the light of the saying (Matt. xi. 27) only by admitting that Jesus "wills to reveal the Father" to some "Israelites in whom is no guile," though they do not as yet recognise the Son." Mark viii. 36; Matt. xvi. 26. the will of your heavenly Father, that one of these little ones should perish. And, as He proceeds to unfold us to ourselves and to unfold God to us, so plainly does He present Himself as the reconciliation, the means by which the alienated children can be restored to their Father, that we become intensely alive to the conflict which is raging. Who can listen to Him long without perceiving that heaven and earth are claiming us! One or the other must win. Behind the death of the body —which is a detail—there awaits the soul of man a glorious ascent or a sad descent. This life would seem to be the parting of the ways, the punctum discriminis. How intense becomes the agitation of the question whether one is to arise and return to his Father, or to waste his substance after an irretrievable manner in the ways of debauchery and swine! 1 Matt. xviii. 14. E |