I Believe in God the Father

It was a great day in the evolving story of the Universe, when Man, as a High Priest, robed and crowned, could stand forth and say, J belteve tx God; but perhaps it was a greater, when after ages of thought and observation, the Divine Spirit enabled him to add the words, J believe tn God, the Father. “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.”

The yearning of the heart for love postulates and proves — unless existence be an insoluble riddle, an aimless maze — that there is a responsive — Love behind the painted curtain that screens the eternal and infinite from our view. Do fish flash from the still surface of the lake for food which is not provided — each fly for its own season? Do swallows preen their wings for flight to summer lands, which do not exist, or which they shall never reach? Does the young lion ery for food, which it shall search for in vain through the forest-glade? Does not the yearning of the babe, its

outcry or its silent tears, prove that there isa 26 mother’s heart, which cannot forget the sucking child, and a fountain of nourishment in the maternal breast? So the unsatisfied yearning of the human heart, which turns even from the tender love of woman to call aloud for a Love which is altogether satisfying and complete, proves that there must be a Father’s Heart, a Father’s Pity, and a Father’s Forgiveness, waiting to run to meet, to kiss, to clothe with the new robe, and feast with song and dance.

This was the supreme message of Jesus to the world. His teachings about the necessity of Propitiation and Sacrifice, though unmistakable, ‘were subordinate to the constant reiteration of the Fatherhood of God. He had come from “the bosom of the Father”: and to the Father He was to return. It was His meat and drink to do the Father’s will. Heaven was the Father’s House with its many mansions. He that had seen Him had seen the Father, because He was in the Father, and the Father in Him. When we pray, He taught us to say, “Our Father which art in Heaven.”

There can be no doubt that there is an inner circle of Sonship. Those who receive Christ have the right or power to become Sons of God in an inner or more vital sense, and because they are sons, the Spirit of the Son is sent into their hearts, whereby they cry, “‘ Abba, Father” (John i. 12; Gal. v. 1, 2). But as the Apostle said, All men are God’s sons, in the true and deep sense of being His offspring (Acts xvii. 28). The fatherly tenderness and love of God go far over the entire range of humanity. They are not confined to a favoured few, who stand in the inner golden circle. There is no fragment of humanity that, by virtue of its creation, may not stand beneath the blue heavens, and pointing upwards, say, I believe in God the Father, adding softly: “‘O, my Father, I have sinned against Heaven, and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son.”

Like a Father He forgives. He takes on Himself the loss, the cost, the shame of our sin, and to how much these amount we have no clue save the mysterious anguish of the Garden and the Cross; and He gives His pardon to each penitent and believing soul, so absolute that it resembles the obliteration by the incoming tide of the rude figures and letters that children had scored on the smooth surface of the sand. Ah, sinful child, thy tears and prayers, thy confessions and vows have not lost their way in the dark night. They have travelled, like some wireless message to the

Divine Lover of Men. “Thy prayers are heard and thine alms are come up as a memorial before God;” but it is not on account of one or the other that thou art forgiven, but because of His free grace and mercy, “declared unto us in Christ Jesus, our Lord.” Hark, He speaks — Thy sins, which are many, are forgiven. Rise up, go thy way and live thy life under the sure conviction that Heaven and Earth may pass, but that Word shall stand for ever.

As a Father He comforteth. The prophet uses a yet tenderer phrase, and tells us that God comforts as mothers do. Yet men are very tender, when their little child is sobbing as if its heart would break. If God’s tenderness is in proportion to the infiniteness of His nature, is there any exaggeration in the Psalmist’s conception of His putting our tears into His bottle, as infinitely precious, and writing our sobs down in His Book. Poor tired child, lean back and lie with all thy weight near His heart, He knows thy sorrows, is acquainted with thy grief. He will not let the fire burn or the waters drown. He will sustain thee in the trial and when it has done its perfect work will wipe away thy tears.

Asa Father He encourages. A little child going up a dark stairway to his bedroom was fearful of the goblins that haunted the shadows, unless his mother stood at the foot of the stairs and kept talking to him till he reached his room. So our Father’s voice sounds through the dark spaces of life, saying: “Fear not, I am with thee; be not dismayed, I will help thee;” and we can say, as we hear His well-known voice, with renewed emphasis: “JI believe in God the Father.”