SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 January 1922, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

DIVINE FATHERHOOD: A KEY TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.

"If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father, ■which is in heaven, give good things to them that ask Him ?” —-Saint Matt., VII., JI,

(By Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth.) Of all the great questions, ancient or moderji, religious or non-religious, this is the greatest—“ What is God like?” A man’s conception of God is determinative and regulative. The thought you make of God is the thought that makes you, and largely settles what you make of life and religion. The parable of the wicked steward illustrates this. “I know the> that thou art a hard master. • . . and I was afraid . . . and hid thy talent.” “I knew,” “I hid.” The two things are knit together as cause and effect, as creed and conduct. But, as someone has sam, “'God made man in His own image, and man has returned the compliment and made God in his own image,” and so you have gods many and lords many that are not lovable or approachable.” “The dark places of the earth are the habitations of cruelty.” and they are so because the gods they worship are lustful, revengeful, and cruel. To pass from the contemplation of pagan deities to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is like passing out of the chamber of horrors into the presence of a dear and familiar friend.

THE GREATEST OF ALL ANSWERS.

But if the greatest of all questions is this: “What is God like?” the greatest of all answers is the answer Christ gave. He never stopped to argue about the existence of God. He took that for granted. What He did was to try to help men to think rightly God. For, after all, it matters little that a man stand up. as thousands will to-day, and recite: “I believe in God.” What really matters is the kind of God in which a man believes. Better have no God than a God who does bad and wicked things. It is here Jesus stands unrivalled. In this passage He tells us of the kind of God in whom He Himself believed and would have us believe. He says’ that if we would know what God is like, we must begin with what is best in man; we must begin with love, love at its holiest and highest, and dare to say that God is like that, and better. The master idea in the religion of Christ, the idea which regulated all the rest, and supplies the key to all His doctrine, is this: that God is Father. Next only to Christ’s gift of Himself for the life of the world, is the gift of this conception of God as “our Father.” When Jesus camo to our world, there was no word rTMi enough to carry His thought, of God, and so He coined the word “Father,” and made it the watchword of the Christian faith. The God whom others called “Force” He called “Father,” and in so saying supplied the key to unlock the treasure house of grace. It is a thouglft of God that includes all others; it is a thought that simplifies religion, and makes bearable some of the dark problems of life, and any doctrine that makes Fatherhood impossible and incredible is no part of Christianity as llesus taught it.

JESUS' MEANING. “I know that other religions have used the word “father” of its deity. The word is the same, but not the sense. Homer speaks of Zeus as the father of gods and men. The. Athenians cried: “We are his offspring.” But the meaning in pagan myth and ‘old-world religions is no more than God as creator, or ruler, or both. They did not mean that Fatherhood represented God’s character and disposition, hut Jesus meant that. In thrf older Testaments there is a gradual ascent in the conception of God from power, and majesty, and awfulness, to justice, and gentleness, and pity, until one sang of God in terms of Fatherhood. “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.” “Like as,” mindj God is like a Father! He does not dare -•» say that God is Father. But’whenever the Master speaKS to God, He calls Him Father, and never by any other name. Five prayers of Jesus are recorded in the New Testament, and in each one God is addressed as “Father,” and in no other way.

Jesus was not a theologian. Jesus was a layman. He never indulged in the obscure and technical language of the schools. His words were direct, simple, and understandable. When He would teach inen_what God is like. He pointed to the flowers, and said: “If God clothe the grass and the lilies do you think He wjll not forget you?” He pointed to the care-free birds and said: “Do you suppose God thinks of them and forgets you?” He pointed to fathers and mothers planning and scheming for their children’s good, and said: “Do you God will do less than that for you?” One day He pointed to Himself ai*d said: “Would you know what God is like? Look at me! He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” Let the long Latinised words go. Cease to speak of God as “omniscent,” “omnipotent” and “omnipresent.” Jesus never used them. And say in sheer ecstasy, “Father.” Not only say it, live in the joy of it and interpret doctrine in the light of if. A KEY TO A DOCTRINE. This is the key to the doctrine of Pro- \ tlence. The conflict between faith and experience is constant and often painful. Those who realised their hopes and aims

have no difficulty in believing in the over-ruling hand of God in human affairs. It is easy to believe when the sun shines, easy to be glad when your cup runneth over, easy to be confident when all your fledglings are safe in the home nest. But there is what Cowper calls “a frowning providence.” Calamity is common; sorrow has a large family; Nature is “red in tooth and claw”; pain is no respecter of persons. Hearts madg for home have no home! Shoulders not made for burdens have to carry heavy loads. Some toil and sacrifice to provide for “a rainy day,” and when the rainy day comes, all is swept away in an hour. Youth and beauty fade while age and ugliness live on for years! One day the sky is cloudless, the next there is a cold, dark shadow, the next a pitiless rain, a tiny grave and a broken heart! What can we say? We’ll interpret Providence by Fatherhood —the Fatherhood of God.

HIS ULTIMATE PURPOSE. God is Father. His ultimate purpose is blessing. You are in the' hands of One who is doing for you what /you are doing for your child; that is the best possible. You say you are disappointed. Granted. Do you never find it needful to disappoint the hopes of your child? Life is hard? True. Isn’t that what your child says about lessons and school? You suffer? Exactly. But listen! What. do you do when your child sobs in paih? You hold the twitching hand, you stroke the flaxen curls, and croon some cradle song. What if your Father wants to do the same for you? Interpret Providence by Fatherhood. When your way seems blocked, and your plans miscarry, try to believe there is a purpose of good in things evil. Divine Fatherhood is the key to the doctrine of Providence.

A KEY TO THE DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. Equally is it the key to the doctrine of prayer. “He that cometh unto God must believe that He is.” But mind the punctuation. There is no full stop after “is.” Read on. You need to believe not simply that God exists. question what God is will determine your idea of prayer.” “He that cometh unto God must believe that He is, and the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” If your God is a sublimated. Oriental despot, with the powers and passions of a man, take heed! If your God is some vast, blind force that blossoms in flowers, shines in stars, and sweeps in tornadoes, you may fly off in raptures about the splendour of Nature, and the glories of the Milky Way, but in that case prayer won't work, and the only voice that will reach you will be the echo of your own! If your God is hard and cruel, nay. if He is only blindly just, “a stream of tendency that makes for righteousness,” to quote Matthew Arnold, you may seek to curry favour. But if God is Father, prayer will seem wise and natural and inevitable. The Father and His Child should be on speaking terms! It is no wonder that men who see no Father question Jhe use of prayer. A little child with pink toes peeping under its bed gown, with clasped hands and wondering eyes, kneels in sweet simplicity to offer its evening prayer. It is very beautiful, and I do not envy’ any man who can see it unmoved. But if there is no Fa.ther who hears, but only a force that drives, the child’s simple act means no more than when the chicken tucks its head under its wing and falls asleep on its precarious perch! Ah! prayer means more than that, and so, when great and solemn questions press, and my heart cries out for sympathy and help more than earth can afford, I will listen to the Elder Brother, who said: “Men ought always to pray and not to faint,” then added: “When ye pray, say our Father.”

IN DEADLY CONFLICT. There is one doctrine which seems in deadly conflict with Divine Fatherhood, but is only so because of human perversion. ' The minds of men are sorely perplexed on the doctrine of Eschatology. Just as the doctrine of the Trinty was formulated in the third century, and the doctrine of Justification of Faith in th* sixteenth century, so the doctrine of

“Last Things” is in process of revision in the twentieth, and if any man supposes the last word has been said on that subject, he knows little of what is taking place in the thinking world. I do not launch on the stormy sea of discussion; I only wish to say that the dread subject should be treated soberly and rationally, and where this or any other truth is in doubt, it must be determined by the fact of Fatherhood. Any doctrine which seems to be in conflict with''bur moral sense, must be brought to tire bar of God’s holy Fatherhood, and from that judgment there can be no appeal.

i Tauler, the German mystic, was one day walking under the linden trees in Berlin, absorbed in painful thoughts and praying that God would clear the mists away, when an old man came to him. Tauier told him his difficulties and explained the greatest of them all: “What if God consign thee to hell?” Then the old man answered: “MTiat hell may be, I know not, This T know. I cannot lose the presence of the Lord. One arm, ‘humility,’ takes hold upon His dear ‘humanity,’ The other, ‘love,’ clasps His ‘divinity.’ So .vhere I go. He goes. And better fire-walled hell with Him, Than golden-gated Paradise without.” That is the spirit to cherish. Interpret the doctrine of the future life by Divine Fatherhood. Here and hereafter, now and forever, we are in the hands of the Holv Father. THE REAL MEANING I "What is sin? It is turning away from j the Father. What is repentance? It i returning to the Father. What is salvation? It is reconciliation to the Father. What is hell? It is separation from th* Father. What is Heaven? It is to be homed with the Father.