The strange objection to faith in Christ is sometimes made that it
interferes with faith in the Father. The notion of mediation is
regarded as derogatory alike to God and to man. There is no need for
any one to come between: no need for God to depute another to bear
witness of Him: no need for us to depute Another to secure His favour,
as from all eternity He is Love. The assumption, the groundless
assumption, underlying this conception is that the Mediator is a
barrier between man and God, a hindrance not a help to fellowship with
the Divine: that one {158} goes to the Mediator because access to God
is debarred. Whatever may occasionally have been the unguarded
statements of representatives of Christianity, it is surely plain that
no such doctrine is taught, that the very opposite of such doctrine is
taught, in the New Testament. 'We do not,' says M. Sabatier, 'address
ourselves to Jesus by way of dispensing ourselves from going to the
Father. Far from this, we go to Christ and abide in Him, precisely
that we may find the Father. We abide in Him that His filial
consciousness may become our own; that the Spirit may become our
spirit, and that God may dwell immediately in us as He dwells in Him.
Nothing in all this carries us outside of the religion of the Spirit:
on the contrary, it is its seal and confirmation.'[13]
The whole object of the work of Christ, as proclaimed by Himself, or as
interpreted {159} by His Apostles, was to show the Father, to bring men
to the Father. 'Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the
Father in Me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of Myself:
but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works.' He 'came and
preached peace to you which were afar off and to them that were nigh.
For through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.' To
argue that to come to Christ is a substitute for coming to God, is an
inducement to halt upon the way, is an absolute travesty and
perversion. To refuse to see the glory of God in the Face of Jesus
Christ is not to bring God near: it is to remove Him further from our
vision. That God should come to us, that we should go to God, through
a mediator, is only in accordance with a universal law. 'Why,' says
one, who might be expected from his theological training to speak
otherwise, 'Why, _all_ knowledge is "mediated" even of {160} the
simplest objects, even of the most obvious facts: there is no such
thing in the world as immediate knowledge, and shall we demur when we
are told that the knowledge of God the Father also must pass, in order
to reach us at its best and purest, through the medium of "that Son of
God and Son of Man in Whom was the fulness of the prophetic spirit and
the filial life?" ... Of this at least I feel convinced, that where
faith in the Father has grown blurred and vague in our days, and
finally flickered out, the cause must in many instances be sought--I
will not say in the wilful rejection, but--in the careless letting go
of the message and Personality of the Son.'[14] So far from the
thought of the Father being ignored or set aside by the thought of
Christ, we may rather say with S. John, 'Whosoever denieth the Son,
the same hath not the Father: he that confesseth the Son hath the
Father also.' 'He {161} that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he
hath both the Father and the Son.'
The homage that we render Thee
Is still our Father's own;
Nor jealous claim or rivalry
Divides the Cross and Throne.[15]
V
The notion that Theism as contrasted with Christianity is a mark of
progress and of spirituality is a pure imagination. 'More spiritual it
may be than the traditional Christianity which consists in rigid and
stereotyped forms of practice, of ceremonial, of observance, of dogma:
but not more spiritual than the teaching of Christ Himself, the end and
completion of Whose work was to bring men to the Father, to teach them
that God is a Spirit, and to send the Spirit of the Father into the
hearts of the disciples. It would be a strange perversity if men
should reject Christ in the name of spiritual {162} religion when it is
to Christ, and to Him alone, that they owe the conception of what
spiritual religion is.'[16] To preach the doctrines of Theism without
reference to Christ is to deprive them of their most sublime
illustration, their most inspiring force, and their most convincing
proof.
It is as Christ is known that God is believed in. The attempt to
create enthusiasm for God while banishing the Gospel of Christ meets
with astonishingly small response. The 'Religion for all Mankind'
makes but little progress, is, in spite of the labours of
five-and-thirty years, confined, as we have seen, almost to a solitary
moderately sized congregation. And whether or not the 'facts' on which
the religion is based 'are never in dispute,' the religion itself is
often-times disputed very keenly. Modern assaults upon religious faith
are, as a rule, directed quite as much against Theism as {163} against
Christianity.[17] It is the Love, or even the existence, of the Living
God, it is human responsibility, it is life beyond the grave, that are
called in question as frequently as the Resurrection of Christ. The
assurance that God at sundry times and in divers manners has spoken by
prophets renders it not more but less improbable that He should speak
by a Son: the assurance that there is life beyond the grave for all
renders it not more but less improbable that Jesus rose from the dead.
Conversely those who believe in Jesus believe with a double intensity
in Him Whom He revealed. 'Ye believe in God,' said Christ, 'believe
also in Me.' For many of us now, it is because we believe in Christ
that we believe also in God. The Almighty and Eternal is beyond our
ken: the grace and truth of Jesus Christ come home to our hearts. The
Word that was in the beginning with God and was God, {164} is wrapt in
impenetrable mystery: the Word made Flesh can be seen and handled: has
wrought
With human hands the Creed of Creeds
In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought.[18]
And however it may be in a few exceptional cases, where people
nominally renouncing Christ desperately cleave to a fragment of the
faith of their childhood, the fact remains that, where He ceases to be
acknowledged, faith in the Father Whom He manifested tends, gradually
or speedily, to vanish.