It was indeed a great and wonderful gospel which Christ proclaimed--so
great and wonderful that all our poor words tremble and sink down under
the weight of the truth they vainly seek to express. By what means has
Christ put us into possession of such a truth? How have we come to the
full assurance of faith concerning the Divine Fatherhood? In two ways:
by His teaching and by His life; by what He said and by what He did. And
once more a paragraph must perforce do, as best it can, the work of an
essay.
To the ear and heart of Christ all nature spoke of the love and care of
God. "Behold the birds of the heaven," He said; "they sow not, neither
do they reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth
them. Are not ye of much more value than they?" And again He said,
"Consider the lilies of the field"--not the pale, delicate blossom we
know so well, but "the scarlet martagon" which "decks herself in red and
gold to meet the step of summer"--"Consider the lilies of the field, how
they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; yet I say unto you that
even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these. But
if God doth so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and
to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye
of little faith?" Or, He bade men look into their own hearts and learn.
"God's possible is taught by His world's loving;" from what is best
within ourselves we may learn what God Himself is like. Once Christ
spoke to shepherds: "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, and having
lost one of them"--how the faces in the little crowd would light up, and
their ears drink in the gracious argument! You care for your sheep, but
how much better is a man than a sheep? If you would do so much for them,
will God do less for you? And once the word went deeper still, as He
spoke to fathers: "What man is there of you, who, if his son shall ask
him for a loaf, will give him a stone; or if he shall ask for a fish
will give him a serpent? 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?" Why, Christ asks, why do
you not let your own hearts teach you? If love will not let you mock
your child, think you, will God be less good than you yourselves are?
But more even than by His words did Christ by His life reveal to us the
Father. "He that hath seen Me," He said to Philip, "hath seen the
Father." In what He was and did, in His life and in His death, we read
what God is. We follow Him from Bethlehem to Nazareth, from Nazareth to
Gennesaret, from Gennesaret to Jerusalem, to the Upper Room, to
Gethsemane, and to Calvary, and at every step of the way He says to us,
"He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." We are with Him at the
marriage feast at Cana of Galilee, and in the midst of the mourners by
the city gate at Nain; we see Him as He takes the little children into
His arms and lays His hands upon them and blesses them; we hear His word
to her that was a sinner in the house of Simon the Pharisee; we stand
with John and with Mary under the shadow of the Cross; and still, always
and everywhere, He is saying to us, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the
Father; if ye had known Me ye should have known my Father also." Within
the sweep of this great word the whole life of Jesus lies; there is
nothing that He said or did that does not more fully declare Him whom no
man hath seen at any time. To read "that sweet story of old" is to put
our hand on the heart of God; it is to know the Father.