“_To me, I confess, it seems a very considerable thing, just to
believe in God; difficult indeed to avoid honestly, and not easy to
accomplish worthily; a thing not lightly to profess, but rather humbly
to be sought; not to be found at the end of any syllogism, but in the
inmost fountains of purity and affection; not the sudden gift of the
intellect, but to be earned by a loving and brave life._”
“_I believe in God the Father Almighty._”
These simple, solemn, tender words contain the Christian Thought of
God. In the one word “Almighty” is summed up Muhammad’s idea of supreme
Will and Power; the Christian prefixes a Name to the attribute which so
governs the sphere of the exercise of that will and power that it is
difficult to conceive that the two teachings represent the same Being.
[Sidenote: Fatherhood]
In the view of Him to Whom we owe the Father Idea, the All of God and
the All of His universe are summed up in the Fatherhood; that is,
Jesus did not think of the al-might of God as exerted from without, the
oneness of Creator and Created is in His view indissoluble. The birds
could not maintain their little life, nor the lilies their delicate
tints, without the Father; and words fail Him to tell of the closeness
of the Fatherly interest in each member of His nearer offspring. “_The
very hairs of your head are numbered._”
[Sidenote: The Parable of Jesus]
And when words have failed, He takes up His parable; “_My Father
worketh, and I work_.” The lifework of Jesus is, He tells us, the
Father’s work made visible.
Gentle, healing Hands were laid upon the suffering; sufficient food
was provided for the hungry; Feet, never weary, travelled hither and
thither on errands of pity; Arms were open to gather in the little
children; Eyes spoke of love and understanding where words missed their
object; happy human fellowship was offered: and all was a parable of
the work of the Father-God.
[Sidenote: The Father-Gift]
It was not a new thought to His hearers that the profoundest attribute
of God is holiness, and that distinctions between right and wrong
become acute in His presence; but it was a revelation to which the
world of men has not yet become accustomed that the Father is so set
upon goodness in the children who had miserably failed of it, that no
sacrifice was too great, _even for Him_, to secure it; and that this
austerity towards evil and purpose to subdue it, was the Father love in
its highest exercise. In the Cross, symbol at once of man’s sin and of
His own grace, our Lord is still speaking the parable of the Father’s
“work.” “The Father worketh, and I work.” “God so loved the world that
He gave”—JESUS.
Muhammad felt after God, and attained the idea of His apartness,
aloneness, immensity.
Jesus knew God, and revealed to us that man had never been, and never
could be, outside of God; and that the only true home of man’s spirit
is in His presence, under His gracious rule; for man and God are
actually _akin_, first by nature, doubly so through His Revealer and
our Brother, Jesus Christ. _Therefore, we “believe in God the Father
Almighty, AND in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord.”_