THOUGHTS FOR THE INNER LIFE.

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I.

The Fatherhood of God.

HERE is no question more important than this: How is the vast universe with its worlds governed and guided? Is it the dull monotonous sound of law, or the fresh loving voice of a living person, that we may hear in its workings? Are things and beings under the control of impersonal, imperial power, or beneath all does there live and move a loving Heart? It is self-evident that intelligence and will imply a Person. Who has not seen marks of design in the things around? Who has not felt, amidst the beauty and glory of the outer world, the presence of a Being a spirit breathing through the rich tints and splendid sunsets? Is it nothing to know whether He, of whose presence we are conscious, rules with a Creator's power or a Father's love. Is He, who amidst the throes of anguish and the

sunbursts of joy, of this life, is felt sometimes at least, to be about us, our Sovereign or our Father? When sin oppresses and guilt bows down, do we fall before a relentless Deity or a forgiving Father? Take the written Word of God, and lives there not throughout its pages the grand truth that God is our Father? One of the writers of the Old Testament won this honour, to be called the man after God's own heart. Surely not because David was a faultless man, not because he was kept from grievous sins, was he thus distinguished? Was it not because he never forgot that God was his Father. His repentance was true and deep, because he truly felt his sin to be sin against his Father. Of all the writers in the New Testament, St. John goes deepest into the Heart of God. Well have his writings been called the holy of holies of the Bible. And he won the blessed distinction of being the disciple whom Jesus loved. He had reposed on the Saviour's breast, his eye beamed with unearthly rapture, as the wonderful soul-stirring Eye of his Divine Master and Friend rested upon him, his ear heard as much as human ear can of the mystery of the Divine Fatherhood. Why is it, when we are heart-sick and weary, we naturally turn to the Psalms of David and the Gospel and Epistles of St. John? How is it, that there is such a calming, soothing influence in their writings? What is it that makes them come home so to our hearts?

Is it not because it was the privilege of David and John, and their privilege, because their power to see further into the Divine Fatherhood, because they trusted with no common trust, loved with no ordinary love, rejoiced with no every-day joy in One Father, the Creator, the Preserver, the Redeemer. Reader, I ask you, is the distinction David and John won beyond your reach? It is one thing to point to passages in the Scriptures where the Fatherhood of God is revealed, and another thing altogether to clasp the truth to our heart. It is one thing to listen to descriptions of this great fact, and another to hear the voice within breathing "Our Father." How shocked would you be were I to accuse you of not believing in the Fatherhood of God! Ah, we believe that we believe, but if we really had faith in the Lord as indeed our Father, the Father of all, we should be and live more as His children. Oh, that the Holy Spirit may even now reveal more of the Divine Fatherhood, making you clasp to your heart the blessed thought that the God of Nature, the God of Grace, the God who creates, the God who destroys, the God who rules, the God who redeems, is the One Eternal Father!

God made man in His own image, after His likeness. Is there not, in spite of disobedience, sin, and the separation from God that is sin's awful consequence, still in man as man, a something that yearns for the Divine, a feeling after God, and

inward cry for the Father. Lost and ruined as is our humanity, there is the want for God. How did our Lord and Saviour meet this craving, when He taught and lived in the world? He unveiled the Father's loving heart. He showed how the Father's heart was beating true to the deepest yearnings of humanity. By His words, in His deeds, throughout His life, as well as in Gethsemane and on the Cross, He manifested the Father's love; He expressed, as none but the God-Man could, the brightness of the Father's glory. Early in His public ministry did Christ teach his followers to say, "Our Father which art in heaven." When addressing a mixed multitude, He hesitated not to speak of God as their Father, and He called upon them to be "perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." In seeking to impress the fact that Divine Providence guides and governs the least among men, He declared, Your Heavenly Father feeds the birds" and again, when speaking of eating and being clothed, He said, “Your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things." How earnestly careful the Saviour is to manifest the Fatherhood of God, let the Gospel of St. John testify. Who could read the wonderful words of Jesus, without feeling that the deepest desire of His heart is to reveal the Father to man. When Mary approached the Risen Saviour, He addressed to her those significant words: "Touch me not, for I am not

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yet ascended to my Father, but go to my brethren and say unto them, I ascend unto My Father and to your Father." And when He met the assembled disciples in Jerusalem, He commanded them to wait for the promise of the Father, His crowning blessing the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Perfectly in harmony with our Lord's teachings are the writings of the Apostles. Unhesitatingly does St. Paul make known this great truth. Even in the midst of an utterly heathen audience on Mars' Hill at Athens, he, quoting from heathen poets, "We are also his offspring," makes it the occasion of declaring that God is indeed the head of the human race. If there be a doubt lurking in your mind, if you are secretly hesitating to accept this blessed truth that One is your Father, take the statement, God is Love, and ask the Lord Himself to show you what it means, and you will rise to this grand conception, that above all, in all, through all the black clouds of sin and sorrow, the dark mysteries of life, there lives and reigns the Father of all mercies, the God who is essentially Love.

I seem to hear amidst the roaring of the fierce waves of controversy, a sweet soft voice, saying, "Look up! What though strife and commotion rage, and men's hearts fail them through fear-Look up! The Father reigns."

A vessel coming across the Atlantic, was suddenly struck in the darkness of midnight by a terrible wind. She shivered and reeled under the stroke, in an instant