65 Revelation of the Fatherhood of God thou art my Father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.” And if in all the great body of the religious poetry of Israel there are only two or three distinct notes of the fatherhood of God, we cannot believe that that idea filled any very large place in the heart of Israel. And in the very last of all the Old Testament prophecies, the complaint of God is just this, that the Israelites would not conceive of Him as their Father, and that even the political conception of God as the Father of the nation was no reality in the experience of the people. A NEW CONCEPTION The revelation of God as the Father of men was a prac tically new conception exposed in the teaching and in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ—not in His teaching alone. We should never have known God as Father by the message of Jesus Christ only; we should never have been able to conceive what Christ’s idea of God was if we had not seen that idea worked out in the very person of Jesus Christ Himself. It was not alone that He told us what God was. He said that when He walked before men, He was Himself one with the Father on Whom the eyes of men might gaze: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye would have known my Father also; from henceforth ye have known Him and have seen Him. Philip saith unto Him, Lord show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus said unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou riot know me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou. Show us the Father ? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I say unto you I speak not from myself: but the Father abiding in me doeth His works.” JO H N AND MATTHEW We cannot separate the Christological elements of the Gospel from the Gospel. The effort is made by throwing the
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