70 The Fundamentals the ideal of purity anywhere in the world where the conception of the father-revelation of God in Christ has not gone. Ex plain it as you will, it is a simple fact of comparative religion. Can any man find the full ideal of moral purity anywhere in this world where it has not been created by the revelation of the father-character of God in Christ? We owe it to that, and we can not be sure of its perpetuation save where the convic tion of that great revelation abides in the faith of man. Or take our ideal of work. Where did Christ get His ideal of work? “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” On what ground did He rest His claim upon men to work? “Son, go work today in my vineyard.” Our whole ideal of a workingman’s life, of a man’s using his life to the fullness of its power in an unselfish service is an ideal born of the revela tion of the father-character of God in Christ. And forgive ness is an ideal of the same kind. We owe all the highest and noblest ideals of our life to that revelation. And it seems to us something less than fair for a man to take those ideals and then deny their origin, trampling under foot the claims of Him from Whom those ideals came into our lives. SWEETENS OBEDIENCE And think how rational and sweet this conception of God makes obedience. There is something rational but hardly sweet in the thought of obedience to Him under the simple theistic conception. All the joy of obedience comes when I think of myself as my Father’s son and sent to do my Father’s will. Our Lord thought of His life just so. “Simon,” He said—that last night that Simon tried to defend Him by force—■ “put up thy sword into its sheath. The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” We get our ideals of obedience and the joy and the delight of obedience from the thought that after all we are simply to obey our Father. In the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John, we get a little vision of what Christ conceives to be the sweetness and the tender-
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