The God that Jesus saw

Front matter

Glass

Book

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Foreword

Preaching before the University of Cambridge in the year 1846, Frederick Myers of Keswick — one of the seers of the nineteenth century — said : "I fear it may be that in some degree our theology has been impairing our reUgion/' and then he added, " the remedy for this is a firmer and fuller faith in the highest Idea of God." ^

No words could better express my own feeling in writing these pages. I have always felt that the one thing vital to a true religion is the moral and spiritual perfection of its God ; and I have, therefore, refused to give assent or to make known anything out of harmony with such perfection, even though it may have been included in the Creeds, Confessions, or dogmas of the Churches. Indeed, the one test I have appUed to every doctrine has been : " Is it consistent with the idea of perfect Fatherhood in God ? " For I have always believed that the central and supreme purpose of Jesus was to reveal this perfect God whom He called and encouraged men to call ''Father."

1 Sermons before the University of Cambridge by the late Frederic Myers, M.A., Perpetual Curate of St, John's, Keswick, 1852, p. 2Z.

V vi FOREWORD

In the assurance of this perfect Fatherhood of God I have found the resting-place for my soul, and I am anxious that others who have not, should find this place of rest. Long experience of life has shown me that many obstacles bar the way thereto, and, therefore, in the pages which follow I have done what little I could to remove such obstacles. If in any small measure I have succeeded my heart will be made glad.

Whilst I alone am responsible for the beliefs expressed, I am greatly indebted to Miss Maud Russell Beasley for unsparing devotion of time and thought, to the Rev. Gerald H. Paulet, B.A., Oxon, for valuable suggestions, and to Dr. Hastings Rashdall, Dean of Carlisle, of whose wide and accurate learning I was glad to avail myself, and who with great kindness read the manuscript and sent me notes of much value. To all these I offer my most hearty thanks.

Part I I

That was a very wise collier who, when leading a Bible-class of his mates, said : '' Whatever we do, lads, let us keep clear the character of Gqd." It seems, indeed, a positive duty for all who think on this great matter to reach the truest possible conclusions. As Dr. Wicksteed says: ''For inasmuch as a man who has formed a wholly false conception of God and feels emotionally moved towards this creatiure of his imagination is not really loving God, it follows that, in proportion as our conception of God approaches the truth, so our love is indeed love of God, and not of an idol/' ^ It is said that Queen ' Victoria idoHsed her husband, the Prince Consort ; but the Prince did not want to be idolised, he wanted to be understood. The Queen never understood him, and the Prince was a lonely man to the end. Would it not be true to say that the Great Father longs to be understood — that is, in an ethical and

^ Reactions between Dogma and Philosophy, p. 261, I spiritual sense apprehended — rather than idoHsed, that He would rather be apprehended as to His vital relationship to men than ignorantly and so wrongly worshipped by His children, since to apprehend Him, in even a far-off way, would draw them to something far higher than idolising — to response of heart and obedience of life.

As I have gone over the representations men have made of Him in the metaphysics of the Greek and the legalism of the Latin, culminating in the awful articles of the Westminster Confession of Faith, I could not help feehng how the great Fatherly heart must have suffered. Far beyond anything else, the conception of the character of his God determines the nature of a man's religion. That is usually estimated by the creed he recites, or the mode in which he worships, whether through extemporary or liturgical forms, with a simple or ornate ritual, but far deeper and more influential is the character of God which rises before his mind and moves his heart.

This has been controverted by pointing to men and women with the most terrible conceptions of the character of God, who have yet lived very pure and noble lives. No one who has considered the subject will deny this. With even the vision of a Sultanic God before their eyes, many have pursued with steadfast purpose the way of righteousness, and have left the memory of very holy lives. But a closer acquaintance with them would have brought to light the fact that their hearts ached at the thought of God which filled their minds, and that, amid all their fidelity, their service was that of servants and did not rise, or rose only fitfully, in moments of ecstasy, to the joyousness and freedom of sons. Within the circle of mxy own acquaintances there have been many devoted and holy lives, which called forth my warmest admiration, but all the while beneath the surface there was often a heart agony, a distress of mind, caused by their wrong vision of God, which made lives, nobly lived and which should have been filled with joy, to be shadowed by the vision which filled their minds and troubled their hearts. And only when the true vision of the Father which Christ revealed rose before their eyes did they pursue the way of holiness, not with the trembling feet of fear, but with the gladness of those whose vision had wakened a love which casts out the fear which hath torment. No sight can be sadder than that of men and women steadily pursuing the way of holiness, but with a distorted vision of God that robs them of much of a joy which is rightly theirs, and which would be theirs if they saw God, not through the unworthy doctrines which men have framed of God, but through the great revealing of Him who, above and beyond all others, really knew God.

Two incidents in the career of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen may serve to show how great a change is wrought in mind and heart by realisation of the Fatherhood of God :

*' He once met a shepherd in the Highlands, to whom, ' in that tone which combined in so peculiar a manner sweetness and command/ he put the unlooked-for question, ' Do you know the Father ? ' The shepherd, taken aback, said nothing ; but the wonderful tone and personality of the questioner made so deep an impression upon his mind that he could not get past the question put to him, nor yet dismiss it from his mind, with the remarkable result that, meeting Mr. Erskine many years afterwards, the shepherd recognised him at once, and said, ' I know the Father now/ " ^

The other incident may show that the surest way to lead to confidence in this Fatherhood is the human one indicated by Jesus : "If ye, being evil, know how to give good things unto your children, how much more will your Father which is in heaven -^ give good things to them that ask Him ? "

" Mr. Erskine was once taken by Lady Matilda Maxwell to see a farmer of whose recovery there was no hope, but who was terribly afraid, and said, ' I cannot face the idea of dying.' To calm his mind, Mr. Erskine asked, ' Would you like me to go with you ? ' which called forth the obvious reply, ' How can a man go with another when he is dying ? ' But, as the farmer grew more excited, Mr. Erskine asked, " Would you like me to go with you if I could ? ' 'Of course I would,' said the farmer. ' Why ? ' asked Mr. Erskine. ' Oh, because that now we are such friends, I am sure you wouldn't let anything very bad happen to me.' On this said Mr. Erskine, ' Do you think I am better than God ? Anything which you Uke in me comes out from Him, for I did not make myself. Depend upon it that He is better than I am, and likes you better too ;

^ Erskine ofLinlathen, by H, E. Henderson, p. 122.

depend upon it that He will not let anything very bad happen to you. Believe me, it will not be so bad as you think ; believe me, it will be easier. Just put it into His hands, just leave yourself with Him, and I am sure that He will see you through it better than I could.' Next day Mr. Erskine returned, and the farmer said, ' I have been thinking, sir, of what you said, and I find something in it ; and I am trying to lift it from myself and put it upon God, and I feel a kind of help in it.' A few days after, when death came, he met it not only without fear, but with hope and even triumph.'' ^

It should be enough to point all walking in the shadow of unworthy ideas of God to the clear, definite, emphatic declaration of Christ of His perfect Fatherhood. But, unhappily, there are often many old and deeply rooted ideas of God in the mind which prevent the entrance of the nobler ones presented by Christ ; and there are many things both in the world and in Scripture which seem to bar the way to the great Evangel of Christ as to this perfect Fatherhood. And the purpose of the pages which follow is to open the road by clearing away the obstacles to the full assurance of Christ's great declaration, '' Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."

Two prefatory remarks must be made to set this declaration in its proper light. The first is, that the perfection here spoken of is that of a Father, There are varieties of perfection. There is the perfection

1 Present-day Papers, edited by Bishop Ewing. Third Series pp. 17-19.

of the craftsman, reached when his work cannot be better done. There is the perfection of the judge whose judgments are just. There is the perfection of the ruler whose rule is for his people's good ; besides many others which need not be named. And a man may be perfect in any one of these, but imperfect in other respects.

Now, the perfection here spoken of is that of a

Father. Of course, God must be perfect in every

respect ; but it is to the perfection of His Father-

-hood we are here pointed — that is, perfection in His

relation to us. His children on earth.

The second thing is, that the name '' Father " really stands for parent, and includes the fatherly and motherly element. We males have no right to monopolise parentage, either in the home or in our idea of God. Theodore Parker, the great American preacher, always spoke of God as Father-Mother God. And he was right. The prophet discerned this when he put into the mouth of Jehovah the declaration, wonderful for that age, '' As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.'' That should bring into our thought a tender element, quite lacking in those who always speak of Him as the Almighty, which is Society's word, and reveals the hardness and crudeness of its idea of Him.

Thousands of hearts are troubled because they have had thrust upon them the vision of a far from perfect God — one, indeed, who is said to have taken their loved ones from their side in the recent war, or taken their babies from the nurture of their bosom, as many a sorrowing parent has been told by unthinking comforters. Such terrible caricatures of God as these have not only been turning hearts away from religion, but have caused inexpressible anguish. And cases have come under my notice in which, when such misrepresentations of God have been wisely and tenderly removed, a great agony of heart has been healed, which has found expression even outwardly in the features of the face.

It seems almost incredible that nearly tv/o thousand years after Jesus declared the perfection of God's Fatherhood refutation of such misrepresentations should be needed ; but so it is ! And there is no truth which followers of Jesus should more clearly and vigorously make known than this perfection.

Protestants have often taken more care of the character of their Bible than of their God. Chillingworth's declaration that the Bible, and the Biblealone, is the religion of Protestants is a sign of this. Catholics have often taken more care of the character of their Church than of their God, and thus the Church has practically become their God. A nobleman who claimed to be a good CathoUc declared to a relative of mine that he " did not believe in Christ or the Bible, but he believed in the Church, and the Church,'^ when he died, would see him through.'' He will surely find in the other world that neither his Church nor any other Church will have any such power. But the supreme matter is the character of God. If, before men's eyes everywhere, the vision of a perfect

Father could be lifted and kept, it would gradually but surely waken the sense of brotherhood among men which just now is the supreme need of the world. No effort should be too great to banish the hard visions of God's character which have held the minds of men and to put in their place that perfect fatherhood which was the very centre of -Christ's teaching and the very goal of His ministry. But, though nearly two thousand years have elapsed since He declared the perfection of this Fatherhood, it is even now rarely realised in its fulness.

In his sermon to the Church Congress of 1920 at Southend, the Archbishop of Canterbury preached on the Fatherhood of God. He said :

'' Less than a hundred years ago George Canning told this story to a listening House of Commons : He had gone, he said, a few Simdays before to a poor Kttle Presbyterian church in Hatton Garden. There he heard from an inconspicuous preacher — it was Edward Irving, not yet famous — a new and startling phrase which had haunted him ever since^ — the Fatherhood of God."

The Archbishop then said :

" The underljdng thought of the phrase which came to him so arrestingly was, of course, in no sense new. But, strangely enough, the actual phrase does not seem to have been previously in use."

Now the Archbishop is wrong in his story. Canning did not hear the phrase — it was reported to him by Sir James Mackintosh, who had heard Irving in his prayer speak of some orphans as " thrown upon the Fatherhood of God/' But the Archbishop makes a more serious mistake when he says that the thought was in no sense new. It was new to that time. If the thought had been there, it would have found, as thought always does, some phrase for its expression. Indeed, even in the earlier years of my own Ufe, the Fatherhood of God was regarded as heresy, and men were thrust from their pulpits for proclaiming it. That was the case with Dr. McLeod Campbell, who was ejected from the church at Row, on the Gareloch, and Alexander J. Scott, who, thrust from the ministry for the same reason, became the first Principal of Owens College, which is now the University of Manchester. Through the fidelity to the teaching of Christ of such and other like-minded men, the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God has almost ceased to be regarded as a heresy ; but it is still imperfectly accepted and applied, and there are still many things which are urged against it. In one sense the Fatherhood of God has been known from the time of Christ to our own ; and in a certain sporadic way, it was known and proclaimed before His time by the Hebrew prophets, to say nothing concerning hints of it in quite other realms. And all down the Christian centuries it could not have been wholly missed, since it forms the preface to the Lord's Prayer, which has always held its place in and even beyond the Church. But from the earliest down to almost our own time it has rarely if ever reached the fulness and vitaUty of meaning which really belongs to the idea of Fatherhood. It would be difficult to find, till quite recent times, those who extended it to the whole race which owes its existence to God. Everywhere, or nearly everywhere, it was limited to those who believed or had been baptized or were in some way within the pale of the Church. Whilst, beyond this, those who beheved in the Fatherhood seemed to be able at the same time to believe things absolutely incompatible with it. For example. Fatherhood, any real sense, rules out the idea of everlasting punishment, even to those unresponsive to its calls and persuasions. And it also rules out what has even yet been rarely realised, the need for any persuasions to obtain the mercy of God. All that the earthly father, in spite of his imperfections, demands as a condition of his mercy to an offending child, is such sorrow for wrongdoing that his forgiveness can be rightly given and received. But men beUeved, or thought they believed, in the Divine Fatherhood when all the while they regarded Jesus, not as the expression or commendation, but as the persuasion of that Father to forgiveness of His repentant children. In this respect the Divine Fatherhood even now is rarely apprehended in its breadth and fulness.

As an article of the Creed, Fatherhood in God has never been absent from the faith of the Church, but as a vitaUty of experience, with all its great impUcations, it has even now reached but a small proportion even of those who bear the name of Christian. And

U it was not till men like Thomas Erskine, Alexander ■" /^ John Scott, and McLeod Campbell were persuaded f{<^^ of the Divine Fatherhood and their ideas gained expression through preachers like Frederic Denison Maurice and poets like George MacDonald that the idea in its vitality and with its great implications became the conviction of any great number of Christian people.

When this idea of the Fatherly nature of God, which had emerged in the teaching of the men just named and other pioneer minds, passed out into wider circles, it was objected that no place was found in it for those sterner elements which find expression in the teaching of Scripture, and that it placed on the throne of the universe a weakly indulgent rather than a righteous ruler. Doubtless, in the representations of ill-balanced minds this was sometimes the case, but it certainly was not so in the case of the men to whom I have referred, whose vision was of Fatherhood in its fulness and perfection. Even in the case of earthly fatherhoods, when they reach to high levels, there are found the characteristics of the king and the judge ; they are at once rulers and judges over their families, but it is love which is the very heart of their fatherhood, and the regal and judicial qualities are only the ways through which love best expresses itself and reaches its end.

This is my own conception of the Fatherly nature of God and that it works not through direct action, rewarding and punishing from without, but, as it were, from within, through that constitution of

Nature which ever leads to the overthrow of the evil and the establishment of the good. The Hebrew mind thought of the action of God as direct and from without. The modem mind, believing quite as fully as the Hebrew in Divine influence, regards it as springing out of the very order of the universe, as originally constituted by God. But, however that may be, the vision of Divine Fatherhood presented in these pages is not of one who loves not wisely but too well, but of one " righteous in all His ways and holy in all His v/orks.''

Now, there are many things in the Old Dispensation which have wrongly been brought into the New, which tend to conceal this perfect Fatherhood, In the pages of the Old Testament Jehovah is mixed up with much that is warUke. There is the record of many campaigns, and Jehovah is said to be the Patron of Israel and to fight on its behalf. And because of this the name '' the Lord of Hosts '' has been given to Him in the Psalms and other parts of the Old Testament. And so the title '' the Lord of Hosts '' is still applied to Him, even in our Christian dispensation. " The Lord of Hosts is with us '' was not only the battle-cry of Cromwell and his troops, who used the Old far more than the New Testament, but in our Christian worship we often use the same words when we sing of Him. It is indeed difficult to get this fighting name for God out of even the devotional parts of the Old Testament used in our worship. And the battle stories of the Old Testament, with their belief in Jehovah as the great Captain, have done and are still doing much to keep alive that fighting tendency which hinders the peace and concord so needed by the nations of the world.

And, of course, the idea of God as the inspirer and leader of war, and His title as the Lord of Hosts, are absolutely out of accord with the declaration of Christ of His perfect Fatherhood. The two cannot exist side by side in the same mind. Perfect Fatherhood must thrust out utterly all such ideas, for a Father — a perfect Father of all — could not be either the inspirer or leader of war between different parts of His family. We must get rid of all names for Him which make Him a Captain of Battles rather than the Head of a Family.

In the fourth century Bishop Ulphilas, who gave the Goths a written language and translated the Bible for them, omitted the Books of Kings and Samuel in order that his people might not find in them an additional stimulus to their warlike enterprises, an example worthy of imitation, for the war stories of the Old Testament greatly foster the war spirit.

And then, too, theology has often been a great obscurer of this Perfect Fatherhood of God,^ Until quite recently, the idea rarely appeared in works of theology, and when it did it was with all sorts of limitations or reservations. If a Father, He was only of a

1 More than three-quarters of a century ago that far-seeing man, Frederick Myers, of Keswick, saw this, for, preaching before the University of Cambridge, he said : "I fear it may be that in some degree our theology has been impairing our religion " (Six Sermons, p. 22).

little company who believed, and their beUef must be of a very definite and orthodox kind. And in many theologies only an elected company, and that a small one, could be in His family, and the rest — and that a vast rest — were doomed to eternal omission from the family, and, worse than that, to eternal punishment for not becoming what the Divine decree had made impossible. No greater hiders of the perfect Fatherhood of God ever darkened the earth than those called Calvinists. There was really some ground for John Wesley's saying that " the Calvinisms God was worse than his devil, for his devil only tempted him to sin, and his God compelled him to sin/'

And then this awful calumny against God's Fatherhood filtered out from books and professors of theology into the pulpit, and so reached the people at large. Until comparatively recently, the perfect Fatherhood of God was more preached against than preached. It was argued against ; it was ridiculed ; it was denoimced as '* heresy.'' And the greater part of the doctrine actually preached was absolutely out of harmony with such Fatherhood. St. Paul says it " pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe " — of course, he did not mean that by foolish preaching men would be saved ; what he meant was that preaching seemed a foolish method to save men. If foolish preaching could have saved men, there has been such a vast quantity of it down the ages that by this time all in Christendom should have been saved !

And it cannot be doubted that foolish preaching has greatly hidden the perfection of God's Fatherhood. In my early days what was preached was not the perfect Fatherhood of God, but the three R's : Ruin by the Fall, which Christ never preached ; Redemption by the Blood ; and Regeneration by the Holy Ghost. All three were usually got out of every text. In many an age and place the pulpit has obscured rather than revealed this Fatherhood. And this has not wholly ceased. In support of this, let me quote from a sermon preached at the beginning of the war :

" The God after this war will be to many different from the God before the war, because we shall have seen His power and grace and know by experience who can help us best. There will be a revival of true Christianity after this, and it was needed and prayed for a long time ; but we never thought it would come this way — that a war-cloud would be big with mercy and would break with blessing on our head. But God brings His olive-branches of peace in chariots of war — for what was Calvary but the battle-ground of God? — and when Christ conquered by dying He became our peace.'' ^

And then, too, even some of the poets who should have been revealers of this Divine Fatherhood have often been its obseurers. And, unfortunately, the charm of their verse has carried their influence into circles beyond the Church. This is the case with two of the greatest poets of the world, Dante and

1 Why God permits War, a sermon by the Rev. W, L. Gibbs, ' 1914.

Milton, whose poems have obscured rather than revealed the Divine Fatherhood. It was their misfortune to be cast in ages whose theology was spiritually hard. Dante drew in the mediaeval theology with his breath. Milton, though himself an Arian, was of the Puritan period, which was Calvinistic. And these theologies, which had no place for a real Fatherhood of God, find expression in their poems — that of Dante in the Divine Comedy, that of Milton in Paradise Lost. In these, poetic phrasing is at its highest, theology at its lowest. I have been going over the first section of the Divine Comedy called '' Hell,'' where each circle holds sinners of a particular type, to whom are meted out punishments like to their sins, and I have asked myself : Can one imagine a real father dooming any of his family, however sinful, to such never-ending woe ?

I suppose the best-kno\vn line of Dante is the inscription over the gate of Hell : " All hope abandon, ye who enter here/' Would any true father banish hope from the sky even of a prodigal son ? I was once asked for advice as to what course a father, whose son had gone astray, should take. I at once replied, '' Let him never close the door of the home against him." And I am sure that in such advice I was in harmony with the will of God. The door was kept open, and that prodigal son is now witliin the home circle. ^

1 What is here said about Dante is in regard to the influence the Divwe Comedy has had in framing popular conceptions of

And in lesser degree it may be said of Milton's Paradise Lost — great poetry, but bad theology. No one can imagine a perfect Father planning the world as pictured in either Dante or Milton. These works have enriched our poetry, but they have not aided or upHfted our religion. And as Dante's cosmogony of the earth as the centre of the Universe and stationary, and the sun as rising and setting, is now obsolete, so his theology, which was equally erroneous, should be regarded as also obsolete. If we want aid from the poets to the vision of the Fatherhood of God, we must come to later ones, touched by the breath of the spirit which has been

the other world. This has tended, in my judgment, to render that world, even to the godly, an object of fear rather than of anticipation. The writer of the article " The Spirit World " in the Dante Supplement to The Times on the six hundredth anniversary of his death, who clearly is a fervent Dante-lover, says : " The tragedies they tell create pity and fear that are unforgettable. Yet not all the beauties of the cantos devoted to ' Malebolge,' and they are many, can redeem the repulsiveness of the physical torments described. The floggings and the boiling pitch, the devils with horns and hoofs, the serpents, the butcheries, and the loathsome diseases are merely hideous. Their ugliness and their grossness jar with the rest of the picture, as Fra Angelico's Hell jars with the lovely Heaven, both plainly inspired by Dante, in his ' Last Judgment.' '* To the ordinary reader who cannot strip ofE this awful mediaevalism, Dante's picture of Hell cannot but cast a dark shadow over the face of God.