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By Root 597 0

being in conflict among themselves, only chaotic thought could follow from such a belief. Those who had got beyond that idea to the concept of the One or True God, still thought of Him almost universally as a kind of Oriental tyrant-king, or sultan, owning and governing man with a rod of iron, on much the same lines that a capricious human tyrant might be expected to pursue. The God of many of the Old Testament writers is a very jealous, revengeful, and cruel despot; a sultan whom it is almost impossible to please, implacable in his anger, often indiscriminate in his vengeance. He seems to have no more in common with mankind than men have with the animals; in fact much less, for we do conceive ourselves to share many of the lowest creatures’ limitations in a common susceptibility to suffering and hunger and death.

This Oriental-sultan view of God was actually the view held by very many earnest orthodox Christians down to very recent times, be it remembered, and it denied to man anything in common with God at all. A witty modern writer has compared this god to a certain English millionaire who keeps a private zoo near London as his own personal hobby. It is stocked with a number of creatures which exist solely for their owner’s interest and pleasure. He visits his menagerie from time to time and (acting no doubt on expert advice) orders certain animals to be destroyed, others to be moved into more commodious cages, and others again perhaps to be dealt with in this way or that. He has, of course, no spiritual communion with them whatever. They are simply so many animated toys that exist for his entertainment. This is not by any means an overstrained description of the ideas held by many Fundamentalists, for instance.

In this passage Jesus once and for all lays the axe to the root of this horrible superstition for those who will read their Bible with an open mind. He says here, definitely and clearly—and he stresses his words in the most circumstantial way—that the real relationship of God and man is that of parent and child. Here God ceases to be the distant potentate who deals with grovelling slaves, and becomes the loving Father of us, His children. It is extremely difficult to realize the far-reaching importance that this declaration holds for the life of the soul. If you will read and reread this section dealing with the Fatherhood of God every day for a few weeks, you will find that it alone answers a great many of your religious problems. I venture to say that you will be considerably surprised at the large number of puzzling questions that it will settle once and for all. The teaching of Jesus concerning the Fatherhood of God was original and unique. In the Old Testament God is never addressed as “Father.” Where references to His Fatherhood are made, He is referred to as the Father of the nation, and not of individuals. Indeed this was the reason why Jesus made the declaration of the Fatherhood of God the opening clause of what we call the “Lord’s Prayer.” It explains, for instance, the tremendous statement in Genesis that man is the image and likeness of God.

It is axiomatic, of course, that the offspring must be of the same nature and species as the parent; and so if God and man are indeed Father and child, man—notwithstanding all his present limitations, and despite all appearances to the contrary—must be essentially Divine too, and susceptible of infinite growth and improvement and development up the rising pathway of divinity. That is to say, as man’s true nature—his spiritual character—unfolds, which means as he becomes more and more conscious of it, he will expand in spiritual consciousness until he has transcended all bounds of human imagination; onward, and yet onward still. It is in reference to this, our glorious destiny, that, as we have already seen, Jesus himself says elsewhere, quoting the older scriptures: “I have said ye are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High.” He then emphasized his point by adding significantly: “And the scripture cannot be broken.”

So, in this passage we are set free