Even so, this young man did not despair. "Be of good cheer," He cried. "I have overcome the world." He was speaking in anticipation, but He was so sure of it that He used the past tense as of a thing accomplished. "I have overcome the world." He had kindled a fire which would never go out. He had lodged a bit of yeast in the heart of the race which would finally leaven the whole lump. He had saturated a few men with His ideas and spirit, and they would set in motion a process which one day would cause every knee to bow before Him and every tongue to confess that He is Lord. He was to change the history of the world--how did He go about it? In the first place He changed men's thoughts about God. Men are influenced by their environment--they are transformed by the renewing of their minds. They are moulded by the thoughts they think and the desires they cherish. As a man thinketh in his heart touching the things that matter, so he becomes. This is true as regards all our prevailing habits of mind, but the potency of right thought is to be found at its best when we come to a man's thought of God. How shall we think about ultimate reality? What is behind all these changing, passing phenomena? Who is back of it all? Is anybody? If so, is he wise or blind? Is he good or evil or morally indifferent? Does he mean anything by it all, or is he only an unreasoning, purposeless force? You cannot ask yourself or your fellows a more important question than this--"How shall we think about God?" Men had been filling their minds with all sorts of wild and foolish guesses about God. This young man placed upon the lips of the race and within its heart that great word "Father." "When ye pray say, 'Our Father.'" Begin with those words on your lips, with that thought in your mind and with the filial spirit in your heart. When you worship "Worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him." When you would turn away from the evil of your life say, "I will arise and go to my Father." When you want assurance say, "No man can pluck me out of my Father's hand." When you come to die say, "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." Death is the act of a tired child falling back into the arms of his Father. He showed us the Father and it sufficed us. This great truth was the heart of this young man's message to the race--God is our Father. God combines the strength and the tenderness, the authority and the devotion, the responsible control and the capacity for self-sacrifice which belong to fatherhood at its best. Take the highest you have ever seen in fatherhood and raise it to the _nth_ power, and then trust that, for that is God.