As a Father of all, He cannot, conceivably, be satisfied with anything short of complete recognition by His children. He must look for faith; He must require it of them all: He must leave no means untried by which to secure it: He must seek to win it at all costs: His love is inevitably and cruelly hindered, unless He can obtain it: and when He obtains it, He must passionately desire to establish, evoke, develope, perfect it: for each rise in faith is a rise in capacities of intercourse, of intimacy, between Father and son. We see how strenuous and zealous will be His efforts to build up faith in men: we understand how urgent, and pressing, and alarming will become His entreaties, His warnings, His menaces, His appeals, if faith is allowed to slide or fail. Loss of faith means a shattered home, a ruptured intimacy, a sundered love; it means that a Father must look on while the very nature He has made in His image shrivels and shrinks, and all hope of growth, of advancing familiarity, of increasing joy, of assured sympathy, is cut down and blighted. We all know the bitterness of a breach which scatters a family into fragments: and that is but a faint shadow of all which the great Father sees to be involved in the broken contact between Himself and His son. What standard have we by which to sound the abyss of divine disappointment, as God waits ready with gift upon gift of endless grace which He will pour out upon the child of His love, as the endless years open out new wonders of advancing intimacy; and lo! the channel by which alone the gifts can reach him, is choked and closed? Faith is the son's receptivity: it is that temper of trust, which makes the entry of succours possible: it is the medium of response: it is the attitude of adherence to the Father, by virtue of which communications can pass. If faith goes, all further action of God upon the soul, all fresh arrival of power, is made impossible. The channel of intercourse is blocked.