(_f_) The truth that man is the offspring of God implies the correlative truth of a common divine Fatherhood. God is Father of all men, in that he originates and sustains them as personal beings like in nature to himself. Even toward sinners God holds this natural relation of Father. It is his fatherly love, indeed, which provides the atonement. Thus the demands of holiness are met and the prodigal is restored to the privileges of sonship which have been forfeited by transgression. This natural Fatherhood, therefore, does not exclude, but prepares the way for, God’s special Fatherhood toward those who have been regenerated by his Spirit and who have believed on his Son; indeed, since all God’s creations take place in and through Christ, there is a natural and physical sonship of all men, by virtue of their relation to Christ, the eternal Son, which antedates and prepares the way for the spiritual sonship of those who join themselves to him by faith. Man’s natural sonship underlies the history of the fall, and qualifies the doctrine of Sin. Texts referring to God’s natural and common Fatherhood are: _Mal. 2:10_—“_Have we not all one father_ [Abraham]? _hath not one God created us?_” _Luke 3:38_—“_Adam, the son of God_”; _15:11-32_—the parable of the prodigal son, in which the father is father even before the prodigal returns; _John 3:16_—“_God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son_”; _John 15:6_—“_If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned_”;—these words imply a natural union of all men with Christ,—otherwise they would teach that those who are spiritually united to him can perish everlastingly. _Acts 17:28_—“_For we are also his offspring_”—words addressed by Paul to a heathen audience; _Col. 1:16, 17_—“_in him were all things created ... and in him all things consist_”; _Heb. 12:9_—“_the Father of spirits._” Fatherhood, in this larger sense, implies: 1. Origination; 2. Impartation of life; 3. Sustentation; 4. Likeness in faculties and powers; 5. Government; 6. Care; 7. Love. In all these respects God is the Father of all men, and his fatherly love is both preserving and atoning. God’s natural fatherhood is mediated by Christ, through whom all things were made, and in whom all things, even humanity, consist. We are naturally children of God, as we were _created_ in Christ; we are spiritually sons of God, as we have been _created anew_ in Christ Jesus. G. W. Northrop: “God never _becomes_ Father to any men or class of men; he only becomes a _reconciled_ and _complacent_ Father to those who become ethically like him. Men are not sons in the full ideal sense until they comport themselves as sons of God.” Chapman, Jesus Christ and the Present Age, 39—“While God is the Father of