But more even than by His words did Christ by His life reveal to us the
Father. "He that hath seen Me," He said to Philip, "hath seen the
Father." In what He was and did, in His life and in His death, we read
what God is. We follow Him from Bethlehem to Nazareth, from Nazareth to
Gennesaret, from Gennesaret to Jerusalem, to the Upper Room, to
Gethsemane, and to Calvary, and at every step of the way He says to us,
"He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." We are with Him at the
marriage feast at Cana of Galilee, and in the midst of the mourners by
the city gate at Nain; we see Him as He takes the little children into
His arms and lays His hands upon them and blesses them; we hear His word
to her that was a sinner in the house of Simon the Pharisee; we stand
with John and with Mary under the shadow of the Cross; and still, always
and everywhere, He is saying to us, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the
Father; if ye had known Me ye should have known my Father also." Within
the sweep of this great word the whole life of Jesus lies; there is
nothing that He said or did that does not more fully declare Him whom no
man hath seen at any time. To read "that sweet story of old" is to put
our hand on the heart of God; it is to know the Father.
III
"Yes," says some one, "it is a beautiful creed--if only one could
believe it." Christ took the birds and the flowers for His text, and
preached of the love of God for man, but is that the only sermon the
birds and flowers preach to us? Does not "nature, red in tooth and claw
with ravine," shriek against our creed? And when we turn to human life
the tragedy deepens. Why, if Love be law, is the world so full of pain?
Why do the innocent suffer? Why are our hearts made to sicken every day
when we take up our morning paper? Why does not God end the haunting
horror of our social ills? They are old-world questions which no man can
answer. Yet will I not give up my faith, and I will tell you why. "I
cannot see," Huxley once wrote to Charles Kingsley, "one shadow or
tittle of evidence that the great unknown underlying the phenomena of
the universe, stands to us in the relation of a Father--loves us, and
cares for us as Christianity asserts." And, perhaps, if I looked for
evidence only where Huxley looked, I should say the same; but I have
seen Jesus, and that has made all the difference. It is He, and He
alone, who has made me sure of God. He felt, as I have never felt, the
horrid jangle and discord of this world's life; sin and suffering tore
His soul as no soul of man was ever torn; He both saw suffering
innocence and Himself suffered being innocent, and yet to the end He
knew that love was through all and over all, and died with the name
"Father" upon His lips. And, therefore, though the griefs and graves of
men must often make me dumb, I will still dare to believe with Jesus
that God is good and "Love creation's final law."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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