so far, in short, as it shadows forth and brings home to us the infinite help that there is in God for all human creatures. In the struggles and aspirations of life, and especially of the religious life, we instinctively cling to others who seem wise and good, and able to help us in our upward way. There is a wonderful faith in the human heart, with all its waywardness-faith in a Divine guidance, which others can interpret for us better than we ourselves. This is the moral meaning of a priesthood, and it is a true meaning. The idea of such help is deeply planted in the religious soul. We would say nothing to weaken it where it is combined with intelligence and sense. But so soon as the idea of moral help becomes translated into ceremonial power or privilege, it passes into falsehood. The priest then becomes not merely the representative of a spiritual order, but the dispenser of spiritual good. By some outward act done to him he is supposed to stand nearer to God than others-he claims to stand nearer to Him, and to hold the blessings of God in his hand, to give according to his own choice and discrimination. Of all this there is not a trace in the Gospels. God is there equally near to all. He is equally the Father of all who will come to Him as children and claim His Fa

therly affection. And, on the other hand, all men. are alike before Him-Pharisee and Sadducee, priest or scribe, have in themselves no spiritual advantage or divine right. If any are disposed to say, "We are the children; others are outside of the divine circle within which we dwell," Christ says, in reply, that He is able to raise up children unto Abraham from the very stones of the street.* * He everywhere passes by external distinctions, and brings into prominent relief those essential characteristics of human nature which bring men together, and make them common or alike before God-those spiritual qualities which, in comparison with mere intellectual or social qualities, unite them on the same level. Dismissing from view all the accidents of which men make so much-distinctions of social or intellectual grade, of education or ability or culture-He fixes attention on the broad moral features in which we are all comparatively onesinners alike needing salvation, alike capable of salvation. In His unerring sight, no one stands before another; in His unerring, comprehending love, no one receives to the default of another. He is the Father of all. "Of a truth God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he

* Matt. iii. 9; John, viii. 39.

that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him.”*

III. But God is not only "Our Father;" He is "Our Father which art in heaven." This conveys to us the idea of perfect Fatherhood; and this idea is an important complement of those we have already considered. The effect of our previous exposition is to bring the Divine very near to man. God is a Father. He is our Father. The Supreme Being is represented under the nearness and dearness of a familiar human relationship. We approach Him, as children a father. We are in the presence of One who loves us, who cares for us, who desires only our good. All this is fitted, if anything can be fitted, to touch within us the instincts of spiritual affection, and awaken in our hearts that love of God which ought to be the guide of our lives. But mistake is apt to arise out of this very familiarity with the Divine which we are taught to cherish in Christ. We are apt to think of God as altogether such an one as ourselves. His heart of love so near to us, so open to us, may be supposed to be a heart like our own in its weakness as well as in its tenderness-sub

*Acts, x. 34, 35.

ject to influence as well as open to entreaty. We may carry up, in short, the idea of human frailty, as well as of human affection, to the Supreme. And it is needless to say that this has been universally done in all human religions. An element of human passion is found clinging to every natural imagination of Deity. The Divine is pictured as subject to animal instincts and gratified by animal sacrifices. The most cruel and dreadful practices have sprung out of this picture of a Divine being as not only to be entreated of men, but propitiated by them moved by some ceremony which they performed or some victim which they offered. You have only to realise the picture to see how irreligious it is. A God of such a nature could be no God. A being pleased with sacrifices and burnt-offerings, whose disposition towards men was affected by the slaying of a victim, and the sprinkling of its blood upon an altar, is hardly a moral being at all. The taint of weakness in its grossest form clings to such a notion of Deity. You must get quite out of the region of such notions before you attain to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ -of a Father who is at the same time "Our Father which art in heaven." In Christ the

Supreme is seen to be a perfect Moral Will, whose sacrifices are the reasonable services of the creatures He has made.

The essence of the Divine Fatherhood in Christ, as we have said, is love, but love which is wholly without weakness; not any mere tenderness, or pitifulness, or affectionateness, but a perfectly good Will, at once just and loving, righteous and tender, holy and gracious. It is only in our imperfect perceptions that these moral attributes are separable. Essentially in the supreme Will, they are inseparable. A love which failed in justice would be no true love, morally speaking. A tenderness which lacked righteousness would become mere good-nature, and issue in evils probably worse than the most rigorous equity. A grace which was without holiness would be no blessing. To break up or separate these moral conceptions in God is a fertile root of false religion, and, we may add, of false theology.

The invocation of the Lord's Prayer in its full form, unspeakably tender as it is, blends inseparably all these moral conceptions. It brings God into the closest personal relation to us, and yet it raises Him infinitely above us. It reveals a love near to us, and which we can fully comprehend, and yet a love transcending while it