2. The Father-God.
“To me, I confess, it seems a very considerable thing, just to believe in God; difficult indeed to avoid honestly, and not easy to accomplish worthily; a thing not lightly to profess, but rather humbly to be sought; not to be found at the end of any syllogism, but in the inmost fountains of purity and affection; not the sudden gift of the intellect, but to be earned by a loving and brave life.”
“I believe in God the Father Almighty.”
These simple, solemn, tender words contain the Christian Thought of God. In the one word “Almighty” is summed up Muhammad’s idea of supreme Will and Power; the Christian prefixes a Name to the attribute which so governs the sphere of the exercise of that will and power that it is difficult to conceive that the two teachings represent the same Being.
Fatherhood In the view of Him to Whom we owe the Father Idea, the All of God and the All of His universe are summed up in the Fatherhood; that is, Jesus did not think of the al-might of God as exerted from without, the oneness of Creator and Created is in His view indissoluble. The birds could not maintain their little life, nor the lilies their delicate tints, without the Father; and words fail Him to tell of the closeness of the Fatherly interest in each member of His nearer offspring. “The very hairs of your head are numbered.”
The Parable of Jesus And when words have failed, He takes up His parable; “My Father worketh, and I work.” The lifework of Jesus is, He tells us, the Father’s work made visible.
Gentle, healing Hands were laid upon the suffering; sufficient food was provided for the hungry; Feet, never weary, travelled hither and thither on errands of pity; Arms were open to gather in the little children; Eyes spoke of love and understanding where words missed their object; happy human fellowship was offered: and all was a parable of the work of the Father-God.
The Father-Gift It was not a new thought to His hearers that the profoundest attribute of God is holiness, and that distinctions between right and wrong become acute in His presence; but it was a revelation to which the world of men has not yet become accustomed that the Father is so set upon goodness in the children who had miserably failed of it, that no sacrifice was too great, even for Him, to secure it; and that this austerity towards evil and purpose to subdue it, was the Father love in its highest exercise. In the Cross, symbol at once of man’s sin and of His own grace, our Lord is still speaking the parable of the Father’s “work.” “The Father worketh, and I work.” “God so loved the world that He gave”—Jesus.
Muhammad felt after God, and attained the idea of His apartness, aloneness, immensity.