tendency runs round the circles of thought, and sees them beautiful in the smile of the Father. It listens to all ethical demands, and hears in them the echo of the harmony that is in the Father's own nature. It stands in the presence of the Father's goodness and love, and adores. It is as if, over this new creation in experience, the old words were heard anew, "Let there be light." Verily there is endless satisfaction for the soul that thus sees the Father. The feeling of orphanhood can no longer oppress the heart.

How, then, could Philip, or any other man, see the Father? Only by intelligently looking upon Christ. That is the answer. Jesus is the revealer of the Father. The Christ, not of the imagination but of history, is God made manifest. That character in which all the glories of the Father concentrate and are reflected upon the world, is not an ideal creation, but an historical reality. Men could see it with the eyes, could apprehend it with the mind, could feel it with the heart. It was clothed in flesh; for how otherwise could man bear to look upon it? All the life, the love, the pity, and the tenderness of the Father find expression in the personality and deeds of Jesus. Genius working at red heat may now

and again startle the world by the glory of its creations; but for breadth, and power, and wonderful results, it has never given form to anything like the fatherly character which Jesus reveals. In His mastery of matter and of mind, in the unveilings of truth and purity, in the matchless openings into love and life, we see the personal Father of men. Beyond doubt the answer which Jesus gives touches mysteries, the depth of which no man knows. But we can see the fact, though it is not necessary that we should be able to fathom it. It is not with the metaphysics of the question we have to do. The brightness of the Father's glory is before us when our minds are face to face with Jesus. Philip needed no Shechinah for his physical vision, no new gift of mental vision. The image of the Father was before him while he was looking upon the Saviour. The glories of the universe are focalised in Christ. If any man cares to deny that it is so, it is difficult to know how any one could show him the Father. If a man could call a rainbow ugly, would it not be necessary for some oculist to examine his eyes, or some phrenologist to finger his head, or some pathologist to make a careful diagnosis of the disease or diseases under which he labours? In the

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same way, if a man should treat this saying of Jesus other than the most glorious and attractive truth, would it not be necessary to inquire whether there were anything in that man's nature for the magnetism of truth to act upon? That man is surely walking in a vain show, and playing with delusions, who can shut out from his mind Jesus Christ as the manifested Father, and give himself up to phantom ideals which, when tested by philosophy and fact, are seen to vanish away, and thus mock the eyes that stand gazing after them.

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CHAPTER VII.

THE SON REVEALING THE FATHER.

"A BETTER Instructor," says Lessing, "must come and tear the exhausted Primer from the child's hands. Christ came." This is progress. Many lines running inward converge at this point, and show that the greatness of the Father and the littleness of the child must be no barrier to free communication and fellowship. The gulf is bridged. The glory is softened through the medium of humanity, so that the weak eye is not injured. "God, who at sundry times and divers manners spake unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last times spoken unto us by His Son." Is His speech final? Or is there a richer, fuller, brighter word yet to be uttered by any one? By whom could it be spoken? When poetry and art, and science and philosophy, and politics and trade, have reached their zenith, and done their best to brighten earth, will not God be in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself? And will not the voice that came

from heaven in the past come to man in the future, saying, "This is my beloved Son, hear ye Him?" "Go thine inscrutable way, Eternal Providence," says Lessing, "only let not me despair in Thee because of this inscrutableness. Let me not despair in Thee, even if Thy steps appear to me to be going back. It is not true that the shortest line is always straight. Thou hast on Thine eternal way so much to carry on together, so much to do, so many side steps to take! And what if it were as good as proved that the vast slow wheel, which brings mankind nearer to this perfection, is only put in motion by smaller, swifter wheels, each of which contributes its own individual unit thereto?" Some of the wheels were put in motion by which great results were to follow when Jesus, with His eye upon the Father's ways, said, “All things are delivered unto me of my Father and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." What to other eyes would have been inscrutable was to the Saviour very clear; and hence, as He saw the "babes" illumined, while darkness still rested on the "wise and prudent," He could say, “I thank Thee, O Father."