word veйμa, Spirit, is here without the article and occupies the emphatic position in the sentence, thus notably describing the nature rather than the personality of God. The Samaritan woman seems to have held the old notion of her ancestors (comp. 2 Kings xvii, 26, 27) that each country has its local deity, and that within that region one place of worship would be more acceptable than another. Over against this notion Jesus set forth the sublime spiritual and monotheistic concept of God, the one universal Father, whose presence may be known in any place. Nay, instead of presuming to find God in this mountain or in that, the Father himself is the one who seeks the true worshipers. The real concern of one who would know the Father must be, not a question of time, and place, and outward forms of reverence, but the spirit and truth in which he opens his inmost soul to the reception of that which is good. Spiritual truth may be spiritually discerned in any place, and every spot where God thus makes himself known to his true worshiper is holy ground. The essential attributes of a spirit are not and cannot be seen by fleshly eyes, but they may be felt and known in personal consciousness. Spirit answers to spirit, and God's wisdom, love, and power are spiritual verities to be truly apprehended by spiritual intuition. Only the spiritual man can truly discern, examine, and receive the things of the Spirit of God.

(2) God is the Life and the Light. We have noticed that, in John vi, 57, Jesus calls God "the living Father." In another place (v, 26) he says: "As the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself." Accordingly, the prologue of this gospel declares that "in him was life, and the life was the light of men" (i, 4). The coming of Christ is that men "may have life, and may have it abundantly" (x, 10). Life and light are thus closely associated in the mind of this evangelist, and the main thought is that of spiritual life and its heavenly illumination. God is the one eternal source of life and light, and these he imparts to man through the incarnation of the Word through whom all things were made. Hence by necessary implication the Father is the source of all life and all light in the universe. All possibilities of life, vegetable, animal, and spiritual, exist primordially in him. Life and light associate naturally together, and since "the life was the light of men," Jesus says with great force, "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (viii, 12). In this connection the language of 1 John i, 5, may well be cited: "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." He became incarnate that he might appear and witness "the true light which lighteth every man" (i, 9; ix, 5; xii, 46).

(3) God is Love. The love of the Father finds highest expression in the person and work of his "only begotten Son." The language of John i, 18, is very remarkable. It is "the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father," who alone can fully reveal him. This statement is in substance the same as that of Jesus himself in Matt. xi, 27, but in this fourth gospel we note the phrases only begotten Son, and the bosom of the Father. These are terms of holiest affection, and the concept of the eternal Word, in the beginning with God, existing in the glory of the Father, and beloved of the Father before the world was (comp. xvii, 5, 24), yet becoming flesh and manifesting himself as a man among men, is unique and marvelous among all the self-revelations of God. While this Son of the Father makes known the truth and holiness and righteousness of God, and magnifies all moral excellencies to the highest conceivable perfection, his manifestation of the love of God has noteworthy preeminence. The classic text, which embodies the whole gospel in one sentence, is John iii, 16: "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life." This is the love divine which, when duly felt, prompts our loving God with all the heart and soul. "As the Father hath loved me, I also have loved you: abide ye in my love" (xv, 9). The same idea of God's love is emphasized in the first epistle of John. We are to love one another because "love is of God, and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God." Thus every true child of God is to know the love of the Father, and all such are to love one another also, as dear children, in whom God delights to abide and perfect his own heavenly love. "God is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him" (iv, 7-16). "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God" (iii, 1). All these sayings are but echoes of the teaching of Jesus in the gospel according to John. God is the tender, affectionate, all-compassionate Father. As truly as he is a Spirit so also God is love, and we think of his omnisentience as preeminently the delicate sensitiveness of an infinite loving-kindness toward his whole creation. The groaning and travailing world of life suffers no emotion that is not also felt in the bosom of the Father. How unfathomable the love that so grasps the world as to feel every joy and every pang of insect, bird, beast, and child of man that ever lived and moved upon the face of the earth, in the depths of the sea, or in the heavens above! (4) Johannine Concept of the Fatherhood. The name of the Father is employed in referring to God about one hundred and twenty times in the gospel, and twelve times in the first epistle of

John. The expression is generally "the Father," and frequently "my Father," but, with the sole exception of xx, 17, "your Father” does not appear as in the synoptic gospels. To the unbelieving Jews who claimed God for their Father he said: "If God were your Father, ye would love me, for I came forth and am come from God. . . . Ye are of your father the devil" (viii, 42-44). So in the parable of the tares those who offend and work iniquity are called "sons of the evil one" (Matt. xiii, 38). There is nothing in the nature of fatherhood nor in the yearnings of love to coerce filial obedience in any human heart. And so while all men are offspring of God, and the whole world of life has its origin in the eternal Spirit, men have rebelled against God, rejected his truth, alienated themselves from his fellowship, and "sold themselves to do evil." But on the other hand, to as many as receive this Son of God, "gave he the right to become children of God" (i, 12). This "right to become children of God" is a Johannine phrase, and the idea is not very different from Paul's doctrine of adoption (viodeoía). It is the gracious bestowal of a peculiar power or authority (ovoía) for personal fellowship with God and with Christ. To those who enjoy such filial right the fatherhood of God becomes in Christ a blessed and glorious vision. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (xiv, 9). The everlasting Father lives, loves, and shows his wisdom and power in the person of his Son, whom he has sent to be the Saviour of the world. There are many mansions in the Father's house prepared for and awaiting those that love him (xiv, 2), and it is the only begotten Son who prepares them, and comes and receives his own, and takes them away to behold his heavenly glory. The Father is thus manifested and glorified in the Son. Hence the force and suggestiveness of the words, "I am in the Father and the Father in me." At the same time the dependence of the Son upon the Father is declared in most positive terms: "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing; for what things soever he doeth, these the Son also doeth in like manner. For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that himself doeth" (v, 19, 20; comp. viii, 28; xii, 49). It is in accordance with this self-testimony that he can both say, "I and the Father are one" (x, 30), and "the Father is greater than I" (xiv, 28). The Father as the infinite source of all love, wisdom, and power holds the essential relationship of fatherhood, but in the outworking of his purpose of redemption he acts in dynamic unity of fellowship with the only begotten Son, and the real basis of such fellowship is a spiritual unity of nature and of life.

CHAPTER III

APOSTOLIC CONCEPTS OF THE FATHER

1. In the Epistle of John. It is a revelation in itself to study and discover the concept of "our Father who is in heaven" as it appears in the teachings of the first apostles of our Lord. We have already observed that the doctrine of the first epistle of John is in substance identical with that of the fourth gospel. There are, however, a few passages in the epistle which deserve additional notice as illustrating the writer's conception of the Father. His controlling thought may be supposed to have had its origin in that profound supplication of Jesus that Christian believers everywhere "may all be one, even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that thou didst send me" (John xvii, 21). For at the beginning of his epistle he observes: "Our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ" (i, 3). Hence the whole company of believers are as "little children," who "have an Advocate with the Father," and "know the Father," and know also that "all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the vainglory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world" (ii, 1, 13, 16). What manner of love such sonship and such knowledge of God display! (iii, 1.) Hence the great lesson that "every one that loveth is begotten of God and knoweth God, and he that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love" (iv, 7, 8). Such knowledge of God and loving fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ bring the purified believer as a little child into the very bosom of the Father.

2. In the Other Catholic Epistles we meet only incidental references to God as "the Father" (James i, 27; iii, 9; 1 Pet. i, 2, 3, 17; 2 Pet. i, 17; Jude 1; 2 John, 3, 4, 9). The expression Father of lights, in James i, 17, is peculiar, and points to God as the creator of the heavenly luminaries, sun, moon, and stars, as told in Gen. i, 14-16. In Heb. xii, 9, God is called "the Father of spirits," that is, of such spirits as angels and the "spirits of just men made perfect" (comp. ver. 23 and i, 7, 14). But these few references attest a prevalent apostolic concept of God as the blessed Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and of all who enter into the life and fellowship of Jesus.

3. In the Pauline Epistles we find the same vivid conception of God as the Father of Jesus Christ and of all them that believe in him. In his address to the men of Athens Paul proclaims "the God that made the world and all things therein," and who also "made of one every nation of men, and determined the bounds of their habitation." He accordingly teaches that men are "the offspring of God," and that "in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts xvii, 24-29). Here is a broad and profound concept of God as the universal Father, the maker and upholder of the visible universe, without whom nothing lives and acts. It is a lofty theism, an all-embracing monotheism, and mankind at large is thought of as begotten (yévos) of him as an eternal Father.

(1) Various Striking Phrases. At the beginning of every epistle this apostle makes mention of "God our Father." The same phrase occurs many times in other parts of the epistles, and varies with such forms as "God the Father," "our God and Father," "God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." In Rom. viii, 15, and Gal. iv, 6, we meet the intensified expression, Abba, Father. The Aramaic word Abba had often fallen from Jesus's lips in prayer (comp. Mark xiv, 36), and it came to have a charming significance in the worship of the first Christian congregations. The tenderness and assurance implied in these phrases may be further noticed in such exquisite conceptions as "the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our affliction" (2 Cor. i, 3); "the God of patience and of comfort" (Rom. xv, 5); “God our Father who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace" (2 Thess. ii, 16); "God rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us" (Eph. ii, 4); "God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. v, 8). In Phil. i, 8, the apostle calls God to witness his deep longing after the saints "in the tender mercies of Jesus Christ." Christ's divine love and personality have so taken possession of his heart that his affection for the Philippians is truly Christ's affection working in him. What he feels is what Christ feels, and God himself is witness to it all and shares the same tender feeling. In Phil. ii, 1, mention is made of the "consolation of love, fellowship of the Spirit, and tendermercies' and compassions," and at the close of the epistle (iv, 19) the writer says: "My God shall supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus." As recognizing the common source of all Christian comfort we notice also in the salu

'In Luke i, 78, we have the word here rendered tendermercies connected with another of similar import, and the compound expression is employed as designating an attribute of God: onháyxva ¿λtov5, bowels, or heart of mercy of our God.