the grace and long-suffering, the faithfulness and righteousness of God, were by no means excluded. An absolute monarch may also care, even in a fatherly way, for his people, and may bestow lasting favours upon those of whom he makes choice; and thus it is quite intelligible how the Israelites, in conceiving of Jehovah as the heavenly King, who graciously ruled. over His people, and had pity on them that feared Him, "as a father pitieth his children" (Ps. ciii. 13), would sometimes attach to Him the name of Father. Nevertheless, the kingly name still remained the peculiar and ordinary title for God, since it expressed that, in their view of His character, His absolute power and transcendence were regarded as the highest qualities, for which independent scope was given in the ways and commands of God, along with the manifestation of His ethical attributes.

In later Judaism, down to the time of Jesus, there was by no means a development of the conception of God, in the line of more strongly accentuating the dominant significance of grace and faithfulness for the character and working of God, and accordingly of inclining to a more prevalent use of the name of Father. The development proceeded rather in the way of enhancing to the utmost the ideas of God's transcendent greatness and judicial authority over men. According to the Pharisaic view, the moral relation of man to God was one of legal subjection. And in that servile relationship on which they supposed man's claim to a share in God's blessings to be founded, the main stress was laid on ceremonial duties, in which respect was paid to the greatness

of God, and His separateness from the transitory world. If we take note of this tendency of Jewish theology in the time of Jesus, and consider how ready it lay to the hand of Jesus, in view of the traditionary notion of the "kingdom of God" which He accepted, to designate God as the King of His kingdom, we gain a right estimate of the fact that Jesus chose much rather the use of the name of Father, for Himself and for His disciples, as the usual term for God, and has made the idea of the paternal love of God the foundation of His proclamation of the kingdom of God. No doubt He found the basis of this apprehension and appellation of God in the Old Testament, but His original and significant achievement was that, in opposition to the religious tendencies of His time, He should have so taken hold of that connecting link, as to bring into a position of sole and sovereign authority in His teaching that view of God which exalts His gratuitous love and faithful-ness, and which, therefore, uses the name of Father as its comprehensive expression,-a view which till then had only appeared in fragmentary form, and had been only incompletely thought out.

2. Jesus knew God first as His own Father. The assurance which He early attained, on the ground of His religious consciousness, that He was the object of the pure fatherly love of God, remained as the principle of His Messianic consciousness, and attended Him through His whole active ministry. He addressed God in prayer as "Father" (Matt. xi. 25 f.; Mark xiv. 36; Luke xxiii. 46), and spoke of Him as His own Father (eg. Matt. x. 32 f.; xi. 27; xviii. 19,

35; Luke xxii. 29). But yet He did not regard God as being only His own Father. Rather it appeared to Him self-evident that the fatherly love of God, whose object He knew Himself to be, was not a limited condition of the character and government of God, manifesting itself merely to some, or only to a single individual, but that it was universally and always present with God, and constituted the highest principle of His will and working. Therefore, for Jesus, God was above all else "the Father" (Mark xiii. 32; Matt. xi. 27; Luke xi. 13). Whilst, in the Old Testament, God is regarded as the Father specially of the people of Israel as a whole, so far as He had chosen that people in unmerited grace, and had in mercy led them, Jesus regarded God by no means in an analogous way as the Father over the kingdom of God as a whole, but rather as the Father of all mankind, and therefore as the Father of single individuals. He taught His disciples also in their prayers to address God as Father (Luke xi. 2); and in His teaching, to whatever hearers, He called Him "our Father" and "thy Father" (Matt. v. 45, 48; vi. 1, 4, 6, 18, 32; x. 29; xxiii. 9; Luke xii. 32; Mark xi. 25). For God bestows His fatherly care and love on every individual (Matt. vi. 31 f.; Luke xi. 13), and sets store by the least individual (Matt. xviii. 14). It would not be according to the mind of Jesus if we regarded God as Father only in relation to the individual members of His kingdom, and not to others also. His view of the matter is shown by the words with which, in the discourse on Righteousness, He describes the motive for the duty of undeserved forgiving love:

"Love your enemies, and pray for them that for them that persecute

you: that ye may become sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He maketh His sun to rise on the

.. Be

evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust. Be ye therefore perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. v. 44 f., 48). does not become the Father, but is the heavenly Father even of those who become His sons.

God

This idea would be inconceivable, if in the Fatherhood and Sonship the mere mere relation of procreator and procreated were understood; for manifestly the Fatherhood of the one implies also the existence of Sonship in the other. But, for the consciousness of Jesus, it is not the relation of God to man as Creator which primarily is taken into account in His name of Father, but His unmerited, bountiful, forgiving love. This relation He maintains always and universally, in that He bestows His benefits on the good and on the evil. His very perfection consists in this love; and it can as little be conceived that God is not eternally and always Father, and does not always act as such, as it can be conceived that God requires to become perfect. This ethical apprehension of the notion of Father, however, also corresponds to Jesus' apprehension of the notion of Sonship. Man is a true son of God, not from the fact of being indebted to God for existence, and in experiencing all kinds of benefits at His hand, but from the fact of his comporting himself as a son of God, in obediently fulfiiling the will of his heavenly Father, and in resembling the ethical nature of God in will and deed. It is thus VOL. I.

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intelligible, that whilst God always is the loving Father of all men, nevertheless men must become sons of the heavenly Father by attaining His spirit of gratuitous forgiving love. Though very far from conceiving of God as first becoming the loving and gracious Father of men from the time of the founding of the kingdom of God, or perhaps in consequence of the atoning death of the Messiah, yet Jesus can declare that only the members of His kingdom who live as becomes God's children are true sons of God. The principle, that the sons of an earthly king are free from payment of tribute to the king, He in this sense applies to Himself and Peter and to all His disciples, whom, in contrast with the Jews who do not yet belong to the kingdom of God, He regards as the sons of God, and therefore as not subject to the obligations corresponding to the relation of servants (Matt. xvii. 25 f.).

By the view of God which Jesus briefly expressed through the name of Father, the thought that God's will is the absolute authoritative standard of human duty, and that men are bound to fulfil the Divine will in unconditional obedience, is not excluded, but rather included. For authoritative commands and guidance on the one side, and willing obedience on the other, are natural and characteristic in the reciprocal relation of father and children. Therefore it was by no means contradictory of the view already indicated, as that mainly taken by Jesus of the character and working of God, that He should, in several instances, illustrate and establish His statements and precepts, bearing on the attitude of God towards men and of