embering that it is only a man-made attempt to
interpret Him who passeth understanding. The important matter is not the
orthodoxy of our doctrine, but the richness of our personal experience
of God. Dr. Samuel Johnson said: "We all _know_ what light is; but it is
not so easy to _tell_ what it is." Christians know, at least in part,
what God is; but it is far from easy to state what He is; and each age
must revise and say in its own words what God means to it. Here is a
statement in which generations of believers have summed up their
intercourse with the Divine. Have we entered into the fulness of their
fellowship with God?

Do we know Him as our Father? This does not mean merely that we accept
the idea of His kinship with our spirits and trust His kindly
disposition towards us; but that we let Him establish a direct line of
paternity with us and father our impulses, our thoughts, our ideals, our
resolves. Jesus' sonship was not a relation due to a past contact, but
to a present connection. He kept taking His Being, so to speak, again
and again from God, saying, "Not as I will, but as Thou wilt." His every
wish and motive had its heredity in the Father whom He trusted with
childlike confidence, and served with a grown son's intelligent and
willing comradeship. Fatherhood meant to Jesus authority and affection;
obedience and devotion on His part maintained and perfected His sonship.

Further, we cannot, according to Jesus, be in sonship with this Father
save as we are in true brotherhood with all His children. God is (to
employ a colloquial phrase) "wrapped up" in His sons and daughters, and
only as we love and serve them, are we loving and serving Him. In Jesus'
summary of the Law He combined two apparently conflicting obligations,
when He said, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with _all_ thy heart,
_and_ thou shalt love thy neighbor." If a man loves God with his all,
how can there be any remainder of love to devote to someone else? What
we do for any man--the least, the last, the lost,--we do for God. We do
not know Him as Father, until we possess the obligating sense of our
kinship with all mankind, and say, "_Our_ Father."

Do we know God in the Son? There is a sense in which Jesus is the "First
Person" in the Christian Trinity. Our approach to God begins with Him.
In St. Paul's familiar benediction, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
precedes the love of God. We know God's love only as we experience the
grace of J