was the same joy in the presence of God yesterday
when a coolie gave his heart to God? Jesus does. That is the central
thing, it seems to me, in his teaching about God--that God cares for
the individual to an extent far beyond anything we could think
possible. If we can wrestle with that central thought and assimilate
it, or, as the old divines said, "appropriate" it, make it our own,
the rest of the Gospel is easy. But one can never manage it except
with the help, and in the company, of Jesus.

Jesus goes a step further, and believes in the possibility of a man
loving God and God enjoying that too. If he speaks of prayer, must
we not think he means that God wants it as much as his child can
want it? How much is involved in the name "Father," which Jesus so
uniformly gives to God? Something less than the word carries in the
case of a human father, or more? What is the attitude of a father to
his child? Jesus, as we have seen, uses this illustration to bring
out God's care for the actual needs of his children. But is that
all? What is the innermost thing in a father's relation to his
children? Surely something more than the bird's instinct to feed her
young, or to gather them under her wings (Luke 13:34). Is not one of
the most real features of parenthood enjoyment of the child? Do not
men and women frankly enjoy the grappling of the little mind with
big things? Is there not a charm, as says one of the Christian
Fathers (Minucius Felix), about the "half-words" that a child uses,
as he learns to talk and wrestles with a grown-up vocabulary? About
the extraordinary pictures he will draw of ships or cows--the quaint
stories he will invent--the odd ways in which his gratitude and his
affection express themselves? Is it a real fatherhood where such
things do not appeal? Jesus' language about God, his whole attitude
to God, implies throughout that God is as real a Father as anybody,
and it suggests that God loves his children the more because they
are real; because they are not very clever; because they do make
such queer and imperfect prayers; because, in short, they need him;
and because they fill a place in his heart.

We have to remark how firmly Jesus believes in his Gospel of God and
man needing each other and finding each other--his "good news," as
he calls it. He bases all on his faith in what has been called
"Man's incurable religious instinct"--that instinct in the human
heart that must have God--and in God's respo