the words that I speak unto you I speak not of Myself:
but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works.' He 'came and
preached peace to you which were afar off and to them that were nigh.
For through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.' To
argue that to come to Christ is a substitute for coming to God, is an
inducement to halt upon the way, is an absolute travesty and
perversion. To refuse to see the glory of God in the Face of Jesus
Christ is not to bring God near: it is to remove Him further from our
vision. That God should come to us, that we should go to God, through
a mediator, is only in accordance with a universal law. 'Why,' says
one, who might be expected from his theological training to speak
otherwise, 'Why, _all_ knowledge is "mediated" even of {160} the
simplest objects, even of the most obvious facts: there is no such
thing in the world as immediate knowledge, and shall we demur when we
are told that the knowledge of God the Father also must pass, in order
to reach us at its best and purest, through the medium of "that Son of
God and Son of Man in Whom was the fulness of the prophetic spirit and
the filial life?" ... Of this at least I feel convinced, that where
faith in the Father has grown blurred and vague in our days, and
finally flickered out, the cause must in many instances be sought--I
will not say in the wilful rejection, but--in the careless letting go
of the message and Personality of the Son.'[14] So far from the
thought of the Father being ignored or set aside by the thought of
Christ, we may rather say with S. John, 'Whosoever denieth the Son,
the same hath not the Father: he that confesseth the Son hath the
Father also.' 'He {161} that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he
hath both the Father and the Son.'

The homage that we render Thee
Is still our Father's own;
Nor jealous claim or rivalry
Divides the Cross and Throne.[15]

V

The notion that Theism as contrasted with Christianity is a mark of
progress and of spirituality is a pure imagination. 'More spiritual it
may be than the traditional Christianity which consists in rigid and
stereotyped forms of practice, of ceremonial, of observance, of dogma:
but not more spiritual than the teaching of Christ Himself, the end and
completion of Whose work was to bring men to the Father, to teach them
that God is a Spirit, and to send the Spirit of the Father into the
hearts of the disciples.