22. The Son has said, Father, I have
manifested Thy Name unto men. What reason is there for
denunciation or fury here? Do you deny the Father? Why, it
was the primary purpose of the Son to enable us to know the
Father. But in fact you do deny Him when, according to you, the
Son was not born of Him. Yet why should He have the name of Son
if He be, as others are, an arbitrary creation of God? I could
feel awe of God as Creator of Christ as well as Founder of the
universe; it were an exercise of power worthy of Him to be the Maker of
Him Who made Archangels and Angels, things visible and things
invisible, heaven and earth and the whole creation around us. But
the work which the Lord came to do was not to enable you to recognise
the omnipotence of God as Creator of all things, but to enable you to
know Him as the Father of that Son Who addresses you. In heaven
there are Powers beside Himself, Powers mighty and eternal; there is
but one Only-begotten Son, and the difference between Him and them is
not one of mere degree of might, but that they all were made through
Him. Since He is the true and only Son, let us not make Him a
bastard by asserting that He was made out of nothing. You hear
the name Son; believe that He is the Son. You hear the
name Father; fix it in your mind that He is the Father.
Why surround these names with doubt and illwill and hostility?
The things of God are provided with names which give a true indication
of the realities; why force an arbitrary meaning upon their obvious
sense? Father and Son are spoken of; doubt not that the words
mean what they say. The end and aim of the revelation of the Son
is that you should know the Father. Why frustrate the labours of
the Prophets, the Incarnation of the Word, the Virgin’s travail,
the effect of miracles, the cross of Christ? It was all spent
upon you, it is all offered to you, that through it all Father and Son
may be manifest to you. And you replace the truth by a theory of
arbitrary action, of creation or adoption. Turn your thoughts to
the warfare, the conflict waged by Christ. He describes it
thus:—Father, I have manifested Thy Name unto men.
He does not say, Thou hast created the Creator of all the
heavens, orThou hast made the Maker of the whole earth. He
says, Father, I have manifested Thy Name unto men. Accept
your Saviour’s gift of knowledge. Be assured that there is
a Father Who begot, a Son Who was born; born in the truth of His Nature
of the Father, Who is. Remember that the revelation is not of the
Father manifested as God, but of God manifested as the
Father.