Great Father

“ It is also a great privilege and encouragement to us to consider him as our Father, as one so nearly related and who bears so tender an affection towards us. We should look upon God, under all our weaknesses and fears, not as a tyrant or an enemy, but as a Father, who is disposed to pity us and help us. 2. We must ascribe glory to God as a Father, the glory of his own excellence and of all his mercy unto us. We must thankfully own the receipt of all from him, and give the praise of all to him. And our praise must be constant and perpetual; it must be glory for ever and ever. ”

“ That Great Father has sent me here to-day to pay you for your lands, to provide for your children, to see that you are fed, and that you are cared for. Your Great Father wishes you to be happy, to be friends to each other. The Great Father wants you and the whites to be friends; he wants you to have a house of your own, to have a school where your children can learn. He wants you to learn to farm, to learn to use tools, and also to have a doctor. ”

“ By these words of Holy Scripture, he continually invites every one to come to him that stands in need of mercy. How then canst thou imagine that He will forsake thee in the time of trouble, who endured so many and great miseries for thy sake! It is for this that God calls himself our Father. Now we know that a father is more compassionate and tender than a master: so that he would not have us dread him, but love him as a dutiful child does an indulgent father. ”

“ We may well imagine that, compared to the heathen deities, those partial patrons of nations and individuals, at discord amongst themselves, and invested with the passions and frailties of men, the great and only God, Father of all mankind, as revealed in the Christian Faith, must have been an idea most elevating, delightful, and consonant to every thing noble and generous in the human understanding or heart. ”

“ The Father, as an evidence of his love for him, hath given all things into his hand. Love is generous. The Father took such a complacency and had such a confidence in him that he constituted him the great feoffee in trust for mankind. ”

“ The vast confidence that the Father puts in the Son: All things are delivered to me of my Father, all wisdom and knowledge, all power and authority, all the grace and comfort which are intended for the chosen remnant; it is all delivered into the hands of the Lord Jesus; in him all fulness must dwell, and from him it must be derived: he is the great trustee that manages all the concerns of God's kingdom. ”

“ If a father was daily making particular prayers to God, that he would please to inspire his children with true piety, great humility, and strict temperance, what could be more likely to make the father himself become exemplary in these virtues? ”

“ I beseech you, sir, that you will be pleased to present my humble duty unto Father General, in whose favour though your good word do procure me that place which I can no ways deserve, yet this I hope you may promise for me, that I will now begin to do my best endeavours, that I may be framed in all things as is fit for a child of that most holy family whereof he hath the care, that both by my voice and hands he may acknowledge me for his child, the better to deserve the blessing of so great and good a father. ”

“ Our father, like unto Abraham of old, sits as a great High Priest, surrounded by his family on earth, which now numbers over five score and ten, and like the ancient patri- archs, is waiting the time when the Lord will call him up, to become a God in eternity, not merely to reign over hundreds, but thousands and tens of thousands. ”

“ Our Father, being Our Father, not just your Father and my Father and his Father and her Father, but Our Father, the Father of us all as one big family of His, brothers and sisters in Him, wills that we all help one another with the gifts He has given us; and the more we can realise that all separate gifts are parts of one great harmonious whole, the more fully we shall live and feel and enjoy. ”

“ The eternal Father earnestly commands that we should hear the Son, and it is the greatest of all transgressions if we despise Him and do not approve His voice. This is what every one should often and diligently consider, and in this disposition of the Father, revealed through the Son, find grace. ”

“ And when we associate with this majestic Being the idea of Father, clothe him in a Father's love, fill him with a Father's care and benignity, he appears to us infinitely lovely and attractive as well as infinitely great and good. It is no common thought that gives to [Pg 178] the universe of spiritual creatures a Father, that binds them all in one family with God as the head, that mingles in the great cup of universal existence of which countless millions of sentient beings are daily partaking, the sweetness of a father's goodness ”

“ If God should thus hear the cry of the noblest of his creatures, for such are all they who do cry after him, and in very deed show them his face, it is but natural to expect that the deeds of the great messenger should be just the works of the Father done in little. If he came to reveal his Father in miniature, as it were (for in these unspeakable things we can but use figures, and the homeliest may be the holiest) ”

“ When I shall have ascended to My Father, then thou shalt handle Me more perfectly and more truly, being about to apprehend what thou touchest not, and to believe what thou seest not.’ When He took Himself away to the majesty of the Father, He began in an ineffable manner to be more present in His Divinity. And a truly great and unspeakable cause of rejoicing it was, when, in the presence of that holy multitude, the nature of manhood was ascending above the dignity of all celestial creatures, to pass above the angelic ranks, and to be elevated above the high seats of the archangels ”

“ Behold how great a Majesty and how great an Equality with the Father hath come down to the flesh because of our infirmity. Behold how greatly beloved we have been, before that we loved God. If before that we loved God, so much by Him we were beloved, as that His Son, Equal with Himself, He made a Man for our sake, what doth He reserve for us now loving Him? ”

“ The Father is living love, and this life of the Father is in his Sons. And the spirit of the Father is in his Son's sons—mortal men. When all is said and done, the Father idea is still the highest human concept of God. ”

“ Let us, then, love such a Father. Let us say over and over again, Our Father, Our Father, Our Father! Shall we never love you? Shall we never be like true children, pierced to the heart by your fatherly tenderness? ”

“ They think of fathers, like too many among themselves, proud, and arbitrary, selfish and cruel. They say in their hearts, even such fathers as we are, such is God. Therefore, they shrink from God, and turn from Him to idols, to the Virgin Mary, or Saints, or any other beings who can deliver them (as they fancy) out of the hands of their Father in heaven. ”

“ The Father comes down to you as a personality only through the divine Sons of the Eternal Son. And you attain the Father by this same living way; you ascend to the Father by the guidance of this group of divine Sons. ”

“ If men once learnt to hallow the name of Father, to think of a father as one who not only possessed power but felt love, who not only had rights which he would enforce, and issued commands which must be obeyed, but who felt yearning sympathy for his children’s weakness, an active interest in their education, and was ready to labour for, to sacrifice himself for, his family—That would be truly to hallow the name of Father, and look on it as a holy thing, whether in heaven above or in earth beneath. ”

“ While you should honor your rulers and reverence your teachers, you should call no man Father in the spiritual sense, for there is one who is your Father, even God. Neither should you seek to lord it over your brethren in the kingdom. ”

“ He who sees Me, sees the Father.’ For the Son is the natural image of the Father, unchangeable, in everything like to the Father, except that He is begotten, and that He is not the Father. The Father begets, being unbegotten. ”

“ Long before this, doubtless, he has heard the words, 'Come, ye blessed of my father!' And what is required of you, do you ask? You shall be merciful to them that live; and trust Him that He will care for those who have gone beyond your reach. ”

“ What more beautiful sight is there in the world than a son who really loves his father, really trusts his father, really does his duty to his father, really looks up to and obeys his father’s will in all things? who is ready to sacrifice his own credit, his own pleasure, his own success in life, for the sake of his father’s comfort and honour? How much more fair and noble must be the love and trust which is between God the Father and God the Son! ”

“ There is no question that the Father is greater. No one can doubt that the Father is greater than the Son in honour, dignity, splendour, majesty, and in the very name of Father, the Son Himself testifying, He that sent Me is greater than I [6] . ”

“ Believe me, my dear son, you too have a Father,—a good and powerful Father. He dwells above us, in the depths of the blue heavens, but he is also everywhere upon the face of the earth. He sees you always, and always takes care of you. ”

“ Think: the Father of Jesus, with whom, in all his knowledge and all his suffering, the grand heart was perfectly, exultingly satisfied,—that Father he calls our Father too. He shares with his brethren—of his best, his deepest, his heartiest, most secret delight, and makes it their and his most open joy: he shares his eternal Father with us, his perfect God with his brethren. ”

“ Our Heavenly Father is a loving and a kind and beneficent Parent. He, himself, has trod the path we are now treading. He is familiar with every step of the road, with all the meanderings of this life; for he has had the experience in it. ”

“ And I humbly beseech you, most loving father, and Christ’s servants who are with you, to intercede fervently with the righteous in behalf of my frailty; and to admonish those, to whom you shall show my work, to do the same. Fare you well, my good and ever loving father in Christ. ”

“ The Father being a personage of spirit, glory and power: possessing all perfection and fulness: The Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, a personage of tabernacle, made, or fashioned like unto man, or being in the form and likeness of man, or, rather, man was formed after his likeness, and in his image;—he is also the express image and likeness of the personage of the Father: possessing all the fulness of the Father, or, the same fulness with the Father ”

“ For this cause I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power by his Spirit unto the inward man. ”

“ It is very significant that as the volume of revelation unrolls, the earlier notions of God as Ruler, Governor, King, give way to the notion of Father, until in our Lord's presentation of the character of God it is His Fatherhood which stands in the forefront. What our Lord emphasises in the character of God are precisely the qualities of love and care and sympathy which the word Father connotes. ”

“ Happy these children, who in its fullest sense could understand the word "father!" to whom, from the dawn of their little lives, their father was what all fathers should be—the truest representative here on earth of that Father in heaven, who is at once justice, wisdom, and perfect love. ”

“ May He enable us to believe that every building in which He permits us to worship Him, and to present before Him the finished sacrifice of Christ, is indeed the house of our Father, because of His Father! ”

“ I think, papa, that those who forget God are not even so good as this little insect; for it at least does nothing wrong, while they are wicked, obstinate, proud, and ungrateful.
Father. You are right, my dear child. The sinner is not so good as this insect. How thankful should we then be that our Saviour has redeemed us from sin, and has made us children of God, by uniting us for ever to himself?
Child. Yes, we know that God is our Father, and that he loves us. I am sure he takes care of me, since he has [Pg 8] given his Son to save me. What a good Father! ”

“ We desire and pray that the name of God, that is, God himself, in all that whereby he has made himself known, may be sanctified and glorified both by us and others, and especially by himself. "Father, let thy name be glorified as a Father, and a Father in heaven; glorify thy goodness and thy highness, thy majesty and mercy. ”

“ We can as little believe that He will abandon us and leave us out of His eternal enjoyment, as we can believe that God would refuse to own Him as Son. And it is this which Christ puts in the forefront of His message as risen and ascending: “I ascend unto My Father and your Father.” The joy that awaits Me with God awaits you also; the power I go to exercise is the power of your Father. This affinity for heaven which you see in Me is coupled with affinity for you. ”

“ Oh, how justly we call him Father, who is so many times ready to receive us, when we sin, into the same favour as before, that he may at length admit us also to the glory, which is the inheritance of the sons of God! ”

“ The Father's mere knowledge of a thing—if that could be, which my father says can't—is not the Father. The Father's tenderness and care and love of it all the time, that is the not falling without him. ”