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is the office of God the Father? I reply, its meaning and pose is set forth in the word Father. True, this word is used in a general, as well as in a particular, sense. When used to designate the first person of the trinity, it expresses His relation to His Son, Jesus Christ, and, through Him, the relation He sustains to all creation-especially to those who are adopted sons and daughters in Christ. But the word Father is also used to designate the relation of the Deity as such, or of the whole divine essence, to creation, and the world of mankind. In this general sense, it applies to the other persons of the Godhead also; as in the Lord's prayer-" Our Father," etc., and when Jesus is called "the everlasting Father." Isa., ix. 6. As already intimated, the usual and most frequent use of the word Father applies to the first person of the Holy Trinity. He is the eternal Father of the eternally begotten Son, from whom, and the Son, proceeds the Holy Ghost. He is also in the Son, in virtue of our regeneration by the Holy Ghost, our Father in the fullest truest sense. Even as "Creator, Preserver, and bountiful Benefactor," He is our eternal Father, but He is especially such in redemption, as we shall see farther on.

The name Father does not merely indicate a temporal relationship. It means infinitely more than is expressed by His relationship, as its creator, to the universe over which He rules, and which is the object of His providential care. He always was Father, as truly as He was and is God; and it is only in this paternal relation to Christ, that He could and did become the author and source of temporal creation. This is clearly taught by the apostle John in his wonderful prologue to his gospel, when he says: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by Him, (or as it is in the margin of the revised version through Him,') and without Him was not anything made that was made." So also the declaration repeatedly made in the Epistles of St. Paul, as in Eph. 3: 9, Col. 1: 16, Heb. 1: 2, and again by St. John, in Rev. 4: 11, that it was by or through the Lord Jesus, that God the Father cre

ated all things, cannot mean anything else tha Fatherhood, as exercised in and through His Son, with the Godhead itself.

There are also passages in the Old Testament which teach the same great truth-I say great trut it is a fundamental conception of any true idea of fgurative mode of expression by Moses, representing ations of the heavens and the earth (Gen. 2: 1,) as from God; and of the book of Job. asking; "Hath father, or who hath begotten the drops of dew," (Jo As also New Testament expressions, such as, "the Lights," and, "to us there is but one God, the whom are all things," (Jas. 1: 17 and 1 Cor. 8: 6 dently intended to set forth the relation of the first the Trinity, as the creator of all mundane things; a in connection with those passages which teach the pa lation of the Father and the Son, and, through Him, of creation), leave no room to doubt the eternal patern first person of the triune God. Thus it is the eternal the eternal Son, by, or through the eternal Son, w eternal Creator of all things visible and invisible on e in heaven; yea, in the entire universe of God.

It is further in the exercise of the fatherhood of G through His immanence, as well as His transcendence, verse is upheld, all natural and moral law is maintai the eternal purposes of creation are attained. Thus the general and the special, (or, if you prefer it; the par providences of God the Father in the government of verse. It is not necessary to quote even a few of the p sustaining this view; the word of God is full of the Genesis to Revelation. If the Scriptures teach anyth reference to God the Father, it is that His office is exer the whole work of creation, preservation, and loving car things that exist in His universe. To repeat, then, the i a personal God, necessitates the Fatherhood of God as fr eternity, in and through His eternally begotten Son, by

or through whom, all things have been created, are governed and upheld, for a definitely fixed purpose, which is His own glory and the highest good of His rational creatures.

It follows, therefore, that in this office, God, the Father stands related to all creation, and especially that portion of it endowed with intelligence, as "creator, preserver and bountiful benefactor," since all this is involved in the very nameFather.

But we may rise to a still higher plane in considering the office of the first person of the Holy Trinity. He is the Supreme Law-giver for the regulation of our thinking, morals and entire life.

ment.

Man in his fallen unregenerate state is prone to imagine that he may determine his own thinking; that he is free to regulate his own morals, and that he is the arbiter of his own destiny; in other words; that he is "a law unto himself." The Bible teaches differently. It informs man that he is in a mentally and morally sin-darkened state., that he has no power to think or act for his own best welfare, and that he is the slave of the destroying forces we call sin and Satan. He is further taught of the giving of a divine law; first in his moral constitution, afterward (when he had destroyed this) by outward promulgation on Mt. Sinai, for his mental, moral, and physical governThis divine law is not arbitrary. It is given for man's highest welfare as well as for God's glory. God does not ask anything of man, simply because, as his Sovereign, He has a right to make the demand. There is a loving purpose, a fatherly interest in us, which prompted the giving of the moral law. If we could keep the law perfectly, it would be found to be promotive only of supreme happiness. Our thinking, our outward deportment, our whole life, even our physical life, would be all that it was originally intended to be-in fullest harmony with the divine will, and therefore in fullest harmony with our own highest interest. Hence our Father God in His fatherly love has provided, and through His word teaches a moral law, without which there would be moral chaos, and only mis

ery and death. But since the fall of our first pare in our power to keep the law, either as a race, or as Though we make all the effort 'possible, and seem in its outward observance, it will be found, upon in that our best obedience is far short of what the sp letter of the law require. Why, then, did our Fat ing our moral inability to keep it, give a law that us all into condemnation? Of course, we cannot k vine mind, except as He has chosen to reveal it; but that He had already provided for our deliverance condemnation in the person and through the work of Son, even before our creation. From the foundati world His Son was slain for the remission of sin, a of escape was made from all its direful consequence so loved the world," &c. "God commendeth His lo us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died "There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but Spirit."

These are but a few of the many familiar passages how our Father has provided to save us from the right alty which sin deserved. It was thus plainly in the out of His purposes of love, as a gracious Father, tha made it possible for us to be again restored to divi His infinite compassion went out toward guilty man ; lingly gave up "His only begotten and well-beloved agreed upon in the councils of eternity, "that He m come" the "propitiation for our sins, and not for ours o for the sins of the whole world."

"What," says one: "Did God the Father punish Son for the sin His creature man had committed? I as God the Son, make an atonement to Himself? Can and thus satisfy His own justice?" To all of these qu the answer must be an emphatic, No! God did not pur Son for the sin of man, but He did punish man in H Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Mary and of God volu

• The Personality and Office of God the Father.

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became the victim to satisfy divine justice. It was not as though. God the Father had laid hold upon His Son, and compelled Him to make the satisfaction He did to divine justice. It was the sinless Godman, voluntarily taking the sinner's place, and, in His own person, enduring the penalty of the law as the representative of the race. It was not God, in the person of the Godman, making an atonement to Himself, but the Son of God, by the assumption of sinless human nature, bringing about an at-one-ment between God and man-a reunion of the divine, and of what was essential in the human-thus objectively delivering man from both the guilt and condemnation of sin. The atonement began in the incarnation of the Son of God; it was consummated in the resurrection, ascension, and session of the Godman, at the right hand of the Father. The death on Calvary, and the descent into Hades, were the culmination of the suffering necessary to satisfy divine justice, and merit for man eternal life, yet it was not God dying, nor man dying, but the Godman. That is to say it was an infinite suffering, which caused a temporary separation of deity and humanity, as in our death there is a temporary separation of the mortal and the immortal parts of us, but in the case of Christ and His believing disciples this separation was and is only in order to a permanent reunion in the heavenly state. Therefore when He ascended up on high to His Father and our Father, it was in immortal, glorified humanity as our representative head. And, now because He lives (in body and soul) we shall live also, if subjectively one with Him.

It belonged to the office of the first Person of the Trinity to provide this full and free salvation in Christ His Son; for the Father, in distinction from the Son and the Holy Ghost, is the fontal source of salvation, as well as of natural creation. Thus all good, whether temporal or spiritual, is from the Father, not only by or through, but in the Son. While all the persons of the Godhead are interested and active in the work of creation, preservation, and redemption, each has an office and work peculiarly His own. The Father is revealed as the Creator,