“O God, our Father! Unto whom we cry,
We know past doubting, thou indeed art nigh,
By all thy doings ere we saw this light,
By what shall follow when we sleep in night;
We know, our Father, thou will keep the right.”
“The word is thine, and it can but go
As thou dost utter, ‘let it be so.’
But all shall smoothen, in thine own good time,—
The rude, rough clanging turn to Sabbath chime:
There is no ruin in thy plan sublime.”
The words “Our Father” stand here as the golden gate of prayer. This is the way we must enter as we approach God. There is no other entrance. It was Christ himself who set up this gate. Not until he came was this way consecrated and thrown open. There were many precious manifestations of God through the prophets, but the divine Fatherhood was not revealed save in the dimmest way in those ancient days. Only a few times in the whole Old Testament is God spoken of as Father, and not once are men taught to pray to him by this name. But when Christ came all things were made new. From the beginning he spoke of God as Father. Indeed he scarcely ever called him by any other name. In the sermon on the mount alone the name is used seventeen times. All through the gospels we find it. Jesus wanted us to see God in the tenderest aspects of love. He wanted us also to understand his revealing of him, and no other name unlocks such a treasure of love-thoughts as the name Father.
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