unit.

Such was the Old Testament idea of God. Now let us return to the
teaching of Jesus. And at once we discover that Christ let go nothing of
that earlier doctrine which was of real and abiding worth. The God of
Jesus Christ is as holy, as sovereign--or, to use the modern term--as
transcendent as the God of the psalmists and the prophets. Their
favourite name for God was "King," and Christ spake much of the "kingdom
of God." To them God's people were His servants, owing to Him allegiance
and service to the uttermost; we also, Christ says, are the servants of
God, to every one of whom He has appointed his task, and with whom one
day He will make a reckoning. But if nothing is lost, how much is
gained! It is not merely that in Christ's teaching we have the Old
Testament of God over again with a _plus_, the new which is added has so
transformed and transfigured the old that all is become new. To Jesus
Christ, and to us through Him, God is "the Father."

It is, of course, well known that Christ was not the first to apply this
name to God. There is no religion, says Max Müller,[11] which is
sufficiently recorded to be understood that does not, in some sense or
other, apply the term Father to its Deity. Yet this need not concern us,
for though the name be the same the meaning is wholly different. There
is no true comparison even between the occasional use of the word in the
Old Testament and its use by Christ. For, though in the Old Testament
God is spoken of as the Father of Israel, it is as the Father of the
nation, not of the individual, and of that nation only. Even in a great
saying like that of the Psalmist:

"Like as a father pitieth his children,
So the Lord pitieth them that fear Him,"