ough Jesus, Christians discover:

First, that God is their Christlike Father, and that He is love as Jesus
experienced His love and Himself was love.

Second, that God is the Lord of heaven and earth. We do not know whether
He is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent; there is much that leads us
to think that He is limited. He can do no more than Love can do with His
children, and Love has its defeats, and crosses, and tragedies. But
trusting the Christlike Father we more and more discover that He is
sufficiently in control over all things to accomplish through them His
will. He needs us to help Him master nature, and transform it into the
servant of man,--to control disease, to harness electricity, to
understand earthquakes; and He needs us to help Him conquer human nature
and conform it to the likeness of His Son. God's complete lordship waits
until His will is done in earth as it is in heaven; but for the present
we believe that He is wise and strong enough not to let nature or men
defeat His purpose; that He is controlling all things so that they work
together for good unto them that love Him.

And third, that God is the indwelling Spirit. The Christlike Father
Lord, whom we find outside ourselves through the faith and character of
Jesus, becomes as we enter into fellowship with Him, a Force within us.
He is the Conscience of our consciences, the Wellspring of motives and
impulses and sympathies. We repeat, today, in some degree, the
experience of the first disciples at Pentecost; we recognize within
ourselves the inspiring, guiding and energizing Spirit of love.

While we find God primarily through Jesus, He reveals Himself to us in
many other ways: in the Scriptures, where the generations before us have
garnered their experiences of Him; in living epistles in Christian men
and women, and in some who do not call themselves by the Christian name,
but whose lives disclose the Spirit of God who was in Jesus; in
non-Christian faiths, where God has always given some glimpse of Himself
in answer to men's search. Christ is not for us confining but defining;
He gives us in Himself the test to assay the Divine.

Nor do experiences which we label religious exhaust the list of our
contacts with God. Our sense of duty, whether we connect it with God or
not, brings us in touch with Him. Many persons are unconsciously serving
God through their obedience to conscience. It was said of the French
_savant_, Littre, that he was a s