ered because it was
popular, not because it was true, and failed for the same reason.
Permanence, not popularity, is the test of truth; for truth has often
no adherents, while error has many.

The permanent truth in Christianity is, I think, to be found in the
spirit, or perhaps more correctly the "will," which Jesus had, and
tried to hand on to his disciples, of service and self-sacrifice. It
calls men to redeem others, rather than to seek redemption for
themselves. This is to spiritual life what gravitation is to the
physical world. It was known to others before him and after, but it
has not yet conquered the world.

But the popular teaching[4] which loomed largest in the early days of
the Church offered the privilege rather than the responsibility of
redemption, and maintained that the Christian was united to the Supreme
God--a claim higher than that made by any other cult. This side of
Christianity, though not Jewish, was in the main derived from Judaism,
from which all the first Christian missionaries accepted the preaching
of the one supreme God, whom Paul constantly refers to as "the Father."
There has been of recent years much loose writing and looser speech
{81} about the "Fatherhood of God." It has even been asserted that
this was the special revelation of Jesus. Such a view does not for a
moment sustain any critical investigation. No doubt Jesus sometimes,
possibly often, spoke of God as "Father"; but so did many other Jews.
They and he referred to the moral son-ship of the righteous, not to a
supernatural or sacramental relation. Nor is there any sign that Jesus
felt that he had any new revelation as to the nature of God: he was
much more intent on telling men what they ought to do to conform to the
demands of God.

But after the time of Jesus the use of "Father" as applied to God
became more and more general; especially to denote the peculiar
relationship--however that may have been conceived--between Jesus and
God. This use is especially characteristic of the editor of Matthew,
and still more of the Fourth Gospel. It is the correlative to the
process by which "Jesus, the Son of God," became "God the Son."

The Hellenistic Christians seem to have been particularly fond of this
use; partly perhaps from linguistic reasons. The Greek for Jehovah is
_kurios_, Lord; but this word had been already taken as the title of
Jesus. Therefore when a Christian-speaking Greek wished to refer to
Jehovah he