, he made him the representative of
his father also; but the eternal child alone can reveal him. To reveal
is immeasurably more than to represent; it is to present to the eyes
that know the true when they see it. Jesus represented God; the spirit
of Jesus reveals God. The represented God a man may refuse; many refused
the Lord; the revealed God no one can refuse; to see God and to love him
are one. He can be revealed only to the child; perfectly, to the pure
child only. All the discipline of the world is to make men children,
that God may be revealed to them.

No man, when first he comes to himself, can have any true knowledge of
God; he can only have a desire after such knowledge. But while he does
not know him at all, he cannot become in his heart God's child; so the
Father must draw nearer to him. He sends therefore his first born, who
does know him, is exactly like him, and can represent him perfectly.
Drawn to him, the children receive him, and then he is able to reveal
the Father to them. No wisdom of the wise can find out God; no words of
the God-loving can reveal him. The simplicity of the whole natural
relation is too deep for the philosopher. The Son alone can reveal God;
the child alone understand him. The elder brother companies with the
younger, and makes him yet more a child like himself. He interpenetrates
his willing companion with his obedient glory. He lets him see how he
delights in his father, and lets him know that God is his father too. He
rouses in his little brother the sense of their father's will; and the
younger, as he hears and obeys, begins to see that his elder brother
must be the very image of their father. He becomes more and more of a
child, and more and more the Son reveals to him the Father. For he knows
that to know the Father is the one thing needful to every child of the
Father, the one thing to fill the divine gulf of his necessity. To see
the Father is the cry of every child-heart in the universe of the
Father--is the need, where not the cry, of every living soul. Comfort
yourselves then, brothers and sisters; he to whom the Son will reveal
him shall know the Father; and the Son came to us that he might reveal
him. 'Eternal Brother,' we cry, 'show us the Father. Be thyself to us,
that in thee we may know him. We too are his children: let the other
children share with thee in the things of the Father.'

Having spoken to his father first, and now to his disciples, the Lord
turns to