The word “father” is even used once of God in what we think of as the strict mother sense.  In speaking of God’s early care of the Hebrews Paul says, “as a nursing-father bore he them in the wilderness."[1] That word “nursing-father” is peculiar in coupling the distinctive function of the mother in caring for the babe with the word father.

The word “father” applied to God includes not only our meaning of father in all its strength as we know it at its best; but all of the meaning of the word “mother,” in all its sweet fragrance, as we have had it breathed into our own very life.

We have come commonly to think of the word mother as a tenderer word than father.  Though I have met many, both men and women, who unconsciously revealed that their experience has made father the tenderer, and the tenderest word to them.  Father stands commonly for the stronger, more rugged qualities; and mother for the finer, gentler, sweeter, maybe softer qualities, in the strong meaning of that word soft.

God Giving Himself.

Here in this Genesis story the creation of the whole sun-system to give life to the earth, and of the earth itself, was the outward beginning of this greatest passion of love in the heart of God.  And if you would know more of that love in this early stage of it, just look a bit at the home itself.  It has been pretty badly mussed, soiled and hurt by sin’s foul touch.  Yet even so it is a wonder of a world in its beauty and fruitfulness.  What must it have been before the slime and tangle of sin got in!  But that’s a whole story by itself.  We must not stop there just now.

When the home was ready God set Himself to bringing the new life He was planning.  And He did it, even as father and mother of our human kind and of every other kind do:—­He gave some of Himself.  He breathed into man His own life-breath.  He came Himself, and with the warmth and vitality of His life brought a new life.  The new life was a bit of Himself.

That phrase, “breathed into his nostrils,” brings to us the conception of the closest personal, physical contact; two together in most intimate contact, and life passing from one to the other.  The picture of Elijah stretching his warm body upon that of the widow’s son until the life-breath came again comes instinctively to mind.  And its companion scene comes with it, of Elisha lying prone upon the child, mouth to mouth, eye to eye, hand to hand, until the breath again softly reentered that little, precious body.

And if all this seems too plain and homely a way to talk about the great God, let us remember it is the way of this blessed old Book.  It is the only way we shall come to know the marvellous intimacy and tenderness of God’s love, and of God’s touch upon ourselves.

How shall we talk best about God so as to get clear, sensible ideas about Him?  Why not follow the rule of the old Bible?  Can we do better?  It constantly speaks of Him in the language that we use of men.  The scholars, with their fondness for big words, say the Bible is anthropomorphic.  That simply means that it uses man’s words, and man’s ideas of things in telling about God.  It makes use of the common words and ideas, that man understands fully, to tell about the God, whom he doesn’t know.  Could there be a more sensible way?  Indeed, how else could man understand?