At this point the Rev. Mr. Strong and his daughter came sauntering along the deck.  They paused to listen, then accepted the chairs which Chester hurriedly found for them.

“I am not stating where in the Scriptures these quotations can be found,” continued the elder, “though I shall be pleased to do so to any who wish to know.  Well then, here we have a glorious truth:  if we wish to know God, we are to study the Son.  Jesus is the great Example, the Revealer of the Father.  He is the Father’s representative in form and in action.  If Jesus, the Son, is meek and lowly, so also is the Father; if He is wise and good and forgiving, so is the Father; if the Son is long-suffering and slow to anger, yet not afraid to denounce sin and call to account the wicked, so likewise may we represent the Father.  All the noble attributes which we find in the Son exist in perfectness in the Father.

“Picture this noble Son, the risen Redeemer, my friends, after His battle with death and His victory over the grave!  In the splendid glory of His divine manhood, all power both in heaven and earth in His hand, He stands as the shining figure of the ages.  Why?  Because He is ’God With Us.’”

There was perfect stillness in the group of listeners.

“Thus the Father has shown Himself to us.  There is no need for any of us to plead ignorance of our Divine Parent.  The way is marked out, the path, though at times difficult, is plain.  The Son does the will of the Father.  ‘My Father worketh hitherto, and I work,’ said Jesus.  ’The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do; for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.’  We, then, are to follow Christ, as He follows the Father.  Isn’t that plain?”

“Do I understand,” asked one, “that you believe God to be in the form of man?”

“Rather that man is in the form of God, for ’God created man in His own image.’”

“In His moral image only.  God is a spirit.  He is everywhere present, and therefore cannot have a body, such as you claim,” objected one.

“I claim nothing, my friend.  I am only telling you what the Scriptures teach.  They say nothing about a ‘moral image.’  What is a moral image?  Can it have an existence outside and apart from a personality of form?”

There was no immediate response to this.  Some looked at the minister as if he ought to speak, but that person remained silent.

“The attributes of God, as far as we know them, are easily put into words; but try to think of goodness and mercy and love and long-suffering and wisdom outside and apart from a conscious personality, an individual, if you please.  Try it.”

Some appeared to be trying.

“Pagan philosophers have largely taken from the world our true conception of God, and given to us one ’without body, parts, or passions.’  The Father has been robbed of His glorious personality in the minds of men.  Christ also has been spiritualized into an unthinkable nothingness.  And so, to be consistent some have concluded that man also is non-existent; and it naturally follows that God and Christ and man, with the whole material universe, are relegated to the emptyness of a dream.”