Page:The Education of the Conscience.djvu/13

Rh spoken unto us by His Son ." In that human nature which from the first was made "in the image of God " God has appeared. 'Who for us and for our salvation came down from heaven and was made man .' In Christ by true being, and by likeness in all that is Christ-like in men, we can know God.

And then, again, in Christ we learn that God is not merely a Law Giver, a King, a Master: for we have seen His Son, and we learn that He is a Father. "My Father and your Father ," Christ says: a Father to all His children; a Father in love, in protection, in care: and so from the earliest days of Christianity, those who became Christians were taught to say, what they were not allowed to say before, the prayer, "Our Father, which art in Heaven." Christ had made them know God as their Father.

Is there any stride in education greater than this, by which the growing man comes to learn the real meaning, the inner mystery of Right? Is there any piece of training to be compared with this which makes the right, the good—morality as we sometimes drily and coldly call it—into something to which a full-grown man can give all the strength and passion, all the force and fear of his nature. For observe in learning to look through Right to a God of love, to a Father self-revealing through a perfect Son, we not only find what satisfies conscience, but what satisfies the heart. All our admiration for strong or sweet characters, all our tender affection for those we love, all our reverence for what is beautiful and noble in them; all this is satisfied, is explained: for this too points to God: it is God's image in them which we love, reverence, and admire: and through