Second, that God is the Lord of heaven and earth.  We do not know whether He is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent; there is much that leads us to think that He is limited.  He can do no more than Love can do with His children, and Love has its defeats, and crosses, and tragedies.  But trusting the Christlike Father we more and more discover that He is sufficiently in control over all things to accomplish through them His will.  He needs us to help Him master nature, and transform it into the servant of man,—­to control disease, to harness electricity, to understand earthquakes; and He needs us to help Him conquer human nature and conform it to the likeness of His Son.  God’s complete lordship waits until His will is done in earth as it is in heaven; but for the present we believe that He is wise and strong enough not to let nature or men defeat His purpose; that He is controlling all things so that they work together for good unto them that love Him.

And third, that God is the indwelling Spirit.  The Christlike Father Lord, whom we find outside ourselves through the faith and character of Jesus, becomes as we enter into fellowship with Him, a Force within us.  He is the Conscience of our consciences, the Wellspring of motives and impulses and sympathies.  We repeat, today, in some degree, the experience of the first disciples at Pentecost; we recognize within ourselves the inspiring, guiding and energizing Spirit of love.

While we find God primarily through Jesus, He reveals Himself to us in many other ways:  in the Scriptures, where the generations before us have garnered their experiences of Him; in living epistles in Christian men and women, and in some who do not call themselves by the Christian name, but whose lives disclose the Spirit of God who was in Jesus; in non-Christian faiths, where God has always given some glimpse of Himself in answer to men’s search.  Christ is not for us confining but defining; He gives us in Himself the test to assay the Divine.

Nor do experiences which we label religious exhaust the list of our contacts with God.  Our sense of duty, whether we connect it with God or not, brings us in touch with Him.  Many persons are unconsciously serving God through their obedience to conscience.  It was said of the French savant, Littre, that he was a saint who did not believe in God.  He made the motto of his life, “To love, to know, to serve”; and no intelligent follower of Him who said, “Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of My brethren, even these least, ye did it unto Me,” will fail to admit that in such a life there is a genuine, though unrecognized communion with God.  In our own day when conscience is erecting new standards of responsibility, rendering intolerable many things good people have put up with, demonstrating the horror and hatefulness of war and forcing us to probe its causes and motives, discontenting us with our industrial arrangements, our business practices, our social order, God is giving us a larger and better Ideal, a fuller vision of Himself.  We know what our Christlike Father is in Jesus; but we shall appreciate and understand Him infinitely better as He becomes embodied in the principles and ideals that dominate every home, and trade, and nation.