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There are degrees of Fathership; or rather, there are such different degrees of the development of a Father's love as make new orders in the relationship. He is the Father of the inanimate creation. Job calls Him the Father of the rain. In a higher sense and measure, He is the Father of the whole human race. All are the creatures of His hand; all are the subjects of His special providence; for all Jesus died. But the believer says it as a heathen or man of the world never says it. Or, see it again in this way. God has only one begotten Son, Jesus Christ. As many as believe are united to Jesus Christ; they become members of that mystical body. So they become sons by a double process, and by virtue of their union with Christ they are sons indeed. Therefore to them in a further degree God is Father. I do not say He is a reconciled Father to them, that He did not need (that is not in the Bible), but they are reconciled children to Him. There are two persons who best know what it is to say "Father." One is a little, simple, trusting child, "of the womb of the morning," who has not yet unlearnt the faith of his infancy. The other is a penitent, rising up from his sin, going back to his home — "I will arise, and go to my Father, and will say unto Him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee." I believe the remedy of all sorrow and almost all sin will be to think of God more as a Father. But this is not the line of thought along which I wish to take you now, but it is this, that God is the common Father of us all. Surely it would be a great thing if we could have it always before us — "One God and Father of all." There is a great deal of harshness of opinion in the world just now, and men are very busy unchurching and un-Christianizing one another. The rich speak of the poor as "the lower orders," and the poor — partly in consequence because they think the rich look down upon them — the poor dislike the rich much more than the rich dislike the poor. But ought this to be where all are one family? Do we call brothers and sisters "lower orders"? At this moment, have you any disagreement with any living man? have you any quarrel? Now think — That person has the same Father that I have; how patient that Father has been with that man; how very patient God has been with me; and is this the way, as a child of God, I should act to another child of the same God? There are deep mysteries in God's providence — why some are heathen and some are Christian, some know nothing and some know much, some have so many advantages and some have so exceedingly few. But let us never forget the Word, and all it tells, and all it teaches us to do — "One God and Father of us all." I know nothing which brings heaven so near. Here are we on earth trying to say, and we ought to say, every day, "Our Father." And up there, just inside the blue veil, the hundred forty-and-four thousand have "the Father's name on their foreheads." Was this the reason why Christ taught us to say, "Our Father"?

(J. Vaughan, M. A.)

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KJV: One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

WEB: one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in us all.