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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Home Ideals (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 40. The Greatest Word.
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The Greatest Word.
The word "father" is the strongest word in our language. It may not be the word most loved. Probably no word is more loved, or so much, as the word "mother." Yet that that is so is immensely suggestive. It suggests how much woman has made her distinctive word mean. But it suggests, too, that men have not put into the word "father" the meaning that belongs to it. There have been, and are, countless numbers of fathers who have been real fathers, until that word has meant fully as much to their children as the word "mother," and has been loved just as dearly. Yet the common experience of the race seems to make it a less tender word, less endearingly and lingeringly spoken. And in so far as that is true it tells the story of how far man has not lived up to the meaning of the great word.
It would be saying the thing more fully to say it this way: with God "father" means "mother," too. And if it be so with God, it should be so with man. For God's meaning is the true one. So far as "mother" means more to any child than "father," by so much is spelled out the failure of some man to live the real meaning of "father" out in his daily contact with his children. By so much as "mother," taken broadly among the thousands who use it, means more in the general thought of it, by so far is told woman's greater faithfulness to the highest holiest task of life, committed not to one pair of hands, but to two. When "father" means to a child's heart as much as "mother," there is a man who has yielded to the sway of the mother spirit, and been true to the great simple plan of God.
But that word "father" is the strongest word in our language. That is to say, it has more meaning than any other. It is one of the granite words, the chief one of them. At first flush you may think that there are at least two other words that mean more, that are stronger in what they stand for, either one or the other according to your experience or maybe according to your mood. The word "will" has been called the strongest of all in the thing it stands for. The will is the imperial bit of us. It is the choosing, deciding part, upon which all else depends. The will is the man. It is essentially the God-image within us.
And then it has been felt and said that "love" is the strongest, in that it stands for that which dominates life most, by all odds. Yet these things all agree. For love is of the will, else it could never sway the heart, and sweep all life as it does. And the will in man, unhurt by sin, as made by God, is an interchangeable word with love. With God to will is to love. And it is so with us men as we allow God's gracious Spirit to sweep our lives.
And both words are included in that great word "father." "Father" means love. It means love at the strongest and finest that love ever reaches. "Father" means a will deciding upon a choice. A man rises up into being a father only as he yields to the sway of love, and chooses to imprint the divine-human image upon a new soul, and to keep it there sweet and fresh and clear. The strongest word is "father." It includes these others in their full meanings. It gets its meaning from God, and keeps its meaning with men when they are true to the original plan.
"Father" is the most inclusive word. It has already been said that it includes "mother." It also includes king or ruler. It includes teacher, with all of instruction and fine discipline, and personal influence and character-building that that great word itself includes. It includes organiser and manager; and coming last to the highest it includes friend. And, more than including, it gives a fullness of meaning to these words that otherwise would be missing. The word "father" is the father of these other words. It gave birth to them, and it gives present life to them. These other words must go to school to this word "father" before they can rise up into fullness of life in their own right.