' George Matheson. ' Dora Greonwell.
GENESIS III. 8. 9 75
(2) In corporate worship. — When one joins a group of worshippers, one enters to take one's part in the ordered re- sponse of the Church universal to the outgoing of the heart of God ; one enters a region where heaven dips down to earth, while earth lifts up " blind hands " to heaven ; one is at the meeting-place of the two orders, the temporal and the eternal ; one is standing with one's fellows before the rending veil. And there are other gains to be got from corporate worship. There is outlook. There is " the restfulness of its wide horizons." The daily work of most of us is done within a very narrow sphere of interest and enterprise. In the fellowship of the Church we have a unique opportunity of emerging from these limitations. No man can enter into the fullest liberty if he is alone with nature and the God of nature. An essential element in the vision of far horizons is the presence of a body of aspirant life. It is " with all saints," not with nature, that we comprehend the love of God. It is where two or three are gathered together to search into His name, that He is in the midst. And another gain to be obtained from corporate worship is quiet of spirit. Who has not known perplexities drop away, who has not seen problems solved, in the contemplation and experience of the fellowship of the Church ? Moods that have distressed us have been dispelled by merely seeing them reflected in the experience of fellow- worshippers, whether of our own or of other ages. Contro- versies which have vexed us have been settled in the light of the broad, plain moralities of the Gospel. Exaggerations of view have been checked by the thought of the manifold variety of catholic Christian experience. Forgotten factors in difficult questions have come to light as we have learned to look at life from the point of view of God's residence in the collective body of His redeemed. We have repeated the Psalmist's experience : " When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me ; imtil I went into the sanctuary of God ; then understood I."
Wandering thro' the city
My heart was sick and sore; Full of a feverish longing
T entered an old church door.
^6 FELLOWSHIP
Dark were the aisles and gloomy;
Type of my troubled breast. Mournful and sad I paced there,
Eager to be at rest.
Sudden the sunshine lighted The arches with golden stream,
Chasing the darksome shadows With brightly-glancing beam.
A chord pealed forth from the organ Tender, and soft, and sweet :
Trembling along the pavement Like the tread of the angels' feet.
The light as a voice from Heaven, Bid all my care to cease;
The chordi as a song of Seraphs, Whispered of God's own peace.^
IL >
The Separation.
The first sin of Scripture is in some sort the type of all our sins. They grow out of a common root. In the language of morals, they are a revolt against the pressure of rules and obliga- tions felt to be in conflict with passion or personal desires. In the language of the Bible, they spring from a state of rebellion against God and the order established by Him.
The author of the record of Genesis shows us in poetic imagery the inward as well as the outward consequences of any deliberate act of rebellion. All sin, until with repentance comes pardon, alters the relations between the creature and the Creator. An estranging cloud comes between the soul and God. And this means bitter shame, haunting fear — the shame of degradation, the fear of death. That concealing cloud cannot be conjured away by any human arts. So long as reconciliation is barred by impeni- tence and unbelief, the cloud will be there. This permanent fact of man's spiritual nature is portrayed in the words, "The man
1 John A. Jennings.
GENESIS III. 8. 9 'j^
and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden."
The heavens above are clear
In splendour of the sapphire, cold as steel,
No warm soft cloud floats over them, no tear
Will fall on earth to tell us if they feel;
But ere the pitiless day
Dies into evening grey.
Along the western line
Eises a fiery sign That doth the glowing sky incarnadine.*
1. How does the loss of God's fellowship show itself?
1. In a sense of Shame. — The first feeling of the man and his wife was an indistinct sense of shame, a desire to hide themselves from one another and from all the world. " Their eyes, both of them, were opened, and they knew that they were naked ; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons." Until then they had been like little children, not knowing shame, because they knew not sin ; but from that day forward they and their posterity had to carry both sin and shame about with them wherever they went.
^ My colleague at the City Temple told me of a young fellow whom a friend of his tried to save, and in the end succeeded, I am glad to say. This poor lad was an adopted son ; he seems to have inherited a weak nature, or if he did not inherit one — for J do not think there is so very much in heredity, after all — at any rate, loose habits, unworthy behaviour, evil company, engendered in him a course of action, and created a character in itself evil. He robbed his adoptive parents, and fled from home. When he was found and brought back almost to the doorstep he refused to enter. " Why ? Are you afraid to face them ? " The answer was, '* I cannot look them in the eye." *