^ No mere coincidence of opinion or of practice in other directions can be compared in uniting power with devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ. Even now, amidst all our outward schisms, and all our inward alienations from each other, it makes our hearts burn within us to speak together of Christ. At such moments — of course I mean where the love of Christ is seen to be genuine and single-hearted — we feel impatient of those miser- able barriers which have erected themselves between us to defeat or to delay His purposes. We are conscious of being really one, and feel that it is a shame that that unity should not be allowed to have its open and glad expression. What right have diver- gences of opinion or practice by which either party intends only the promotion of the cause of Christ to interrupt ecclesiastical unity between those who love each other for the love that both bear to Him ? In the ancient days the love of Christ was con- fessed to be the internal principle of Christian unity. " Grace be with all them who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity " : so St. Paul ends the great Epistle which displays the glories of the one holy Church. It is adoring love of Christ which is the true fundamental article of the Christian creed. It may co-exist with many mistakes, many superstitions, many blindnesses ; and Christians may well be patient with these, while seeking to increase that central love which, in its natural and healthy action, will at last dispel them. " If the persons be Christians in their lives, and Christians in their profession " — I would heartily adopt the glowing words of Jeremy Taylor — " If they acknowledge the Eternal Son of God for their Master and Lord, and live in all relations as becomes persons making such professions, why then should I hate such persons whom God loves and who love God, who are partakers of Christ and Christ hath a title to them, who dwell in Christ and Christ in them, because their understandings ^ U' C. McCook, The Qospel in Nature, 6p,
PSALM cxxxm. i 141
have not been brought up like mine . . . have not the same opinions that I have, and do not determine their school questions to the sense of my sect or interest ? " God grant that we may so prize and exalt Christ above all, extol and magnify His person so incomparably over all, that the common devotion to Him may annul and bear down the divisions which keep us asunder, and make us again to be outwardly one as He left His first disciples one, until we reach that yet richer and Diviner unity which was to be the reward and consummation of abiding in the fellowship which He established.^
^ A. J. Mason, The Prmcijples of Ecclesiastical Unity, 64.
The Encompassing God.
Literature.
Barnett (T. R,), The Blessed Ministry of CJaldhoodi 51. Ealand (F.), The Spirit of Life, 55. Jowett (J. H.), Brooks by the Traveller's Way, 22. Martineau (J.), Endeavowrs after the Christian Life, 13 Street (C. J.), in Sermons by Unitarian Ministers, i. 13. Christian Age, xxxiv. 386 (H. P. Liddon). Homiletic Review, xlix. 371 (N. M. Waters). National Preacher, xxxvi. 191 (W. G. T. Shedd). Prsachers' Monthly, v. 73 (C. S. Robinson).
<44
The Encompassing God.
Thou hast beset me behind and before,
And laid thine hand upon me.— Ps. cxxxix. 5.
1. That God besets us behind and before and has laid His hand on us is the crowning glory, as it is also the perpetual mystery, of human life. In the light of this truth nothing seems small or negligible. Every incident and every association of our lot takes on a new meaning. The stars have a fresh message for us ; the flowers look up to us with intelligent faces ; God walks in His garden still, and His voice calls for our recognition. Nothing becomes impossible for us ; our strength is sufficient for our day, and new ideals press upon us for acceptance as soon as we have faithfully done the work of the immediate present.
2. We speak of God as a Person, for want of a better term to express the thought that He is self-conscious and freely acting, of a kind with ourselves in all that makes for the difference between the realm of the Personal and that of the Impersonal, though infinitely higher, not only than we are, but even than we can conceive. But we reach an even greater truth when we say that God is an all-encompassing Spirit, in whom we live and move and have our being, a Presence everywhere and in all things, a Source of boundless energy and influence, the Cause and Sustainer and Hope of all that is. There is nothing inconsistent in these propositions. It is the same God who, being a pervasive Spirit and having created us in His own image, maintains relations of tender watchfulness over His children.
Two great ideas underlie this beautiful text : I. God's Intimate Knowledge of Man. II. God's Individual Care of Man.
PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — lO
146 THE ENCOMPASSING GOD
I.
God's Intimate Knowledge of Man.
1. God accurately and exhaustively knows all that a man knows of himself. Every man who lives amid Christian influ- ences has an intimate knowledge of himself. He thinks of the moral quality of some of his own feelings. He considers the ultimate tendency of some of his own actions. In other words, there is a part of his inward and his outward life with which he is well acquainted; of which he has a distinct apprehension. There are some thoughts of his mind at which he blushes at the very time of their origin, because he is vividly aware what they are, and what they mean. There are some emotions of his heart at which he trembles and recoils at the very moment of their uprising, because he perceives clearly that they involve a very malignant depravity. There are some actings of his will of whose wickedness he is painfully conscious at the very instant of their rush and movement.