(2) Something more, therefore, must be meant when it is said " The love of God be with you." What is it ? There is no better explanation than that given by the Master Himself, speaking to His disciples. It is given in St. John's Gospel. He says : " Hence- forth I call you not servants ; for the servant knoweth not what
1 Robert Bridges. « Bisliop Welldon, The Sclwol of Faith, 57.
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his lord doeth ; but I have called you friends." You know the distinction between the servant and the friend : the servant is one thing and the master another. The servant is not taken into the master's confidence as the friend is supposed to be. The servant does not stand upon the same level as the master ; the servant is supposed to be doing his work for his wages. " Now," says Christ, " that is not your relation to Me ; I call you friends, I put you in a sense on a level with Myself; I give you My confidence ; we stand or fall together, and you are not bound to Me simply by the prospect of the wages you will get. I love you and you love Me back again, and because you love Me you will keep My commandments ; if you keep My commandments I will love you, and My Father will love you." That is a love of com- placency, a love of delight and confidence.
^ Two or three years ago it was my duty to go to an elder of the church J. serve, a most godly and faithful aged servant. An operation upon his eyes had been necessary, and the surgeon who performed it said to him : " I want you to remember this : until these wounds are healed do not get into circumstances where a tear would be likely to come ; it would spoil all my work." A few days after a telegram came to me : " Kindly break the news to Mr. Walker that his son James is dead." It was a hard task under the circumstances, but I never saw grace come out more beautifully. He said : " No one can judge what a great loss this is to me. James was not only my son, but he had become my friend. I talked with him about everything ; he managed things for me ; I had the fullest confidence in him. I have not merely lost a child; I have lost my best earthly friend." And to the credit of God's grace I want to say that he did speak these words, and the tears were kept away.^
lit
The Communion of the Holy Ghost.
Grace leads to love, and love opens the way to communion. - As grace is through Jesus Christ and love is of God, so communion is with the Holy Ghost. The Spirit is the gift of both the Father and the Son, and is Himself the Giver of each. " No man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit " ; and if " the love of
1 John Hall. 2 COR. & GAL. — 21
322 THE APOSTOLIC BENEDICTION
God hath been shed abroad in our hearts," it is " through the Holy Ghost which was given unto us." The Spirit is always revealed as the immediate Agent in the communication of God to the soul. It is He who convicts and converts, assures and inspires, equips and strengthens. In the Christian kingdom He is the Paraclete, who abides with us for ever. His abiding presence in the soul is the result of accepted grace and realized love. The end of redemption is realized in conscious communion with God through the Holy Ghost.
^ It was St. Paul's invariable habit to take the pen from his amanuensis at the close and write a parting salutation as his sign- manual. This was always a prayer that " grace " might be with his readers ; the word was characteristic of his teaching, and it always occurs, even in the briefest form of the closing salutation. To understand the enlarged form of this salutation in 2 Corin- thians we must recall the circumstances of the Corinthian Church. Party divisions were distracting it : all its manifold troubles St. Paul traces to this root. Unity must be restored: this is the first injunction of the first epistle (1 Cor. i 10), and the last injunc- tion of the second (2 Cor. xiii. 11). His remedy for disunion was his doctrine of the One Body, which he brought to bear on their sin of fornication, their difficulty about idol-meats, their jealousy as to spiritual gifts, their profanation of the Lord's Supper. The second epistle opens with an outburst of relief at their return to obedience. Yet at the close he shows that his fears are still alive. What will he find when he comes ? " Strife, jealousy, wraths, factions, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults ? " If so, he warns them that he will not spare. He closes with exhortations to unity and peace, and promises the presence of " the God of love and peace." Then his final salutation runs at first in its accus- tomed form, " the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ " ; but it is expanded to meet the occasion and its needs ; " the God of love " suggests the addition " the love of God," and the true sense of membership which the One Spirit gives to the One body is prayed for in the words " the fellowship of the Holy Spirit." It is clear, then, that the genitive here is subjective and not objective ; and this is confirmed by the parallel clauses. " The grace " which is " of the Lord Jesus," and " the love " which is " of God," are parallel with " the fellowship " which is " of the Holy Spirit." The meaning in this place seems to decide the otherwise doubtful sense of Phil. ii. 1, " if there be any fellowship of the Spirit." Here, again, the context speaks of love and unity. So that it is most uatural to interpret the phrase in both places of the sense of