IV.
The Families.
" Every family, in heaven and on earth."
1. "I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom [not the whole family, but] every family in heaven and on earth is named." The point of St. Paul's original phrase is somewhat lost in translation. The Greek word for family (patria) is based on that ior father (pater). A distinguished father anciently gave his name to his descendants ; and this paternal name became the bond of
^ Bishop Gore. ' George MacDonald.
I04 THE FATHER AND THE FAMILIES
family or tribal union, and the title which ennobled the race. So we have " the sous of Israel," the " sons of Aaron " or " of Korah " ; and in Greek history, the Atridae, the Alcaemonidae, who form a family of many kindred households — a dan, or gens, designated by their ancestral head. Thus Joseph (in Luke ii. 4) is described as being " of the house and family [patria] of David " ; and Jesus is " the Son of David." Now Scripture speaks also of sons of God , and these of two chief orders. There are those " in heaven," who form a race distinct from ourselves in origin — divided, it may be, amongst themselves into various orders and dwelling in their several homes in the heavenly places, and there are those "on earth."
The various classes of men on earth, Jewish and Gentile, and the various orders of angels in heaven, are all related to God, the common Father, and only in virtue of that relation has any of them the name of family. The father makes the family ; God is the Father of all ; and if any community of intelligent beings, human or angelic, bears the great name of family, the reason for that lies in this relation of God to it. The significant name has its origin in the spiritual relationship.
This great and noble conception of the unity of heaven and earth in God is characteristic of that form of Christian theology which is illustrated in this Epistle and in the Epistle to the Colossians. It appears elsewhere ; but in these two Epistles, wlftich were written about the same time, it is developed with extraordinary boldness and with a vehement and glorious eloquence. As yet, according to Paul's conception, the Divine idea is unfulfilled. Its orderly development has been troubled, thwarted, and delayed by sin, by sin in this world and in other worlds. But it will be fulfilled at last. In Christ "were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him, and unto him " ; and in union with Christ, the eternal Son of God, heaven and earth will be restored to the eternal Father.
^ During this tour in England (in 1894) Dr. Paton was invited by the Bishop of Durham — the late Bishop Westcott — to visit him at Auckland Castle. Both of the men of God who then met are gone, and we can speak more freely of the event. The Bishop
EPHESIANS III. 14, 15 105
received his Presbyterian brother as whole-heartedly as if he had been one of his own clergy. The missionary on his part was profoundly moved by the visit, and told his friend subsequently how the Bishop had led him away to his study, and there discussed, with evident eagerness of soul, the progress and hopes of the evangelization of the heathen in the South Sea Islands and in the world. Then they knelt together before God — those two warriors who, in such different fields and circumstances, had fought their great fight and well-nigh finished their course. They recognized that they were one in heart and purpose, and each poured out his soul in fervent petition for the other, and for the bringing in of the Kingdom of God.^
^ Painful as it is to witness the ineffectual yearnings after unity on all hands of which you speak, still it is hopeful also. We may hope that our good God has not put it into the hearts of religious men to raise a prayer for unity without intending in His own time to fulfil the prayer. And since the bar against unity is a conscientious feeling, and a reverence for which each party holds itself to be the truth, and a desire to maintain the faith, we may humbly hope that in our day, and till He discloses to the hearts of men what the true faith is, He will, where hearts are honest, take the will for the deed.^
2. The Greek words can grammatically mean only "every family " not " the whole family." All such ideas, therefore, as that angels and men, or the blessed in heaven and the believing on earth, are in view as now making one great family, are ex- cluded. The sense is " the Father, from whom all the related orders of intelligent beings, human and angelic, each by itself, get the significant name oi family."
^ In the Epistle to the Ephesians, St. Paul lays open a vision of the spiritual origins and influences and issues of things temporal and confirms the truth which lies in the bold surmise of the poet that earth is in some sense a shadow of heaven. Now he sees in the future of the material Temple with its " wall of partition " a figure of the state of the world before the Advent, and then passes to the contemplation of its living antitype, built on the foundation of apostles and prophets with Christ for its head corner-stone. Now he traces in the organization of the natural body the pattern of a glorious society fitly framed together by the ministries of every part, and guided by the animating energy of a