^ R. H. Story, Creed and Cmiduct, 152. * D, L. Moody, Tlu Way to God, 9,
192 THE LOVE OF CHRIST
love as a child might lay its tiny palm upon the base of some great cliff, and hold that love in a real grasp of a real knowledge and certitude, but we cannot put our hands round it and feel that we comprehend as well as apprehend.
^ The love of God is the glory of love, the most orient pearl in the crown of it. It is not mercenary, nor self-ended, nor deserved ; but as a spring or fountain it freely vents or pours out itself upon its own account. And what ingenuous, truly noble, heavenly-descended heart can hold out against the power of this love ? Its constancy and unchangeahleness is a star of eminent magnitude in the heaven of love. It is not a fading, a wavering, an altering thing, but abides for ever. It may be eclipsed and obscured, as to its beams and influence, for a season ; but changed, turned away, it cannot be. And this consideration of it renders it to the souls of the saints inestimably precious. The very thought of it is marrow to their bones and health to their souls, and makes them cry out to all that is within them to love the Lord and to live unto Him.i
It passeth knowledge, that dear love of Thine, My Saviour, Jesus: yet this soul of mine Would of Thy love, in all its breadth and length, Its height and depth, its everlasting strength, •:
Know more and more.^ * John Owen, The Perseverance qf the Saints. * Mary Shekleton.
Our High Calling.
EPH.-COL. — 13
i
Literature.
Brown (A. G.), Sermons from the Penny Pulpit, No. 63.
Drury (T. W.), The Prison- Ministry of St. Paul, 139.
How (W. W.), Plain Words, ii. 213.
Maclaren (A.), Christ in the Heart, 53.
McClure (J. G. K.), Loyalty the Soul of Religion, 229.
Martin (S.), Eain upon the Movm Grass, 304.
Matheson (G.), Moments on the Mount, 129.
„ „ Times of Retirement, 155.
Spiirgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxix. (1883), No. 1755. De Teissier (G. F.), Village Sermons, iv. 30. Williams (I.), Sermons on the Epistles and Gospels, ii. 241. Wilmot-Buxton (H. J.), The Life of Duty, ii. 137. Cambridge Review, xiii. Supplement, No. 327. Christian World Pulpit, xxxii. 339 (White). Church Pulpit Year-Booh, vii. (1910), 223. Examiner, Feb. 18, 1904 (Jowett). Keswick Week, 1900, p. 183 (Inwood).
XM
Our High Calling.
I bow my knees unto the Father . . . that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.— Eph. iii. 19.
1. In no part^of St. Paul's letters does he rise to a higher level than in his prayers, and none of his prayers is fuller of fervour than this wonderful series of petitions. They open out one into the other like some majestic suite of apartments in a great palace- temple, each leading into a loftier and more spacious hall, each drawing nearer the presence-chamber, until at last we stand there. ^ Meditating on this prayer is something like ascending an Alpine peak. The first hour or so is comparatively easy work. The giant flanks of the mountain are steep, but still their ascent is not over difficult ; but, the higher you go, the steeper it becomes, until at last there is just that one glittering pinnacle towering above your head, and it seems to say, " Thus far, but no farther ! Scale me if you can." But with the aid of a trusty guide, who cuts steps in the very icg for us, and who lends us the strength of his arm, we are able to gain the summit, and drink in with our eyes the grandeur of the scene.^
2. There can be nothing above or beyond this wonderful petition. Eather, it might seem as if it were too much to ask, and as if, in the ecstasy of prayer, Paul had forgotten the limits that separate the creature from the Creator, as well as the experience of sinful and imperfect men, and had sought to " wind himself too high for mortal life beneath the sky." And yet Paul's prayers are God's promises; and we are justified in taking these rapturous petitions as being distinct declarations of God's desire and purpose for each of us ; as being the end which He had in view in the un- speakable gift of His Son ; and as being the certain outcome of His gracious working on all believing hearts.
* A. G. Brown. 19s
196 OUR HIGH CALLING
^ Filled unto all the fulness of God : who shall ever unfold the meaning of this expression to us ? How shall we ever reach any definite idea of what it signifies ? God has made provision for our enlightenment. In Christ Jesus we see a Man full of God, a man who was perfected by suffering and obedience, filled unto all the fulness of God : yea, a Man who, in the solitariness and poverty of an ordinary human life, with all its needs and infirmities, has nevertheless let us see on earth the life enjoyed by the inhabitants of heaven, as they are there filled unto all the fulness of God.^
^ The main theme common to both the Colossian and Ephesian Epistles is the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the relation of believers to Him. Isolated from the bustling activities of life, debarred from aggressive missionary work, limited to the few friends that visited him in his hired room, the Apostle is driven to contemplate the innermost realities of life, and to dwell upon the cardinal truths of revealed religion. His thoughts at such a time found centre in one truth — the Person of Christ, as the one mediating agent in both the natural and the spiritual world (Col. i. 13-23, Eph. i. 7-14). It was this that he came to feel was the rock on which alone his own feet could safely rest ; it was this that he could boldly put forward as the antidote to the erroneous teaching at Colossse ; it was this alone that could enable those to whom he wrote in the Churches of Asia to become " full- grown men," and to attain to " the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."