^ The Gospel became at once a social message. The preach- ing which laid hold of the outer man, detaching him from the world, and uniting him to his God, was also a preaching of solidarity and brotherliness. The Gospel, it has been truly said, is at bottom both individualistic and socialistic. Its tendency towards mutual association, so far from being an accidental phenomenon in its history, is inherent in its character. It spiritualizes the irresistible impulse which draws one man to another, and it raises the social connexion of human beings from the sphere of a convention to that of a moral obligation. In this way it serves to heighten the worth of man, and essays to recast contemporary society, to transform the socialism which involves a conflict of interests into the socialism which rests upon the consciousness of a spiritual unity and common goal. This was ever present to the mind of the great Apostle to the Gentiles. In his little churches, where each person bore his neighbour's burden, St. Paul's spirit already saw the dawning of a new humanity, and in the Epistle to the Ephesians he has voiced this feeling with a thrill of exultation. Far in the background of these churches, like some unsubstantial semblance, lay the division between Jew and Gentile, Greek and Barbarian, great and small, rich and poor. For a new humanity had now appeared, and the Apostle viewed it as Christ's body, in which every member served the rest and each was indispensable in his own place.^
2. Dependence is, indeed, an inexorable law of natural life. Our faith has anticipated the conclusion and hallowed it. Men must be dependent on one another. For saints this dependence
^ Harnack.
224 FELLOWSHIP IN THE LIGHT
is transfigured into fellowship. The believer recognizes that the power which acts upon him from without is the expression of a spiritual life. He sees that the image of Christ's Body gives the truest possible view of the relation in which all who are "in Him " stand to one another. The one life, the one Spirit, by which they are united to their Head, united eternally, united them in time to one another. In that Divine vision life appears in the fullest proportions we can yet apprehend. We turn from the living to the dead, and, as we contemplate the splendour of the heritage which they have bequeathed to us, we confess with no unworthy self-disparagement that without them we are incom- plete. We turn from the dead to the living, and as we trace the lineaments of a Divine likeness in those about us, we give thanks without presumption that there are saints now.
^ Sir Henry Havelock used to meet with his soldiers for prayer. His men were called " Havelock's saints." " Yes," said Sir Eobert Sale, " and I wish the whole regiment were Havelock's saints, for I never see a saint in the guardroom, or his name in the defaulter's book." On one occasion in Burmah, when an out- post was attacked by night, some of the troops being unfit for duty through drink, the General in command said, " Get the saints, you can depend on them, they are always sober." ^
III.
Cleansing
1. One of the first evidences and signs of the coming of the Spirit of God — and His coming is the coming of the light in the heart — is a new discovery of the depth and reality of sin. It is the imperfect light, the twilight, in which so many professing Christians live that accounts for that weakened sense of sin which is so marked a feature of the present day.
^ Some little time ago a tourist who was walking through the Lake District was overtaken at night by a heavy storm of wind and of rain, and soon got soaked to the skin. In the darkness he was glad to see the twinkling of a light by the roadside that proved to be the light of a little inn, in which he at once took shelter from the pitiless rain. The landlord, with a rushlight,
^Morning Watch, 1894, p. 16.
I JOHN I. 7 225
showed him to what looked like a fairly clean and comfortable room, and the weary and soaked traveller was glad to get rid of his wet things and to have them dried by the morning.
The morning sun streaming through the window awoke him, and the moment his eyes were opened he was horrified to see the room in which he had been sleeping. The walls and the floor and even the curtains were filthy, and he was glad to escape from the room as quickly as possible. The night before he thought the room was fairly clean, now he saw its foulness ; but the room had not changed during the night, it was only the light that had changed. The little rushlight was not light enough to reveal all the dirt of the room, but when the sunlight of heaven came streaming in the revelation was made in a moment.^
2. Now it is a universal law that blood alone can redeem. The Creator of all things accepts the law of suffering in order to save and to bless the race that has sinned. The connexion between this suffering and the remission of sins may be hard to trace ; but in the absence of any theory defining that connexion we may recognize the harmony between this revelation of the infinite love of God and the deepest laws of human life. We must suffer greatly to redeem greatly. God also suffered greatly that He might greatly redeem. And apart from theory, when the human heart, agitated by the consciousness of sin, troubled by the guilt of past years, seeing the shadow of that guilt extending over the years that are coming, wondering whether it can ever be possible to escape from it — when the human heart, haunted by the worst fears, discovers that the Eternal Son of God is descend- ing from the heights of eternal glory and is sharing its sufferings, its temptations, its death, the Gospel is out, the secret is disclosed. He has come to suffer instead of to punish. He, the representa- tive of the Eternal Lord of Eighteousness, must express in some way His abhorrence and His condemnation of human sin. How shall He express it ? By sweeping into eternal darkness the race that had transgressed the Divine commandments ? No ! but in a sublimer form, by making Himself one of that race, and descend- ing from His eternal glories to shame, to sorrow, and to death. Apart from theory altogether, the discovery that the Eternal Son of God has done that, quietens the conscience, gives the heart