Closely considered, we find that the seven unities resolve themselves into three, centring in the names of the Divine Trinity--the Spirit, the Lord, and the Father. The Spirit and the Lord are each accompanied by two kindred uniting elements; while the one God and Father, placed alone, in Himself forms a threefold bond to His creatures--by His sovereign power, pervasive action, and immanent presence: "Who is over all, and through all, and in all" (comp. i. 23).
The rhythm of expression in these verses suggests that they belonged to some apostolic Christian song. Other passages in Paul's later epistles betray the same character;[98] and we know from chapter v. 19 and Colossians iii. 16 that the Pauline Church was already rich in psalmody. This epistle shows that St Paul was touched with the poetic as well as the prophetical afflatus. He expected his people to sing; and we see no reason why he should not, like Luther and the Wesleys afterwards, have taught them to do so by giving voice to the joy of the new-found faith in "hymns and spiritual songs." These lines, we could fancy, belonged to some chant sung in the Christian assemblies; they form a brief metrical creed, the confession of the Church then and in all ages.
I. _One body_ there is, _and one Spirit_.
The former was a patent fact. Believers in Jesus Christ formed a single body, the same in all essentials of religion, sharply distinguished from their Jewish and their Pagan neighbours. Although the distinctions now existing amongst Christians are vastly greater and more numerous, and the boundaries between the Church and the world at many points are much less visible, yet there is a true unity that binds together those "who profess and call themselves Christians" throughout the world. As against the multitudes of heathen and idolaters; as against Jewish and Mohammedan rejecters of our Christ; as against atheists and agnostics and all deniers of the Lord, we are "one body," and should feel and act as one.
In missionary fields, confronting the overwhelming forces and horrible evils of Paganism, the servants of Christ intensely realize their unity; they see how trifling in comparison are the things that separate the Churches, and how precious and deep are the things that Christians hold in common. It may need the pressure of some threatening outward force, the sense of a great peril hanging over Christendom to silence our contentions and compel the soldiers of Christ to fall into line and present to the enemy a united front. If the unity of believers in Christ--their oneness of worship and creed, of moral ideal and discipline--is hard to discern through the variety of human forms and systems and the confusion of tongues that prevails, yet the unity is there to be discerned; and it grows clearer to us as we look for it. It is visible in the universal acceptance of Scripture and the primitive creeds, in the large measure of correspondence between the different Church standards of the Protestant communions, in our common Christian literature, in the numerous alliances and combinations, local and general, that exist for philanthropic and missionary objects, in the increasing and auspicious comity of the Churches. The nearer we get to the essentials of truth and to the experience of living Christian men, the more we realize the existence of one body in the scattered limbs and innumerable sects of Christendom.
There is "one body and one Spirit": one body because, and so far as there is one Spirit. What is it constitutes the unity of our physical frame? Outward attachment, mechanical juxtaposition go for nothing. What I grasp in my hand or put between my lips is no part of _me_, any more than if it were in another planet. The clothes I wear take the body's shape; they partake of its warmth and movement; they give its outward presentment. They are not of the body for all this. But the fingers that clasp, the lips that touch, the limbs that move and glow beneath the raiment,--these are the body itself; and everything belongs to it, however slight in substance, or uncomely or unserviceable, nay, however diseased and burdensome, that is vitally connected with it. The life that thrills through nerve and artery, _the spirit_ that animates with one will and being the whole framework and governs its ten thousand delicate springs and interlacing cords,--it is this that makes _one body_ of an otherwise inert and decaying heap of matter. Let the spirit depart, it is a body no more, but a corpse. So with the body of Christ, and its members in particular. Am I a living, integral part of the Church, quickened by its Spirit? or do I belong only to the raiment and the furniture that are about it? "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His."