"Wherever two or three are met together in my name," said Jesus, "there am I in the midst." In the multitude of these obscure and humble meetings of brethren who love each other for Christ's sake, is the grace supplied, the love diffused abroad, by which the Church lives and thrives. The vitality of the Church of Christ does not depend so much upon the large and visible features of its construction--upon Synods and Conferences, upon Bishops and Presbyteries and the like, influential and venerable as these authorities may be; but upon the spiritual intercourse that goes on amongst the body of its people. "Each several part" of Christ's great body, "according to the measure" of its capacity, is required to receive and to transmit the common grace.
However defective in other points of organization, the society in which this takes place fulfils the office of an ecclesiastical body. It will grow into the fulness of Christ; it "builds up itself in love." The primary condition of Church health and progress is that there shall be an unobstructed flow of the life of grace from point to point through the tissues and substance of the entire frame.
[105] =Eis hena kaino anthrôpon= (_homo_), ch. ii. 15; similarly in iv. 22, 24; Rom. vi. 6; 1 Cor. xv. 45, 47, etc. Here =eis andra teleion= (_vir_); comp. 1 Cor. xiii. 11; James iii. 2. To call the Church =anêr= would be highly incongruous, in view of ch. v. 23, etc.; comp. 2 Cor. xi. 2.
[106] Col. i. 22, 28, 29; 2 Tim. ii. 10.
[107] For this association of metaphor, comp. Shakespeare: _Julius Caesar_, Act V., Scene 1:--
"Blow, wind; swell, billow; and swim, bark! The storm is up; and all is on the hazard!"
[108] Vulgate: _per omnem juncturam ministrationis_. St Paul's word here is =dia pasês haphês=, _through every touching_. See Lightfoot's valuable note on the medical and philosophical use of the word by Greek authors, in his Commentary on Colossians (ii. 19).
[109] Comp. ch. i. 13: "in whom you also [Gentiles, along with us Jews] found hope"; also Rom. iii. 29, 30; Tit. i. 4, "my true child according to _a common faith_."
[110] See the connexion of thought in Col. ii. 8-10, 18, 19.
[111] Compare 1 Cor. ii. 6, iii. 1-3, xiv. 20, xvi. 13; Gal. iv. 19; Heb. v. 11-14.