former case, the spiritual well-being of all depended on their "having the knowledge of the true God, and of Jesus Christ whom He had sent." In this it depends on "their hearing the voice of the Son of God," a voice which had that knowledge for its constant guide, and God himself for its constant theme. These two passages from the Gospel, therefore, are perfectly parallel to one another, and both have the same tendency as those which have been adduced from the prophets. All unite in resting Christian unity, not in any such mutable considerations as outward agreement, whether uniformity or concord as to ritual, polity, or the like, but in the vital and essential fact of union to God through Christ, and thus through the Godhead to one another.

66

It may here be remarked, however, that though the true principle of unity thus appears to be wholly spiritual, and consequently invisible in its very nature, yet it is calculated to produce, and does in point of fact always produce, many points of outward agreement among all Christians. Thus all "being regenerated by the same uncorruptible seed,"* bring forth the fruits of righteousness some thirty, some sixty, and some a hundred fold.”+ The grace of God which bringeth salvation, hath taught them all, that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, they "should live soberly, righteously, and piously in this present world, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave himself for them that he might redeem them from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works." Nor are they taught to agree in acting only, but also in believing. And, indeed, it is delightful to contemplate how nearly unanimous all true Christians are about all the essentials of the Christian faith. But this does not fall to be illus

* 1 Peter i. 23.

† Matt. xiii. 8.

Titus ii. 11.

trated here. What we are here bent on shewing is, that however numerous the features of outward language or behaviour in which all Christians do agree, it is not these outward circumstances which constitute the true tiethe true bond of their unity. It is something that has more life in it than either words or deeds, something that admits of special adaptation to the wants of every soul more than either. The words which Christ speaks to the soul that is united to him, are not mere phrases of human language, "but they are spirit and they are life.” * And though the sameness of the sap that circulates through all the vine causes a general resemblance in the foliage and fruit of all the branches, yet it is the sap not the similarity that constitutes and maintains the unity. And when this sap ceases to influence and animate any member of the visible church, he ceases, from that very fact, to belong to the true unity of the Church, though he may still remain in external connexion with it.

Upon the whole, then, we learn from the divine aspirations of our blessed Saviour in this His prayer which we have been considering, that all Christians are intimately one with their Saviour, and through Him one with one another. Into however many individual congregations or churches those who hold the evangelical faith and follow after a holy life may be parted, they cannot cease to be truly one till they cease to be Christians. The chasms which time, place, or feeling may open up between them, however vast they may seem to be, cannot break the tie which unites them into one; for that tie does not lie between Christian and Christian; nor does it admit of being broken by their adverse pulling. It lies between every individual believer and the Redeemer, and in Him, and in Him alone, do Christians all really meet in one. Hence the jarrings and antagonisms which reciprocate between * John vi. 63.

+

Christian and Christian, cannot hurt the true unity of the Church, except in so far as they weaken and darken those rays of life which, flowing from the Son of God, animate and lighten the soul, and through which all are united to Him, and through Him to one another. It is only in so far as they hurt the Christianity of those who engage in them, that they hurt the unity of the Church. But this they do more than could be told. For if the essential condition of Christianity be the possession of the spirit of Christ, if those who have not the spirit of Christ be none of His,* there is but little room among his disciples for the contentious, to whom, instead of salvation, the apostle Paul assures us, that God will recompense tribulation and wrath.+

But, even when matters do not go so far as the destruction of the Christianity of those who engage in religious dispute with one another, such dispute, though it cannot destroy the real, destroys the visible unity among Christians. And hence a great evil. For mutual love, in that case, being manifestly wanting, the church is self-condemned in the eyes of the world. Infidelity is armed with weapons of fearful moral energy. In that case, infidelity can rail, not without reason and Scripture too on its side, against every pretension to a holy zeal on the part of those, whose most forward features are a schismatic antipathy to all but their own party. Oh, how it must grieve the spirit of the God of love when He looks down upon His church and sees it lacerated, as it is now, by party zeal! Again, and again in this single prayer we have been considering, does our blessed Saviour raise His hands (in a few hours to be stretched on the cross) praying for the unity of His disciples, assigning as the reason of His holy importunity, that when they were seen to be thus united, the world would know and acknowledge that their Master was the Son of the God of love. And is it * Rom. viii. 9. + Rom. ii. 8.

thus that we requite His solicitude! Is it thus that we answer to His prayer! Oh! is it the mind of Christ that we are embracing, or a holy life that we are seeking, when we are wrangling about every tittle? Whence have we gathered, that our calling as Christians is to be zealous each more than another in plaiting sectarian crowns of thorns to thrust upon the bleeding brows of our Redeemer? If it be the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ that we are contending for, and striving to be fruitful in, that is good. To know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent, is eternal life. But how do we become fruitful in such knowledge? If we are to believe inspiration, it is by "adding to our faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity." He that lacketh these things we are assured is blind. Ah! how many among us are blind. Would that this long night of strife were spent! Would that the day were at hand when every Christian will put on the armour of light,— GODLINESS, BROTHERLY KINDNESS, CHARITY!"

If that day do not come speedily, it looks all as if a dark dark night would soon be over the evangelical churches of Britain. It looks as if God were preparing a judgment to shew, in a way that cannot be misunderstood, that love really is, as our Saviour positively declared it to be, the peculiar characteristic of Christianity, and that this grace, though many shortcomings therewith, is better than more truth with strife. As is always the case with a party who are denied privileges, which they cannot be persuaded that they have no right to enjoy, the members of the Church of Rome, in this kingdom, have been long, and still are, animated (in painful contrast with those of the churches of the Reformation), by such a spirit of fraternal regard, that they form a strongly united communion. And does it not look as if, in reward,

they had now a mission to chastise, to purge the Lord's vineyard, which, though it has now for nearly three hundred years been growing in a bright light of truth to which Romanists are strangers, is yet bringing forth to such a fearful extent wild grapes only? But let the reader think rather than the writer speak on such a subject. The present only is ours. "It is not for us to know the

times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his But we have duties. Let us not forget

own power.

them, nor Him who calls us to them.

THE APOSTLES.

The apostles, guided by that Spirit which "taught them all things," were too enlightened not to know that party spirit and sectarian zeal, which had ever shewn themselves leading principles in human nature under every form of religion, would soon manifest themselves in the Church of Christ, as well as every where else. In almost every one of the apostolic epistles, therefore, there are to be found passages emphatically enjoining unity in that church to which the epistle is addressed, and cautioning the Christian converts against schism. In almost every apostolic epistle, therefore, there is some passage or other relating to the inquiry which now engages us. And this part of our investigation naturally leads us to a variety of details.

There is one respect, however, in which all these passages are at one; and it is important for us to remark, in the first place, this feature of universal agreement amongst them; and therefore let us do so now. They are all at one, then, in this, that they have all for object to shew, not the limits of Christian communion, like the articles of the creeds of too many subsequent churches,