CHRISTIAN UNION.

PART SECOND.

THE DIVINE TYPE OF UNITY.

JOHN Xvii, 21-26.

THE Lord's concern for a perishing world, as well as his separation of his peculiar people from it, stand as antagonist but related truly; not inconsistent or conflicting, but conspiring forces. The line, indeed, is clearly and sharply drawn between the apostolic fellowship and that of the world. But the very solicitude of Christ, that the world should have knowledge and assurance of his Father's name, as well as of his own mission, requires that it should be so. For it is to this fellowship of the apostles and their successors that he looks for the prosecution of the high end of his own coming into the world, and for the production in the world of that conviction which he desires to see wrought respecting the truth and righteousness of God.

How much, in reference to this great object, depends upon the little flock of Christ, and especially upon their being of one mind in the Lord!

For their own preservation amid the world's assaults

this is of the utmost consequence, as in a previous part of this prayer the Lord intimates, when, anxious about their safety while he is absent, he affectionately commends them to the keeping of his Father: "And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thy own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are " (ver. 11). It is by union and unity that they are to be preserved.

But in addition to this personal consideration, connected with their own safety in the midst of a hostile world, another motive is suggested in the close of the prayer for the cultivation of this unity, derived from its bearing on the condition of that hostile world itself. Not only for their own sakes, that they may be secured against the deteriorating influence and the dangerous enmity of the world, does he pray that they may be kept together, but for the sake also of the world itself, -that the world may know the Father's name, and may believe in the divine mission of the Son.

In this view, it is not difficult to perceive generally the propriety and force of the remarkable comparison which the Lord makes between the visible union of his people on earth, and his own mysterious relation to the Father in heaven: "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (ver. 20, 21).

"AS THOU, FATHER, ART IN ME, AND I IN THEE!" What a type or pattern is here presented to us of the

unity of the Church! It is to be after the fashion of the unity of the Godhead; "ONE IN US, AS WE ARE ONE!" The mutual indwelling of the Father in the Son, and the Son in the Father, is to be shadowed forth in the mutual love of believers to one another. What a model, what a measure, of brotherly kindness,-“ of the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace!" The divine Sonship of Jesus is to have its counterpart in the brotherhood of his believing people. The bosom of the Father, which is His own proper home on high, is opened wide in Him, to be the home also of the "whole family in heaven and earth" which bears his name. And in that home, even here below, the household may be seen to be one!

What profanation is it to bring down this high title and this sacred analogy to the level of any merely external and formal framework, or any artificial apparatus, by which discordant elements, and particles still mutually repellent, may be bound together in apparent uniformity! What impiety to dignify any clerical institute which may presume to arrogate to itself the exclusive character of the Church-nay, to dignify the very mother of harlots herself, with the appellation of the Saviour's holy home! His home is in the bosom of the Father; and it is only in so far as the unity of his believing people reflects the unity of the Father's bosom, -which unity assuredly is not formal, or forced, or fictitious,—that it can be instrumental in accomplishing the end which the Saviour has in view, when he prays "that the world may know that the Father has sent him."

For, let us consider more closely what it is that is to be exhibited and exemplified in this aspect of unity which the Church is to present to the world.

In the first place, what is the Lord's great cause of regret respecting the world? It is the world's ignorance of the Father. "O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee!" Would that we could better and more fully enter into the tenderness of this pathetic exclamation! It is almost like the language of complaint, the cry of bitter disappointment, that the righteous Father should not be known in his own world. Nay, but, adds the Saviour, "I have known thee." Thou art not to be quite unknown,-altogether without any to understand thee,-in this world of thine. Here am I. I, at least, for one,-"I have known thee." And if it be asked how? Let the Saviour himself answer, "by the love wherewith thou hast loved me;" by that, "O righteous Father," I know thee. Yes, and by that I make thee known to some at least; for there are some who will acquaint themselves with thee. These, these whom thou hast given me out of the ignorant and unbelieving world,— these have known that thou hast sent me. These I can make to know thee, even as I have known thee; -by the same token, and in the same spirit; for “I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it; that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them" (ver. 26).

Here, then, let it be observed above all things, that the Father is known by the love wherewith he hath loved the Son. It is thus that the Son himself has ever known the Father; and it is thus that through the Son the Father is made known-it is thus that his name is declared.

For the name of God is his nature, his character, or, as it were, his heart. And even as an earthly father's

heart,—his true nature, or what he really is, is best understood from his disposition towards his son, and his treatment of his son,-so is it with the Eternal Father in heaven. The veriest outcast, the most abandoned and depraved among men, if there be any remnant of sensibility at all, can better stand this than any other test. Bankrupt in reputation as to every thing else, sunk in infamy and lost to his own selfesteem, the miserable victim of profligacy and crime, he may yet give forth from the dark despair within him, one gleam of lingering light,—one last sign of a nobler nature, by which, if it were possible, he might be favourably, or at least tenderly, judged,-in the pang that shoots through his seared and withered heart, and the unwonted tear that starts from his eye, as the image of the child he used in other days to love rises to his view, and he seems to hear as of old the prattling voice, and to feel again the fond caress. Hardened by sin and selfishness in all his feelings, he is soft and tender here; and transformed, as it might be thought, into the very image of a fiend, by this one gush of parental feeling he may be known to be still a man. Among the happier households of purity and peace, this criterion of character may be more safely applied; for, with all the full flow of a good man's affections over the whole field of the charities of life, -the spring and fountain of love in his inmost soul,— the unsealing and unlocking of his very heart,-is reserved, as it would seem, for the fellowship of that relation which, of all earthly relations, is the most godlike, the relation of a father to his son. Thus, if I am a father, I feel that no man knows me as I would desire to be known-no acquaintance or friend