There are still Christians who believe that God in supreme love became a man, and so died for them in love: that the first of duties, the truest affection—without which all others are vile—is to appreciate Him who did it as we ought; that the first of all obligations is to the Savior; and that to slight that, and to attempt to sustain love in despite of that, is the chiefest wickedness and the worst of all dispositions. We owe something to Christ; and if He be dishonored and slighted, I may seek to win but I cannot be the loving companion of one who has denied my Lord deliberately. “To me to live is Christ.” To own him and dishonor Him is worse than heathenism; it is to own and acquiesce in His dishonor when I know better. The man who believes Christ to be God, and is the professed Christian companion of him who denies it, is worse than the latter. We may all, alas! err; but he who knows the truth, and accepts what he knows degrades Christ, is deliberately preferring ease and companionship to Him, though he may dignify it with the name of love. Every effort to recover is right; but a step in acquiescence is a step in disloyalty to One, whom no one would have dared to dishonor if He had not come down in love.
Christ, not opinion, is the center of union; but I never meant, nor do I mean, that a true Christ and a false one were equally good as a center, provided people are amiable one with another; for that means that union is man's amiability and the denial of Christ. What do I want of union, if it be not union in Christ, according to the power of life, through the Holy Ghost.
The business of those united is Christ's glory. If Christians ever unite on a condition of that not being essential, their union is not Christian union at all. I have no reason for union but Christ, the living Savior. I do not want any union but that which makes Him the center, and the all and the hope of it. “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren”; but to make that a plea of indifference to Christ's personal glory in order to be one with him who, calling himself a brother, denies and undermines it, is, in my mind, wickedness. J. N. D.