ROMISH efforts to produce the Reunion of Christendom, under the rule of the Pope, and by the suppression of loyalty to the Holy Scriptures, will never receive countenance from Christians who rejoice in the liberty wherewith Christ has made them free. But the call for union, whether of Christendom or of Christians, is of a peculiarly captivating kind, and one which has in our own day great power over multitudes.
It may be conceded, that in our times there is more practical union amongst true Christians than has been the case for a very long period; and it will be allowed that the real union of true Christians is enforced in the strongest manner in the Word of God, and consequently it will be recognized that disunion is in some way the result of disobedience to the divine Word.
There are two great bonds of union of which the New Testament speaks: that of the Family; that of the Church. Our present paper will be devoted to the former.
The New Testament has for one of its
PILLARS OF TRUTH
the revelation of the name of “Father” to the people of God. A considerable part of Christ’s teaching opened up to His disciples this holy name. When He was risen from the dead, His first message to them was this: “I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.” He, in the power of His resurrection, associated His own with Himself in relationship to His Father, and He made the relationship in its fulness known through Mary to the disciples. And thus did our Lord fulfil the prophecy, “I will declare Thy name unto My brethren”―The Father, His only Son, and the “brethren” of the Lord. Such is the revelation of God, which we do well to keep before the mind in considering the subject of union.
In contemplating, as well as in seeking to practice, the spirit of Christian union the important principle, that should be before the mind. Man cannot make a divinely-formed union, but he can live it out. The children of an earthly parent do not make their family union, but being children, being united to each other by the birth bond, they are called to live it out in practical behavior. Men can make and break unions political and ecclesiastical―they can neither make nor break the union of the family of God; but they may fail to live it out.
We are members of the family of God because we are children of God, and we are children of God because we are born of God. There may be a great effort for the Reunion of Christendom, and at the same time an absolute rejection of the divine fact that the members of the family of God are
CHILDREN OF GOD, BORN OF GOD,
and thus the call for union may be merely a means of leading hearts away from God. Some of those who call out the most loudly for the Reunion of Christendom deprecate the most strongly the divine reality of God’s people being really and truly born of God, and of their being His children.
The children of God are “born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man.” Neither heredity, such as the Jews could boast of, nor the action of men, nor a man’s own individual determination, has part or lot in the matter. The origin of the child of God is traced back to its author—we are born “of God.”
We are born or begotten “not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the Word of God.” Various seeds of thought sown in the world are producing their peculiar results, and such has been the case in all ages; but from the first, one special seed alone has produced in the human subject the divine birth, and that seed is the Word of God. “Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth.”
The active power Who gives to the Word of God life in man, is the Holy Spirit. A man is born of water and the Spirit.
The Holy Spirit makes the seed of the Word effective and fruitful in the heart.
Thus by God, through His Word and Spirit, do we become God’s children. We are related to Him, we are members of His family, and God is our Father. All the favors belonging to the child are ours as a gracious yet common inheritance. The Spirit is within us, by whom “we cry Abba, Father.” The Father Himself loveth us, and the child shall be in God’s due time “conformed to the image of His Son.”
When we meditate upon these wonders, our hearts rise up to our Father. Yet the highest of the favors is common privilege. The greatest of apostles is a child, the humblest of disciples is a child. However great the position, however high the privilege,
BOTH PRIVILEGE AND POSITION
belong equally to all the children of God.
These realities themselves indicate why it is, that in the efforts for the Reunion of Christendom they are hardly ever mentioned.
Imagine “His Holiness the Pope,” the would-be monarch of Christendom, uniting himself with all God’s children as did the disciple whom Jesus loved, and saying, “Behold what, manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called children of God ! . . . Beloved, now are we children of God.” Oh, it is impossible!
Imagine cardinals and lords, whose ambition is to break the will of an imperial race, and subject millions of men to the “Head of the Church,” rejoicing in the love of the family of God, and in the love of God the Father, common—praised be His Name—to all His children, be they called Romanist or Protestant. Verily, such union is as far distant from their vision as are the heavens from the earth.
Let it be our earnest endeavor to live in the joy of the Father’s love, to walk as Christ walked when He was on earth, and then we shall reach to the manifestation of that holy union which should characterize the children of God.