With God in the World: A Series of PapersBrent, Charles Henry
Religion
With God in the World: A Series of Papers
Brent, Charles Henry
Christianity
It is God's will that the Church should be coterminous with society, and
that the unity of life thus produced should make the "communion of
saints" a reality on earth and not a mere theory. Past years have seen
much earnest straining to gain a truer conception of God, that
fellowship with and love for Him might be according to His will. All
this theological effort will be lost, unless it is followed up by a no
less strenuous effort to make the brotherhood of man a fact. The Master
gave a new commandment of love, a commandment new not in essence but
rather in intensity and comprehension. After the injunction to love God
comes the equally unequivocal injunction to love man--"Thou shalt love
thy neighbour as thyself." That is to say, personality whether in
ourselves or in others is to receive the highest reverence and
consideration, and that without any partiality. Humanity being full of
diversity, this commandment requires a most thorough and intelligent
study of society and its elements. Heresies concerning God have been and
are destructive of unity; but heresies concerning man are productive of
almost equal mischief. If the first part of the commandment of love
calls us to a study of theology, the second demands a study of
sociology--an old science under a new name. It is worth while noting
that the Apostle who earned the name of "the Divine," or as we would
say "the Theologian," by reason of his familiar acquaintance with the
deep things of God, was the same who felt that the appeal most worth
urging with the scant breath of extreme old age was, that men should
love one another; and he repeats this simple phrase until the world
wonders--"My little children, let us not love in word, neither in
tongue, but in deed and in truth."
But it must never be forgotten that human fellowship and friendship must
under the best of conditions be sectional and shallow, and under the
worst, disastrous, unless it be "in Christ," that is, in God. The true
ideal of human fellowship is realized only thus. And it is such a unity
as would be the outcome of fellowship in Christ, for which the Master
prayed at the last. Ecclesiastical unity does not necessarily produce
unity of life, though the latter must include the former in some true
sense. Christian unity has a twofold basis, the love of God and the love
of man. This differentiation in the commandment of love, is of Christ's
own making, and cannot be ignored by His followers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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