The exhortations of our text were preceded with injunctions to distribute material help, and to bestow helpful sympathy.  The tempers enjoined in our present text are the inward source and fountain of such external bestowments.  The rendering of material help and of sympathetic emotion are right and valuable only as they are the outcome of this unanimity and lowliness.  It is possible to ‘distribute to the necessity of saints’ in such a way as that the gift pains more than a blow; it is possible to proffer sympathy so that the sensitive heart shrinks from it.  It was ’when the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one soul’ that it became natural to have all things common.  As in the aurora borealis, quivering beams from different centres stream out and at each throb approach each other till they touch and make an arch of light that glorifies the winter’s night, so, if Christian men were ’of the same mind toward one another,’ did not ’set their minds on high things, but condescended to things that were lowly, and were not wise in their own conceits,’ the Church of Christ would shine forth in the darkness of a selfish world and would witness to Him who came down ‘from the highest throne in glory’ to the lowliest place in this lowly world, that He might lift us to His own height of glory everlasting.

STILL ANOTHER TRIPLET

’Render to no man evil for evil.  Take thought for things honourable in the light of all men. 18.  If it be possible, as much as in you lieth, be at peace with all men.’—­ROMANS xii. 17, 18 (R.V.).

The closing words of this chapter have a certain unity in that they deal principally with a Christian’s duty in the face of hostility and antagonism.  A previous injunction touched on the same subject in the exhortation to bless the persecutors; but with that exception, all the preceding verses have dealt with duties owing to those with whom we stand in friendly relations.  Such exhortations take no cognisance of the special circumstances of the primitive Christians as ’lambs in the midst of wolves’; and a large tract of Christian duty would be undealt with, if we had not such directions for feelings and actions in the face of hate and hurt.  The general precept in our text is expanded in a more complete form in the verses which follow the text, and we may postpone its consideration until we have to deal with them.  It is one form of the application of the ’love without hypocrisy’ which has been previously recommended.  The second of these three precepts seems quite heterogeneous, but it may be noticed that the word for ‘evil’ in the former and that for ‘honourable,’ in these closely resemble each other in sound, and the connection of the two clauses may be partially owing to that verbal resemblance; whilst we may also discern a real link between the thoughts in the consideration that we owe even to our enemies the exhibition of a life which a prejudiced hostility will be forced to recognise as good.  The third of these exhortations prescribes unmoved persistence in friendly regard to all men.