sometimes it is true about people, as well as about scenery, that ’distance lends enchantment to the view.’  A great many of us have much keener sympathies with ‘brethren’ who are well out of our reach, and whose peculiarities do not jar against ours, than with those who are nearest.  I do not say Quartus was one of these, but he may very well have been one of the wranglers in Corinth who found it much easier to love his brother whom he had not seen than his brother whom he had seen.  So take the hint, if you need it.  Do not let your Christian love go wandering away abroad only, but keep some for home consumption.

Again, how simply, and with what unconscious beauty, the deep reason for our Christian unity is given in that one word, a ‘Brother.’  As if he had said, Never mind telling them anything about what I am, what place I hold, or what I do.  Tell them I am a brother, that will be enough.  It is the only name by which I care to be known; it is the name which explains my love to them.

We are brethren because we are sons of one Father.  So that favourite name, by which the early Christians knew each other, rested upon and proclaimed the deep truth that they knew themselves to be all partakers of a common life derived from one Parent.  When they said they were brethren, they implied, ’We have been born again by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.’  The great Christian truth of regeneration, the communication of a divine life from God the Father, through Christ the Son, by the Holy Spirit, is the foundation of Christian brotherhood.  So the name is no mere piece of effusive sentiment, but expresses a profound fact.  ’To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God,’ and therein to become the brethren of all His sons.  That is the true ground of our unity, and of our obligation to love all who are begotten of Him.  You cannot safely put them on any other footing.  All else—­identity of opinion, similarity of practice and ceremonial, local or national ties, and the like—­all else is insufficient.  It may be necessary for Christian communities to require in addition a general identity of opinion, and even some uniformity in government and form of worship; but if ever they come to fancy that such subordinate conditions of visible oneness are the grounds of their spiritual unity, and to enforce these as such, they are slipping off the real foundation, and are perilling their character as Churches of Christ.  The true ground of the unity of all Christians is here:  ’Have we not all one Father?’ We possess a kindred life derived from Him.  We are a family of brethren because we are sons.