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Although aleetheuein has in usage the special force of "expressing truth," yet here it seems to be the expression by a whole life and conversation, and so to answer to the recent phrase — too recent to find place in a great version; the phrase of "being real." It means the tone of true life answering to true conviction. For the apostle, with a crash of images, bids us not be infantile, and not toss and twist as the waves of opinion surge to the breath of every new system, system ever so fortuitous, ever so scheming, ever so methodically misleading; but counter to all this, bids us form a purpose of steady growth, a growth depending on our own will, a growing into Jesus Christ. Of this mystic attainment, the moral intelligible meaning at this present is: "To be real — in love" — reality in contrast to illusion, love in contrast to self-seeking. Is not this the world's problem of life? The very epigram of ethics — "Lovingly real." It is easy to be straightforwardly real, and show no tenderness for anyone but yourself. It is easy to express devoted interest by voice and look, and to be a dissembler. But to be real oneself and to be in love even with those that are not real and not loving, requires such an ejection of self-pleasing and self-seeking, as must be troublesome to the best, and intolerable to the most. There is an honesty of manner which, as Cicero says, makes "a brow look not so much a brow as a pledge to society, an austerity like that of an archaic bust, a massive simplicity on which an age or a kingdom might lean; yet (says he) such a man may be a deceiver from his boyhood, his spirit shrouded by his looks, and his doings by four wails." Or the selfish may wear no disguise at all. As in a vivid portrait lately exhibited to us — "the motive of his talk was never an appeal for sympathy or compassion, things to which he seemed indifferent, and of which he could make no use. The characteristic point with him was the exclusiveness of his emotions. He never saw himself as part of a whole, only as the clear-cut, sharp-edged, isolated individual...needing in any case absolutely to affirm himself." The feigning of the actor and the indifference of the egotist are equal, though contrasted tributes to the world's high honour of honesty. But in neither of them is there a grain of love. Love has its tributes too. All the forms of society are penetrated and saturated with the expression and exhibition of our interest in each other. And these forms are hollow only if you choose to make them so. Genuine courtesy fills every one of them with meaning.

I. TESTIMONY FOR CHRIST. And here we have a first application of this antithetic unity of reality and love: — Independence with considerateness, dignity with humility, self-respect free from self-consciousness, and kindness without assumption. It is reality which Christ seems to require as a first condition of our remaining within the circle of His own influences present and to come. And how effective it is! Even the rudest personal testimony, the forced-out declaration in clumsiest English of "what He hath done for my soul," seems to clench the holdfast of the speaker, and to pierce like nails into the consciences of hearers.

II. A LOVING WORD OF FAITHFUL WARNING TO RICH MEN.

III. LOVING REALITY IN WORSHIP. If the great antithesis of reality and lovingness is a help in the guidance of our own heart, and has a bearing on the present fast-changing relations between rich and poor, ought it not further to contribute something to our view of the modern agitations of the Church? It cannot be without significance even to an unconcerned looker-on (if the literature of the time can allow us to imagine such a person), that these agitations centre upon worship. But has not reality as much to do with the question as lovingness? For what is worship? Is it not a recognition of the truth of things, how things are in the world? Was it not so framed of old by God, has it not so been felt by man to be the most expressive, the most solemn recognition of realities unseen, of veritable relations filling all the region around man?

(Archbishop Benson.)

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KJV: But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:

WEB: but speaking truth in love, we may grow up in all things into him, who is the head, Christ;