2 Corinthians 13:14 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen. The great benediction of the Christian Church never grows old and never becomes monotonous. It is like the sunshine, which rises on us every day of our lives with a fresh beauty; or like our truest friendships, which are for ever new. There is no blessing more continually needed than "the communion of the Holy Ghost." We go, then, first to the perpetual and universal facts of human life, for Christianity always uses them and is in harmony with them. And one of the deepest of these facts IS MAN'S PERPETUAL NEED OF INTERCOURSE AND FELLOWSHIP. A life of solitude is never satisfactory to a truly healthy man. He needs some fellowship. And for his whole satisfaction he needs various fellowships: with those above him, on whom he depends; with those beside him, who are his equals; and with those below him, whom he helps. All three of these relationships furnish the life of a completely furnished man. And the essence of all these fellowships is something internal; it is not external. It is in spirit and sympathy, not in outward occupations. It is communion and not merely contact. This goes so far that, where communion is perfect, where men are in real sympathy with one another, contact or outward intercourse may sometimes be absent. What a man really needs, then, is a true understanding of other men; community of intelligence producing community of sentiment, interest in the same things producing the same feelings. This is communion. And then the second fact IS THAT THE COMMUNIONS OR FELLOWSHIP OF MEN ARE SELDOM DIRECT, BUT COME ABOUT THROUGH A MEDIUM. They are not the mere liking of men for each other for qualities directly apprehended, but they are the result of a common interest in something which brings the men together and is the occasion by which their sympathy is excited, the atmosphere or element in which their communion lives. Is not this so? Two children in the same family grow up in cordial love for each other; but their love is a love of and in the family. They did not deliberately choose each other for friends, but their hearts were drawn out in the same direction, towards the same father, the same mother, the same home life, and so they met and came to know each other. So two scholars find their element of communion in their common study. Two business men reach each other and become friends through their common business. And two reformers enter into each other's life in the indignation or enthusiasm of a common cause. In every case you see the union of men is made through a third term, an element into which both enter, and in which they find each other as they could not without it. This is the way in which men come to be gathered in those groups which make the variety and picturesqueness of human life. Now it is in the application of this same idea that there lies, I think, the key to this phrase, "the communion of the Holy Ghost." Once more there is an element, an atmosphere, in which men are brought close together — brought together as they come under no other auspices, in no other way. That element is God. Men meet each other, when they meet in Him, with peculiar confidence, dearness, frankness, and truth. Just as there is a certain character which belongs to the intercourse of men who are met as the pursuers of a common business, and so are met in the communion of that business; and as there is another character which belongs to the intercourse of men who are met as the disciples of a certain study, and so are met in the communion of that study, so there is yet another deeper and completer character which belongs to the fellowship of men who come to have something to do with one another as the servants of God, and so whose communion is the communion of God. And now take one step farther. Who is the Holy Ghost? He is the effectively present Deity. He is God continually in the midst of men and touching their daily lives. He is the God of continual contact with mankind. The doctrine of the Holy Ghost is a continual protest against every constantly recurring tendency to separate God from the current world. Wherever the fellowship and intercourse of men has a peculiar character because it is born of the presence of God among men; wherever men's dealings with each other, or men's value of each other, is coloured with the influence of the truth that we live in a world full of God; wherever our communion with each other takes place through Him, the sacredness and usefulness of what we are to each other resulting from what He is to all of us, then our communion is a communion of the Holy Ghost. I doubt not there is a deeper philosophy in this than we can understand. The Bible truth is that the Holy Ghost is "the Lord and Giver of Life." The power of life is the power of unity everywhere. It is the presence of life in these bodies of ours that keeps them from falling to pieces. The moment that life departs dissolution comes. And so life, which is the gift of the Holy Ghost — nay, which is the presence of the Holy Ghost in society or in the soul — is the power of unity in society or in the soul. The society in which there is no presence of a living God drops into anarchy and falls to pieces. The soul in which there is no presence of a living God loses harmony with itself, becomes distracted. Again, our idea finds its illustration in the different characters of different households. Lift the curtain, if you will, from two homes, both of them happy and harmonious, neither of them stained with vice nor disturbed with quarrels. One of them is a household of this world altogether. The domestic relationships are strong and warm. The loves of husband and wife, of parents and children, of brothers and sisters, are all there. They prove themselves in all kind offices. Each helps the other, and there are no jealousies, no strifes. There is the best picture of the communion of the family affection. Now look into the other home. All is the same, but with this difference: that here there is an ever-live, strong, vivid, loving sense of God. As real as father or mother, as real as brother or sister, God is here. No act is ever done out of His presence. He is felt in the education of the children. The children are His gifts. The love of each member of the household for the rest is coloured all through with gratitude to Him. All of that love is deepened because each desires for each sacred and spiritual mercies. All these loves which were there before move on still, but they are all surrounded by and taken up into one great comprehending love; and he who enters in at the door of that converted house hears them all in deepened, richened music, the same strains still, only full of the power of the new atmosphere in which they are played. And so it is with friendship. Two men who have known each other for years become together the servants of Christ. His Spirit comes to them. They begin the new life of which He is the centre and the soul. How their old friendship changes! How it is all the same, and yet how different it is! It opens depths and heights they never dreamed of. Where they used to do so little for each other, now they can do so much. Where they used to touch only on the outside, now their whole natures blend. One of the most valuable changes which come to a human friendship when it is thus deepened into a communion of the Holy Ghost is the assurance of permanence which it acquires. There is always a lurking distrust and suspicion of instability in friendship which has not the deepest basis. No present certainty answers for the future. This must be so to some degree with an affection where each is held to each only by the continuance of personal liking. But when friendship enters into God, and men are bound together through their communion with Him, all the strength of that higher union authenticates and assures the faithfulness and perseverance of the love that is bound up with it. The souls that meet in God may well believe that they shall hold each other as eternally as He holds each and each holds Him. And the same power which insures the perpetuity of friendship must also secure a wider range of sympathy and fellow-feeling among men The more the associations of men come to consist in what is essential, and not in what is merely formal, the larger becomes the circle of a man's fellow-creatures with whom he may have relations of cordial interest. So much of our communion with men is a communion, not of spirit, but of form. We associate with men because we happen to be thrown in with them in the mere circumstances of our lives; because we live in the same circle of society, and so our habits are the same; because we are seeking the same ends of life in the same kind of actions. And very often our sympathies are bounded by the same narrow lines which limit our associations. But the communion of the Spirit, the communion of the Holy Ghost is something deeper, and therefore something wider, than that. Wherever any human soul is loving the God whom we love, feeling His presence, trying to do His will, though it be in forms and ways totally different from ours, the communion of the Holy Ghost brings us into sympathy with Him. There is no influence of the Christian life more ennobling, more delightful than this. It takes you out of the low valley of formal life. It sets you upon the open summit of spiritual sympathy, close to the sun. Thence you look out into unguessed regions of noble thought and living, with which you never dreamed that you had anything to do. But meanwhile is it not a very lofty and inspiring ambition to offer to a man, that the more he knows and loves God the more he shall see the noble and the good in all his brethren? We should like to believe in men so much more than we do! We are almost ready to give up in despair; the meanness, the foulness, the cruelly of humanity crowd on us so. "If you will earnestly try by obedience and love to enter into communion with God, these brethren of yours, who are like sealed books with stained covers, shall open to you, and you shall see goodness, nobleness, truth, devotion, all through them." Here is the difference between religious and secular philanthropy. Secular philanthropy loves and helps men directly, for themselves. Religious philanthropy loves and helps men in God. (Bp. Phillips Brooks.) Parallel Verses KJV: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen. |
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