Page:Groves - Darbyism - Its Rise and Development and a Review of the Bethesda Question.djvu/8



, became thus the watchword and the rallying point of thousands who sighed for a fellowship, everywhere hindered by the doctrines and commandments of wen. In the Epistle to the Ephesians (chap. iv.) the Apostle speaks of two unities—“a unity of the spirit,” and a “unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.” The latter pointing onwards to the time of the glory, when all shall come to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, when the one Body, and the one Head, shall be manifested in the one Christ. Till then it is the “oneness of the Spirit” that we are called on to keep—a oneness we have not to make, but to keep—a oneness that, just in proportion as it is kept, will grow up into a manifested oneness, that cannot be produced by any action from without, but must be grown up into from within, by the hidden power of the Spirit of Life; a life the exhibition of which is Love, for God is Love, and “He who dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him;” and this life, this love, is as a seed sown, and that grows up spontaneously into a development which accords with its internal organization, as appointed by God, not by man. We hear much about the unity of the body as something to be kept; but what we are called upon to keep, is the inner, deeper, unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, which, in proportion as it is kept and maintained, will grow up into an exhibition even now more or less perfect of that outward similitude, which God shall exhibit hereafter, when He reveals in the Church the glory of Immanuel. Failing to see this, men have been led from the Apostle’s days downward, to seek a development of the Christian Church after some particular form or other, as an external unity to be attained, and thereby going back, in fact, to the externalism and ritualism of a past dispensation.Spiritual unity is a deep reality, and if the enquiries and aspirations of the saints of God had been directed towards its maintenance, instead of towards the realization of the unity of body, there would have been no place for aught, but those precious fruits of the Spirit, love, mercy, and truth, which would have redounded to the glory of God, wherein all saints would have been growing up into Him in all things, who is the Head, even Christ.

After speaking of this unity of the Spirit which the Church of God is responsible for keeping, the Apostle brings before us the sevenfold unity, kept and maintained by God himself; unto which in Christ we have been brought, and in the power of which we are called now to walk; and for the measure in which we have not so walked, we shall have to answer, when we all “stand before the judgment scat of Christ.” This seven-fold unity is described by St. Paul, as follows:—“There is one body, and one Spirit