I

YE ARE MEMBERS ONE OF ANOTHER.

SAY, to every man that is among you, not to

think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but so to think as to think soberly. For even as we have many members in one body, and all the members have not the same office: so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another.

Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good. In love of the brethren be tenderly affectioned one to another; in honor preferring one another; in diligence not slothful; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord.

Bless them that persecute you; bless, and curse not. Rejoice with them that rejoice; weep with them that weep. Be of the same mind one toward another. Set not your mind on high things, but be carried away with things that are lowly. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

ROMANS, chapter twelve.

YE ARE MEMBERS ONE OF ANOTHER.

I. Difficulty of Understanding Paul's Letters.

To the majority of readers Paul's letters, especially in the authorized translation, are of comparatively little interest. They belong to another world than ours.

This is in part due to the fact that considerable portions of them refer to conditions and appeal to arguments which are altogether outside the horizon of our time. But it is still more due to the fact that the translation is full of phrases which have become the current coin of a theology which had not been born when Paul wrote. No one would be more astonished than Paul himself at the theological doctrines which are supposed to have been derived from his writings.

The first thing we have to do, if we wish to understand his letters, is to remember that they are neither "Scripture " nor systematic theological treatises, but the rapidly dictated impulsive speech of a man all tingling with the inspiration of a burning enthusiasm. They are full of every mark of hurried, eager, familiar speech. They are colloquial in style. Sentences are left unfinished. Passionate eagerness thrills through them again and again. Nothing matters but that his readers may catch the enthusiasm of the new life of brotherhood.

One of the best helps available is to read these letters in a version which is wholly different from that to the sound of which we have become accustomed. Perhaps the best yet accessible to us is the translation now published as the second part of the "Twentieth Century New Testament."

If we read them in some such version, keeping in mind what has just been said and skipping the argumentative portions turning on the interpretation of the Old Testament, we may find, as we come into touch with the man himself, something of the enthusiasm of his own noble, eager spirit.

II. Paul and Jesus.

It has been often said that Christianity as the Church has known it is not the religion of Jesus, but the creature of Paul's theological imagination. If, however, we get at the real Paul, we shall find that this is only worse than untrue. It is half-true.

Underneath his semi-theological interpretation of the Messiah who was crucified we find the constant current of the ideal of life which was that for which Jesus himself supremely stood. True though it is that Paul tells us nothing about the life or directly about the teaching of his Master, it is also true that he continually breathes his spirit. He speaks of the turning-point of his own life as his coming to understand what Jesus really was. Growing up into that life or having that life grow up in him is his constant ideal. Nowhere in the New Testament have we any picture of what in its essence Jesus stood for, which we can place beside the picture of the spirit of his master in Paul's letter to the Corinthian church (1 Cor. xiii.).

III. The Kingdom of God.

This which was the main theme of the gospel in the mouth of Jesus is, in word at any rate, not so constantly before us in Paul's writings. But the reality, the rule of their own highest nature as God's children in the lives of men, is the main burden of all that he writes. Moreover, by him it is applied to all the detailed practical questions of the daily life of those to whom he wrote. It is no far-off dream. He sets about establishing it in all the cities of the eastern Mediterranean. It began to realize itself amid the rottenness of a decaying Paganism in the slums of Corinth and Ephesus and Thessalonica.

It is the life of brother-like kindness, of comradeship. Ye are members one of another. "Brothers" is his favorite term of address. A splendid manhood fashioned after the manliness of Jesus is his ideal. He is supremely the practical man of affairs. The "faith" on which he so incessantly insists is most of all the confident assurance that this finer life is a possible thing, realizable here and now. If Jesus declared and lived the kingdom of God, Paul made it a practical reality in the lives of

men.

IV. The Ideal of Manhood.

This is what our lesson and countless passages like it all through Paul's letters continually presents. As we come to believe the message that we are children of God, there awakens into life the better nature which is latent in every man. It vibrates with a new spiritual dignity. Its law is the inner power of a new enthusiasm, not the craven's obedience to an outside authority. We are sons of God and fellow-heirs with Christ. In no religion in the world has the inspiration of the ideal life

been set forth with such splendid reality. Believe in it. Find out its meaning by actual trial. Unite yourself with your fellows in the endeavor to realize its meaning. Fight clear of all religion of mere form and ritual. Live from within. Stand as free men whom Jesus has delivered from the tyranny of external authority and made servants of their own highest good. Such are the counsels which echo through all that he writes.

V. Keynotes.

Be yourself, not a dreamer led astray by some phantom of imagination in the quest of an impossible good. Think of yourselves soberly. Make religion a matter of the sane wise following of a practical ideal. What that ideal is he himself describes as the realization of our manhood as we see it in the fuller manhood of Jesus. Pass from the childhood of ignorance into the full manhood which we see clearly in him. His spirit is your spirit. To be yourself is to learn to let that be the ruling power of your life.

Love men. That is the second step. Your own true life brings you at once into truer relations to your fellows. The ideal is a social ideal. The kingdom of heaven means the creation of a community where each is strong in the sense of common ideals and common needs. The first thing is to be delivered from the paltry life seeking its own narrow good. The second, resulting at once from it, is to find delight in establishing closer relations with others in whom that same life is springing up.

Then you will find that you come into a different relation even to those who oppose you. They, too, though they know it not, are kinsmen. The man in whom the ideal life is awakening cannot hate, but only pity, those who know less of life's finer spirit than he does. Love one another. Love your enemies. Learn what both mean by growing into the manhood you see in Jesus.

A

THE TEST OF EXPERIENCE.

CCORDING to the grace of God which was

given unto me, as a wise master-builder I laid a foundation; and another buildeth thereon. But let each man take heed how he buildeth thereon. For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. But if any man buildeth on the foundation gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, stubble; each man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it is revealed in fire; and the fire itself shall prove each man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work shall abide which he built thereon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss.

Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? For all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.

I. CORINTHIANS, chapter three.