however our human weakness sometimes confuses them. It is obvious
that this final precept of our text will be the direct result of the
two preceding, for the love which has learned to be moral, hating
evil, and clinging to good as necessary, when directed to possessors
of like precious faith will thrill with the consciousness of a deep
mystical bond of union, and will effloresce in all brotherly love and
kindly affections. They who are like one another in the depths of
their moral life, who are touched by like aspirations after like holy
things, and who instinctively recoil with similar revulsion from like
abominations, will necessarily feel the drawing of a unity far deeper
and sacreder than any superficial likenesses of race, or
circumstance, or opinion. Two men who share, however imperfectly, in
Christ's Spirit are more akin in the realities of their nature,
however they may differ on the surface, than either of them is to
another, however like he may seem, who is not a partaker in the life
of Christ.

This instinctive, Christian love, like all true and pure love, is to
manifest itself by 'preferring one another in honour'; or as the word
might possibly be rendered, 'anticipating one another.' We are not to
wait to have our place assigned before we give our brother his. There
will be no squabbling for the chief seat in the synagogue, or the
uppermost rooms at the feast, where brotherly love marshals the
guests. The one cure for petty jealousies and the miserable strife
for recognition, which we are all tempted to engage in, lies in a
heart filled with love of the brethren because of its love to the
Elder Brother of them all, and to the Father who is His Father as
well as ours. What a contrast is presented between the practice of
Christians and these precepts of Paul! We may well bow ourselves in
shame and contrition when we read these clear-drawn lines indicating
what we ought to be, and set by the side of them the blurred and
blotted pictures of what we are. It is a painful but profitable task
to measure ourselves against Paul's ideal of Christ's commandment;
but it will only be profitable if it brings us to remember that
Christ gives before He commands, and that conformity with His ideal
must begin, not with details of conduct, or with emotion, however
pure, but with yielding ourselves to the God who moves us by His
mercies, and being 'transformed by the renewing of our minds' and
'the indwelling of Christ in our