ength, and tied together with a rope, resemble the tree
from which they were chopped, waving in the wind and living one life to
the tips of its furthest branches. Men have made out of the Apostle's
divine vision of a unity in the faith and knowledge of the Son of God 'a
staunch and solid piece of framework as any January could freeze
together,' and few things have stood more in the way of the realisation
of his glowing anticipations than the formation of the great
Corporation, imposing from its bulk and antiquity, to part from which
was branded as breaking the unity of the spirit.

Paul gives no clear definition here of the time when the one body of
Christian believers should have attained to the unity of the faith and
knowledge of the Son of God, and the question may not have presented
itself to him. It may appear that in view of the immediate context he
regards the goal as one to be reached in our present life, or it may be
that he is thinking rather of the Future, when the Master 'should bring
together every joint and member and mould them into an immortal feature
of loveliness and perfection.' But the time at which this great ideal
should be attained is altogether apart from the obligation pressing upon
us all, at all times, to work towards it. Whensoever it is reached it
will only be by our drawing 'nearer, day by day, each to his brethren,
all to God,' or rather, each to God and so all to his brethren. Take
twenty points in a great circle and let each be advanced by one half of
its distance to the centre, how much nearer will each be to each? Christ
is our unity, not dogmas, not polities, not rituals: our oneness is a
oneness of life. We need for our centre no tower with a top reaching to
heaven, we have a living Lord who is with us, and in Him, we being many,
are one.

II. Oneness in faith and knowledge knits all into a 'perfect man.'

'Perfect,' the Apostle here uses in opposition to the immediately
following expression in the next verse, of 'children.' It therefore
means not so much moral perfection as maturity or fulness of growth. So
long as we fall short of the state of unity we are in the stage of
immaturity. When we come to be one in faith and knowledge we have
reached full-grown manhood. The existence of differences belongs to the
infancy and boyhood of the Church, and as we grow one we are putting
away childish things. What a contrast there is between Paul's vision
here and the tendency which has been