them, to the churches to whom this letter was sent.

Now, brethren, our temptation is not so much to let barriers of race and
language and distance weaken our sense of Christian community, as it is
to let even smaller things than these do the same tragical office for
us. And we, as Christian people, are bound to try and look over the
fences of our 'denominations' and churches, and recognise the wider
fellowship and larger company in which all these are merged. God be
thanked! there are manifest tokens all round us to-day that the age of
separation and division is about coming to an end. Yearnings for unity,
which must not be forced into acts too soon, but which will fulfil
themselves in ways not yet clear to any of us, are beginning to rise in
Christian hearts. Let us see to it, dear friends, that we do our parts
to cherish and to increase these, and to yield ourselves to the uniting
power of the common faith.

II. We note, further, the clear recognition here of what is the strong
bond uniting all Christians.

Peter would probably have been very much astonished if he had been told
of the theological controversies that were to be waged round that word
'elect.' The emphasis here lies, not on 'elect,' but on 'together.' It
is not the thing so much as the common possession of the thing which
bulks largely before the Apostle. In effect he says, 'The reason why
these Roman Christians that have never looked you Bithynians in the face
do yet feel their hearts going out to you, and send you their loving
messages, is because they, in common with you, have been recipients of
precisely the same Divine act of grace.' We do not now need to discuss
the respective parts of man and God in it, nor any of the interminable
controversies that have sprung up around the word. God had, as the fact
of their possession of salvation showed, chosen Romans and Asiatics
together to be heirs of eternal life. By the side of these transcendent
blessings which they possessed in common, how pitiably small and
insignificant all the causes which kept them apart looked and were!

And so here we have a partial parallel to the present state of
Christendom, in which are seen at work, on one hand, superficial
separation; on the other, underlying unity. The splintered peaks may
stand, or seem to stand, apart from their sister summits, or may frown
at each other across impassable gorges, but they all belong to one
geological formation, and in their depths the