genial associations any Christian man may be, he may feel that
he is not alone, not only because his Master is with him, but because
there are many others whose hearts throb with the same love, whose lives
are surrounded by the same difficulties. It is by no means a mere piece
of selfish consolation which this same Apostle gives in another part of
his letter, when he bids the troubled so be of good cheer, as
remembering that the 'same afflictions were accomplished in the
brotherhood which is in the world.' He did not mean to say, 'Take
comfort, for other people are as badly off as you are,' but he meant to
call to the remembrance of the solitary sufferer the thousands of his
brethren who were 'dreeing the same weird' in the same uncongenial
world.

If thus you and I, Christian men, are pressed upon on all sides by such
worldly associations, the more need that we should let our hearts go out
to the innumerable multitude of our fellows, companions in the
tribulation, and patience, and kingdom of Jesus Christ. Precisely
because the Roman believers were in Babylon, they were glad to think of
their brethren in Asia. Isolated amidst Rome's splendours and sins, it
was like a breath of cool air stealing into some banqueting house heavy
with the fumes of wine, or some slaughter-house reeking with the smell
of blood, to remember these far-off partakers of a purer life.

But if I might for a moment diverge, I would venture to say that in the
conditions of thought, and the tendencies of things in our own and other
lands, it is more than ever needful that Christian people should close
their ranks, and stand shoulder to shoulder. For men who believe in a
supernatural revelation, in the Divine Christ, in an atoning Sacrifice,
in an indwelling Spirit, are guilty of suicidal folly if they let the
comparative trivialities that part them, separate God's army into
isolated groups, in the face of the ordered battalions that are
assaulting these great truths.

Because persecution was beginning to threaten and rumble on the horizon,
like a rising thundercloud, it was the more needful, in Peter's time,
that Christians parted by seas, by race, language, and customs, should
draw together. And for us, fidelity to our testimony and loyalty to our
Master, to say nothing of common sense and the instinct of
self-preservation, command Christian men in this day to think more, and
to speak more, and to make more, of the great verities which they all