: it is a 'secret
... hidden in God who created all things.' Redemption in fact
interprets to angels and men what God's purpose in creation originally
was. To minister to this disclosure is enough for any {133} man. It
makes all St. Paul's tribulations only such as it is worth while to
bear; and the Gentiles, in their turn, should find their glory in his
tribulations as an evidence of how much he thought it worth while to
suffer in what is their cause no less truly than his.

[Sidenote: St. Paul's second prayer]

Here, as in the first chapter, the consideration of the glory, and
consequently the difficulty, of the gospel which St. Paul has to
deliver leads him off--just at the point where he seems to be resuming
the uncompleted sentence with which he began--into a prayer that the
Asiatic Christians may have strength given them to apprehend the wealth
of their spiritual position and opportunity. He invokes God as the
universal 'father (_pater_) from whom every family (_patria_)--every
company of men knit together by common relation to one father--is
named,' because this has direct reference to his purpose. All men
recognize family, or blood relations and obligations. St. Paul reminds
them that every conceivable society on earth or in heaven which is
bound by the ties of a common fatherhood, derives its 'name' and
therefore its significance from a larger relationship, an all-embracing
relationship of which these lower ones are but shadows--the
relationship to the one Father: {134} and he calls upon the one Father
to strengthen men to transcend all narrownesses of family or blood, and
rise to realize their position in the great family, the great
brotherhood under the one Father. To do this a strengthening of the
inner man, or inner life, by the divine Spirit is indeed needed.
Christ must be not only possessed by Christians, but realized. He must
dwell in their hearts by the realizing power of an active personal
faith. Where this is so--where faith is vigorous--there life must be
rooted and founded on love. Christian faith involves love. For it is
faith in a Father and His Son and His Spirit; and love, and nothing but
love, is the gift of the Father in the Son by the Spirit. This love
then will strengthen them, in the fellowship of the saints or
consecrated ones altogether, to apprehend God's work and purpose in all
its dimensions--breadth and length and depth and height--and to know
Christ's love (which yet p