AROUND WHOM WE GATHER
‘Our gathering together unto Him.’
It is that conception, so full of both peace and power, of present rest and of the energy of an immortal hope, so pregnant with the suggestion of a co-operation deeper than we can analyse, but which is ruled and managed by Him—that draws us in ultimate reality together here, and sends us out again, dispersed, yet one in soul.
I. Around Whom we gather.—It is the Lord Jesus Christ, God of God, Man of Man, coessential with the Father, coessential with us, Son of the Infinite, Son of the Virgin, Lamb of the Sacrifice, Victor of the Resurrection, Priest upon His Throne, King reigning and to return, Head of the Church, Corner-stone of the Creation, Dweller in our hearts, Saviour of our souls, Friend of our sorrows and our joys, Companion of our life and of our death, and of our heaven—it is He around Whom we gather and are one.
II. Our union, if it has the Christian life within it, must needs be not only deep but ever deepening still.—And so it will be, on the one condition that we draw ever nearer, in simplest faith, in worshipping love, to Him. So doing we shall, as we can never otherwise do, in this restless and perplexing time, all always draw towards one another, and be also instruments of edification, of true cohesion, in the Church and in the world around us.
III. Ours is a period of profound unrest.—It is full of more than normal perils of centrifugal disturbance. Never in modern times was there so importunate a need for all the virtues of humility, of self-restraint, of a tolerance wholly other than indifference, of jealous truthfulness, of anxious fairness, of the noble modesty and candour of love. Without these virtues, I frankly own, I see little hope for that Church for which we think we could die, and for which we pray to live, that she will long escape not only disestablishment from her immemorial national place and relation—England’s crowning benefit, as I think—but disruption within her own society. And we, if we would, from our varying points of conviction and sympathy, work, and work together, for her life, and peace, and holy power—we must ourselves be ever more and more ‘gathering together unto Him.’
IV. For nearness to Him is the place of mental and spiritual peace; of holy humbleness and holy courage; of deeper insights into other hearts; of larger and longer views of the proportions of truth and of duty; of the patience which is power, of the loving faith which is victory; of foretastes, as from a Pisgah, of the eternal country, such as to enable us, in the life of hope, to meet aright the duties of the way. In our inmost souls, in our secret chambers, in our holy worship, in our preaching, our teaching, our converse, our spirit, we will each resolvedly get nearer to Him Who is our all. So inevitably we shall draw and converge together with a coalescence which, true and beautiful in itself, is sure, through the lives and ministries of this company of pastors, to tell far and wide for the benefit of the Church of God and the glory of His Name.
—Bishop H. C. G. Moule.
Illustration
‘Man is a social being; and, go where you will, people, as a rule, like ‘gathering together.’ Christmas, e.g., is peculiarly a time when English people like to ‘gather together’; it is the season when family meetings have become a national institution, in town and country, among rich and poor. It is indeed the one time in the twelvemonth, with many, for seeing their friends. Business is at a standstill for a space. Poor and shallow the philosophy, hard and cold the religion, which sneers at Christmas gatherings. Anything that helps to keep up family affection and brotherly love is a positive good for a country. Long may the custom last!’