God. The smallest crumb that can come in between two polished plates
will prevent their adherence. A trivial sin will slip your hand out of
Christ's hand; and though His love will still come and linger about
you, until the sin is put out it cannot enter in.

'It can but listen at the gate,
And hear the household jar within.'

'He that doeth the will of God, the same is'--and feels himself to
be--'My brother, and sister, and mother.'

II. This relationship includes all others.

That is a very singular form of expression which our Lord employs.
'Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is My brother, and
sister, and mother.' We should have expected, seeing that He was
speaking about three different relationships, that He would have used
the plural verb, and said, 'The same are My brother, and sister, and
mother.' And I do not think that it is pedantic grammatical accuracy
to point out this remarkable form of speech, and even to venture to
draw a conclusion from it--viz., that what our Lord meant was, not
that if there were three people, of different sexes, and of different
ages, all doing the will of God, one of these sweet names of
relationship would apply to A, another to B, and the other to C; but
that to each who does the will of God, all the sweetnesses that are
hived in all the names, and in any other analogous ones that can be
uttered, belong. Of course the selection here of relationships
specified has reference to the composition of that group outside the
circle. But there is a great deal more than that in it. Whether you
accept the grammatical remark that I have made or no, we shall, at