And, being individually weak, they held on by one another, so that
many weaknesses might make a strength, and glimmering embers raked
together might break into a flame.

Now, all these circumstances, or almost all of them, that drove the
primitive believers together, are at an end, and the tendencies of
this day are rather to drive Christian people apart than to draw them
together. Differences of position, occupation, culture, ways of
looking at things, views of Christian truth and the like, all come
powerfully in to the reinforcement of the natural selfishness which
tempts us all, unless the grace of God overcomes it. Although we do
not want any hysterical or histrionic presentation of Christian
sympathy and brotherhood, we do need--far more than any of us have
awakened to the consciousness of the need--for the health of our own
souls we need to make definite efforts to cultivate more of that
sense of Christian brotherhood with all that hold the same Lord
Christ, and to realise this truth: that they and we, however
separate, are nearer one another than are we and those nearest to us
who do not share in our Christian faith.

I do not dwell upon this point. It is one on which it is easy to
gush, and it has got a bad name because there has been so much unreal
and sickly talk about it. But if any Christian man will honestly try
to cultivate the brotherly feeling which my text suggests, and to
which our common relation to Jesus Christ binds us, and will try it
in reference to _A_, _B_, or _C_, whom he does not much like, with
whose ways he has no kind of sympathy, whom he believes to be a
heretic, and who perhaps returns the belief about him with interest,
he will find it is a pretty sharp test of his Christian principle.
Let us be real, at any rate, and not pretend to have more love than