iations, and how gladly I reknit
the bonds of an affection which has been unbroken, and deepening on
both sides through thirty long years.

Dear friends! let us together thank God to-day if He has knit our
hearts together in mutual affection; and if you and I can look each
other, as I believe we can, in the eyes, with the assurance that I
see only the faces of friends, and that you see the face of one who
gladly resumes the old work and associations.

But now, dear brethren, let us draw one lesson. Unless there be this
manly, honest, though oftenest silent, Christian affection, the
sooner you and I part the better. Unless it be in my heart I can do
you no good. No man ever touched another with the sweet constraining
forces that lie in Christ's Gospel unless the heart of the speaker
went out to grapple the hearts of the hearers. And no audience ever
listen with any profit to a man when they come in the spirit of
carping criticism, or of cold admiration, or of stolid indifference.
There must be for this simple relationship which alone binds a
Nonconformist preacher to his congregation, as a _sine qua non_ of
all higher things and of all spiritual good, a real, though oftenest
it be a concealed, mutual affection and regard. We have to thank God
for much of it; let us try to get more. That is all I want to say
about the first point here.

II. Note the lofty consciousness of the purpose of their meeting.

'I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift.'
Paul knew that he had something which he could give to these people,
and he calls it by a very comprehensive term, 'some spiritual
gift'--a gift of some sort which, coming from the Divine Spirit, was
to be received into the human spirit.

Now that expression--a spiritual gift--in the New Testament has a
variety of applications. Sometimes it refers to what we call
miraculous endowments, sometimes it refers to what we may call
official capacity; but here it is evidently neither the one nor the
other of these more limited and special things, but the general idea
of a divine operation upon the human spirit which fills it with
Christian graces--knowledge, faith, love. Or, in simpler words, what
Paul wanted to give them was a firmer grasp and fuller possession of
Jesus Christ, His love and power, which would secure a deepening and
strengthening of their whole Christian life. He was quite sure he had
this to give, and that he could impart it, if they would