lps and brotherly impartations of gifts is, on
the one hand, a result of the one gift to the whole body, and is on the
other a sign of, because a necessity arising from, the imperfect degree
in which each individual has received of Christ's fulness; and these
helps of teaching and guidance have for their sole object to make
Christian men able to do without them, and are, as the text tells us, to
cease when, and to last till, we all attain to the fulness of Christ. To
Paul, then, the manifest unity of the Church was to be the end of its
earthly course, but it also was real, though incomplete, in the present,
and the emphasis of our text is not so much laid on telling us when this
oneness was to be manifested as in showing us in what it consists. We
have here a threefold expression of the true unity, as consisting in a
oneness of relation to Christ, a consequent maturity of manhood and a
perfect possession of all which is in Christ.

I. The true unity is oneness of relation to Christ.

The Revised Version is here to be preferred, and its 'attain unto'
brings out the idea which the Authorised Version fails to express, that
the text is intended to point to the period at which Christ's provision
of helpful gifts to the growing Church is to cease, when the individuals
composing it have come to their destined unity and maturity in Him. The
three clauses of our text are each introduced by the same preposition,
and there is no reason why in the second and third it should be rendered
'unto' and in the first should be watered down to 'in.'

There are then two regions in which this unity is to be realised. These
are expressed by the great words, 'the unity of the faith and knowledge
of the Son of God.' These words are open to a misunderstanding, as if
they referred to a unity as between faith and knowledge; but it is
obvious to the slightest reflection that what is meant is the unity of
all believers in regard to their faith, and in regard to their
knowledge. It is to be noted that the Apostle has just said that there
is one faith, now he points to the realisation of that oneness as the
very end and goal of all discipline and growth. I suppose that we have
to think here of the manifold and sad differences existing in Christian
men, in regard to the depth and constancy and formative power of their
faith. There are some who have it so strong and vigorous that it is a
vision rather than a faith, a trust, deep and firm and settled, to