he mind
of God, was only now being disclosed through Christ's consecrated
messengers, and specially through St. Paul himself, the apostle of the
Gentiles. The incredible nature of the idea clogs St. Paul's language,
and almost makes shipwreck of his grammar. All the depth of Christian
doctrine is necessary as background {127} to recommend and justify this
otherwise entirely 'supernatural' ideal--this marvellous climax of the
workings and revelations of God. The spectacle of a catholic
brotherhood, with all that it promises of universal unity beyond
itself, is a lesson even to the angels of what the manifold wisdom of
God can conceive and accomplish.

We have got into a habit of talking about the 'brotherhood of man' as
if it was an easy and obvious truth. All our experience of our English
relations with races of a different colour to our own, nay, all our
experience of class divisions at home, might have served to check this
easy-going sort of language. If we will consent to pause and reflect
on the actual difficulty of behaving or feeling as brethren should
behave and feel towards men of other races and of other educations and
habits than our own, we may be more inclined to believe that it is only
through some fundamental eradication of selfishness and inherent
narrowness that it can be made possible; only when we begin to live
from some centre greater than ourselves. And that is the moral meaning
of the constant doctrine of the New Testament, that only through being
reconciled to God can we be reconciled to one {128} another--only in
Christ that men can permanently and satisfactorily learn to love one
another, when racial and educational and personal antipathies make for
separation and not for unity.

Now perhaps we are in a position to read with greater intelligence what
St. Paul wrote about 'the dispensation of the divine mystery,' i.e.
'the stewardship of the divine secret,' of the brotherhood of all men
in Christ or the catholicity of the Church, which had been committed to
him by the 'revelation' which followed his conversion to Christ[8].

The doctrine of the brotherhood of men is in fact as much a peculiarly
Christian doctrine as that of divine sonship, and both alike are, in
the New Testament language, represented as realized only within the
community of the baptized. The facts of New Testament language compel
us to say and to recognize this[9]. But {129} we are bound to
recognize also that they are