live, and move, and have our being."

(4) "May be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth
and length and height and depth" (ver. 18, R.V.). Here again the emphasis
is on strength, and the Apostle prays that we may have full strength to
grasp, may be quite able to accomplish this purpose. Spiritual ideas can
never be appropriated by intellectual action alone. It is not by brilliant
intellect but by spiritual insight that we become "able to comprehend."
Although there is now no specific reference to love, it would seem as
though the idea of verse 19 is already in view, and, assuming this to be
the case, we have four aspects of the Divine love which we are to be
strong to grasp. Its "breadth" means that there is no barrier to it,
reminding us of the extent of the Divine counsels; its "length" tells us
of the Divine foreknowledge and His thought of us through the ages; its
"height" points to our Lord in heaven as the goal for the penitent
believer; its "depth" declares the possibility of love descending to the
lost abyss of human misery for the purpose of redemption. And the ability
to grasp the Divine love in this fourfold way is to be experienced with
"all the saints." It is impossible to accomplish it alone; no spiritual
exclusiveness is thinkable in this connection, to say nothing of the lower
forms of egotism and selfishness. Twice in this brief writing does the
Apostle refer to "all the saints" (ch. vi. 18), thereby reminding us of
the place and power of each saint in the spiritual economy of God. One
saint will be able to comprehend a little, another saint a little more,
and so on, until at length all the saints together are "strong to grasp"
the Divine love. The wider our fellowship the fuller and firmer our hold
of the love of Christ. This is doubtless why public worship is so strongly
emphasised in the New Testament. "Where two or three are gathered
together in My Name, there am I." The experiences of our
fellow-worshippers are always intended to be, and usually will be, of help
to our own fuller realisation of our Lord and Master. The soul is
justified solitarily and alone, but it is sanctified only in the community
of believers.

(5) "And to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge" (ver. 19). If
we are correct in interpreting verse 18 of the Divine love, the present
verse will be the climax of this part of the prayer, and it has been
helpfully suggested that we have here the "fifth di